■ ■ : , 1 \ ' 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT, 
 
 AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
OBHAMPTON: 
 fED BY JOHN GRIFFIN. 
 
THE GUNPOWDER PLOT, 
 
 AND 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 IN REPLY TO PROFESSOR GARDINER , 
 
 BY JOHN GERARD, S.J. 
 
 WITH FACSIMILES OF DOCUMENTS, 
 
 AND AN APPENDIX. 
 
 “ Veritas temporis filia. Truth is the daughter of Time; and this will 
 appear especially in this case.” 
 
 Sir Edward Coke, at the trial of the Gunpowder Conspirators. 
 
 LONDON AND NEW YORK: 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, 
 
 45, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 
 
 897. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/gunpowderplotgunOOgera 
 
W I 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT, 
 
 AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 To question the traditional history of the Gunpowder Plot, as 
 I have presumed to do, 1 is, I am fully sensible, a daring under¬ 
 taking. For almost three hundred years that history has been 
 in possession of the field, and whatever mutterings of unbelief 
 may from time to time have been heard, its substantial truth 
 has been accepted by historians, even by such as would 
 naturally be most willing to find reason for calling it in 
 question. It is acknowledged, indeed, that the projected crime t 
 cannot with any shadow of justice be imputed to the Catholics 
 of England as a body, who neither lent it their countenance, nor 
 even knew that it was in progress ; but, at the same time, all 
 the world has without hesitation endorsed the opinion expressed 
 by Mr. Jardine : 2 “ That a design had been formed to blowup 0 ^ 
 the Parliament House, with the King, the Royal Family, the 
 Lords and Commons, and that this design was formed by 
 Catholic men, and for Catholic purposes, could never admit of 
 controversy or concealment.” 
 
 Nor is it only that the story approves itself to the judgment 
 of eminent writers of every school. Any attempt to impugn 
 its truthfulness must of necessity be based upon the same 
 evidence which has so long been held to establish it. From 
 the very nature of the case, as an author of the last century 
 has observed, 3 it is practically impossible that any new light 
 should now break upon us, directly to disclose what hitherto 
 has been out of sight. No fresh documents have been dis¬ 
 covered, or in all probability will ever be discovered, to put us 
 in possession of new facts, or new evidence regarding old ones. 
 
 1 What was the Gunpowder Plot? The traditional story tested by original evidence. 
 London : Osgood, Mcllvaine, and Co., 1896. 
 
 5 Critninal Trials , ii. 3. 
 
 3 Essay towards a new history of the Gunpowder Treason , 1765. 
 
 B 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 AT URBANA-CH/'- PAIGN 
 
2 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT , 
 
 All that can be done, if anything can, towards a better estimate 
 of men and things, is, by analyzing the various elements of the 
 tale, and comparing one with another, to seek reflex lights, 
 which may assist us to discern what has hitherto been over¬ 
 looked. 
 
 Under such conditions it was inevitable that when for the 
 first time I seriously ventured to call in question such an item 
 of our history, not merely as to its minor or accidental details, 
 but as to its very essence, the attempt should be judged 
 presumptuous and wanton ; while it was scarcely possible that 
 it should be manifestly justified by the result. If any traces 
 are to be found of artifice and fraud, suggesting that the 
 account we have been accustomed to believe does not represent 
 the truth, but has been artfully framed to lead the minds of 
 men in a different direction, these must, like tracks scattered 
 in the sand, depend for their significance far more upon their 
 mutual relations, as indicating a common starting-point or a 
 common goal, than upon the precise information that can be 
 gathered from any one in particular. It is quite possible that 
 devoting special attention to all the complex details of evidence, 
 and of the circumstances connected with it, one may satisfy 
 himself that, broken and fragmentary as they are, the lines of 
 argument which here and there he finds, undoubtedly converge 
 towards a point quite different from that to which on accepted 
 principles they should conduct him ; and that at the same 
 time he should be unable to weave them into a connected clue 
 leading directly to that point, or to determine precisely what 
 we should discover could we get there. 
 
 Such was the condition of the problem with which I found 
 myself confronted. Having been led to look somewhat closely 
 into the subject of the Gunpowder Plot, and having started 
 my investigations with no idea whatever that, as to the main 
 features of the story, there could possibly be anything new to 
 learn, I was at first perplexed and presently impressed by the 
 experience, that, wherever I turned, I was met by difficulties 
 which had to be explained or explained away; whilst frequently, 
 not to say as a rule, I failed to discover explanations which I 
 could deem satisfactory. Weighty as some of the considerations 
 thus suggesting themselves undoubtedly appeared to be, it was 
 not so much their individual significance, as the cumulative 
 effect of their common tendency—like the footprints all pointing 
 towards the lion’s den—which gradually produced a conviction 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 
 that the familiar story of the Plot, far from exhibiting the truth 
 of the matter, was expressly designed to conceal it. From 
 whatever side the question w~as approached, such doubts and 
 difficulties offered themselves, and the more thickly, in pro¬ 
 portion as any single line of argument was carefully followed 
 out. The more I endeavoured to track the story to its source, 
 the less satisfactory did it appear. Of the documents containing (P) 
 evidence regarding it, many, and those precisely the most 
 important, must be accepted on faith, exhibiting as they do no 
 such proofs of authenticity as we are accustomed to require. 
 Others have undoubtedly been tampered with, and suggest 
 grave doubts as to what those who so dealt with them may 
 have been ready to do in other instances. The account <2) 
 given by the Government of its own position in regard 
 of the whole transaction, is not only extremely hard to 
 harmonize with evidence obtainable from other sources, but is 
 contradicted by incidental admissions occasionally made by 
 prominent members of the Government itself. The cardinal ■ 
 incidents of the story, upon which everything turns, are invari¬ 
 ably shrouded in mystery, or are surrounded with such dis¬ 
 crepancies of testimony as make it almost impossible to 
 determine how they actually happened. Material and physical 
 considerations must, with more or less of violence, be put aside, 
 before we accept many points of the narrative. Those of the 
 conspirators who were deepest in the design, and would have been 
 the most valuable witnesses as to its real character, including 
 all ever supposed to have been tools of the Government, died 
 violent deaths, or deaths in which violence was suspected, 
 without giving any evidence on the subject. The detection 
 of the conspiracy had important political consequences, and 
 entailed the pursuance of a system of intolerance towards the 
 Catholics of England, which, as was universally supposed, the 
 King’s Chief Minister was most anxious to secure. To that 
 Minister himself it undoubtedly brought a large increase of 
 power and popularity, and it enabled him to remove from his 
 path at least one rival—the Earl of Northumberland—against 
 whom, as is well known, he had long been endeavouring to 
 poison the mind of King James, but whom he had not as yet 
 been able to deprive of influence. 
 
 Nor is it only considerations such as these which must thrust 
 themselves upon an inquirer. Even the material incidents of 
 the story, concerning which there might appear to be no 
 
 
4 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT , 
 
 possibility of doubt, present, on no very profound scrutiny, 
 problems so perplexing as to shake our confidence in the 
 truthfulness of the narrative, of which they form an integral 
 part. The episode of the mine, which the conspirators are said 
 to have dug, is beset with difficulties. So likewise of the store 
 of gunpowder they are said to have accumulated ; especially in 
 view of the strange indifference exhibited by the Government, 
 when, on their own acknowledgment, they had become aware of 
 it. Even if we suppose, that all this powder had actually been 
 placed where it is said to have been, and that it was fit for an 
 explosion, it is exceedingly difficult to understand how Guy 
 Faukes could have carried out his final operations at the critical 
 moment upon which all depended. 
 
 What positive conclusion is to be deduced from these and 
 similar considerations, who shall say? They furnish us, as I 
 have acknowledged, with but broken and scattered threads, 
 which we have not the means of piecing into a connected whole. 
 But in my own mind they produce a conviction, which, though 
 merely negative, is perfectly clear, that the truth regarding this 
 transaction is not what we have been accustomed to suppose, 
 < s and that immense pains have been taken to disguise the truth. 
 Meeting in every direction with signs and symptoms of untruth¬ 
 fulness, I have been lecTto regardTTEe authorized version of this 
 history as ‘‘gangrened with fraud,” and undeserving of the credit 
 it has so long enjoyed. 
 
 To make such a view apparent to others, was of necessity no 
 easy task. It was possible to exhibit, with more or less of 
 fulness, the flaws discoverable in this or that particular of the 
 traditional tale ; but, having no connected story of my own to 
 tell, it was almost impossible to show their common bearing 
 upon my subject, or to make them illustrate the central idea 
 gradually evolved in my own mind, from their gradual 
 recognition. 
 
 It was accordingly inevitable that exceptions should be taken 
 to my line of argument, on grounds inseparable from the 
 necessary limitations of its scope. My criticism, I have been 
 told, is purely destructive, my treatment of the subject is 
 fragmentary ; it is impossible to see what single conclusion I 
 mean to draw from its various parts ; do I insinuate that there 
 was no Plot at all ? or that the Earl of Salisbury set it on foot ? 
 or that he was merely aware of it, and manipulated it for his 
 own purposes? Till I have given a plain answer to such plain 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 5 
 
 questions, it appears to be commonly assumed, that I have 
 nothing to say which is greatly to the point. 
 
 Such objections are not unnatural, and although I have 
 endeavoured to show that they are somewhat irrelevant, they 
 must undoubtedly suggest themselves to many minds, on account 
 of what must seem the rather indefinite nature of the conclusions 
 to which I saw my way. To exhibit the common drift of 
 various and seemingly disconnected considerations, and to show 
 that they lead to one result, is by no means an easy task.^ 
 What is wanted is some definite issue of sufficient importance to 
 warrant a definite and final conclusion. It was because I could 
 find none that I felt myself compelled to be content with the 
 course which I actually adopted. 
 
 Under such circumstances nothing could be more desirable 
 than the intervention in the controversy of such an authority as 
 Professor Gardiner, who has honoured my work with a formal 
 and elaborate rejoinder. 1 If I am, as he pronounces, a novice, 
 unversed in the methods of recent historical scholarship, he is 
 beyond question a veteran, and the foremost representative of 
 the new Oxford school. His practised eye may be confidently' 
 expected to discern, amid the apparent confusion of the battle¬ 
 field, the true key of the situation, and to indicate upon what 
 points assailants and def enders of the accepted story should 
 alike concentrate their efforts, as upon success or failure there, 
 must the whole result depend. If I am not greatly mistaken, he 
 has done this effectually. [He indeed opposes me all along the line 
 and, acce ptin g the traditional history in its entirety, combats 
 my arguments in detail. But, at the same time, he shows, as I 
 did not previously recognize, that there are certain points 
 of the first importance, to which all our attention should be 
 directed, and from a fuller treatment of which more satisfactory 
 results may be hoped, than I had previously supposed to be 
 attainable. To these I shall accordingly now confine myself, 
 neglecting minor and subsidiary matters, upon which I might 
 have something to say in reply to his criticism. 2 I musT" 
 endeavour to the best of my power, to conform my practice to 
 the approved methods of the Oxford School of History, and I 
 
 1 What Gunpowder Plot was. By Samuel Rawson Gardiner, D.C.L., LL.D., 
 Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. London: Longmans, 1897. 
 
 2 Such points are dealt with in three articles contributed to The Month for 
 September, October, and November, 1897, under the title, “ The Problem of the 
 Gunpowder Plot.” 
 
6 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT, 
 
 believe I am not mistaken in supposing that the first point to be 
 attended to—as common sense itself suggests—regards our 
 source of information, to the consideration of which I accordingly 
 turn. 
 
 i.—The Fundamental Evidence. 
 
 Amongst the numerous documents which contain evidence 
 concerning the Gunpowder Plot, I have described two as being 
 of exceptional importance, namely, a Declaration of Guy 
 Faukes, and a Confession of Thomas Winter, which alone 
 amongst the mass of similar productions were selected for 
 publication in the official history of the conspiracy, commonly 
 known as the “ King’s Book.” 
 
 To the claim which I have thus advanced on their behalf, 
 Mr. Gardiner takes exception. 1 He considers it a mistake to 
 describe them as furnishing the basis of the whole history 
 originally narrated by the Government, and since generally 
 accepted, and declares that if both of these depositions had 
 been absolutely destroyed, though we should have missed some 
 picturesque details assisting us better to understand what took 
 place, we should still have been able to set forth the main 
 features of the Plot precisely as we do now. 
 
 From such an account of the matter I must dissent. These 
 published declarations, which differ from all others, made by 
 the same individuals or their confederates, in giving a connected 
 sketch of the conspiracy from first to last, furnish the thread 
 upon which all the fragments of information found elsewhere 
 have to be strung. Without them we should have no more 
 than the disjecta membra of a story, which it would scarcely 
 be in our power to combine into one whole. Nor would these 
 diverse items of information, could they be woven together 
 avail to produce the complete picture of the Plot with which 
 we are familiar, for these two published documents, not only 
 serve as a bond of union for the rest, but are themselves the 
 source whence most of our knowledge must be drawn. But 
 for them we should be almost wholly in the dark as to the 
 first beginnings of the conspiracy, and likewise as to the course 
 contemplated, after the great blow had been struck, while we 
 should be entirely ignorant of a great deal else; of the 
 wonderful mining operations, for example, which form so 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 7 
 
 I striking a feature of the tale, we should know nothing. 1 It 
 I is not too much to say, that were all information derived from 
 ; these two depositions to be blotted out, the tale of the Powder 
 Plot, as we are accustomed to read it, would disappear from 
 our histories. As evidence of this, we need go no further than 
 the instance furnished by Mr. Gardiner himself in his classical 
 
 1 .History of England , for in his account of the conspiracy the 
 particulars which have been obtained from any other evidence 
 than this would no more suffice for its construction, than would 
 the shells embedded in limestone for the building of a house. 
 
 But although thus arguing against the special importance 
 , of these declarations, Mr. Gardiner’s historical instinct makes 
 him recognize it in practice to the full. I had expressed atT 
 opinion that neither of them can be accepted as authentic, and 
 that they represent, not the genuine utterances of their reputed 
 authors, but an account put into their mouths, which it was 
 1 desired to present to the public under cover of their names, 
 Mr. Gardiner not only repudiates such a supposition, but in 
 so doing emphasizes the supreme and vital importance of these 
 particular pieces of evidence, making it clearly appear that upon 
 the conclusion established concerning them everything will 
 turn. It will therefore be necessary to study them a good deal 
 more closely than I have hitherto done. 
 
 And first as to the declaration of Giiy_Faukes. This, it is 
 evident, was for some time upon the anvil, and did not at 
 i once assume the shape in which it ultimately saw the light. 
 We meet with it first, under date of November 8th, in a docu¬ 
 ment which I have termed the “ draft ” of another signed by 
 ' Faukes on November 17th. To this description Mr. Gardiner 
 1 objects, complaining that it begs the whole question ; but this 
 I at least is clear—the document of the 8th is that of the 17th 
 in the rough, for, with the exception of names of persons, there 
 is nothing in the second which is not to be found in the first, 
 while the earlier document contains much which was subsc- 
 
 1 The only word concerning the mine, for instance, to be found elsewhere occurs 
 in Keyes’ examination of November 30th [G. P. B. 126], wherein is found this clause, 
 apparently added as an after-thought, “and helped [also] to work in the mine.” 
 This document is full of interlinear additions and alterations, and apparently is not 
 signed by Keyes, though as we have no other specimen of his writing, it is not easy 
 to be positive upon this point. It is witnessed by Popham, Coke, and Waad. A 
 shorter version of the same examination [Ibid. 127], certainly not signed by Keyes, 
 but witnessed, in addition to the above, by Nottingham, Worcester, Devonshire, 
 Northampton, and Salisbury, makes no mention of the mine. 
 
8 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT , 
 
 quently emitted, and has evidently been carefully edited to get! 
 it into proper shape. I 
 
 My belief is, that the so-called deposition of the 8th is not) 
 a deposition at all, but the substance of one, which it was 
 intended afterwards to procure. One reason which I adduced 
 for this opinion must, I fear, have been inadequately expressed, 
 for Mr. Gardiner does not seem to have caught its drift. Faukes 
 cannot, it seems to me, have said all the things attributed tor 
 him, some of those at first set down, and afterwards struck out, 
 being quite incompatible with what was substituted for them. | 
 From this I inferred that t hose w ho prepared the account he 1 
 was to give, were feeling their way, and trying which of various i 
 stories would best suit their purpose. It cannot, for example, 
 have been true, and we can scarcely imagine Faukes to have 
 said, both that the conspirators intended at once to avow and 
 justify their action, and had a proclamation ready drawn for 
 that purpose—and, likewise, that they had determined not to 
 avow it, until they found themselves in possession of force 
 sufficient to make head against their enemies. Yet the first 
 of these statements having been originally set down, was crossed 
 out, and the second added instead. In the finished version, of 
 the 17th, the substance of the latter was adopted, but into it 
 was skilfully woven a modified item of the first, for we are told 
 that while the plotters were resolved not to let it be known that 
 they had done the great deed, till they felt themselves secure, 
 they had a project of a proclamation ready, to be issued when 
 this should have come about, taking all upon themselves. 1 Such 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 I subjoin the full text of the passages in question, printing in italics what was 
 crossed out. 
 
 November Sth. “ He confesseth that it was resolved amongst them, that the same 
 day that this detestable act should have been performed, the same day should other 
 of their confederacy have surprised the person of the Lady Elizabeth, and presently 
 have proclaimed her Queen to which purpose a procla7Jiation was drawn, as well to 
 avow and justify the action , as to have protested against the union , and in no sort to 
 have meddled with religion therein. And would have protested also against all 
 strangers and this proclamation should have been made in the name of the Lady 
 Elizabeth.” 
 
 “He confesseth that, if their purpose had taken effect, until they had power 
 enough they would not have avowed the deed to be theirs; but if their power— 
 for their defence and safety—had been sufficient, they themselves would have taken 
 it upon them.” 
 
 November 17th. “ It was further resolved amongst us that, the same day that 
 
 this action should have been performed, some other of our confederates should have 
 surprised the person of the Lady Elizabeth, the King’s eldest daughter, who was 
 kept in Warwickshire at the Lord Harington’s house, and presently have proclaimed 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 9 
 
 traces of artificial manufacture, in the case of a document made' 
 to play so conspicuous a part in the diffusion of the official 
 story, are certainly not calculated to inspire confidence. 
 
 It may also be remarked, that the programme finally attri¬ 
 buted to the conspirators, although upon paper it might serve 
 well enough, and might countenance the idea that there were 
 many throughout the country upon whom they might count, 
 jcould scarcely have presented itself as practicable, even to the 
 
 E unpowder plotters, utterly devoid of common sense as all their 
 ported actions show them to have been. They were to blow¬ 
 up a Parliament House, with King and Queen, princes and 
 
 foreign ambassadors, Lords and Commons, and all the flower 
 ‘/of the State ; at the same moment, they were to seize and carry 
 I off the Princess Elizabeth, the King’s eldest daughter, and 
 I proclaim this child Queen of Britain ; they were to rais e the 
 ^standard of revolt against all that was left of constituted 
 I authority, inviting to it all who were dissatisfied with the 
 | existing state of things ;—and meanwhile nobody was to know 1 
 I that there was any connection between the catastrophe in 
 1 London and the simultaneous rebellion, or to suspect that those 
 !who selected that precise moment to take the field and launch 
 a policy, had anything to do with the wholesale removal of their 
 most formidable antagonists, or knew that the throne would 
 just then be vacant. Is it conceivable that Guy Faukes 
 should have described such a project, unless it had been actually 
 entertained ? or that it should have been entertained as a 
 practical possibility by any mortal that ever lived ? 
 
 But here, again, we obtain fresh light from Mr. Gardiner, 
 who contends that the declaration is genuine, and that from its 
 earlier form it can be proved to be so. 
 
 ) 
 
 I 
 
 Curiously enough [he writes], 1 one of the crossed out passages 
 supplies evidence that the document is a genuine one. [It] contains 
 an intimation that the conspirators did not intend to rely only on a 
 Catholic rising. They expected to have on their side Protestants who 
 disliked the union with Scotland, and were ready to protest “against 
 all strangers,” that is to say, against all Scots. We can readily under¬ 
 stand that Privy Councillors, knowing as they did the line taken by the 
 
 1 her for Queen, having a project of a proclamation ready for the purpose, wherein 
 I we made no mention of altering of religion, nor would have avowed the deed to be 
 
 I ours until we should have had power enough to make our party good, and then we 
 
 should have avowed both.” 
 
 I 1 P- 38 
 
IO 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT, 
 
 King in the matter of the Union, would be unwilling to spread infor¬ 
 mation of there being in England a Protestant party opposed to the 
 Union, not only of sufficient importance to be worth gaining, but so 
 exasperated that even these Gunpowder plotters could think it possible 
 to win them to their side. Nor is this all. If it is difficult to conceive 
 that the Commissioners could have allowed such a paragraph to go 
 abroad, it is at least equally difficult to think of their inventing it. We 
 may be sure that if Fawkes had not made the statement, no one of the 
 examiners would ever have committed it to paper at all; and if the 
 document is genuine in this respect, why is it not to be held genuine 
 from beginning to end ? 
 
 On arguments of this nature it appears dangerous to build 
 too much. It is very easy to imagine motives and purposes 
 for-the statesmen of three centuries ago, but how are we to assure 
 ourselves that these were the true ones? Such a view of the 
 subject as Mr. Gardiner has set forth is doubtless a possible 
 one ; but it is also not impossible that the idea suggested itseli 
 of utilizing the Gunpowder Plot against the opponents of 
 the King’s favourite scheme of Union, by making them bear 
 some of the odium. And while speculations of this kind seem 
 to be somewhat futile, a consideration of more solid character 
 is suggested, which forbids the belief that Faukes ever made 
 any such statement as we have heard. The King’s Council, 
 Mr. Gardiner tells us, would be unwilling to spread infor¬ 
 mation as to the strength and sentiments of the anti- 
 Unionists; but they must have been extremely anxious to 
 obtain it. Had Faukes really made such a disclosure, it must 
 have become for his examiners a point of prime importance to 
 ascertain how far the conspirators had dealt with or sounded 
 the members of the anti-Union party, and to what extent their 
 anticipations of support were justified by facts. But of this 
 most important matter we hear nothing whatever in any 
 examination either of Faukes himself or his associates. Save 
 in this one crossed-out passage no mention of it occurs. 
 
 There is another point in connection with the declara¬ 
 tion which it is more to our purpose to notice. Although 
 the earlier version is headed “The Confession of Guy Fawkes, 
 taken the 8 of November, 1605,” it bears no internal tokens of 
 being a confession at all. It is , uns igned, even ip copy, and 
 although a list of witnesses is appended, this obviously is~~not 
 copied from their own signatures, for none__gf them are given 
 in the form which their owners would have used, peers and 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 ii 
 
 officials being designated by their offices or dignities, which 
 others would employ to describe them, but not themselves. 
 Thus, the list commences with the “ Lord Admiral,” “ Lord 
 Chamberlain,” and “ Earl of Devonshire,” and terminates with 
 the “ Lord Chief Justice” and “Mr. Attorney General.” 1 
 
 As we find that when Faukes put his name to the finished 
 version of the declaration, on November 17th, Sir Edward Coke, 
 and Waad, the Lieutenant of the Tower, alone witnessed it, but 
 that when it came to be printed, the signatures of all the persons 
 designated on the “ draft ” appeared as those of witnesses—it 
 seems not unnatural to infer that just as the body of the earlier 
 document was meant to indicate what Faukes was to be induced 
 to say for the benefit of the public, so the list appended was 
 meant to indicate the individuals under the shadow of whose 
 grjeat names his testimony was to go forth. 
 
 But there is something even more worthy of notice. An 
 English, or Welsh, exile, in the service of the Archdukes 
 in/ Flanders, by name H ugh _Q wen, had for various reasons 
 become most especially obnoxious to the English Govern¬ 
 ment, who were exceedingly anxious to implicate him in the 
 Plot, that they might thus be enabled to demand his extra¬ 
 dition and get him into their hands. 2 How keen was their 
 anxiety, is evidenced by the instructions sent by Salisbury 
 jto Sir Edward Coke, the Attorney General, for his conduct of 
 the conspirators’ trial, which concluded with the admonition : 
 v You must remember to lay Owen as foul in this as you may.” 3 [ 
 During the period between the 8th and 17th of November, 
 
 1 Mr. Gardiner, who denies the inference I have drawn from the form in which 
 (the witnesses’ names first appear, writes as follows : 
 
 j “As for the titles Lord Admiral and Lord Chamberlain being used instead of 
 I their signatures, it was in accordance with official usage. A letter written, on 
 January 21, 1604-5, by the Council to the Judges, bears nineteen names at the foot 
 in the place where signatures are ordinarily found. The first six names are given 
 [ thus : ‘ L. Chancellor, L. Treasurer, L. Admiral, L. Chamberlain, E. of Northumber- 
 / land, E. of Worcester.’” (p. 40.) 
 
 / I cannot pretend to such acquaintance as Professor Gardiner’s with the official , 
 papers of the time, but he has selected a very unfortunate example. Nothing could, 
 in fact, be more unlike the case it is intended to illustrate. It is headed “ Copy of 
 the LL.’s letter to the Judges,” and at the foot we find ‘‘ Signed by the L. Chan¬ 
 cellor,” &c. Nothing could be plainer or more intelligible, nor could anything less 
 resemble what we find in Faukes’ confession. 
 
 2 Owen acted as a kind of agent general on the Continent for English Catholics, 
 and from him, could he have been secured, much information might probably have 
 been extorted. 
 
 3 Dom. fames /. xix. 94. 
 
12 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT , 
 
 when the confession was in preparation, we learn from a letter 
 written by the Earl of Salisbury to Sir Thomas Edmondes, 
 English Ambassador at Brussels, 1 that it was expected to 
 obtain from Faukes such evidence against Owen as w r as wanted. 
 This, however, he clearly would not give, for amongst the state¬ 
 ments which he finally subscribed there is no mention of 
 Owen’s name. The Government accordingly fabricated a 
 clause to the required effect, w r hich they inserted, very skilfully, 
 in the printed version of the declaration given to the world. 2 
 
 Still more interesting and instructive are the questions which 
 connect themselves with the companion document, T^homas 
 Winter’s confession. The objection which I previously alleged 
 against its authenticity, based upon a contradiction respecting 
 its__date, though I cannot think that it is wholly without force, I 
 now find to be of far less weight than I had supposed, and 
 I must acknowledge its insufficiency for such a purpose. On 
 the other hand, Mr. Gardiner, having, in part at least, eliminated 
 the above difficulty, proceeds to draw out with great force the 
 vital importance of this confession, and has made me see, as I 
 never did before, how much hangs upon it. 
 
 More even than the companion deposition of Faukes, this 
 of Winter is the backbone of the entire traditional story. It 
 gives a complete and intelligible account of the whole course 
 of the conspiracy, from its first conception to its final collapse 
 when the plotters attempted to make a last stand at Holbeche 
 House. It furnishes much information that is not to be found 
 anywhere else, and very much which is to be found nowhere 
 else except in the published narrative of Faukes ; and upon it, 
 as on a trunk or stem, the details supplied by other documents 
 may be grafted. jTTf this narrative be Winter’s genuine work, it 
 must undoubtedly be admitted that everything happened as we 
 have been accustomed to believe—that the conspirators devised 
 their scheme, and swore one another to execute it, and dug 
 their mine, and stored their powder, and made effective arrange¬ 
 ments for the final catastrophe, exactly as historians tell us ; 
 and, although it would still remain uncertain how far the 
 
 1 Nov. 14. Stowe MSS. 168, 54. 
 
 2 The following is the passage thus falsified, the portion here printed in italics 
 being that interpolated. 
 
 “ About Easter, the Parliament being prorogued till October next, we dispersed 
 ourselves ; and I returned into the Low Countries, by advice and direction of the rest, 
 as well to acquaint Owen with the particulars of the Plot , as also lest by my longer 
 stay I might have grown suspicious, and so have come in question.” 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 !3 
 
 Government were aware of their doings, the establishment of 
 so much as true, which I have argued to be false, must un¬ 
 questionably shake to its foundations the whole structure I have 
 attempted to raise. 
 
 Nor is it only that Professor Gardiner thus brings out the 
 supreme importance of this document. He likewise exhibits 
 with singular force the considerations which appear to indicate 
 its genuine character. Having printed the confession in full, 1 
 from the copy in the Record Office, he proceeds to point out 
 the internal marks of authenticity which it bears. 
 
 I have printed this interesting statement in full [he writes], because 
 it is the only way in which I can convey to my readers the sense of 
 spontaneity which pervades it from beginning to end. To me, at leasts 
 it seems incredible that it was either written to order, or copied from a’ 
 paper drawn up by some agent of the Government. Nor is it to be 
 forgotten that if there was one thing the Government was anxious to I 
 secure, it was evide nce against th e priests, and that no such evidence 
 can be extracted from this confession. What is, perhaps, still more to 
 the point is, that no candid person can, I imagine, arise from the 
 perusal of these sentences without having his estimate of the character 
 of the conspirators raised. There is no conscious assumption of high 
 qualities, but each touch as it comes strengthens the belief that the 
 men concerned in the Plot were patient and loyal, brave beyond the 
 limits of ordinary bravery, and utterly without selfish aims. Could this 
 result have been attained by a confession written to order or dictated 
 by Salisbury or his agents, to whom the plotters were murderous 
 villains of the basest kind? 
 
 Mr. Gardiner elsewhere 2 draws attention to the fact, that 
 the confession was pruned before publication, passages being 
 omitted in which Lord Monteagle’s name occurred, in pur¬ 
 suance of the policy constantly adopted of disguising the fact 
 that this nobleman, who played so conspicuous a part in the 
 discovery of the treason, had been on terms of intimacy with 
 the traitors. Does it not seem obvious that, if officially 
 composed expressly to be published, it would have required 
 no such curtailment? 
 
 No other portion of Mr. Gardiner’s argument appears to me 
 so forcible as this, and I must own that he has convinced me 
 that if Winter’s confession is to stand, the substantial truth of 
 the old story is sufficiently vindicated. But if, on the other 
 
 1 P- 57- 
 
 3 P. 56. 
 

 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT , 
 
 hand, this crucial position be turned, it is equally clear that the 
 traditional tale will sustain a blow striking at its very root 
 
 For my own part, forcible as Mr. Gardiner’s arguments 
 appear, and deserving of all consideration as they undoubtedly 
 are, I cannot think that they avail to establish thp authenticity 
 of the confession. To say nothing of the difficulty about the 
 date, which, as we shall see, is by no means abolished, there 
 are others' of a still graver character which an examination of 
 the document reveals, even in its published form. These are 
 severally cogent enough, and taking them in conjunction, it 
 is not easy to believe that the confession is what it professes to 
 be. 
 
 Before we proceed to consider them, it is needful to 
 remember, that in dealing with documents such as this, too 
 much reliance should not be placed upon the internal evidence 
 of spontaneity and simplicity which they appear to exhibit. 
 Grave and even shocking as such an accusation must appear, 
 we have undeniable proof that the statesmen of the period 
 had the means at their command, of investing fiction with 
 an air of absolute truth, and did not hesitate to use them. 
 It is certain that, upon occasion, the writing of prisoners or 
 suspected persons was so artfully imitated as to deceive those 
 best acquainted with it. This was done in the case of Father 
 Garnet, whose very peculiar hand was copied so skilfully as to 
 be accepted for his by his most frequent correspondents, theirs 
 being in like manner reproduced so as to delude him. 1 It is 
 even more important to remember that the Government’s agents 
 could do what was still more difficult, and throw an air of 
 ingenuousness and simplicity over a carefully concocted tale. 
 On this point I need do no more than quote Mr. Jardine’s 
 remarks upon the history of the Gunpowder Plot itself. 2 
 
 No doubt [he writes] the story which it cost so much pains to 
 distribute, was the result of corresponding care in the manufacture. 
 The same skilful artificer, who had been employed to shape the stories 
 of the treasons of Lopez and the Earl of Essex in Queen Elizabeth’s 
 time to suit the objects of the State, was still in the service of the 
 Government; the same statesman, who directed Bacon to prune the 
 
 1 See the similar case of the correspondence between Phelippes and Owen. 
 (What was the Gunpowder Plot ? p. 112.) 
 
 2 Criminal Trials, ii. 4. He inclines to the belief that Bacon was the instrument 
 employed in this as in previous cases. 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 1 5 
 
 depositions and pervert the facts on the latter of these occasions, was 
 still an active minister of the Crown. . . . The whole scheme of the 
 Discourse [the “King’s Book”] is the same as that of the Declaration 
 of the Earl of Essex’s Treasons , viz., to surround fiction by undoubted 
 truths with such apparent simplicity and carelessness, but in fact with 
 such consummate art and depth of design, that the reader is beguiled 
 into an unsuspecting belief of the whole narration. The fidelity of the 
 story is in both cases vouched by the introduction of depositions and 
 documents which might be garbled at the discretion of the writer, 
 without fear of detection, as the originals were in his power, but which 
 give an air of candour and authenticity, and thus complete the 
 deception. 
 
 Mr. Jardine continues, with special reference to our present 
 point: 
 
 Of several hundreds of examinations which were taken, two only 
 were published in this narrative, namely, a Declaration of Guy Fawkes 
 and a Confession of Thomas Winter. That both of these were carefully 
 settled and prepared for the purpose of publication is not only highly 
 probable from a comparison of them with the other statements of the 
 same individuals, which are still extant, but is demonstrated as a fact 
 by the interlineations and alterations observable upon the originals. 
 
 Were a narrative artificially produced in the manner thus 
 described, it might be expected to contain much that really 
 emanated from the person to whose authorship it was assigned, 
 and it is quite conceivable that the literary expert to whom its 
 preparation was entrusted might include various genuine dis¬ 
 closures which his employers afterwards saw reason to withhold. 
 
 It is clear, as I fully acknowledge, that suggestions of this 
 nature ought not to be made unless solid reasons can be 
 adduced in their support, but I believe that in this instance 
 such reasons are to be found. 
 
 In the first place, a consideration at once presents itself 
 which, if it stood alone, would not perhaps appear serious, but 
 in conjunction with others is certainly not devoid of signifi¬ 
 cance. The production of Winter’s confession was, for the 
 Government’s purposes, most singularly opportune. It made 
 its appearance just at the moment when it was wanted, 
 when the “ King’s Book ” was in preparation, containing the 
 authorized version of the story for the instruction of the world, 
 and original testimony substantiating this version was invalu¬ 
 able. So timely, indeed, was it, that the author of the book was 
 induced to insert a special note concerning it. 
 
i6 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT , 
 
 And in regard [we read] that before this Discovery could be ready 
 to go to the press, Thomas Winter, being apprehended and brought to 
 the Tower, made a confession, in substance agreeing with this of 
 Fawkes’s [of November 17], only larger in some circumstances, I have 
 thought good to insert the same likewise in this place, for the further 
 clearing of the matter and greater benefit of the reader. 
 
 It was certainly a singular coincidence that Winter should 
 be moved, at this precise moment, to compose a flowing narra¬ 
 tive, utterly unlike the ordinary run of depositions, but eminently 
 suited for publication, corroborating Faukes in particulars which 
 neither of them, nor any of their fellows; thought of mentioning 
 on any other occasion ; nay,that his relation should “agree with 
 this of Faukes ” so closely as to include the statement con¬ 
 cerning Owen, which Faukes never made, but the Government 
 fabricated, and should even make it larger in some im¬ 
 portant circumstances. Indeed, Winter himself would appear 
 to have thought it necessary to explain his adoption of so 
 unusual a course, for his narrative is prefaced by" a rather 
 elaborate exposition of the motives inducing him to undertake it. 
 
 Turning to consider the confession itself, we cannot but 
 observe, as I have before noticed, that there is some mystery 
 about its date. The copy in the Record Office, 1 which is in 
 the writing of Levinus Munck, Salisbury’s secretary, is dated 
 November 23rd. The original, at Hatfield, has the same date 
 first written, and then altered to November 25th. This is 
 witnessed 2 by Sir E. Coke alone, but the copy has appended 
 to it, in Salisbury’s hand, “Taken before us—Nottingham, 
 Suffolk, Northampton, Salisbury, Mar, Dunbar, Popham, Edw. 
 Coke, W. Waad,” and these names duly" appear as those of 
 witnesses in the printed version. 
 
 Mr. Gardiner gets rid of these difficulties in a manner which, 
 I observe, is singled out by some critics as a brilliant example 
 of historical argumentation, being even styled “ convincing.” 
 I take the liberty of indicating by italics how large a part the 
 use of the potential mood is made to play in his demonstration. 3 
 
 Winter, I suppose, writes it on the 23rd, and it is then witnessed by 
 Coke alone. Though no copy with the autograph signatures of the 
 Commissioners exists, it is reasonable to suppose that one was made, in 
 
 1 G.P.B. 114. 
 
 2 As will be seen presently, it cannot really be said to be witnessed even by him. 
 
 3 P. 56. 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 *7 
 
 which a passage about Monteagle—whom the Government did not wish 
 to connect with the Plot except as a discoverer—was omitted, and that 
 this, still bearing the date of the 23rd, may have been brought before 
 the Commissioners on the 25th. They would thus receive a statement 
 from Winter that it was his own, and the signatures of the Com¬ 
 missioners would then be appended to it, together with those of Coke 
 and Waad. This then would be the document from which copies would 
 be taken for the use of individual Commissioners, and we can thus 
 account for Salisbury’s having appended to his own copy: “ Taken 
 before us, etc.” The recognition before the Commissioners would 
 become the official date, and Coke, having access to the original changes 
 that on which it was written to that on which it was signed by the Com¬ 
 missioners. 
 
 It seems scarcely necessary for Mr. Gardiner to add : “ This 
 explanation is merely put forward as a possible one.” He goes 
 on, however, to assume that it is a good deal more, speaking of 
 Winter’s confession as “having been thus vindicated.” 
 
 Mr. Gardiner considers that the all-important point is to 
 show that the change of date was made by Coke; but, for my 
 part, I find it difficult to believe, either that Coke would have 
 made such alteration without some motive, or that Salisbury 
 would have written out for his own information the names 
 of his brother Commissioners with whom he was acting every 
 day, or that the existence of a copy with the witnesses’ names, 
 of which no trace is to be found, can be established merely by 
 the requirements of Mr. Gardiner’s argument. To me it seems 
 plain that Levinus Munck’s copy was that prepared for the 
 press, a phrase in it having been dutifully altered in accord¬ 
 ance with a marginal note by the King, and that if Salisbury 
 took the trouble to add the witnesses’ names, it was because 
 there was no document from which they might be copied. 
 
 There are other difficulties, necessarily of a negative 
 character, which appear considerably graver. Winter wrote 
 his confession, we will assume with Mr. Gardiner, on November 
 23rd. On the 25th he was undoubtedly examined by the 
 Commissioners, 1 and in this examination dealt with some few 
 of the matters spoken of in the confession ; but he made no 
 allusion to the confession itself, nor to the much fuller infor¬ 
 mation it contained. On December 5th he was again examined, 2 
 and referred to the examination of November 25th, but not to 
 the confession of the 23rd [or 25th]. Neither did he allude to 
 1 G. P. B. 116. 'Ibid. 146. 
 
 c 
 
i8 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT , 
 
 this when examined on January 9th and 17th, nor upon any of 
 these subsequent occasions say anything about the mine and 
 other important matters of which in the said confession he so 
 freely discoursed. 
 
 There is another circumstance still more curious. In the 
 confession we of course encounter Hugh Owen, the stormy 
 petrel of our history, the appearance of whose name is soon 
 found to be ominous of perplexity. Winter is made to declare 
 in the most ample manner that Owen was thoroughly com¬ 
 mitted to the worst part of the treason, that Faukes was sent 
 to the Low Countries to acquaint him with the conspirators’ 
 proceedings, and did so ; and that Owen “ seemed well pleased 
 with the business.” As the English Government undoubtedly 
 desired above all things to incriminate Owen, we might certainly 
 expect to hear more of this important admission ; but we find 
 no word concerning it in any of Winter’s examinations. Nor 
 only this. In April, 1606, Sir Edward Coke, moving for Owen’s 
 attainder before Parliament, among the proofs which he adduced 
 in support of his application, did not adduce this, which would 
 certainly have been far more to the purpose than those actually 
 offered. The omission is the more remarkable, as Coke cited 
 upon the occasion from an earlier portion of Winter’s same 
 confession, the comparatively trivial statement that Owen had 
 introduced Winter to Faukes, a twelvemonth before he was 
 alleged to have heard of the conspiracy. I do not think that 
 it is unfair to conclude that while the evidence thus brought 
 forward represents something actually said by Winter, it was 
 thought better not to expose to close scrutiny the other portion, 
 which in itself would have been far more conclusive. Certainly, 
 Coke was not the man to neglect, without good reason, a 
 valuable instrument ready to his hand ; but, at the same time, it 
 appears that Parliament—the House of Lords in particular— 
 was more sceptical than other folk, and less inclined to accept 
 on faith assertions roundly made by official personages. 
 
 I must here remark that, as Mr. Jardine points out, 1 there 
 is no proof that Winter’s confession was produced as evidence 
 in court, so as to come to his own knowledge. He considers, 
 indeed, that it was probably so used, since the facts it contains 
 were frequently referred to in the harangue of the Attorney 
 General. But he tells us elsewhere 2 that the report transmitted 
 to us even of this “ dull and tedious speech,” cannot be accepted 
 1 Criminal Trials, ii. 147, note. 2 Ibid. 112. 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 19 
 
 as evidence of what was actually said on the occasion. Like 
 the rest of the account of the trial, it was evidently prepared for 
 the press in the form in which it was thought most beneficial 
 for people to read it, as bearing out the story furnished for them 
 with so much solicitude in the “ King’s Book.” There are 
 Mr. Jardine continues, anachronisms discernible which show that 
 Coke’s speech, as we have it, must have been composed at a 
 date subsequent to the trial. 1 
 
 Not even as regards the internal evidence are difficulties 
 altogether wanting. It is not only passages in which Monteagle 
 is mentioned that are omitted. Amongst other things, the 
 terms of the oath said to have been taken by the conspirators, 
 which are given in the original, 2 and in no other document 
 emanating from the prisoners, are suppressed in the copy and 
 in the published version. This oath was afterwards made much 
 of, being reproduced verbatim more frequently than any other 
 piece connected with the Plot, excepting only the warning 
 letter addressed to Monteagle. It is certainly strange that 
 it was not printed whilst those said to have taken it were 
 alive. Another point regards the brothers John and Christopher 
 Wright. In his confession, Winter says, speaking of the catas¬ 
 trophe at Holbeche: “ The next shot was the elder Wright 
 stone dead ; 3 after him the younger Mr. Wright.” We know, 
 however, on the authority of Sir Edward Leigh, that neither of 
 the brothers was struck stone dead. They were both alive on 
 the following day, November 9th, and not till the 13th was 
 their death reported to the Council by the Sheriff, Sir Richard 
 Walsh. They were amongst the earliest conspirators, and 
 presumably knew much as to the history of the enterprise. 
 Some contemporaries undoubtedly suspected that those so cir¬ 
 cumstanced might, had opportunity been given, have made 
 inconvenient disclosures, and it is somewhat suspicious to find 
 this assurance put forth, that they had no time to say anything. 
 Winter, who was in their company, can hardly have been 
 ignorant of the facts of the case. 
 
 So strong a presumption against the authenticity of Winter’s 
 confession did such considerations appear to furnish, as to 
 convince me that, if inferences are worth anything, the docu¬ 
 ment could not be genuine. But after the publication of 
 
 1 The notes of Coke’s speech in John Hawarde’s Reportes del Cases in Camera 
 * f tellata, make no mention of any topic traceable to Winter’s confession. 
 
 - They are given as a marginal addition. 
 
 3 In the copy, “struck dead.” 
 
20 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT , 
 
 Mr. Gardiner’s book, I felt that the matter could not be allowed 
 to rest there, and must be probed to the bottom, by examina¬ 
 tion of the original confession preserved at Hatfield. I accord¬ 
 ingly obtained permission from the Marquis of Salisbury to 
 inspect it, and the result has been to furnish what appears to 
 me, and I think will appear to every man, convincing proof 
 that the confession is nothing else but a forgery. 
 
 In the first place, however, it plainly appears that the parti¬ 
 cular record of the date at the head of this original, upon the 
 alteration of which—from November 23rd to 25th—I had laid 
 stress, can claim little importance, being merely an official note 
 by way of memorandum. The alteration, as Mr. Gunton, Lord 
 Salisbury’s librarian, has suggested, was probably made by Sir 
 Edward Coke, whose reason for making it we have seen con- 
 jecturally explained by Mr. Gardiner. What is certain is, that 
 Coke adopts the later date, both in the heading he has prefixed 
 to the document, 1 and in a most important note which he has 
 appended to it, this being all there is in the way of attestation, for 
 no names of witnesses appear. The note in question runs thus : 
 
 Delivered by Thomas Wynter, all written with his own hand, 
 25th November, 1605,—Edw. Coke. 
 
 And here we touch the root of the matter. Was the 
 confession indeed written, as Coke declares, by Thomas Winter 
 with his own hand ? If so, inferences notwithstanding, it seems 
 impossible to deny its authenticity. 
 
 But, I suppose, it will hardly be maintained that this all- 
 important question is settled beyond possibility of doubt by a 
 certificate from Sir Edward Coke ; although his formal state¬ 
 ment undoubtedly proves, that if the confession was not actually 
 penned by Winter, it is a fraudulent production. Turning from 
 Coke’s guarantee to the document itself for which he vouches, 
 
 I find it impossible to believe that Winter wrote it; and 
 although the writing certainly resembles his very closely, far 
 from establishing its authenticity, it is precisely this circum¬ 
 stance which most effectually condemns it. 
 
 Of Thomas Winter’s handwriting there are several specimens 
 in the Public Record Office, belonging to various periods of 
 his career. From these we can see that, in his normal condition, 
 he wrote an exceedingly good and scholarly hand, which is 
 exhibited in four letters written previously to the Gunpowder 
 
 1 “The voluntarie declaration of Thomas Winter of Hoodington in the county 
 of Worcester, gent., the 25th of Nov, 1605, at the Tower,” 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 21 
 
 Plot troubles, all addressed to John Grant, his brother-in-law 
 and fellow conspirator. 1 Two of these I reproduce in facsimile. 
 But when he was captured at Holbeche House, November 8th, 
 Winter was not only hurt, as he himself relates, “ in the belly 
 with a pike,” but, as Mr. Gardiner reminds us, got a bullet 
 through his right shoulder. The result of these injuries was, 
 apparently, to disable him for a time from writing at all. An 
 examination of his, taken on November 12th, is unsigned. 2 On 
 the 21 st, Sir William Waad, Lieutenant of the Tower, wrote 
 to Salisbury. 3 " Thomas Winter doth find his hand so strong, 
 as after dinner he will settle himself to write that he hath 
 verbally declared to your lordship, adding what he shall 
 remember.” From this it appears that at this date he was 
 only recovering his power of using a pen, and although he then 
 proposed to write something in the way of a statement, there 
 is clear evidence that he was still quite incapable of either 
 composing or transcribing a lengthy narrative.*'' This is proved 
 by his signature affixed to the record of the examination which 
 he underwent upon November 25th, 4 the very day upon which 
 as Coke certifies, he wrote the confession, and still more 
 evidently by a short holograph note of half-a-dozen lines 
 addressed, upon the same day, to the Lords Commissioners. 5 
 From these, while the hand is undoubtedly Winter’s, it is 
 obvious that he wrote with none of his former facility and 
 elegance, but with pain and labour, finding even six lines no 
 easy task; and, moreover, that he was in no condition to 
 indulge in graces of style or diction, and could only attempt 
 to express his meaning in the simplest fashion. 
 
 But the original confession, written, as Sir Edward Coke 
 declares, on the very same day, occupies ten folio pages, well 
 written from beginning to end, and, still more extraordinary, in 
 a hand extremely like that of Winter before he received his 
 wounds. 
 
 Here is the fatal flaw in a piece of work which otherwise 
 might almost defy suspicion. The writing is undoubtedly 
 marvellously like Winter’s,—but Winter’s at another period ; 
 and it is altogether unlike the undoubted specimens we have 
 of what he could do with his wounded arm, upon the very same 
 day on which the confession is said to have been written. 
 
 1 December 4th, 1603 ; January (or thereabout), 1604-5 ; February 22nd, 1604-5 ; 
 August 31st, 1605. The last is signed with initials only. 
 
 3 Dorn. James I. xvi. 59. 3 Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 6178, 84. 
 
 4 G. P. B. 116. 6 Ibid. 117. Both of these I reproduce. 
 
22 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT , 
 
 The style, moreover, is as remarkable as the handwriting, 
 being that of a fluent and practised writer, rolling out his 
 periods with a facility of which in his best days Winter has 
 left no proof. 1 
 
 From the undoubted specimens of his writing on the 25th 
 of November which we possess, it appears absolutely impossible 
 that upon that day Winter can have produced such a document, 
 and the difficulty is by no means obviated if we suppose, in 
 spite of Coke’s testimony, that it was written, as the official 
 copy declares, two days earlier—on the 23rd ; for at this date 
 Winter’s injuries were still more recent. 
 
 But there is another thing which is even more extraordinary. 
 The original confession is signed “ Thomas Winter,” a form of 
 his name which the supposed writer never used, in any one 
 of his signatures with which we are acquainted. The Govern¬ 
 ment, indeed, always called him “Winter,” or “Wynter,” 2 but 
 he invariably wrote his name “ Wintour,” as may be seen, 
 besides the five instances already referred to, in his three 
 subsequent examinations. 3 It can hardly be supposed that 
 he forgot the spelling of his own name, upon the very day in 
 which he twice wrote it in his accustomed form, for he was no 
 illiterate or half educated man, but a good scholar and linguist, 
 being even described by Coke as “ universally learned.” 4 
 
 Nor was it he alone who adopted the form “Wintour,” 
 which Teems to have been exclusively employed by his two 
 brothers, Robert and John, as may be seen in all their signatures 
 now to be found. 5 
 
 1 The opening paragraph may serve as a specimen : 
 
 “Not out of hope to obtain pardon, for—speaking of my temporal part—I may 
 say the fault is greater than can be forgiven, nor affecting hereby the title of a good 
 subject, for I must redeem my country from as great a danger as I have hazarded the 
 bringing her into, before I can purchase any such opinion ; only, at your Honours’ 
 command, I wifi briefly set down mine own accusation, which I shall the faithfuller do 
 since I see such courses are not pleasing to Almighty God ; and that all, or the most 
 material parts, have been already confessed.” 
 
 There is, however, a remarkable dissimilarity of style observable, the earlier 
 portions of the confession being in keeping with the above, while others, especially 
 those regarding the Monteagle episode, are in quite another, and far inferior, manner. 
 
 2 In consequence of this, “Winter ’ has become the accepted form in all histories, 
 and I have therefore retained it. 
 
 3 Viz. : December 5th, G.P.B. 146 ; January 9th, Ibid. 164; January 17th, Ibid. 
 170. 
 
 4 “Winter and Fauxe are men of excellent good naturall parts, verye resolute, 
 and universallye learned.” (Apud Hawarde, Reportes .) 
 
 5 For Robert, see Dom. James /. xiii. 32, xiv. 33, xviii. 44; G. P. B. 168 and 
 ' 176. For John, G. P. B. 109. 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 23 
 
 It must undoubtedly appear almost incredible that such a 
 blunder should be committed in a document upon which, if it 
 be a fabrication, so much laborious care was evidently expended. 
 But there it is, whether it were Winter that made it or some one 
 else. Improbable as it may appear that a copyist should fall into 
 such an error, it is still less likely that he himself should have 
 done so; and unless he did so, a gross fraud has unquestionably 
 been perpetrated. Written in a style of which at the time he is 
 seen to have been physically incapable, and in the handwriting 
 which had once been his, but was so no longer, and signed with 
 his name in a form which he and others of his family are never 
 known to have used, the confession attributed to Winter must> 
 I think, stand self-condemned. Upon this point, however, my 
 readers have it in their power to judge for themselves, for, 
 through the courtesy of Lord Salisbury, I am enabled to lay 
 before them a substantial specimen of the Hatfield confession, 
 to be compared with the others which I have reproduced. It 
 does not appear surprising that such a document should have 
 been relegated to the comparative obscurity of the Chief 
 Minister’s private archives. 1 
 
 But if this fundamental document be fraudulent, what 
 becomes of the official history of the Gunpowder Plot? It is 
 not merely that the story falls to pieces for want of the bond 
 which has hitherto seemed to co-ordinate its various parts. If 
 the Government adopted such a device as the manufacture of 
 evidence like this, they undeniably had an end in view which 
 only falsehood could secure, and deliberately set themselves to 
 impose a perversion of history upon the world, and by so doing 
 have furnished against themselves evidence more damning than 
 any other could possibly supply. 
 
 It will be seen that in regard of attestation, there is a 
 remarkable similarity between these confessions of Winter and 
 Faukes. Winter’s was witnessed by Coke alone, if it can be 
 said to have been witnessed by him ; but, in print, the names of 
 witnesses were added, from the list supplied by Salisbury upon 
 his secretary’s copy. Faukes signed his deposition in presence 
 
 1 It is, I think, not unworthy of notice, that in Levinus Munck’s official copy, 
 and the printed version taken from this, the name of the signatary is entirely omitted. 
 The original concludes, “ And so I remain your Honors poor humble and penitent 
 prisoner, Thomas Winter.” In the copy, this becomes, “And so I remain yours, 
 &c.” [no name added]. I may here remark that the Hatfield confession appears to have 
 been very carelessly copied in the versions generally known. Thus a puzzling phrase 
 which is always given as “ you shall be one,” is undoubtedly, “you shall goe over.” 
 
24 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT , 
 
 only of two minor officials ; but was furnished in print with 
 the list drawn out nine days before he put his hand to the 
 declaration. 
 
 A difficulty here at once presents itself upon which Mr. 
 Gardiner strongly insists. 1 Can it be seriously supposed, he 
 asks, that the Lords Commissioners, and others, allowed their 
 names to be misused in such a fashion, without ever protesting 
 against the fraud in which they were made to co-operate ? 
 Some of them, as the Earls of Worcester and Northampton, 
 were professedly Catholics. The majority had no great love 
 for the King’s Secretary of State, the Earl of Salisbury, and no 
 wish to see him increase his power and influence, which already 
 they found irksome. Are they likely to have lent themselves 
 to dishonourable and iniquitous practices, merely that he should 
 carry out his schemes ? 
 
 Though there is undoubtedly much apparent weight in such 
 an objection, I cannot think that it can be sustained, for it is 
 perfectly clear, on the evidence which we possess, that the 
 noblemen in question undoubtedly did, again and again, what 
 Mr. Gardiner argues that they cannot be suspected of doing 
 In regard of Guy Faukes’ declaration, it is not merely that they 
 allowed their names to appear as witnesses, but they thereby 
 guaranteed before the world the authenticity of what they 
 cannot but have known to be a garbled version. The passage 
 interpolated for Owen’s benefit, is acknowledged on all hands 
 to be a fabrication, with no warrant in the original. That 
 original was in the hands of the Commissioners, who had been 
 expressly appointed to examine the evidence, yet they thus 
 sanctioned by their authority the capital charge manufactured 
 against an absent man. 
 
 Nor does this instance stand by any means alone. Faukes 
 and Winter in other examinations than those of which we have 
 been speaking—of November 9th and January 9th, respectively, 
 —stated that the confederates having mutually administered 
 their oath of secrecy, had presently received the Sacrament at 
 the hands of Father John Gerard, in pledge of fidelity to their 
 evil purpose, but both explicitly declared that Gerard was not 
 acquainted with their design, Winter adding that Gerard was 
 not present when they took the oath. In both cases Sir Edward 
 Coke struck out the passage exculpating the Jesuit, directing 
 that it should be omitted when the rest was read in court. 
 
 1 Pp. 24 and 41. 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 2 5 
 
 He then declared in his speech that Gerard had administered 
 the oath to the conspirators, and although all who had access 
 to the evidence could see that such an assertion was in direct 
 contradiction to it, and that it had been falsified to make the 
 assertion possible, not only was Coke’s statement allowed to 
 pass unchecked, but it was published in the official report of the 
 trial, 1 with the names of the honourable Commissioners prefixed 
 to give it weight. 
 
 This was no solitary or exceptional instance of such dis¬ 
 honesty. The written depositions, which furnished the only 
 evidence produced, were carefully prepared for service by the 
 Attorney General—the prosecuting counsel—who indicated, as 
 we can see with our own eyes in the Record Office, what 
 portions were to be read, and what others were to be passed 
 over; everything being suppressed which could in any way 
 tell in favour of those whose guilt the Government were anxious 
 to establish, and the meaning of the passages which were retained 
 being thus in many instances entirely changed. On this subject 
 it will be sufficient to cite the words of Mr. Jardine : 2 
 
 This mode of dealing with the evidence of an accused person is 
 pure and unmixed injustice; it is, in truth, a forgery of evidence; for 
 when a qualified statement is made, the suppression of the qualification 
 is no less a forgery than if the whole statement had been fabricated. 
 
 Yet no attempt whatever was made to conceal what was 
 done from those who had any part in the conduct of the case. 
 The passages withheld from the jury and the public could be 
 read without the slightest difficulty by all who saw the docu¬ 
 ments ; yet the Commissioners, before whom the depositions 
 thus mutilated had been made, sat by and said nothing at the 
 time or afterwards. 
 
 It would not be difficult to add other instances to the same 
 effect, but these will suffice for my purpose. Can it be main¬ 
 tained that these men would not do what they actually did, or 
 that any argument can be based on their having failed to raise 
 their voices in protest against deceit? 
 
 To us, indeed, it seems quite incredible that men of position, 
 education, and character should condescend to play such a part 
 and show no signs of shame or remorse for having played it. But 
 in the time of James I. it seems, that when a man was charged 
 
 1 True and Perfect Relation , sig. H. 4. b. 
 
 2 Criminal Ti ials, ii. 358. 
 
26 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT, 
 
 with high treason his guilt was taken as unquestionable, and it was 
 considered a proof of loyalty to secure his conviction. 1 Mr. 
 Gardiner himself tells us, 2 that one who was even suspected 
 of this crime could never meet with sympathy, and could 
 hardly hope for the barest justice; that judges and juries 
 had been trained under a system which completely ignored 
 the elementary principles of justice with which we are familiar ; 
 and that treason was regarded as an act of consum¬ 
 mate wickedness aiming at the ruin of the nation. He 
 points out, moreover, that in a case of treason, none of those 
 engaged on the side of the prosecution had any real sense of 
 the responsibility attaching to their own share in it; that— 
 whilst a man accused of a State crime, would find in his 
 examiners, persons incapable by their very position of taking 
 an impartial view of the affair—the Privy Councillors, who 
 conducted the examinations, regarding their inquiries merely 
 as a preliminary investigation, threw upon the jury the responsi¬ 
 bility which in theory they were themselves bound to feel; 
 and that the jury, on the contrary, considered that everything 
 had been established when the Councillors committed a prisoner 
 for trial, and “ would naturally feel a diffidence in setting their 
 untried judgments against the conclusions which had been 
 formed by men who were accustomed to conduct investigations 
 of this kind, and who might be supposed, even if the evidence 
 appeared to be weak, to have kept back proofs which for the 
 good of the public service it was inadvisable to publish.” 
 
 When the public conscience was in this chaotic state, it 
 would have required a man of singular force of character and 
 devotion to principle, to set himself against the tide of popular 
 indignation, which swept over the country from the first 
 moment that the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot was 
 announced. It cannot be said that the Commissioners were 
 men of such a stamp. Before all things courtiers, they were 
 engaged in a struggle for office and emolument, whilst for any 
 one of them to have made difficulties on the score of truth and 
 justice, would inevitably have been to lay himself open to a 
 charge of wishing to favour the King’s enemies ; while to have 
 confessed at a later period his own neglect of duty, would have 
 
 1 Compare Dogberry’s principle : “ Masters, it is proved already that you are 
 little better than false knaves, and it will go near to be thought so shortly.” 
 
 2 History of England , i. 124, 125. He is speaking of the case of Sir Walter 
 Raleigh, with whom he strongly sympathises. 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 27 
 
 been to injure himself far more grievously than the memory of 
 the statesman under whom he had acted. 
 
 Nor does it appear that the individual commissioners 
 specially cited by Mr. Gardiner as least likely to connive at 
 fraud, could be counted upon to do much in such a case. He 
 tells us: 1 
 
 Worcester is always understood to have been professedly a Catholic, 
 Northampton was certainly one, though he attended the King’s Service, 
 while Suffolk was friendly to the Catholics. 
 
 It is clear, however, that none of these allowed religion in any 
 way to influence his conduct, or was willing to suffer the 
 smallest inconvenience for its sake ; and at the same time that 
 for any one to whom the slightest suspicion of Papistry 
 attached, it would have been exceptionally dangerous to afford 
 any handle for an accusation of sympathy with the plotters. 2 
 As to Suffolk, he is known to have been venal even beyond the 
 ordinary measure of his contemporaries, and his friendliness 
 towards the Catholics was probably due to his need of money, for 
 there is evidence that very shortly after the time of the Plot, he 
 offered to obtain toleration for them for a sufficient consider¬ 
 ation, as his affairs were greatly embarrassed, his expenses 
 being “infinite.” 3 He closed his career in dishonour, as, having 
 become Lord Treasurer, he was condemned for embezzlement 
 and extortion to a fine of ^”30,000, and imprisonment for life. 
 Worcester’s Catholicity sat so lightly upon him that we cannot be 
 certain he was a Catholic even in name. As to Northampton, 
 the one undoubted Catholic amongst the Commissioners, his 
 interests, more than those of any other, were bound up with 
 those of Salisbury, whose confidential instrument he had been 
 in the secret correspondence with King James in the time of 
 Queen Elizabeth, in which her Chief Minister had endeavoured 
 to pave the way for himself to a like position under her 
 successor, and, in particular, to undermine possible rivals, such 
 as Northumberland and Raleigh. In spite of his Catholicity, 
 
 1 P. 25. 
 
 2 How real such a danger might be is abundantly evident from the history of 
 Titus Oates and his monstrous fables, which moved the country to a state of frenzy 
 much beyond that aroused by the Gunpowder Plot itself. In his time, to be accused 
 of attempting to “stifle the Plot,” or discredit the witnesses for it, meant almost 
 
 certain ruin. 
 
 3 Father Richard Blount to Parsons, December 1, 1606. Stonyhurst MSS. 
 Anglia , iii. 72. 
 
28 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT, 
 
 Northampton afterwards boasted of the special part he had 
 taken in hunting Father Garnet from the bar to the gallows ; 1 
 and as to his character we are told by Professor Gardiner, 2 “Of 
 all who gathered round the new King, this man was, beyond 
 all comparison, the most undeserving of the favours which he 
 received.” 
 
 Putting these various considerations together, I do not 
 think that the negative evidence deduced from the silence of 
 the Lords Commissioners, can be allowed to weigh against the 
 positive testimony which we have examined. 
 
 2.—The Political Situation. 
 
 Should the arguments hitherto adduced have any validity, 
 it must follow that the traditional history of the Gunpowder 
 Plot can no longer be accepted. If the confessions of Faukes 
 and Winter were fraudulently manufactured for the purpose of 
 deceiving the public, the credit of the story which so largely 
 rests upon their evidence must be irretrievably damaged ; and 
 we have seen that the arguments showing these documents 
 to be spurious, are not sufficiently answered by an appeal to 
 the character of the men who testified to their genuineness. 
 
 It therefore appears that, the question has been brought to 
 a point beyond which it is useless to pursue it, for the final 
 conclusion will undoubtedly depend upon the judgment at 
 which we arrive in regard of what has been already said. There 
 is, however, another matter, brought into special prominence 
 by Mr. Gardiner, which seems to demand some consideration. 
 
 Having disposed, as he believes, of the arguments I had 
 adduced against the traditional story, he invites our attention 
 to considerations of a broader kind, which will in his opinion 
 assist us to understand the whole aspect of the case better than 
 any mere scrutiny of details. 
 
 We can [he writes] 3 raise ourselves into a larger air, and trace the 
 causes leading or driving the Government into measures which per 
 suaded such brave and constant natures to see an act of righteous 
 vengeance in what has seemed to their own and subsequent ages, a 
 deed of atrocious villainy. Is it true, we may fairly ask, that these 
 measures were such as no honourable man could in that age have 
 
 1 Dom. James 1 . lxx. 6i. 2 History , i. 93. 3 P. 138. 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 29 
 
 adopted, and which it is therefore necessary to trace to the vilest of all 
 origins—the desire of a half successful statesman to root himself in 
 place and power ? 
 
 To the elucidation of this question, he devotes a singularly 
 interesting chapter, in which he endeavours to trace the con¬ 
 flicting streams of policy favoured by King James and by his 
 Chief Minister, and the confused and somewhat wayward line 
 of action resulting from their confluence. His conclusion is 
 that neither the monarch, nor his Secretary of State, was at 
 heart a persecutor, and that while both would have suffered 
 men to believe what they chose, but for political considerations, 
 they alike felt that, as things then were, an increase in the 
 number of Catholics was incompatible with the security ol 
 the realm ; the King thereupon indulging in speculative and 
 unpractical schemes of a partial toleration, while Salisbury fell 
 back upon those Elizabethan principles of government with 
 which he had been familiar, and endeavoured to graft upon 
 his royal master’s policy such provisions as would effectually 
 secure the attainment of his object. 
 
 Mr. Gardiner likewise maintains, that at the moment when 
 the Gunpowder Plot is said first to have been hatched, that is, 
 in the spring of 1604, the Secretary had achieved a success, 
 which made it needless for him to trouble himself greatly about 
 the security of his own position : for in February of that year, 1 
 a proclamation had been issued ordering the banishment of 
 all priests. 
 
 Consequently [says Mr. Gardiner], all arguments attributing the 
 invention of the Plot to Cecil, for the sake of gaining greater influence 
 with the King, fall to the ground. He had just achieved a triumph of 
 no common order, the prelude, as he must have been keen enough to 
 discern, of greater triumphs to come. Granted, for argument’s sake, 
 that Cecil was capable of any wickedness—we at least require some 
 motive for the crime which Father Gerard attributes to him by 
 innuendo. ... In plain truth, Salisbury did not need to gain favour 
 and power. He had both already. 2 
 
 Notwi thstanding Mr. Ga rdiner’s authority and unrivalled 
 acquaintance with this periocTof history, I find if impossible to 
 attach much value to such an argument as this. Who can 
 undertake to say, that he understands all the motives which may 
 have presented themselves to such a statesman as Cecil, in 
 
 l February 22nd, 1603-4. 
 
 3 Pp. 160, 161. 
 
30 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT, 
 
 dealing with such a Sovereign as James I.? According to the 
 rules then governing the game of politics, for a Minister to lose 
 power meant disgrace and ruin, and Salisbury certainly held his 
 position by no tenure so secure as had his father and Walsingham, 
 or even he himself, under Queen Elizabeth. Although the King 
 had as yet found his services indispensable, it was widely 
 supposed that the monarch had no great affection for him, and 
 would not have been sorry to find another to take his place. 
 There can be little doubt that he was unpopular with the 
 nobility and the people. Mr. Gardiner tells us 1 that, as events 
 proved, he was not exactly loved by his colleagues, and the 
 share attributed to him in bringing Essex to the block, had 
 turned against him the hearts of those, who made of that 
 nobleman a national hero. Meanwhile, there were men in high 
 position whose influence he undoubtedly dreaded, foremost 
 amongst them the Earl of Northumberland, against whom, 
 since the discovery, more than a century later, of his secret 
 correspondence with King James in Scotland, he is proved to 
 have strenuously endeavoured to set the mind of his future 
 master. There was a considerable Catholic party amongst the 
 nobility, which any system of toleration would, without doubt, 
 extend, and any increase of its influence would certainly tell 
 against one, who on all hands was considered the most 
 implacable enemy of Catholics. When the Gunpowder Plot was 
 first heard of, he had succeeded in procuring the banishment of 
 priests, which no doubt was much,—as much, perhaps, as he had 
 ever actually proposed to James ; but even if he could feel 
 secure of the continuance by so unstable a Sovereign of the 
 policy thus initiated, it represented but a small part of that at 
 which he was generally supposed to aim, and before the 
 discovery of the conspiracy opened the flood-gates of anti- 
 Catholic legislation, he had succeeded in making notable advance 
 along the path of intolerance. Mr. Gardiner, who pronounces, 2 
 that “ All that has been said of the tyranny of the penal laws 
 upon the laity, as affording a motive for the Plot, is so much 
 * misplaced rhetoric,” tells us elsewhere, 3 that even as regards the 
 actual plotters, the Government must bear a share of the blame, 
 as having goaded them beyond endurance, and that they may 
 even be regarded as more sinned against than sinning, 4 and 
 again, 5 that in November, 1605, Catholic gentlemen and their 
 
 1 P. 41. 2 P. 160. 3 P. 8. 4 P. 3. 5 P. 28. 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 3 1 
 
 tenantry were undoubtedly so exasperated by recent enforcement 
 of penal statutes, as to make them possible or probable rebels. 
 He likewise admits 1 that Salisbury’s animosity against the 
 Catholics, and his resolution to put them down, were “ no secret.” 
 
 Even if it be granted that so far as this particular branch of 
 policy was concerned, the Secretary felt no need of strengthening 
 his hand, it would be hard indeed to make sure that there were 
 no others portending difficulty and danger against which it 
 would be prudent to fortify himself. Impending questions of 
 foreign policy, especially as regards Spain, might well make 
 it appear doubtful how long the Minister could count upon the 
 countenance and confidence of his royal master. 
 
 It is, more over, nhviQWr-+frm*j-whatevw- its origin, nothing 
 couTclHiavehappened more fortunately for Salisbury than the 
 Gunpowder Plot. There was no more question of toleration 
 for CatholicSj and the surest road to power and popularity came 
 to lie through the cause he strenuously adopted of loading 
 them with new shackles. He may have secured much before, 
 but undoubtedly the discovery of the conspiracy, attributed to 
 his vigilance, greatly advanced him in favour with all classes 
 of men ; and he was, moreover, at last rid for ever of all 
 possible antagonism on the part of Northumberland. 
 
 Considerations such as these at least avail to show how 
 difficult it is, or rather how impossible, adequately to treat such 
 a question by surveying it from the higher air to which 
 Mr. Gardiner invites us. Unless we could see all that Salisbury 
 saw, it must be hopeless to attempt to reconstruct all the 
 motives for action that suggested themselves to his mind, and 
 in attempting to do so we run the risk of disguising history 
 by the exercise of our ingenuity. 
 
 But at the same time, if what has been said above con¬ 
 cerning the fundamental evidence have any weight—if it be 
 established that documents were elaborately fabricated for the 
 purpose of imposing upon the world a fictitious story—it is 
 useless to argue about the motives which may or may not have 
 existed to recommend the adoption of a course, which is found 
 to have been, from whatever motive, actually adopted. 
 
 There is another fact, writ large on the face of history, which 
 appears to be unaccountably ignored. Mr. Gardiner acknow¬ 
 ledges, in the most ample terms, 2 that to lay the Gunpowder 
 
 1 P. 7- 
 
 2 P. 2, 
 
32 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT , 
 
 Plot at the door of English Catholics as a body, is now known 
 to all historical students to be an “ entirely false charge.” That 
 it is so, students learn from examination of the mass of evidence 
 taken at the time and transmitted to us by the Government 
 of the day. Yet the net result of the whole affair was to 
 brand Catholics for centuries with the odium of a design in 
 which they had no part, and to crush them under a cruel 
 persecution, the only excuse for which was their supposed 
 complicity; and it was the very men who had collected the 
 evidence which convinces us of their innocence, who, by word 
 and act, persuaded the world of their guilt. At the very outset, 
 the King himself in his speech to Parliament—November 9th— 
 pronounced the atrocious project to be the direct outcome of 
 Catholic principles, declaring “ that no other sect of heretics, not 
 excepting Turk, Jew, nor Pagan, no, not even those of Calicut, 
 which adore the devil, did ever maintain by the grounds of their 
 religion, that, it was lawful, or rather meritorious—as the Romish 
 Catholics call it—to murder princes or people for quarrel of 
 religion; ” and again, that “ none of those that truly know 
 and believe the whole grounds and school conclusions of that 
 doctrine, can ever prove either good Christians or faithful 
 subjects;” the Secretary of State wrote in the King’s name 
 to inform Sir Charles Chichester in Ireland, that 1 “this detestable 
 and inhuman treason was an abominable practice of Rome 
 and Satan ; ” and again, the Sovereign himself informed Sir 
 John Harington, 2 that “these designs were not formed by a 
 few—the whole legion of Catholics were consulted—the priests 
 were to pacify their consciences, and the Pope confirm a 
 general absolution for this glorious deed, so honourable to God 
 and His holy religion.” 
 
 These things were proclaimed while as yet no evidence 
 whatever had been obtained to implicate any one except the 
 actual plotters; not even that which was subsequently alleged 
 against individuals like Garnet and Greenway. As time went 
 on and inquiries were multiplied, the same tone was con¬ 
 sistently maintained, no opportunity being lost of disseminating 
 the entirely false charge of which we have heard. Thus, upon 
 the 3rd of March following, Salisbury wrote to Sir Henry 
 Bruncard 3 “I must plainly tell you, as my good friend, that 
 I must still apprehend the dangerous estate wherein we live, 
 
 1 State Papers, Ireland, 217, 95. 2 Nuga Antigua, i. 374. 
 
 ? State Papers, Ireland, 218, Dom, James /, xix. 10. 
 
AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOTTERS. 
 
 33 
 
 considering how we are forced, after so long a suffering, to run 
 a course more violent than standeth either with the ordinary 
 rules of moral policy, or with the moderation of his Majesty’s 
 mind. But necessity hath no law, and the same God who 
 blessed us in our slumber, will not forsake us when we are 
 awake.” On the 9th of the same month, he, in like manner, 
 informed the Earl of Mar, 1 that although unwilling to persecute 
 Catholics for conscience’ sake, he is forced to do so having 
 ascertained them to be traitors—“ Seeing the law of nature and 
 of nations teacheth all kings to prevent destruction practised 
 under mantle of religion, it is expedient to make manifest to 
 the world how far these men’s doctrine and practice trencheth 
 into the bowels of treason; and so for ever after stop the 
 mouths of their calumniation that preach and print our laws 
 to be executed for difference in point of conscience.” Ten 
 days later, Salisbury wrote in the same strain to Sir Henry 
 Wotton, at Venice. 2 “ Now they may see that the just laws 
 that were enacted during the reign of the late Queen of famous 
 memory, against those Romish Catholics, and particularly 
 against priests and Jesuits, which they then calumniated and 
 termed persecutions for difference in point of conscience and 
 religion, are demonstrated to have been for no other cause than 
 for high treason. . . . when Garnet, the Provincial, who was 
 one of those proscribed by the proclamation, being now taken 
 and examined in the Tower, hath confessed his own privity and 
 Green way’s to the treason, not sticking to avow the action 
 justifiable by divinity.” Now that we have access to the 
 evidence whicji the Government possessed, we can see that, 
 whatever be thought of Father Garnet’s attitude towards the 
 conspiracy, this last assertion regarding him was as entirely 
 false as the general charge against Catholics. 
 
 The policy foreshadowed in utterances such as the above, 
 was speedily translated into action, it being the first business of 
 Parliament, when it assembled, to forge new fetters for the luck¬ 
 less Papists. It was solemnly declared to be matter of daily 
 experience, “ that many of his Majesty’s subjects that adhere in 
 their hearts to the Popish religion, . . . are so perverted in the 
 point of their loyalties and due allegiance unto the King’s 
 majesty and the Crown of England, as they are ready to 
 entertain and execute any treasonable conspiracies and prac- 
 
 1 Dom. James /. xix. 27. 2 Ibid. 59. 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 THE GUNPOWDER PLOT. 
 
 tices,” 1 and accordingly measures were taken to have the penal 
 laws fully executed, to secure the banishment of all priests, to 
 ruin the Seminaries beyond the seas, and, in short, to stamp out 
 the Catholic faith. As Mr. Jardine says, 2 t he hor jo r excited b y 
 the Gunpowder Plot “ was artfully converted into an engine 
 for the suppression of the Roman Catholic Church/’ and 
 Mr. Gardiner adds, 3 that the charge, which he so severely 
 stigmatizes, caused Catholics, and especially their priests, to be 
 subjected to persecution, which they bore with the noblest^and 
 least self-assertive constancy, and that the false belief regarding 
 them prevailed so widely as to have hindered in no slight degree 
 the spread of Catholicism. The historian Birch remarks, moreover, 4 
 that “ in passing these laws for the security of the Protestant 
 religion, the Earl of Salisbury exerted himself with distinguished 
 zeal and vigour, which gained him great love and honour from 
 the kingdom.” 
 
 And all this on the strength of an accusation which the 
 evidence by which the Government sought to support it show's 
 to have been “entirely false.” Is it needful to seek further 
 proof that the history of the Plot was entirely falsified ? 
 
 1 Preamble to Act for better execution of penal statutes, January 21, 1605- 
 
 2 Criminal Trials , ii. 1. 3 P. 2. 4 Negotiations , p. 256. 
 
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 November 25, 1605. 
 
 An attempt has been made to obliterate the name of Lord Monteagle, over which a piece of paper was also pasted. 
 
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 TENTH, AND LAST, PAGE OF THE HATFIELD CONFESSION. 
 
 November 25, 1605. 
 
 With Note by Sir Edward Coke. Two-thirds of original size. 
 
No. 6. 
 
 
 /ptt’ 
 
 CONCLUSION OF LEVINUS MUNCK’S COPY OF WINTER’S CONFESSION. 
 The witnesses’ names added by the Earl of Salisbury. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER’S DEFENCE OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 ( Reprintedfroi7i u The Month ” September, October , November, i8gp) 
 
 HAVING ventured in a recent publication, 1 to express my 
 disbelief in the received history of the famous Powder Plot, I 
 cannot but rejoice that my conclusions should have elicited the 
 formal criticism of an authority so eminent as Professor Gardiner. 
 Arguments which are sound, must necessarily gain in cogency 
 when carefully sifted, and if mine be unsound, the sooner they 
 are swept away the better, for the question at issue is too 
 important to be obscured by sophistry or special pleading. 
 
 For the tone and temper of Mr. Gardiner’s attack on my 
 position, 2 I have every reason to be grateful. As the nature of 
 the case imperatively requires, he hits straight and speaks 
 plainly, concerning whatever seems to him defective in my 
 method or my reasoning. At the same time, he manifestly 
 desires to be fair, and to meet every difficulty with a sufficient 
 answer. More than this, he peremptorily sweeps away the one 
 allegation which has been supposed to invest the history of the 
 Plot with any legitimate importance, namely, that it was the 
 work of English Catholics as a body, that it was, in fact, as the 
 Anglican Calendar long described it, “ The Papists’ Conspiracy.” 
 Nothing could be more satisfactory than his pronouncement 
 upon this all-important point. It is something new to find 
 an English historian of eminence expressing himself in such 
 terms as these. 3 
 
 No candid person can feel surprise that any English Roman 
 Catholic, especially a Roman Catholic priest, should feel anxious to 
 wipe away the reproach which the Plot has brought upon those who 
 share his faith. Not merely were his spiritual predecessors subjected to 
 
 1 What was the Gunpowder Plot ? Osgood, Mcllvaine and Co., 1896. 
 
 5 What Gunpowder Plot was. By Samuel Rawson Gardiner, D.C.L., LL.D., 
 Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. Longmans and Co., 1897. 
 
 * P. 2. 
 
4 2 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 a persecution borne with the noblest and least self-assertive constancy, 
 simply in consequence of what is now known to all historical students 
 to have been the entirely false charge that the Plot emanated from, or 
 was approved of by the English Roman Catholics as a body, but this 
 false belief prevailed so widely, that it must have hindered, to no slight 
 extent, the spread of that organization, which he regards as having been 
 set forth by divine institution for the salvation of mankind. 
 
 Did we not know by sad experience that bad history is 
 invulnerable, we might expect to hear no more of the “entirely 
 false charge,” so recklessly repeated by ill-informed or prejudiced 
 writers and speakers. 
 
 But, whilst fully exonerating Catholics as a body, Professor 
 Gardiner strenuously" maintains that the conspiracy was wholly 
 and solely the work of a small knot of individual Catholics—the 
 thirteen men who suffered for it on the scaffold, or died in the 
 field—and although he acknowledges 1 that even as concerns 
 them the Government must bear a share of the blame, as 
 having goaded them beyond the limits of endurance, he alto¬ 
 gether rejects the idea that the plotters were unwittingly used as 
 tools for ministerial purposes, or that the true story of their 
 proceedings was in any material particular different from what 
 we have been accustomed to believe. 
 
 Here it is that we part company, and his attack upon my 
 position begins Without going into particulars, for which 
 readers must be referred to the book in which I have set forth 
 my argument at large, I must be allowed briefly 7 to indicate its 
 essential features. 
 
 I maintain that the story- of the Gunpowder Plot commonly 
 accepted—which was that originally circulated by the Govern¬ 
 ment of the day—is not, and cannot be, true. It seems to me 
 impossible to believe that the Government, or some of its 
 principal members, were not aware of the conspirators’ proceed¬ 
 ings long before they professed to discover them : and if they 
 had such knowledge whilst simulating ignorance, it is obvious 
 that the real facts of the case are quite different from what has 
 commonly been supposed : that it was not the King’s Ministers 
 who were almost involved in unforeseen ruin, but Guy 
 Faukes and his fellows, who were allowed in fancied security to 
 consummate their own destruction. Should this prove to be the 
 true account, it will hardly be denied that the transaction 
 assumes a character quite different from that with which it has 
 1 P. 8. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 43 
 
 hitherto been invested, and illustrates not so much the lengths 
 to which a few desperate men were prepared to go, as the 
 dexterity with which such men could be utilized by statesmen 
 for the accomplishment of political objects, for it is a patent 
 fact that the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot ensured the 
 continuance during many years of a policy of intolerance 
 towards the Catholics of England, and equally certain that 
 nothing so powerfully contributed to this result, as the belief, 
 sedulously fostered by the Government, that they and the 
 entire nation had suddenly found themselves on the brink of 
 destruction at the hands of Catholics, and had been preserved 
 from an appalling and wholly unsuspected catastrophe only by 
 a lucky chance, which deserved to be termed miraculous. 
 
 It is with this fundamental point that my argument is 
 primarily concerned. I maintain that the account of the Plot 
 furnished by the Government is manifestly untrue in regard of 
 this essential feature of the story, and that the pains they took 
 to obtain credence for this falsehood sufficiently testify to its 
 importance for their purposes. 
 
 With their knowledge of the conspiracy the question of the 
 Monteagle letter is necessarily connected. It was by this alone, 
 they declared, that they obtained any information of the 
 impending danger ; but I agree with such writers as Mr. Jardine 
 and Professor Brewer in considering this famous communication 
 to have been merely a device to conceal the truth as to the 
 manner in which they became cognizant of the conspiracy, and 
 the time at which they obtained such knowledge. 
 
 Finally, I find it extremely difficult to believe that the 
 conspirators ever did some of the things they are said to 
 have done. If they really performed the actions ascribed to 
 them, it becomes more than ever impossible to suppose that 
 their proceedings eluded the observation of the authorities. If, 
 on the other hand, they never did what they are alleged to have 
 done, the narrative, of which such allegations form an integral 
 part, forfeits all claim to consideration. The mine which the 
 plotters are said to have endeavoured to dig beneath the House 
 of Lords, with the intention of storing in it their powder, is 
 the principal example of what I mean. 
 
 Professor Gardiner, on his side, maintains that the account 
 to which we are accustomed is in all important respects 
 unimpeachable. “ My hypothesis is,” he writes, 1 “ that the 
 1 P. 13. 
 
44 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 traditional story is true—cellar, mine, the Monteagle letter and 
 all,” and it is the object of his book to show that there is 
 nothing in the evidence we possess which impugns its sub¬ 
 stantial truthfulness. The arguments which I have alleged— 
 or a certain number of them—he weighs and finds wanting, and 
 feels compelled to repudiate alike my method and my con¬ 
 clusions. 1 
 
 Having carefully, and I trust fairly, considered all that 
 Professor Gardiner says in support of this judgment, I confess 
 to finding my former opinions unaltered. I venture to think 
 that the method I adopted was a perfectly legitimate method, 
 and that my conclusions are not weakened but strengthened 
 by the new tests to which they have been subjected, and I 
 proceed to give some of my reasons. 
 
 I. 
 
 To begin with the question of method, to which Mr. Gardiner 
 rightly attaches supreme importance, inasmuch as it must needs 
 underlie everything else. His first objection to mine is thus 
 formulated by himself. 2 
 
 I object to [Father Gerard’s] criticism as purely negative. He 
 holds that the evidence in favour of the traditional story breaks down, 
 but he has nothing to substitute for it. He hap not made up his mind 
 whether Salisbury invented the whole Plot or part of it, or merely knew 
 of its existence, and allowed its development till a fitting time arrived 
 for its suppression. Let me not be misunderstood. I do not for an 
 instant complain of a historian for honestly avowing that he has not 
 sufficient evidence to warrant a positive conclusion. What I do 
 complain of is that Father Gerard has not started any single hypothesis 
 wherewith to test the evidence on which he relies, and has thereby 
 neglected the most potent instrument of historical investigation. When 
 a door-key is missing, the householder does not lose time in deploring 
 the intricacy of the lock, he tries every key at his disposal to see 
 whether it will fit the lock, and only sends for the locksmith when he 
 finds that his own keys are useless. So it is with historical inquiry, 
 at least in cases such as that of the Gunpowder Plot, where we have 
 a considerable mass of evidence before us. Try, if need be, one 
 hypothesis after another—Salisbury’s guilt, his connivance, his inno¬ 
 cence, or what you please. Apply them to the evidence, and when 
 one fails to unlock the secret, try another. Only when all imaginable 
 keys have failed have you a right to call the public to witness your 
 avowal of incompetence to solve the riddle. 
 
 1 P. 3- 
 
 2 P. 12. I take Professor Gardiner’s objections in the order which seems to me 
 the most easy to follow. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 45 
 
 I must confess myself altogether unable to follow Mr. 
 Gardiner upon this point, and his remarks appear to exemplify 
 the facility with which a fallacy may insinuate itself under 
 cover of an illustration. Neither can I see that our methods 
 are essentially different. We agree that the traditional or 
 official story, being in possession, has a right to be first 
 examined. We alike examine it, but while he pronounces in 
 its favour, as tallying with the known facts of the case, I come 
 to an opposite conclusion. The only question which would 
 seem to arise is as to which of us is right, and this, as will be 
 seen, I am quite ready to meet. But Mr. Gardiner appears 
 to argue, that because my conclusion, being adverse to the 
 account hitherto accepted, is only negative or destructive, I 
 ought not to announce it, until I have found, or at least until 
 I have exhausted every imaginable supposition in trying to 
 find, a story of my own with which the evidence can be made 
 to square. 
 
 But why so? If the key examined in the first instance be 
 really found not to fit the lock, no examination of other keys 
 will make it do so. The result of my inquiries may be negative, 
 but, if these inquiries have been rightly conducted, their result 
 is final, and is a distinct addition to our information. 
 
 Moreover, why should we go in quest of other solutions of 
 the problem, unless we have some reason to believe that the 
 true one can be found ? Here, as seems to me, the fallacy 
 comes in. In the case of a material lock, it is morally certain 
 that some key will open it, and, should this not be the case, 
 as Mr. Gardiner reminds us, there still remain locksmiths. But 
 with such an historical problem as this, it is quite otherwise. 
 If the true key be not that presented to us by the Government 
 of the day, there can be little doubt that it is lost beyond hope 
 of recovery. The official story of the Plot is acknowledged 
 by writers, such as Mr. Jardine, who can be suspected of no 
 hostile bias, and who have even accepted its details as sub¬ 
 stantially accurate, to be a dishonest and unscrupulous pro¬ 
 duction, of no authority, carefully manufactured for the express 
 purpose of leading the public mind in a particular direction. 1 
 Supposing a story totally different from that which it relates 
 to be the true one, is there any sort of likelihood that the men 
 who composed and circulated this so carefully, should have 
 allowed evidence to remain in existence which would suffice 
 
 Jardine’s Criminal Trials , ii. 4, 5. 
 
4 6 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 for the construction of a narrative diametrically opposed to 
 theirs ? When statesmen engage in underhand transactions, 
 they must pull many strings, and approach their desired end 
 by such tortuous paths as seem least likely to be detected. 
 If in the case before us anything of the kind took place, can 
 we suppose that at this distance of time, and with no docu¬ 
 mentary evidence at our disposal, except what has been 
 transmitted by the authors of the traditional account, we shall 
 be able to piece together the broken threads of this complex 
 web? But even although we cannot discover the truth, it 
 may be quite possible to satisfy ourselves that the story which 
 we are asked to believe is untrue, and that the evidence 
 produced in support of it breaks down when closely examined. 
 I believe that we can do this, and that it is all we can do. 
 
 On the other hand, there appears to be much truth in 
 Dr. Lingard’s view , 1 that nothing so much conduces to the 
 perversion of history as the introduction of hypotheses and 
 speculations not necessarily suggested by established facts. 
 An hypothesis is a dangerous tool to handle, and a writer who 
 starts with one is apt to be too easily satisfied with arguments 
 to sustain it, and to borrow from imagination or conjecture 
 what is required for his purpose. Mr. Gardiner himself tells us : 
 “ Nothing—as I have learnt by experience—is so likely as a 
 false theory to blind the eyes to existing evidence .” 2 I cannot 
 but think that in the present instance he has plentifully illus¬ 
 trated the reality of this danger. 
 
 Neither can I think that, in such a case, the results of merely 
 destructive criticism are entirely negative. A verdict for the 
 defendant is sometimes equivalent to an indictment of the 
 plaintiff, and since the days of Daniel many a cross-examiner, 
 by merely discrediting the story told by an accuser, has made 
 him change places with the accused. Should the Government’s 
 account of the Gunpowder Plot be proved unworthy of credence, 
 we shall inevitably be forced to conclude that those who fabri¬ 
 cated that account played a part in the affair which they were 
 extremely anxious should not be known ; while, as an eighteenth 
 century writer 3 not unreasonably argues, if they played a part 
 at all, then it was a principal one. 
 
 Another charge which Professor Gardiner brings regards 
 
 1 History of England (Fifth Edition), Preface, xxvi. 
 
 2 P. 107. 
 
 3 Essay towards a new History of the Gunpowder Plot, Introduction. London, 1765. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 47 
 
 my use of evidence, as to which he expresses himself very 
 strongly. “ It is plain,” he writes, 1 “ as the Edinburgh Review 
 has shown, that Father Gerard is unversed in the methods of 
 historical inquiry which have guided recent scholars.” And 
 again : 2 “ It seems strange to find a writer so regardless of 
 what is, in these days, considered the first canon of historical 
 inquiry, that evidence worth having must be almost entirely the 
 evidence of contemporaries who are in a position to know some¬ 
 thing about that which they assert.” He goes on to cite with 
 approval the rule laid down by the late Mr. Spedding : 3 “ When 
 a thing is asserted as a fact, always ask who first reported it, 
 and what means he had of knowing the truth.” 
 
 This is doubtless excellent, but it is likewise somewhat 
 obvious, and scarcely seems to require the high authority of 
 Mr. Spedding to recommend it. How far I have disregarded so 
 plain an injunction of common-sense I must leave my readers to 
 determine. But does it necessarily follow that no evidence 
 regarding an event which is not contemporary is of any value 
 at all ? 
 
 In the first place, Professor Gardiner himself tells us the 
 contrary, for “ tradition is worth something, at all events 
 when it is not too far removed from its source.” But the 
 existence of tradition must necessarily be demonstrated by 
 evidence contemporary with the tradition, and not with the 
 event to w r hich it refers. It seems therefore hard to understand 
 his point when he goes on to say that he must regard the 
 whole of my chapter dealing with “ The Opinion of Con¬ 
 temporaries and Historians” as absolutely worthless. 4 It is 
 surely something to show that from the moment when the 
 Plot was first divulged there appear to have been many who 
 disbelieved the official account, and that a like incredulity 
 prevailed widely for more than a century. This is what the 
 evidence I have adduced seems to establish, and although 
 the argument which it furnishes is far from being in itself 
 conclusive, which I never supposed it to be, I cannot think that 
 it is wholly without value. 
 
 It appears, moreover, that historians of later date may 
 legitimately be cited, if they had the same grounds as we have 
 on which to base a judgment, being called, not as witnesses to 
 the fact, but as experts in the interpretation of evidence. This, 
 Professor Gardiner seems to disallow. He dismisses the opinion 
 1 P. 3 * 3 P- 4- * P. 5. 4 P. 6. 
 
4 8 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 of Professor Brewer, for example, with the observation that he 
 wrote in the nineteenth century. 1 True ; but he had access 
 to the same documents which are open to us, and I quoted 
 him to show that the conclusion he drew from them was, in a 
 certain particular, the same as mine. If all nineteenth century 
 writers are to be at once ruled out of court, we who live in the 
 closing years of that century are spending labour to no purpose 
 upon the present discussion. 
 
 Again : even though a critic may not have had access to all 
 the evidence we now possess, he may be a good witness as to 
 the meaning of what was before him. An excellent example is 
 suggested by a point on which Professor Gardiner severely 
 criticizes one of my statements. I had said that while engaged 
 in digging their abortive mine, the conspirators, “ ridiculous as is 
 the supposition,” appear to have been ignorant of the existence 
 above their heads of the large “cellar ” which they subsequently 
 hired; and I cited in corroboration a history of the Plot published 
 in 1678 (which I erroneously ascribed to Bishop Barlow of 
 Lincoln), and the more recent testimony of Mr. Tierney. Pro¬ 
 fessor Gardiner replies : “ The supposition would be ridiculous 
 enough if it were not a figment of Father Gerard’s own brain,” 2 
 and he goes on to declare that in making such an assertion 
 I rely upon the authority of witnesses whose evidence, as he 
 elsewhere explains, 3 may at once be brushed away as worthless, 
 since they lived so long after the event. Their testimony, it 
 would seem, might at least serve to show that the objectionable 
 supposition was a figment of their brains as well as mine, but 
 it was not for this purpose that I quoted it. They were as fully 
 acquainted as we with the only piece of evidence which throws 
 any light upon the question, the published confession of Guy 
 Faukes, which seems to me—although Professor Gardiner thinks 
 otherwise—clearly to imply that the conspirators did not know 
 of the existence of the cellar till a late period of their operations, 
 and I called my witnesses to show that they understood his 
 words in the same sense as I, and that this was therefore their 
 legitimate signification. 4 
 
 But in addition to such considerations, there appears to be 
 
 1 P. 7. 2 P. 106. 3 P. 84. 
 
 4 Faukes says : “As they were working upon the wall, they heard a rushing in a 
 cellar of removing of coals ; whereupon we feared we had been discovered, and they 
 sent me to go to the cellar, who, finding that the coals were a-selling, and that the 
 cellar was to be let, viewing the commodity thereof for our purpose, Percy went and 
 hired the same for yearly rent.” 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 49 
 
 no doubt whatever that the supposition which Mr. Gardiner 
 acknowledges to be so absurd, and represents as having been 
 so recently and vainly imagined, was an integral part of the 
 story from the beginning. A French contemporary writer, 
 whose account of the Plot is amongst our State Papers, tells 
 us, in so many words, that the existence of the cellar was 
 unknown to the miners until they had been for a long time at 
 work upon the wall beneath it. 1 Even more explicit is the 
 testimony of Father Greenway in his Italian narrative of the 
 Plot, in which he evidently incorporates the version of the tale 
 generally current. 2 
 
 It would moreover appear that in his anxiety to dispose of 
 hostile witnesses, Mr. Gardiner sometimes satisfies himself with 
 arguments by no means satisfactory. A writer, of the year 
 1673, alleges that Lord Cobham testified to having heard 
 James I. speak of the 5th of November as “Cecil’s holiday.” 
 On this, Mr. Gardiner observes: “ Lord Cobham (Richard 
 Temple) was created a peer in 1669, so that the story is given 
 on very second-hand evidence indeed.” 3 But, in the first place, 
 Richard Temple’s birth, not his creation, occurred in 1669, 4 and 
 he cannot therefore be supposed to have ever heard King James 
 say anything. In the second place, as is evident, he was not 
 the Lord Cobham in question, who was quite a different man, 
 of a different family—John Brooke, restored to his title by 
 Charles I. in 1645. As first cousin to Cecil’s wife, Brooke 
 would naturally take particular notice of all which concerned 
 her husband. 
 
 Another witness cited by me argues that King James cannot 
 have believed the Plot to have been genuine, since the sons of 
 Sir Everard Digby, one of the conspirators, “ were both knighted 
 soon after.” Such an assertion, in Mr. Gardiner’s judgment, is 
 sufficient to destroy the authority of the person who makes it. 
 
 1 “Aquoy [the mine] sept des conjurateurs furent long temps a travailler, mais 
 trouvans beaucoup de difficult^ a percer le fondement de la muraille, et ayans 
 decouvert en travaillant qu’il-y-avoit une Voute ou Caveau de l’autre coste de lad. 
 muraille, directement soubs la haute chambre, ils desisterent de leur premier 
 ouvrage,” etc. (Do/n James /. xx. 55.) 
 
 2 “ Ilora mentre stavano cosi affiticati et dal timore di non essere intesi di 
 lavorare in quel luogo, et del travaglio excessivo et difficolta che haveano in tagliare 
 quel muro, ecco che sopra le teste loro sentono un gran fracasso et strepito, del quale 
 cercando l’occasione vengono a sapere che la su vi era una cantina, et che quel 
 rumore era stato di carboni delli quali quella cantina era pieno,” etc. (De Coujuratione 
 Pulveraria, f. 44 verso, Stonyhurst MSS.) 
 
 * P. 8. 4 He was created Baron Cobham in 1714. 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 “ What,” he asks, “ is to be thought of the accuracy of a writer, 
 who states that ‘ Sir Everard Digby’s two sons w r ere both 
 knighted soon after,’ when, as a matter of fact, the younger, 
 Kenelm, was not knighted till 1623, and the elder, John, not 
 till 1635 P” 1 And he goes on to argue that “our anonymous 
 and erudite friend who perpetrated that little blunder about the 
 knighthood of Sir Everard Digby’s sons,” is capable of any feat 
 in the way of misrepresenting evidence. This surely is much ado 
 about nothing. Kenelm Digby was but twenty years of age 
 when he received knighthood, which was about as soon as it 
 could possibly be conferred upon him, and he had already been 
 for some time in the service of the Prince of Wales. John 
 Digby was knighted at the age of thirty. Moreover, if we must 
 be accurate, Kenelm was the elder brother, and John the 
 younger. 2 
 
 The same witness who speaks of the Digbys, also declares 
 that according to the testimony of a gentleman whom he names 
 as living when he wrote, William Lenthal, Speaker of the Long 
 Parliament, testified to having heard the second Earl of 
 Salisbury acknowledge that the Gunpowder Plot was “his 
 father’s contrivance.” Coming through so many hands, this 
 evidence is doubtless not above suspicion, but it cannot be 
 altogether disregarded. Mr. Gardiner—who argued against its 
 acceptance on the ground that Lenthal was described by 
 Anthony a Wood as a liar and a braggart, and that as he 
 died in 1681 and was apparently dead when his testimony 
 was thus quoted, it refers to very ancient history—has since 
 acknowledged 3 that it is Lenthal’s son, and not himself, 
 of whom all this is true. He still thinks, however, that the 
 second part of his objection holds good. Lenthal, the Speaker, 
 died in 1662, that is to say, fifty-seven years after the Plot, and 
 this, Mr. Gardiner thinks, is a period too long to be thus 
 covered. But is there any extreme improbability in supposing 
 a person who died in 1662 to have been in the confidence of 
 one who survived him half-a-dozen years, 4 or a third who lived 
 
 1 P. n. 
 
 2 The relative age of the Digbys is wrongly given by the Dictionary of National 
 Biography in the article “ Everard Digby,” but it corrects and contradicts itself in 
 the following article, “Kenelm Digby.” The point is settled by a passage in Sir 
 Everard’s letter to his sons from the Tower: “Let me tell you, my son Kenelm, 
 that you ought to be both a father and a brother to your unprovided for brother.” 
 (Barlow’s Gunpowder Treason , p. 259.) 
 
 3 Athenceum , July 17, 1897. 
 
 4 William Cecil, second Earl of Salisbury, died in 1668. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 a few years longer to have heard something of what passed 
 between them ? 
 
 More serious is the manner in which the son’s alleged 
 evidence concerning his father is treated, which Mr. Gardiner 
 dismisses in most summary fashion, as follows : 
 
 Whatever else a statesman may communicate to his son, we may be 
 sure that he does not confide to him such appalling guilt as this. . . . 
 Maxima debetur pueris reverentia. Moreover, the second Earl, who 
 was only twenty-one years of age at his father’s death, was much too 
 dull to be an intellectual companion for him, and therefore the less 
 likely to invite an unprecedented confidence. 1 
 
 Rut wherefore must we suppose there was any confidence 
 in the case ? The same witness who speaks of the communica¬ 
 tion to Lenthal implies that at least one other member of the 
 family—Edward Cecil, Viscount Wimbledon—possessed similar 
 information. Even if this were not so, who was so likely to 
 learn the great Secretary’s secrets as the son who upon his 
 sudden death came into possession of his most private papers ? 
 Lord Castlemaine remarks that it is not easy to discover the 
 truth concerning a statesman who died in prosperity ; but if 
 any one may be supposed to have done so, it is the heir who 
 succeeded him in such circumstances. 
 
 In much the same manner is explained away a reported 
 utterance of Archbishop Usher, who is said to have declared 
 that if the Papists knew what he knew, the guilt of the Powder 
 Treason would not lie on them. No great stress, it is true, can 
 be laid on such a remark, on account of the manner in which it 
 comes to us ; but Professor Gardiner wishes to maintain that, 
 even as it stands, it need mean no more than that the Catholics 
 in general were not implicated. But surely the words, if they 
 mean anything, point to something definite, not generally 
 known, which wholly changes the aspect of the case. 
 
 So much as to the selection of evidence. Let us pass on to 
 the manner of using it. Mr. Gardiner considers my practice 
 to be as faulty in this -respect as in the other, and in the 
 interests of brevity I will select but one instance, in which he 
 charges me with the violation of all the rules which an historian 
 should observe. 
 
 I had cited the apprehension of Guy Faukes as one of those 
 particulars connected with the Plot regarding which it is impos- 
 
 1 P. 12. 
 
52 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 sible to have any certainty, on account of the contradictions 
 which the evidence exhibits, some witnesses declaring that it 
 took place in the “ cellar,” others in the street, and others, again, 
 in his own chamber. After quoting my words on this subject, 
 Mr. Gardiner thus continues : 
 
 This passage deserves to be studied, if only as a good example of 
 the way in which historical investigations ought not to be conducted, 
 that is to say, by reading into the evidence what, according to pre¬ 
 conception of the inquirer, he thinks ought to be there, but is not 
 there at all. In plain language, the words “cellar” and “street” are 
 not mentioned in any one of the documents cited by Father Gerard. 1 
 
 This, I must confess, looks to me very much like trifling 
 with the subject. What can it matter whether these particular 
 words are used, if the things for which they stand are precisely 
 designated ? That they are so designated, it will, I think, be 
 difficult to deny. 
 
 That the “cellar” was the scene of the arrest we have such 
 evidence as the following: 
 
 “ As he was busy to prepare his things for execution, on 
 Monday night, [he] was apprehended in the place itself. . . . Sir 
 Thomas Knyvet, going by change into the vault by another 
 door, found the fellow, as is said before.” ( Salisbury's letter to 
 Sir Thomas Parry , November 6, 1605.) 
 
 “[He was taken] making his trains at midnight.” ( Chamberlain 
 to Dudley Carleton , November 7.) 
 
 “ Certain it is that upon a search lately made on Monday 
 night in the vault beneath the Parliament Chamber, one 
 Johnson, 2 was found . . . preparing his trains against the next 
 morrow.” ( Sir E. Hoby to Sir T. Edmondes , November /<?.) 
 
 This appears to make the matter perfectly clear. The “vault” 
 and the “ cellar ” were used as synonymous terms to describe 
 the chamber in which the powder was lodged, and I cannot but 
 think that I am fully justified in saying that some witnesses speak 
 of Faukes as being apprehended in this celebrated apartment. 
 When Mr. Gardiner argues that we are not told what is meant 
 by “the place itself,” nor where Guy was making his trains, it is 
 not very easy to believe him to be serious. “The place” must 
 certainly be that where the powder was, which was the cellar, 
 and there alone can the trains possibly have been made. 
 Mr. Gardiner seems to suggest that they were being prepared 
 
 1 r. 132. 
 
 2 Faukes’ assumed name. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 53 
 
 in a passage outside, or even in the head of the court beyond ; a 
 suggestion which does not appear to call for discussion. 
 
 On the other hand, the evidence that the arrest took place 
 out of doors is equally explicit and more abundant, though I 
 must confess that my description of this as “ the street ” is based 
 not upon written accounts, but upon contemporary drawings, 
 which undoubtedly so represent it. 1 Here are some testimonies 
 to this effect. 
 
 “ When the party was taken he was but new come out of the 
 house.” ( The King's speech in Parliament, November p.) 
 
 “ [Sir T. Knyvet] finding the party newly come out of the 
 vault.” (. Relation of the Discovery , November 7.) 
 
 “ But before his entry to the house, finding Thomas Percy’s 
 alleged man standing without the doors, his clothes and boots 
 on ... he resolved to apprehend him, as he did, and thereafter 
 went forward to the searching of the house. . . . [The fellow] 
 declaring unto him that if he had happened to be within when 
 he took him, as he was immediately before (at the ending of 
 his work), he would not fail to have blown him up, house 
 and all.” (The King's Book. ) 
 
 “ [Knyvet] went the next midnight, and coming before the 
 entrance of the house, spied Percy’s pretended servant standing 
 without the door, booted and spurred.” (Stow's Chronicle , 
 Howes.) 
 
 “ He met John Johnson in front of the house.” 2 —( Thuanus .) 
 
 “ The caitiff of the cave, who being some hours before in the 
 cellar (when some of the Lords came thither), had not the 
 pow'er to suspect or the grace to fly, but when the privy watch 
 came in the night, he was the first man that appeared at the 
 door, as if God Himself had presented him into their hands.” 
 
 ( William Barlozv, Bishop of Rochester , Sermon at Paul's Cross , 
 November 10.) 
 
 I cannot think that any preconception is required to discover 
 in these testimonies plain contradiction, nor that it is necessary 
 to read into them a meaning which they do not legitimately 
 bear. Had Faukes been making his trains when his captors 
 appeared, he could hardly have explained that, had he been 
 somewhere else, he would have put a match to the powder, for 
 such a situation was precisely the one which made it possible 
 to do so. I 7 or my own part, I never imagined that there could 
 
 1 Some of them are reproduced in my book already referred to. 
 
 2 “ Joannem Jonsonum ante aedcs oflendit.” 
 
54 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 be such discrepancies as to a simple matter of fact, till they 
 stared me in the face. 
 
 Moreover, while Mr. Gardiner reproves me so severely for 
 not being sufficiently rigorous in my interpretation of evi¬ 
 dence, he does not appear to be equally exacting in his own 
 regard. 
 
 In connection with the supposed mining operations of the 
 conspirators, for example, I have urged as an objection, that 
 being quite inexperienced in this kind of labour, it is hard to 
 understand how they could have done all they are said to have 
 done without an accident, and should never have attracted 
 attention by the noise they made during the long period when 
 they were engaged in breaking through the foundations of 
 the Parliament House. The difficulty is thus solved by 
 Mr. Gardiner. 1 
 
 Father Gerard forgets that though six of the seven miners were 
 amateurs, the seventh was not. Fawkes had been eight years in the 
 service of the Archdukes in the Low Countries, and to soldiers on 
 either side the war in the Low Countries offered the most complete 
 school of military mining then to be found in the world. Though 
 every soldier was not an engineer, he could not fail to be in the way 
 of hearing about, if not of actually witnessing, feats of engineering 
 skill, of which the object was not merely to undermine fortifications 
 with tunnels of far greater length than can have been required by the 
 conspirators, but to conduct the operations as quietly as possible. It 
 must surely have been the habit of these engineers to use other imple¬ 
 ments than the noisy pick of the modern workman. 
 
 Whether the sappers and miners of three centuries ago are 
 likely to have been better furnished with implements than those 
 of our own days—whose tools are pick and shovel—military 
 authorities must decide, but at least it is clear that a good deal 
 is here read into the evidence which Mr. Gardiner thinks ought 
 to be there, but certainly is not there at all. In fact, something 
 which we do find looks very like a contradiction of his whole 
 supposition ; for the one man of the party who was not an 
 amateur, himself tells us, that he was just the one who did not 
 bear a hand in the work of excavation ; Faukes expressly 
 stating, “ that all the time while the others wrought, he stood 
 as sentinel to descry any man that came near.” 2 Mr. Gardiner’s 
 method of dealing with this difficulty is extremely simple. 
 
 1 P. 98 . 
 
 2 Examination, November 8 th. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 55 
 
 “Fawkes,” he says, “indeed speaks of himself merely as a watcher 
 whilst others worked. But he was a modest man, and there 
 can be no reasonable doubt that he directed the operations.” 
 
 Of the reasonableness of such a conclusion I will say nothing, 
 but is it not clear that on principles of interpretation such as 
 these, it matters extremely little what our documents say? 
 
 Another difficulty regarding the same mine relates to the 
 earth and stone dug out of it. How could these be disposed of 
 without attracting notice ? Mr. Gardiner acknowledges 1 that 
 the quantity must have been too great to be concealed in the 
 little garden adjoining the scene of operations. “ The greater 
 part of it,” he writes, “ must have been disposed of in some 
 other way. Is it so very difficult to surmise what that was ? 
 The nights were long and dark, and the river was very 
 close.” 
 
 Such an explanation may perhaps seem plausible, but the 
 fact remains that Faukes, the only witness who says anything 
 on the subject, speaks of the garden as the place of con¬ 
 cealment, and says nothing about the river. It would also 
 appear that we require to know a good deal more than we do 
 about the locality in order to satisfy ourselves that the river 
 would have been practically available for such a purpose. 
 Although Mr. Gardiner strongly contends that there were no 
 houses in the way, towards the water’s edge, one of the plans 
 which he reproduces 2 shows a solid block of buildings down to 
 the Thames. Moreover, it is obvious that, if they were to be 
 kept out of sight, the stones at least from the Parliament wall 
 would need to be immersed below low water-mark, as they 
 would otherwise be left high and dry at every ebb for all folk 
 to see. But it is at least possible—and the distance to which, 
 according to the plans, the Parliament Stairs projected, makes 
 it very probable—that the bank shelved gradually in, so that, 
 in order to reach the required spot, the conspirators would have 
 had to wade or flounder in the dark with their burden of stones 
 over a bed of ooze. If we are to argue apart from evidence 
 as to what may have been, many circumstances can be imagined 
 which would stand in the way of the course which, as Mr. 
 Gardiner assumes, the plotters must have adopted, though they 
 have themselves omitted to mention it. 
 
 In some instances we are enabled to satisfy ourselves more 
 fully as to the precise value of such speculations. The alleged 
 1 p. 103. 2 P. 81. 
 
56 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER’S DEFENCE 
 
 bigamy of Thomas Percy is a case in point, which Mr. Gardiner 
 holds to be established by no evidence worthy of attention. 
 He says 1 that my charge against Percy was “ probably ” received 
 from Bishop Goodman, whose belief that Percy was a bigamist 
 rested on information derived from a lady, “ who may very well 
 have been as hardened a gossip as he was himself.” 
 
 But Goodman was a contemporary, and his account is very 
 explicit. 2 “ It is certain [he writes] that he was a very loose 
 
 liver—that he had two wives, one in the south and another in 
 the north. An honourable good lady said she knew them both; 
 his wife in the south was so mean and poor, that she was fain 
 to teach school and bring up gentlewomen ; there are yet some 
 living that were her scholars.” 
 
 Moreover, I neither cited Goodman’s testimony upon this 
 point, nor had it in my mind. The charge I held to be proved 
 by the fact, attested by documents in the Public Record Office, 
 that on the 5th of November a Mrs. Percy was apprehended in 
 London, and on the 12th of the same month, one was appre¬ 
 hended in Warwickshire, the magistrates in each instance 
 reporting to Salisbury what they had done, and their reports 
 being still extant. This agrees well enough with Goodman’s 
 account, and so does the description of the person apprehended 
 in London, supplied by Justice Grange. 3 “She saith her 
 husband liveth not with her, being attendant on the Earl of 
 Northumberland. She hath not seen him since midsummer. 
 She liveth very private and teacheth children.” 
 
 Such was the evidence on which I based my statement, that 
 Percy had two wives living. But Mr. Gardiner brushes it away : 
 
 The papers in the Public Record Office [he says, 4 ] prove nothing of 
 the sort. On November 5th, Justice Grange writes to Salisbury that 
 Percy had a house in Holborne, “ where his w r ife is at this instant . . . 
 I have caused some to watch the house, as also to guard her until your 
 Honour’s pleasure be further known.” There is, however, nothing to 
 show that Salisbury did not within a couple of hours direct that she 
 should be set free, as she had evidently nothing to tell; nor is there 
 anything here inconsistent with her having been arrested in Warwick¬ 
 shire on the 12th, especially as she was apprehended in the house of 
 John Wright, her brother. What is more likely, than that, when the 
 terrible catastrophe befell the poor woman, she should have travelled 
 
 1 P. 117. 2 Court of King James, i. 102. 
 
 3 Gunpowder Plot Book, n. 15. 4 P. 116. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 57 
 
 down to seek refuge in her brother’s house, where she might perchance 
 hear some tidings of her husband? It is adding a new terror to 
 matrimony, to suggest that a man is liable to be charged with bigamy, 
 because his wife is seen in London one day and in Warwickshire a 
 week afterwards. 
 
 Mr. Gardiner has strangely omitted to mention a cir cum- 
 stanceAHririr'is'of great importance in connection with the 
 ingenious conjecture which he wishes us to accept as an 
 vjiisieudeah facb In the house of the Mrs. Percy arrested in 
 Holborn, as the same Justice Grange informs Salisbury, was 
 taken along with her a Catholic priest, the Benedictine Father 
 John Roberts, who five years later suffered at Tyburn for his 
 priesthood. At the time of his arrest, or at least on the same 
 day, his priestly character was known to the authorities, 1 and, 
 as it was felony to harbour a priest, it appears in the highest 
 degree improbable that the lady in whose house so compromising 
 a lodger was discovered should have been liberated in the free 
 and easy manner suggested by Mr. Gardiner, especially at a 
 moment when the Government were, as he declares, so completely 
 in the dark as to the accomplices of Faukes, and every such 
 stranger was for them a probable traitor. 
 
 It so happens, moreover, that this very Father Roberts 
 supplies us with clear evidence that, in spite of Mr. Gardiner’s 
 plea, Percy was a bigamist. When examined before the Bishop 
 of London, December 21, 1607, Roberts, amongst other 
 
 particulars regarding himself, gave the following : 
 
 “ That upon the said day [of the discovery of the Gunpowder 
 Treason] he was taken in the upper end of Holborn, in the 
 house of Thomas Percy, Esq., his first wife, and w r as then 
 committed to the Gatehouse by the Lords from the Council 
 Table.” 2 
 
 The mention of this wife as Percy’s “first” is clear proof that 
 he had a second ; and as the first was still living, he must 
 certainly have committed bigamy. It is begging the question to 
 speak of the London wife as John Wright’s sister: the lady 
 arrested on the 12th at Wright’s house, Lapworth, was indeed 
 so, and apart from all other considerations, it seems very 
 unlikely that Percy should have consigned the sister of his 
 
 1 Dom James /. xvi. 10. “ Points mentioned in the papers and letters found in 
 
 Percy’s house, likely to be the priest’s, Roberts, which was taken there.” 
 
 2 Old Brotherhood MSS. (Good Shepherd Convent, Hammersmith). Copy of the 
 Examination, certified by Robert Christian, Deputy Registrar. 
 
58 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 friend and fellow-conspirator to neglect or poverty in the 
 metropolis. 
 
 It would not be difficult to adduce other instances in which, 
 as seems to me, the charges brought by Mr. Gardiner against my 
 method of working lie rather against his own. The above, 
 however, suffice for my purpose, which is to illustrate, and not to 
 exhaust this branch of the question. In my next article I shall 
 consider the conclusions he deduces from the evidence, which 
 certainly, if correct, altogether dispose of mine. 
 
 II. 
 
 It is not, at present, my purpose to consider all the points 
 raised by Professor Gardiner in connection with the Gunpowder 
 Plot. It was not to be expected that an historian of his 
 eminence could approach the subject without throwing fresh 
 light upon it, by indicating lines of argument, the following 
 out of which might lead to sound results. At least, we may 
 be sure, his practised eye will recognize where the key of the 
 position lies, and thus simplify further operations by restricting 
 their scope. This, if I am not greatly mistaken, he has done, 
 indicating certain points of the traditional story by which, apart 
 from all the rest, its truth or falsehood must be determined, 
 thus making it possible to pursue our investigations with some 
 prospect of finality. 
 
 With the new chapter which thus opens to us I do not 
 intend to deal in The Month, reserving it to be treated apart, 
 as I hope, very shortly. All that I now propose to do, is to 
 examine Mr. Gardiner’s criticisms upon my former arguments, 
 which I still believe to have their value, hoping to make it 
 appear that they were not advanced without some grounds, and 
 that, despite the assault of so formidable an opponent, they are 
 not altogether demolished. 
 
 Before we attempt to follow the history of the Plot as 
 Mr. Gardiner draws it out of the evidence, one or two con¬ 
 siderations must be premised. 
 
 In the first place, even if we go the length of supposing that 
 the Government first instigated the conspiracy, and still more 
 if they only knew of it and nursed it—in its developments the 
 conspirators themselves must obviously have counted for some¬ 
 thing. Mr. Gardiner, who begins by charging me with having 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 59 
 
 no hypothesis on which to work, appears afterwards to assume 
 that I am pledged to the theory that the Earl of Salisbury 
 arranged the scheme in every detail, and had the whole history 
 in his pocket when he commenced his investigations. Nothing 
 appears to me less probable than that things should have been 
 done in such a way. A knot of men known, as the Secretary 
 described the conspirators, to be “ fit for all alterations,” might 
 well be incited to undertake a desperate enterprise, or, being 
 discovered to have undertaken it spontaneously, might be 
 suffered to go on, with full assurance that they would hopelessly 
 compromise themselves, and an expectation that they would 
 draw in others whom it would be desirable to compromise. 
 But when the time came for striking a blow, there would be 
 much to learn as to how far such anticipations had been realized. 
 It will hardly be denied that Babington’s conspiracy, whatever 
 its precise origin, was sedulously watched and fostered by 
 Secretary Walsingham, through his agents, Gifford, Maude,'and 
 Pooley, the correspondence of the confederates passing through 
 his office and being thence forwarded to its destination, while 
 Babington himself reposed the most implicit confidence in the 
 last-named spy, by whom, as his friends believed, he was lured 
 to destruction. Yet for all this, his plot was produced before 
 the world as a genuine danger to Queen Elizabeth and the 
 State, happily arrested by the vigilance of her Ministers, and 
 while we may read the trial of the unhappy men who 
 engaged in it, without discovering any trace of the strings to 
 which they unwittingly danced, there are many particulars 
 regarding their proceedings for which they alone were evidently 
 responsible. 
 
 Another point is concerned with the character of those who 
 conducted the enquiry into the Gunpowder Plot. Mr. Gardiner 
 strongly insists on the argument that the Commissioners and 
 other official persons engaged in this duty were honourable 
 men ; that, had there been fraud in the proceedings, they must 
 have been cognizant of it; and that, had they been cognizant, 
 it is impossible to suppose they would never have protested 
 against the part they were made to play in countenancing a lie. 
 “Has [Father Gerard],” he asks, 1 “seriously thought out all 
 that is involved in this theory?” I must answer that I have 
 thought it out, and there seems to me no manner of doubt that 
 the Commissioners and others engaged in the investigation, again 
 1 P. 41. 
 
60 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 and again did the very thing which Mr. Gardiner thinks it 
 preposterous to suspect them of doing. Nothing, in fact, is so 
 shocking as the evidence afforded by the documents remaining 
 to us, of the open and shameless disregard of truth and justice 
 on the part of all, high and low alike, who were connected with 
 the official side. A few incontestable examples will suffice to 
 establish this charge. 
 
 In the published version of Guy Faukes’ celebrated con¬ 
 fession of November the 17th, a clause was introduced 
 for the purpose of incriminating an English exile, Hugh 
 Owen, of whom no mention whatever is made in the 
 original, as can be seen by inspecting the said original, 
 still preserved in the Record Office. The Lords Com¬ 
 missioners had not witnessed the original confession, but their 
 names appear in print as having done so, the document being 
 described as “ The True Copy of the deposition of Guido 
 Fawkes, taken in presence of the Counsellors whose names 
 are underwritten.” These noblemen, therefore, not only allowed 
 themselves to appear as having witnessed a deposition which 
 they never witnessed, but, which is still more important, as 
 guaranteeing the correctness of a version, containing an im¬ 
 portant clause, involving a capital charge against an absent man, 
 which was in fact a forgery. 
 
 Faukes and Thomas Winter—in their confessions of 
 November 9th and January 9th respectively—described the 
 oath of secrecy taken by the associates, and their subsequent 
 Communion at the hands of Father Gerard, the Jesuit; but 
 both added that Gerard was not acquainted with their design,— 
 Winter explaining that he was not present when they took the 
 oath. In both cases Sir Edward Coke, the Attorney General, 
 marked off with red ink the passage exculpating Gerard, as not 
 to be read in court, and in Faukes’ confession, he wrote in 
 the margin the word “ Hucusque,” that is to say, “ Stop here,” 
 the exculpatory clause being thus deliberately suppressed. 
 He then went on in his speech to declare that Gerard 
 administered the oath to the plotters, 1 although not only the 
 Commissioners, but every clerk in court must have been able 
 to see that such a statement was a direct contradiction of the 
 evidence, and that this had been falsified in order to make the 
 statement possible. This dishonest version of the story then 
 went forth to the world in the “King’s Book,” published with the 
 
 1 True and Perfect Relation , sig. H, 4 b. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 6r 
 
 fullest official sanction, and with the names of the honourable 
 Lords Commissioners prominently displayed to give it weight. 
 
 It would doubtless appear incredible that such things could 
 be done, did we not find that without question they actually 
 happened, and we are thus enabled to gauge, at least to some 
 degree, the extraordinary perversion of all ideas of truth and 
 honour prevalent at the time—men accused of high treason 
 being apparently considered as noxious vermin whom it was a 
 proof of loyalty to destroy ,fas et nefas. 
 
 The very confessions of which we are speaking furnish 
 another example of the extent to which this kind of thing was 
 practised by men whose position would seem to make it an 
 outrage to attribute it to them. In reply to the foreign Jesuit, 
 Eudaemon Joannes, who undertook the vindication of Father 
 Garnet and his religious brethren, Bishop Robert Abbot, of 
 Salisbury, was employed to write a Latin treatise for the 
 benefit of Continental Europe; the original documents con¬ 
 nected with the Plot being placed in his hands, and freely 
 quoted in his Antilogia. His adversary had maintained that, 
 on their own showing, the English Government denounced the 
 Jesuits as accomplices in the intended crime, before they had 
 any sort of evidence to connect them with it. To this Abbot 
 replies, 1 with much vehemence and virulence, that such an 
 assertion is an unblushing lie, inasmuch as, amongst other 
 things, Faukes had acknowledged that Father Gerard had 
 bound Catesby and others by the most solemn obligations to 
 consummate the treason, and he appeals in confirmation to the 
 very confession in which' the passage exculpating Gerard had 
 been marked for omission by Coke. His adversary, of course, 
 would never be able to see this document, and so could not 
 know, as Abbot, who had it in his hands, must have done, that 
 it testified precisely to the contrary. 
 
 Neither is the instance of these particular depositions by any 
 means singular or solitary. Sir Edward Coke habitually made 
 selections from the confessions or replies extracted from the 
 prisoners, indicating by letters, in the margin which portions 
 were to be read in court and which suppressed. All passages 
 which told against the accused were produced as evidence, and 
 all passages or parts of passages which told in their favour were 
 omitted. So unscrupulously was this process employed as to 
 
 1 Epistola ad lectorem , f. 4. 
 
62 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 amount, in the judgment of Mr. Jardine, 1 to downright forgery 
 of evidence, the suppressed passages in several instances alto¬ 
 gether changing the signification of those retained. Yet no 
 attempt was made to conceal what was thus shamelessly done 
 from the eyes of even subordinate officials. All who were 
 connected with the management of the case must have been 
 perfectly well aware of the treatment to which the documents 
 were subjected. 2 
 
 The celebrated “ interlocutions ” between Fathers Garnet 
 and Oldcorne in the Tower, overheard by spies placed in 
 ambush for that purpose, afford another example. A com¬ 
 parison of the reports taken down by these listeners, with the 
 versions produced in court, reveals the fact that expressions 
 were altered, with the manifest object of giving a bad com¬ 
 plexion to what in the original was harmless. Yet this dishonest 
 version was affirmed upon oath, and promulgated to the world 
 by the very men who had the original documents before diem. 
 
 In view of instances such as these, I do not see how it is 
 possible to build any argument upon the high character of the 
 men who lent themselves so freely to the practice of what 
 Mr. Jardine styles “pure and unmixed injustice.” As Mr. Philli- 
 more, no prejudiced witness, remarks with special reference to 
 the trial of Father Garnet: “ I would appeal to any reader 
 whether the Crown Judges or lawyers of the Tudors and 
 Stuarts, who hired out their voices and understandings to slay 
 
 1 Criminal Trials , vol. ii. p. 358. 
 
 2 A notorious example is furnished by Father Garnet’s autograph declaration of 
 March 13, 1605-6. Sir E. Coke directed that the paragraphs which he marked 
 A, B, D, and F, should be read, the all-important passages which I italicize being 
 omitted. For the sake of brevity I somewhat curtail the omitted portion. 
 
 A. . “I have remembered some things, which, because they were long before my 
 knowledge of the Powder acts, I had forgotten. 
 
 B. “About Michaelmas, after the King came in [1603], Mr. Catesby told me 
 there would be some stirring, seeing the King kept not promise. 
 
 C. “And I greatly misliked it, saying it was against the Pope's express com¬ 
 mandment. . . . Therefore I earnestly desired that he and Mr. Thomas Winter would 
 not join with any such tumults. . . . He assured me that he would not. But neither 
 he told , nor I asked any particulars. 
 
 D. “Long after this, about Midsummer was twelvemonth [1604], either Mr. 
 Catesby alone, or he and Thomas Winter together, insinuated that they had something 
 in hand, and that they would sure prevail. 
 
 E. “ I still reproved them , but they entered into no particulars. 
 
 F. “Soon after came Mr. Greenwell [i.e., Greenway] to me, and told me as 
 much. 
 
 G. “ I greatly misliked any stirring, and said , ‘ Good Lord! how is it possible 
 that God work any good effect by these men ? These arc not God's knights , but the 
 devil's knights,"' &c. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 63 
 
 the innocent, were in any moral sense superior to the assassins 
 who hired out their daggers to gratify the revenge of an Italian 
 potentate. Indeed the evil was so much the greater in England, 
 as in that country those crimes were perpetrated by men of 
 rank, and education, and character—of which in Italy, the 
 lowest ruffians only were the instruments.” 1 
 
 And what is to be said concerning the value of the docu¬ 
 mentary evidence which has come to us through such hands ? 
 Mr. Gardiner, who believes that “ the action of the Government 
 was on the whole straightforward,” 2 appears to take for granted 
 that the evidence is presumably trustworthy, and that if in 
 particular instances traces of foul play be discovered, it is unfair 
 to extend the atmosphere of suspicion which these create to 
 other documents. Moreover, he lays far less stress than might 
 be thought their due upon the examples of dishonest tampering 
 with evidence which are undeniable. He never mentions the 
 fraud dent interpolation in the “King’s Book,” directed against 
 Owen. Coke’s suppression of the evidence in favour of Father 
 Gerard he acknowledges and condemns, but endeavours to 
 minimize its import by excuses which it is almost incredible 
 should be alleged by an historian of repute. Gerard, he says, 3 
 was not on his trial, and, therefore, could not be affected by 
 anything Coke might say; the men who were on their trial 
 could not be injured by a misrepresentation regarding Gerard ; 
 finally, the confession thus mutilated “contained many obvious 
 falsehoods, and Coke may have thought that he was keeping 
 back only one falsehood more.” It might also be gathered from 
 Mr. Gardiner’s words that this instance of falsification stands 
 alone, whereas it is but one, and scarcely the worst, of many. 
 
 All this being considered, I do not see how we can feel more 
 assurance as to the authenticity of the documents, than as to 
 the good faith of the honourable men from whom we receive 
 them. Whatever his vagaries in practice, no man could better 
 enunciate excellent, and even edifying, principles, than Sir 
 Edward Coke, 4 and one of these is much to our present purpose. 
 When preparing his case for the arraignment of the same 
 unfortunate Hugh Owen, Coke, amongst other things, laid down 
 
 1 History of the Law of Evidence , p. 155. 
 
 2 P. 199. 3 Pp. 178, 179. 
 
 4 ‘ ‘ Lord Coke lays it down clearly, ‘ that no exemplification ought to be of any 
 part of a letters patent, or of any other record, or of the inrolment thereof, but the 
 whole record or inrolment ought to be exemplified, so that the whole truth may 
 appear, and not of such part as makes for one party and nothing that makes against 
 
6 4 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 this maxim, 1 Qui scmel est malus , semper prcesinnitur mains , in 
 eodern genere mali , which I may be allowed to render, “ He who 
 is found to have falsified evidence in some cases, may be 
 presumed to have done so in others.” 
 
 It requires but a slight acquaintance with the documents of 
 which we are speaking, to know that but few of them could 
 possibly pass muster, not only in a modern court of law, but in 
 any transaction of ordinary life. They abound in features of 
 the most equivocal nature. Many come to us only in copy, 
 with no attestation of concordance with the original. Dates 
 are altered. Names of witnesses are not subscribed, and we 
 are only told by the prosecuting counsel that the truth of the 
 contents was duly attested. Copious alterations and additions 
 are inserted between the lines, there being nothing to show 
 that these were made before signature. Yet it seems to be 
 assumed that documents of this description, which, if they 
 related to our own times, would not be worth the paper on 
 which they are written, must be accepted as unimpeachable 
 because they date from the reign of James I., and, it may be 
 added, because they tell against Catholics. But evidence does 
 not, like wine, improve with age, and if this particular evidence 
 were found to support in all respects the account of the Gun¬ 
 powder Plot which it was intended to establish, we should 
 still, T venture to think, be a long way from a full assurance 
 upon the subject. 
 
 But does the evidence do so much as this? Here we 
 approach what Mr. Gardiner will, I think, agree with me in 
 considering the principal point of his attack upon my position. 
 He maintains that the documents in our hands evidently show 
 the Government to have been, at first, quite in the dark as to 
 the Plot and its authors. They had Faukes in their hands, who 
 had been apprehended early on the 5 th of November, and they 
 could be tolerably sure that Percy had to do with the business, 
 since the cellar, where the powder was stored, was rented by 
 him. But beyond this, says Mr. Gardiner, they knew nothing, 
 and their knowledge only grew with the admissions painfully 
 
 him.’ Yet such was the consummate wickedness of this man, that he who lays 
 down this principle in civil cases, actually, when prosecuting men for their lives, 
 scored particular passages in depositions to be read against the prisoner, and sup¬ 
 pressed those passages which would have proved his innocence.” (Phillimore, History 
 of the Law of Evidence , p. 153.) 
 
 1 Proofs against Owen, presented to Parliament, April, 1606 ( Dom. James /. 
 xx. 52, margin). 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 65 
 
 extracted from Faukes, or with information of sedition raised in 
 the shires by some Catholic gentlemen, whom they naturally 
 connected with the abortive design happily frustrated in London. 
 Faukes, on his part, Mr. Gardiner continues, was resolved to 
 compromise no man, especially no priest, 1 and would not dis¬ 
 cover his accomplices till he was racked beyond endurance—“ it 
 required the horrible torture of the 9th [of November] to wring 
 a single name from him.” The action of the Government mean¬ 
 while, we are told, was that of men groping in the dark, all that 
 they knew, so late as the evening of the 6th, being “ that an 
 unknown number of conspirators were at large—they knew not 
 where—and might at that very moment be appealing—they 
 knew not with what effect—to Catholic landlords and their 
 tenants, who were, without doubt, exasperated by the recent 
 enforcement of the penal laws.” 2 
 
 It seems to me, however, that this display of ignorance was 
 somewhat overdone, and that the Government cannot possibly 
 have been so much in the dark as they professed to be. They 
 had, we are told, no notion who the conspirators were, and were 
 utterly at a loss as to whom they should connect with Faukes 
 and Percy in their desperate enterprise. But, in the letter which 
 he composed for the information of English Ambassadors on the 
 Continent, the Earl of Salisbury plainly declared that even before 
 he received, through Lord Monteagle, the warning which led to 
 the discovery, he was perfectly well aware that most of the men 
 actually concerned were engaged in preparing violence of some 
 sort in connection with the assembly of Parliament. “ Not [he 
 wrote] but that I had sufficient advertisements that most of 
 those that now are fled, being all notorious recusants, with many 
 others of that kind, had a practice in hand of some stir this 
 Parliament.” He moreover described them not only as “ gentle¬ 
 men spent in their fortunes,” and “ fit for all alterations,” but 
 likewise as “ all inward with Percy.” Is it conceivable that 
 this important information should have suddenly escaped his 
 memory just at the moment when it became practically valuable, 
 or that he should be at a loss to know whom to connect with 
 Percy in such a matter ? 
 
 So, likewise, as to the danger of rebellion in the provinces. 
 The passage quoted above is not the only one in which 
 Mr. Gardiner represents the anxiety of the Government upon 
 this head as very real and acute. It is known that the man 
 1 P. 20. 2 P. 27. 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 who shot Catesby and Percy received a handsome pension for 
 his service, though these were the very men whom it was most 
 important to capture, if the whole truth were to be discovered, 
 and the Government emphatically declared that they had been 
 supremely desirous to have them taken alive. This, not 
 unnaturally, has been considered a suspicious circumstance, 
 lending colour to the suggestion that it was not desired in high 
 quarters to have the whole truth told. Mr. Gardiner sweeps 
 away this difficulty, no less easily than others i 1 “ To the theory 
 [he writes] that Salisbury wanted inconvenient witnesses dis¬ 
 posed of, because the man who shot Percy and Catesby got a 
 pension of two shillings a day, I reply that the Government was 
 more afraid of a rebellion than of testimony.” 
 
 But this is just the point to be proved, and unfortunately for 
 so summary a solution, Salisbury has left it on record, that of 
 rebellion he had no fear at all. In the same letter to the 
 Ambassadors already cited, which, as Mr. Gardiner argues, was 
 written on the 7th of November, just when, if ever, the proceed¬ 
 ings of the rebels might have appeared formidable, he spoke of 
 them and their rising with derision, and unhesitatingly predicted 
 its immediate collapse. “ It is also thought fit,” he wrote, “ that 
 some martial man should presently repair down to those 
 counties where these Robin Hoods are assembled, to encourage 
 the good, and terrify the bad. In which service the Earl of 
 Devonshire is used, and commission going forth for him as 
 General. Although I am easily persuaded to believe that this 
 faggot will be burnt to ashes before he shall be twenty miles on 
 his way.” 
 
 But if the Government cannot possibly have been so much 
 in the dark as we are asked to believe when commencing their 
 investigations, it is likewise clear that the evidence extracted, or 
 said to have been extracted, from Faukes was by no means so 
 meagre as we are told it was. Here I must presume to differ 
 from Mr. Gardiner on a plain matter of fact. He says that 
 Faukes began with a resolute refusal to name any accomplices, 
 and in particular was so firmly determined to incriminate no 
 priest, that he would not even own to having received the 
 Sacrament as a pledge of fidelity to his bad purpose. We have, 
 however, but to look at his very first confession to see that in it 
 he named, or was made to name, four persons, one of them a 
 priest. I cannot, I confess, feel any very great assurance as to 
 
 1 P. 119. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 67 
 
 the genuineness of this document, for we have it only in a copy, 
 which unfortunately is the case with other highly important 
 pieces of evidence, and, moreover, a copy which has come 
 through the hands of Sir Edward Coke, as appears by various 
 annotations, and an interlinear addition, in his writing. Mr. 
 Gardiner, indeed, explains that a copy of this sort is almost as 
 good as an original, yet, knowing the peculiar views entertained 
 by the officials concerned as to the treatment of evidence, I am 
 unable altogether to share his confidence. But, taking the 
 document as it stands, we find that Faukes gave the following 
 important information regarding his recent visit to the Low- 
 Countries : “ [He] returned to Brussels, and remained there 
 about a month, and saw Sir William Stanley, Hugh Owen, 
 Ligon, Greenway, and divers other Englishmen.” 
 
 Of the persons thus named, the most important is Father 
 Greenway. There is no other evidence, and it is exceedingly 
 unlikely, that he had been in Flanders at the time spoken of; 
 but undoubtedly when Faukes made this statement he was in 
 England ; testimony being thus furnished, apparently without 
 any difficulty, against one whom it would certainly endanger, 
 and, moreover, one of the very persons whom, we are told, 
 Faukes was most firmly resolved to screen, a priest and a Jesuit. 
 
 Scarcely less remarkable is the mention of Hugh Owen. 1 
 He was the man whom beyond all others the Government 
 desired to incriminate, and it was of him that Salisbury wrote 
 in his celebrated instruction to Coke: “You must remember to 
 lay Owen as foul in this as you may.” 2 For this end it was 
 greatly desired, as we know from a letter of Salisbury’s to Sir 
 Thomas Edmondes, 3 to extort from Faukes something that 
 might be used against Owen. But this is just what Faukes 
 would not supply, not even after the “ terrible torture of the 
 9th.” In his confession of November 17th, the longest and 
 
 1 I had pointed out that it is a mistake to describe Owen as a Jesuit—as is 
 frequently done—he being a captain in the Archduke’s army. Mr. Gardiner, 
 however, remarks [p. 60, note] that the error is not without warrant in the original 
 documents, since a paper of intelligence received on April 29, 1604, begins : “ Father 
 Owen, Father Baldwin, and Colonel Jaques, three men that rule the Archduke at 
 their pleasure,” &c. But the paper in question [Dorn. James I. vii. 86] is professedly 
 only a copy, and that it is, in this respect, an incorrect copy, is shown by the version 
 of the same document presented to Parliament by Sir Edward Coke [April, 1606, 
 Dorn. James /. xx. 52], which begins, “ Hugh Owen, Father Baldwin, and Colonel 
 Jaques.” 
 
 * Dom. James /. xix. 94. 
 
 3 November 14, 1605. {Stowe MSS. 168, 54.) 
 
68 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 most ample which he ever signed, the name of Owen did not 
 occur, so that the Government had to adopt the rude device 
 of fabricating and interpolating a passage for Owen’s benefit in 
 the version of this confession which they published to the world 
 as has already been said. 1 Not till two months later is Faukes 
 represented as having given the required evidence about Owen 
 and then in a confession which is undoubtedly far more suspi¬ 
 cious even than that which we are considering. 2 
 
 Such being the case, I find myself unable to agree with 
 Mr. Gardiner’s appreciation of the first confession of Faukes, 
 made on November 5th, which is the corner-stone of his whole 
 argument. Having presented to his readers much of what it 
 contains, but not the passage to which I have drawn attention, 
 he thus continues : 
 
 After this it will little avail Father Gerard to produce arguments in 
 support of the proposition that the story of the plot was contrived by 
 the Government as long as this burning record is allowed to stand. 3 
 
 That the record may fitly be described as of supreme 
 importance, I am not disposed to deny ; but it seems to me 
 to tell altogether the other way 7 , and to be sufficient—even 
 were there nothing else—to cast grave suspicion upon the 
 whole series of documents which follow in its wake. It looks 
 to me, if I must have an hypothesis, as though the Government, 
 while in no doubt as to the complicity of the turbulent gentlemen 
 on whom the Secretary had his eye, were casting about for the 
 best means of giving their hair-brained enterprise a wider scope, 
 and began by' making what was presently perceived to be a 
 false start. For this is one of the most remarkable circum¬ 
 stances connected with the admission ascribed to Faukes, that 
 his interrogators let it drop altogether out of sight, and never 
 attempted to work the mine which it seemed to open for them. 
 We should naturally expect to find them extremely 7 inquisitive 
 as to the nature of the communications which had passed 
 between Faukes and Greenway; but on this subject no single 
 
 1 The following is the portion of the confession thus dealt with, the words here 
 italicized being those inserted by the Government: ‘ ‘ About Easter, the Parliament 
 being prorogued till October next, we dispersed ourselves; and I returned into the 
 Low Countries, by advice and direction of the rest, as well to acquaint Owen with the 
 particulars of the Plot, as also lest by my longer stay I might have grown suspicious, 
 and so have come in question.” 
 
 2 January 20, 1605—6. See What zuas the Gunpowder Plot* p. 191. 
 
 5 P. 21. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 69 
 
 word seems afterwards to have been breathed ; the name of 
 Greenway does not occur in any other of Faukes’ numerous 
 examinations. It was undoubtedly attempted to obtain from 
 him evidence against Owen, but there is nothing to connect 
 such attempts with the particular statement here ascribed to 
 him. Ligon, moreover, never appears again in our history, 
 while of Stanley, Faukes had nothing to say until the most 
 mysterious of all his depositions was made, on the 20th of 
 January following. 
 
 It therefore appears either that Faukes was ready from the 
 first to communicate the very kind of information which 
 Mr. Gardiner declares him most resolutely to have withheld, 
 or—which appears far more probable—that his confession has 
 not come down to us in an authentic form. 
 
 It would likewise seem that as regards his actual accomplices, 
 the Government were not greatly dependent upon information 
 obtained from Faukes, that they manifested no great anxiety to 
 extract it, and that if he failed to tell more, it was largely because 
 he was not asked. In the above examination of November the 
 5th, amidst a multitude of questions as to his own doings and 
 intentions, we find but one touching this point: “ Being further 
 demanded who were party or privy to this conspiracy, answereth, 
 that he cannot resolve to accuse any,” and there the matter 
 apparently dropped. On the 6th, he was twice examined, most 
 of the questions put to him appearing decidedly trivial— 
 respecting the making of a door into the cellar, the mode of 
 carrying the powder, and the like; but of his associates no 
 more was demanded than who had helped him to shift the 
 barrels. 1 On the same day, however, Chief Justice Popham 
 was able to give a surprisingly full list of the traitors, containing 
 seven names, exclusive of Percy and Faukes ; 2 particulars being 
 added as to their probable whereabouts, which indicate that 
 the authorities knew a good deal about these individuals. 
 Mr. Gardiner considers 3 that Popham was clearly proceeding 
 upon suspicion only, and had no special information to guide 
 him. His grounds for suspicion must, however, have been 
 
 1 There was also a question about some persons in exile—Sir William Cobb, Sir 
 Edmund Baynham, and the inevitable Hugh Owen. Also about one Griffin, of 
 whom no more is heard. (Perhaps the same as Griffith, a tailor, into whose hands 
 a letter addressed to Faukes seems to have come. Dom. James /. xvi. 17.) 
 
 2 Viz., Catesby, Rokewood, T. Winter, Keyes, John and Christopher Wright, 
 and Grant. (G . P. B. 16 a.) 
 
 3 P. 24. 
 
7o 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER’S DEFENCE 
 
 remarkably definite to enable him to fix upon all the indi¬ 
 viduals who had taken any active part in the conspirators’ 
 operations, and to mention no single person outside their 
 ranks. On the 7th, the' names of the majority of the con¬ 
 spirators were suggested to Faukes, but, although he refused 
 to say anything, the Government by this time at least 
 stood in little need of his assistance, for on that same day a 
 proclamation was issued for the apprehension of these indi¬ 
 viduals. In his deposition of the 8th—whereof we shall hear 
 more—no names are mentioned, though many particulars were 
 given concerning the number of the gang; but to the same day 
 Mr. Lemon assigns a list in the handwriting of Levinus Munck, 
 Salisbury’s Secretary, 1 containing the names of all the con¬ 
 spirators except Bates, the existence of which list Mr. Gardiner 
 has apparently overlooked. It is not till the 9th, as he says, that 
 we find his accomplice’s names (precisely the same list as 
 Munck’s) given upon the authority of Faukes, but it is by 
 no means evident that this was extorted by the “ terrible 
 torture” which he undoubtedly suffered on that day. His 
 confession is written upon both sides of a sheet of paper, 
 and is attested by his signature upon each. It is on the 
 first page that the names are given, along with the statement 
 that they received Communion from Father Gerard, which 
 the deponent may have been even more reluctant to make; 
 and the contents of this page are acknowledged in a hand 
 which, although certainly not his normal one, bears no resem¬ 
 blance to the hideous scrawl appended on the second. It 
 was evidently not the names of his confederates, but some¬ 
 thing else, which it was found so hard to get from him. What 
 this was, it is impossible to say, for many questions were doubt¬ 
 less asked of a prisoner under torture of which no record was 
 kept; but if it were anything of what appears upon the second 
 page, it was either an acknowledgment that he had been to 
 the house in Enfield Chase where Walley (i.e., Garnet) often 
 resided, 2 or another, “ that there was speech amongst them to 
 draw Sir Walter Raleigh to take part with them, being one 
 that might stand them in good stead [as others of like sort 
 were named].” 3 
 
 Another point in regard of which the ignorance professed 
 
 1 Gunpowder Plot Book, p. 133. 
 
 3 White Webbs. 
 
 8 The words in brackets are added, in a different hand from the rest. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 7 1 
 
 by the Government is hard to credit, is the conspirators’ 
 abandoned mine, concerning which something has already been 
 said. As I have pointed out, the truth or falsehood of the 
 story as to this remarkable piece of engineering is not of the 
 essence of our present enquiry, for the conspirators may really 
 have worked at it, and the Government all the time have known 
 perfectly well what they were about. I maintain no more than 
 this, that the story abounds in difficulties so grave as to make 
 it well-nigh incredible that the things said to have been done 
 actually occurred, and one such difficulty is raised by the point 
 we are now considering. Mr. Gardiner tells us 1 that on the 
 7th of November, the third day after the discovery of the 
 conspiracy, and the seizure of the conspirators’ premises, neither 
 the Government officials, nor the landlord and others living on 
 the spot, had discovered the existence of this excavation, which 
 they only learnt by means of information supplied by Faukes 
 on the 8th. He considers, moreover, 2 that it is an insult to 
 the sharp wits of the plotters, to suppose that they did not 
 close up the mine as soon as it was abandoned. But 
 how were they to do so ? The earth and stones which 
 had been dug out had been hidden away somewhere— 
 Mr. Gardiner believes they were at the bottom of the Thames,— 
 and although he thinks that the relaying of a couple of flag¬ 
 stones was all that was necessary, it does not appear to me 
 that practical workmen will agree with .him, for the tunnel said 
 to have been made had to be large enough for the conveyance 
 of powder barrels. Certainly, if they could so effectually 
 obliterate the traces of their work, these wonderful amateurs 
 might have given lessons to professionals. 
 
 A most singular feature of this famous mine, I may 
 here remark, is its apparent invisibility. No one except 
 its constructors appears ever to have seen it. Not only 
 did no person observe it in the making, nor any divine 
 its existence after the seizure of the premises, but, even 
 when it was revealed to the authorities, we hear nothing 
 of its being opened and inspected, although a description of 
 it would certainly have furnished a most appropriate and 
 effective item for the history of the conspiracy. What is 
 still more extraordinary, Sir Edward Coke strongly insisted 
 at the conspirators’ trial, that if the cellar had not been hired, 
 and the original project of the mine had been persisted in, it 
 
 1 Pp. 29, 31. 5 P. 104. 
 
PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 7 2 
 
 would have been practically impossible to have discovered 
 it: the treason, he declared, “ could hardly or not at all have 
 been discovered, for the mine was neither found nor suspected 
 until the danger was past, and the capital offenders apprehended, 
 and by themselves, upon examination, confessed.” That is to 
 say, if the mine had been completed and the powder stored 
 in it, the Government, although they had been warned of 
 impending danger through Lord Monteagle, and had taken such 
 measures as they actually did, to avert it, would have been 
 unable to detect it. But does it not seem, on the contrary, 
 that detection would in that case have been absolutely inevitable? 
 The mine must have been left open for Faukes to get in and 
 out, and to make his trains and other little arrangements 
 amongst the casks ; not even the couple of flagstones would 
 have shrouded it. The orifice of a tunnel, which the keeper 
 of the place knew to be no proper feature of the locality 
 would be just the thing to attract attention. Coke’s assertion 
 is obviously ridiculous; but doubtless it was made for a purpose, 
 and might perhaps avail to persuade the public not to expect 
 to see the subterranean works of which they heard so much. 1 
 
 1 Mr. Gardiner adds [p. 104], “How careful the plotters were of wiping out 
 all traces of their work is shown by the evidence of Whynniard’s servant, Roger 
 James, who says that about midsummer, 1605, Percy, appearing to pay his quarter’s 
 rent, ‘ agreed with one York, a carpenter in Westminster, for the repairing of his 
 lodging,’ adding, * that he would send his man to pay the carpenter for the work he 
 was to do.’ Either the mine had no existence, or all traces of it must have been 
 effectually removed before a carpenter was allowed to range the house in the absence 
 of both Percy and Faukes. I must leave it to my readers to decide which alternative 
 they prefer.” 
 
 I am quite willing to do so too. 
 
 He further takes exception to my statement that we learn on the unimpeachable 
 testimony of Mrs. Whynniard, the landlady, that Faukes had workmen in to repair 
 the house within a day of the intended explosion. “ The ‘ unimpeachable testi¬ 
 mony,’ [he writes] is that—not of Mrs. Whynniard, but of Roger James, who says, 
 that the carpenter came in about midsummer, not on November 4.” 
 
 Roger James does' indeed say, as we have seen above, that a carpenter was 
 employed by Percy at midsummer, but Mrs. Whynniard herself, in her examination 
 of November 7th, [ G . P. B. 39] after saying that Faukes had paid the last instalment 
 of rent on the previous Sunday [Nov. 3] thus continues : “ And further this exami- 
 nate cannot say, having not seen him since, but as she hath heard by her servants he 
 hath been in the lodging since, and set carpenters and other workfolk on work for 
 the mending and repairing thereof.” This seems to me perfectly dear, and I cannot 
 see that because Percy had a carpenter in at midsummer, it follows that Faukes did 
 not employ others in November. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 73 
 
 III. 
 
 There remains something to say concerning a mode of 
 reasoning much favoured by Mr. Gardiner in dealing with 
 evidence, which appears to be liable to the same objections as 
 habitual indulgence in the use of hypotheses, as allowing too 
 much scope to ingenuity of speculation, and easily blinding a 
 writer to alternatives at least as weighty as those upon which 
 he relies. 
 
 Thus, when treating of Faukes’ examination of November 9, 
 of which we have heard so much, and the passage in it exoner¬ 
 ating Father Gerard, and suppressed by Coke, Mr. Gardiner 
 argues 1 that if Faukes had not made this exculpatory statement 
 it would assuredly not have appeared in the document. Doubt¬ 
 less it would not: but what then ? As I have pointed out, it 
 is no part of my hypothesis that all such examinations are 
 fabrications. Those actually signed by the deponents clearly 
 represent what they could be induced to say, or at least to 
 subscribe. But Faukes, as Mr. Gardiner acknowledges, was no 
 coward, and as Salisbury himself complained, 2 both he and his 
 accomplices obstinately refused to give evidence against priests, 
 “yea, what torture soever they be put to.” Obviously it would 
 have been no easy matter to obtain Guy’s signature to a state¬ 
 ment which, on the face of it, incriminated Father Gerard. It 
 would be far more simple to do what was actually done, and 
 after he had put his name to what in itself was harmless, to 
 remove a phrase from its setting, thus making it appear as 
 implying an accusation. It was the evidence that could be 
 used in court which really mattered ; as it stood on the record, 
 it would meet the eyes only of such as could be trusted. 
 
 So again, in what I term the “draft” of Faukes’ published 
 confession, the following passage has been cancelled, and does 
 not appear in the finished version. Speaking of the plans of 
 the conspirators after the explosion, Faukes was made to say : 
 
 A proclamation was drawn, as well to avow and justify the action, 
 as to have protested against the Union, and in no sort to have meddled 
 with religion therein. And would have protested also against all 
 strangers. 3 
 
 1 P. 44, note. 
 
 3 Letter to Favat, December 4, 1605. Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 6,178, §625. 
 
 * P. 38. 
 
74 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 Upon this, Mr. Gardiner argues thus : 
 
 Curiously enough, one of the crossed out passages supplies evidence 
 that the document is a genuine one. . . . [It] contains an intimation 
 that the conspirators did not intend to rely only on a Catholic rising. 
 They expected to have on their side Protestants who disliked the union 
 with Scotland, and who were ready to protest “ against all strangers,” 
 that is to say, against all Scots. We can readily understand that Privy 
 Councillors, knowing as they did the line taken by the King in the 
 matter of the Union, would be unwilling to spread information of there 
 being in England a Protestant party opposed to the Union, not only of 
 sufficient importance to be worth gaining, but so exasperated that even 
 these gunpowder plotters could think it possible to win them to their 
 side. Nor is this all. If it is difficult to conceive that the Com¬ 
 missioners could have allowed such a paragraph to go abroad, it is at 
 least equally difficult to think of their inventing it. We may be sure 
 that if Fawkes had not made the statement, no one of the examiners 
 would ever have committed it to paper at all, and if the document is 
 genuine in this respect, why is it not to be held genuine from beginning 
 to end ? 
 
 Here, in the first place, I have to remark, as before, that 
 Mr. Gardiner saddles me with the theory that every jot and 
 tittle of documents such as this, must have been fabricated. But 
 I hold it as certain that, if there were fraud, as much as possible 
 of what the supposed speaker had really said would be worked 
 into his confession, to give it body and verisimilitude. In this 
 very “ draft ” there is a good deal, especially in the portions 
 which it was subsequently decided to omit, which looks as if it 
 might very well have come from Faukes himself. He may 
 have expressed himself thus about the Union and the Scots, 
 just as he may have uttered the oft-quoted phrase about blowing 
 the Scottish beggars back to their native mountains. 
 
 On the other hand, when we begin to talk of what states¬ 
 men of the period would or would not do, I cannot but think 
 that we plunge into a maze of which we have not the clue. 
 Their ideas of statecraft were altogether beyond us, and I see 
 no great profit in endeavouring to imagine motives for them, 
 which may be true, but also may not. Were I to argue that 
 the idea suggested itself of propitiating King James, by inti¬ 
 mating that opponents of his pet scheme of a union were only 
 one degree removed from gunpowder plotters, I do not see that 
 my supposition would be much less plausible than that which 
 we have heard. 
 
 It is far more to the point, however, to observe, that if the 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 75 
 
 matter had been so critical as Mr. Gardiner represents, we ought 
 to hear more of it; for in common prudence the Privy Council 
 must have endeavoured to learn how far the conspirators had 
 dealt with anti-unionists to ascertain their sentiments and secure 
 their assistance. But upon this subject we find no single word 
 in any other portion of the evidence either of Faukes or of any 
 other. 
 
 Once more. Faukes upon two occasions 1 vehemently pro¬ 
 tested that both he himself and his friends would have shed the 
 last drop of their blood to resist foreign invasion ; and in 
 Winter’s published confession it is incidentally noted, as a chief 
 feature of the conspiracy, that the Catholic cause should be 
 served without foreign aid. “ Are we seriously asked to believe, 1 ” 
 exclaims Mr. Gardiner, 2 “ that Salisbury placed this crown of 
 sturdy patriotism on the brows of those whom he wished to 
 paint as the most atrocious villains ? ” 
 
 But here we are at once confronted by a difficulty on the 
 other side, at least equally serious. It was a main point of the 
 Government’s case that these very men, Faukes and Thomas 
 Winter, had been actively engaged in trying to arrange for a 
 Spanish invasion of England, and had taken up the gunpowder 
 idea, only when the other failed them. As Sir Edward Coke 
 expressed it, 3 “ The treason for foreign invasion of England 
 succeeding not, by reason of the peace between England and 
 Spain, then did the Powder Treason rise out of the ashes of the 
 other.” At the trial, both of the conspirators and of Father 
 Garnet, much evidence—of a very equivocal character, it is 
 true—was produced, to substantiate the story of these Spanish 
 negotiations, which, according to this evidence, were so con¬ 
 ducted that, if they took place, they cannot have been a secret. 
 Is it likely that in such circumstances, and when there was 
 nothing to gain by it, these same men would have attempted 
 to pose as sturdy patriots ? On the other hand, if their 
 patriotism were genuine, what about the tale of the Spanish 
 Treason, of which almost as much was made as of the Powder 
 Plot itself? Moreover, so far at least as Faukes was concerned,, 
 no crown of any kind was ever placed on his brow, for his 
 protestations on the subject were carefully withheld from the 
 public. Most probably he said what is reported, and meant it. 
 
 1 November 6 and 7. 2 P. 59, note. 
 
 s Proofs against Owen, Dorn. James /. xx. 52. 
 
?6 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 As for Winter’s remark, it appears, as has been said, in his 
 published confession. To say nothing of the character of that 
 document, of which I shall have much to say elsewhere, the 
 Government were extremely anxious to dissociate foreign 
 powers, Spain especially, from all connection with the Gun¬ 
 powder Plot, a point which Coke placed in the forefront of his 
 speech at the conspirators’ trial. Winter’s brief observation, 
 which does not otherwise appear to be called for, might usefully 
 serve such a purpose ; but his testimony does not very well 
 agree with itself, for he goes on to tell how, after the speech 
 about doing without foreign aid, he went to Flanders, to learn 
 whether the Archdukes would assist the Catholics of England, 
 should they do anything to help themselves. 
 
 Before I quit the subject of this documentary evidence, I 
 may perhaps notice a minor charge which Mr. Gardiner has 
 thought fit to advance. In my book I have always described 
 King James’ Secretary of State by his family name, as “Cecil.” 
 Mr. Gardiner remarks : “ Father Gerard appears to show his 
 dislike of Salisbury by denying him his title.” 1 This observa¬ 
 tion affords a good example of the difficulty of penetrating 
 another person’s mind, for nothing could be further from my 
 thoughts than the motive thus suggested. I spoke of “ Cecil ” 
 in the first place, because I found this term used almost 
 universally by contemporary writers, as well as by such recent 
 authorities as the Historical Manuscripts Commission ; and in 
 the second, because it avoids the inconvenience of having to 
 speak of the Same man, at different stages of his career, some¬ 
 times as Sir Robert Cecil, sometimes as Lord Cecil of Essendon, 
 sometimes as Viscount Cranborne, and sometimes as Earl of 
 Salisbury. 
 
 Here, for the present at least, I must cease. As in my 
 previous consideration of the question of method, so now in 
 regard of documentary evidence, I have not attempted to deal 
 with every particular which has been urged against me, for this 
 would have involved the obvious inconvenience of producing 
 another book. I am content to restrict myself to some points, 
 which appear to be fair samples of the whole, and to indicate the 
 lines upon which, as I conceive, my position may be maintained. 
 
 There remain other portions of the field in which it seems 
 desirable to do the like—in particular the sensational episode 
 of the mine and certain salient features of the topography of 
 1 P. 54. note. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 77 
 
 the scene of action demand consideration, which must, however, 
 be reserved for another article. 
 
 At the same time, as I have already intimated, whatever 
 there may be to say about such matters, and whatever their 
 individual significance, I feel that Mr. Gardiner has reduced 
 them to a position of secondary importance. He has indicated 
 the points around which the real battle must centre, and by 
 confining our attention to which we shall be enabled to obtain 
 results more definite and conclusive than have hitherto appeared 
 possible. With such points it is my intention to deal in a 
 separate publication. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Respecting material circumstances connected with the Plot, 
 Mr. Gardiner has a good deal to say. I shall confine my 
 attention to a few which seem to be of importance, and treat 
 these with all possible brevity. 
 
 (i.) On the constantly recurring question of the mine, I have 
 not much to add to what I have said in my book, and it does 
 not seem to me that Mr. Gardiner has succeeded in disposing 
 of the difficulties which present themselves. I understand as 
 little as ever how the conspirators could have done the things 
 they are said to have done, or, if they did them, how the 
 authorities and the whole neighbourhood can possibly have 
 been ignorant of what they were doing; how the earth and 
 stones can have been concealed, or the noise inseparable from 
 their operations have remained unnoticed. On the latter point 
 Mr. Gardiner speaks as follows: 1 
 
 If the conspirators restricted their operations to the night-time, 
 there was little danger of their being overheard. There was not much 
 likelihood either that Whynniard would get out of bed to visit the 
 tapestry or whatever the stuff belonging to the King may have been, or 
 that Mrs. Skinner would want to examine her coal-sacks whilst her 
 customers were asleep. The only risk was from some belated visitor 
 coming up the quiet court leading from Parliament Place to make his 
 way to one of the houses in Whynniard’s block. Against this, however, 
 the plotters were secured by the watchfulness of Fawkes. 
 
 But, omitting for the present the question as to what 
 dwelling-houses were within earshot, and how far the sound 
 of the operations against the wall would travel, where is the 
 evidence that those operations were restricted to the night-time ? 
 
 1 P. IOl. 
 
73 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 Mr. Jardine supposed that it was only by day that the con¬ 
 spirators worked. “ All day long,” he writes, “ they worked at 
 the mine, carrying the earth and rubbish into a little building 
 in the garden behind the house, and at night they removed it 
 from the building into the garden, spreading it abroad, and 
 covering it carefully over with turf.” 1 It is true that we have 
 no evidence to corroborate these particulars, but Mr. Jardine’s 
 authority may suffice to show that there is none to contradict 
 them. One thing at least is clear : the miners were not working 
 in the middle of the night, when they heard the men moving 
 coals above their heads, and as there is nothing whatever to 
 indicate that upon this occasion they were pursuing their 
 operations at an unusual time of day, it is natural to infer, with 
 Father Greenway, 2 that the same persons must previously have 
 been close to them without their knowledge, before they dis¬ 
 covered the existence of the coal-cellar. Even were we to 
 suppose the mining work to have been restricted to the night¬ 
 time, although neither Whynniard nor Mrs. Skinner is likely 
 to have instituted a search, for the purposes specified by 
 Mr. Gardiner, is it not possible that they might be curious as to 
 the noises necessarily produced by iron tools upon a stone wall, 
 “ very hard to beat through ” ? Whynniard at least cannot have 
 been very far away, nor other denizens of his block, and the 
 stillness of the night is not well calculated to render sounds 
 inaudible. 
 
 Neither does it seem that the vigilance of Faukes can so 
 effectually have guarded the workers against observation. There 
 is, Mr. Gardiner tells us, no reasonable doubt that he directed 
 the mining operations ; but, to do so to any purpose, he must 
 have spent a large portion of his time underground ; and, as 
 Winter tells us that none of the party except Faukes ever 
 showed himself outside, none other can have kept watch in his 
 place. 
 
 We have also seen that in Mr. Gardiner’s opinion there was 
 presumably no great noise made in breaking through the 
 foundations of the Parliament House, because Faukes had 
 probably seen or heard of mining operations in the wars abroad, 
 and so could teach his associates how to conduct them without 
 attracting attention. I am told, however, by military authorities 
 that, in attacking a town or building, mines are not driven 
 through walls or foundations, which could not be done secretly, 
 
 1 Criminal Trials , ii. 39. 3 F. 44. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 79 
 
 but lower down in the ground, clear of all stone-work. It does 
 not appear, therefore, that Faukes’ experience, if he had any 
 experience, would have been greatly to the purpose in the case 
 in hand. 
 
 The difficulty of keeping things dark must have been 
 materially aggravated by the presence in Percy’s house of a 
 housekeeper, or care-taker, or charwoman, whichever she was, 
 Mrs. Gibbins, wife of a porter dwelling hard by, 1 “ who kept 
 the lodging for Percy, as before for Mr. Ferrers [the previous 
 tenant],” and was able to give evidence as to the visits he paid 
 to his premises. 2 It is not easy to understand either how this 
 woman can have failed to notice that strange doings were in 
 progress, or that, noticing them, she should say nothing to her 
 gossips. She was presumably left in charge, when, at Christmas, 
 1604, the conspirators went off into the country, leaving the 
 mine in process of digging, and she must certainly have been 
 about the house when, a month later, twenty barrels of gun¬ 
 powder were brought in and stored there,—a somewhat unusual 
 species of furniture. 
 
 Another puzzle is presented by a letter of Thomas Winter’s. 3 
 It must be remembered that the mining operations are said to 
 have commenced on the nth of December, 1604, and that by 
 Christmas a tunnel had been made from the starting-point, in 
 Percy’s house, to the foundation wall of the Parliament building. 
 The conspirators then separated for the Christmas holidays, 
 resuming their labours in January, by the end of which month 
 they had made some progress in penetrating the wall, at which 
 they wrought, off and on, till near Easter, when they discovered 
 and hired the cellar. On the 22nd of February Winter wrote 
 the letter I speak of, to his brother-in-law, John Grant, who had 
 by this time been enlisted as an accomplice. 4 It runs as follows : 
 
 I had thought to have come down before this, but business hath 
 hitherto and will yet longer keep me away. I am now going to the 
 bath \i.e. to Bath] with my Lord Mounteagle, and from thence into 
 Lancashire. My fortunes are so poor that they will not leave me mine 
 own man, if they did, Jack, thou shouldst have more of my company. 
 Commend me to my sister, and wax rich. Newses are asleep. A. Dio. 
 Your loving brother,— Tho. Wintour. 
 
 London, the 22th of Feburary. 
 
 My L. Mounteagle will receive your brother betwixt this and Easter 
 term, at what time he goeth into Lancashire. 
 
 1 Faukes, November 5. 2 Evidence of Roger James, November 7. 
 
 3 Dorn, fames /. xii. 89. 4 Grant was initiated in January, 1604— 5. 
 
8o 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 This letter was written whilst the toilsome labour of breaking 
 through the stubborn Parliament wall is said to have been 
 taxing to the utmost all the forces of the little company, and 
 it was written to one whom, as privy to their design, there was 
 no object in hoodwinking ; but there is little sign of the writer’s 
 having on hand a work which required constant and unremitting 
 labour. A trip to Bath and Lancashire, though it might suit 
 Winter’s pocket, could not greatly assist the making of the 
 mine. 
 
 The difficulty is enhanced by another letter, written just a 
 month later (March 23, 1604— 5 )> by Robert Winter, elder 
 brother of Thomas, to the same John Grant, informing him that 
 Tom’s projected journey [to Flanders] is delayed that he may 
 wait for the going over of Sir Charles Percy, who is about to 
 receive a Colonelcy [in the Archduke’s service]. 1 Clearly the 
 business of the mine did not occupy much of Tom’s time. 
 
 The neighbourhood of the river suggests another problem. 
 This, as Mr. Gardiner reminds us, was very close by, so close, 
 indeed, that it is hard to understand how the proposed excava¬ 
 tion could possibly have been suited for the storage of powder, 
 or even how the miners can have got so far as they did, without 
 being drowned out. The Thames was in those days a wayward 
 and turbulent stream, prone to overflow its banks, and the 
 buildings standing near were, generally at least, without cellars, 
 which must frequently have been converted into water-tanks, 
 and which, even apart from inundations, the water percolating 
 the loose intervening soil, would keep constantly flooded, 
 making them eminently unsuited for the housing of com¬ 
 bustibles. 2 The floor of Westminster Hall was on the same 
 
 1 “Sir, on thursday reseved I a letter from Tom Wintour Importing the stay ot 
 his Journey, by the expectinge of Sir Charles Percye, his goinge over Colonell, which 
 is the only newes; so, with my hartyest commendation to your selfe and the rest of 
 your good company, I end, this xxiiith of March 1604. Ro. Wintour.” (Dow. 
 James 1 . xiii. 32.) 
 
 2 Mr. Gardiner, following Mr. Jardine, tells us that the mine was started from a 
 cellar in Percy’s house. If it was ever started at all, this may have been the case, 
 but there is no evidence that Percy’s house had a cellar. 
 
 Upon another point connected with this, I am unable to follow Mr. Gardiner. 
 Assuming that Percy’s house was built of brick, he tells us (p. 97), that the brick of 
 the period was comparatively soft, and that the wall would, therefore, be easy to 
 penetrate. It is not, however, the bricks or stones that are attacked in such an 
 operation, but the mortar between them. No one would try to drive a pick into 
 the substance of the wall itself. I am moreover informed that the old bricks, though 
 not so hard as ours, were far more tough, and would be more difficult to deal with in 
 the manner supposed. 
 
 Another somewhat similar point may here be noticed. I had remarked that as 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 81 
 
 level with that of the cellar, but a good deal further from the 
 river. On the 30th of September, 1555, as Stow tells us : “The 
 Palace at Westminster and Westminster Hall was overflowen 
 with water, unto the stair-foot going to the Chancery and King’s 
 Bench, so that when the Lord Mayor of London should come 
 to present the sheriffs to the Barons of the Exchequer, all 
 Westminster Hall was full of water.” It was reported upon 
 the same occasion that a waterman had rowed his wherry up 
 and down various streets in the neighbourhood. On February 
 4th, 1578-9, as the same chronicler relates, “The water rose so 
 high in Westminster Hall, that after the fall thereof, some 
 fishes were found there to remain.” In view of such possibilities 
 the cellar itself was none too safe a place for keeping gunpowder 
 which was meant to explode. To go lower would be to invite 
 inevitable failure. 
 
 (ii.) After the mine comes the “ cellar,” which supplanted it 
 as the headquarters of the Plot. The great question concerning 
 it is this: How far was it a secret place, suitable for the dark 
 design it was made to serve ? Mr. Gardiner considers it at least 
 most probable 1 that, even when the thirty-six barrels of powder 
 had been placed there, Mr. Whynniard, from whom it was 
 rented, had free access to it, independently of the conspirators ; 
 and that they “ must have been content with the strong proba¬ 
 bility that whenever their landlord came into his end of the 
 ‘ cellar/ he would not come further to pull about the pile of 
 wood with which their powder barrels were covered.” If in 
 such circumstances the plotters could calmly go off, as they 
 did, into the country or to the Continent, for months together, 
 leaving the custody of their terrible secret to such a “strong 
 probability,” assuredly they were not only, as Mr. Gardiner 
 believes, 2 the most estimable and unselfish set of miscreants 
 who ever contrived a diabolical crime, but likewise the most 
 childlike and guileless that ever baffled the vigilance of an 
 English Government. 
 
 the conspirators never got to the other side of the Parliament wall’s foundation, it is 
 strange that they knew it to be nine feet thick. To this Mr. Gardiner replies (p. 102, 
 note), that in such cases the foundations were always made broader than the wall 
 itself, and that, the wall above being seven feet thick, “the diggers, observing the 
 angle of the face they attacked, might roughly calculate that a foot on each side 
 might be added, thus reaching the nine feet.” Mr. Brewer tells me that the breadth 
 of a wall was increased, not by any slope of the face, which was always vertical, but 
 by stages successively broadening like steps, and set one upon another. 
 
 1 P. hi. 2 P. 70. 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 There appears, indeed, to be no doubt that the “cellar” 
 was accessible in other ways than through the door of which 
 Faukes or Percy kept the key. This is shown by the account 
 of the arrest of the former, prepared by Salisbury on the 6th of 
 November, for Sir Thomas Parry. 1 According to this, Sir 
 Thomas Knyvet, who had been sent, on the night of November 
 4th, “ to make search about that place, and to appoint a watch 
 in the old Palace, to observe what persons might resort there¬ 
 abouts,” in pursuit of this duty, “about midnight going by 
 change into the vault by another door, found the fellow.” 
 
 I very much regret that in my book the word “ change ” 
 should have been wrongly printed “ chance.” The former is 
 undoubtedly the correct reading, and I so transcribed it. I am, 
 however, unable to see that the mistake is of such importance 
 as Mr. Gardiner thinks. 
 
 If [he writes], 2 the word “chance” had been found in the real 
 letter, it could hardly be interpreted otherwise than to imply a negative 
 of the other visit [of the Lord Chamberlain] said to have been followed 
 by a resolve on the King’s part to search farther. As the word stands, 
 it may be accepted as evidence that an earlier visit had taken place. 
 How could Knyvet go “ by change ” into the vault by another door, 
 unless he or someone else had gone in earlier by some other approach ? 
 
 As the letter to Parry makes no mention at all of the Lord 
 Chamberlain’s earlier visit, it seems that the phrase “ by change” 
 is somewhat overloaded with meaning, like Burghley’s shake of 
 the head, if we accept it as evidence that such a visit had been 
 paid, and had been paid through a door different from that by 
 which Knyvet entered when he found Faukes. The natural 
 interpretation appears to be, that Knyvet in the course of his 
 perambulations, opened a door which he had not previously 
 tried, and that this was not the one used by the plotters. All 
 this, however, is quite beside the mark. The important point 
 is that there was “ another door,” through which admittance to 
 
 1 Mr. Gardiner appears to imply (p. 127), that the authority of this document is 
 impaired by the fact that we have it only in a draft, that there is no proof of its 
 having ever been despatched in this form, that it is quite inartistic, and that it may 
 have been altered so as to agree with the letter subsequently sent to the other 
 ambassadors, which gives quite a different account of Faukes’ arrest. If this were 
 so, I cannot see what it can be supposed to prove. The question is not about the 
 form in which the account was ultimately sent, but about that in which it was 
 originally written. 
 
 2 P. 129. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 83 
 
 the “ cellar ” could be obtained, without the assistance of the 
 conspirator in charge. 
 
 Another question regarding the “ cellar/’ is raised by Thomas 
 Winter’s published confession. He tells us that the powder 
 barrels, when finally deposited there, were covered with a large 
 amount of firewood, a thousand billets and five hundred faggots, 1 
 “ because we might have the house free to suffer any one to 
 enter that would.” From this I have argued, that the “ cellar ” 
 was by no means a private place, nor well calculated for the 
 concealment of a powder magazine. 
 
 Mr. Gardiner altogether denies the correctness of my 
 inference. 
 
 The extraordinary thing [he writes] is that Father Gerard does not 
 see that his quotation from Winter is fatal to his argument. . . . The 
 cellar was not part of the house: and, although the words are not 
 entirely free from ambiguity, the more reasonable interpretation is that 
 Fawkes disposed of the powder in the cellar, in order that visitors 
 might be freely admitted into the house. 
 
 I must confess my blindness to be as extraordinary as ever. 
 The powder was placed in the “ cellar,” not to leave the house 
 free for visitors, but because it was wanted in the cellar to blow 
 up the chamber above, and the place had been taken on purpose 
 to receive it. And, as the cellar was not part of the house, 
 why should the barrels in the former be carefully hidden, in 
 order that people might be admitted to the latter? Had the 
 barrels been left exposed in the “cellar” and labelled “Gun¬ 
 powder,” no one who restricted his visits to the house would 
 have been any the wiser. 
 
 (iii.) Various problems connect themselves with the gun¬ 
 powder said to have been provided by the confederates and 
 stored in the “ cellar,”—and first as to its amount. This I have 
 estimated at about four tons, and have argued that it is hard 
 to understand how half a dozen individuals, known as dangerous 
 and turbulent men, could have obtained such a quantity, and 
 conveyed it beneath the Peers’ Chamber without exciting 
 observation and suspicion ; likewise, how after the discovery 
 it can altogether have disappeared, no further mention of it 
 being found. 
 
 Mr. Gardiner replies, with a writer in the Edinburgh Review, 2 
 
 1 Gideon Gibbins, a porter, gave evidence that he with two others brought in 
 3,000 billets. ( Dom . fames I. xvi. 14.) 
 
 2 January, 1897. 
 
8 4 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 that my estimate is much exaggerated; that, apart from hearsay 
 reports, I based my computation upon the weight of a barrel 
 of powder, which I have taken to be four times what it really 
 was : that the proper figure is probably about a ton and a 
 half; and that this agrees well with the cost of the powder as 
 estimated by Sir Edward Coke. 1 
 
 But it was not by any computation that I arrived at my 
 estimate, which is supplied by the explicit testimony of John 
 Barclay, in his Conspiratio Anglicana , testimony which it seems 
 somewhat arbitrary to dismiss as “ hearsay.” The writer 2 was 
 a Court favourite, who must have heard the most authoritative 
 version of the story, and wrote his account of the discovery, as 
 we are expressly told, within a month of its occurrence— illo 
 ipso Novembri. Barclay states that the amount discovered in 
 the “ cellar ” was nearly nine thousand pounds of the very best 
 powder ( electissimipulveris'). 
 
 I do not, however, wish to deny that there appears to be 
 considerable force in the Edinburgh Reviewer’s arguments, and 
 that the quantity may have been a good deal less than Barclay 
 says. But even a ton and a half of gunpowder is a tolerably 
 large amount and the difficulties above indicated will not 
 entirely disappear should such an estimate be adopted. More¬ 
 over, I do not think it a conclusive argument that the proper 
 weight of a barrel of gunpowder was ioo lbs. This was 
 doubtless true of orthodox or regulation barrels, as used 
 officially, but the conspirators evidently employed whatever 
 casks they could obtain, it being particularly stated that there 
 were two hogsheads amongst them—the indictment drawn 
 against them says four. I am told by military experts that 
 a cubic foot of Jacobean powder weighed about 37 lbs., and, 
 supposing ordinary barrels to have been used, the sum total for 
 thirty-six would thus be almost three tons. 
 
 (iv.) The conduct of the Government in regard of the 
 powder, as I have pointed out, is very inexplicable and seems 
 to indicate that from some reason or other they were not 
 greatly afraid of it. Salisbury himself acknowledges, in his 
 letter to the Ambassadors, that he divined its presence under 
 the House of Lords, ten days before he did anything to prevent 
 the catastrophe it might occasion, and such apathy, which may 
 
 1 P. 112. 
 
 s The “Joannes Barclaius” of King James ni the Fortunes of Nigel , and author 
 of the Argents. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 8 5 
 
 suggest various interpretations, is at least scarcely consistent 
 with the idea that he was surprised by an imminent peril of 
 which he had known nothing. Mr. Gardiner attempts to get 
 rid of the difficulty by a most extraordinary piece of argument. 1 
 
 No doubt [he says] there was a danger of gunpowder exploding and 
 blowing up, not only the empty House of Lords, but a good many 
 innocent people as well; but there had been no explosion as yet, and 
 the powder was in the custody of men whose interest it was that there 
 should be no explosion before the 5th. 
 
 But if the gunpowder had previously exploded, there would 
 have been nothing further to fear from it; it was precisely 
 because it had not yet gone off that there was danger of its 
 doing so. The plea advanced is like saying that a man is 
 unlikely to die because he never died before. And if the 
 Government did what they say they did, sending the Lord 
 Chamberlain down on the afternoon of the 4th, to look into 
 the “cellar,” it was only the dogged fatuity of Faukes which 
 prevented a terrible calamity. On hearing of the Chamberlain’s 
 visit, we are told, Percy’ and others at once fled, understanding 
 that the game was up. Had Guy imitated them, first putting 
 a match to his touchwood, he would have consulted the best 
 interests of himself and his comrades, for their enemies would 
 have had quite enough to occupy them in London, without 
 organizing searches and pursuits. If there were all the powder 
 in the cellar which there is said to have been, and if it were 
 in a condition to blow up, an amount of confusion must have 
 inevitably been created, under cover of which a small number 
 of obscure individuals, of whose doings, we are told, the Govern¬ 
 ment knew nothing, might surely have got away unnoticed 
 Mr. Gardiner seems to think that the results of the explosion 
 would not have been very extensive, declaring that “ Smith’s 
 wildly improbable view, 2 that the shock might have ‘levelled 
 and destroyed all London and Westminster like an earthquake,’ 
 can hardly be taken seriously.” But Smith was not wholly 
 unwarranted by high contemporary authority, which certainly 
 was meant to be taken very seriously indeed. Preaching at Paul’s 
 Cross on the Sunday after the discovery (November 10), Barlow, 
 Bishop of Rochester—having, as we are particularly informed, 
 been coached in his subject the previous evening by no less a 
 personage than the Secretary of State—spoke as follows : 
 
 1 P. 126. 2 Antiquities of Westminster , p. 41. 
 
86 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 By the report of military men, his [Faukes 5 ] provision was so large, 
 that if fire had been given, besides the place itself at which he aimed, 
 the Hall of Judgment, the Courts of Records, the Collegiate Church, 
 the city of Westminster, yea, Whitehall, the King’s house, had been 
 trushed and overthrown, such heaps he had laid in of billets, faggots, 
 huge stones, iron crows, pick-axes, great hammer-heads, besides so 
 many barrels of gunpowder, five-and-thirty in number small and great, 
 as I am credibly informed . 1 
 
 These last words remind us that, like the mine, the gun¬ 
 powder stored in the “ cellar ” must have been singularly hard 
 to see. Saving the conspirators who mention it in their 
 depositions, no witness speaks as if he had himself set eyes 
 upon it, but we are always referred to some one else. Com¬ 
 bined with the placid manner in which it was treated in high 
 quarters, this cannot but suggest a doubt to those sceptically 
 inclined, as to whether there was not some mystery about this 
 essential element in the story of the Plot, which, could it be 
 penetrated, might very seriously modify our notions on the 
 subject. Although Mr. Gardiner has not deemed them worthy 
 of notice, various other circumstances connected with the powder 
 upon which I remarked, seem to corroborate such a suspicion. 
 It is undoubtedly, very strange that while every trivial detail 
 concerning the doing of the plotters was minutely scrutinized, 
 no question should ever have been asked as to whence they 
 obtained the gunpowder, or who sold it to them : that no word 
 should be recorded as to its removal, or what afterwards became 
 of it: that on the 5th of November, within a few hours of the 
 discovery, the House of Lords should calmly have met above 
 the “ cellar,” from which it is hard to suppose that the powder 
 can already have been removed ; finally, that for more than 
 
 1 It is a very curious circumstance, that in a preface of “ The Preacher’s friend to 
 the Reader,” prefixed to this sermon when published, it was thought necessary to 
 contradict the idea that Barlow when appointed to preach upon this day, had known 
 that the Plot would be his topic. 
 
 “ If thou thinkest [we read] the Preacher of this Sermon was upon purpose 
 appointed to relate the discovery of this late Tragi-comical treason, . . . thou art 
 deceived. ... As I heard the Preacher himself frankly confess, that unless the 
 King’s Majesty his most excellent speech, with the right honourable L. Chancellor 
 his grave oration (both of them in the Parliament house the day before), and divers 
 circumstances sensibly conceived and imparted to him overnight by the E. of 
 Salisbury, his Majesty’s principal Secretary, had not succoured him, he had failed 
 even in that slender performance, which was then offered to the ear, and here is 
 presented to the view.” 
 
 Barlow makes no mention of the mine, but speaks of the “cellar”as though it 
 were below ground, which we know it was not, saying that the explosion was to have 
 been “ under the earth, out of a cave, as kindled and sent from the infernal pit.” 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 87 
 
 seventy years this “cellar” should have continued to be let 
 out to tenants, no precautions being taken to prevent them 
 using it for another plot. All this agrees well with the supposi¬ 
 tion that the King’s Ministers had been behind the scenes, and 
 had in some manner assured themselves that no accidents would 
 happen, but how shall it be reconciled with the dismay and 
 alarm which they so vehemently professed ? 
 
 V. 
 
 The warning letter received by Lord Monteagle, and by 
 him taken to the Earl of Salisbury, was, as we are assured, 
 the only means by which the Government obtained an inkling 
 of impending danger. Concerning it I have little to add to 
 what I have previously said. Professor Gardiner admits that 
 this famous missive was probably a trick, a little comedy 
 contrived for the purpose of explaining Monteagle’s possession 
 of the information which he so fortunately imparted ; but he 
 holds that the game was played by Monteagle, not with 
 Salisbury, but with Tresham, his brother-in-law, a faint-hearted 
 conspirator, who desired to find means of frustrating the scheme 
 of his more resolute associates. No doubt, if Tresham wrote 
 the letter, as is generally supposed, he must have taken a hand 
 in the game, but authorities such as Mr. Jardine and Professor 
 Brewer have expressed their conviction that greater people than 
 Tresham were likewise partners. This opinion I share, and I 
 find it impossible to read the account given in official documents 
 of Monteagle’s interview with Salisbury, without concluding 
 that Monteagle’s comedy was not acted with Tresham alone. 
 The brace of lords are represented as strenuously protesting 
 that neither supposed the letter to mean anything ; and at the 
 same time as exchanging elaborate speeches implying that it 
 was of the highest importance : Salisbury avowing the high 
 opinion he had always entertained of Monteagle’s loyalty and 
 sense of duty, which his present action did not belie; and 
 Monteagle imploring that excess of solicitude for his Majesty’s 
 safety should not be reckoned as a fault, because it had urged 
 him at once to hand over so mysterious a communication. 1 
 
 The principal argument relied on by Mr. Gardiner, 2 to 
 disprove Salisbury’s share in the comedy, is the same which he 
 
 1 See especially the Relation of the discovery prepared by Salisbury for the Privy 
 Council. ( G. P. B. 129.) 
 
 2 P. 124. 
 
88 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 advanced when treating this subject in his classical History. 1 Is 
 it to be supposed, he asks, that the Secretary should have 
 contrived such a scheme, on purpose, as it would seem, to let the 
 conspirators slip through his fingers, as, with the exception of 
 Faukes, they did, getting away from London to make trouble in 
 the provinces ? 
 
 I have already expressed my opinion as to the futility of 
 endeavouring to fathom the motives of such a statesman. In 
 the present instance one thing is perfectly clear; if the majority 
 of the conspirators escaped for the moment, to raise the standard 
 of revolt, and draw others into trouble, this resulted not from the 
 receipt of the letter, but from Salisbury’s action, or want of 
 action, when he was avowedly in possession of the information it 
 conveyed. For ten days, by his own testimony, he was assured 
 that a store of gunpowder was lying under the Parliament House ; 
 yet during all this time he did nothing, not even attempting to 
 ascertain what suspicious characters resorted thereabouts. When 
 at the last moment he began to move, he did the very thing best 
 calculated to scare away intending criminals, and but for the 
 incredible foolhardiness of Faukes, he too would have gone with 
 the rest ; the Lord Chamberlain being sent officially to “ peruse 
 the cellar,” to make remarks upon the extraordinary quantity 
 of firewood collected in it, and enquiries as to who rented it. 
 What may have been the purpose of all this, is not easy to 
 determine, but in view of the strange course so deliberately 
 adopted, it can scarcely be argued that the Minister could not 
 possibly be privy to the sending of a letter, which would have 
 enabled him, had prompt measures been taken, to secure the 
 object which he appears so carefully to have avoided. 
 
 For the rest, Mr. Gardiner omits all mention of various 
 circumstances, which certainly call for notice in connection with 
 this matter. He says nothing of the magnitude of the reward 
 conferred on Monteagle, in the form of an annuity for life, 
 equivalent at the lowest computation to £3,000 of our money 
 nearly a third of which, was to be continued to his heirs for ever ; 
 nor of the extreme solicitude, as the draft of this grant testifies, 
 to assure the public that the letter was the first “and only” 
 means whereby the treason was discovered ; nor of the extra¬ 
 ordinary pains which were taken to conceal his name, when it 
 occurred in any document connected with the Plot; nor, most 
 suspicious of all, of the fact that although he always posed as,a 
 1 Vol. i. p. 254, note. 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 89 
 
 Catholic exceptionally zealous for the Catholic cause, and was 
 on terms of close intimacy with the conspirators, he had 
 expressed to King James his desire to become a Protestant, and 
 to abandon a Church which he had learnt to despise. 1 I cannot 
 think that these circumstances deserve no consideration whatever. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The topographical features of the House of Lords and its 
 surroundings, important as they are for our history, are not easy 
 to describe in detail, without running to a greater length than at 
 present seems desirable. Neither does it appear necessary to do 
 more than examine one or two particular points, to which 
 Mr. Gardiner attaches importance. 
 
 It must, however, in the first place be remarked that he here 
 executes a notable change of front. He began, it may be 
 remembered, by finding fault with me for not restricting myself 
 to contemporary evidence. Now, he complains that my 
 conclusions are unsound, because they are based on the evidence 
 of contemporaries, and that I should have gone by topographers 
 of later date. Speaking of Mr. Brewer, to whose assistance I 
 owe so much in this department, he says, 2 “ Mr. Brewer has, I 
 think, been misled by those early semi-pictorial maps, 3 which 
 though they may be relied on for larger buildings, such as the 
 House of Lords or St. Stephen’s Chapel, are very imaginative in 
 their treatment of private houses.” Accordingly, he himself 
 prefers to follow other maps, the earliest of which was 
 constructed eighty years after the time of which we are treating. 
 
 The first point as to which we are at issue, regards the popu¬ 
 lousness of the immediate neighbourhood, a restoration of which, 
 drawn for me by Mr. Brewer, 4 exhibited several buildings as 
 situated between the House of Lords and the Thames. These, 
 if they really existed at the time, would obviously add to the 
 difficulty alike of keeping the mining operations secret, and of 
 importing the gunpowder and other materials, to say nothing of 
 shooting into the river the rubbish dug out of the mine. 
 Mr. Gardiner appears to maintain that there was no such 
 
 1 His letter is printed in full. What was the Gunpowder Plot? p. 256. 
 
 I P. 93 - 
 
 3 Principally, Ralph Agas’ Civitas Londinum , published about 1560, and John 
 Nordcn’s Specuhtm Britannia , Part i. 1593. 
 
 4 What was the Gunpowder Plot ? p. 56. 
 
go 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 number of buildings in the locality, and he strenuously denies 
 the existence of two, which Mr. Brewer has placed on the river- 
 bank. At the same time, the sketch which he produces as a 
 frontispiece, shows (on the extreme left) part of a large house in 
 the very position spoken of, and, which is more important, the 
 earliest of his maps, 1 represents a solid block of buildings as 
 stretching from the House of Lords to the Thames. This is 
 more than I ever imagined, and, indeed, more than can possibly 
 have been, but at least it indicates the map-maker’s impression, 
 that the site was anything but bare of edifices. Mr. Gardiner 
 finds himself forced to suggest that part of what might be 
 supposed to represent houses, in reality represents gardens. The 
 early semi-pictorial maps are at least free from the inconvenience 
 of leaving us in doubt upon such a point. 
 
 Without going into particulars which at present are not 
 essential, there appears sufficient evidence that the locality 
 was not so devoid of habitations as to do away with the 
 difficulties I have indicated. There was certainly “ Whynniard’s 
 block,” in part of which were the premises rented by Percy for 
 the purposes of the Plot: there was a baker’s shop, “joining the 
 Parliament House,” in which Bates tried to find a lodging for 
 his master, Catesby; there was a dwelling occupied by the 
 porter, Gideon Gibbins, of which more anon. We hear, more¬ 
 over, 2 of buildings, shops, booths, and the like, erected about the 
 old Palace of Westminster, till they became a nuisance, 3 and of 
 land by the Thames recently waste and now in part built upon. 4 
 
 More interesting is the question as to the nature of the 
 house which served the conspirators as a base of operations. 
 We know that one was taken in the name of Percy, which 
 
 1 1685, What Gunpowder Plot was, p. 81. 
 
 2 Land Record Office, Hill, iv. 261. 
 
 3 Ibid. 264. 
 
 4 Mr. Gardiner attaches great importance to a piece of waste land sold to 
 Whynniard, Percy’s landlord, in July, 1600, upon which he fixes as the site of the 
 garden of which the conspirators had the use. This identification appears to me too 
 purely conjectural to invite discussion, but in the extract defining its situation, which 
 he quotes from the deed of transfer, Mr. Gardiner, to the detriment of his own 
 argument, has inadvertently omitted one line of the original document, making the 
 description unintelligible. The following is the passage, the portion placed between 
 brackets being that omitted. 
 
 “That other piece of waste land lying there right against the said piece, and 
 lyeth and is without the said stone wall, that is to say, between the said passage or 
 entry of the said Parliament House on the [south part and a certain other sluice 
 coming from the said Parliament House on the] north part,” &c. ( Middlesex 
 Enrolments , 29 (5), 104. Land Record Office.) 
 
OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 9 1 
 
 formed part of the premises belonging to Whynniard, the keeper 
 of the King’s wardrobe. From this house the mine was started : 
 in it the greater part of the powder was temporarily stored ; 
 and from it Guy Faukes had access to the cellar, to make his 
 arrangements for the projected explosion. 
 
 There is, however, this difficulty. The house was clearly 
 public property, and liable to be required for official purposes. 
 After obtaining their lease, Percy and his friends were kept out 
 of possession, apparently for several months, because their 
 house was wanted for the sittings of a commission appointed 
 to discuss the proposed union with Scotland. Nor was this all. 
 While the conspirators’ apartments might apparently be requi¬ 
 sitioned at any time for the public service, there were occasions 
 when they would necessarily be so, and that precisely when 
 they were most urgently required by the plotters. We are told 
 by the contemporary Speed, that only out of Parliament-time 
 were they let out to tenants, and that when Parliament was in 
 session, they served as a withdrawing-room for the Peers. If 
 Parliament met upon the 5th of November, how was Faukes to 
 have the run of the place upon that fateful day, when prepara¬ 
 tions for the opening function and the King’s advent would fill 
 all the precincts with peers and their attendants ? 
 
 These difficulties, Mr. Gardiner contends, are entirely dis¬ 
 posed of by the fact that Percy rented from Whynniard, not 
 one house, but two, taking both off the hands of a Mr. Henry 
 P'errers, the previous tenant. A copy of the agreement remains, 1 
 in which it is declared that Ferrers grants to Percy, “his house 
 in Westminster belonging to the Parliament House”—subject 
 to Whynniard’s approval—and that Percy shall “ also have the 
 other house that Gideon Gibbins dwelleth in, with an assign¬ 
 ment of a lease from Mr. Whynniard thereof, . . . and using the 
 now tenant well.” 
 
 It is, therefore, beyond question [says Mr. Gardiner], on the 
 evidence of this agreement, that Speed was right in connecting with 
 Parliament a house rented by Percy. It is, however, also beyond 
 question, on the evidence of the same agreement, that he also took a 
 second house, of which Whynniard was to give him a lease. The 
 inference that Percy would have been turned out of this second house 
 when Parliament met seems, therefore, to be untenable. 2 
 
 I must confess my utter inability to understand what 
 possible bearing all this can have upon the question in hand. 
 
 1 G. P. B. 1. 2 P. 86. 
 
92 
 
 PROFESSOR GARDINER'S DEFENCE 
 
 Supposing Percy to have not only rented, but occupied, the 
 two houses, yet only one of them would be of any use when 
 the time came ‘for action, and that just the one he would 
 be unable to use. The second house Mr. Gardiner places 1 
 behind the first, which he supposes to have stood between it 
 and the House of Lords. If the premises lying alongside the 
 “ cellar ” were to be full of lords and their lacqueys, they would 
 form the most efficient barrier against any one trying to reach 
 the powder from the other position. Speed makes it plain 
 which house it was that suited the conspirators’designs. “To 
 which purpose,” he writes, 2 “no place was held fitter than a 
 certain edifice adjoining to the walls of the Parliament House, 
 which served for withdrawing-rooms for the assembled lords ; 
 and out of Parliament, was at the dispose of the keeper of the 
 place, and wardrobe therewith belonging.” 
 
 But, moreover, there is no evidence, nor any likelihood, that 
 Percy ever occupied the second house at all. Ferrers, when 
 he gave up that in which he himself dwelt, probably insisted 
 on being relieved also of the other, which he did not occupy, 
 but sublet to Gibbons, and he expressly stipulated that Percy 
 should treat the latter well. That Percy did not evict Gibbons, 
 there is strong evidence. Gibbons, or Gibbins, was the porter 
 of whom we have already heard, as carrying into the “ cellar ” 
 the billets to cover the powder-barrels. On November 5th, he 
 was examined concerning the doings of Percy and Faukes 
 when he told about this porterage, but said nothing of Percy’s 
 having turned him out of his abode. Moreover, his wife was 
 the woman who “kept the house for Percy as before for P'errers” 
 —evidently that in which Ferrers had lived—and Faukes 
 mentioning this circumstance, speaks of her as “one Gibbons’ 
 wife who dwells thereby,” 3 whence it appears that under Percy’s 
 tenancy she continued to live at least close to the quarters she 
 had previously occupied. Neither is there any word of evidence 
 to indicate that Percy made use of more houses than one. 
 
 Here I will conclude. There are many other points which 
 might be dealt with, but to prolong the discussion of such 
 details is unnecessary for my purpose. I believe I have said 
 enough to show, that from whatever side it is approached, the 
 
 1 P. 81. 2 History , p. 1231. 
 
 3 Examination of November 5th. Faukes says that she “had charge of the 
 residue of the house,” i.e ., of the house apart from the “ cellar” under the House of 
 Lords, which, as we know, was not part of the house. 
 
/ 
 
 OF THE TRADITIONAL STORY. 
 
 subject bristles with difficulties for those who wish to vindicate 
 the truth of the traditional story, and that these difficulties 
 are not easily explained away. It is the note of falsity thus 
 running through the history as generally told, more than any¬ 
 thing else, that produced the conviction I made bold to express, 
 that this history is a fabrication ; but I venture to think that 
 the evidence I have produced elsewhere, enables us to bring 
 this opinion to a more crucial test than ever before, and by so 
 doing to establish its validity.