Southampton's connections with Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot

Plotters hoping to restore a Catholic to the throne leased an undercroft beneath the House of Lords and Guy Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder that they stockpiled there. 

The authorities were prompted by an anonymous letter to search Westminster Palace during the early hours of November 5, and they found Fawkes guarding the explosives.

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He was questioned and tortured over the next few days and confessed to plotting to blow up the palace in a planned assassination of King James I, when he was present at Parliament.

Incidentally, it is claimed that John Pains, the founder of Pains, based in Whiteparish, Wiltshire, one of the oldest fireworks companies in the country, supplied the materials.

Another legend claims that the gunpowder had previously been hidden in the cellars of Monteagle House, Yately.

Several conspirators were killed during their pursuit, the rest were captured. Guy Fawkes was taken to the Tower until after Christmas.

One of four signatories to the document allowing the conspirators to be released for trial was Sir Thomas Fleming (1544 –1613), a judge and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1581 and 1611. He held several important offices, including Lord Chief Justice, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and Solicitor General for England and Wales.

In 1570 Fleming married his cousin, Mary James at St Thomas’ Church, Newport, Isle of Wight, and they had fifteen children.

His sons Thomas and Philip were both Members of Parliament.

His son Francis was Master of the Horse to Oliver Cromwell.

They lived at Carisbrooke Priory until Fleming purchased the North Stoneham estate in1604.

Fawkes and the seven co-conspirators were tried for high treason in January 1606, by a commission which included Fleming as Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, together with the Earls of Salisbury, Nottingham, Suffolk, Worcester, Devonshire and Northampton. Sir John Popham acted as Lord Chief Justice.

The men all pleaded not guilty to the charges laid against them, which included the plot we all know, “To murder the King, the Queen, and the Prince; to change, alter, and subvert the Religion here established; and to ruinate the State of the Commonwealth, and to bring in Strangers to invade it.”

However, they were also accused of planning “That they would take into their Custody Elizabeth and Mary the King’s Daughters, and proclaim the Lady Elizabeth Queen.”

Had they succeeded, we might have recently said farewell not to Queen Elizabeth II, but to Queen Elizabeth III!

Fleming was normally praised by his contemporaries for his “great judgments, integrity and discretion.” But during this trial, he was accused of attempting “to look wise, and say nothing.”

The trial only lasted one day.

Prosecutor Sir Edward Coke, is recorded as declaring that his closing remarks would be delivered “in respect of the time (for it grew now dark) very briefly”

The prisoners were all found guilty of treason and sentenced to, “the reward due to traitors, whose hearts be hardened” – hanged, drawn and quartered.

Fawkes himself avoided the more agonising aspects of this fate, by jumping from the scaffold with the noose fixed and breaking his neck.

Fleming died suddenly on August 7, 1613 at Stoneham Park. He went to bed apparently in sound health, but was taken suddenly ill, and died before morning.

He was buried in St Nicolas’ Church, North Stoneham, where a monument, known locally as the Floating Flemings, is ornamented with recumbent full-length figures of Fleming in his robes with his official insignia, and of his wife, with ruff and hood, and the singular waist favoured by ladies of the Tudor era.

Fleming’s descendants were still in possession of the Stoneham Park estate in 1908.

The Fleming Arms pub and Fleming Road, both in Swaythling, are named after the family. There is another pub of the same name in Binstead, Isle of Wight.

Martin Brisland is a tour guide with SeeSouthampton.co.uk .

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