The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter, Being a Proof, with Moral Certitude, of the Authorship of the Document: Together with Some Account of the Whole Thirteen Gunpowder Conspirators, Including Guy FawkesSpink, Henry
History
The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter, Being a Proof, with Moral Certitude, of the Authorship of the Document: Together with Some Account of the Whole Thirteen Gunpowder Conspirators, Including Guy Fawkes
Spink, Henry
Gunpowder Plot, 1605; Monteagle, William Parker, Baron, 1574 or 1575-1622
Fawkes was probably _taken into custody_ in the court adjoining Percy’s
house and the House of Lords’ cellar, and a few moments afterwards
_secured_ by being bound with such things in the nature of cords as Knevet
and his men had with them.——See Gardiner’s “_Gunpowder Plot_,” pp.
132-136.
The dark lantern, now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, was left burning
in the cellar by Fawkes.
CHAPTER XXIX.
Let me now make two quotations.
One is from the King’s Book, giving an account of the procedure followed
by the Earl of Suffolk the Lord Chamberlain, and the Lord Mounteagle, the
champion, protector, and hero of the England of his day, in whose honour
the “rare” Ben Jonson[96] himself composed the epigram transcribed at the
end of this Inquiry.
The other quotation, collected from the relation of a certain interview
between Catesby, Tresham, Mounteagle, and Father Garnet, is one which
plainly shows that Mounteagle was closely associated with Catesby, not
merely as a passive listener but as an active sympathiser, as late as the
month of July, 1605, in general treasonable internal projects, which
indeed only just fell short of particular treasonable external acts.
But this, of course, does not prove any complicity of Mounteagle in the
particular designment known as the Gunpowder Treason Plot, of which
diabolical scheme, I have no reasonable doubt, the happy, debonair,
pleasure-loving, but withal shrewd and generous, young nobleman was
perfectly innocent.
These two quotations show, first, how zealously and faithfully Mounteagle
of the Janus-face, looking both before and after——as henceforward we must
regard him——kept his hand on the pulse of the Government at the most
critical hour of his country’s annals, with a view to doing what both he
and his mentor deemed to be justice in the rightful claims and demands,
though diverse and conflicting, of each group of “clients.”
And, secondly, how wisely and prudently Christopher Wright and his
counsellor or counsellors had acted in determining upon this favoured
child of Fortune as their “vessel of election” for conveying that precious
Instrument, which for all time is destined to be known as Lord
Mounteagle’s Letter, to the Earl of Salisbury and, through him, to King
James, his Privy Council and Government, on that Saturday night, the 26th
day of October, 1605.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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