Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/289

 were revived and the old statutes put in force. The catholics, who had begun to hope for better days, were goaded to frenzy by this change of attitude. The more conscientious and the more sincerely desirous they were simply to enjoy the liberty of worshipping God after their own fashion, the more sullenly they brooded over their wrongs. The catholics by this time had become divided into two parties somewhat sharply antagonistic the one to the other. The one party consisted of those who had a vague idea of setting up an organised ecclesiastical establishment in England which should be placed under the discipline of its own bishops appointed by the pope, and which should occupy almost exactly the same position occupied by the Roman catholics in England at the present moment. They hoped that by submitting themselves to the government and taking the oath of allegiance they might purchase for themselves a measure of toleration of which they suspected that in process of time they might avail themselves to bring back the nation to its allegiance to the see of Rome.

The other party consisted of those who were under the paramount influence of the jesuits, and these were vehemently opposed to any submission or any temporising; they would have all or nothing, and any concession to the heretics or any weak yielding to laws which they denounced as immoral they taught was mortal sin, to be punished by exclusion for ever from the church of Christ in earth or heaven. It was with this latter party—the party who, not content with toleration, could be satisfied with nothing but supremacy—that Catesby had allied himself, and of which he was qualified to be a leading personage. At the accession of James I he was in his thirtieth year, of commanding stature (, p. 57) and great bodily strength, with a strikingly beautiful face and extremely captivating manners. He is said to have exercised a magical influence upon all who mixed with him. His purse was always at the service of his friends, and he had suffered grievously for his convictions. Moreover, he was a sincerely religious man after his light, a fanatic in fact, who subordinated all considerations of prudence to the demands which his dogmatic creed appeared to him to require. A catholic first, but anything and everything else afterwards. Such men get thrust into the front of any insane enterprise that they persuade themselves is for the advancement of a holy cause, and Catesby when he girded on his sword took care to have that sword engraved ‘with the passion of our Lord,’ and honestly believed he was entering upon a sacred crusade for the glory of God. In the confused tangle of testimony and contradiction, of confession under torture, hearsay reports and dexterous prevarication on which the story of the Gunpowder plot is based, it is difficult to unravel the thread of a narrative which is told in so many different ways. Thus much, however, seems to be plain, viz. that the plot was originally hatched by Thomas Winter about the summer of 1604, first communicated to Guy Faux and soon after to Catesby, who was always to be relied on to furnish money; that it was not revealed to any of the Roman priesthood except under the seal of confession, which rendered it impossible for them as priests to divulge it; that the two jesuit fathers Garnett and Gerrard, who were a great deal too astute and sagacious not to see the immeasurable imprudence of any such attempt, revolted from its wickedness, and did their best to prevent it, foreseeing the calamitous issue that was sure to result from it; finally, that it never would have gone so far as it did but for the ferocious daring of Faux, supported by the immovable obstinacy, amounting to monomania, of Catesby. The Gunpowder plot is, however, a matter of history, not of biography, and into its details it is not advisable here to enter. The full particulars are to be read in the confession of Thomas Winter, among the documents at the Record Office (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1603–11, pp. 262, 279). It is sufficient to say that about midnight of 4 Nov. 1605 Faux was apprehended at the door of the cellar under the parliament house by Sir Thomas Knyvett, who found thirty-six barrels of powder in casks and hogsheads prepared in all readiness for the explosion. Catesby obtained information of his confederate's arrest almost immediately and lost no time in getting to horse. He was joined by the two Wrights, Percy, and Ambrose Rookwood, and the party reached Ashby St. Legers, a distance of eighty miles, in less than seven hours. On the evening of the 7th the whole company, about sixty strong, reached Holbeach, on the borders of Staffordshire. Next morning occurred the remarkable explosion of the gunpowder which the conspirators were getting ready for their defence of the house against assault, whereby Catesby himself was severely scorched. Some few hours after this Sir Richard Walsh arrived with his force, surrounded the house, and summoned the rebels to lay down their arms. On their refusal the attack commenced, and Catesby and Percy, standing back to back and fighting furiously, were shot through the body with two bullets from the same musket. Catesby, crawling into the house upon his hands and knees, seized an image of the Virgin, and dropped down dead with it clasped