Fawkes, indeed, was not truthful in his early examinations, but he had
no inducement to invent this story, and it may be noted that whenever
the accounts which have reached us go into details invariably they speak
of two separate actions connected with the arrest. The draft to Parry,
indeed, only speaks of the first apprehension, but the draft of the
narrative which finally appeared in the King's Book[213] says that
Knyvet 'finding the same party with whom the Lord Chamberlain before and
the Lord Monteagle had spoken newly, come out of the vault, made stay of
him.' Then Knyvet goes into the vault and discovers the powder.
"Whereupon the caitiff being surely seized, made no difficulty to
confess, &c."[214] The letter to the ambassadors[215] tells the same
story. Knyvet going into the vault 'found that fellow Johnson newly come
out of the vault, and without asking any more questions stayed him.'
Then after the search 'he perceived the barrels and so bound the caitiff
fast.' The King's Book itself separates at least the 'apprehending' from
the searching.
"But before his entry into the house finding Thomas Percy's alleged
man standing without the doors,[216] his clothes and boots on at
so dead a time of the night, he resolved to apprehend him, as he
did, and thereafter went forward to the searching of the house ...
and thereafter, searching the fellow whom he had taken, found three
matches, and all other instruments fit for blowing up the powder
ready upon him."
All these are cast more or less in the same mould. On the other hand, a
story, in all probability emanating from Knyvet, which Howes
interpolated in a narrative based on the official account, gives a
possibility of reconciling the usual account of the arrest with the one
told by Fawkes. After telling, after the fashion of the King's Book, of
Fawkes' apprehension and Knyvet's search, he bursts on a sudden into a
narrative of which no official document gives the slightest hint:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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