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 Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot is a clever mask for a social history of Catholic grievance in the days of Elizabeth and then James. If this book is to believed, Catholics truly did have a cross to bear for their faith which was made even more of a burden by people like Salisbury and Coke who were bent on exterminating them. Fraser presents an eloquent and easy to read piece of work, but her choice of vehicle for the issues she raises is the wrong one. I would suggest more primary document research and a more scholarly approach if she wants her message to be taken seriously.
Reviewed by James Jordan
Doubleday 1996. Pp. xxxv, 347.
Subject: Early Stuart history in England; events surrounding the gunpowder plot. Fiction.
ISBN: 0385471890.
Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot, written by Antonia Fraser, is an accurate titular depiction of what follows in the text. Although historical fiction, the author makes good use of footnotes, however, upon closer examination she seems to make more use of other people's work than actual primary sources. All things considered, Fraser brings some interesting ideas to the fore in this very readable piece of work.
Fraser spends the early part of her book detailing the raison d'être behind the ill-fated attempt on King James I's life pre-1605. From her proto-Catholic point of view, one finds a Catholic community, battered and disheveled from the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in joyous anticipation of James' accession. However, when the milk turns sour and James cannot implement his allegedly promised policy of religious liberty for Catholics, they turn on him and begin to plot his downfall.
Throughout the book, there is an impending sense of Fraser's sympathy with the plotters, giving them generous detail and writing of their bravery under torture. Nevertheless, she states quite definitively that the plotters of 1605 were "not good men" and alludes to them as the terrorists of yesteryear (295). While Fraser attempts to answer the moral questions pertaining to the plot in her narrative she fails to investigate them fully and so falls short of exploring the potential philosophical scope that the topic begs. Instead, she prefers to pursue a subtle Catholic agenda, combining social history with a rye sense of humor.
Robert Catesby emerges as the driving force and leader behind the plotters not Guy Fawkes, as popular history would have it. Fraser's Catesby is popular among his contemporaries, and able to influence and make use of his natural charm to engineer the plot from its inception to its premature conclusion. It is in this kind of personal profiling that Fraser's true voice emerges. The priests in the book all receive very generous press, while the government officials such as Salisbury (Cecil) and Coke are portrayed as monsters. This is evidenced many times throughout Fraser's work, in particular for the priests who, she stresses, were risking their lives and undergoing severe hardships for their faith.
I particularly liked the section about the letter sent to Monteagle, "warning" him of the possible dangers of attending parliament. Fraser attests that this "dark and doubtful letter" was a fake and that the smell of entrapment wafted as far as the highest echelons of the Jacobean government (143). Although she is willing to admit that Salisbury did not manufacture the Gunpowder Plot out of thin air, she does attest that he fabricated it, manipulated the King with the threat of it and was guilty of employing it in his quest to exterminate the Catholics of England.
The show trials also make very interesting reading as, through the priests; she defends the Catholic faith with regards to its legitimacy in Jacobean England whilst also highlighting the troublesome nature of the sacrament of confession. I believe that in this section Fraser attempts to manifest all the aspects of Catholic hatred, persecution and oppression in the person of Sir Edward Coke. Coke, along with Salisbury, are presented as trying their hardest to entangle the Jesuits in the plot. In a fictional speech made by Coke, Fraser describes how he depicts the Powder Treason as having "three roots, all planted and watered by the Jesuits" (222). Furthermore, she "quotes" (without citing any evidence) Coke as holding the "seducing Jesuits" responsible for the plot (222).
One wonders why she would want to darken the name of a prosecutor who, by her own admission, was right to bring the plotters to justice. The answer lies in her attitude towards the other people involved with (not in) the plot, such as the priests, wives, and lay brothers. Her vehement defense of these persons alludes to perhaps her reasons for writing the book. I think these reasons are ones of vindication and righteousness of the catholic community during the early seventeenth century, a century in which things were going to get a lot worse for them. Fraser neither glorifies nor fully vilifies the plotters; they are only subsidiary to her story, describing them as terrorists who believed they were fighting for a holy cause (not unlike a situation we have today).
Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot is a clever mask for a social history of Catholic grievance in the days of Elizabeth and then James. If this book is to believed, Catholics truly did have a cross to bear for their faith which was made even more of a burden by people like Salisbury and Coke who were bent on exterminating them. Fraser presents an eloquent and easy to read piece of work, but her choice of vehicle for the issues she raises is the wrong one. I would suggest more primary document research and a more scholarly approach if she wants her message to be taken seriously.
About the Reviewer: James Jordan is a history major studying in the US on a soccer scholarship. An England native, his football career with Bradford City was cut short due to a shoulder injury. He is an avid reader of Jack Higgins and loves anything Irish.
For more information or to purchase a copy of Faith and Treason , click here: Faith and Treason
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