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Gunpowder, Treason, and Scots

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Jenny Wormald
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Extract

On November 9, 1605, the warden and fellows of All Souls College wrote to Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, in some distress, and, as they thought, on a matter of considerable importance. Then, as now, they elected fellows at the beginning of November. On this occasion, they believed it essential to explain that they had turned down a nominee of Salisbury and the king; the man had failed to turn up for examination, and the college nervously pointed out that it did have its academic standards. But it could assure Salisbury that another candidate of the king's was safely in. This letter is the first of many ironies of the Gunpowder Plot. It was not unusual for colleges to worry about the pressure applied by the crown and its leading ministers to their selection procedures. That this anxiety should have preoccupied this institution at this particular time is nevertheless a delightful example of the differing priorities of philosophers and kings.

For the letter was written four days after men had learned the stupendous news that the king, the queen, at least one of their children, the lords temporal and spiritual, the judges, the leading members of the House of Commons, any foreign ambassadors present, and no doubt many others as well—King James put the figure at thirty thousand—were to be blown up by the Catholics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 2: Politics and Religion in the Early Seventeenth Century: New Voices , April 1985 , pp. 141 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1985

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References

1 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Salisbury MSS, xvii, pp. 480–81Google Scholar.

2 Calendar of State Papers, Venetian (CSPV), 1603–7, p. 297.

3 Public Record Office (PRO), State Papers (SP) 14/216/7, 12, 13, 14, 8; the letter from Ware is in answer to a letter from Salisbury that had arrived at twelve o'clock, reporting that one of the principal conspirators, Thomas Percy, had come south on November 2 but had not so far returned north through Ware.

4 Hurstfield, Joel, “A Retrospect: Gunpowder Plot and the Politics of Dissent,” in Freedom, Corruption and Government in Elizabethan England (London, 1973), p. 330Google Scholar.

5 Scotland already had its annual day for celebrating the king's deliverance from treason: August 5, the anniversary of the Gowrie Conspiracy in 1600. This continued, but November 5 became the major day of celebration. Both were revived after the Restoration: Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, ed. Burton, J. H.et al., 3d ser. (Edinburgh, 1877–), 1:15, 62–63Google Scholar; Gowrie lapsed, Gunpowder continued. Indeed, the Dorchester diarist William Whiteway's reference to the “lecture … in remembrance of the Gunpowder Treason” almost sounds like the sermon that marked August 5, whereas the Scots had a thoroughly enjoyable November 5: a public holiday and bonfires were the rule at least in the major burghs (diary of William Whiteway, British Library [BL], Egerton MS, fol. 54r, November 2, 1625). Today, the only place where there is any real connection with the anti-Catholic dimension to the celebration is Lewes; even there, the activity centered on the Jireh Chapel is modern in its form.

6 Hill, C., The Century of Revolution, 1603–1714 (London, 1974), p. 19Google Scholar; Hurstfield, p. 327, calls it “an incident, minor in itself.”

7 Hurstfield, pp. 335–40.

8 Gerard, John, What Was the Gunpowder Plot? (London, 1897)Google Scholar. The original five conspirators were Robert Catesby, Thomas Percy, Thomas Wintor, John Wright, and Guy Fawkes. By November 1605 the principal group amounted to thirteen.

9 Gardiner, S. R., What Gunpowder Plot Was (London, 1897)Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., pp. 1–4.

11 Edwards, Francis, Guy Fawkes: The Real Story of the Gunpowder Plot (London, 1969)Google Scholar.

12 Willson, D. H., King James VI and I (London, 1966), pp. 223–27Google Scholar.

13 PRO, SP 14/216/129.

14 CSPV, 1603–7, p. 289.

15 A list of some of these petitions is in Milward, P., Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age (London, 1978), pp. 72–75Google Scholar. Also, e.g., PRO, SP 14/1/55, 56, and SP 14/8/125. For statements of belief that things would be better under James, PRO, SP 14/1/7, 63. PRO, SP 14/8/80 is an anonymous note, possibly of 1604, entitled “it seemeth that the bill against Recusants should not be proceeded in.” There is an excellent account of the propaganda about Mary in Phillips, J. E., Images of a Queen (Los Angeles, 1964)Google Scholar.

16 His refusal to persecute undoubtedly infuriated the more vigorous among the Scottish Presbyterians and has created a major problem in explaining the execution of the only Scottish Catholic martyr, John Ogilvie, in Glasgow in 1615. Normally the king resisted pressure, to the extent of refusing the bishop of the Isles's demand for action against the Jesuits in Argyll; the king laughed and said that he would welcome anyone who could civilize the highlanders (Giblin, Cathaldus, Irish Franciscan Mission to Scotland, 1619–1646 [Dublin, 1964], pp. 45–47)Google Scholar.

17 Gardiner, pp. 138–72, and History of England, 1603–42 (London, 1887), 1:97–101, 234–36Google Scholar; Willson, pp. 148–49, 223; Milward, p. 72; Smith, A. G. R., ed., The Reign of James VI and I (London, 1973), p. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ashton, R., James I by His Contemporaries (London, 1969), p. 172Google Scholar; Peck, Linda Levy, Northampton: Patronage and Policy in the Court of James I (London, 1982), p. 111Google Scholar; McGrath, P., Papists and Puritans under Elizabeth I (London, 1967), pp. 363–66Google Scholar; Dures, A., English Catholicism, 1558–1642 (London, 1983), p. 42Google Scholar. But cf. the brief but perceptive comment by Bossy, J., “The English Catholic Community, 1603–25,” in Smith, , ed., pp. 95–96Google Scholar.

18 BL, Cotton MS Caligula B VIII, Ms. 342r–346v.

19 That this was already in his mind when he became king of England is shown by the conversation between the Scot Edward Bruce, Lord Kinloss, who accompanied him south, and the Venetian ambassador, Giovanni Carlo Scaramelli, in which Kinloss talked of James's desire for an ecumenical council. This took place on May 8, 1603; it is impossible that the idea had come to the king only during the rushed and heady six weeks since Elizabeth's death (CSPV, 1603–7, p. 22). See Patterson, W. B., “King James I's Call for an Ecumenical Council,” in Councils and Assemblies: Studies in Church History, vol. 7, ed. Cuming, G. J. and Baker, D. (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 267–75Google Scholar.

20 Calderwood, David, The True History of the Church of Scotland, Wodrow Society (Edinburgh, 1842–1849), 5:7–8Google Scholar: “Good lord! methink I do but dream … no king a week would bear this.”

21 Hurstfield, Joel, “The Succession Struggle in Late Elizabethan England,” in Freedom, Corruption and Government … (n. 4 above), pp. 104–34Google Scholar.

22 Correspondence of King James VI of Scotland with Sir Robert Cecil and Others in England, ed. Bruce, John, Camden Society (London, 1861), pp. 33, 36–38Google Scholar.

23 BL, Egerton MS 784, fol. 16r–v; the normally low-key, but approving, reporting of William Whiteway turns to much more positive criticism here.

24 Calderwood, 6:367. James, even in the immediate aftermath of the Plot, did not blame all Catholics, as Fr. John Gerard reported with great relief, citing his assurance of November 7, 1605 (The Condition of Catholics under James I, ed. Morris, J. [London, 1872], pp. 114–15Google Scholar). For a comment similar to Calderwood's on James's attitude to English Catholics and Puritans, by Matthew Hutton, archbishop of York, see Babbage, S. B., Puritanism and Richard Bancroft (London, 1962), pp. 113–14Google Scholar.

25 Correspondence of King James VI …. p. 33.

26 ibid., p. 56.

27 Forbes-Leith, W., Narratives of Scottish Catholics under Mary Stuart and James VI (Edinburgh, 1885), pp. 264–65Google Scholar: letter by Fr. Robert Abercromby, S.J., describing Anne of Denmark's conversion and saying that the queen herself told him this story. From the same period comes the despairing letter and report by Fr. Alexander Mac-Quhirrie, S.J., to the Jesuit general, Father Aquaviva, written in 1601, in which Mac-Quhirrie claimed that the king's international dealings were directed only toward the English throne and that persecution of Scottish Catholics had begun, dashing the Jesuits' hopes of James's easy temper. The date—exactly in the period when James was supposedly cultivating the Catholics—is interesting, the persecution, by any normal standards, nonexistent (Forbes-Leith, pp. 268–74). For Kinloss, 's comment, CSPV, 1603–7, p. 22Google Scholar.

28 The Warrender Papers, ed. Cameron, A. I., Scottish History Society (Edinburgh, 1932), 2:299–301Google Scholar. Lee, M. Jr., “James VI and the Revival of Episcopacy in Scotland, 1596–1600,” Church History 43 (1974): 52–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a splendid contemporary account of the riotous party in Aberdeen that marked Huntly's reconciliation with the Kirk in June 1597, Miscellany of the Spalding Club (Aberdeen, 1841–1854), 2:lx–lxiiGoogle Scholar. Wormald, J., “‘Princes’ and the Regions in the Scottish Reformation,” in Church, Politics and Society, 1408–1929, ed. Macdougall, N. (Edinburgh, 1983), pp. 77–78Google Scholar. This approach, which sought to avoid confrontation, was continued in England after 1603; I have benefited from discussion with Peter Lake and Kenneth Fincham on this point and am most grateful to them for allowing me to read their essay “The Ecclesiastical Policy of King James I” (in this issue) in advance of publication.

29 Gerard (n. 8 above), p. 123; Bossy, John, “The Character of English Catholicism,” in Crisis in Europe, 1560–1660, ed. Aston, T. (Cambridge, 1965), p. 246Google Scholar.

30 Nuttall, G. F., “The English Martyrs, 1535–1680: A Statistical Review,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 22 (1971): 191–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; this is not, as the author says, a complete analysis of recusant executions, which remains to be done. Cross, Claire, Church and People, 1450–1660 (Glasgow, 1976), p. 166Google Scholar, gives the total of twenty-seven executions in James's reign.

31 On the confusing subject of recusancy fines, see Williams, Penry, The Tudor Regime (Oxford, 1979), p. 283Google Scholar. Dietz, F. C., The Exchequer in Elizabeth's Reign, and Receipts and Issues of the Exchequer temp. James I and Charles I, Smith College Studies in History, vols. 8, 13 (Northampton, Mass., 1923, 1928), pp. 84–89, 136Google Scholar, respectively; Recusant Roll No. 2 (1593–1594), ed. H. Bowler, Catholic Record Society (London, 1965), p. cxi. BL, Landsdowne MS 153, fol. 190r, contains figures presumably relating to recusant lands where two-thirds had been taken and leased. This list was compiled on May 9, 1614; on May 10 figures for recusant forfeitures for the last five years of Elizabeth were drawn up, ranging from £6,519.3/1 to £10,333.9/7 (ibid., fol. 188r). Comparison of receipts of the last five years of Elizabeth with the first five of James shows a reduction of £14,000 in recusants' fines (Dietz, F. C., English Public Finance, 1485–1641 [London, 1964], 2:114Google Scholar).

32 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic (CSPD), 1603–10, pp. 105 (grant of £2,000 to Gibb, May 3, 1604), 175 (grant of £3,000, December 17, 1604). This John Gibb is presumably the same man who had been valet of the king's chamber in Scotland, A. J. Loomie, Toleration and Diplomacy: The Religious Issue in Anglo-Spanish Relations, 1603–1605, American Philosophical Society, n.s., 53, pt. 6 (Philadelphia, 1963), pp. 32–33, 36–42, 52–55Google Scholar.

33 Stuart Royal Proclamations, ed. Larkin, J. F. and Hughes, P. L. (Oxford, 1973), 1:70–73Google Scholar. Gardiner, , What Gunpowder Plot Was (n. 9 above), pp. 159–60Google Scholar. An indication of the pressure James was under is seen in John Chamberlain's letter of February 26, 1605, to Ralph Winwood, reporting that “the Puritans go down on all sides” but then going on to record the king's “long and vehement apology for himself in the Council Chamber” that he was not favoring the papists and that he would now put the recusancy fines and the laws against the Catholics into full execution. There is the air of a man with his back to the wall in his excuse that mitigation had been “in consideration that not any one of them had lift up his Hand against his coming in.” Mitigation was now over—“saving for Blood, from which he had a naturall aversion.” This gives an interesting twist to the traditional understanding of James's attitude to the Catholics and the succession (Memorials of Affairs of State in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I, Collected [Chiefly] from the Original Papers of the Right Honourable Sir Ralph Winwood, Kt., ed. Sawyer, E. [London, 1725], 2:49Google Scholar).

34 PRO, SP 14/1/7, 15.

35 PRO, SP 14/216/114.

36 Bossy, J., “Henri IV, the Appellants and the Jesuits,” Recusant History 8 (1965): 80–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Loomie, A. J., Guy Fawkes in Spain: The “Spanish Treason” in Spanish Documents, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, special suppl., 9 (London, 1971)Google Scholar. This section relies heavily on Loomie's two illuminating and important articles.

38 Parker, G., Europe in Crisis, 1598–1648 (London, 1979), pp. 146–47Google Scholar; Elliott, J. H., Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (London, 1979), pp. 299–300Google Scholar.

39 Generally, Loomie's detailed discussion of the events of 1598–1603, “Philip III and the Stuart Succession in England,” Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 43 (1965):492–514CrossRefGoogle Scholar, suggests, to me at least, the extreme lack of reality of those who believed that they could force on England a Catholic ruler.

40 Loomie, , Guy Fawkes in Spain, pp. 39–42Google Scholar; PRO, SP 14/216/114.

41 PRO, SP 14/216/114.

42 Loomie, , Guy Fawkes in Spain, pp. 22–24Google Scholar; the paper is printed on pp. 61–63.

43 The rumors that James's conversion to Catholicism was likely certainly filtered round the courts of Europe but were, like the expectations of English Catholics, based on wishful thinking only; the Catholic Sir James Lindsay put the point very clearly, writing from Rome to Cecil on January 23, 1605, that “they have far greater esperance here that his Matie wilbe a Catholique nor I did ever see any appearance, although I shalbe ever one of those that shall pray for the same” (PRO, SP 85, bundle 3, fol. 48v). James himself, as Lindsay well appreciated, saw his role as the leader of reformed Europe, with a crucial ecumenical role, and the image he put forward to the European powers was one of friendship and reconciliation, not conversion. But there was no reason why Wintor and his associates before 1603 were better informed than the infanta; unlike Sir James Lindsay, they did not know him personally. The contrast between their attitude and Lindsay's is marked, and emphasizes both their unwillingness to accept a Protestant monarch and their indifference to the possibility of his conversion.

44 Major, John, A History of Greater Britain, Scottish History Society (Edinburgh, 1892), pp. 27, 40–42, 223Google Scholar; the work was produced in 1520.

45 BL, Additional (Add.) MS 35, 844, fols. 193r–198r.

46 Loomie, , “Philip III and the Stuart Succession in England,” p. 503Google Scholar. English superiority, fueled by three centuries of failure to conquer the Scots, produced in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a strenuous paper war on the subject of Scotland's vassal status; a particularly nice example is the parchment roll setting out the origins of that status in the time of the three sons of Brutus and giving a list of homages paid by Scottish kings from Anglo-Saxon times until Henry VI's reign, which was kept in a local gentleman's archives (Hants Record Office, Herriard MSS, parliamentary papers, box 07); I am grateful to J. L. Jervoise for permission to consult and cite the papers in his collection. This is similar to, but not identical with, A Declaration, conteyning the iust causes and consyderations, of this present wane with the Scottis, wherein also appareth the trewe and right title, that the kinges most royall maiesty hath to the soverayntie of Scotlande, 1542 (Pollard, A. W. and Redgrave, G. R., comps., A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640 [STC] [London, 1926], 9179)Google Scholar. There is also a delightful, if overlengthy, treatise arguing that Mary queen of Scots did have the best title to the throne after Elizabeth, despite her vassal status—but hoping that Elizabeth would still produce children “and make frustrate all this my discertation” (BL, Cotton MS Caligula B IV, fols. 2v–94v).

47 Wormald, Jenny, “James VI and I: Two Kings or One?” History 68 (1983): 187–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Galloway, B. R., “The Union of England and Scotland, 1603–1608” (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1982)Google Scholar.

48 PRO, SP 14/86/132.

49 Correspondence of King James VI … (n. 22 above), p. 56.

50 PRO, SP 14/2/96. Similar reactions, though less specifically anti-Scottish, are found in Sir Henry Whithed's Letter Book, Hampshire Record Series (Portsmouth, 1976), 1:15–17Google Scholar.

51 PRO, SP 14/216/18.

52 PRO, SP 14/90/135, and SP 14/216/137. Northumberland was not, admittedly, a particularly easy man for any of his family to deal with, even without this provocation (Batho, G. R., “A Difficult Father-in-Law: The Ninth Earl of Northumberland,” History Today 6 [November 1956]: 744–51Google Scholar).

53 Birch, T., The Court and Times of James I (London, 1848), 1:37Google Scholar; BL, Add. MS 6178, fol. 56r; PRO, SP 14/216/48.

54 CSPV, 1603–7, p. 303.

55 PRO, SP 14/216/49; everything from “to which purpose” to “all strangers” is scored through. See also PRO, SP 14/216/6.

56 Lee, M. Jr., James I and Henry IV (Urbana, Ill., 1970), pp. 9–10, 15, 129–30Google Scholar. I have not been able to trace the famous phrase “The Wisest Fool in Christendom” to Henri IV; it does not, e.g., appear in Hardouin de de Péréfixe, Hardouin de Beaumont, Histoire du Roy Henry le Grand (Paris, 1662)Google Scholar, in his “Receuil de quelques Belles Actions et Paroles Memorables du Roy Henry le Grand.” It does, however, appear in Weldon, Anthony, The Court and Character of King James, in The Secret History of the Court of James I, ed. Scott, Walter (Edinburgh, 1811), 2:1–20Google Scholar.

57 PRO, SP 14/216/9, 10, 11, 16, 20, 26, 35, 55, 63, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 87, 90, 91, 132–34; BL, Add. MS 6178, fols. 28r, 134r–35r. On November 5, e.g., one Henry Tatnell, out for a stroll in Lincoln's Inn Fields at 7 A.M., sent in a report about two men, visibly distressed, going in haste and muttering and swearing. On the sixth, a London cutler, John Cradock, linked Catesby to Ambrose Rookwood and Christopher Wright; already on the sixth, Lord Chief Justice Popham could give Salisbury the names of six conspirators other than the two known on t he fifth, Fawkes and Percy.

58 Register of the Privy Council of Scotland (n. 5 above), 7:476–77, 148–49Google Scholar.

59 CSPV, 1603–7, pp. 293, 300, 303–4.

60 Parker, G., “If the Armada Had Landed,” in Spain and the Netherlands, 1559–1659 (London, 1979), pp. 135–47Google Scholar.

61 PRO, SP 14/216/6.

62 Ibid.

63 CSPV, 1603–7, p. 299.

64 BL, Add. MS 6178, fol. 56v.

65 Tyacke, Nicholas, “Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution,” in The Origins of the English Civil War, ed. Russell, Conrad (London, 1973), pp. 119–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Russell, Conrad, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979), esp. pp. 26–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collinson, P., The Religion of Protestants (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar.

66 Smith, A. Hassell, County and Court: Government and Politics in Norfolk, 1558–1603 (London, 1974), pp. 166–67Google Scholar; MacCulloch, D., “Catholic and Puritan in Elizabethan Suffolk; A County Community Polarises,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 62 (1981): 241–47Google Scholar; on the loss of power and position by the Suffolk Catholics generally after the execution of the fourth duke of Norfolk, pp. 233–35.

67 PRO, SP 14/216/114. Clearly the condition of the Catholic gentry was not identical throughout the country, some fared better than others, and the presence or absence of a powerful patron—or a relatively conciliatory or hostile bishop—obviously counted for much. See, e.g., MacCulloch; Bossy, John, The English Catholic Community, 1570–1850 (London, 1975)Google Scholar, pt. 2; Haigh, Christopher, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1975), pt. 3Google Scholar; Wark, K. R., Elizabethan Recusancy in Cheshire, Chetham Society (Manchester, 1971)Google Scholar; Aveling, H., “Some Aspects of Yorkshire Catholic Recusant History,” in Studies in Church History, vol. 4, ed. Cuming, G. J. (Leiden, 1967), pp. 98–121Google Scholar; Finch, Mary E., The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families, 1540–1640, Northamptonshire Record Society, 19 (Oxford, 1956)Google Scholar, chap. 4, “Tresham of Rushton.” But even if for some the threat of oppression remained potential rather than the reality it was for a family like the Treshams—and perhaps there was a better chance of this in the remoter north—all were an excluded section of society.

68 Holmes, Peter, Resistance and Compromise (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 135, 178–79Google Scholar.

69 PRO, SP 14/14/39, 46, 47.

70 It is, of course, entirely appropriate that Puritans and Revolutionaries: Essays in Seventeenth-Century History presented to Christopher Hill, ed. Pennington, Donald and Thomas, Keith (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar, should concentrate so heavily on the Protestant world; of the fifteen articles, only one deals with Catholics: Briggs, Robin, “The Catholic Puritans: Jansenists and Rigorists in France,” pp. 333–54Google Scholar. The opening sentence of that article, although making a different point from that advanced here, somehow suggests a similar thought world: “English puritan divines seem to have found no difficulty in dismissing Roman Catholics en bloc as superstitious and idolatrous.” Holmes's very interesting Resistance and Compromise does distinguish strands of Catholic thought, not only in the ideas themselves, but also chronologically. Yet even here, there is a certain “en bloc” quality; this time, his Catholics are all rational and “political” animals. The extremists, the fanatics, are lacking. Rather more curiously, given that it is a work dealing with the community generally, the same point emerges from Scarisbrick, J. J., The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984), esp. chap. 7Google Scholar. Compare, however, MacCulloch, pp. 248–61.

71 Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Harmondsworth, 1973)Google Scholar, is the one major exception to the above comment. Brief though it is, there is also the reference in Peck (n. 17 above), p. 111, to “the apocalyptic scheme of a band of disillusioned Roman Catholic gentry.”

72 James to Molin, Nicolo, CSPV, 1603–7, p. 297Google Scholar.