Catesby had joined with his friends Thomas Wintour, Jack Wright and Thomas Percy at the Duck Drake, in the Strand. The fifth person was Guy Fawkes originally coming from York, he had been recruited in Flanders where he had been serving the Spanish Army.
The original plan involving renting a house near to the Palace of Westminster and digging a tunnel under the Houses of Parliament was established into action. However, slow progress was upon these gentlemen who were not used to such hard labour.
In March 1605 Thomas Percy was able to acquire a cellar directly beneath the House of Lords through connections. After obtaining the cellar, the tunnel was quickly abandoned. Posing as Percy’s servant, one “John Johnson” (Guy Fawkes) was able to suffuse the underground storehouse with thirty-six barrels of gunpowder hidden beneath heaps of coal and wooden sticks. Everything was going according to plan.
Thoughts of worry crossed the Catholics’ minds, for the reasons of maybe having prepared too early. There were other worries involving situations similar to fellow Catholics attending the Parliament meeting on the appointed day, 5th November.
On the Opening of Parliament, Lord Monteagle, an apparently reformed Catholic, received a letter while dining in his Hoxton home. There was evidence of strong warning in the letter: “My Lord, out of the love I bear for some of your friends, I have a care for your preservation”, and in other parts also, such as, “…devise some excuse to shift your attendance of this Parliament”, and “retire yourself into your country, where you may expect in the event of safety. There was more, now directing as to what Lord Monteagle should be safe from: “…they shall receive a terrible blow, the Parliament, and yet they shall not see who hurts them…” The letter closed with “I hope God will give you the grace to make good use of it [the letter], to whose holy protection I commend you”, and at that, it was blatant that the situation was religious.
The authorship of the letter was not identified although Francis Tresham was Lord Monteagle’s brother-in-law, which meant that he cared for any Catholic that was going to be a victim of the ‘blow’. Monteagle immediately had the letter seen by Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, and Secretary of State.
Reaction was very slow, but the vaults beneath the House of Lords were searched on 4th November; first by the Earl of Suffolk, finding nothing evident towards the letter; and later the same evening by Sir Thomas Kynvett. Composed to the very end, Fawkes coolly let the officials into Percy’s cellar. The gunpowder was rapidly discovered and Fawkes was obviously overpowered.
On hearing of the failure of his plans, Robert Catesby and Wintour fled to the Midlands where Wintour survived for three days and was captured thereafter. Catesby, Percy and the Wright brothers were killed instantly on a bloody raid. The others eventually died in the Tower of London, although they kept the whole story of the plot, the reasons of certain events and all the people involved in it concealed.
It is known that James’ chief minister, Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, hated Catholics and saw them as a continuous source of trouble. Cecil also feared that there was a chance that James would be lenient with them during his reign and that this he couldn’t tolerate. Cecil may have framed these Catholics to make them look delinquent towards James.
Cecil may have not appreciated James expelling the priests and reintroducing fines as enough of a punishment. He wanted Catholicism removed from the land, as he saw it a threat to England and its Government.
I believe that there was also a monopoly on gunpowder and it was stored in places like the Tower of London. There couldn’t have been any way that the conspirators got a hold of thirty-six barrels without drawing attention to them. It is a possibility that the government gave a hand to help in all of this, as far as I believe that is so.
The soldier who killed Catesby and Percy at Holbeech House in the Midlands was given a large pension of ten pence a day for life. But why: when their arrest and torture was much more desirable so that the names of any other conspirators might be found out? My theory is that this was all a part of the plans of Robert Cecil; that all of the Catholics would die, not having a bother about torturing the other conspirators’ names out of them, as he already knew them.
There are, however, counter-arguments to many of the above points. There are some historians who have pointed out some issues in favour of the theory that the plotters were pawns in the hands of Robert Cecil and that he orchestrated the whole affair in his bid to get James to ban Catholics altogether.
Hassan Kamal 8M