What Gunpowder Plot Was

t step is obviously to ascertain the exact position of Whynniard's house, part of which was rented by Percy. The investigator is, however, considerably assisted by Father Gerard

House of Lords (i.e. nearer to the river than that building, and adjacent to

he river 'a boat lie close to the pale of Sir Thomas Parry's garden, and men going to and from the wa

1605, speaks of the window in his chamber ne

bled by the influx of water from the river, which would be impossible

ontage towards the river, marked 'very old walls, remaining in 1795 & 1800,' of which the line

that this piece of ground was covered by part of the house in 1799, and I imagine that the 'many years' must have commenced in 1807, when the house was demolished (see view at p.

obe's house, 1799, is evidently identical with the more modern

n (pp. 81, 82, 83), respectively dated 1685, 1739, and 1761. They are taken from the Crace

has reached us as taking a house. Salisbury, no doubt, was thinking of the whole tenement held by Whynniard as a house, whilst others gave that name to such a part of it as could be separately held by a single tenant. The other difference between the plans is less easy to explain. Neither of the later ones show that excrescence towards the river-bank, abutting on its northern side on Cotton Garden, which is so noted a feature in the plan of 1685. At one time I was inclined to think that we had here the 'low room new

er I

nt Palace of Westminster, b

ween 1793 and 1823.-Ve

of the river were not

were built having been

f part of Wes

f the chamber attached

tion of the hous

s are not in th

f Westminster, with I

rds and Commons,

round set apart by Kent

inster Hall and the

ppeared

ing is in pencil in

nniard's block as that rented from him by Percy, it is

t to tenants only when Parliament was not assembled, and during a session formed part of the premises at the disposal of the Lords, whom it served as a withdrawing room. As this plot was of neces

still more strongly in

ion for a withdrawing-room, and if the session was to begin on November 5, how could Fawkes hope not only to remain in possession, but to carry on his strange proceedings unobserved amid th

Plot at all. He merely republished, in 1679, an old official narrative of the trial, with an unimportant preface of his own. What Father Gerard quotes here and elsewhere is, however, not even taken from this republication, but

especially as it is found in the first edition of his History, p

iament House, which served for withdrawing rooms for the assembled Lords, and out of Parlia

way modified, fully justifies Father Gerard in his contention. L

Henry Ferrers of Bordesley Clinton in the County of Warwick Gentleman the

Parliament House, the said Thomas getting the consent of Mr. Whynniard, and satisfying me, the said He

dwelleth in, with an assignment of a lease from Mr. Whynniard t

nry twenty pounds, to be allowed upon reckoning or

y Fer

elivered in t

Christopher

he also took a second house, of which Whynniard was to give him a lease. The inference that Percy would have been turned out of this second house when Parliament met seems, therefore, to be untenable. Whynniard, it may be obse

wall of the remainder of the block. It certainly looks as if this must have been the house, or division of a house, belonging to Parliament, and this p

ge 89, which was taken in 1807, when the wall of the House of Lords was being laid bare by the demolition of the houses abutting on it, shows two apertures, a window with a Gothic arch, and an opening with a square head, which may very well have served as a door, whilst the window may have been blocked up. If such a connection with the House of Lords can be established, there seems no reason to doubt that we have the withdrawing room fixed beyond doubt. Father Gerard mentions an old print representing 'the two Houses assembled in the presence of Queen Elizabeth,' and having 'windo

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the Prince

y 1, 1804, by

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House of Lords, the East End

ctober

which a man is peeping, nearl

e his escape. Published No

we are able to find a place for the 'little entry,' under which, according to Winter, the conspirators worked. This view of the case, too, is borne out by Smith's statement, that 'in the further end of that court,' i.e. the court running up from Parliament Place, 'is a doorway, through which, and turning to the left through another doorway, is the immediate way out of the cel

in one storey, we can hardly fail to discover the second house as that marked B in the plan on p. 81, since that house al

premises occupied by Percy were far too s

time, so that when Percy came there to spend the night, Fawkes, who passed for his man, had to lodge out. This suggests another question. Per

said that he had heard from Mrs. Gibbons 'that Mr. Percy hath lain in the said lodging divers time

nt for herself and her husband. If she brought any maidservants with her, beds could be provided for them without much difficulty. Is it not likely that the plan of sending Fawkes out to sleep was contrived wit

ceedings so remarkable' as the digging of the mine could have escaped t

the Exchequer, and other such officials. There were tradespeople and workmen constantly employed close to the spot where the work was going on; while the public character of the place makes it impossible to suppose that tenants such as Percy and his fr

ded the follo

ard VI. to Sir Ralph Lane. They reverted to the Crown under Elizabeth, and were appropriated as residences for the audi

the Crace Collection, on which I rely, has, I think, been misled by those early semi-pictorial maps, which, though they may be relied on for larger buildings, such as the House of Lords or St. Stephen's Ch

to the Crown, was re-granted to Sir John Gates.[147] Again reverting to the Crown, it was dealt with in separate portions, and the part on which the Exchequer officers' residences was built was to the north of Cotton Garden, and being quite out of earshot of Whynniard's house, need not concern us here. In 1588, the Queen granted to John Whynniard, then an officer of the Wardrobe, a lease of several parcels of ground for thirty years.[148] Some of these

ry of the said Parliament House[149] on the north part, and abutteth upon the said stone wall which compasseth the said Old Palace towards the West, and upon the Th

ness of neighbourhood. No doubt people flocked up and down from Parliament Stairs, but they would be excluded from the garden on the river side, and with few exceptions would pass on without turning to the right into the court. Nobody who had not business with Percy himself or with his neighbour on the south[151] would be likely to approach Percy's door. As far as that side

ing taken suddenly sick, and therefore sent away to London, and coming late to lie at the Queen's Bridge,[153] the tide being high, he saw a boat lie close by the pale of Sir Thomas Parry's garden[

as carried in at night, and by a way through the g

omrades 'wrought under a little entry to the wall of the Parliament House.'[156] The little entry, as I have already argued,[157] must be the covered passage under the withdrawing room; a tunnel leading from the cellar of Percy's house would be about seven or eight feet long. The main difficulty at the commencement of the work would be to get through the wall of Percy's house, and this, it may be noticed, neither Fawkes nor Winter speak of, though they are very positive as to the difficulties presented by the wall of the House of Lords. If, indeed, the wall on this side of Percy's house was, as

Father Gerard

imber'[161] of which Speed tells us, and the provision and importation of this must have been almost as hard to keep dark as the exportation of the earth and stones. A still more critical operation is that of meddling with the foundations of a house-especially of an old and heavy structure-which a professional craf

ed the most complete school of military mining then to be found in the world. Though every soldier was not an engineer, he could not fail to be in the way of hearing about, if not of actually witnessing, feats of engineering skill, of which the object was not merely to undermine fortifications with tunnels of far greater length than can have been required by the

g overheard were very slight. Having taken the precaution to hire the long withdrawing room and the passage or passage-room beneath it, the sounds made on the lower part of the main wall could not very well reach the ears of the tenants of the other houses in Whynniard'

s' Chamber on the ground floor was a large room, which plays an important part in our history. This had originally served as the palace kitchen, and, though commonly described as a 'cellar' or a 'vault,' was in reality neither, for it stood on the level of t

fessor, and that on the south the 'Prince's Chamber,' assigned by its architectural features to the reign of Henry III. The former served as a place of confer

d to have stated 'that Thomas Percy had hired both the house and part of the cellar or vault under the same.'[168] That part was so let is highly probable, as the internal length of the old kitchen was about seventy-seven feet, and it would therefore be far too large for the occupation of a single coalmonger. We must thus imagine the so-called vault divided into two portions, probably with a partition cutting off one from the other. If, therefore, the conspirators restricted their operations to the night-time, there was

topher Wright, and brought over Keyes from Lambeth together with the powder which they now stored in 'a low room new-builded.'[169] After a fortnight's work, reaching to Candlemas (Feb. 2), they had burrowed through about four feet six inches into the wall, after which they again gave over working.[170

se.' Then Goodman declares that he saw it,[173] but, even if we assume that his memory did not play him false, it is impossible that the whole of the produce of the first fortnight's diggings should be disposed of in this way. The shortest length that can be ascribed to the mine before the wall was reached is eight feet, and if we allow five feet for height and depth we have

abandoned. All that would be needed, if the head of the mine descended, as it probably did, would be the relaying of a couple or so of flagstones. How careful the plotters were of wiping out all traces of their work, is shown by the evidence of Whynniard's servant, Roger James, who says that about Midsummer 1605, Percy, appearing to pay his quarter's rent, 'agreed with one York, a carpent

rs. Skinner (afterwards Mrs. Bright) was selling coals, and having also ascertained that she was willing to give up her tenancy to them for a consideration, they applied to Whynniard-from whom the so-called 'cellar' was leased

fancied that they were working their way immediately beneath the Chamber of Peers.' The supposition would be ridiculous enough if it were not a figment of Father Gerard's own brain. He relies on what

d been discovered, and they sent me to go to the cellar, who finding that the coals were a selling, and that the cell

s an opening closed only by a grating into the 'cellar' itself,[177] would negative the impossible supposition. Father Gerard, however, adds that Mrs. Whynniard tells us that the cellar was not to let, and that Bright, i.e. Mrs. Skinner, had not the disposal of the lease, but one Skinner, and that Percy 'laboured very earnestly before he succeeded in obtaining it.' What Mrs. Whynn

hole which the conspirators were alleged to have made. His own statement, however, printed in the fifth volume of Vetusta Monumenta,[179] says nothing about the foundations; and besides, as Father Gerard has shown, he had

ommunication between Percy's house and

0] of that year, Percy caused 'a new door' to be made into it, tha

reover, it is not very easy to understand how a tenant-under such conditions as his-was allowed at discretion to knock doors through the

Gerard proceeds to dispose o

om new built, and could not have been conveyed into the cellar but that all the street must have seen it; and therefo

are head near the south end of the same wall marked C. The first of these would naturally be used by Mrs. Skinner, as it opened on a passage leading westwards, and we know that she lived in King Street; the second would be used by Whynniard, whilst, either he or some predecessor might very well have put up a grating at the third to keep out thieves. That third aperture was, however, just opposite Percy's house, and when he hired Mrs. Skinner's part of the 'cellar,' he would necessarily wish to have it open and a door substituted for the grating. There was no question of knocking about the walls of a royal palace in the matter. If he had not that door opened he must either use Whynniard's, of which Whynniard presumably wished to keep the key, or go round by Parliament Place to reach the one hitherto used by Mrs. Skinner. It is true that, if the north door was really the one used by Mrs. Skinner, it necessitates the conclusion that there was no i

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-called cellar under

tiquities of We

ed by various writers, subsequently, that free ingress was actually allowed to the public."[183] As the subsequent writers appear to be an anonymous writer, who wrote on The Gunpowder Plot under the pseudonym of L., in 1805, and Hugh F. Martyndale, who wrote A Familiar Analysis of the Calendar of the Church of England in 1830, I am unable to take them very seriously. The extraordinary thing is that Father Gerard does not see that his quotation from Winter is fatal to his argument. Winter says that Fawkes covered t

inion of the writer discussed in the Edinburgh Re

The quantity of powder stored in the cellar is repeatedly said, both in the depositions and the indictment to have been thirty-six barrels-that is, a last and a half, or about one ton twelve hundredweight; and this agrees very exactly with the valuation of the powder at 200l. In 1588, the cost

not to be traced is the less justifiable, as the Ordnance accounts of the stores in the Tower ha

cellar are consistent with the documentary and structural evidence, I pass