Catesby recruits his servant, Thomas Bates, into…
December 1604 CE
Catesby recruits his servant, Thomas Bates, into the plot in December, after the latter accidentally becomes aware of it.
It is announced on December 24 that the re-opening of Parliament will be delayed.
Concern over the plague means that rather than sitting in February, as the plotters had originally planned for, Parliament will not sit again until October 3, 1605.
The contemporaneous account of the prosecution claims that during this delay the conspirators were digging a tunnel beneath Parliament.
This may have been a government fabrication, as no evidence for the existence of a tunnel was presented by the prosecution, and no trace of one has ever been found.
The account of a tunnel comes directly from Thomas Wintour's confession, and Guy Fawkes did not admit the existence of such a scheme until his fifth interrogation.
Logistically, digging a tunnel would have proved extremely difficult, especially as none of the conspirators had any experience of mining.
If the story is true however, by December 6 the Scottish commissioners had finished their work, and the conspirators were busy tunneling from their rented house to the House of Lords.
They ceased their efforts when, during tunneling, they heard a noise from above.
The noise turned out to be the then-tenant's widow, who was clearing out the undercroft directly beneath the House of Lords—the room where the plotters eventually stored the gunpowder.
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