THE GUNPOWDER PLOT OF 1605

Part One: PROVOCATION

Catholics were considered a threat by the royal court in 16^th century England. Not just a religious threat but a threat to the entire social fabric. The Church of England, established by Henry VIII and his parliament in 1534 as a protest against Catholicism, reached deeply into everyday life. Parishes didn’t just provide spiritual guidance – they provided almost everything else, from education to refuse collection. Failing to attend Church of England services was deemed unpatriotic, a dereliction of one’s social obligation and, ultimately, illegal. This left devout Catholics who were also loyal subjects of the King facing an agonising dilemma. They had to choose between abandoning their faith altogether, practising it covertly while, somewhat insincerely, also attending regular Church of England services, or breaking the law. Needless to say Catholics were pleading for a law change to enable them to practise their faith openly.

It wasn’t always like this. Henry VIII had been a pious Catholic himself, so much so that he penned a strong attack on Luther’s strict Protestantism and was rewarded for it in 1521 when the Pope appointed him Defender of the (Catholic) Faith. But then came his marital problems. He needed a male heir to continue his noble line but his queen wasn’t providing him with one so he appealed to the Pope for an annulment of his marriage. It was bad timing. In 1527 the Holy Roman Empire had just over-run Rome, leaving the Papacy largely at the beck and call of the Emperor. And the Emperor just happened to be the beloved nephew of Henry’s no longer beloved wife. The Pope declined the annulment.

What happened next is well-known. Henry divorced his wife, was excommunicated from Catholicism by the Pope, established a new church and in 1534 parliament passed the Act of Supremacy declaring Henry “the Supreme Head on Earth of the Church of England”.  He was now the defender of a different faith – his own. Overnight Catholics became heretics.

Henry set about changing the landscape and denuding the country of any vestige of the old faith by disbanding every religious house (900 of them), confiscating property and putting 12,000 monks, canons, friars and nuns out of house and home. Religious icons, statuary and all forms of religious art were destroyed. The Church of England had no place for such idolatry. Anyone who demonstrated allegiance to the Pope could be charged with treason. Public figures and former religious leaders were required to sign an Oath of Allegiance and when Henry’s Lord Chancellor Thomas More refused to sign he was executed, becoming the first of many post-reformation Catholic martyrs. Cardinal John Fisher and many more followed. The executions began in 1535 when the ink on the legislation enabling them was barely dry. There were uprisings in subsequent years objecting to the break with Rome and Henry’s excessive punishments and confiscations.

In 1537 Henry finally succeeded in fathering his first male heir to survive infancy - the future Edward VI. The progeny was by his third wife after the first two had produced only one child each to live to adulthood, both girls (future Queens Mary and Elizabeth). Up till then Henry had lost six sons and two daughters either as stillbirths or in infancy.

When Henry died in 1547 all eyes were on the regime of his successor. Edward was a mere nine years old and, continuing Henry’s run of bad luck with male heirs, only lived to fifteen. But his reign saw major developments in Henry’s church. Henry had not entirely rejected Catholicism. Much of the doctrine and many prayers and liturgy were retained. It was the authority of the Pope that irked Henry. Edward’s team of protectors with the support of the youthful King himself now moved the church further away from Catholicism and closer to European Protestantism. The changes were fixed in place by the Act of Uniformity (1549), an act which also introduced a Book of Common Prayer and abolished the use of Latin. Any priest who failed to follow prescribed services was punished by imprisonment and loss of income. The reaction of the non-Catholic people was mixed – some traditionalists felt the changes went too far while many zealots wanted every last vestige of Catholic practice, such as the wearing of vestments, to follow abbeys, monasteries, church art and papal authority into total oblivion.

But England’s headlong rush towards Protestantism came to a sudden halt in 1553 with the death (by tuberculosis) of the teenage King Edward, Henry’s long sought-after son and heir. The throne passed to Henry’s oldest surviving child Mary despite Edward’s youthful attempt to prevent it. Edward’s problem was that Mary was born long before Henry’s church even existed and was raised strictly in the Catholic faith by Henry’s second wife (Anne Boleyn) and, ironically, Henry himself. Mary’s later marriage into the Catholic Spanish royal family reinforced her faith. Henry’s Church and Edward’s laws appeared doomed.

As might be expected, when Mary ascended to the throne the anti-Catholic laws were gone by lunchtime. She had always rejected her father’s break with Rome and detested still more the move towards Protestantism by her half-brother’s regents. But relegating the Church of England to the underground status Catholics had suffered under Henry and Edward was not so simple. While her law changes placed the Church of England under Papal jurisdiction this had required intense negotiations and a degree of compromise. The agreement, reached by Mary, parliament, Church of England leaders and the Pope, benefitted the Catholic church enormously but still left the confiscated church property in the hands of their new owners. In fact Mary’s relationship with the Vatican wavered at times. The Pope was a fervent supporter of France and France wasn’t impressed with the marriage between Mary and Spain’s future King Phillip. And when Mary declared war on France in retaliation for them assisting a private army’s invasion of England (as a protest over the royal marriage), the friendship between Mary and the Pope hit the rocks.

Queen Mary I, turned England into an authoritarian Catholic country – but not for long.

It goes without saying that the majority of the people, still largely Church of England adherents, were incensed. A strong anti-Catholic movement developed underground and became widespread. They were concerned that the Pope might be seeking secular power over England in alliance with France, or even Spain, both long-standing enemies of England. And Mary had openly declared herself loyal to the Pope despite retaining her title as Head of the Church of England. A deep division between the faiths remained.

In 1555 Henry Garnet was born. He would be the major link between the Catholic Jesuit priesthood and the gunpowder plotters.

When Mary died in 1558 there was no debate over her successor. Nor was there any doubt over her successor’s religious affiliation. Elizabeth had been born into the Church of England just as her father was busy establishing it and just months before the passing of the Act of Supremacy. She was destined to remain loyal throughout her life. So, for the second time, religion was turned on its head. Mary’s reign was a mere blip on the anti-Catholic radar.

Elizabeth was not ruthless, at least not yet. She settled for a compromise, combining the use of the Book of Common Prayer with some practices of Catholic origin in her 1559 Acts of Settlement and Uniformity. It wasn’t so much deferring to Catholicism as maintaining an English church with an identity distinct from European Protestantism. But Catholics had no easy ride. Attending Mass was punishable by a fine and although priests could be subjected to the death penalty for saying Mass leniency was shown if worship remained private. Everybody was again required by law to attend Church of England services.

In 1560 Thomas Percy was born. He was destined to serve as a staff member of the Earl of Northumberland which would give him a direct link to the House of Lords. He himself was a distant cousin of Northumberland and was also descended from a previous Earl, Henry Percy. Percy’s position would be of immense value to the gunpowder plotters. It entitled him to hire rooms conveniently close to Westminster, including the infamous cellar situated below the Parliament building itself where the gunpowder could be placed.

In 1565 Robert Keyes was born. He would become known to and trusted by the leader of the plotters and would be employed as a caretaker at the Westminster house used to store the gunpowder.

Mary, Queen of Scots

The arrival in England from Scotland of Mary Queen of Scots in 1568 lit a fuse under any semblance of religious tolerance in England. In fact it could be claimed that the seeds of the gunpowder plot were planted right then. Acceding to the Scottish throne as an infant, Mary was forced to abdicate due to a series of bad choices (mostly involving marriage) and flee to England. There she sought the protection of Elizabeth. There was a family relationship – both were descended from Elizabeth’s grandfather Henry VII and were thus first cousins once removed. But there were major complications. Mary was Catholic. She married the future King of France and was Queen Consort during his brief reign. France and England were enemies. After the death of the French King she returned to Scotland. But Scotland too was torn between Catholic and Protestant factions and John Knox’s followers were a major threat. She considered England a safer option now that she was no longer on the Scottish throne. But due to her strong connection with France she was not welcome in England either. Her presence there was seen as a serious threat to Elizabeth and her court. An uprising against the throne could gather around Mary and support from France wouldn’t be far away. Elizabeth’s welcome to Mary therefore was not of the open arms variety – it was fourteen years confined (for her “protection”) in Sheffield Castle. Not uncomfortably, it must be stressed, but she was then moved to less congenial surroundings in other castles for a further four years.

Mary Queen of Scots - a thorn in Elizabeth's side

Many English Catholics felt that Mary should have preceded Elizabeth onto the English throne as the senior surviving legitimate descendant of Henry VII. Elizabeth was illegitimate under Catholic law. Failing that, they thought Mary should definitely be next in line for the monarchy but Elizabeth had ruled that out. The clouds of radical Catholic rebellion loomed.

While Mary was confined “for her protection”, John and Christopher Wright, Robert and Thomas Wintour, Guy Fawkes, John Grant, Robert Catesby, Stephen and Humphrey Littleton, Everard Digby and Ambrose Rookwood were all born and destined to play various roles in the gunpowder plot.

Mary’s incarceration was the spark that set off a succession of Catholic attempts to have Elizabeth removed. Catholicism was widespread in the north, especially among the aristocracy and the first rebellion was carried out in 1569 by an elite group of northerners. It was dubbed the Rising of the North and its lofty aim was to raise enough nationwide support to install Mary on the throne. Durham was occupied but the rebels failed to attract the support they hoped for and when a combined army of 22,000 was mobilised against them they, wisely, retreated to Scotland. Elizabeth was not amused. 750 plotters were tracked down and executed in reprisal along with many northern villagers, most of them Catholic.

Now the Pope was not amused. The recently concluded Council of Trent had deepened the divide between the two faiths. The Pope (Pius V) was determined to assert his church’s identity and its power. Hearing of the rising in the north and believing it had succeeded, he took the unprecedented step of excommunicating Elizabeth as a heretic and warned all Catholics they too would be excommunicated if they obeyed the Queen’s orders to attend non-Catholic services. He also declared that Elizabeth was not the rightful queen and should be deposed. This was unbelievably harsh. The Queen, her government and Church of England leaders had made modest attempts to accommodate Catholic beliefs. Until the Pope’s intervention many Catholics had been worshipping with their non-Catholic neighbours out of loyalty to the Queen. They were devastated to hear of her excommunication. Many now felt torn between respect and devotion to the Queen and loyalty to the Pope.

Following the Pope’s extreme pronouncements Queen Elizabeth, not surprisingly, retaliated. The gloves were off. Jesuit priests were forced to leave the country (some stayed and went into hiding), and even just attempting to convert English subjects away from their allegiance to the Queen became a treasonable offence. Spurred on by such a draconian step fanatical Catholics now became more venomous in their determination to plot Elizabeth’s demise. A string of increasingly treasonous plots followed. The Ridolfi plot (1571) featured a plan for Spanish troops to invade England. The Throckmorton plot (1583) invited in a French army with financial support from Spain and the Pope. Both plots were foiled by the Queen’s network of spies and informers. But with unfriendly countries on all sides, Catholic Ireland a stone’s throw away and discontent within, the Queen now felt extraordinarily vulnerable. And even more so when an event in France showed what carnage a Catholic mob was capable of foisting on its fellow citizens. The notorious 1572 Bartholomew’s Day massacre resulted in the deaths of thousands of Huguenots (Calvanist Protestants). This only added to the perceived Catholic threat in England.

More plots to rid England of its Protestant Queen lay ahead. Throckmorton was followed by the even more ominous Babington Plot (1586) which rightly or wrongly implicated Mary Queen of Scots herself. She was thought to have at least knowledge of the previous plots. Babington aimed big – destroy not just the Queen but also, in an ominous foretaste of the gunpowder plot, the entire Government, including Catholics. It was Mary’s final downfall – Anthony Babington (raised secretly as Catholic but also a one-time insider at Elizabeth’s court) had written letters to Mary advising her of the plot. The letters were intercepted. Mary’s replies were non-committal but her mere knowledge could have justified her execution. Elizabeth had been urged by her advisors to execute Mary after the earlier plots but was reluctant as she doubted her complicity (remember, they were cousins). Babington left her little choice. Mary was beheaded on February 8, 1587.

Elizabeth's defeat of the Armada demonstrated the dominance of English sea power over Catholic Spain

Elizabeth’s failing health did not stop yet another rebellion in 1601: the work of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.  The Earl was somewhat peeved that he had been punished for a failed military campaign in Ireland and lost the Queen’s favour having earlier been one of her poster-boys in court. His plan to overthrow Elizabeth’s government was foiled just as the others had been and, predictably, he was executed. The Essex rebellion is particularly relevant as it involved several gunpowder plotters.

Robert Catesby, mentioned earlier, was now 29. He had been born (ominously) in the same year of the Bartholomew’s Day massacre. His father had resolutely practised the Catholic faith in Protestant England and spent years in prison for it. A relative was executed in 1584 for his involvement in an attempt to free Mary Queen of Scots. Robert himself served time in prison in 1588 for political agitation at the time of the Spanish Armada when he was only 16. It is not surprising that he felt the sting of religious discrimination. He first dipped his toe into organised protest by joining the Essex rebellion and only narrowly escaped execution. His reputation grew among other Catholic rebels of which, by now, there were many. He was destined to devise and lead the gunpowder plot.

Change was in the wind. Elizabeth died on 24 March, 1603 and was succeeded by James VI of Scotland. Elizabeth had no descendants and James’ entitlement to the English throne was through his great-grandmother Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister. James was the son of Mary Queen of Scots and the Catholic lobby had already made excursions to Scotland to sound out James VI’s plans when he would became James I of England and reign over both realms.

One to make this excursion was Thomas Percy, sent by his employer the Earl of Northumberland, a Catholic sympathiser, to Scotland to plead with James to be more tolerant with Catholics on attaining the monarchy.

James had been born and baptised Catholic but raised Presbyterian in Scotland and now as King of England favoured the English church. He did initially appear to be more accommodating with Catholics. Fines previously imposed on the general laity were relaxed and, more significantly, he made overt attempts to reconcile with Catholic Spain, England’s traditional enemy since long before the Armada. James was somewhat hamstrung in that many of Elizabeth’s protestant ministers were still in place and they were determined to prevent England from ever becoming a Catholic country again. James didn’t want to go that far either. His security forces targeted radical priests, missionaries and Jesuits in particular, and any lay person who sheltered them. He was generally tolerant with the rest of the Catholic community.

James was a very different monarch from the string of Tudors before him. The first Stuart King, his Scottish accent, his un-Tudor ramshackle demeanour, his support for Puritanism, his attempts to reconcile England with France and Spain – combined to make England a little uneasy and the Catholic community somewhat confused. To add to their confusion, James appointed the Earl of Northumberland, a man with strong Catholic sympathies, to his Privy Council.

No longer strictly forced to attend the English church, many former Catholics who had turned away out of loyalty to the crown were now coming back (a much frowned-on practice called recusancy). This made James uneasy. Within twelve months Elizabeth’s crippling laws would again be enforced and in a short time over 5,000 people had been convicted of recusancy which had by now become a punishable offence. The penalty could be a fine, property confiscation or imprisonment. James had clearly become paranoid and some of the more radical Catholics no longer trusted him, if they ever did. Remember, though, that the vast majority of Catholics in England were law-abiding and were treated leniently if they were discovered covertly practising their faith. But our story is not about them. It’s a group of firebrand, frustrated and devout Catholics who hated the laws that we’ll be following. This group, all men, had the luxury of leisure time and, in most cases, were the products of well known property-owning Catholic families.

Even before the King’s July coronation another set of plotters were at work. In a two-fold operation, planned and led by English courtiers with financial support from the Spanish Government, James was to be kidnapped and new Privy Councillors with Catholic sympathies recruited. The second stage was to replace James on the throne altogether. The headless Mary Queen of Scots was no longer a replacement option but there was another candidate in Arbella Stuart, James’s cousin and Elizabeth’s cousin twice removed. She had clear rights to the throne through descent and had indeed been a candidate to succeed Elizabeth. Moreover, unlike James she had been born in England and, as a niece of Mary Queen of Scots would surely have Catholic sympathies. But the plan was short-lived. Arbella was given a letter advising of the plot but thought it so ridiculous she laughingly showed it to the King. The perpetrators were tried but somehow spared execution. The famed explorer Walter Raleigh had been peripherally involved. Yet another plot had been foiled.

By 1603 Thomas Percy was furious. He had visited Scotland three times the previous year and had received a promise from the future King that Catholic worship would be tolerated when he came to the throne in England. Now that he was here he was denying he’d made such a promise and things had not got better - they had got worse. To add insult to injury, Percy was being pilloried by his fellow Catholics for “deceiving them” with false promises. He was desperate to find someone to share his anger with. He sought out Robert Catesby. He had never met him but was aware of his involvement in the Essex rebellion. Percy himself was indebted to the Earl of Essex for earlier favours and had supported him in a conspiracy though not in the actual rebellion. In June, 1603 he decided to call on Catesby at his Northamptonshire home to introduce himself and expostulate over James. He told Catesby he was “ready to kill the King with my own hands.” Catesby restrained him by indicating something “surer” was being planned. This is the first recorded reference to the gunpowder plot.

The attempt to install Arbella Stuart on the throne unnerved King James. Any vestige of his desire to accommodate Catholics vanished and within a year all Romanist priests were exiled from the kingdom. Egged on by the Puritans in his administration the King now re-affirmed and brutally applied the previous anti-Catholic laws. The laws were indeed restrictive and discriminatory and a recap is justified. Surveyed in their entirety they required that all English citizens:

• Must swear allegiance to the Monarch
• Must attend Church of England services regularly
• Must not conduct or attend any other service
• Must not declare the Monarch a heretic, schismatic or unfit for the throne
• Must not absolve or be absolved in Catholic confession of any crime against the State
• Must not leave England for longer than six months without the Monarch’s licence
• Must not convert another, or be converted, to the “Romish” religion
• Must not harbour a priest or fail to report the whereabouts of one if known
• Must not financially support Catholic seminaries overseas.
• Must not send children overseas for a Catholic education.

The penalties ranged from fines and forfeiture of property to imprisonment and execution. Plotting to dethrone, harm or kill a Monarch had been high treason for centuries and carried a certain death penalty.

King James I, principal target of the Gunpowder Plot

Parliament and James’s court argued that the laws were justified. There had been multiple treasonous plots and the whole country was jittery. And hostile neighbours loomed on all sides itching to re-impose Catholicism. Strangling the faith from within was England’s best defence.

End of Part One.

goto Part Two: Gunpowder

return to Gunpowder Plot title page

return to History/biography Menu

return to Home page