Читать книгу The Life of a Conspirator - Thomas Longueville - Страница 10

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Considering that the king had been led to distrust the Catholics through the two lately discovered plots in which some of their number had taken part, the best policy for those who remained loyal, and these were by far the majority, would have been to have taken every opportunity of displaying their faithfulness to their sovereign, and, for those whose position so entitled them, to present themselves as often as they conveniently could at his Court, even if their welcome was somewhat cold. Digby chose to follow an exactly opposite course. He went to Court on James’s accession and received knighthood, and then he returned to the country, only visiting London occasionally, and then not going to Court. Like his fellow-Catholics, he at first entertained hopes that the new king was about to exhibit toleration, and as much as any of them was he disappointed and embittered as time speedily began to prove the contrary. One cause of Sir Everard Digby’s disgust at the aspect of affairs, early in James the First’s reign, may have been that, as a courtier, he had expected much from the Queen’s being a Catholic,[82] and that not only did no apparent good come of it, but her example gave the greatest discouragement, as well as grave scandal, to such of her subjects as professed her own religion. Indeed, all that can safely be said of her Catholicism, is that she was[83] “a Catholic, so far, at least, as her pleasure-loving nature allowed her to be of any religion at all.”Nevertheless, “she took great delight in consecrated,”—or, as Catholics would say, blessed or sacred—“objects.”She had allowed herself to be crowned by[84] “a Protestant Archbishop; but when the time arrived for the reception of the Communion, she remained immovable on her seat, leaving the King to partake alone.” “Enthusiastic Catholics complained that she had no heart for anything but festivities and amusements, and during the rest of her life she attended the services of the church sufficiently to enable the Government to allege that she was merely an enemy of Puritanical strictness.”On one occasion, the king,[85] “with some difficulty,”had actually “induced her to receive the Communion with him at Salisbury, but she had been much vexed with herself since, and had refused to do it again. On Christmas Day she had accompanied him to Church, but since then he found it impossible to induce her to be present at a Protestant service. At one time Sir Anthony Standen, a Catholic, was employed by James on a mission to some of the Italian States, and he brought home with him some objects of devotion, as a present from the Pope to the Queen of England. These delighted her; yet, when the king heard of them, they were returned to the Pope through the Nuncio in Paris.”

Now to any good Catholic, especially to an exceedingly zealous convert in his first fervour, like Sir Everard Digby, a Protestant king might be tolerable, provided he treated his Catholic subjects properly; but a court presided over by a queen, herself a convert, who was a most indifferent Catholic, if not an apostate,[86] would be odious in the extreme. It was difficult enough, in any case, to make many simple Catholics understand that there was anything very wrong in avoiding persecution by putting in an occasional appearance at the Protestant churches, without joining in the service, if they heard mass when they could, and went regularly to confession and communion; but the difficulty was immensely increased when they heard that the greatest lady in the land, who was herself a Catholic, did that very thing. Again, the country-gentlemen of high estate, Sir Everard Digby among them, suffered fines and penalties for their faith; yet here was the Catholic queen herself, contently living in the greatest luxury, and yielding on the most important points of her religion, in order to obtain it.[87] No wonder, therefore, that Sir Everard Digby absented himself from Court, however impolitic it may have been in him to do so.

In his country home, at Gothurst, he brooded, with much impatience, over the wrongs of his co-religionists, nor can it have been a pleasant reflection that at any moment his beautiful house might be broken into by pursuivants, who would hunt every recess and cupboard in it, in search of a priest, or of what Anglicans then denominated “massing-stuff.” Should they suspect that the most richly carved pieces of oak-work concealed a hiding-place, the “officers of justice”would ruthlessly shatter them to pieces with axe or crowbar; his wife’s private rooms would not be safe from the intrusion of the pursuivants, or the bevy of rough followers who might accompany them; and, if his house were filled with guests, even were they Protestants, it would none the less necessarily be given up to the intruders for so long a time as they might choose to remain. The invasion would be as likely to be made by night as by day; no notice would be given of its approach, and, as its result, not only might the domestic chaplain be carried off a prisoner, with his face to a horse’s tail and his legs tied together beneath its girths, but Sir Everard himself would be liable to be taken away in the same humiliating position, on a charge of High Treason.

The fine which Catholics had to pay must have been sufficiently annoying even to a rich man like Sir Everard Digby, and this annoyance would be greatly increased by the knowledge that to poorer men it meant ruin, as well as by the remarks of his less wealthy Catholic friends that “after all, to him it was a mere nothing.”

The present was bad enough, and worse things were expected in the future. Most of us know the fears with which we hear that a Prime Minister of opposite politics to our own is going to bring in a bill, in the coming session, directed against our personal interests; even the coming budget of a Chancellor of the Exchequer on our own side of the House, in a very bad year, is anticipated with serious misgivings. Imagine, therefore, the terrors of the Catholics whose lives would already have been rendered unendurable, had the laws existing against them been put into full force, when they not only observed a rapidly increasing zeal among magistrates and judges in their proceedings against Romish recusants, but heard, on what appeared to be excellent authority, that additional, and most cruel, legislation against them was to be enacted in the Parliament shortly to be opened.

One of the most remarkable features in Sir Everard Digby’s character was his extreme susceptibility to the influence of others; and, for this reason, what may seem, at first sight, an undue proportion of a volume devoted to his biography, must necessarily be allotted to a description of the friends, and more especially one particular friend, under whose influence he fell; and, if my readers should sometimes imagine that I have forgotten Sir Everard Digby altogether, or if they should feel inclined to accuse me of writing Catesby’s life rather than Digby’s, I can assure them that I am guiltless on both counts. For the moment, however, I must beg them to prepare themselves for an immediate and long digression, or rather an apparent digression, and warn them that it will be followed by many others.

To an impetuous man, zealous to the last degree, but not according to knowledge, few things are more dangerous than an intimate friend of similar views and temperament. Exactly such a friend had Sir Everard Digby. Here is a description of him by one who knew him well.[88] He “grew to such a composition of manners and carriage, to such a care of his speech (that it might never be hurtful to others, but taking all occasions of doing good), to such a zealous course of life, both for the cause in general, and for every particular person whom he could help in God’s service, as that he grew to be very much respected by most of the better and graver sort of Catholics, and of Priests, and Religious also, whom he did much satisfy in the care of his conscience; so that it might plainly appear he had the fear of God joined with an earnest desire to serve Him. And so no marvel though many Priests did know him and were often in his company. He was, moreover, very wise and of great judgment, though his utterance was not so good. Besides, he was so liberal and apt to help all sorts, as it got him much love. He was of person above two yards high, and, though slender, yet as well proportioned to his height as any man one should see. His age (I take it) at his death was about thirty-five, or thereabouts. And to do him right, if he had not fallen into”—one particular and exceedingly “foul action and followed his own judgment in it (to the hurt and scandal of many), asking no advice but of his own reasons deceived and blinded under the shadow of zeal; if, I say, it had not been for this, he had truly been a man worthy to be highly esteemed and prized in any commonwealth.”

Be his attractions and virtues what they might, this man, Robert Catesby, had not anything like such an unblemished past as his friend, Sir Everard Digby. He was of an old Warwickshire and Northamptonshire family—he was the lineal descendant of William Catesby, who was attainted and executed for high treason after the battle of Bosworth Field.[89] Robert Catesby’s father, who had been an ardent Catholic, had suffered considerable losses in his estate, and been imprisoned on account of his religion; but Robert himself, on his father’s death, apostatized, became exceedingly dissolute, and still further impoverished the family property by his extravagance. Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, says of him:[90] “For Catesby, it is very well known that he was a very cunning, subtle man, exceedingly entangled in debts, and scarce able to subsist.”

Some three or four years before Sir Everard Digby’s conversion, Catesby had returned to the faith of his fathers. Whatever may have been the love of his God manifested by the reformed reprobate, his hatred of his queen, and afterwards of his king, was unmeasured. I have no desire to say anything in disparagement of Catesby’s religious fervour; but, considering that he had once abjured the Catholic faith, it may be no harm to remark that some people seem to like to profess the religion hated most by their enemies, and to exhibit zeal for it in proportion to that shown by their enemies against it. With several of his friends, Catesby joined the ill-fated conspiracy of the Earl of Essex, in the course of which he was wounded, taken prisoner, and finally ransomed for £3000 in all. When fighting for Essex, he greatly distinguished himself as a swordsman. Later, as I have already said, he was implicated in the intrigue that sent Christopher Wright and Guy Fawkes to Madrid in the hope of inducing Philip of Spain to depose James I. A modern Jesuit, Father J. Hungerford Pollen, has well said of him:[91] “The owner of large estates in the counties of Northampton, Warwick, and Oxford, honourably married, with issue to perpetuate the ancient family of which he was the only representative—such is not the sort of man we should have thought likely to engage in a desperate adventure, and this presumption might be further strengthened by the consideration of his moral qualities. He was brave and accomplished, attractive to that degree which makes even sober men risk life and fortune to follow where he should lead, honest of purpose and truthful, and, above all, exceedingly zealous for religion. These qualities should have, and would have, insured him from the frightful error into which he fell, had they not run to excess in more than one direction. Full of the chivalry that characterised the Elizabethan period, he was also infected with its worldliness, a failing which ill accorded with the patience every Catholic had to practice, and, moreover, his force of character carried him into obstinate adherence to his own views and plans. This it was that worked such ruin upon himself and all those who came in contact with him. Happy times may lead such men so to direct their energies, that the evil side of their character is never displayed, but times of great temptation often bring out the latent flaw in unexpected ways.”

This is admirably put, except, perhaps, on one single point; and it is one of such importance that I will pause to consider it, especially as it applies to Sir Everard Digby, almost, if not quite, as much as to Catesby. In the reign of Elizabeth, it was not chivalry but the decay and abolition of chivalry and the chivalrous spirit which occasionally led to deeds which a knight-errant would have despised. As Sir Walter Scott says:—[92] “the habit of constant and honourable opposition, unembittered by rancour or personal hatred, gave the fairest opportunity for the exercise of the virtues required from him whom Chaucer terms a very perfect gentleman.”Again he says:—“We have seen that the abstract principles of chivalry were, in the highest degree, virtuous and noble, nay, that they failed by carrying to an absurd, exaggerated, and impracticable point, the honourable duties which they inculcated.”Chivalry, therefore, acted as a wholesome check upon the barbarity, the licentiousness, and the semi-civilisation of the middle ages, and when it was abolished, the knights and nobles, in spite of all the glamour of refinement and education in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, still retained enough of the savage brutality of their forefathers to be occasionally very dangerous, when the discipline of chivalry had been withdrawn. “It is needless,”says Sir Walter Scott, “by multiplying examples, to illustrate the bloodthirsty and treacherous maxims and practices, which, during the sixteenth century, succeeded to the punctilious generosity exacted by the rules of chivalry. It is enough to call to the reader’s recollection the bloody secret of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, which was kept by such a number of the Catholic noblemen for two years,[93] at the expense of false treaties, promises, and perjuries, and the execution which followed on naked, unarmed, and unsuspecting men, in which so many gallants lent their willing swords.”Now I am not going to enter here upon the question of Sir Walter Scott’s historical accuracy, or its contrary, on this horrible massacre; but might he not have extended his period “of treacherous maxims and practices,”which “succeeded to the punctilious generosity exacted by the rules of chivalry,”a few years later, and included, with the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Gunpowder Plot? Catesby was quite a man of the type contemplated by Sir Walter Scott, gallant, charming, zealous, brave to a degree, and even pious, yet with something of the wild, lawless, and bloodthirsty spirit of the but partially-tamed savage, which every now and then asserted itself, until an even later period, unless it was kept under control by some such laws as those of chivalry. It was not, therefore, chivalry, but the want of chivalry, which led to the spirit, habits, and actions of Catesby and the other conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot.

I hope this digression—a digression from a digression—may be pardoned. It is high time that I returned to Robert Catesby in his relations to Sir Everard Digby.

It was likely enough that Sir Everard Digby should become intimate with a zealous Catholic landowner in the neighbouring counties of Northamptonshire, and Warwickshire, especially as Catesby’s mother’s house, at Ashby St. Legers, was little more than twenty miles from Gothurst; but probably the reason of his seeing so much of him was that Catesby’s first cousin, Tyringham of Tyringham, lived only three-quarters of a mile from Gothurst, the two estates adjoining each other, either house lying within a short distance of the high road, on opposite sides of it.

Once on intimate terms, Sir Everard and Catesby were constantly together. In speaking of his master, Sir Everard’s page, William Ellis, said in his examination[94]:—“both at London and in the countrie Mr. Robert Catesby hath kept him companie.”

In this not altogether desirable “companie,”Sir Everard Digby spent much time “in cogitation deep” upon the treatment of his fellow-religionists and countrymen. Both men were exasperated by the persecution which was going on around them, by the fickleness of their king, and by the dangers to which they, their wives, their families—for Sir Everard, as well as Catesby, had a child now—and their estates were exposed. Perhaps most irritating of all, to country-gentlemen of high position, was the then prevalent custom of sub-letting, or farming, the fines and penalties levyable upon Catholics to men who squeezed every farthing out of them that was possible. To be persecuted and fined by an authorized public official was bad enough; but to be pestered and tormented by a pettifogging private person who had purchased the right of doing so, as a speculation, must have been almost unendurable. The subject, however, which Digby and Catesby discussed most would probably be the severe anti-Catholic legislation which was apprehended from the new parliament. In this, said Catesby, the great danger lay. His surmises as to the form it might take would give him and his friend, Sir Everard, ample scope for contemplation, speculation, and conversation. The words of Scripture, “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof,”do not appear to have occurred to their memories.

In periods of trouble and danger, as indeed in all others, men of different dispositions and temperaments take different views and different lines of conduct; there are optimists and pessimists, men who counsel endurance, men who advocate active resistance, men who advise waiting a little to see what may turn up, and men who urge that not a moment is to be lost. And so it was among the persecuted Catholics during the early years of the reign of James I. At the very time that men like Digby and Catesby were in the deepest depression of hopeless anxiety, the Spanish Ambassador was congratulating himself because he fancied he saw symptoms of the king’s inclination to become[95] a convert to the Catholic Church. On the other hand, among those who took the most gloomy view of the prospect, there were very distinct phases of thought and action. “England will witness with us,”says Father Gerard,[96] “that the greatest part by much did follow the example and exhortation of the Religious and Priests that were their guides, moving them and leading them by their own practice to make their refuge unto God in so great extremities. … This we found to be believed practically by most, and followed as faithfully, preparing themselves by more often frequentation of the Sacraments, by more fervent prayer, and by perfect resignation of their will to God, against the cloud that was like to cover them, and the shower that might be expected would pour down upon them after the Parliament, unto which all the chief Puritans of the land were called, and only they or their friends selected out of every shire to be the framers of the laws, which thereby we might easily know were chiefly intended and prepared against us.”

But he says all were not quite so perfect, and of these imperfect there were two leading divisions. The first[97] “fainted in courage, and, as St. Cyprian noteth of his times, did offer themselves unto the persecutors before they felt the chief force of the blow that was to be expected.”Sir Everard Digby was not one of these. The second division were, as Father Gerard might most veraciously say, “much different from these, and ran headlong into a contrary error. For being resolved never to yield or forsake their faith, they had not patience and longanimity to expect the Providence of God, etc.”It is to be feared that he may have noticed this want of patience and longanimity in Sir Everard Digby and his companions. “They would not endure to see their brethren so trodden upon by every Puritan,”he goes on to say of this class, “so made a prey to every needy follower of the Court, or servant to a Councillor, so presented and pursued by every churchwarden and minister, so hauled to every sessions when the Justices list to meet, so wronged on every side by the process of excommunication or outlawry, and forced to seek for their own by law, and then also to be denied by law, because they were Papists; finally both themselves and all others to be denounced traitors and designed to the slaughter. These things they would not endure now to begin afresh after so long endurance, and therefore began amongst themselves to consult what remedy they might apply to all these evils,”&c., “so that it seems they did not so much respect what the remedy were, or how it might be procured, as that it might be sure and speedy—to wit, to take effect before the end of the Parliament from whence they seemed to expect their greatest harm.”

Those who followed the latter course may have included some who were in other respects good Christians; whether they showed the spirit of Martyrs and Confessors is another question.

Few things discouraged the English Catholics more than the goodwill and peaceful disposition shown to the new king by foreign Catholic kings and princes, notwithstanding that one final effort was made on their behalf by Spain, just as the treaty was being concluded with England for peace and the renewal of commercial intercourse. Velasco, the constable of Castile, who negotiated that treaty on behalf of Spain, was visited by Winter, at Catesby’s suggestion, and urged to assist the English Catholics. Although he promised to speak on their behalf, he made it clear that his country would make no sacrifice to obtain toleration for them.[98] So far as he had promised, he kept his word. He told James that whatever indulgence he might show to them would be regarded by Philip as a personal act of friendship towards himself, and that they were prepared to make a voluntary offering annually in the place of the fines at that time imposed upon them by law; and he laid before him statistics of the distress to which very many respectable English families had been reduced by clinging to the faith of their forefathers.

James’s reply was very decided. On any diplomatic question relating to the interests of England and Spain he would be ready and glad to confer with the Spanish representative, but the government of his own subjects was a domestic matter upon which he could not consent to enter with a foreigner. Besides this, he informed Velasco that, even were he himself inclined to better the condition of the Catholics, his doing so would offend his

Protestant subjects to such an extent as to endanger his throne.

It would almost seem as if Velasco’s endeavours on behalf of the Catholics had a contrary effect to that which had been intended; for, instead of granting them the smallest relief, James issued a proclamation, ordering the judges and magistrates to enforce the penal laws, and to adopt measures calculated to insure the detection of Catholic recusants. Before the judges started on their circuits, he called them together and charged them “to be diligent and severe against recusants.”[99] Accordingly, in the year 1604, about 1000 recusants were indicted in Yorkshire, 600 in Lancashire, and in the counties of Oxford, Berks, Gloucester, Monmouth, Hereford, Salop, Stafford, and in Wigorn, 1865.[100] Of Buckinghamshire, Sir Everard Digby’s county, I can find no return. In all, the number of Catholic recusants convicted in the years 1604–5 amounted to 5500. In July, a priest named Sugar was executed at Warwick, simply and only because he was a priest, and a layman, named Grissold, for “accompanying and assisting”him.[101] In the Star Chamber, a man named Pound accused Sergeant Phillips of injustice in condemning a neighbour of his to death, for no other crime except that he had entertained a Jesuit. Not only did the lords of the Star Chamber confirm and approve of this sentence of Sergeant Phillips, but they condemned Pound himself to lose one ear in London and one “in the country where he dwelleth,”and to be fined £1000, unless he would impeach those who advised him to make the suit. Fortunately this tremendous sentence was commuted, at the intercession of the French and Venetian Ambassadors, to standing for a whole day in the pillory.[102]

Bancroft had just ascended the archiepiscopal throne of Canterbury, full of zeal against the Papists. He urged his suffragan bishops to select the more wealthy and earnest among the Catholics, and, after first trying “sweet”and “kind means,”to excommunicate them if they should refuse to conform. Forty days after their excommunication, the Bishops were to certify their names in Chancery, and then to sue out a writ de excommunicato capiendo, an instrument which subjected the delinquents to outlawry, forfeiture, and imprisonment, and deprived them of the right of recovering debts, of suing for damages, of effecting legal sales or purchases, and of conveying their properties either by will or otherwise.[103] Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, writes[104]:—“The Spiritual Court did not cease to molest them, to excommunicate them, then to imprison them; and thereby they were utterly unable to sue for their own.”Nor were the rumours of an approaching increase of severities, to be enacted in the ensuing parliament, mere exaggerated fancies. The denunciations of the Chancellor in the Star Chamber, and of Archbishop Bancroft at St. Paul’s Cross, confirmed the reports that sterner legislation against recusants was impending in the coming session. On the other hand, it is just possible that these official threats may have been uttered only to terrify the Catholics into submission, and with no very serious expectation of their fulfilment.

During those distressing times, Catesby’s friends, among whom not the least was Sir Everard Digby, observed a change in his manner. He looked anxious and careworn; he was moody and abstracted at one moment, unusually loquacious and excitable at another. His mysterious absences from home were another source of uneasiness to those most intimate with him; so, too, were his large purchases of horses, arms, and gunpowder, which also attracted the attention of people who were not his friends; but he took great trouble to inform everybody that he was about to raise 300 horse, to join the English regiment which the Spanish Ambassador had prevailed upon King James to allow to be levied in England for the assistance of the Archduke in Flanders.[105]

Nevertheless, his friends were not satisfied. If he were really going to join the army in the Low Countries, why these long delays?

Great as was their intimacy, Catesby was in the condition just described for many months without confiding the real reason of his activity to Sir Everard Digby; although it is probable that he warned him to be prepared for any emergency which might arise for the use of men, arms, and horses. Both Digby and Catesby were heartily tired of a state of passive endurance; the tyranny which was crushing the Catholics was daily increasing, and Sir Everard might very naturally suppose that while Catesby had no definite plan for resisting it, he wished to be ready in case foreign powers might come to their assistance, or the whole body of English Catholics, goaded to desperation, might rise in rebellion against their oppressors. Freely as he might appear to talk to Digby, and satisfied as the latter may have felt that he had the confidence of his friend, Catesby in reality feared to intrust a great secret, which was absorbing his attention, to the brave but straightforward master of Gothurst.

Another of Catesby’s friends was less easy about him than Sir Everard Digby. Father Garnet, the Provincial of the Jesuits, suspected that some mischief was brewing, and seized an opportunity, when sitting at Catesby’s own table, of inculcating the duty of patient submission to persecution. His host, who was his personal friend as well as a great respecter of his wisdom as a priest, showed considerable irritation. Instead of treating the Provincial of the Jesuits with his usual reverence and courtesy, he flushed up and angrily exclaimed[106]:—“It is to you, and such as you, that we owe our present calamities. This doctrine of non-resistance makes us slaves. No authority of priest or pontiff can deprive man of his right to repel injustice.”

Another friend and frequent guest of young Sir Everard’s, after he became a Catholic, should be noticed. A younger son of a Worcestershire family, Thomas Winter had attractions for Digby, in his profound zeal for the Catholic Church, his scholarship, his knowledge of foreign languages, his powers of conversation, and his military experiences, as he had served in Flanders, France, and, says Father Gerard, “I think, against the Turk.”Unlike Catesby, he was “of mean stature, but strong and comely,” and of “fine carriage.”He was very popular in society, and “an inseparable friend to Mr. Robert Catesby.”In age he was about ten years older than Sir Everard. Whatever his zeal may have been for the Catholic Church, he did not always live in the odour of sanctity, and on one occasion he incurred the grave displeasure of Father Garnet by conveying a challenge to a duel from John Wright, one of the earliest conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot, to an adversary who had offended him. The combatants met, and Winter, as Wright’s second, measured the swords of both duellists to ascertain whether they were of equal length; but the actual encounter was somehow prevented at the last moment.[107] Father Garnet says that he had a “hard conceit of him.”

In dealing with the subject of Digby’s friends, certainly his page, William Ellis, ought not to be forgotten. I have been unable to discover any details of his birth, except that he was heir to £80 a year—a much larger income, of course, in those days than in these—“if his father did him right.” He entered Sir Everard’s service at the age of seventeen, about May 1604.[108] How faithful he was to his master will appear by-and-bye.

Among Sir Everard’s younger friends was Lord Vaux of Harrowden, a cousin of Catesby’s. One reason of the intimacy is thus described by Father Gerard.[109] “Sir Everard had many serious occasions to come to my Lord Vaux’s; and then in particular, as I have learned since, being come from his [Digby’s] ancient house and chief living, which lay in Rutlandshire, from whence he could not go unto the house where his wife and family lay [Gothurst], but he must pass the door of Lord Vaux, his house, which also made him there an ordinary guest.”To harbour priests, and to defend the Catholic cause was no new thing in the family of Vaux, for, some twenty or thirty years earlier, Lord Vaux’s grandfather had been imprisoned and fined for sheltering Father Campian in his house.[110] His grandmother had been a daughter of John Tresham of Rushton, and of his cousin, Francis Tresham, we shall hear something presently. His mother and his aunts, Anne and Elizabeth, were most pious Catholics, but the religious atmosphere in which he was brought up does not seem to have led him to perfection; for, although as a young man he suffered imprisonment for his faith,[111] he afterwards had two sons, who bore the name of Vaux, by Lady Banbury during her husband’s lifetime;[112] and, although he married her after Lord Banbury’s death, she never had another child. Worse still, he left Harrowden and the other family estates to his illegitimate children, instead of to his brother, who succeeded him in the title, although his wife, on her side, claimed for her son that, as he was born during her first husband’s lifetime, he had a legal right to the title of Banbury. Accordingly, this son changed his surname to Knollys, and once actually sat, as Lord Banbury, in the House of Lords. As is well known, his descendants went on claiming and disputing the title until the year 1813, when their right to it was finally disallowed.

But what specially concerns my story is that Sir Everard Digby was endeavouring to bring about a marriage for this (then) very young Lord Vaux, with the “Lord Chamberlain his daughter,”[113] as Father Gerard writes; and, in a footnote, is added “Earl of Suffolk. Erased in Orig.”If this footnote is right, Sir Everard was probably trying to make a match for the youth with the very girl whom he eventually married, as Lady Banbury had been Elizabeth Howard, the eldest daughter of Lord Suffolk. Suffolk was Lord Chamberlain,[114] and curiously enough (when we consider that he seems to have had negotiations with Sir Everard Digby with respect to a match between his daughter and Lord Vaux), in his capacity of Lord Chamberlain, he suspected and led to the discovery of the gunpowder laid in the cellar beneath the Houses of Parliament.[115]

Sir Everard visited a good deal at the house of Lord Vaux’s mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Vaux. This was a house in Buckinghamshire at Stoke Poges, that had been built by Sir Christopher Hatton,[116] the Lord Chancellor, who had died childless. It was let for a term of years to Mrs. Vaux, and she not only established Father Gerard in it as her chaplain, but had hiding-places and other arrangements made, so that he could receive priests and Catholic laymen, as he might think well, for the good of the cause of religion. Here Sir Everard was probably thrown a good deal with Catesby and Tresham, as they were both related to his young host. Lord Vaux’s two aunts, Miss Anne Vaux and Eleanor, the wife of Edward Brooksby, lived with him and his mother, and Miss Anne was one of those who had serious misgivings as to the mysterious conduct of her cousin, Robert Catesby.[117] “Seeing at Winter’s and Grant’s”—Grant was a popular Warwickshire squire, a Catholic, and celebrated for his undaunted courage—“their fine horses in the stable, she told Mr. Garnet that she feared these wild heads had something in hand, and prayed him to talk to Mr. Catesby and to hinder anything that possibly he might, for if they should attempt any foolish thing, it would redound to his discredit. Whereupon he said he would talk to Mr. Catesby.”

Another account of what was probably the same interview was given by Father Garnet himself, in his examination of March 12th, 1605.

[118]“He sayth that Mrs. Vaux came to him, eyther to Harrowden or to Sir Everard Digby’s at Gothurst, and tould this exam^t. that she feared that some trouble or disorder was towards [them], that some of the gentlewomen had demanded of her where they should bestow themselves until the burst[119] was past in the beginning of the Parliament. And this exam^t. asking her who tould her so, she said that she durst not tell who tould her so: she was [choked] with sorrow.”

An attempt was made, later, to represent the name of Vaux to be the same as that of Fawkes:—[120] “Mrs. Anne Vaux, or Fawkes, probably a relative of the conspirator;”for which there seems to be no foundation, and certainly there is none for the base imputation, in the same paragraph, of immorality between Anne Vaux and Father Garnet. Even the Protestant historian, Jardine, repudiates this calumny at considerable length.[121]