William Harrison Ainsworth

GUY FAWKES

THE GUNPOWDER TREASON

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WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH

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Guy Fawkes
The Gunpowder Treason
First published in 1841
ISBN 978-1-62012-501-4
Duke Classics
© 2012 Duke Classics and its licensors. All rights reserved.

While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in this edition, Duke Classics does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. Duke Classics does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book.

Contents

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Dedication
Preface
BOOK THE FIRST - THE PLOT
Chapter I - An Execution in Manchester, at the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century
Chapter II - Ordsall Cave
Chapter III - Ordsall Hall
Chapter IV - The Search
Chapter V - Chat Moss
Chapter VI - The Disinterment
Chapter VII - Doctor Dee
Chapter VIII - The Magic Glass
Chapter IX - The Prison on Salford Bridge
Chapter X - The Fate of the Pursuivant
Chapter XI - The Pilgrimage to St. Winifred's Well
Chapter XII - The Vision
Chapter XIII - The Conspirators
Chapter XIV - The Packet
Chapter XV - The Elixir
Chapter XVI - The Collegiate Church at Manchester
Chapter XVII - The Rencounter
Chapter XVIII - The Explanation
Chapter XIX - The Discovery
Chapter XX - The Departure from the Hall
BOOK THE SECOND - THE DISCOVERY
Chapter I - The Landing of the Powder
Chapter II - The Traitor
Chapter III - The Escape Prevented
Chapter IV - The Mine
Chapter V - The Capture of Viviana
Chapter VI - The Cellar
Chapter VII - The Star-Chamber
Chapter VIII - The Jailer's Daughter
Chapter IX - The Counterplot
Chapter X - White Webbs
Chapter XI - The Marriage in the Forest
Chapter XII - The Fifth of November
Chapter XIII - The Flight of the Conspirators
Chapter XIV - The Examination
BOOK THE THIRD - THE CONSPIRATORS
Chapter I - How Guy Fawkes was Put to the Torture
Chapter II - Showing the Troubles of Viviana
Chapter III - Huddington
Chapter IV - Holbeach
Chapter V - The Close of the Rebellion
Chapter VI - Hagley
Chapter VII - Viviana's Last Night at Ordsall Hall
Chapter VIII - Hendlip
Chapter IX - Whitehall
Chapter X - The Parting of Viviana and Humphrey Chetham
Chapter XI - The Subterranean Dungeon
Chapter XII - The Traitor Betrayed
Chapter XIII - The Trial
Chapter XIV - The Last Meeting of Fawkes and Viviana
Chapter XV - Saint Paul's Churchyard
Chapter XVI - Old Palace Yard
Chapter XVII - The Last Execution
Endnotes

Dedication

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TO

MRS. HUGHES,

KINGSTON LISLE, BERKS.

MY DEAR MRS. HUGHES,

You are aware that this Romance was brought to a close during my last brief visit at Kingston Lisle, when the time necessary to be devoted to it deprived me of the full enjoyment of your society, and, limiting my range—no very irksome restriction,—to your own charming garden and grounds, prevented me from accompanying you in your walks to your favourite and beautiful downs. This circumstance, which will suffice to give it some interest in your eyes by associating it with your residence, furnishes me with a plea, of which I gladly avail myself, of inscribing it with your name, and of recording, at the same time, the high sense I entertain of your goodness and worth, the value I set upon your friendship,—a friendship shared in common with some of the most illustrious writers of our time,—and the gratitude I shall never cease to feel for attentions and kindnesses, little less than maternal, which I have experienced at your hands.

In the hope that you may long continue to diffuse happiness round your own circle, and contribute to the instruction and delight of the many attached friends with whom you maintain so active and so interesting a correspondence; and that you may live to see your grandsons fulfil their present promise, and tread in the footsteps of their high-minded and excellent-hearted father,—and of his father! I remain

Your affectionate and obliged friend,

W. HARRISON AINSWORTH.

KENSAL MANOR HOUSE, HARROW ROAD, July 26, 1841.

Preface

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The tyrannical measures adopted against the Roman Catholics in the early part of the reign of James the First, when the severe penal enactments against recusants were revived, and with additional rigour, and which led to the remarkable conspiracy about to be related, have been so forcibly and faithfully described by Doctor Lingard,[1] that the following extract from his history will form a fitting introduction to the present work.

"The oppressive and sanguinary code framed in the reign of Elizabeth, was re-enacted to its full extent, and even improved with additional severities. Every individual who had studied or resided, or should afterwards study or reside in any college or seminary beyond the sea, was rendered incapable of inheriting, or purchasing, or enjoying lands, annuities, chattels, debts, or sums of money, within the realm; and as missionaries sometimes eluded detection under the disguise of tutors, it was provided that no man should teach even the rudiments of grammar in public or in private, without the previous approbation of the diocesan.

"The execution of the penal laws enabled the king, by an ingenious comment, to derive considerable profit from his past forbearance. It was pretended that he had never forgiven the penalties of recusancy; he had merely forbidden them to be exacted for a time, in the hope that this indulgence would lead to conformity; but his expectations had been deceived; the obstinacy of the Catholics had grown with the lenity of the sovereign; and, as they were unworthy of further favour, they should now be left to the severity of the law. To their dismay, the legal fine of twenty pounds per lunar month was again demanded, and not only for the time to come, but for the whole period of the suspension; a demand which, by crowding thirteen payments into one, reduced many families of moderate incomes to a state of absolute beggary. Nor was this all. James was surrounded by numbers of his indigent countrymen. Their habits were expensive, their wants many, and their importunities incessant. To satisfy the more clamorous, a new expedient was devised. The king transferred to them his claims on some of the more opulent recusants, against whom they were at liberty to proceed by law, in his name, unless the sufferers should submit to compound, by the grant of an annuity for life, or the immediate payment of a considerable sum. This was at a time when the jealousies between the two nations had reached a height, of which, at the present day, we have but little conception. Had the money been carried to the royal coffers, the recusants would have had sufficient reason to complain; but that Englishmen should be placed by their king at the mercy of foreigners, that they should be stripped of their property to support the extravagance of his Scottish minions, this added indignity to injustice, exacerbated their already wounded feelings, and goaded the most moderate almost to desperation." From this deplorable state of things, which is by no means over-coloured in the above description, sprang the Gunpowder Plot.

The county of Lancaster has always abounded in Catholic families, and at no period were the proceedings of the ecclesiastical commissioners more rigorous against them than at that under consideration. Manchester, "the Goshen of this Egypt," as it is termed by the fiery zealot, Warden Heyrick, being the place where all the recusants were imprisoned, the scene of the early part of this history has been laid in that town and its immediate neighbourhood. For the introduction of the munificent founder of the Blue Coat Hospital into a tale of this description I ought, perhaps, to apologize; but if I should succeed by it in arousing my fellow-townsmen to a more lively appreciation of the great benefits they have derived from him, I shall not regret what I have written.

In Viviana Radcliffe I have sought to portray the loyal and devout Catholic, such as I conceive the character to have existed at the period. In Catesby, the unscrupulous and ambitious plotter, masking his designs under the cloak of religion. In Garnet, the subtle, and yet sincere Jesuit. And in Fawkes the gloomy and superstitious enthusiast. One doctrine I have endeavoured to enforce throughout,—TOLERATION.

From those who have wilfully misinterpreted one of my former productions, and have attributed to it a purpose and an aim utterly foreign to my own intentions, I can scarcely expect fairer treatment for the present work. But to that wider and more discriminating class of readers from whom I have experienced so much favour and support, I confidently commit this volume, certain of meeting with leniency and impartiality.

BOOK THE FIRST - THE PLOT

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Their searches are many and severe. They come either in the night or early in the morning, and ever seek their opportunity, when the Catholics are or would be best occupied, or are likely to be worse provided or look for nothing. They willingliest come when few are at home to resist them, that they may rifle coffers, and do what they list. They lock up the servants, and the mistress of the house, and the whole family, in a room by themselves, while they, like young princes, go rifling the house at their will.

Letter to Vers'egan, ap. Stonyhurst MSS.

What a thing is it for a Catholic gentleman to have his house suddenly beset on all sides with a number of men in arms, both horse and foot! and not only his house and gardens, and such enclosed places all beset, but all highways laid, for some miles near unto him, that none shall pass, but they shall be examined! Then are these searchers oft-times so rude and barbarous, that, if the doors be not opened in the instant they would enter, they break open the doors with all violence, as if they were to sack a town of enemies won by the sword.

Father Gerard's MS.

Chapter I - An Execution in Manchester, at the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century

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More than two hundred and thirty-five years ago, or, to speak with greater precision, in 1605, at the latter end of June, it was rumoured one morning in Manchester that two seminary priests, condemned at the late assizes under the severe penal enactments then in force against the Papists, were about to suffer death on that day. Attracted by the report, large crowds flocked towards the place of execution, which, in order to give greater solemnity to the spectacle, had been fixed at the southern gate of the old Collegiate Church, where a scaffold was erected. Near it was a large blood-stained block, the use of which will be readily divined, and adjoining the block, upon a heap of blazing coals, smoked a caldron filled with boiling pitch, intended to receive the quarters of the miserable sufferers.

The place was guarded by a small band of soldiers, fully accoutred in corslets and morions, and armed with swords, half-pikes, and calivers. Upon the steps of the scaffold stood the executioner,—a square-built, ill-favoured personage, busied in arranging a bundle of straw upon the boards.