of such undoubted military genius as Sir William Stanley should have fallen so low as to become a mere pensioner of Spain, and the enemy of his fatherland, is sad in the extreme. Devotion to his religion utterly blinded him, and prevented him from discerning how fatal and how foolish was the course he was pursuing. Had he held instead of surrendering Deventer, he would undoubtedly have obtained high honours in England; and it is said that, at the very moment when he was plotting to surrender this city to Spain, Elizabeth had just consented to his being appointed the next Viceroy of Ireland.

CHAPTER XXI

STH

BEHIND THE SCENES

IR WILLIAM WAAD, Lieutenant of the Tower at the period of the Gunpowder Plot, has left on record a list of names which he considers to have included all the persons concerned in hatching the famous conspiracy. This list mentions not only the thirteen conspirators universally allowed to have been engaged in the plot, but the following persons in addition, viz.— Henry Morgan, Sir Edward Baynham, Hugh Owen, Sir William Stanley, Thomas Abington, Henry Garnet, John Gerard, Oswald Tesond, Hammond, John Winter, and Baldwin. From this list we can erase the names of Sir William Stanley and Thomas Abington, for, I think, the good and sufficient reason that their innocence has been satisfactorily established. Of the rest, I have already dealt with Hugh Owen, Garnet,

1 In an inscription preserved in the Council Chamber of the King's House, Tower of London.

2 Conjuratorum nomina, ad perpetuam ipsorum infamiam et tanta diritatis detestationem sempiternam.

3 Father Tesimond, S.J., alias ' Greenway.',

Father Nicholas Hart, S.J.

Father William Bawden, S.J.

and Baynham. We are, therefore, left with Gerard, Baldwin, Morgan, Greenway, John Winter, and Hammond, into whose cases (as regards their complicity in the Gunpowder Plot) I shall now inquire; whilst I propose also to consider the question of the innocence, or guilt, of Anne Vaux, and Nicholas Owen, nicknamed 'Little John.' Yielding precedence to the fair sex, I will first take the case of

ANNE VAUX. This lady was the third daughter of William, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, by his first wife, Elizabeth Beaumont. The date of her birth has not come down to us, but for several years prior to 1605, she had been living entirely under the direction of the Jesuits, for whom she ever expressed the warmest admiration. She put herself under a vow of blind obedience 1 to Father Garnet and his society, and followed him about like a pet dog whenever she could safely do so, going often, in these adventures, under the alias of Mrs. Perkins.' This close intimacy with Garnet caused considerable scandal. At Garnet's execution, some one in the crowd having taunted him with this, he protested in reply that 'this honourable gentlewoman hath great wrong by such false reports. And for my own part, as I have always been free from such crimes, so I may protest for her upon my conscience that I think her to be a perfect pure

1 Vide Gunpowder Plot Book, ii., p. 245, at the Record Office,

virgin, if any other in England or otherwise alive. She is a virtuous good gentlewoman, and, therefore, to impute any such thing unto her cannot proceed but of malice' (Gerard's Narrative).

Anne Vaux, with her sister, Mrs. Brooksby, frequently entertained Garnet, as we have seen, at White Webbs,' a resort of several of the conspirators, such as (her relative) Tresham, Catesby, and Thomas Winter. She was, during the twelve months preceding the plot, on terms of great friendship with these persons, as well as being intimately acquainted with Digby, Gerard, Oldcorne, Greenway, Grant, Robert Winter, and Ambrose Rookewood. When Tresham, on his death-bed, had perjured himself by swearing that he had not met Garnet for sixteen years, Anne Vaux's subsequent confession (in the Tower), to the effect that from 1602 to 1605 she had constantly been in the company of Tresham and Garnet, met together at her own house, was produced at Garnet's trial in refutation.

According to her own account, Anne Vaux had often questioned Garnet concerning the preparations being made by certain of the conspirators for military service. She was, for instance, surprised at the large number of horses kept ready in some of their stables. Garnet, however, told her that these preparations had no connection with any plot in England, but were

And at Stoke Poges, Bucks (the scene of Gray's Elegy).

destined to help the Spanish forces in the Netherlands.

Liberated from the Tower early in August, 1606, Anne Vaux, although little is known of her subsequent career,' maintained all her old devotion to her religion, and as late as the year 1635 we find her keeping a Jesuitical school in Derbyshire for Roman Catholic children, which was broken up by order of the Privy Council.

That Anne Vaux was a willing accessory before the fact to the Gunpowder Plot I refuse to believe. She was so much under the influence of the Jesuits that she may have been desirous of aiding in any mild scheme for helping her co-religionists, but she was too honest to have joined in so sanguinary a business as the Gunpowder Treason. According to her evidence in the Tower (where nothing material was proved against her), she professed to have been much shocked at Garnet's connection with the plotters. Most of her letters to Garnet in the Tower were intercepted by the gaoler, and her handwriting is, as I have hinted, by no means unlike that of the Lord Mounteagle's anonymous correspondent. She seems also to have known that 'a plot was hatching' some weeks before the 'Powder' Plot was discovered.

NICHOLAS OWEN, S. J.-This Jesuit lay-brother,

1 Garnet formally released her from her vow of obedience before his death. She probably renewed it, however, to his

successor.