For the next twelve years the Tower was Raleigh’s home, and not till he had succeeded in bribing King James’s favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, by the payment of a large sum of money, did he again obtain his liberty. Before settling down in the Tower, and while the plague was still raging, Raleigh, with his wife and son, were taken to the Fleet Prison on several occasions. At length they were placed in the not uncomfortable rooms in the Bloody Tower, which he, with his family and servants, must have quite filled, for besides Lady Raleigh and her son Carew, there were two servants named Dean and Talbot, and a boy, who was probably a son of Talbot’s. Their imprisonment was not absolutely rigid, for they were allowed the visits of a clergyman named Hawthorne, a doctor, Turner, and a surgeon, Dr John, as well as those of Sir Walter’s agent, who came up from Raleigh’s place, Sherborn, so that he was kept in touch with his affairs; one or two other friends were also admitted. In addition to these privileges Sir Walter was allowed the run—the liberty as it would be called then—of the Lieutenant of the Tower’s garden, which lay at the foot of the Bloody Tower, as has already been mentioned in the description of that place. In 1604 the penal laws against the Roman Catholics were re-enacted by Parliament, and in the following year the famous Gunpowder Plot was discovered, with the consequence that in the month of November of that year the Tower received many of the principal conspirators, and still more of those individuals who were in some way or other concerned in it. Foremost amongst the latter were the aged Earl of Northumberland, Henry Percy, and with him were Henry, Lord Mordaunt, Lord Stourton, and three Jesuit priests, Fathers Garnet, Oldcorn, and Gerrard. Northumberland, besides having to pay an enormous fine, was kept a prisoner in the Tower for sixteen years; Mordaunt and Stourton were also heavily fined and remanded to the fortress during the King’s pleasure; Fathers Garnet and Oldcorn were hanged—the former at St Paul’s, in the usual manner, after being cruelly tortured, the latter at Worcester. As for the third priest, Gerrard, I have in another part of this work described the treatment he endured and his escape from the Tower. [Illustration: _The Byward Tower and Moat from the Wharf_] Of the active conspirators, besides Guy Fawkes—who was executed with Thomas Winter, Rookwood, and Keyes in Old Palace Yard—Sir Everard Digby, the father of the accomplished Sir Kenelm, Robert Winter, Grant, and Bates, were drawn on hurdles to the west end of St Paul’s Churchyard, where they were done to death in the approved fashion of execution for high treason.