Gunpowder episode 2, fact vs fiction: how accurate was that torture scene?
After the gruesome torture and execution scenes we witnessed last week, viewers tuning in to the second instalment of Gunpowder, the BBC retelling of the thwarted 1605 plot to blow up King James I and the House of Lords, were likely primed for further horrors. This episode was a little more restrained – but still found time for some painful priest-put-to-the-rack scenes and a daring prison escape. But was any of this tense sequence true?
The answer, it seems, is both yes and no (depending on how far you want to stretch the truth). As with the first episode, in which the grisly death of Lady Dorothy Dibdale was loosely based on the earlier case of Margaret Clitherow, the writers have apparently taken inspiration from other historical events and wound them into the Gunpowder story.
Who was Father John Gerard?
In the BBC show Catholic priest Gerard, played by Robert Emms, is portrayed as deeply sympathetic to the plotters, and fully complicit in their plan – almost one of them himself, in fact. Consequently, after he is caught, imprisoned, and put to torture, Catesby (Kit Harington) and the other plotters must rescue him before he can reveal their treason (and their whereabouts).
In reality, Gerard was indeed a devoted Jesuit who spent several years covertly preaching his faith in England, spying for the foreign Catholic Church and playing cat and mouse with the authorities – before finally fleeing abroad and living to the ripe old age of 73. He was not, however, directly involved in the Gunpowder plot, although he was indeed close with many of the conspirators, and may possibly have had some knowledge of the plan in advance.
Was he really tortured like that?
In this week’s torture scenes, Gerard isn’t shown lying on a traditional, wooden-framed rack, but is instead suspended from the air, arms bound above his head and his feet chained to the floor. The gruesome “stretching” principle of the infamous torture device, however, is still employed in the scene – and we see the character struggle with excruciating pain as the wheel is turned, before eventually passing out. He also undergoes a form of waterboarding torture, during which a bag is placed over head, and water poured into his throat (something which would cause him to gag, and feel as if he were drowning).
The real Gerard was captured in 1594, and later taken to the Tower of London and tortured – but, as evidenced by the date, this wasn’t in relation to the gunpowder plot. The exact nature of the torture he underwent, according to an account of his life he later wrote, also wasn’t quite the same as the version depicted in the show.
“Then they took me to a big upright pillar, one of the wooden posts which held the roof of this huge underground chamber. Driven into the top of it were iron staples for supporting heavy weights. Then they put my wrists into iron gauntlets and ordered me to climb two or three wicker steps,” Gerard recounted in his book.
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“My arms were then lifted up and an iron bar was passed through the rings of one gauntlet, then through the staple and rings to the second gauntlet. This done, they fastened the bar with a pin to prevent it from slipping, and then, removing the wicker steps one by one from under my feet, they left me hanging by my hands and arms fastened above my head. The tips of my toes, however, still touched the ground, and they had to dig the earth away from under them.”
This type of suspension torture was still excruciatingly painful – “so intense that I thought I could not possibly endure it”, Gerard writes – and, over the course of many hours, the priest repeatedly fainted.
As far as we know, Gerard was never tortured in the way shown in the show. But given the widespread popular knowledge of racks, and the principles behind them, the team behind the TV show most likely decided that showing the priest being stretched, rather than simply suspended, would be the effective way to convey his pain.
It seems one crucial aspect of the TV show is indeed accurate, however. By both his own account, and that of the records we have, the real Gerard – who was being questioned about fellow Catholics in England, and about the whereabouts of Father Henry Garnet (played in the series by Peter Mullan) – did not give way under torture.
Did he escape?
Again, the answer to this is yes – but not in the way shown in the series. Instead, Gerard’s impressive flight took place on October 4, 1597, when Elizabeth I was still in power, and saw the priest and another prisoner, John Arden, use a rope suspended across the Tower moat to make their escape from one of the towers, with the help of waiting friends on the outside.
In his book, Gerard recalls how, ahead of his escape, he left letters exonerating the prison warden and Lieutenant from any complicity in his flight, keen that they should avoid punishment. He also later arranged an escape for the warden, should he need to flee London, writing that the man “had always been faithful in his trusts, as I would stand by him now”.
The escape had been planned out in advance – but, in the event, the descent down the rope proved much more difficult than the two men had envisaged. Instead of stretching downwards, it “stretched almost horizontally between the two points”, meaning that Arden and Gerard had to effectively inch their way along.
“I had gone about three of four yards downwards when suddenly my body swung round with its own weight and I nearly fell,” Gerard later recalled in his memoir. “I was still very weak and with the slack rope and my body hanging underneath, I could make practically no progress. At last I managed to work myself as far as the middle of the rope and there I was stuck. My strength was failing and my breath, which was short before I started, seemed altogether spent.”
Upon finally reaching the other side and his friends, Gerard found himself so weak, he was unable to stand – but was helped to the waiting rowing boat, where the men were able to escape via the Thames.
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What about the burning at the stake scenes in Spain?
These brutal scenes helped hammer home the fact that, while Catholics were certainly being persecuted in England, those following the Roman Church were doing a fair bit of persecution themselves elsewhere in the world. (Protestants, of course, had also previously been tortured and executed in England during the restoration of the Catholic Mary I, whose reign had ended a half century earlier.)
The specific targeting of Jewish people, which did indeed include a number of executions by burning, was a central part of the Spanish Inquisition, which began in 1481. Numerous countries, including England in 1290, had previously passed laws of expulsion – and Spain had issued a similar decree in 1492, requiring Spanish Jews to either convert, or leave. But those who did convert, and their descendants, were not treated as full citizens, and were suspected of keeping up their old faith in private.
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Did Henry Garnet really know about the plot in advance?
Contemporary accounts suggest that the priest did indeed know that something violent was being planned, and was later told of the plan – although he did not alert the authorities, believing himself to be bound by the seal of the confessional. It was not Garnet himself that Catesby confessed to, however, as shown in the series, but another priest, Father Oswald Tesimond– who later told Garnet, his superior, what he had heard. Garnet tried to avert Catesby from his chosen path, even asking the Pope to condemn the use of violence by Catholics in England, but failed to sway him.
