Henry Spink

Let us now examine the Letter itself.

The first thing to be noted is that no reprint that I have seen of the famous Letter, whether in ancient or modern continuous Relations of the Gunpowder Plot, is strictly correct. For they all omit the pronoun “yowe” after the words “my lord out of the loue i beare.” This pronoun “yowe” is indeed crossed out in the original Letter with a blurred net-work of lines.[55] But, this notwithstanding, it can be still detected in the original document, happily, even to this day, to be seen in the Record Office, London.

Now the fact that this word “yowe” is crossed out in this mysterious fashion, coupled with the fact that the words used at the end of the Letter are as follow: “and i hope god will give yowe the grace to mak good[56] use of it to whose holy proteccion i comend yowe,” makes it clear (to my mind) that an universal temporal salvation of the destined victims was intended by the revealing conspirator and by his penman, and not merely the particular salvation of the recipient of the Letter.

Again, the meaning of the words “for the danger is passed as soon as yowe have burnt the letter,” is in one sense fairly clear. For as Wilson says, in his “Life of James I.” (1653), p. 30, “the writer’s desire was to have the letter burned, and then the danger would be past both to the writer and the receiver, if he had grace to make use of the warning.”[57]

This must be the, at least, ostensible meaning. For it is obvious that neither Wright nor Oldcorne (ex hypothesi) would, for different but most potent reasons, wish the penman of the Letter to be known to the then public, either Catholic or Protestant.

Now it was in accordance with universal right reason and moral fitness that Father Oldcorne should— so far as was consistent with his being satisfied that warning of the Plot had been given through trustworthy channels to the King’s principal Secretary of State— keep in the background and not himself in person adventure upon the theatre of action, even for the purpose of compassing an object which he was bound by his vocation, alike in Justice and Charity, to compass. For by the Act 27 Elizabeth, he was “a traitor,” being a Priest and remaining in England for more than forty days. While the fact that he was a Jesuit into the bargain would be, of course, counted an aggravation of his statutory offence.[58]

Again, Father Oldcorne had to remember, besides the ideal standard that his vocation imposed upon him, the practical standard which was the unwritten law that guided the conscience of the best of the average Catholics in that period of their intolerable sufferings.[A] For it is a fact of human nature that every man seeks to instruct his conscience by some objective rule or standard of Truth and Right; but that instincts and emotions oftentimes finally rule men rather than reason and argumentative proof.

[A] The English papists groaned under the following persecution:— The poor were practically liable to be fined (and therefore sold up “stick and pin”) one shilling every time they absented themselves from their parish church. The richer members of the community were compelled to pay £20 per lunar month. Many of the English nobility, gentry, and yeomanry were ruined by this; indeed the Catholics must have been very rich on the whole to hold out as long as they did. It was the Government authorities (Clerical and Lay) that did the persecuting; individual Protestants often sought to mitigate the miseries of their fellow-countrymen from whom they differed in religion. Being reconciled to the See of Rome was death, and to be a popish priest was by the terrible Statute 27 Eliz. to be “a traitor” and to be liable to be hanged, cut down alive, bowelled, and quartered. To say Mass was to be liable to a fine of 200 marks and imprisonment for life (a mark was 13s. 4d.). To hear Mass was to be liable to a fine of 100 marks and imprisonment for life. To harbour a priest was death and forfeiture of property.

It was, furthermore, incumbent upon Oldcorne to recollect that more harm than good is frequently occasioned in this entangled world by an unseasonable, indiscriminate, “heroic” application of abstract principles (faultless in themselves) to the varied and perplexing circumstances of man’s terrestrial life.

To illustrate my propositions: It is worth while remembering that even so lofty a soul as Mrs. Ambrose Rookwood evidently regarded her husband, primarily, as a sufferer for conscience sake, and only secondarily, if at all, as a repentant sacrilegious traitor and murderer in desire, who was suffering condign punishment and paying the just penalty of his ruthless crimes.

No doubt special allowances have to be made for this poor woman, inasmuch as her husband and children were all the world to her. But still the following recorded statement proves that the tendency was for even the best of the average English Catholics of that day, of whom Mrs. Rookwood is a fair type and specimen, to centre their sympathies on the wrong-doers rather than on the wronged.

This was natural enough; for man’s disposition is to be led by his unconscious instincts and emotional sympathies rather than by drawn-out reason and cool argument, as has been mentioned above.

It was the bounden duty of Oldcorne to hold that disposition strictly in check and to keep himself absolutely master of the tendency. But, on this being assured, he was bound likewise to remember that the tendency existed, and that he lived in a world not of angels, nor of machines, but of men— of men indeed who were not totally depraved, nor utterly corrupt, yet who were sorely wounded and weakened in intellect, heart, and will.

The crying want of the present day— as of Oldcorne’s day— is not only for men but for men who are statesmen. And no man can be a statesman unless he has a wide and profound knowledge of human nature, and who, while he pities human nature and loves it, never makes the mistake of expecting too much from it. In other words, we require men who are humanists and humorists, as I cannot but think was the character of Edward Oldcorne.

Now, no man in England knew better nor recognised more fully (for he knew the virtually omnipotent transforming power of the precedent conditions of person, time, and circumstance) the truth of the propositions I have just enunciated than did Father Oldcorne. But this notwithstanding, I hold it was not the truth of the foregoing propositions ALONE— indisputable doubtless as he regarded them— that finally controlled the motives that ruled the action— in substance and in form— at the most critical moment of the existence of this acute, disciplined, high-minded Yorkshireman, when by Fate he was called upon to contemplate, after the fateful November the Fifth, the bloody, prodigious Gunpowder Plot, and the mighty feat which Destiny had imposed upon him for helping to spin the same right round on its axis, even though well-nigh at the eleventh hour.[59]

What finally controlled the motives, the positive not negative motives, that ruled that beneficent and never-to-be-forgotten action of this Yorkshire Priest and Jesuit in that supreme moment— the Plot having then become, through his instrumentality, as a mere bubble-burst— will be discovered in due course of this Inquiry.

The remark of Mrs. Rookwood to which I have referred is given in Gerard’s “Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot,” p. 219. Thomas Winter, Rookwood, Keyes, and Fawkes were drawn on their hurdles from the Tower to the Yard of the old Palace of Westminster over against the Parliament House.

“As they were drawn upon the Strand, Mr. Rookwood had provided that he should be admonished when he came over against the lodging where his wife lay: and being come unto the place, he opened his eyes (which before he kept shut to attend better to his prayers), and seeing her stand in a window to see him pass by, he raised himself as well as he could up from the hurdle, and said aloud unto her: ‘Pray for me, pray for me,’ She answered him also aloud: ‘I will; and be of good courage and offer thyself wholly to God. I for my part do as freely restore thee to God as he gave thee to me,’”

This was Friday, the 31st day of January, 1605-6.

On the previous day in St. Paul’s Churchyard had been likewise hanged, cut down alive, drawn, and quartered, Sir Everard Digby, Robert Winter, John Grant, and Thomas Bates.

Catesby, John Wright, and Christopher Wright had been slain at Holbeach on the 8th of November previously.

Thomas Percy died of wounds there received the next day.

Father Tesimond had proceeded to Huddington, doubtless mainly in the hope, let us trust, of stirring up in the hearts of these desperate creatures sorrow— that great natural sacrament— for their awful crimes that, not in vain, had cried to Heaven for vengeance! For truly the guilty suffer and the blood-guilty man shall not live out half his days.