Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 18.djvu/274

 At one o'clock in the morning the council met in the king's bedchamber at Whitehall, and Fawkes, who betrayed neither fear nor excitement, was brought in under guard. He coolly declined to give any information about himself beyond stating that his name was Johnson, and persisted in absolute silence when interrogated as to his fellow-conspirators. He asserted that he was sorry for nothing but that the explosion had not taken place. When asked by the king whether he did not regret his proposed attack on the royal family, he replied that a desperate disease required a dangerous remedy, and added that ‘one of his objects was to blow the Scots back again into Scotland.’ Fawkes was removed the same night to the Tower, and was subjected to further examination by the judges Popham and Coke, and Sir William Waad, lieutenant of the Tower, on each of the following days. A long series of searching questions was prepared by the king himself on 6 Nov. (cf. Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. viii. 369). Fawkes's name was discovered by a letter found upon him from Anne, lady Vane, but no threats of torture could extort the names of his friends, nor any expression of regret for the crime he had meditated. To overcome his obstinacy he was subjected to the rack, ‘per gradus ad ima,’ by royal warrant. Torture had the desired effect. On 8 Nov., although still ‘stubborn and perverse,’ he gave a history of the conspiracy without mentioning names. On the next day his resolution broke down, and he revealed the names of his fellow-conspirators, after learning that several had already been arrested at Holbeach. His confession is signed in a trembling hand ‘Guido Fawkes.’ Meanwhile parliament had met as arranged on 5 Nov., and on 9 Nov. had been adjourned till 21 Jan. On that day the 5th of November was set apart for ever as a day of thanksgiving. Guy Fawkes's name is still chiefly associated with the date. A proposal to inflict some extraordinary punishment on the offenders awaiting trial was wisely rejected. A special thanksgiving service was prepared for the churches, and many pamphlets, some in Latin verse, denounced the plotters.

On 27 Jan. 1605–6 Fawkes, with the two Winters, Grant, Rookwood, Keyes, and Bates, were tried before a special commission in Westminster Hall. All pleaded not guilty. Fawkes was asked by the lord chief justice, Popham, how he could raise such a plea after his confessions of guilt, and he replied that he would not retract his confession, but the indictment implicated ‘the holy fathers’ in the plot, which was unwarranted. All the prisoners were found guilty as soon as their confessions were read. Sir Everard Digby was then tried and convicted separately. Finally judgment of death was passed on all. On Friday, 31 Jan., Fawkes, with Winter, Rookwood, and Keyes, were drawn from the Tower to the old palace at Westminster, opposite the parliament house, where a scaffold was erected. Fawkes was the last to mount. He was weak and ill from torture, and had to be helped up the ladder. He spoke briefly, and asked forgiveness of the king and state.

A rare print of the plotters Fawkes, the two Wrights, the two Winters, Catesby, Percy, and Bates, was published in Holland by Simon Pass soon after their execution, and was many times reissued. There is a copy in Caulfield's ‘Memoirs of Remarkable Persons,’ 1795, ii. 97. A contemporary representation of the execution by N. de Visscher is also extant, besides an elaborate design by Michael Droeshout entitled ‘The Powder Treason, Propounded by Sattan, Approved by Anti-Christ,’ which includes a portrait of ‘Guydo Fauxe.’ In Carleton's ‘Thankfull Remembrance’ is an engraving by F. Hulsius, showing ‘G. Faux’ with his lighted lantern in the neighbourhood of some barrels. A somewhat similar illustration appears in Vicars's ‘Quintessence of Cruelty, a Master Peice of Treachery,’ 1641, a translation from the Latin verse of Dr. [Francis] Herring, issued in 1606, and translated in 1610. In most of these drawings Fawkes's christian name is printed as ‘Guydo’ or ‘Guido,’ a variant of ‘Guye,’ which he seems to have acquired during his association with the Spaniards. A lantern, said to be the one employed by Fawkes in the cellar, is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. A Latin inscription states that it was the gift of ‘Robert Heywood, late proctor of the university, 4 April 1641.’ Another lantern, to which the same tradition attaches, was sold from Rushden Hall, Northamptonshire, about 1830 (History of Rushden Hall).

[A True and Perfect Relation of the whole Proceedings against the late most Barbarous Traitors, London, 1606, is an official version of the story of the plot. The account of the trial is very imperfect, consisting mainly of the vituperative speeches of Coke and Northampton. It was reprinted with additions as ‘The Gunpowder Treason, with a Discourse of the Manner of its Discovery,’ in 1679. See also the Relation of the Gunpowder under the Parliament House, printed in Archæologia, xii. 202*; Howell's State Trials; David Jardine's Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, 1857; Winwood's Memorials; The Fawkes's of York in the Sixteenth Century, 1850; Gardiner's Hist. of England, vol. i.; State Papers (Dom. James I), 1605–6; and art. . William Hazlitt contributed three articles to the