Episode 319: The Gunpowder Plot

This was an ominous sign. One such young Catholic was Thomas Winter, who had already appealed unsuccessfully to fill up the third for support. In the same month that James banished the Jesuits, he met with his cousin Robert Catesby. The plot the two concocted became known as the Gunpowder Plot, though the plot is often associated with its third member, Guy Fox. In April, Winter traveled to Flanders, from which place he brought back Fox himself. Now they're basically called

the conspirators in all of our sources. In the following month, an oath of secrecy was sworn before they made their way to a house behind the Church of Saint Clement's, Eastcheap, where they met a Jesuit by the name of Gerrard, who administered to them the holy sacrament. It was now agreed that a house conveniently close to Parliament needed to be found, but it wasn't until the beginning of December

that a suitable property became available. On the eleventh of the month they entered the house, carrying with them a stock of hard boiled eggs and baked meats. By Christmas Eve, the conspirators had dug their way down and, in the words of Thomas Winter Quote, wrought under a little entry to the wall of Parliament House and under propped it

as we went with wood end quote. They believed the next session of Parliament would begin in February sixteen o five, but now they learned that it had been pirogued until the following October. That gave them more time. The gunpowder in question was being stored at Catesbury's lodging in Lambeth, but under conditions of great secrecy and security, it was

ultimately brought to the House at Westminster. They had already made some progress in penetrating the nine foot wall that separated the House of Parliament, but their work was impeded by an influx of water. They're basically digging next to the Thames. One day, soon after the gunpowder had been acquired, they heard a rustling sound above their head. Fox went outdoor and was cautiously investigating. There he was met by Ellen Bright, a coal merchant, who informed him that she

was leaving the premises. It so happened that her seller or vault ran directly under the House of Parliament itself, and only took a few minutes, and the two reached a deal to acquire this new lodging. An iron gate between the basement of the conspirator's house and missus Bright's seller was opened, and Fox was quickly able to smuggle about thirty six barrels of gunpowder into the neighboring vault.

It was enough gunpowder to kill thousands of people. By September, fresh barrels of gunpower were acquired in order to replace those that had been affected by the damp, but funds were running low and everyone agreed that they needed to bring in three other conspirators with money or property. Thirteen men by this time had been discussed in secret, leaving

thirteen ways for the secret to be betrayed. Now, one of the new conspirators, Francis Tresham, had a brother in law, Lord Monteagle, and he was actually part of the House of Lords. Terrisham desperately wanted his brother in law to be spared from the conflagration. Meegel was a staunch Catholic who had already defended the church in the House of Lords. The other conspirators, however, weren't sure about making exceptions however

well meant. Monteagle was sitting down for dinner on the twenty sixth of October at his house when a letter was suddenly brought in by a messenger. He glanced at it and then requested one of his gentlemen to read it aloud. It read as follows, my Lord, out of belove, I bear you of your friends. I have a care of your preservation. Therefore, I would advise you, as you tender your life, to devise some excuse to shift of

your attendance at this parliament. So the letter began. The correspondence went on to warn that there will be a terrible blow this parliament, yet no one will know who struck it. Now Monteagle immediately set out for Whitehall with the letter in hand. He may have been a Catholic, but he was also an Englishman. He came down to see Robert Cecil, the newly created Earl of Salisbury, and took Salisbury into an adjoining room, showing him the document.

Cecil was inclined at first to dismiss this matter as a false alarm, but on consulting his colleagues, the possibility of a gunpowder explosion as the quote unquote terrible blow was discussed. Now the King was a hunting at Royston, and upon his return to London at the beginning of November, the letter was shown to him. Instantly he agreed that

the discussion enclosed therein involved fire and powder. On the afternoon of Monday, the fourth of November, Suffolk and Monteagle began their search on the excuse that they were looking for some property belonging to the King. Didn't take long for them to come upon the home that had been rented by Catesby guy Fox opened the door of the cellar, displaying an enormous amount of wood and a ton of gunpowder.

It didn't take long for the King to send a subsequent search of soldiers, at which time more gunpowder was uncovered. Fox made no attempt to fight or to flee. He admitted that he intended to blow up the King and the two houses of Parliament the following morning. It seems he was prepared to light a slow match and then make his way to Wapping and from there take a

vote to France. When he was asked later informal questioning by the Council the reason for procuring so much gunpowder, he replied that he wanted quote to blow the Scottish beggars back to their native mountains end quote. Shortly thereafter, James was told of Fox's capture and gave thanks for this miracle. But it was perhaps not a miracle at all.

There's a very good chance that Francis Tresham and Lord Monteagle may have conspired in the production of the letter as a device to gain the favor of the King. It has also been suggested over the centuries that Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury, was aware of the conspiracy but allowed it to go forward as a way of catching out the Catholics. This is highly unlikely, though not impossible. News of Fox's arrest spread quickly. KTS By and the other remaining conspirators

fled London. Their only hope now was to create the right conditions for a Catholic rising in the countryside, most likely in the North. It didn't happen, Just like in Elizabeth's reign, Those who desperately wanted to see in English rising desperately overestimated the likelihood that one might occur. On January twenty seventh, sixteen oh six, Fox and the other conspirators were tried for treason. All but one pleaded not guilty, and their innocence they were executed a few days later.

The remaining Jesuits, who hadn't come up with the plot but had condoned it, were executed a few days after that, So ended the Gunpowder plot. I honestly think the most interesting part of the whole affair, apart from its ludicrousness, is how close it came to fruition. I'm not sure it would have worked had all those beryls taken out Parliament and the king. Certainly the whole Kingdom would have

been pitched forward into chaos if nothing else. Whether or not that would have ended with the restoration of some sort of a Catholic monastery well, that seems a lot less likely. The King himself, despite his miraculous survival, was not comforted. The Venetian ambassador reported that quote the King is in terror. He does not appear, nor does he take his meals in public as usual. He lives in the innermost rooms, with only his scotsmen about him end quote.

James seemed subdued and melancholy, occasionally benting his anger against Catholics, writing quote, I shall most certainly be obliged to stain my hands with their blood, though sorely against my will end quote. Luckily it did not come to that the members of Commons had going on with their ordinary business of the day, In fact, the very day they were supposed to have been blown to smithereens. By May sixteen o six, they had passed an Act quote for the

better discovering and repression of Popish recusants end quote. Catholics were now required to attend Anglican services and receive communion at least once per year. If you did not, then you could be fined or have your property seized. No known Catholic could be a doctor or a lawyer. Neither could they travel more than five miles of their home or ever come within ten miles of London. These measures did not end Catholicism in England. They just pushed the

Catholics into the shadows. By and large, Catholics simply withdrew from public life during James's reign. Only ultra Catholics kept trying to support the pope. But even then, James did not want to see either the Puritans or the Catholics made martyrs, so these measures were rarely enforced. I guess what we learn is it was just a lot easier in the seventeenth century to make laws than it was to enforce them. James was very different from Elizabeth. She

loved crowds. He detested them to an extent. This is explained by his desperate fear of assassins. If a crowd formed around him, James would cry out and attempt to escape, but he didn't stay in the palace all the time, cloistered away. James absolutely loved hunting. He justified it on the grounds that hunting was vigorous and good for his health. But religion and gunpowder plots aside, the biggest issue of James's reign was money. James was continually and heavily in debt.

He thought he had come into this realm of plenty of gold, but he soon found the treasury bear or rather, I suppose he emptied it too quickly. He bought boots and silk stockings and beaver hats like they were going out of style. Court ceremony suddenly became more lavish, with the arrival of evermore quote unquote gentlemen extraordinary. There was a vogue at court for gambling. The king loved masks and feats, which were for him a true sign of

a sovereign's power. He wished to have a mask on the night of Christmas, whereupon he was told that it was not in fashion. James's response was telling, what do you tell me of the fashion? I will make it a fashion. Certainly, a lot of the Crown's money went to his favorites, and favorites, unlike during the Tutor years, are going to play a major role during the reigns of James the First and his son Charles. Yet, reasons other than favoritism can be given for the king's indebtedness.

There had been a steady rise in prices due to inflation all the way back to the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, there was a reluctance of landowners to pay further taxation. All of this contributed to the rise of expenditure of the court above its income. The cost of an extended royal household, complete with wife and three children, was also very high. Queen Anne was extravagant and devoted to the

delights of a fashionable London. Her husband had proposed that she might confine herself to the three thousand dresses in the previous queen's wardrobe, but she did not care for the old fashions. Sometimes Queen Anne would appear at court dressed as a goddess or a nymph, even an Eastern or Arab princess. To pay his expenses, James instituted new taxes which were called impositions. These were import taxes. One merchant decided to test the validity of these impositions on currents.

He simply refused to pay the customs agent as they approached his card on the docks. He took the case all the way up to the Exchequer, which ruled in the Crown's favor, But then Parliament took up the matter. The Commons had not been impressed by these impositions. After all, it was a long established principle that the crown should live of its own. The king held vast lates and lands,

he was supposed to pay his expenses out of that. Taxes, it was universally agreed at the time, were extraordinary, only to be raised in the times of war. The first Parliament of James the First was summoned for five sessions from March sixteen oh four to February sixteen eleven, and in that l long period it acquired the beginning of a corporate identity, largely lacking during the reign of Elizabeth, more business was enacted and parliament set progressively for longer.

In sixteen oh seven, for example, the comments instituted a Committee of the Whole House. This committee could elect its own chairman, as opposed to the Speaker, who was still chosen by the Monarch, and debate could go on as long as Parliament wished. It was at the time seen as a remarkable invention, and might be considered an early warning sign of the strife between court and parliament. Now the king also still had another major opponent. A legal

dispute had arisen. Was there a distinction between those Scots born before James's ascension to the English throne and those born afterwards. This gets back to that original question that we had discussed earlier. Is there such a thing now as Great Britain or are we still talking about the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland. The King argued that those born after his ascension were naturalized by

common law and therefore could hold office in England. James turned to the judges, whom he assumed would take his part. One of them refused to do so, and his name was Sir Edward Coke. Sir Edward Coke had been a judge of the Common Plae since sixteen oh five, and he was an impassioned expert of English common law. James, on the other hand, had no real conception of common law, having been educated in what was very different legal proceedings

in Scotland. Coke believed, for example, that both the sovereign and the subject were accountable to a body of ancient law that had been conceived in practice and clarified by usage. It represented immorial general custom, but it was also a law very much grounded in reason. This was not, however, the King's opinion. He had already firmly stated that the King is above the law, both as the author of

the law and the one who gives it. Strength. From this, it could be construed that the King possessed an arbitrary authority. James alleged, for example, that he was allowed to decide cases in person. Coke disagreed a case he said could only be judged in a law court. The two obviously did not get along. Any opinion that James was subject to the law utterly infuriated him, Yet he wasn't ready

yet to make that sort of a fight. In sixteen oh five, one of the King's learned council presented him with a treatise that summed up the spirit of this new age. Francis Bacons of the proficience and advancement of learning divine and human has better been known to us today as the advancement of learning. It can justifiably be said to have changed the terms of human understanding and

our nature of knowledge. Bacon had been a royal servant for some years under the patronage of his uncle, Lord Berry, and had been first enlisted in the court of Elizabeth. But the advent of a new King promised more tangible rewards, and soon after the Ascension, Bacon provided James with texts of advice on such matters as the Union of Scotland

and England and ecclesiastical policy. Yet the advancement of learning was a work in quite another key, and one that helped create the climate of scientific rationalism that would eventually characterize the entire seventeenth century. Now, Bacon first had to clear away all the inherited knowledge that came before the early pages of the treatise. He denounces old studies in

which men study words and not matter. Words and not matter had been the foundation for traditional learning for centuries, and was grounded in the humanism of the Renaissance as well as the scholastic theology of the Middle Ages. But Bacon declared, quote that men have withdrawn themselves too much from the contemplation of nature and the observations of expertise, and have tumbled up and down in their own reasons

and conceits. In other words, it was time to pick your head up out of the books and look at the world if you wanted to learn something about the world.

He further observed quotes this kind of degenerate learning word learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen, who, having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors cheerfully Aristotle their dictator, as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history either of nature or of time, did out of no great quantity of matter

and infinite agitation of wit spin unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books, cobwebs of learning, admirable for fineness of threat and work, but of absolutely no substance and no profit end quote. Bacon was assaulting the methods and principles of previous human learning that had dominated for centuries in favor of experiment and observation.

He believed that this was the central tenet of actual science, and for him the purpose was also different because the purpose of all learning, for Bacon was to promote the benefit and prosperity of humankind. It wasn't thinking about the world beyond life after death, which had been the purpose of all learning throughout the Middle Ages. The purpose, then was to contemplate man's existence vis a v a distant God. For Bacon, it was about making life better right now.

It is interesting that a man like Bacon would rise under the reign of James the First. He was a Puritan, or at least a puritanical disposition. He did not believe in divine authority at all. He believed individualism. He believed in observation, not contemplation, as the source of reason. Bacon, in other words, just doesn't make a ton of sense

in James's court. That again, though, might be an indication not that Bacon was out of place, but that James was the divine right of kings, was increasingly out of touch with modernity. On the cover of one of Bacon's most important works, there is depicted a ship sailing smoothly through the pillars of Hercules, long believed to be the end of the world. Bacon, like many men of his age, no longer accepted conventional norms. To see was to believe,

not to read Aristotle. Honestly, James feels a bit out of step with the young men pushing forward the boundaries of the human imagination in the seventeenth century, and perhaps, as we will see that was one of the reasons that things would get out of hand so quickly. Now, if you're interested in supporting the show, there's two links in the show notes. One is to the website and the other is to a free trial of Western SIV two point zero. You can click on that and it'll

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