The Gunpowder Plot (History/16th/17th Century History) Read Free Page A

involved, but when his feelings about it shifted and the plan began to evolve, it is possible to see a shadowy prefiguring of the gunpowder plot itself. Both plots were held together by a strongly felt male bond that could override the loyalties of marriage and fatherhood. For example, young Thomas Salusbury, the owner of Lleweni in North Wales and a gentleman in the service of his guardian, the Earl of Leicester, was devoted (for no clear reason) to Babington. Salusbury had been forced into a marriage when aged ten to his stepfather’s daughter, an arrangement intended to secure financial advantages, and it was some years before he was reconciled to his bride. 12 Beside Salusbury in the taverns of London, where gentlemen (perhaps at the Inns of Court) met for conviviality, was the young Welsh squire Edward Jones of Plas Cadwgan. He seems to have been an uncritical admirer of his compatriot whose style of clothes and beard marked him out as something of an exquisite, like the nonchalant and elegant young man in Nicholas Hilliard’s portrait miniature Young Man among Roses. Even so, Salusbury gave Jones only passing attention being altogether taken with Babington, whose charm, like that of Robert Catesby, was ultimately fatal. Another who centred his life on Babington was the minor poet Chidiock Tichborne, as did to a less marked degree John Travers and Edward Abington (sometimes given as Habington) whose fortunate brother Thomas managed to escape the brutal denouement of both the Babington and Gunpowder plots. Was this because the second plot unravelled so sweetly for the government through the effect of the famous anonymous letter to Lord Monteagle, which one writer has ascribed to the pen of his lordship’s sister Mary – the wife of Thomas Abington? While no women took part in the plot, it was frequently associated with the supposed sneaky cunning of women, so many were imprisoned and questioned.
    The more dangerous of the two plots was certainly Catesby’s, because unlike the somewhat naïve Babington, who was compromised virtually at all points by government spies, he managed to exclude them. Still the similarities are striking for both men saw their efforts develop with the support of swordsmen with reputations as such, preliminary to a specific localized reaction in the country. For Babington this was intended to be the release of Mary, Queen of Scots and the gift of another crown and country to her. For Catesby, the culmination of his plot would come after the detonation of the gunpowder and would take place around Stratford-upon-Avon, with a general insurrection and a new government. At the head of this was to be placed the young Princess Elizabeth who at that time was also living in Warwickshire – at Combe Abbey, some four or five miles east of Coventry. In the case of neither man is it now possible to state with absolute certainty down to the last detail in what degree he shared his full plans with his supporters. In Babington’s case this may well have been due to a clumsy effort to throw off the government; in sociopath Catesby’s, to dissembling rooted in unconsidered, even anarchic, ambition. Perhaps he thought he could transform the former errors into positive action and so manufacture a triumph.
    One of the secondary but not negligible effects of the Babington plot was to infuriate the Earl of Leicester. This was unfortunate for Catholics since in that frame of mind, as he proved repeatedly, he could be a very troublesome enemy. He had been trying for months to give the Dutch rebels direct support after they had sought the assistance of Elizabeth following the unexpected deaths of Prince William and François, Duke of Anjou. Leicester had been stuck in the Low Countries, piling up errors, both civil and military, during the period when Babington’s plot was taking place. While Burghley and Walsingham could point to a sharp demolition of treason, he had managed to upset Elizabeth by his blunders