The Gunpowder Plot:
Filling in the gaps
Did Fawkes really betray his co-conspirators under torture?
The accepted truth is that Fawkes broke on the rack and confessed the names of his fellow plotters. But the chronology of his arrest and questioning – as seen in assorted state papers about the Gunpowder Plot in the National Archives, Kew – does not add up.
5 November Early in the morning, Fawkes is arrested and taken for questioning. The first warrant is issued – for the arrest of Thomas Percy, identified by the landlord as the man who had leased the Westminster cellar.
6 November James I decides to have Fawkes tortured.
7 November Fawkes holds out under torture, revealing only his own identity. Nevertheless, an arrest warrant is issued naming all the chief conspirators. The same evening, a posse comitatus is hot on the fugitives’ heels as they flee westward.
8 November Several conspirators are killed in a shoot-out at Holbeach House in Staffordshire, and others are captured. But only on this day, according to his signed confession, does Fawkes begin to name his fellow conspirators.
This means that the second arrest warrant had been made out for men whose names were not yet officially known. Historians have explained this – when they have noticed it – by saying that the plotters were probably identified earlier, during an abortive raid on Warwick for arms and horses. But that raid had been carried out at night, with no street lights. Men of the time wore wide-brimmed hats and had beards and moustaches. They also wore cloaks and bulky clothing that disguised body shape. How had they been identified?
Given those circumstances and that time sequence, I find it hard to believe that Cecil didn’t already know who the conspirators were, before Fawkes confessed. In my novel, I suggest that Cecil already had them under observation, by someone very like my fictional firemaster Francis Quoynt (although Francis finds that he likes the plotters better than he does his employer). Why did Cecil pretend ignorance? In my book, I suggest a possible answer to that as well.
