My own belief is that it gives a correct account of a
statement made by the prisoner, but omitted by the clerk who made the
copy for Coke, and inserted by some other person. Nobody that I can think
of had the slightest interest in adding the words, while they are just
what Fawkes might be expected to say if he wanted to lead his examiners
off the scent. At all events, even if these words be left out of account,
it must be admitted that Fawkes said nothing about the existence of a
mine.
Though Fawkes kept silence as to the mine, he did not keep silence on the
desperate character of the work on which he had been engaged. "And," runs
the record, "he confesseth that when the King had come to the Parliament
House this present day, and the Upper House had been sitting, he meant to
have fired the match and have fled for his own safety before the powder
had taken fire, and confesseth that, if he had not been apprehended this
last night, he had blown up the Upper House when the King, Lords,
Bishops, and others had been there, and saith that he spake for [and
provided][6] those bars and crows of iron, some in one place, some in
another, in London, lest it should be suspected, and saith that he had
some of them in or about Gracious Street."[7] Fawkes here clearly takes
the whole terrible design, with the exception of the mine, on his own
shoulders.
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