They took him to the King’s bed-chamber first of all, and there the
King (causing him to be held very tight, and keeping a good way off),
asked him how he could have the heart to intend to destroy so many
innocent people? ‘Because,’ said Guy Fawkes, ‘desperate diseases need
desperate remedies.’ To a little Scotch favourite, with a face like a
terrier, who asked him (with no particular wisdom) why he had collected
so much gunpowder, he replied, because he had meant to blow Scotchmen
back to Scotland, and it would take a deal of powder to do that. Next
day he was carried to the Tower, but would make no confession. Even
after being horribly tortured, he confessed nothing that the Government
did not already know; though he must have been in a fearful state—as
his signature, still preserved, in contrast with his natural
hand-writing before he was put upon the dreadful rack, most frightfully
shows. Bates, a very different man, soon said the Jesuits had had to do
with the plot, and probably, under the torture, would as readily have
said anything. Tresham, taken and put in the Tower too, made
confessions and unmade them, and died of an illness that was heavy upon
him. Rookwood, who had stationed relays of his own horses all the way
to Dunchurch, did not mount to escape until the middle of the day, when
the news of the plot was all over London. On the road, he came up with
the two Wrights, Catesby, and Percy; and they all galloped together
into Northamptonshire. Thence to Dunchurch, where they found the
proposed party assembled. Finding, however, that there had been a plot,
and that it had been discovered, the party disappeared in the course of
the night, and left them alone with Sir Everard Digby. Away they all
rode again, through Warwickshire and Worcestershire, to a house called
Holbeach, on the borders of Staffordshire. They tried to raise the
Catholics on their way, but were indignantly driven off by them. All
this time they were hotly pursued by the sheriff of Worcester, and a
fast increasing concourse of riders. At last, resolving to defend
themselves at Holbeach, they shut themselves up in the house, and put
some wet powder before the fire to dry. But it blew up, and Catesby was
singed and blackened, and almost killed, and some of the others were
sadly hurt. Still, knowing that they must die, they resolved to die
there, and with only their swords in their hands appeared at the
windows to be shot at by the sheriff and his assistants. Catesby said
to Thomas Winter, after Thomas had been hit in the right arm which
dropped powerless by his side, ‘Stand by me, Tom, and we will die
together!’—which they did, being shot through the body by two bullets
from one gun. John Wright, and Christopher Wright, and Percy, were also
shot. Rookwood and Digby were taken: the former with a broken arm and a
wound in his body too.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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