Note 91 — Chapter II

It must, at the same time, be confessed that the character of the plotters is one of the most perplexing features of the Plot. The crime contemplated was without parallel in its brutal and senseless atrocity. There had, it is true, been powder-plots before, notably that which had effected the destruction of the king's own father, Lord Darnley, a fact undoubtedly calculated to make much impression upon the timorous mind of James. But what marked off our Gunpowder Plot from all others, was the wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter in which it must have resulted, and the absence of any possibility that the cause could be benefited which the conspirators had at heart. It was at once reprobated and denounced by the Catholics of England, and by the friends and near relatives of the conspirators themselves.[91] It might be supposed that those who undertook such an enterprise were criminals of the deepest dye, and ruffians of a more than usually repulsive type. In spite, however, of the turbulent element in their character of which we have seen something, such a judgment would, in the opinion of historians, be altogether erroneous. Far from their being utterly unredeemed villains, it appears, in fact, that apart from the one monstrous transgression which has made them infamous, they should be distinguished in the annals of crime as the least disreputable gang of conspirators who ever plotted a treason. On this point we have ample evidence from those who are by no means their friends. "Atrocious as their whole undertaking was," writes Mr. Gardiner,[92] "great as must have been the moral obliquity of their minds before they could have conceived such a project, there was at least nothing mean or selfish about them. They boldly risked their lives for what they honestly believed to be the cause of God and of their country. Theirs was a crime which it would never have entered into the heart of any man to commit who was not raised above the low aims of the ordinary criminal." Similarly Mr. Jardine, a still less friendly witness, tells us[93] that "several at least of the conspirators were men of mild and amiable manners, averse to tumults and bloodshed, and dwelling quietly amidst the humanities of domestic life," a description which he applies especially to Rokewood and Digby; while of Guy Faukes himself he says[94] that, according to the accounts which we hear of him, he is not to be regarded as a mercenary ruffian, ready for hire to do any deed of blood; but as a zealot, misled by misguided fanaticism, who was, however, by no means destitute either of piety or of humanity. Moreover, as Mr. Jardine farther remarks, the conspirators as a body were of the class which we should least expect to find engaged in desperate enterprises, being, as Sir E. Coke described them, "gentlemen of good houses, of excellent parts, and of very competent fortunes and estates," none of them, except perhaps Catesby, being in pecuniary difficulties, while several—notably Robert Winter, Rokewood, Digby, Tresham, and Grant—were men of large possessions. It has also been observed by a recent biographer of Sir Everard Digby,[95] that, for the furtherance of their projects after the explosion, the confederates were able to provide a sum equal at least to £75,000 of our money—a sufficient proof of their worldly position.