The Life Of A Conspirator Part 7

If it were objected that all these fell in battle, and that it was quite a different thing to murder people by stealth in cold blood, could not Catesby have replied that "Jael Heber's wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him [Sisera], and smote the nail into his temple, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died."[147] Jael Heber's wife was acting as hostess to a friend who had come into her tent for shelter and protection, and had fallen asleep. Yet Deborah and Barak sang in honour of this performance:--[148] "Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent. He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth b.u.t.ter in a lordly dish. She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman's hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples. At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead." "So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord."[149] Might not, and ought not, the English Catholics to sing much such a song in honour of Catesby, Digby, and their fellow-conspirators, when the king and the Parliament should be blown up, and fall, and lie down, at their feet, where they should fall down dead? Was there not something biblical and appropriate, again, in destroying the enemies of the Lord with fire? "Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them."[150] "Thou shalt be fuel for the fire; thy blood shall be in the midst of the land."[151] And had not the very gentlest of men, even the G.o.d-man, said, "I am come to send fire on the earth?" Surely, too, if Holy Writ did not specially mention gunpowder, it constantly threatened one of its ingredients, namely brimstone, to the wicked!

[147] Judges iv. 21.

[148] Judges v. 24 _seq._

[149] Judges v. 31.

[150] Isaiah xlvii. 14.

[151] Ezekiel xxi. 32.

Under the old dispensation, it was considered a religious duty to fall upon the enemies of the Lord and slay them; under the new, it would be as religious a duty to get under them and slay them. This was merely a detail, a simple reversal of the process, conducing to exactly the same results, and quite as Scriptural in its character.

A ma.s.sacre by means of an explosion of gunpowder was neither a novel nor an exclusively Catholic notion. Persons observed, "There be recounted in histories many attempts of the same kynds, and some also by Protestants in our days: as that of them who at Antwerp placed a whole barke of powder in the great street of that citty, where the prince of Parma with his n.o.bility was to pa.s.se: and that of him in the Hague that would have blown up the whole councel of Holland upon private revenge."[152]

[152] _Lingard_, Vol. vii. chap, i., footnote.

Within the last half century, had not great earls and statesmen, in Scotland, conspired together to blow up with gunpowder the Queen's own husband, as he lay ill in bed, in his house; had not four men been destroyed by this means,[153] and had not the princ.i.p.al conspirator "declared," with how much truth or falsehood it is not necessary to pause here to inquire,[154] "that the Queen"--the very pious martyr-queen, Mary, herself,--"was a consenting party to the deed,"[155]

and had not that very pious queen married that very conspirator after he had brought about the murder of her first husband?

[153] _Ib._, Vol. vi. chap. ii.

[154] Recent historical research tends to absolve Mary Queen of Scots from all imputation of complicity in this horrible crime.

[155] Bellesheim's Hist. Cath. Ch. of Scot., trans. H. Blair, Vol.

iii. p. 112.

It would be scarcely too much to say that, early in the seventeenth century, the ethics of explosives were not properly understood. Catesby might argue that gunpowder was a destructive agent, the primary and natural use of which was to kill directly, and that its indirect use, by exploding it in a tube, thereby propelling a missile, was a secondary, less natural, and possibly less legitimate use. And, if it were objected that to employ it in either way would be right in war, but wrong in peace, he could bring forward the exceedingly dangerous theory (which has been made use of by Irish-American dynamitards in the nineteenth century), that oppressed people, who do not acknowledge the authority of those who rule over them, may consider themselves at war with those authorities, a theory which Catesby's Jesuit friends would have negatived instantly, if he had asked their opinion about it.

Any attempt to prove the iniquity of Catesby's conspiracy is so unnecessary that I will not waste time in offering one. I have only to endeavour to imagine the condition of mind in which he and his friends were able to look upon it with approval, and the arguments they may have used in its favour.

Next to pa.s.sages and precedents from Scripture in support of his diabolical scheme, Catesby would be well aware that its approval by authorities of the Church, and especially by Fathers of the Society of Jesus, would have most influence with his friend Sir Everard. To the surprise of the latter, he informed him that he had laid the matter before the Provincial of the Society, and had obtained his consent to the scheme.

He admitted that the Jesuits were not fully aware of all the particulars; it was not intended to put them to the dangers of responsibility for the deed itself, or anything connected with it; already their very priesthood was high treason, and the last thing that Catesby and his friends desired was to add to their perils; but their approval of the design in general was of such importance that neither Catesby himself, nor any of those admitted into the secret, would have acted without it, and this Catesby declared he had obtained.

Upon a zealous convert, like Sir Everard Digby, such an a.s.surance would exercise a great influence. Nor was it only of sacerdotal approval that Catesby boasted; he was able to add that he had obtained the consent, as well as the a.s.sistance, of John Wright, a Catholic layman and a Yorkshire squire; of Sir Everard's own friend, Thomas Winter; of his eldest brother, Robert Winter,[156] "an earnest Catholic," at whose house the pilgrims to St Winefride's Well had stayed for a night on their way thither; of Ambrose Rookwood, a Catholic,[157] "ever very devout," who had actually been one of the pilgrims; of John Grant,[158]

"a zealous Roman Catholic," who, like his brother-in-law, Robert Winter, had entertained the St Winifride's pilgrims for a night in his walled and moated house, and of Thomas Percy, a relative of the Earl of Northumberland's, and a very recent and earnest convert to the Church.

[156] _Narrative_, G. P., Gerard, p. 71.

[157] _Ib._, p. 85.

[158] Jardine's _Gunpowder Plot_, p. 52.

CHAPTER VII.

Believing that his princ.i.p.al friends, and the priests for whom he felt the greatest veneration, had either joined in or expressed their approval of the scheme, Sir Everard began to be half inclined to consent to it. Was there to be a great enterprise, entailing personal activity and danger for the good of the Catholic cause, and was he to shrink from taking part in it? Was he alone, among the most zealous Catholic laymen of England, to show the white feather in a time of peril? Could he call himself a man if he trembled at the very thought of bloodshed? Yet, in truth, the idea of the cold-blooded ma.s.sacre which was proposed appalled him; fair fighting he would rather rejoice in, but wholesale a.s.sa.s.sination was to the last degree repulsive to his nature. Hesitating and miserable, he reached Gothurst with his guest without giving any definite answer to the question whether he would join in the conspiracy.

When they were in the house, Catesby showed him a book justifying proceedings which he claimed to be similar to the proposed plot. "I saw," he wrote afterwards to his wife,[159] "I saw the princ.i.p.al point of the case, judged by a Latin book of M. D., my brother's father-in-law." What book it may have been we have no means of knowing; but we do know that the perils of comparing parallel cases are notorious: and, unfortunately, the production of this book had the effect of turning the scale, and inducing Digby to join in the infamous plot.

[159] "Letters of Sir Everard Digby" in _Gunpowder Treason_, p. 177.

Necessary as it is for a biographer of Sir Everard Digby carefully to consider all the arguments that are likely to have influenced him in consenting to the Gunpowder Plot, it is all-important to keep before the mind the cause which, on his own admission,[160] was the first and most potent of his a.s.sent to the conspiracy. This was[161] "the friendship and love he bare to Catesby, which prevailed so much, and was so powerful with him, as that for his sake he was ever contented and ready to hazard himself and his estate."

[160] Speech at his trial.

[161] _Gunpowder Treason_, by Thomas, Bishop of Lincoln, p. 55.

Sir Everard was a man of what may be termed violent friendship. We have already seen his almost immoderate attachment to Father Gerard. It was an excellent thing that he should have such a man for a firm friend; but his feeling towards him was something much more than that. Father Gerard was "his brother." The Jesuits make a rule of avoiding what they term "particular friendships," and the great aggression of affection would certainly not come from Father Gerard's side. And now we find him loving Catesby to such an extent as to be "ready to hazard himself and his estate" "for his sake."

There is such a thing as an undue admiration for "the man who thinks as I do." It proceeds from a combination of pride and weakness. The man in question is the embodiment of "my" principles, and therefore to be worshipped, and, holding "my" principles, his decisions, which are presumably formed upon those principles, must be right, and "my"

adoption of them will save me the trouble of forming any for myself.

Such is the line of argument which men of Sir Everard Digby's type mentally follow. When, again, some difficulty presents itself, concerning which they have never thought at all, they argue to themselves after this fashion. "My friend agrees with me about A, B, and C, topics on which we are both well informed; therefore I may safely follow his advice about D, a subject of which I at present know nothing, but about which, when I have studied it, I may logically a.s.sume that I shall agree with him."

Few men act on principle at first hand. To a vast majority, it is too invisible, intangible, difficult to define, and difficult to realise, to serve as either a guide or a support. Yet some of those who are least able, coolly, logically, and consistently to understand and adhere to a principle in the abstract, are the most enthusiastic in advocating, the most vigorous in defending, and the most extravagant in extending to the most extreme limits, its reflection, or supposed reflection, in the person and behaviour of a friend; and they are apt, in their devotion to the friend, to forget the principle. It was thus in the case of Sir Everard Digby and Robert Catesby. In his friendship with Catesby, Sir Everard was eager to be one of the most p.r.o.nounced champions of the Catholic religion, yet when Catesby acted in direct opposition to the fundamental principles of that religion, Sir Everard clung to the visible friend to the neglect of the invisible principle, which, theoretically, he held to be more precious than life itself.

When one idea takes too forcible possession of the mind, although the objections to it may collectively be overpowering, if taken one by one, it is easy to dispose of them, and then to blind the eyes, to stifle the conscience, and to imagine a glamour of righteousness, unselfishness, and heroism, in iniquity, self-pleasing, and even cruelty. Digby experienced this fatal facility. He did not at once consent to Catesby's request without the least pretence of considering its merits; but he combatted the objections to it one by one, and thus easily defeated them. He endeavoured to regard the matter from Catesby's point of view, and he found the process simple, if not agreeable.

And here let me say that I wish I could honestly represent Sir Everard as having consented hurriedly to the plot in a hot-headed love of adventure. The evidence, unfortunately, all points the other way. He was persuaded with great difficulty by Catesby. He disliked the look of the whole thing, and he finally consented to it after cool and deliberate reflection. I admit that he was impulsive; I do not deny that, in this instance, he may have acted on sudden impulse at particular stages of his lengthened agony of doubt and indecision, or that, after being too slow in obeying his first impulse to refuse to hear another word about the atrocious project, he may have yielded too hurriedly to his later impulse to throw in his lot with the friend whom he trusted; but I cannot excuse him on the ground that his adhesion to the conspiracy was the result of a momentary convulsion of enthusiastic folly.

He objected; he feared the destruction of Catholic peers; he talked over the pretended opinions of the Jesuit Fathers; he read a so-called authority in a book shown to him by Catesby; he calculated the chances of success and failure; he thought over the question of men, money, arms, and horses; and then, with false conclusions, on false premises, in a sort of spasm of wrongheadedness, he, who had been depending excessively on clerical direction--even Jesuits admit that there is such a thing as being over-directed--suddenly acted, upon a question involving an enormous issue, without any advice whatever except that of the man who was tempting him to what, he must have seen, had, _prima facie_, the colour of a most odious crime. I am not forgetting that Catesby vaunted Jesuit approval; but what good Catholic would take clerical advice upon an intricate point at second hand from another layman? Or, to put it in another form, what prudent man would commit himself to a lawsuit simply because a friend told him that his lawyer recommended him to sue an adversary under very similar circ.u.mstances?

Digby had good reason for knowing that the Jesuit Father, whose opinion he most valued--Father Gerard--would strongly object to what was proposed; but he fancied that he himself knew better what was for the good of the Church; so, after meekly wavering in a state of great uncertainty, like the weak man that he was, he suddenly yielded and agreed to partake in what he persuaded himself to be a pious act on behalf of his religion, but was in reality a piece of unprecedented pious folly; and few things are more certain than that, be his personal virtues ever so exalted, and his intentions ever so pure, the pious fool can do, and often does, more to injure the cause of religion than even the scientific fool to injure that of science, which is saying much.

It is now my duty to explain how grossly Sir Everard was deceived by Catesby, when he was a.s.sured that any Jesuit Fathers had approved of the conspiracy "in general, though they knew not the particulars." What I am about to write may appear a long digression; but it should be remembered that it was chiefly upon Catesby's a.s.surance of the approval of the Fathers of the Society of Jesus that Sir Everard consented to join in the conspiracy; therefore the amount of consent actually obtained from them, if any, is of the utmost importance to my story.

Here is Father Gerard's account of the so-called approval of the plot, which Catesby had extracted from Father Garnet, and on the strength of which he persuaded Sir Everard Digby and others to join in it.[162]

"Having a great opinion both of the learning and virtue of the Fathers of the Society, Mr Catesby desired to get, by cunning means, the judgment of their Superior, so as he should never perceive to what end the question were asked." This makes Father Gerard's opinion of Catesby's shameful dishonesty in the affair unmistakably clear.

"Therefore," he continues, "coming to Father Garnet, after much ordinary talk, and some time pa.s.sed over after his arrival" (at a house in Ess.e.x, in June 1605, that is to say, about three months before he revealed the plot to Sir Everard) "one time he took occasion (upon some speech proposed about the wars in the Low Countries or such like)"--observe the fraud of this! Catesby was to have command of a regiment in the "Low Countries," so he clearly intended to lead Father Garnet to suppose that he was contemplating a position in which he might very probably find himself when _there_--"to ask how far it might be lawful for the party that hath the just quarrel to proceed in sacking or destroying a town of the enemy's, or fortress, when it is holden against them by strong hands. The Father answered that, in a just war, it was lawful for those that had right to wage battle against the enemies of the commonwealth, to authorise their captains or soldiers, as their officers, to annoy or destroy any town that is unjustly holden against them, and that such is the common doctrine of all Divines: in respect that every commonwealth must, by the Law of Nature, be sufficient for itself, and therefore as well able to repel injuries as to provide necessaries; and that, as a private person may _vim vi repellere_, so may the commonwealth do the like with so much more right, as the whole is of more importance than a part; which, if it were not true, it should follow that Nature had provided better for beasts than for men, furnishing them with natural weapons as well to offend as to defend themselves, which we see also they have a natural instinct to use, when the offence of the invader is necessary for their own defence. And therefore that it is not fit to think that G.o.d, Who, by natural reason, doth provide in a more universal and more n.o.ble manner for men than by natural instinct for beasts, hath left any particular person, and much less a commonwealth, without sufficient means to defend and conserve itself; and therefore not without power to provide and use likely means to repel present injuries, and to repress known and hurtful enemies. And that, in all these, the head of the commonwealth may judge what is expedient and needful for the body thereof." Much of all this was useless to Catesby's purpose; but he waited patiently, and when Father Garnet had finished speaking, he answered, "that all this seemed to be plain in common reason, and the same also practised by all well-governed commonwealths that ever have been, were they never so pious or devout.

But, said he, some put the greatest difficulty in the sackage of towns and overthrowing or drowning up (_sic_) of forts, which, in the Low Countries"--the Low Countries again! mark his deceitfulness--"and in all wars is endeavoured, when the fort cannot otherwise be surprised, and the same of great importance to be taken. How, then, those who have right to make the war may justify that destruction of the town or fort, wherein there be many innocents and young children, and some perhaps unchristened, which must needs perish withal? Unto this the Father answered, that indeed therein was the greatest difficulty; and that it was a thing could never be lawful in itself, to kill an innocent, for that the reason ceaseth in them for which the pain of death may be inflicted by authority, seeing the cause why a malefactor and enemy to the commonwealth may be put to death is in respect of the common good, which is to be preferred before his private (for otherwise, considering the thing only in itself, it were not lawful to put any man to death); and so because the malefactor doth _in re gravi_ hinder the common good, therefore by the authority of the magistrate that impediment may be removed. But now, as for the innocent and good, their life is a help and furtherance to the common good, and therefore in no sort it can be lawful to kill or destroy an innocent."

[162] _Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot_, p. 65 _seq._

Determined as Catesby was to twist Father Garnet's words into "a parallel case," he wanted something more tangible than this to work upon. Accordingly he said:--"That is done ordinarily in the destruction of the forts I spake of." "It is true, said the Father, it is there permitted, because it cannot be avoided; but is done as _per accidens_, and not as a thing intended by or for itself, and so it is not unlawful.

As if we were shot into the arm with a poisoned bullet, so that we could not escape with life unless we cut off our arm; then _per accidens_ we cut off our hand and fingers also which were sound, and yet being, at that time of danger, inseparably joined to the arm, lawful to be cut off, which it were not lawful otherwise to do without mortal sin. And such was the case of the town of Gabaa, and the other towns of the tribe of Benjamin, wherein many were destroyed that had not offended. With which Mr Catesby, seeming fully satisfied, brake presently into other talk, the Father at that time little imagining at what he aimed, though afterwards, when the matter was known, he told some friends what had pa.s.sed between Mr Catesby and him about this matter, and that he little suspected then he would so have applied the general doctrine of Divines to the practice of a private and so perilous a case, without expressing all particulars, which course may give occasion of great errors, as we see it did in this."

If Sir Everard Digby had heard the conversation on which the vaunted "consent" of the Jesuits had been founded, there can be little doubt that he would have refused to have anything to do with the conspiracy on such grounds. Father Gerard probably heard the account of the interview, after the failure of the plot, from Father Garnet himself.

Father Garnet's own much shorter account of the conversation may be given here.[163] Mr Catesby "asked me whether, in case it were lawful to kill a person or persons, it were necessary to regard the innocents, which were present, lest they also should perish withal. I answered that in all just wars it is practised and held lawful to beat down houses and walls and castles, notwithstanding innocents were in danger, so that such battering were necessary for the obtaining of victory, and that the mult.i.tude of innocents, or the harm which might ensue by their death, were not such that it might countervail the gain and commodity of the victory. And in truth I never imagined anything of the King's Majesty, nor of any particular, and thought it, as it were, an idle question, till I saw him, when we had done, make solemn protestation that he would never be known to have asked me any such question as long as he lived."

[163] Hatfield MS., 110, 30. Father Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot, p. 7.

That Father Garnet believed Catesby to have deceived him and to have told untruths about him is evident from one of his letters written in orange juice in the Tower. He says[164] "Master Catesby did me much wrong, and hath confessed that he tould them that he said he asked me a question in Q. Eliz. time of the powder action, and that it was unlawfull. All which is most untrew. He did it to draw in others." Again he writes[165] "I doubt not Mr Catesby hath fained many such things for to induce others," Sir Everard Digby, of course, among the rest.

[164] _Records, S. J._, Vol. iv., p. 108.