831 



FAWKES, GUY. 



FEDOR IVANOVICH. 



682 



but retyere youre self into youre contri wheare yowo may expect the 

 event in safti for thowghe thenre be no apparance of anni stir yet 

 i saye they shall receyve a terrible blowe this parliament and yet they 

 shall not seie who hurts them, this councel is not to be contemned 

 because it may do yowe good and can do yowe no harme for the 

 dangere is passed as Boon as yowe have burnt the letter, and i hope 

 God will give yowe the grace to mak good use of it to whose holy 

 protection i commend yowe." " To the right honorable the Lord 

 Mounteagle." This letter has been ascribed to Anne, the daughter of 

 Lord Vaux, to Miss Abiugton, Lord Mounteagle's sister, to Percy, and 

 to others ; but there seem greater reasons for believing that no one 

 of these was the writer of it, but rather that Tresham was its author. 

 It i.s a point however we have not room to discuss, and therefore must 

 refer the inquiring reader to ' Criminal Trials ' (vol. ii p. 66) for 

 further remarks upon it. 



On the same evening Lord Mouuteagle showed the letter to several 

 lords of the council, who with him agreed that no steps should be 

 taken until the king returned from hunting at Royston. The contents 

 of the letter and its communication to many of the council, as well 

 as to the secretary of state, soon reached the ears of the conspirators ; 

 but though their danger was evident, and the vessel which was to 

 convey Fawkes to Flanders was lying in the river, they made no 

 attempt to escape. All suspected Tresham to be their betrayer, and 

 he was accused by them, but he vehemently denied the accusation. 

 Since they did not know accurately to what extent their proceedings 

 had been divulged, they had still hope of effectiug their design, espe- 

 cially as, upon examination, Fawkes found that the cellar was not 

 watched, r.nd had not been disturbed. When however they heard 

 that on the 31st of October the letter had been shown to the king, 

 their hope diminished and their fears increased. Some of the con- 

 spirators left London ; others concealed themselves in an obscure 

 lodging ; all held themselves ready to start at a moment's warning. 

 Fawkes alone, with the extraordinary courage which he had displayed 

 throughout the transaction, took up his station in the cellar. Thus 

 they passed three days of anxiety and suspense. On Monday the 

 chamberlain, with Lord Mouuteagle, commenced the search, which 

 appears to have been somewhat strangely delayed. Their suspicions 

 were excited both at finding that Percy was the occupier of a house 

 of which he was known to make no use, and at the unaccountably 

 large store of fuel which filled the cellars, and by the side of which a 

 tall dark auspicious-looking man (Fawkes) was standing. They there- 

 fore gave orders to Sir Thomas Knevet, a magistrate in Westminster, 

 to search the houses, the cellars, and the whole neighbourhood. The 

 search was commenced, and about twelve o'clock on the night of the 

 4th, Fawkes was seized as ho came out of the cellar : matches and 

 touchwood were found upon his person, a dark lantern with a lighted 

 candle ttood behind the cellar door, and under the faggots thirty-six 

 caska of gunpowder. Fawkes at once avowed his purpose to the 

 magistrate, and declared that " if he had happened to be within the 

 house when he took him, ho would not have failed to have blown him 

 up, house and all." His courage and composure were not disturbed 

 when he was examined before the king and council. He gave his 

 name as John Johnson, the servant of Thomas Percy, declared his 

 intention to blow up the king, lords, and bishops, and others who 

 should have assembled at the opening of the parliament, refused to 

 accuse any one as his accomplice, and upon being asked by the king 

 how he could enter upon so bloody a conspiracy against so many 

 innocent persons, declared that "Dangerous diseases require a desperate 

 remedy." 



After having received the news of the apprehension of Fawkes, it 

 was agreed by the conspirators, who had assembled nt Ashby Ledgers, 

 to take up arms with the few followers they could collect, aud to 

 endeavour to excite to rebellion the Koman Catholics in the counties 

 of Warwick, Worcester, and Stafford, together with those of Wales. 

 This scheme waa immediately adopted ; arms and horses were seized 

 upon, and different parties despatched over the country. But all their 

 efforts were in vain [Dicnr], and the failure of the project so complete, 

 that their proceedings served no other purpose than to point them 

 out as members of the confederacy. A party of the kind's troops 

 pursued some of the conspirators to Holbeach, and here an obstinate 

 defence was made, in which the two Wrights, Percy, and Catesby 

 were killed, and Rookwood and Thomas Winter wounded. The others 

 were eventually token. Tresbam died a natural death in prison, and 

 on the 27th of Jauuary 1606, eight persons, namely, Robert Winter, 

 Thomas Winter, Guy Fawkes, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert 

 Keyes, and Thomas Bates, were tried at Westminster by a special 

 commission, for being concerned in the powder-plot. Sir Everard 

 Digby was arraigned and tried separately for the same crime. Upon 

 the trials no witness was orally examined : the evidence consisted of 

 the written declarations of Digby's servant and of the prisoners them- 

 selves. There is reason to believe that Fawkes was tortured in order 

 to make him confess more fully. All the prisoners were found guilty, 

 and upon all the sentence of deatli wan passed. Care was taken to 

 i-i'iidiT tlu-ir execution, which took place on the following Thursday 

 uii'l Kridny, as solemn and impressive at possible. 



Of the implication of the Jesuits in this conspiracy we shall speak 

 in the article GARNET. 

 The atrocity of the design and the extent of the mischief con 



templated form the principal features of the gunpowder-plot. It is 

 also remarkable for having been imagined and contrived, not by 

 needy and low-born adventurers, but by gentlemen of good family 

 and for the most part ample fortune. Its eifect continued long to 

 be felt ; for it not only determined the feeble and wavering mind of 

 the king against the Roman Catholics, but prejudiced the whole 

 nation against them to such an extent, that not only were the severe 

 acts then in force against them left uurepealed, but others equally 

 harsh were enacted. 



(Abridged and extracted from Criminal Trials, vol. ii.) 

 FAYETTE LA. [LAFAYETTE.] 



FEDERI'CI CAMILLO, an Italian dramatic writer of note, whose 

 real name, Giovanni Battista Viassolo, is, like that of Poqueliu (Moliere), 

 quite lost in that which he assumed on joining a company of actors 

 and beginning to write for the stage, and which he took from the 

 title of his first dramatic effort, ' Camillo e Federico.' He was born at 

 Garessio in Piedmont, 9th April 1749. Intended by his family for 

 either the church or the bar, he was educated accordingly at Turin, 

 but a passionate taste for the theatre, which had captivated his 

 imagination while he was yet in his boyhood, prevailed over all other 

 considerations. After being for some years in different companies in 

 the double capacity of a performer upon the stage and a writer for it, 

 he had, in 1777, the good fortune to find an excellent wife in the 

 widow of Vicenzo Bazzigotti, who had realised some fortune by the 

 theatre as a manager. The union was a happy one on both sides, for 

 his wife was not only an amiable, but an intelligent and well-educated 

 woman, possessing considerable literary taste. Federici now quitted 

 the boards, and settled at Padua, where he employed himself in com- 

 posing a succession of new pieces for the theatres of both that city and 

 Venice. The juncture was a favourable one, for Goldoni's popularity 

 was upon the wane, Gozzi had ceased to write for the stage, and 

 Chiari was altogether forgotten. Without treading in the footsteps of 

 Goldoni, Federici showed himself a worthy successor to him, inferior 

 in comic force, but equally fertile in invention, and more varied in his 

 subjects, many of his pieces being of a serious aud sentimental kind 

 then just brought into fashion in Germany accordingly answering 

 better to the title of domestic drama than comedy. Federici's fame 

 was not confined to the applause of the public whoso favour he had 

 more immediately in view, for his pieces were brought out with equal 

 success in almost every theatre throughout Italy. But this full tide 

 of prosperity was suddenly cheeked by a calamity that human pru- 

 dence could neither foresee nor avert. He was attacked, in 1791, by a 

 malady of the chest, that rendered him incapable of all exertion, either 

 bodily or mental ; nor did he ever afterwards recover from it further 

 than to be able to dictate either to his wife or one of his sous, who 

 served him as amanuenses. To add to his distress, soon alter his 

 disorder first seized him, he learnt that Pellaudi, the manager of one 

 of the companies for which he had written, had surreptitiously sold 

 twenty-nine of his pieces to a publisher at Turin an injury which the 

 increased celebrity it brought to his name could hardly solten. 



Federici died 2iird December 1802. Amiable and unassuming, he 

 had invariably resisted every proposal to his becoming a member of 

 any literary or learned society ; but he could not prevent one public 

 mark of honour being paid him, namely, a medal being struck, with 

 the head of Alfieri on one side, and his own on the other as the 

 effigies of the two dramatic writers whom Piedmont had reason to be 

 proud of having given birth to. The high reputation he obtained has 

 been confirmed by the testimony of foreign critics. One quality that 

 recommends his productions Is the healthy tone of morality that 

 generally pervades them ; neither is it the least of his merits, that he 

 enlarged the resources of the Italian stage, by bringing subjects upon 

 it that were calculated to amend and improve as well as amuse. 

 Besides his serious pieces, he produced a few tragedies, which would, 

 however, hardly have associated him in the manner above meutioued 

 with Altieri. The most complete collection of his works is that pub- 

 lished under the title of ' Opere Teatrali di Camillo Federici,' Padova e 

 Venezia, 1S02-16, in fourteen volumes. 



FEDOR IVANOVICH, the last Czar of Russia of the dynasty of 

 Ruric, ascended the throne in 1584, after the death of his father, the 

 celebrated tyrant Ivau Vasilevich. He was weak iu body and mind; 

 tut the affairs of the government were conducted by Godoonoff during 

 his reign, which was marked by some events that produced a decisive 

 influence on the destinies of the Russian empire. It was during 

 Fedor's reign that the peasants of Muscovy, who had hitherto eujoyucl 

 personal liberty, aud could pass from the estate of one landowner to 

 that of any other who would grant them better conditions, were con- 

 verted into serfs attached to the ground (servi gleboc adscript!). This 

 change was introduced in 1592, by the instrumentality of Godoonoff, who 

 adopted that measure in order to obtain a party among the landowners. 

 There had been, previously to that epoch, domestic slaves in Russia, 

 but the predial serfs date only from that time. The Greek church of 

 Moscow originally depended on the patriarch of Constantinople, who 

 consecrated the metropolitan of Moscow; but alter the capture of Con- 

 stantinople by the Turks, the supremacy of the Greek patriarch over 

 the Muscovite church was almost destroyed. Jeremy, patriarch of 

 Constantinople, arriving iu 1588 at Moscow, iu order to collect alms 

 for the erection of churches, was received with great honours by Fedor, 

 who, being exceedingly devout, presented the head of the Greek 



