Lettice Cooper - Gunpowder, Treason and Plot

by
Lettice Cooper

For
Matthew Felix Cooper
to read later on

This book is an account of the Gunpowder Plot based on historical records. I have invented dialogue only where there are no historical records, and to bring the facts, all of which are true, to life.

L.C.

Please to remember

The Fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason

Why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

Traditional rhyme

On a Spring morning in the year 1604 two young men met unexpectedly on the Westminster landing stage of the river Thames. Their names were Tom Winter and Jack Wright; they were distant cousins; they looked at one another and began to laugh.

Tom! I might have known it.

So Robin sent for you too?

Do you know what he wants us for?

He wrote only that he had urgent need of help in a great enterprise.

He wrote the same to me.

So we are here.

Of course we are here, they were both thinking. All their lives they had admired their brilliant cousin, Robert Catesby, and had followed his lead in any game he wanted to play.

We had better take oars.

Tom Winter signalled to one of the wherries, the boats plying for hire on the water. The boat drew in to the landing stage, and the two young men stepped on board.

Row us across, if you please, to a landing stage on the south bank. You will know the house because it stands directly opposite to the Parliament House.

They were carried out into the middle of the great river. It was a busy thoroughfare on that fine Spring morning. A barge belonging to some nobleman swept by them, the eight oarsmen, in their livery of crimson and gold, swinging backwards and forwards together as their oars dipped and rose in unison. A swan moved with slightly ruffled dignity out of the wash from the barge. There were small wherries all over the water ferrying people from one landing stage to another. A coal barge, black as charred wood, made its slow way through the dense river traffic. Overhead the sun shone and the pale blue sky was lightly dappled with cloud.

The wherryman, thinking about his fee, noticed that the two young men, though gallant in their bearing, were not rich. Their doublets were rubbed by wear: they had no gold chains hanging below their ruffs, no jewels in the bands of their high-crowned hats. He guessed that they might be younger sons of some good but impoverished family. They might even, he thought, be Roman Catholics. Everyone knew that the Roman Catholics, who had been forced to pay heavy fines under Queen Elizabeth for adhering to their faith, were still having to pay them under King James I, who had now been a year on the throne of England.

The wherry cut across the main stream of traffic and drew near to the Lambeth bank.

That will be it, Jack Wright pointed to a shabby-looking house standing alone on the marshy shore.

What possessed Robin to come and live in such a desolate, aguish place?

Perhaps he could afford no other.

Tom Winter nodded. Most likely.

The wherryman had been right. The cousins were Catholics who had already paid heavy fines, but so far had been lucky enough to escape imprisonment.

The wherry nosed in along the reeds and bumped against the rotting planks of an old landing stage.

This must be it, for it is the only dwelling on this bank opposite to Parliament House.

And there is Robin coming to meet us.

They paid the wherryman, ran up the short flight of dilapidated wooden steps, and threw themselves into the arms of a tall, dark-haired, remarkably handsome young man who came quickly to them with his own arms outstretched.

Tom! Jack!

Robin!

I knew you would come. Its good to see you both.

Whats in the wind, Robin?

Come into the house and I will tell you.

With an arm through one of each, laughing, turning his head from one to the other, he led them indoors. Tom Winter and Jack Wright felt their spirits rise. From the time when they were all boys playing together in the country, the mere sight of Robin had always made life more interesting.

Robert Catesby took them to an upstairs room with a window that looked out over the river. He called to his servant, Thomas Bates, to bring a flagon of wine.

When Bates had gone out, Tom Winter, with a full glass of wine in his hand, strolled to the window.

You choose a strange dwelling, Robin! You cannot look out across the river without seeing the accursed Parliament House where these cruel laws are made to oppress Catholics.

Robert Catesby had flung himself into a chair, his handsome head tilted back. He too had paid heavy fines, but he always managed to make himself look splendid. His ruby, quilted doublet glowed freshly and his ruff was edged with tiny pearls.

Do you think it so strange that I should choose to live opposite Parliament House? The cat crouches opposite the mousehole until the time comes to spring.

He had spoken with so much meaning that the two cousins stared at him.

What do you mean, Robin?

That I took this house for a purpose. As I asked you both to come here for a purpose.

What purpose?

Catesby replied calmly. My purpose is to blow up the Parliament House with gunpowder on the day of the Opening of Parliament. King James will be thereKing James who promised more tolerance for Catholics and then betrayed us. The Queen will be there and the young Prince Henry; and the Chief Minister, Cecil, that little grey beagle who hunts us down without mercy and the other Ministers and Lords and Commons who plan to make more laws to persecute us for adhering to our faith. With one swift secret stroke we shall send them all to their death. Then the country will be in our hands.

There was a silence of sheer astonishment.

Are you mad, Robin?

No.

It would be impossible.

No.

Catesby smiled at their astounded faces.

No, it would not be impossible, only difficult. We would store gunpowder here in this house, and ferry it, over secretly by night to the other side. We should hire some house close to the Parliament House and dig a tunnel underground to the cellars below Parliament House, and pack the cellar with gunpowder and lay a mine with a fuse and a slow match. It has often been done by soldiers besieging a walled town. A skilled engineer trained in the foreign wars could do it.

But but we are not skilled engineers.

We should find one. I know the right man for the work.

Tom Winter was still staring as if he did not believe that Robin could mean what he was saying.

Jack Wright said earnestly, If it is possible to attempt such a thing have you thought that if we should make the attempt and fail we should not be the only ones who would suffer? Every Catholic in this country would be worse treated because of this attempt.

Could we be worse treated than we are now? Think of the priests creeping from hiding hole to hiding hole after dark, and saying Mass only at the risk of their lives. Think how we are all watched and spied upon, and may find ourselves any day hauled before the courts for no crime but worshipping God in the way we choose. Think how clipped and confined we are. You, Tom, you are a man of capacity, you speak French, Latin, Spanish and Italian with ease, but what hope have you or any other promising young Catholic of a good post in the service of your country? There is no future for you but to live on what is left of your estate here until even that is taken away from you, or to go and fight for Spain in Flanders, as Guy Fawkes has done.