The Gunpowder Plot (History/16th/17th Century History) by Alan Haynes Page A

of some thirty appeared, and once the government had a line on the conspirators from Herefordshire the project swiftly folded. The sheriff there was soon able to report that John Scudamore had been arrested, his house at Kentchurch searched. When the prisoner reached London he was examined by Sir William Waad and he admitted links to Watson who had been at Kentchurch in mid-July and may have intended to flee to Ireland. That never came about because by the end of the month Watson was under arrest, almost certainly secured by Henry Vaughan of Moccas. 2
    The fumblings of Watson and Clarke (what was he about at this time?) did nothing to enhance the reputation of the Earl of Northumberland. The folding of one plot into another certainly had uncomfortable repercussions for the man whose marriage to Lady Arabella Stuart had once been urged. She was the figurehead in the so-called Main plot and according to one account regicide was to have been a violent preliminary to her succession to the throne. It is true that those named as the Main plotters – Ralegh, Cobham, Brooke, Lord Grey and Markham – were seething with various grievances. For example, Ralegh had lost his post as Captain of the Guard and felt keenly the ignominy of being ejected from old Durham House, his palatial residence on the Thames. He and Cobham had been excluded from the new privy council, and Ralegh certainly resented the enhanced position of Cecil. The first cast of the plotters was to France for funds, but Henri IV would have nothing to do with them. Next they approached Archduke Albrecht through his London envoy, Charles de Ligne, Comte d’Aremberg. The instruction he received from Brussels was to give a favourable response to the plotters who intended to obtain some 500,000 to 600,000 crowns from the Spanish treasury. This was vital for a maverick like Markham, so much in debt that a warrant was out for his arrest even before the plots. It was Aremberg’s aide, La Rensy, who was spotted by government spies in meetings with Cobham, and when asked about these Ralegh denied all knowledge of them to the privy council. Then he stumbled into an error that made him and Cobham vulnerable to pressure from Cecil. Realizing that Cobham had once left Durham House to visit La Rensy and alarmed that this would have been reported, Ralegh sought to mitigate any inference from it by declaring it himself to Cecil, thus contradicting his previous submission to the privy council. 3 This letter had an aggravating effect since it coincided with the confession of George Brooke whose loyalty to the plotters evaporated; there is even the possibility that he was (as it has been claimed) a spy for Cecil. According to Brooke the huge sums of money sought from France and then Spain had been ‘to assist and furnish a secret action for the surprise of his Majesty’ – a somewhat bland version of the intention to kill James and his immediate family.
    Ralegh was sent to the Tower and in a trance of bemused anger and dismay seems to have made a half-hearted attempt at suicide. His trial was delayed, but rather by a combination of the plague, the coronation of James late in July and the presence still in England of Aremberg. With a touching regard for established diplomatic proprieties it was felt his intrigues could not be revealed yet and to expel him was too embarrassing. So the trials were stalled until the ambassador quit the country in October. Then all the Bye plotters were condemned by their own confessions after trial in mid-November. Only Sir Edward Parham was acquitted after pleading that he joined solely to rescue the king if his would-be captors got to him. Cecil’s mild intervention on his behalf allowed a rare verdict of not guilty, and so an air of impartiality was given to the proceedings.
    The trial of Ralegh was held in Winchester on 17 November; the trials of Cobham and Grey on 25 and 26 November. The town was chosen because James and the court had quit London for