" Being
asked whether Catesby, the two Wrights, Winter, or Tresham, were privy,
he refused to accuse any one.
[10] Properly "John."
That Fawkes had already been threatened with torture is known, and it may
easily be imagined that the threats had been redoubled after this last
unsatisfactory acknowledgment. On the morning of the 8th, however, Waad,
who was employed to worm out his secrets, reported that little was to be
expected. "I find this fellow," he wrote, "who this day is in a most
stubborn and perverse humour, as dogged as if he were possessed.
Yester-night I had persuaded him to set down a clear narration of all his
wicked plots from the first entering to the same, to the end they
pretended, with the discourses and projects that were thought upon
amongst them, which he undertook [to do] and craved time this night to
bethink him the better; but this morning he hath changed his mind and is
[so] sullen and obstinate as there is no dealing with him."
The sight of the examiners, together with the sight of the rack,[11]
changed Fawkes' mind to some extent. He was resolved that nothing but
actual torture should wring from him the names of his fellow-plotters,
who so far as was known in London were still at large.[12] He prepared
himself, however, to reveal the secrets of the plot so far as was
consistent with the concealment of the names of those concerned in it.
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