Note 280 — Chapter VI

I have already remarked upon Faukes' statement that he was arrested in quite a different place from any mentioned in the government accounts. It should be added, that as to the person who arrested him, there is a somewhat similar discrepancy of evidence. The honour is universally assigned by the official accounts to Sir T. Knyvet, who in the following year was created a peer, which shows that he undoubtedly rendered some valuable service on the occasion. An epitaph, however, in St. Anne's Church, Aldersgate (printed in Maitland's History of London, p. 1065, 3rd ed.), declares that it was Peter Heiwood, of Heywood, Lancashire, "who apprehended Guy Faux, with his dark Lanthorn; and for his zealous Prosecution of Papists, as Justice of Peace, was stabbed, in Westminster Hall, by John James, a Dominican Friar, A.D. 1640." No trace of this assassination can be found, nor does the name of John James occur in the Dominican records. It is, however, a curious coincidence that the "Guy Faukes' Lantern," exhibited in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, bears the inscription: "Laterna ilia ipsa quâ usus est, et cum qua deprehensus Guido Faux in cryptâ subterraneâ, ubi domo [sic] Parliamenti difflandae operam dabat. Ex dono Robti. Heywood nuper Academiae Procuratoris, Ap. 4o, 1641." See the epitaph in full, Appendix I.