The Life Of A Conspirator Part 21

JESUS MARIA.

Who's that which knocks? Oh stay, my Lord, I come: I know that call, since first it made me know My self, which makes me now with joy to run, Lest He be gone that can my duty show.

Jesu, my Lord, I know Thee by the Cross Thou offer'st me, but not unto my loss.

Come in, my Lord, whose presence most I crave, And shew Thy will unto my longing mind; From punishments of sin Thy servant save, Though he hath been to Thy deserts unkind.

Jesu forgive, and strengthen so my mind, That rooted virtues thou in me maist find.

Stay still, my Lord, else will they fade away, As Marigold that mourns for absent Sun: Thou know'st thou plantest in a barren clay That choaks in Winter all that up is come; I do not fear thy Summers wished for heat May tears shall water where thy shine doth threat.

However deeply Sir Everard Digby may have sinned, he knew how to make his peace with G.o.d when death approached him. He had a definite religion to depend on, he had no need to consider which of many widely divergent views held by the professors of one nominal church was the most probable. It is true that he was deprived of those consoling rites which the Catholic Church provides for her children when on the threshold of death; he had none of the "soothing charm" of "the words of peace and blessing"[405] uttered by the confessor in absolution; he was not strengthened for the perilous journey from this life to the next by the sacred viatic.u.m, but he knew that, where these privileges could not be obtained, a hearty desire for them, with a good act of contrition, might obtain many of their blessings and all that was necessary for salvation.

[405] See Cardinal Newman in _Present Position of Catholics_, p.

351.

From a theological point of view, it was a happy thing that he knew the plot in which he had been implicated to be all but universally condemned by his co-religionists. If many of them had defended it, and he had heard that there were two parties, one extenuating the conspiracy and another anathematising it, he might have clung to the belief that he had done nothing wrong, and that "rending of the heart" conducive to true contrition might have been wanting.

He had sinned deeply; let us hope that deep was his sorrow. Yet is not this the moment--the moment when we are supposing him in the deepest degradation of spirit for his iniquities--at which we may best say a kind word for him?

Hitherto I have written little in palliation of his crime; perhaps the very fact of his having professed my own religion may have made me more careful to say nothing that might have the appearance of minimising his guilt; nor, in the few more pages that I have still to write, do I intend to plead that his sentence ought to have been commuted on account of any extenuating circ.u.mstances. Unquestionably he deserved to die, but I beg to commend his memory to the mercy of my readers.

Let others speak for him. The Protestant Bishop Barlow, in his book on the Gunpowder Plot, which so severely condemns all concerned in it, says[406]:--"This Gentleman was verily persuaded of the lawfulness of this Design, and did engage in it out of a sincere, but ignorant zeal for the advancement, as he thought, of the true Religion." These are the words of a hostile historian: the following--some of which have been quoted earlier--are those of a friend[407]:--"He was so much and so generally lamented, and is so much esteemed and praised by all sorts in England, both Catholics and others, although neither side can or do approve this last outrageous and exorbitant attempt against our King and country, wherein a man otherwise so worthy, was so unworthily lost and cast away to the great grief of all that knew him, and especially of all that loved him. And truly it was hard to do the one and not the other." An unfriendly critic, Scott, in a footnote to the _Somers'

Tracts_,[408] says that Sir Everard "was a man of unblemished reputation until this h.e.l.lish conspiracy." Yet another, Caulfield, says of him,[409] "Digby himself was as highly esteemed and beloved as any man in England"; and one more hostile writer, Jardine, says[410]:--"There is abundant evidence that Sir Everard Digby joined in the enterprise under the full persuasion that in so doing he was rendering good service to his church and promoting the cause of true religion."

[406] _Gunpowder Treason_, Appendix.

[407] _Narrative of the G. P._, Gerard, p. 91.

[408] Vol. ii. p. 116.

[409] _History of the G. P._, by James Caulfield, 1804, p. 56.

[410] _Gunpowder Plot_, p. 153.

Testimonies to his character would be incomplete without any from a woman. Here is one from a Protestant to the back-bone, Miss Aikin:--[411] "His youth, his personal graces, the constancy which he had exhibited whilst he believed himself a martyr in a good cause, the deep sorrow which he testified on becoming sensible of his error, seemed to have moved all hearts with pity and even admiration; and if so detestable a villainy as the powder plot may be permitted to have a hero, Everard Digby was undoubtedly the man."

[411] _Memoirs of the Court of James I._, Vol. i. p. 254.

Lastly, he must be allowed to have his share in the fair and considerate pleadings of the greatest of all historians of the Stuart period, on behalf of the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot. Dr Samuel Rawson Gardiner writes:--[412] "Atrocious as the whole undertaking was, great as must have been the moral obliquity of their minds before they could have conceived such a project, there was at least nothing mean or selfish about them. They had boldly risked their lives for what they honestly believed to be the cause of G.o.d and of their country." A few lines further on he says, "if the criminality of their design was hidden from the eyes of the plotters, it was not from any ambitious thoughts of the consequences of success to themselves." Presently he adds, "As far as we can judge, they would have been ready, as soon as the wrongs of which they complained had been redressed, to sink back again into obscurity." And finally, after dwelling upon their difficulty in seeing "their atrocious crime in the light in which we see it," he declares his opinion that, just at last, at least some of them saw "their acts as they really were," and "with such thoughts as these on their minds,"

"pa.s.sed away from the world which they had wronged to the presence of Him who had seen their guilt and their repentance alike."

[412] History of England, Vol. i. pp. 263-4.

It is well, however, to be just as well as generous, and if it be impossible to consider the fine, handsome youth, of four and twenty, awaiting execution in the Tower of London, without feelings of compa.s.sion; we should none the less remember that Sir Everard Digby's co-religionists have other reasons for sorrow in connection with him.

Instead of benefiting the Catholic cause in his country by the enterprise which he a.s.sisted with his influence, his wealth, his time, and his personal services, he did it the most serious mischief conceivable; we must keep before our minds, therefore, the fact, that to Catholics he should appear, not so much an unhappy failure, as a most active, if most unintentional, aggressor. Although King James himself declared that the English Catholics, as a body, were neither implicated in, nor approvers of the Gunpowder Plot; although the Archpriest condemned it formally a day or two after its discovery; although Father Gerard and other Jesuits distinctly and categorically disclaimed all connection with it, and although the Pope himself addressed two letters to King James, expressing his unqualified horror of it, the idea was never dispelled that it was a Popish and Jesuitical design. For many years, English people were ready to believe any absurd tale of Catholic conspiracy, such as[413] "Rome's Master-piece: or, The Grand Conspiracy of the Pope and his Jesuited Instruments," in 1640, and the pretended plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate Charles II. in 1678, for which, on the perjured evidence of t.i.tus Oates and others,[414] "about eighteen Roman Catholics were accused, and upon false testimony convicted and executed; among them the aged Viscount Stafford." Ballads, such as that which begins as follows, describing this so-called and non-existent conspiracy, were eagerly purchased in the streets.

[415] "Good People, I pray you, give ear unto me, A Story so strange you have never been told, How the _Jesuit_, _Devil_, and _Pope_ did agree Our State to destroy, and Religion so old.

To _murder_ our _King_, A most horrible thing, &c."

[413] See Wharton's _Laud's History, &c._, p. 567.

[414] Haydn's _Dictionary of Dates_, 1892, p. 696.

[415] _A New Narrative of the Popish Plot, showing the Cunning Contrivance thereof._

Nor did the prejudices against Catholics raised by the Gunpowder Plot, early in the seventeenth century, die out at the end of it. Even now there remains a traditional superst.i.tion in this country that it was planned by the Jesuits, admired by the majority of English Catholics, and secretly connived at by the Pope and the Sacred College. For generations, English schoolboys have believed that Roman Catholics are people who would blow up every Protestant with gunpowder if they could.

So indelible has been the prejudice created against Catholics by the misdoings of a mere handful of conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot, that the large number of English Catholic squires, baronets, and n.o.blemen, who squandered their estates and their patrimony, and even gave their lives, for their king, in the reigns of Charles I. and Charles II., failed to eradicate the popular notion that all Catholics were disloyal.

The meetings at White Webbs and Gothurst gave rise to the idea that the private house of every Catholic served as a rendezvous for plotters, and every seminary as a nest of traitors; the fact that Catesby and Digby had Jesuit friends has made Protestants believe that every Jesuit would commit a murder if he thought it would serve the cause of his religion; and the fact that they had priests in their houses has led to the impression that, wherever there is a domestic Catholic chaplain, mischief is certain to be brewing. Worst of all, when Protestants are told of "an excellent Catholic," a man who goes to confession and communion every week, a man of irreproachable character both in private and in public life, a man of high position, great wealth, charming manners, and popularity among Protestants as well as Catholics, they can point, as they have been able to point for nearly three hundred years, to the history of Sir Everard Digby, as an example of what even such a man would be "obliged to do" were "his priest" so to order him.

Thus much for the moral effect produced by the efforts of Sir Everard Digby and his friends for the benefit of the English Catholics; the material effect may be described in a few words. It was, instead of relieving them from oppression, to cause the laws and disabilities under which they suffered to be redoubled. When they reflect upon all these things, can Catholics recall the memory of Sir Everard Digby with no other feelings than those of pity? Surely, if any cla.s.s of men have cause to execrate the memory of every conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot, it is not the Protestants but the Catholics.

None the less may it be doubted, whether, among misguided men, there is a character in history more to be pitied than Sir Everard Digby.

Whatever his faults, whatever his errors, whatever the mischief he wrought to the cause for which he was ready to give his life, he never seems to have been guilty of a selfish action; if he was disloyal to his country, he believed that he was serving its best interests; if he mistook atrocious murder for legitimate warfare, it was with the hope of restoring his fellow-countrymen to the faith of their forefathers.

The inhabitants of London were to have two thoroughly happy days; there was to be a great execution on Thursday and another on Friday. Four traitors were to be hanged, drawn, and quartered on either day.

On Thursday, the 30th of January 1606, Sir Everard Digby was taken from his prison in the Tower to a doorway in front of which four horses were each harnessed to a separate wattled hurdle lying on the ground. He found three of his fellow-conspirators awaiting him--his late host, Robert Winter of Huddington, the courageous, but rough and pugnacious, John Grant of Norbrook, and--there being no respect of persons on the scaffold--Thomas Bates, Catesby's servant.

Ordered to lie down on his back, with his head towards the horse's tail, Sir Everard was tightly bound to the hurdle, and when all the four condemned men had been treated in the same manner, the procession started on its doleful journey. To be dragged through the muddy streets of London, to be splashed and saturated with their slush and filth, and to be bruised and shaken over the rough stones as the hurdle rose and fell over them, must have been as disagreeable as it was degrading; and the mile or more from the Tower to the place of execution--the west of St Paul's Cathedral--was a long distance over which to be submitted to such an ordeal. To add to the sensations of disgrace, the streets were crowded, and nearly every window in Cheapside was filled with people watching the prisoners pa.s.sing to their doom.

Every pains had been taken to render the execution as imposing as possible. A large number of soldiers accompanied the procession, and the Lord Mayor had issued an order to the Alderman of each ward of the city, ordering him to[416] "cause one able and sufficient person, with a halbard in his hand, to stand at the door of every several dwelling-house in the open street in the way that the traitors were to be drawn towards the place of execution, from seven in the morning until the return of the sheriff." This was partly with a view to add dignity and importance to the terrible function, and partly to provide against tumult or raids by the mob.

[416] Repertories in the Town Clerk's Office. _Criminal Trials._ Jardine, Vol. xi. pp. 181-2.

When the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral fell upon his hurdle, Sir Everard knew that he was very near the scene of his execution; the crowd became greater at every step of the horse that was dragging him, and he had scarcely pa.s.sed the great church before he found himself in a narrow lane formed by a densely packed ma.s.s of people, kept apart by a line of soldiers on either side.

Suddenly the horse that was drawing his hurdle stopped, and, on looking up, he saw the ghastly gallows by his side. There, also, was the long, low, thick table, or block, on which the quartering would take place; there, too, were the preparations for the fire in which certain portions of his body would be burnt before it went out.

He was liberated from the hurdle. Stiff and mud-bespattered, he got up and was led towards the gallows. He was then informed that he was to be the first to suffer. Many officials were present. The protestant clergy came forward and offered their services. He courteously refused them; but turning to the crowd, he begged the a.s.sistance and prayers of all good Catholics.[417] Even his enemies admitted that as he stood on the scaffold, he was[418] "a man of a goodly personage and a manly aspect,"

although "his colour grew pale," as well it might, after having been dragged on his back for a mile over the streets of that period; nor could a man be expected to carry much colour on his face immediately before being put to a horrible death in cold blood.

[417] Narrative G. P., Gerard, p. 217.

[418] Somers' Tracts, Vol. ii. p. 114.

After saying a few prayers, he again turned to the people, and one of the officials asked him to acknowledge his treason before he died. He then made a short speech. [419] "Sir Everard Digby" says Stow, "protested from the bottome of his heart, he asked forgivenesse of G.o.d, the King, the Queene, the Prince, and all the Parliament, and if that hee had knowne it at first to have ben so foule a treason, he would not have concealed it to have gayned a world, requiring the people to witnesse he died penitent and sorrowfull for this vile Treason, and confident to be saved in the merits of his sweet Saviour Jesus, etc."

[419] Stow's _Annales_, p. 882.

Still, he declared most solemnly[420] that while he was quite willing to die for his offence, he had not been impelled to commit the treason by feelings of ill-will towards any living creature, or a desire for self-advancement or worldly gains. His sole motive had been to put an end to the persecutions of Catholics, to benefit human souls, and to serve the cause of religion. The action itself he acknowledged to have been sinful; the intentions which prompted it he protested to have been pure.

[420] Narrative of the G. P., Gerard, p. 217.

"His speech was not long,"[421] and, when it was ended he knelt down, made the sign of the Cross, and said some prayers in a low voice in Latin, "often bowing his head to the ground," says Stow, "mumbling to himself," and "refusing to have any prayers of any but of the Romish Catholics," says the hostile historian in the _Somers' Tracts_, he "fell to his prayers with such devotion as moved all the beholders," states his friend Father Gerard, who goes on to say:--"And when he had done, he stood up and saluted all the n.o.blemen and gentlemen that stood upon the scaffold, every one according to his estate, to the n.o.blemen with a lower _conge_, to others with more show of equality, but to all in so friendly and so cheerful a manner, as they afterwards said, he seemed so free from fear of death, as that he showed no feeling at all of any pa.s.sion therein, but took his leave of them as he was wont to do when he went from the Court or out of the city to his own house in the country; yet he showed so great devotion of mind, so much fervour and humility in his prayers, and so great confidence in G.o.d, as that very many said[422]

they made no doubt but his soul was happy, and wished themselves might die in the like state of mind."