Author's Notes
In putting together Remember! Remember!, we have continually found ourselves
having to strike a balance between the demands of dramatic effect and historical
accuracy. While we feel we have been successful in telling the story of the
Gunpowder Plot, both in terms of specific details and of the broader picture,
there are a few points where we have had to sacrifice strict historical correctness
on the altar of convenience, the more important of which we will mention here.
All but one of the major characters in Remember! Remember! represent actual
historical figures. The sole exception is Jane Finwood. Catholic families in
England were often infiltrated by government spies, and while it is perfectly
possible that Anne Vaux’s household was too, Finwood is a creation of
our own.
As to a more minor character – in our story, at least – the name
of Father John Watt is made up, but there were dozens of Jesuit priests arrested
and killed at the time whose stories would have been scarcely distinguishable
from Watt’s.
Beyond that, all of our characters – even the naïve landlady, Susan
Whynniard – are real and their actions based on what is known from historical
sources, with a few simplifications and interpolations.
Catesby did not, in fact, confess directly to father Garnet (although he knew
him well) but to another Jesuit priest, Father Oswald Tesimond. It was Tesimond
who then confessed what he knew to Garnet, and so although the route was more
convoluted than we have shown, Garnet’s dilemma was just as real.
It remains an historical mystery as to exactly who sent the Monteagle Letter
(which we have used verbatim). Many theories have been put forward, including
that Cecil himself might have written it in order to divert attention from the
real source of his information. Our idea that the letter was written by Anne
Vaux and Lady Monteagle – though not inconceivable – is purely a
dramatic convenience and is not presented as a new historical theory.
There were thirteen men generally recognised as plotters, and each has his
own unique story, but for simplicity we have focussed predominantly on Catesby,
Fawkes, Tresham and Tom Wintour. Some incidents which historically relate to
other plotters have been attached to one of these four, so for example, we have
Tom Wintour renting the house from Susan Whynniard and her husband, where in
fact it was Thomas Percy.
Francis Tresham was always a reluctant plotter and – aside from his relationship
with Finwood which, like the lady herself, is fictional – we hope we have
portrayed him reasonably faithfully. He was suspected by the plotters of sending
the Monteagle Letter and did persuade them of his innocence. He left the plot
at that point, but was arrested anyway (though not betrayed by Monteagle). He
died in the Tower of London, but almost certainly of illness, not directly through
torture.
Both Garnet and Owen were arrested after the plot and taken to the Tower, although
they had not been hiding together at White Webbs, but in separate priest-holes
at Hindlip House in Worcestershire. Owen was with another Catholic who had become
caught up in the plot, Ralph Ashley, while Garnet was hiding with a fellow priest,
Father Edward Oldcorne. Both Ashley and Oldcorne became victims of the wave
of executions that followed the unravelling of the plot.
The plotters and their associates were not all executed on a single occasion
as we have shown them. Most of the plotters who survived Holbeche were hanged
over two sessions, on 30th and 31st of January 1606. Garnet met his fate in
May of that year.
Nick Owen never made it to the scaffold at all. He died in the Tower on March
2nd. The official story was that he had committed suicide, but few believe that
a devout Catholic who had endured so much would have damned himself by committing
this mortal sin, and it seems likely that he died under torture. He was canonised
in 1970.
The devoted student of history will, no doubt, find further discrepancies between
Remember! Remember! and the recognised historical narrative, but we hope that
most will leave the theatre with a clearer picture of this famous, infamous
and yet strangely unfamiliar story from four centuries ago.
