The Life Of A Conspirator Part 20

In the latter part of his pompous harangue, there was a pa.s.sage which must have been very unpleasant hearing to the prisoners, however interesting to the rest of the audience.[391]

[391] _Gunpowder Treason_, by Thomas, Bp. of Lincoln, pp. (48)-(50).

"The conclusion shall be from the admirable clemency and moderation of the King, in that howsoever these traitors have exceeded all others their predecessors in mischief, and _Crescente, malitia crescere debuit, etc., Poena_; yet neither will the King exceed the usual punishment of Law, nor invent any new torture or torment for them, but is graciously pleased to afford them an ordinary course of trial, as an ordinary punishment, much inferior to their offence." Nor was this reference to a "new torture" a mere figure of rhetoric on the part of the Attorney-General; for a few days earlier,[392] in both houses of Parliament, a proposal had been made to pet.i.tion the King "to stay judgment until Parliament should have time to consider some extraordinary mode of punishment, which might surpa.s.s in horror even the scenes which usually occurred at the execution of traitors." To their credit be it spoken, this suggestion was negatived by both Lords and Commons.

[392] Gardiner's Hist. of Eng., Vol. i. p. 286; and see 3 Jac. I.

cap. 1.

"And surely," continued c.o.ke, "worthy of observation is the punishment by law provided for High Treason, which we call _Crimen laesae Majestatis_. For first after a traitor hath had his fair trial, and is convicted and attainted, he shall have his judgment to be drawn to the place of execution from his prison, as being not worthy any more to tread upon the face of the earth, whereof he was made. Also for that he hath been retrograde to Nature, therefore is he drawn backwards at a horse-tail. And whereas G.o.d hath made the head of man the highest and most supreme part, as being his chief grace and ornament: _p.r.o.naque c.u.m spectent Animalia caetera terram, Os homini sublime dedit_; he must be drawn with his head declining downward, and lying so near the ground as may be, being thought unfit to take benefit of the common air. For which cause also he shall be strangled, being hanged up by the neck between heaven and earth, as deemed unworthy of both, or either; as likewise, that the eyes of men may behold, and their hearts contemn him. Then is he to be cut down alive, and to have ---- cut off, and burnt before his face, as being unworthily begotten, and unfit to leave any generation after him; his bowels and inlayed parts taken out and burnt, who inwardly conceived and harboured in his heart such horrible Treason.

After, to have his head cut off, which had imagined the mischief. And lastly, his body to be quartered, and the quarters set up in some high and eminent place, to the view and detestation of men, and to become a prey for the Fouls of the Air."

Considering that the prisoners had not yet been found guilty, and that even had they been, it was no business of his to pa.s.s sentence on them, this pointless and objectless description of their probable fate was as gratuitous as it was cruel on the part of the Attorney-General.

With the prisoners, other than Sir Everard Digby, I have nothing to do, and it will suffice to say, that, at the conclusion of the Attorney-General's speech, the depositions of their examinations in the Tower--"the voluntary confessions of all the said several traitors in writings subscribed with their own proper hands"--were then read aloud.

These are very interesting, and have already been partially used in framing the story in the preceding pages. They are humble and penitent in tone, and as a specimen of this apparent penitence I will quote the opening of one of the longest, namely that by Thomas Winter.[393]

[393] S. P. Dom. James I., G. P. Book, Part II. n. 114.

"My most honorable Lordes.--Not out of hope to obtayne pardon, for speakinge of my temporall past, I may say the fault is greater than can be forgiven, nor affectinge hereby the t.i.tle of a good subject, for I must redeeme my countrey from as great a danger as I have hazarded the bringinge her into, before I can purchase any such opinion; only at your Ho. Commans I will breifely sett downe my owne accusation, and how farr I have proceeded in this busyness w{ch} I shall the faythfuller doe since I see such courses are not pleasinge to Allmighty G.o.d, and that all or the most material parts have been allready confessed."

At the conclusion of the public reading of these confessions, the Lord Chief Justice made some remarks to the jury, and then directed them to consider of their verdict; upon "which they retired into a separate place."[394]

[394] _Criminal Trials_, Jardine, Vol. ii. pp. 138 and 169.

Sir Everard Digby was then arraigned by himself upon a separate indictment issued by Sir Christopher Yelverton and other special commissioners of Oyer & Terminer, on the 16th of January, at Wellingborough, in Northamptonshire, and delivered to the same commission in Middles.e.x that had tried the other prisoners. It charged him with High Treason in conspiring the death of the king, with conferring with Catesby in Northamptonshire concerning the Gunpowder Plot, a.s.senting to the design, and taking the oath of secrecy.

As soon as the indictment was read, Sir Everard began to make a speech; but was interrupted by being told that he must first plead, either guilty or not guilty, and that then he would be allowed to say what he liked.

He at once confessed that he was guilty of the treason; and then he spoke of the motives which had led him to it.[395] The first of these was neither ambition, nor discontent, nor ill-will towards any member of Parliament, but his intense friendship and affection for Robert Catesby, whose influence over him was so great that he could not help risking his own property and his life at his bidding. The second motive was the cause of religion, on behalf of which he was glad to endanger "his estate, his life, his name, his memory, his posterity, and all worldly and earthly felicity whatsoever." His third motive was prompted by the broken promises to Catholics, and had as its object the prevention of the harder laws which they feared and professed to have solid reasons for fearing, from the new Parliament; as "that Recusant's Wives, and women, should be liable to the Mulct as well as their husbands and men."

And further, that "it was supposed, that it should be made a _Praemunire_ onely to be a Catholick."

[395] _Gunpowder Treason_, by Thomas, Bp. of Lincoln, p. (55) _seq._

Having stated the motives of his crime, he proceeded to make his pet.i.tions--[396] "That sithens his offence was confined and contained within himself, that the punishment also of the same might extend only to himself, and not be transferred either to his Wife, Children, Sisters, or others: and therefore for his Wife he humbly craved, that she might enjoy her Joynture, his Son the benefit of an Entail made long before any thought of this action; his Sisters, their just and due portions which were in his hands; his Creditors, their rightful Debts; which that he might more justly set down under his hand, he requested, that before his death, his Man (who was better acquainted both with the men and the particulars than himself) might be licensed to come unto him. Then prayed he pardon of the King and Ll. for his guilt, and lastly, he entreated to be beheaded, desiring all men to forgive him, and that his death might satisfie them for his trespa.s.s."

[396] _Gunpowder Treason_, by Thomas, Bp. of Lincoln, p. (56).

The daylight was waning quickly in the great hall of Westminster, on that short January day, when Sir Edward c.o.ke, the Attorney-General, rose from his seat, at the conclusion of Sir Everard Digby's dignified but distressed speech. He had already shown refinement of cruelty in treating the prisoners to a detailed description of the horrors of the death that was awaiting them, and he was now again ready to inflict as much pain as possible.

As to Sir Everard's friendship with Catesby, he said, it was "mere folly, and wicked Conspiracy"; his religion was "Error and Heresie"; his promises--it does not appear that he had made any--were "idle and vain presumptions"; "as also his fears, false alarms, Concerning Wives that were Recusants." "If a man married one," great reason there is, "that he or they should pay for it"; but if a wife "were no Recusant at the time of Marriage"--as had been the case with Lady Digby, although he did not mention her by name--"and yet afterwards he suffer her to be corrupted and seduced, by admitting Priests and Romanists into his house"--Roger Lee and Father Gerard, for instance, Sir Everard might understand him to imply--"good reason that he, be he Papist or Protestant, should pay for his negligence and misgovernment."

Next he dealt with Sir Everard's pet.i.tions on behalf of his wife, children, sisters, &c., and on this point he became eloquent.[397] "Oh how he doth now put on the bowels of Nature and Compa.s.sion in the perils of his private and domesticated estate! But before, when the publick state of his Countrey, when the King, the Queen, the tender Princes, the n.o.bles, the whole Kingdom, were designed to a perpetual destruction, Where was then this piety, this Religious affection?" "All Nature, all Humanity, all respect of Laws both Divine and Humane, were quite abandoned; then there was no conscience made to extirpate the whole Nation, and all for a pretended zeal to the Catholick Religion, and the justification of so detestable and d.a.m.nable a Fact."

[397] _Gunpowder Treason_, by Thomas, Bp. of Lincoln, p. (57).

Here Sir Everard Digby interrupted the great lawyer with the remark that he had not justified the fact, but had confessed that he deserved the vilest death; and that all he had done was to seek mercy, "and some moderation of justice."

As to moderation of justice, replied the Attorney-General, how could a man expect or ask for it who had acted in direct opposition to all mercy and all justice? And had he not already had most ample and most undeserved moderation shown to him? Verily he ought "to admire the great moderation and mercy of the King, in that, for so exorbitant a crime, no new torture answerable thereunto was devised to be inflicted upon him."

Was it not sufficient consolation to him to reflect upon his good fortune in this respect? Sir Everard had talked about his wife and children. Well! did he forget how he had said "that for the Catholick Cause he was content to neglect the ruine of himself, his Wife, his Estate, and all"? Oh! he should be made content enough on this point.

Here was an appropriate text for him:--"Let his Wife be a widow, and his Children vagabonds, let his posterity be destroyed, and in the next generation let his name be quite put out." Then Sir Edward c.o.ke spoke directly to Sir Everard, and said:--"For the paying of your Creditors, it is equal and just, but yet fit the King be first satisfied and paid, to whom you owe so much, as that all you have is too little: yet these things must be left to the pleasure of his Majesty, and the course of Justice and Law." Fortunately for Sir Everard, "in respect for the time (for it grew now dark)" the Attorney General spoke "very briefly."

One of the nine Commissioners, appointed to try the prisoners, now addressed Sir Everard. His words came with more force, perhaps it might be said with more cruel force, because he was himself a Catholic. This was Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, younger brother of the Duke of Norfolk, and second son of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who had been beheaded on Tower Hill, nearly sixty years earlier, in the reign of Henry VIII. This Commissioner had espoused the cause of Mary, Queen of Scots,[398] and he was rather ostentatiously put forward at this trial, and afterwards at that of Father Garnet, to prove his loyalty and to counteract the jealousy and suspicion which had been caused by the appointment of a man of his religion[399] to the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports. Banks wrote of him,[400] "other authors represent him as the most contemptible and despicable of man-kind; a wretch, that it causes astonishment to reflect, that he was the son of the generous, the n.o.ble, and accomplished Earl of Surrey.[401] He was a learned man, but a pedant, dark and mysterious, and consequently far from possessing masterly abilities. He was the grossest of flatterers, &c."

[398] Froude's Hist. of Eng., Vol. xi. p. 74.

[399] _Criminal Trials_, Jardine, Vol. xi. p. 172, footnote.

[400] I quote from Burke's _Dormant and Extinct Peerages_, p. 285.

[401] Henry, Earl of Surrey, was the first English writer of blank verse and sonnets. _Beeton's Encyclopaedia_.

Northampton began his speech as follows:--[402] "You must not hold it strange, Sir Everard Digby, though at this time being pressed in duty, Conscience and Truth, I do not suffer you to wander in the Laberinth of your own idle conceits without opposition, to seduce others, as your self have been seduced, by false Principles; or to convey your self by charms of imputation, by clouds of errour, and by shifts of lately devised 'Equivocation'; out of that streight wherein your late secure and happy fortune hath been unluckily entangled; but yet justly surprised, by the rage and revenge of your own rash humors. If in this crime (more horrible than any man is able to express) I could lament the estate of any person upon earth, I could pity you, but thank your self and your bad counsellours, for leading you into a Crime of such a kind; as no less benummeth in all faithfull, true and honest men, the tenderness of affection, than it did in you, the sense of all humanity.

That you were once well thought of, and esteemed by the late Queen, I can witness, having heard her speak of you with that grace which might have encouraged a true gentleman to have run a better course: Nay, I will add further, that there was a time, wherein you were as well affected to the king our master's expectation, though perhaps upon false rumours and reports, that he would have yielded satisfaction to your unprobable and vast desires: but the seed that wanted moisture (as our Saviour Himself reporteth) took no deep root: that zeal which hath no other end or object than the pleasing of itself, is quickly spent: and Trajan, that worthy and wise Emperour, had reason to hold himself discharged of all debts to those, that had offended more by prevarication, than they could deserve by industry."

[402] _Gunpowder Treason_, p. 59.

The main contention of his long and wordy speech was to refute the charge of broken promises to his co-religionists brought by Sir Everard Digby in his description of his motives. It was well-known that the Catholics considered the king guilty of perfidy on this point, and that they based their accusation chiefly upon the reports of Father Watson's celebrated interview with James in Scotland, a matter with which I dealt in an early chapter. Northampton denied that James had ever encouraged the Catholics to expect any favour.

He made a strong point of Percy's having a.s.serted that the king had promised toleration to the Catholics; asking why, if this were really the case, Percy, at the beginning of the king's reign, thought it worth while to employ Guy Fawkes and others to plot against the king in Spain?

He wound up by praying for Sir Everard's repentance in this world and his forgiveness in the next.

Then Lord Salisbury spoke. He began by acknowledging his own connection, by marriage, with Sir Everard, and then he proceeded, with even greater zeal than Northampton, to imply that the prisoner's plea of broken promises to Catholics would be understood to mean bad faith on the part of the king; and it was thought by some that Sir Everard would have had his sentence commuted for beheading, had it not been for what Salisbury now said.[403] After defending the king from all imputation of faithlessness towards his Catholic subjects, Salisbury referred to Sir Everard's personal guilt, and dwelt upon Guy Fawkes's evidence that, at Gothurst, he had expressed a fear lest the gunpowder stored beneath the houses of Parliament, might, during the wet weather in October, have "grown dank."

[403] _Narrative of the G. P._, Gerard, p. 216.

When Salisbury had finished, Sergeant Philips got up and "prayed the judgment of the court upon the verdict of the Jury against the seven first prisoners, and against Sir Everard Digby upon his own confession."

Each prisoner was then formally asked what he had to say why judgment of death should not be p.r.o.nounced against him. Finally Lord Chief Justice Popham described and defended the laws made by Queen Elizabeth against priests, recusants, and receivers and harbourers of priests,[404] which seems to have been a little wide of the subject of the crime of the prisoners, and then he solemnly p.r.o.nounced the usual sentence for high treason upon all the eight men who stood convicted before him.

[404] _Criminal Trials_, Jardine, Vol. ii. p. 181.

Then Sir Everard bowed towards the commissioners who had tried him and said:--"If I may but hear any of your Lordships say you forgive me, I shall go more cheerfully to the gallows."

They all immediately replied:--"G.o.d forgive you, and we do."

And thus, late in the evening, this memorable trial ended, and the prisoners were conveyed by torches to their barge; then they were rowed down the river to the Tower, and led through the dark "Traitor's Gate"

to their cells.

CHAPTER XVI.

Sir Everard Digby was only allowed two clear days between his trial and his execution to prepare for death. He was not permitted to see his young wife or his little sons, nor was he granted the consolation of the services of a priest. Short as was the time he had yet to live, it must have hung heavily on his hands. Fortunately he had lived much with Jesuits, who would doubtless have instructed him in their admirable system of meditation; but "the exercise of the memory," which it includes, can hardly have afforded him much consolation under the circ.u.mstances. To add to his depression, it was at the time of year when there are but few hours of daylight, and the artificial light permitted in a prisoner's room in the Tower would certainly be very meagre, and little more than sufficient to render the ghastly gloom of the dungeon-walls more manifest. Very early, too, all prisoners' lights would be put out, and terrible then must have been the dreariness of the long nights and the dark mornings, until the sun rose at about a quarter to eight o'clock. It is easy to imagine him dreaming of his happy home at Gothurst, and fancying himself walking with his wife in its garden, or playing with his little children by its great hall fireside, or entertaining his guests at its long banquetting-table, and suddenly waking with a start, to find himself in darkness, on a hard bed, with a rough, cold wall beside him, and to remember that he was a condemned traitor in the Tower of London; and then, perhaps, lying awake to reflect upon the brilliant opportunities of happiness, prosperity, and usefulness with which he had started in his short life, and the misery in which he was about to end it. Nor does it require any great effort of the imagination to see him falling, from sheer weariness, into a fitful, feverish sleep, and, as he turned and tossed, frequently dreaming of the horrors of his impending execution, as they had been so lately described in his presence by the Attorney-General.

When, in the morning, he rose to obtain consolation from devotion, how likely that the heavy drowsiness or headache resulting from a wretched night would make him feel utterly helpless as he tried to pray or meditate; or that, distracted by the memories of his misfortunes, and the terrible thought of the dest.i.tution to which his wife and family might be exposed--for he seems to have died in doubt whether Gothurst, as well as his estates inherited from his father, would not be confiscated--he would be unable to fix his attention upon spiritual matters.

During the interval preceding his death Sir Everard wrote the following lines. Criticise them as you please; call them doggrel if you will; but at least respect them as the words of a broken-hearted and dying man.