The myth of the Gunpowder Plot

Magazines and some guide books continue to print the erroneous assertion that the infamous Guy Fawkes plot to blow up King James I and the Houses of Parliament during the early 17th century was hatched at the Red Hall in Bourne.

The earliest reference I can find to this is in John Moore’s account of the town published in 1809 but as he was stating beliefs that were prevalent at that time it is safe to assume that there was a widespread oral tradition that subsequently filtered down through the printed word, notably by later written historical accounts, particularly those that appeared regularly in trade directories such as Kelly’s and White’s that are still available and often quoted today.

Historian Joseph J Davies, the distinguished headmaster of the former Council or Board School in Abbey Road, now the Abbey Road School, was quite specific in his 1909 edition of Historic Bourne that one of the leading conspirators, Sir Everard Digby, was born at the Red Hall and although he does not claim that the plot was hatched there, most probably at Lambeth instead, he was executed for his part in the plot which he had joined with the sole purpose of restoring the Roman Catholic church in England.

But by 1925, John T Swift dismissed all connections between the plot and the Red Hall in his history Bourne and People Associated with Bourne yet it was to be another forty years before the myth was finally laid to rest. In between times, Bourne was stuck with the legend which was often referred to in the local newspapers and there is evidence that many still believed it in later years and may still do so today.

I was recently taking photographs in the town centre one sunny morning when I was approached by a man who mistook me for a tourist capturing images to take back home and he suggested that I should not miss the Red Hall because, he said, this was the place where the Gunpowder Plot was hatched. I asked where such information came from and suggested that the story may have been apocryphal but he insisted that it was true because his wife had been born and bred in Bourne and had been told by her family that this was indeed the location for this little piece of British history and despite my doubts, his belief in the tale remained unshakeable.

The story was finally discredited in 1964 by Mrs Joan Varley, archivist to Lincolnshire Archives Committee, after studying parish registers and deeds of the hall that had recently been deposited with their records by a descendant of the Bourne Digby family, Sir Everard Philip Digby Pauncefort-Duncombe, of Great Brickhill Manor in Buckinghamshire, and so the popular theory was well and truly laid to rest.

The story had evolved around the mistaken belief that Sir Everard Digby was born and lived at the Red Hall and it has been frequently stated that as he was one of the main perpetrators, he and his fellow conspirators met at his home where the plot was hatched. The date the hall was built is not known exactly but 1605 is the most favoured. This was the year that the plot was actually discovered and as it was some time in the planning, it would have been impossible for the hall to have been the meeting place for those involved in the conspiracy.

In fact, Sir Everard lived at Stoke Dry, Uppingham, Rutland, and was one of the great landowners in the Midlands although he had no connection with Bourne. But over a century later, the building did pass into the hands of descendent of the Digby family, James Digby, gentleman, (1707-1751), who appears as a deputy steward to the Manor of Bourne Abbots at a session of the manorial court in October 1730, and from then onwards there are numerous references to him and his descendants in the manorial records. It is from this date also that the name Digby begins to appear in the parish registers. The family owned and inhabited the Red Hall from then until about a century later and this fact appears to have been the cause of some wishful deduction that Sir Everard was at one time the tenant of the Red Hall  which was certainly not the case.

After an exhaustive search through the documents, Mrs Varley published her findings in April 1964, with some reluctance it would seem, because she said at the time: “I am sorry in a way that I have robbed Bourne of its best known legend but I was merely trying to get at the truth. It is very easy for incorrect statements to get into local town guides. Stories grow up about places, following generations believe they are true and eventually they are accepted as fact. They are written into books and other authors do not take the time to check and revise them.”

This is still the case. Once a statement is made in print, it is filed away in various archives and then when a subject or place is to be written about again, the writer consults the cuttings and repeats the error. So it is that the Gunpowder Plot will surface occasionally as having happened at the Red Hall because some writers are lazy and, as Mrs Varley pointed out, careless about checking their facts.

See also Guy Fawkes' Night celebrations in past times