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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
For contemporaries, the Gunpowder Plot was ‘a mother… of all crimes’, and their sense of shock, and awe, in the face of so dreadful a treason was in no way diminished by the drama surrounding its discovery.2 The arrest of Guy Fawkes outside the cellars of Westminster, late on the night of 4 November 1605, caught King James I and his ministers completely off guard. A mass of documentary evidence for the fraught days following Fawkes's apprehension confirms that ignorance, embarrassment, even panic ran through the highest counsels in the land. While a deadly strike had clearly been frustrated, with just hours to spare, no one knew whether trouble might be expected from other conspirators in the capital, or indeed, from rebels and mischief-makers elsewhere in England. Military men rushed to court, and within a week a sizeable force had assembled there under the command of the Earl of Devonshire, prepared to face and to repel a phantom enemy.3 Open panic did of course subside, as administration and country alike began to measure and appreciate the danger, but anxiety was a long time dying. The extraordinary hysteria that swept London in the spring of 1606, on a rumour that the king had been assassinated, touched the court itself and serves as a reminder that, months after 5 November, many Englishmen in high positions still stood on their guard.4
An early draft of this article was read at the ‘Gunpowder Plot: contexts and reactions’ conference at Westminster in Nov. 2005. I am grateful to all those who have commented on points raised in that draft, and in particular to Professor Pauline Croft and Leanda de Lisle. The article assumes that the Gunpowder Plot was a genuine conspiracy that came very close to destroying king and political nation in the autumn of 1605. This is not, of course, the only interpretation of events surrounding the famous treason, but it is one that I have defended in Investigating Gunpowder Plot (Manchester, 1991) and in an earlier article with the same title which appeared in Recusant History in Oct. 1988. Readers keen to assess the latest interpretations of the Plot and its historical context may refer to several new books published in the quatercentennial year: BengtsenFiona, Sir William Waad: lieutenant of the Tower and the Gunpowder Plot (Victoria, BC, 2005);BuchananBrendaet al., Gunpowder Plots: a celebration of 400 years of Bonfire Night (London, 2005);HoggeAlice, God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's forbidden priests and the hatching of the Gunpowder Plot (London, 2005);SharpeJames, Remember Remember the Fifth of November: Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot (London, 2005);TraversJames, Gunpowder: the Players behind the Plot (London, 2005).
2 His Majesties Speach in this last session of Parliament… (London, 1605,Google Scholar STC 14392, 14392.5, 14393, ESTCS 1004), a work known as the King's Book, All quotations in this article are from STC 14392.5, here sig. E3.
3 [Papers of the Marquess of Salisbury], Hatfield [House] 112/172, 12 Nov. 1605.
4 McClure, N. E. (ed.), The Letters of John Chamberlain (2 vols, Philadelphia, 1939), i, p. 223.Google Scholar See Okines, A. W. R. E., ‘Why was there so little government reaction to Gunpowder Plot?’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 55:2 (2004), p. 276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, pp. 10–11.
6 Hatfield MS 112/162.
7 McClure, Letters of Chamberlain, i, pp. 212–14.
8 Gardiner, S. R., What Gunpowder Plot Was (London, 1897), p. 75.Google Scholar
9 Hatfield MS 112/174; 191/69.
10 Hatfield MS 227, p. 129; 113/14. At that point the council was confident enough to assert that the Plot was ‘thoroughly discovered’. Their confidence, however, was somewhat premature.
11 N[ational] Archives], SP 14/216/35.
12 SP 14/216/21.
13 SP 14/216/87. It is possible that the authorities in London remained uncertain of the fate of Percy and Catesby until 14 November, if the news conveyed by Walshe on 13 November was indeed new.
14 SP 14/216/88.
15 SP 14/216/160.
16 Ibidem. On the circulation of news among courtiers see Mears, Natalie, Queenship and political discourse in the Elizabethan realms (Cambridge, 2005), esp. pp. 107–14.Google Scholar
17 Okines, ‘Government Reaction’, p. 277. See also Wills, Garry, Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare's Macbeth (Oxford, 1995), ch. 1.Google Scholar
18 His Majesties Speach, sig. A3r-v.
19 Cf. Elton, Geoffrey, ‘Tudor government, the points of contact, I: Parliament’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 24 (1974), pp. 183–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20 His Majesties Speach, sig. C3v. A slightly abbreviated version of the speech is also to be found in Journals of the House of Lords, ii, pp. 357–59. This version does not include James's reflections on Parliament! The speech is conveniently printed in Sommerville, J. P. (ed.), King James Viand I: political writings (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 147–58.Google Scholar For a recent exploration of its political subtleties, and the ways in which these dramatic political events were interpreted by Shakespeare, see Taunton, Nina and Hart, Valerie, ‘ King Lear, King James and the Gunpowder Treason of 1605’, Renaissance Studies 17 (2003), pp. 695–715.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21 STC 4895.
22 See, for example, the letter to Sir Thomas Parry in France, NA, SP 78/52, fo. 338. Cecil's statement was, of course, manifestly true. For a particularly perceptive account of the Catholic Community's response to the Plot and on the diversity of Catholic attitudes and fortunes in Jacobean England see Questier, Michael C., Catholicism and Community in early modern England: politics, aristocraticpatronage and religion c.1550–1640 (Cambridge, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23 Cited in Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, pp. 25–26.
24 Journals of the House of Lords, ii, 357.
25 Jardine, David, Criminal Trials… The Gunpowder Plot (London, 1847), pp. 4–5.Google Scholar
26 Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, p. 33.
27 His Majesties Speach, sig. E4.
28 On developing attitudes to regicide see Morrill, John, ‘King-killing in perspective’, in von Friedeburg, Robert (ed.), Murder and Monarchy; regicide in European history, 1300–1800 (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 293–95.Google Scholar
29 His Majesties Speach, sig. G1.
30 His Majesties Speach, sig. H1.
31 On these half-formed plans see Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, pp. 7–8.
32 His Majesties Speach, sig. F4.
33 His Majesties Speach, sig. G3.
34 See Winter's letter to Grant, talking of a visit to Bath with Monteagle in the late winter of 1604–5, SP 14/12/89.
35 His Majesties Speach, sig. F1v.
36 SP 14/19/94.
37 Hatfield MS 112/164.
38 SP 14/216/16a.
39 But for a summary in the context of individual rights and freedoms competing with the pressures and fears of investigating authorities see Baker, John, ‘Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Renaissance England’, Northwestern University Journal of International Human Rights 2 (2004).Google Scholar
40 Hatfield MS 112/164. See also Bengtsen, Sir William Waad, pp. 58–59.
41 SP 14/216/48B.
42 The shaky ‘Guido’ at the foot of SP 14/216/54.
43 SP 14/216/53.
44 SP 14/216/49.
45 His Majesties Speach, sig. H4v.
46 Sir Henry Bromley, SP 14/216/89.
47 SP 14/216/55.
48 These indignities are detailed in NA, E134 4 James I/Trinity/6.
49 See Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, pp. 33–34.
50 SP 14/16/59.
51 SP 14/16/60.
52 The literature touching on this question from the 1890s to the 1980s is very briefly summarised in Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, p. 32 note 50. See also Edwards, Francis, ‘Still Investigating Gunpowder Plot’, Recusant History 21 (1993), pp. 305–46 at pp. 320–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
53 See Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, pp. 28–29.
54 Hatfield MS 113/24.
55 SP 14/216/109.
56 SP 14/216/114.
57 Hatfield MS 113/54.
58 Hatfield MS 113/77; Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, pp. 49–50.
59 His Majesties Speach, sig. L2.
60 For example the dissent in Staffordshire over the correct response to news of insurrection in neighbouring counties, SP 14/16/54.
61 The confusion is noted succinctly in the Short-Title Catalogue.
62 Variants also responsible for the mis-correction of a correct Tuesday to an incorrect Wednesday at sig.L1v! STC 14392 and 14392.5; also in the Latin translation STC 14394.
63 See also SP 14/216/42. It may be this insertion that Sir Fulke Greville junior refers to when he thanks Cecil in an undated letter endorsed ‘1605’ for the ‘favour’ done to his ‘old father’, ‘for the merit of you rown noble heart is and will be the best story and monument that can be published of his faith, and love to his country’ (Hatfield MS 191/136).
64 His Majesties Speach, sig. M1.
65 Notably the 1606 True and Perfect Relation of the plotters’ trials and executions (STC 11618–19), which sets out first to correct erroneous reports on these matters, but also to allow ‘men to understand the birth & growth of the said abominable and detestable Conspiracy, and who were the principal Authors and Actors in the same’.
66 Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 22, fo. 101.
67 Journals of the House of Commons, i, 301–2, speech to the Commons justifying the attainder of the plotters, 29 April 1606; Croft, Pauline, ‘Serving the Archduke: Robert Cecil's management of theparliamentary session of 1606’, Historical Research 64 (1991), p. 289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
