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How the Gunpowder Plot unravelled
00:31:16
Historian John Cooper explains how the Gunpowder Plot was exposed – and how the men behind it were hunted down and subjected to brutal punishment
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- [00:01]
Professor John Cooper
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- [01:00]
Professor John Cooper
Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine.
- [01:10]
Danny Bird
In the autumn of 1605, the conspirators behind the Gunpowder Plot believed they were on the verge of striking a blow that would shake England to its core. But then, a single mysteriously written letter changed everything. I'm Danny Bird and for this four part History Extra series on the Gunpowder Plot, I'm joined by historian Professor John Cooper from the University of York. In this second episode, we follow the dramatic unravelling of the plot, from the discovery of Guy Fawkes beneath the palace of Westminster to the desperate flight of the remaining conspirators and their bloody last stand. We'll also see how the trials and executions that followed were staged to send a chilling message about loyalty, treason and the power of the state. In late October 1605, the Catholic nobleman William Parker, Baron Monteagle, received a mysterious letter warning him to stay away from the state opening of Parliament scheduled for 5 November. What is the significance of that letter? And who do historians think wrote it?
- [02:12]
Professor John Cooper
The Monteagle letter is really significant because it blows the existence of the Gunpowder Plot. I mean, it's a letter, a mysterious letter to, to this Catholic peer, Lord Monteagle, basically warning him to stay away from Parliament because something awful is going to happen. So the question is, who wrote that letter? And there are lots of different possibilities as to who wrote that letter. If you're in the mind of a conspiracy theorist, it could be that the letter itself is fabricated by the government in order to justify the further repression of Catholics. I mean, if you want to believe that, then the whole Gunpowder Plot is itself a kind of fabrication of the government. And there is a line of interpretation that claims that. I mean, not, I think, a completely plausible line of interpretation. But the most likely writer of that letter is Francis Tresham, the sort of 13th man of the Gunpowder Plot, the Judas Iscariot of the plot, and he's always the least committed of the plotters, and it could be that he just wants Monteagle's life to be saved, or it could be that actually Tresham expects that the first thing that Monteagle will do with this letter, this piece of political dynamite, is to take it round to the Privy Council and show it to the Privy Council, who will then tell the King, thus preventing the plot.
- [03:39]
Danny Bird
How far did the plot get before authorities became aware that something was amiss? And how did they miss such a huge stockpile of gunpowder under the palace of Westminster?
- [03:49]
Professor John Cooper
This is one of the interesting things about the Gunpowder Plot, that the authorities know quite a lot about it from a comparatively early stage. So Cecil's intelligences have picked up that Catesby and Winter have been engaged in some sort of plans to make some sort of an attempt on the Houses of Parliament months previously. So Catesby is probably being watched, and that's a rather extraordinary set of circumstances. So it does make us ask questions about the Gunpowder Plot and the extent to which the Government may be just allowing it to play out. But there's something of a delay between the Monteagle letter revealing the existence of the Gunpowder Plot as a real plot, and then James the Sixth and first finding out about it. Cecil sits on that letter for a few days, interestingly, ostensibly because James is out hunting. He waits until James has come back from a hunting expedition before he tells the King. But even that's round about the first of November. So we're talking about a period of several days where the government seems to be aware of something that's going on. At any rate, shortly before the state opening of Parliament, the Palace of Westminster is searched. This is the famous first search, when it's noted by the searchers that there is a big pile of firewood in the cellar underneath the Queen's chamber, underneath the House of Lords. And there's a tall man with a hat and a reddish beard, sort of acting as guardian of that. Nobody seems to think much more of that until this is reported. And then, as the story goes, and this is a story that's kind of refracted through government propaganda, it's James I himself who says, hold on, that sounds suspicious. I'm ordering a second search. And it's the second search where they then look inside that big pile of firewood and they find 36 barrels of gunpowder and this man who's called himself John Johnson, reveals himself ultimately to be Guy Fawkes. Now, there are a number of questions that we might ask about that evidence, but the official account does put James very much as. It's almost sort of divine revelation that James thinks, oh, that sounds strange. I'm going to order this second search. And that reveals the gunpowder treason that's about to go off.
- [06:31]
Danny Bird
I was curious to know, where did the conspirators procure the gunpowder from?
- [06:36]
Professor John Cooper
It's a very interesting question, isn't it, because it was a lot of gunpowder. I mean, we're talking about 36 barrels of the stuff. The answer is not very easy to come up with. We know where the gunpowder went because after the Gunpowder Plot, the powder was taken to the Tower. It was basically taken to the sort of Royal Ordnance Factory, effectively to be reused where it came from. Well, there was actually quite a lot of gunpowder around in early 17th century society, you'd be surprised. So anybody who'd served as a military officer and Catesby and Winter had both served as military officers, would know how to acquire gunpowder, because you needed to acquire it for your unit, for your men. It was manufactured at the Tower, but there were a number of other powder mills that could have supplied the gunpowder. And of course, London in the early 17th century is a port. We don't really think of London as a port in quite the same way these days, but it is a port and any merchant ship or military ship would have had substantial quantities of gunpowder or the guns for defence. So actually, the acquisition of the gunpowder was probably not the biggest problem that the plotters were facing.
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Danny Bird
So do we know much about the exact circumstances of Guy Fawkes arrest and what happened subsequently to him?
- [07:53]
Professor John Cooper
We do know something about the exact circumstances of Guy Fawkes arrest. We know that he gives a false name, although his true identity is fairly rapidly revealed, we know what was found on him. He has, rather suspiciously, for somebody who's sitting on a pile of firewood, he has. Well, in early 17th century English, they're called matches. Essentially they're fuses. And he also has tubes in which to put the fuses, and presumably these are the tubes that would have been inserted into the barrels in order to prime the gunpowder. The question then becomes, is this a suicide mission for Guy Fawkes? Is it intended that he's going to go up with the gunpowder or is he going to light the fuse? He also has a lantern, by the way, a hooded lantern. So he's got a source of fire, basically to light the fuses. Guy Fawkes is a very devoted Catholic. He's an extremely brave man. He's a psychologically complex man. I don't think it's impossible to believe that this was a suicide mission. And he's got nerves of steel. He is prepared to sit there, literally sit there next to all of this gunpowder. My sense is that in order to make the connection between the two sides of the Gunpowder Plot, the connection between the immolation, the destruction of the palace of Westminster and the uprising in the Midlands, it's important that Guy gets away and he's found with riding boots and spurs. So the implication is that somewhere nearby he has a fast horse and he would have lit the fuses and then quietly backed out of that cellar, then run like hell for his horse, and then had a rendezvous with other plotters and then they would have got word to the plotters in the Midlands that the plot had literally ignited.
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Danny Bird
And after Guy Fawkes was arrested underneath the palace of Westminster, he was subjected to an interrogation and forced to confess. Could you go into a little bit more detail about what actually happened to him?
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Professor John Cooper
Guy Fawkes, he's interrogated multiple times. He's an extremely brave man and he would have have known how to operate under torture. I think. I think he'd probably been trained or trained himself not to reveal everything at once, to drip feed information. And it takes a couple of days to get the full story out of him. But there were two principal forms of torture. The manacles, where you were essentially sort of suspended from the ground, and the rack, where you're stretched. And the. One of the many horrible things about the rack is that the pain can be reduced a bit quite easily just by lessening the tension on the rack, but then increased again. So there's a kind of, you know, an awful psychology that operates with that particular form of torture. We know that Guy Fawkes was wrecked. Even so, it takes a couple of days to get. It's not so much a confession out of him because he doesn't, you know, he's discovered with 36 barrels of gunpowder. There's never any question that he was about to engage in an act of what we would today call, you know, terrorism. What his interrogators are trying to get out of him is who else is involved. So Guy Fawkes knows that his life is forfeit. There's no way he's going to escape this. But what he can do is delay long enough that other members of the plot could perhaps ignite the other half of the plot, which is the Conspiracy in the Midlands, the rebellion in the Midlands. So he's trying to prot his fellow conspirators, I think, and that must have taken a remarkable degree of bravery.
- [11:41]
Danny Bird
And of course, the plot has failed. The palace of Westminster survives. How did the other half of the conspiracy then play out? Were people aware that the plot had failed immediately?
- [11:51]
Professor John Cooper
So communication time between Westminster, London and the Midlands is, you know, it's obviously based on the speed that a fast horseman can ride. I think it fairly rapidly becomes clear to the principal plotters that the first part of the plot has failed, that Fawkes has been discovered, that there is no big explosion, that government continues to function as normal. And then they have a choice to make. They either all disperse and hope that nobody finds out their identities, or they try and ignite the second part of the plot anyway. And they choose the second of those options. So the second half of the plot, this uprising across the sort of, you know, Catholic recusant Midlands does take place, or it begins to take place. So the principal plotters do Catesby and Winter, and they do exactly what they had agreed to do. There is a hunting party organized, they try and rally the local Catholic gentry and they try and feed them. I think the story that government is in disarray, the King may have been killed. It's time to safeguard and protect the Princess Elizabeth and proclaim a Catholic government. But pretty quickly it becomes evident to those, that kind of wider group of gentlemen that this is just a fabrication of lies, that the palace of Westminster hasn't been destroyed, that the King is still very much living. And so the uprising of a couple of hundred gentlemen across the Midlands that Catesby and Winter had wanted to ferment, that rapidly does not happen. And then again, Catesby's faced with a choice. Do they run for cover or do they try and make a last stand? And they decide to fight it out. They decide to make a last stand. And even when they reach the final last stand, the whole beach house, they're moving around a cart with them full of arms and gunpowder. So they're carrying weapons with them and they decide to fight. And I think that's one of the reasons that the Gunpowder Plot continues to resonate. You know, it doesn't just all sort of fizzle out, that the remaining plotters, they make this dramatic, almost western style last stand. A gun battle at an English country house in which, you know, Catesby is killed and Thomas Winter is badly wounded.
- [14:22]
Danny Bird
You mentioned the Princess Elizabeth there. We should talk about who she was. Exactly.
- [14:25]
Professor John Cooper
So the Princess Elizabeth is James young daughter, the daughter of James and Queen Anne, and she's actually third in line to the throne. So the way the line of succession works in early Stuart England is that the boys would inherit first. So the heir to the throne is Prince Henry. And then if Prince Henry were to die, then the very young Prince Charles would be heir to the throne. If Charles were to die or to be incapable, then Princess Elizabeth would be third in line. @ one level, she's a plausible candidate, I suppose, for a sort of a puppet Catholic government. She's only nine years old. If she had been, well, she would have been kidnapped, essentially. There's no way she would have done this willingly, because even at nine years old, the Princess Elizabeth has shown herself to be quite a strikingly Protestant presence. She wouldn't, I think, easily have fallen in with a Catholic conspiracy that had blown up her father and her brother. And I don't think this is something the conspirators had ever really thought. So the idea that Princess Elizabeth would have been ruling as Queen Elizabeth II is, I think, really a fantasy. She would have been a figurehead, so proclamations would have been issued in her name, but a Catholic puppet government would have assembled around her. And I suspect that Elizabeth would have been forced into a marriage with a Catholic nobleman pretty quickly. And the expectation would be that it would be a new Catholic regime, sort of headed by that Catholic nobleman, but nominally carried out in the name of Queen Elizabeth. But all of this we're really speculating about because the state paper trial records tell us remarkably little about this. And even when the conspirators are interrogated and threatened with torture and then tortured, their details on some things are very, very accurate. And they concur. Their details around the Princess Elizabeth are actually. They're quite sketchy. And that rather suggests. Well, it suggests one or two things. Either that Catesby had a brilliant plan in his head that died with him, or that they were playing it by ear. And I suspect it's the second of those.
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Danny Bird
Cause there is, I believe, a theory that Prince Charles may have been another candidate they'd have sought to potentially turn into a puppet monarch. Obviously, Princess Elizabeth is the person they choose to go with. But do we know why they chose her specifically, given what you've just told me about her being quite a devoted Protestant?
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Professor John Cooper
I don't think they care about her being a devoted Protestant. I think that they probably imagine that what they want to do could be done without the active support and complicity of the princess or this new queen Elizabeth Charles is very young. He's only recently learned to walk. Elizabeth is nine years old. There is a precedent. Prince Edward, Edward VI had come to the throne aged nine years old in the mid Tudor period. So it is, you know, nine seems a crazily young age for somebody to come to the throne. But that has actually happened sort of actually within people's lifetimes in 1604, 1605. So it's possible that that's why they go for Elizabeth. I think, to be honest, I think it might reflect two things, right? I think it might reflect the fact that Charles is a sickly child. Nobody knows whether he's going to be well enough to attend the state opening of parliament. They don't know whether he's gonna be there or not. They don't know whether he's gonna be dead or alive. The conspirators, they know that Prince Henry will be there and he will therefore be dead. So possibly if Charles survived, they might have gone through that route. But I think this actually reflects the quite, quite sort of gendered thinking of the conspirators and that is that they assume that a woman, a princess, is going to be more malleable and that if they can marry Elizabeth to a suitable candidate, then they can rule through her, but that she wouldn't be an active force in government. I suspect that's the truth behind it.
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Danny Bird
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Professor John Cooper
The trials and of course the executions are an absolute political sensation. I mean, any treason trial of this kind tends to be conducted in Westminster Hall. But there's a particular poignancy about treason trials being conducted in Westminster hall because Westminster hall is one of the places that the conspirators would have would have blown up. I mean, a treason trial is a trial in name only, really. I mean, it's, you know, if you're accused of treason, you don't have any legal representation. You're not really allowed to defend yourself in any meaningful way These days, we would think of it as being a show trial. And it's clear that the trial is part of this very rapidly developing notion of divine providence in action, that this was a real plot. It was a plot that was deathly serious. It came very close to igniting. What has prevented that plot? What has prevented King James from being assassinated and everybody who is anybody in early Stuart England being killed in an almighty explosion? It's the action of God, it's the protection of God. And that's the propaganda line that's spun out of this. And we see Attorney General Cook being very involved in this, in his interrogations and his line of questioning. The whole presentation of the trial becomes part of a. Of a big sort of propaganda campaign to explain to the English public in particular, and perhaps the wider British public, that this was a genuine conspiracy and it came within an ace of succeeding. And that the only way of explaining the discovery of this plot, it's not the Jacobean secret service, it's the fact that God has intervened in the affairs of men and protected King James. That's the line that's promoted. Very soon after the announcement of the discovery of the gunpowder treason, the powder treason, as it's called, at the time, bonfires start being lit in London. So that tradition of bonfires on, as it were, Bonfire Night, begins right at the beginning, begins right at the discovery. Now, the extent to which this is the Privy Council coordinating a kind of propaganda campaign and telling communities, right, organise a bonfire for the safe delivery of the King, or whether it's local communities actually spontaneously celebrating that the King has not been assassinated, this Catholic conspiracy has been defeated, we don't know, actually. What we do know is that the government is sufficiently involved in this process that it actually creates an official form of prayer to celebrate the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, which is mandated, ultimately mandated by act of Parliament, to be used in every English parish church, certainly right from the trial, and particularly at the executions, again, there was an enormous campaign of broadcasting these events in any ways possible. Broadcasting through pamphlets, broadcasting through sermons and broadcasting through church services and through engravings as well. And that's the origin of the famous engraving that viewers and listeners may have seen of the gunpowder plotters with their big floppy hats and their extravagant moustaches and little sort of cartoon names above their heads that actually dates from 1605. So it's part of that same propaganda campaign.
- [25:14]
Danny Bird
What kind of punishments were meted out to those that had survived the plot?
- [25:17]
Professor John Cooper
The conspirators who survived the plot were found guilty of treason. And treason. The death of punishment for treason is a long and very awful one. The only way of avoiding this is if you're high born. So sometimes noblemen guilty of treason are beheaded. There is no nobleman behind the Gunpowder Plot. Catesby is dead already. So it's Winter and it's Guy Fawkes and a few of the lesser conspirators who face the full horrors of a traitor's death. And Attorney General Cook sort of describes this enormous gleeful detail about what will happen to them, that they're hanged until not quite dead, and then they're castrated and then those bits are burned in front of them and then they're slit apart and their entrails are slopped out onto the floor and then they're beheaded and then they're cut into four pieces and then those pieces are tarred and stuck on spikes. So that's what happened to them. At least that's what happens to Thomas Winter. It ultimately happens to the Jesuit Henry Garnet as well, who's also caught up in the sort of aftermath of the conspiracy. Even though it's very doubtful whether Garnet was actually involved in the conspiracy directly, there's an interesting codicil to what happens to Guy Fawkes himself. He cheats the executioner. I mean, Guy Fawkes has been racked. We know from his signature, his, you know, very spidery wobbly signature on his ultimate confession, that it's a man who's been very brutally treated. But somehow when he's ascending the scaffold and has the noose around his neck, he either manages to get high enough or he manages to summon the physical strength to jump and he breaks his neck immediately. So it's an instant death for Guy Fawkes, which again, just shows, I suppose, it shows his presence of mind, it shows his extraordinary bravery. It shows those nerves of steel that, you know, enabled him to sit on that big pile of gunpowder underneath the palace of Westminster.
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Danny Bird
That's an extremely gruesome description. Thank you, John. Why did the failure of the Gunpowder Plot end up being not only a huge relief, but also a political gift to James? Virginia?
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Professor John Cooper
There's a lot of anti Catholic feeling in England and a number of parliamentarians, a number of Privy Councillors, are rather, I think, alarmed by the language of toleration that James is speaking when he becomes King of England. Also, the fines that Catholics pay and the estates that are confiscated were a very useful source of money for the Treasury. And if Catholicism is going to be tolerated as some kind of state Minority, state sanctioned, minority religion. That money tap will switch off to the Exchequer and the Treasury. And also we're talking, remember, about very sectarian times in which there is a terror amongst the English establishment, that if Catholics are allowed to breed and this is the language that they use, that they'll create a kind of fifth column within England, that if the persecution of these people ends, that they'll grow and grow and grow and ultimately they won't stop sort of, you know, trying to lead conspiracies. They won't stop trying to persuade the Catholic powers of Europe to intervene in English affairs. There might be another invasion armada. So there are a lot of people invested, I think, in using the Gunpowder Plot to whip up sectarian anti Catholic tension. And I think James himself is terrified by the Gunpowder Plot. James has actually suffered assassination attempts and kidnap attempts back home in Scotland. He's always been worried about the idea of being assassinated. Elizabeth has also faced assassination attempts. But Elizabeth of England somehow manages to brazen this out. James is. Well, he's sometimes described, I think, rather unfairly as being timorous, as being aware of the danger of assassination. I mean, if you look at the way that James was raised, you'd be quite understanding of why he might be fearful of assassination. But I think the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot and the way in which it's described to him means that any ideas of toleration of Catholics really have gone from his head. And he is deeply shocked by this. And I think it ignites with him a fear of assassination sort of within his English dominions as well, that never really goes away. So I think that has quite profound consequences from now on. Also, James has a very difficult relationship with Parliament itself. It might be too spurious to make a sort of connection between James dislike of Parliament and the fact that he was nearly blown up whilst opening Parliament. I mean, psychologically, there might be something there, I think, to explore.
- [30:28]
Danny Bird
Next time we'll be looking at what might have happened had the Gunpowder Plot succeeded and what this might have meant for England's political and religious unity. If you enjoyed today's episode and want to know more about the Gunpowder Plot, head over to the History Extra app. To go beyond the podcast, I've selected several articles from the BBC History Magazine and the History Extra archives that will help you to broaden your knowledge of what you've learned today with features from historians including Lucy Worsley, Justin Pollard, Claire Jackson and more. You can find a link to download the app and access that content in the description of this episode.
- [31:13]
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- [31:42]
Danny Bird
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- [31:57]
Professor John Cooper
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Professor John Cooper
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Danny Bird
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