The Gunpowder Plot*


The main player in the Gunpowder Plot, Guy Fawkes was not a spy and his execution was expertly faked. From the start and for four years previously he was a double agent who was working for the English.

dragOn the way to his execution we swaped one of the real plotters for him. That is why we had them all dragged on sleds like in the picture at left.

The man riding the horse which dragged his sled simply took a longer route and ducked into a side street where one of the real plotters replaced Guy Fawkes. A couple of sharp turns on the way to the execution rolled the sled over several times and that made his face so bloody no one could tell him from Guy. The noise from the crowd covered his moans of 'I'm not Guy Fawkes'. He was killed by the ride to the gallows. This is why all the accounts state that Guy did not kick which is an involuntary action when a person is strangled by hanging.

Other of our secret agents who had infiltrated the plot got out of being executed by different methods such as swaping a dead body from the morgue for Garnet at the last second which I explain below here.


As the wife of Robert Cecil I became deeply involved.
We patriotic English turned the Gunpowder Plot completely around and used it to completely destroy Spain's intelligence network in England.  

It was all a big trap to draw in all their spies and to bring them all down at once. There were so many plots to kill or kidnap King James that it had to be done this way. Otherwise the plots were just going to continue until they were sucessful. There were several as it were. Two other main plots that got exposed were the Main Plot and Bye Plot.

Note: The kidnapping in the Bye Plot was likely to have taken place on the way to Hatfield House and that is why King James traded it to us for Theobalds. That was never made public knowledge as the reason for the exchange but it is pretty obvious. (It was just said that King James did not like Hatfield.)

I think I used the name of Anne Vaux (see below) and I can tell you we were completely successful in taking over and then destroying Spain's entire spy ring by capturing every spy of theirs and nearly all their resources.

Before King James, Queen Elizabeth had directed, hourly at times, the anti spy operations in England. We loved it since she was incredibly canny and effective at catching more spies than anyone else ever had.

Though it was after her reign the Gunpowder Plot was dealt with the same way as she would have done things. Nearly every resource was brought to bear to stop such assassinations as they should be.


The Gunpowder plot took so much time to pull off that I don't understand why nobody ever realized that the whole operation was taken over by British intelligence almost from the start. For Christ's sake it took over a year and a half. I mean how long does it take to explode a pile of gunpowder?

Guy and I got involved in May 1604. 
Eight month's later, in March 1605 we rented the cellar. If the plot had been real then the gunpowder would have gone into the cellar the same day and set off the next. The truth is that would have only blown a few of the Lords and the Royals to Kingdom come. However, the fact is that another eight months rolled by before we pulled the plug on the operation. We stopped it the very day the gunpowder was to be set off, November 5, 1605.  (The dates can be confirmed  here.)  

By delaying it for a year and a half English Intelligence was able to learn the identity of almost every Spanish, French and Flemish spy and sympathizer in England.  That was one reason for the delay.


What was the other reason for us to wait until the day of the planned explosion for us to spring the trap and arrest everyone involved? It was the best way to determine the level of complicity and involvement that the various countries had in the plot. The Spanish were the big perpetrators. Although they destroyed their records and tried to cover it up we had agents on the ground tell us that for over two weeks the Spanish and Flemish had kept all their ships in port, they were all stocked, 12,000 troops were encamped nearby, ready to board and the officers had all their leaves canceled. At least 20 ships had already set sail from Spains east coast. The Flemish were loading troops on their ships. They were both waiting for orders to sail against an England whose government had been destroyed. The Portuguese knew of the plot but were planning to wait until the gunpowder went off before they prepared. The whole thing got completely out of hand. The French thought they were Spain's target and readied themselves for war against Spain. Then most of the European countries readied themselves for war against Spain. Why? The rulers of most of the European countries condemned Spain because the rulers were supposed to be off limits in war. Rulers have a vested interest in the survival of other rulers be they friend or foe. War was for peasants and knights not lords and royalty. The mass assassination of all the rulers of a country had never been attempted and the idea of it was simply unheard of. It meant that Spain had changed the rules of war and all rulers were fair game from then on. This exposure was all due to Robert Cecil's planning. He said it 400 years ago and I will say it now: 'We caught them with their pants down taking a last shit before battle.'

This was a very big deal at the time.

Credit needs to go where credit has been due...for 400 years. Robert Cecil masterminded the whole thing. He even came up with this idea of dragging it out for a year and a half then arresting everyone the day of the planned attack. Once again Robert Cecil saved England. There were two or three other times his personal planning and actions actually directly saved England but his role was always kept secret. He and his family have dealt with the abuse and aspersions of detractors who have even accused him of treason. I'm here to say that it must end.

Wouldn't spending a year and a half to pile up some gunpowder and light the fuse make you very suspicious? To assure you that I was there just read this proof.

Then there was the 'just in the nick of time' overly dramatic discovery of an anomyous warning note 'intercepted' the very day before the explosion and handed to my husband Robert Cecil. That should have made every one suspicious.

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The problem-

BeefeatersWas that there were so many plotters and so much gunpowder that we had to capture everyone and everything and not just break up the ring. However, there was no chance of Parliament being blown up after Guy Fawkes talked the plotters out of their first idea which was to simply explode wagons full of gunpowder outside of the buildings. 

People also ask 'why would King James take such a chance with the lives of Parliament'? Good point. The plain truth of the matter is that no chances were taken. Nobody was in peril after Guy got involved.

Guy Fawkes was a government agent who was planted midway in the plot to take over the whole affair.** Once he got control of the plot then the safest place for all that gunpowder was in storage with him having the key. Every night after gunpowder was put in the room we snuck in and took it out. We then substituted something like sugar and ash for the gunpowder.

During the sessions of Parliament the conspirators all had to stay far away. Then we stationed Yeomen of the Guard (Beef eaters) all underground to prevent anyone from accessing the room. It was totally safe for Parliament.
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Why we had to take over the gunpowder plot instead of just breaking it up- 
westminster hall
There were too many conspirators and too much gunpowder running around for us to have done anything else or used any other method. You often see law enforcement take down drug rings and usually about 1/4 of the people get away and they admit that less than 10% of the drugs get stopped. We had to capture (or kill) every one of the conspirators and confiscate every last bit of the gunpowder. This was the only way we could protect Parliament and stop all further attempts.

Otherwise one man could have done everything. He could have simply put two barrels of gunpowder on a donkey and run it in through the doors of Parliament to destroy the government. O
r just rolled a 50 pound barrel of gunpowder down the steps of Westminster Hall (right past where the Queen is standing in the picture) during certain state occasions would have ended the government too.

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What the conspirators planned before we took over the plot.

The conspirators had just about settled on running a few wagons in between and on the back sides of the buildings while the government was in session. Then by setting them off the walls would cave in on all the buildings and thereby destroy the entire government. 
That is over here on the 'proof page'.  It was so simple and effective I don't how Guy talked them out of it. It would have been much more effective than setting off gunpowder in an underground room. That blast would have mostly gone upwards and killed only those who were directly above the blast whereas in wagons that much gunpowder would have destroyed almost every government office and killed everyone in those buildings.
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What was needed-

We had to first talk them out of using this simple foolproof method of destroying the English Government. To do so we had to come up with a better one and there was none. So we lied and then we had to get someone who could convince the plotters that our lie was better.
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Why Guy Fawkes?

So we got our best agent who was an expert on explosives. He was able to both manufacture and perpetrate a lie. Putting the gunpowder in the cellar was the only thing we could come up with that looked like it might be a marginally better idea than blowing up wagons but it was far from it.

He served for many years as a
soldier, gaining considerable expertise with explosives. In 1593 he enlisted in the army of Archduke Albert of Austria in the Netherlands, fighting against the Protestant United Provinces in the Eighty Years' War. In 1596 he was present at the siege and capture of Calais. By 1602, however, he had still risen no higher than the rank of ensign. Wikipedia

Guy Fawkes was an Ensign going on a Colonel. By that I mean he was paid the same as a colonel, did the work of a Colonel and was really a Colonel. The Austrians did not want anybody to know this and a colonels insignia would have given away the information that he had special knowledge. Intelligence groups and the military often still do this.

He had served as an English secret agent for ten years in the Netherlands Spanish army under Archduke Albert of Austria. Since he was English he knew about English weapons and tactics. Guy's primary task was to determine the weak points of the Spanish defenses and figure out how to make them strong enough to repel any possible English invasion.  (That is why he was present at certain battles but not usually actively involved directly in them.)

While we were walking to one of the meetings I asked him how he had gotten away with it for so long. He said he faithfully advised the Archduke about all the vulnerabilities and all the ways to correct them and he never lied or deceived them except for one thing. He never told them about the worst vulnerability. All the others but not the one that the English could penetrate easiest. Then that was the only vulnerability that he sent information about to England. He sent no information about the lesser vulnerabilities.
His spying went on for over ten years. Even though there were three interceptions of messages to England it was never the same information that he gave the Archduke so they never knew who the information had come from. 

The problem they mainly faced were new forms of gunpowder that could destroy walls. Italy and Spain were learning that certain additions to the basic gunpowder formula changed it's actions. Some were more shattering and others burned extremely hot. Guy was a specialist in both kinds but what has stuck with me for 400 years was the 'fusing powders' he told me about. These were very hot burning gunpowders which could fuse together metal. It may have been an early form of thermite which is a simple mixture of a gunpowder and metal. The formulas that we had were kept secret so the references say that thermite was invented in the 1890's. However, as it says, any number of metals could be used and about a half dozen of these were known in 1600. At least one was used to create very high heat 400 years ago.
(What kind of fools do they think people were back then? Do you think we were too stupid to add iron shavings and copper filings to gunpowder in order to make a type of thermite?) A few ounce of one of these mixtures poured between the stones of a wall and then lit would often cause more damage than the broadsides of ten ships.  It would heat the stone walls until they cracked. They would become powder to the touch. If it was done in secret and no one saw it then nobody would know that the wall was weak. Six months later five men with a battering ram could easily breach that part of the wall. 

This was the kind of expertise that us spies had to have to talk the conspirators out of doing it right.
You can see why it wasn't that simple. There were about three issues that made it really difficult and I'll put them here when I recall them.

Who was I-

I think I used the alias Anne Vaux for that operation.

 Look at the name Anne Vaux. My name when I was a maid of honor to Queen Elizabeth was Anne Vavasor. It's not that different. Anne V was a great combination and this was a really high drama acting job.


Anne Vaux was born in 1562, the daughter of a Catholic nobleman, Lord Vaux of Harrowden. She was a cousin of Francis Tresham. Unmarried, she seems to have devoted her life to supporting the cause of Catholicism in England and for many years she helped the Jesuit priest Henry Garnett to carry out his secret missionary work.

Working often with her widowed sister, Eleanor Brooksby, she created safe houses for Garnett and other clerics. One of them was Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire, now belonging to the National Trust; another was White Webbs in Enfield Chase, near London. Both houses were fitted up with priest holes or hiding places for the priests.

Note: Those hiding places were not for priests. They were for the government agents to hide in so they could listen in on the plotters. If they had been caught in their hiding places they were to pretend to be Catholics in hiding. Read on.

Several of the conspirators met at White Webbs in the summer and autumn of 1605, and although she did not know about the Plot, Anne Vaux did have some suspicions. After the discovery of the Plot she was arrested but soon released, and following her release tried to protect Garnett, posing as his sister, a Mrs Perkins. By the beginning of December Garnett was in hiding at Hindlip House, where he was eventually found on 27 January.

After his arrest, Anne Vaux followed Garnett to London and tried to pass secret messages to him, which were intercepted by the authorities. She was herself arrested again in March and interrogated. Distraught at Garnett's death, she was released in August and lived first in Leicestershire and then in Derbyshire, where she ran a Catholic school. She died some time after 1637.Read the full dramatic text here.

Could I have made it any more dramatic than this? Doesn't this just sound like it is a little bit too much to be real? Doesn't this really sound more like one of the bards plays? I lived it and I actually was the one that wrote these very accounts for the history books. I was Queen Elizabeth's personal secretary and wrote many of the states records during that time period.

Anne Vaux never existed. They messed up Anne's fake bio in the history books though. Anne Vaux was supposed to go down throughout history as having run not a Catholic school but a Catholic Orphanage (making over population and birth control an issue). Also, there is nothing about my being the daughter of an English Catholic (not very) Noble-man who was so hated by my step mother (who my father married immediately) that I was sent off as an infant to live out my life of obscurity in a Portuguese Convent. Then to be rescued by Jesuit monks to whom I became blindly devoted. (Imagine a 1600's Manson follower and you have Anne Vaux.) 

However, without the false history of me being saved by the Jesuits my personality lacks a distinct balance. So instead of making me appear truly devoted to those who had given me freedom it makes me appear to be a slavish fool for having stupidly allowed myself to get talked into their 'Jesuit terrorist bombings'. You can read through the Vaux genealogy here to see how I laid out my character, however keep in mind that this Anne Vaux never existed. Besides I was supposed to have been a daughter by the maid and not the wife. 

The father was never a very responsible person and got himself in lots of trouble which left behind dozens of children by many women (although he was said to have been a great Catholic). Anyway, I wonder if this false bio I wrote still exists anywhere?

Anne Vaux had various past history's according to the need. Sometimes Anne Vaux had to be a Catholic and sometimes a common criminal. To make her qualified to be involved in a Catholic plot we gave her a father William Vaux and gave him a really bad record as a papist.

Committed by the Privy Council to the Fleet prison, and after in the
Star Chamber [a feared courtroom] 15 Nov following for harbouring, Edmund Campion and for contempt of court, was sentenced to imprisonment in the Fleet and a fime of £1000; 18 Aug 1581 Here

The strangest thing is even after this false record about my father being deeply involved in Catholic intrigues people still thought I did not know anything about the Gunpowder plot.

...and although she did not know about the Plot, Anne Vaux did have some suspicions

If the plotters were going to keep their plot a secret from someone they would have used someone whose family had a clean record and were above suspicion and, not someone from the 'Vaux family'. It is totally logical that I was either involved in the Gunpowder Plot or else I was an English spy. Actually the plotters did not trust or accept me for a long time even though they trusted Guy from the start.

O.K. I admit it, I invented the whole family. Technically Queen Elizabeth invented the family many years before. It never really existed except in my mind and the plot as I wrote it were scenes to a play I was going to produce but never did.  Well I needed a man's name to publish my poems when I was Anne Vavasor. I know it is a high crime to pretend to be an aristocrat in England, you can probably still be drawn and quartered for doing it (and have all your holdings confiscated). There is only one reason I would ever do such a thing. Queen Elizabeth ordered me to

You can see how this way of living gets to be a lot of fun and almost as much fun as acting the life of Anne Vavasor who was the alleged victims of both the Earl of Oxford and Queen Elizabeth who threw her in the tower...(read about it here)

I was right in the thick of it but I pretended to be a dumb as a 'potatoe' which was a strange fruit that had just come from the New World which nobody could figure out how to cook, so they just sat around the kitchens of England doing nothing and looking stupid...like I tried to do.  

When we first got involved with the plotters I had to wait outside the room they met in. When the other plotters wanted to talk without Guy hearing them they would walk across the room and talk next to the door (near where I was sitting outside)  Guy was half deaf which was the sign of a real expert at explosives so he couldn't hear them. He would cough really loud once and that was my signal to walk over and listen through the door to those men holding their private conversation.

About every third time they would open the door really fast and catch me with my ear almost against it. They would ask me if I was listening to them and I'd just tell them 'I have to pee'.

Ladies, always remember this fact. When you need a time out all you have to do is say that you have to pee and you can call time out for a few minutes. By the time I got back I'd be dumb and forgotten what I had been accused of about five minutes earlier. Always I pretended that I had to pee so badly that I had blinders on to every thing else that had been going on.

Useful women's information-

When a woman has to pee nobody can ask any other questions until she gets back.

It works great for all kinds of situations because men are socially not allowed to talk about such things regarding women. Their mother taught them this and also that they have to consider such announcements as if they were coming from their own mother. When their mother had to pee it was immediate and it took priority over everything else that was going on. And of course questioning them was not allowed. 

It got me out of quite a few situations where I sensed I was probably going to be raped. It's exceptional for this. It implies that you might urinate on them and men who like that kind of stuff pay experts for the service. Saying you need to pee also implies that you are going to come right back and they will get it voluntarily but you had better get away from them fast. The best part is the transformation in thinking that occurs. Men who rape usually think of all women as being either mothers or whores. Wives, sisters and mothers compose the first group and so do you once you transform into his mom when you tell him you need to pee.

This last part only comes into play about 90 percent of the time. Some men are just plain mean to all people. This next item adds to the effect. Talk about his mother or at least his family. It amplifies the effect and then it works almost every time.

If that doesn't work then in less than a minute pee and say you have this horrible infection which doesn't allow you to hold your water. You have to use the bathroom right away and it's been like that for the last three years since you had sex with that _____ (fill in the race the man hates the most). I used to say 'Frenchman'. That used to work for me but it probably not a good choice these days.

When they were in the room they tested the various gunpowders by burning little piles of it. They would come out afterwards and ask me if I heard anything. For goodness sakes the acrid smoke from all the burning gunpowder would come billowing out around them and choke me half to death but they didn't think of that.

They were not rocket scientists but Guy Fawkes was and that is how the English Government took over the Spanish Gunpowder Plot.


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How we did it-

By taking over the entire plot England was able to get all the names of the conspirators to the last man (and woman), get all the gunpowder and prevent the destruction of the new English government lead by King James (I).

Guy Fawkes and my relative,
Sir William Stanley (I was born Ursula Stanley), were both English agents. You might notice in the bios of both of these men, nothing they were involved in against England ever succeeded and almost everyone else who was involved got caught. The Spanish never caught on to the fact they were double agents.

Gunpowder Conspirators executionIt's in the records and shown in the drawing of the execution that the guilty were 'hanged, drawn and quartered' which was an outdated method of execution by then. Simple hanging and beheading had mainly taken it's place. However this old method of execution allowed for Guy Fawkes and two other government agents to escape death. When you end up waist deep in pieces of bodies who is going to count them up to figure out whether there are enough right arms, left legs, etc. and who they belonged to in order to determine if the right men were actually executed?

Their friends (Catholic conspirators) would want the body to check and see if it was the right person.

headsThis way they got a big bag of body parts minus the head which were put on poles until birds ate them beyond recognition.

For two of our agents they used a flesh colored leather collar that would strap down invisibly around their neck. On the inside there were overlapping rings. Some were linked and some could be adjusted by small straps
just enough to prevent the rope from pinching off the blood flow completely. The person could move their head and even bend their neck but they would not die. It was fitted beforehand and the hangman had to be in on it. It was quite ingenious because the hanging looked like it killed the person. 

Pointless additional information-

Through hundreds of years the armorers had learned this and many similar tricks.


They got so good at metal work that they sometimes made the elbow and wrist of armor lock so if a knight twisted his arm ten degrees it would create a virtual 6 foot lance out of his arm and sword. They would have to hold the sword by it's hilt instead of the handle. From the shoulder to the tip of the sword was locked in place but a twist of his arm it worked like normal armor. They could pull in their shoulder about one inch and the arm also would lock in place.


The strangest thing is that in both dreams and visions I keep seeing one of these in the National Armory and they don't know what the notches at the joint are for. 

This virtual lance conserved a knight's energy and the locked sword/arm combination could not be deflected easily. It was very effective in battle.
If he pierced someone then the whole suit of armor would take that impact and not just his arm. Without such lockig devices that impact often broke the arms of knight holding the sword and then they would usually lose the fight.)

When they dropped the body after the hanging they substituted a corpse that they then drew and quartered.

He (Garnet) was given a few minutes for prayer and then signalled the hangman. He was cast off the ladder, not being bound and not making any struggle with death. Due to intercession of the crowd, he was allowed to hang until dead before being cut down for quartering and burning. here

The implication is that he allowed himself to be strangled to death on the end of the rope while his hands were untied and without moving so much as a twitch. Sounds like he was already dead.

The body moves automatic when dying of suffocation no matter how much a person may will himself not to. When a person suffocates first the thought processes stop and then the motor parts. Without the impediment of the thought processes the motor parts automatically cause the body to move. It's unpreventable. It was called the 'dance of death' in Elizabethan times but in America the most common term is "dancing at the end of a rope." In any case a person who dies that way can't prevent or stop those movements so if a hanged man doesn't 'dance at the end of the rope' then he was dead before they ever hung him.  Hence our agent Garnet did not die. (I may have this mixed up with another execution. There were several executions that occurred about then in which our man had to appear to have died. However, we rescued them. I had to work out the details. Some of these plans may never have been used but were locked away in my memory as potential ruses until now.)

You can see in the picture above of the executions that it was done on a high platform (it used to be 13 steps to the platform) that was raised about twelve feet off the ground so Garnet could not be seen when he got down to pray. Neither was it visible when the hangman picked up a dead body that was next to Garnet.

The main reason for hanging, drawing and quartering was to strike terror into foreign spies and invaders. Nobody tried to blow up Parliament again so it seems to have worked.

They also did another stunt when chopping off a cadaver's head. They would suture into its chest a pressurized bladder filled with red fluid which had a tube that went up into the head. When they chopped the dead man's head off the red water would squirt all over the place like it should with a live man. 


That was one of the main reasons that form of execution and then bodily defilement was used. Since dozens of people were dying each day of natural causes in London it was easy to locate a man with a full beard and a body that looked a lot like Guy Fawkes (and the other two), then put them on ice until the execution. 

There were some others who were also government agents. 

The authorities caught up with the conspirators on the morning of Friday 8 November at Holbeach House near Kingswinford, in Staffordshire. Several, including Catesby, had already been injured in an accident trying to dry out their water-soaked gunpowder. There was a brief shoot-out: Catesby, Thomas Percy, Christopher and Jack Wright were killed. here

These four men were not killed in the shoot out. They were other English government agents who were released and retired or sent abroad.
 
Since Guy always wore a full beard it was easy to change his identity so he could retire safely in the south of England. His being an English agent was never exposed because he had supplied the English Navy with all the defense works of the Netherlands. It was not the details of the gunpowder plot that had to be kept secret, it was that Guy Fawkes was an English agent from the start. If it got out that he was an English secret agent then everything he had done for the previous 20 years would have been wasted including all the information about the defenses of the Netherlands.

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Why was there never any chance of Parliament getting blown up?

Once Guy and I got involved in the conspiracy we infiltrated our own spies and took over the conspiracy completely until only our spies were in contact with the gunpowder and we had manuvered all of the real plotters away from the explosives. Then that night we
substituted something like sugar and ash for the gunpowder.

However without us this would have been the biggest disaster that ever happened in England.

This man is the first person who clearly saw the devastation that almost occurred. Everyone else seems to think it was a joke or not very serious.

One thing that I was told is that afterward the plot was thwarted the government tested the gunpowder in five cannons. The gunpowder ruptured two cannons and shattered a third. They threw lots of the gunpowder into the river but some of the officers took barrels of it.

By the way all this is from my memory. In this life I have only read one single paragraph about the Gunpowder Plot many years ago in my Chatsworth High School history class. 

What did I get out of this? Did I get a medal? Did I get 1000 pounds a year retirement? Did I get a job offer with the new King James government? What I got was 'if other women were as perfect as she is then we should probably get some of them to work for us.'
 And after this whole thing was over I had to change my identity again, for about the fifth time.

The ultimate irony is that had the plotters succeeded then James's daughter would have become queen and I would have gotten my old job back as the queens chamber lady.

Somehow I have to integrate this page with this one (I started this with a few memories about the gunpowder plot which I thought was just going to amount to a couple of paragraphs. But now it has really gotten out of hand). 

 .

*
Memories of events start as a trickle and if I write them down then they often start to flood my mind and they become much clearer. Often what I recall first is my first impression of that event (in that previous life) and then as I recall more I see my later impressions of the same event. 

In this case I recalled first the acting and I saw it almost as if we were part of the plot. A few hours later I realized I was only acting the part. Then for two weeks more I thought Guy was not acting and was an actual conspirator. At first I wrote the following .

-'Guy Fawkes decided he needed a girl on his arm to impress the others so he took me along with him when he planned the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the House of Lords and left me outside the room. I was the wrong broad to take along. He needed a woman with cotton between her ears and inside of them...since the door was so thin I could hear everything they said inside. There was and is lots of controversy over the fact that it was allowed to proceed and was only prevented at almost the last minute, which was pretty true. That was to prevent people from saying King James did it so he could start persecutions or that they were planning to blackmail Parliament and were not actually going to set it off...and people still say both of these things. It was real and what about the letter that supposedly gave the whole thing away? It's too obvious that it was planted to get the Catholics to cut each others throats..and it worked. Some would say too well.'-

Then after two weeks it all came into focus at once. Only then did I realize that Guy was acting too and that is what you will read in the main text.  I may still add to or subtract parts of this page as my memories get clearer about the details.

*
*Normally we would have used inexperienced agents so that we could expose them afterwards and used their testimony in court.

This plot was far too important though.
Our intent was first to save Parliament and that meant we had to use the best spies. Everything else was secondary, even if it meant that our entire network of spies and ourselves would have been compromised. Luckily it was not. 

If we had exposed them then about 15 countries would have known that they had been compromised. Those 15 countries would have then rounded up all their friends and wiped out England's entire network of  spies in Europe. Also if it was learned that Guy was a spy then the Spanish ruled Netherlands would have shored up all their defenses. That also goes for both Spain and Italy since he learned a lot about their defenses as part of his work in the Netherlands. He learned a weakness in about 1/4 of the main fortresses of those two countries. For instance he found out that with even a slight cross wind the Spanish man of wars would tilt so much that they could not depress their cannons to hit a nearby ship with a broadside.

***(Oh, what great drivel you are about to read. I just don't know what to do to make it more interesting.)

First, about 1585-1595,  Queen Elizabeth ordered me to publish my poetry. I explained to her I had to be a man to have a contract and I did not have the money to publish it. The only way I could get the money was from the book dealers but they would not give me any money. They would sign an agreement to buy the books but I had to be an aristocrat man to get a loan against the book sellers note. Queen Elizabeth said 'why not become one'. 

I asked her 'Do you want me to pretend to be an Earl?' 

She said 'heaven's no, there are a only a few Earls and everyone knows their finances. 'We will do a baron, they always have land but not always very much money. There are lots of them around and not near enough to London for my tax collectors. Some are on rocks out in the ocean. The bankers won't even bother to look for confirmation and with land holdings you will get your loan right away.'

She was our queen so she could do whatever she wanted and she made the Barony of Harrowden then and there. I guess they back dated the barony to 1523 and for a few days I became William VAUX (3° Baron Vaux of Harrowden) until I got the loan. Actually I think I played his made up wife Elizabeth who was getting the book of poetry reprinted for the father, Thomas Vaux, posthumously. Of course I had to do it all. Since William had lost the use of his legs and his left arm so he could not attend to it himself but his right arm and hand worked which meant he could sign papers. I just had to do the foot work, poor man.

Queen Elizabeth may not have actually started the Barony. There were two Baron's whose entire families had been recently murdered by uprisings of the local population. It was due mainly to hardships by the mini Ice age or at least that was what was claimed until one of these revolts were investigated and it was found that the Baron and his son's had started acting like Vlad the Impaler. They had murdered many of the men in the local villages so that they could have their women. A lot of these investigations ended up with more questions than answers because of two recent advents which had created unforeseen and completely new problems. 

The colder damp weather of the mini Ice Age caused huge amounts of mold growth everywhere. (This may be why you don't have that many English paintings or manuscripts from before the 1500's. The climate had become like that of Scandinavian countries where they gave up on keeping records and had virtually no written language because of the molds). For the first time in history England experienced whole counties going mad due to Ergot and other unknown grain molds sending everyone on LSD trips. 

Another issue was the recently arrived disease Syphilis (from the new world). During the final stage of that disease many Barons went stark raving mad. Like I said more questions were often produced than answers. 

I think the Barony of Harrowden was actually started in the 1300's, terminated by the peasants and then I helped cover it up by assuming the baronesses identity and rewriting the family history. 

I wonder if I could I claim the other barony that was made to completely disappear?

What do you get if you are a baron these days?  Is it of any benefit or is it like dating a movie star? It's an expensive proposition, time consuming and requires all your attention but you can end up looking really good. (Or bad but at least you know it is always going to be very high profile.)

I knew of another barony near the east coast that stopped being used. It was just forgotten (or covered up) about when an
unknown mold the local villagers and the entire barons family tripped out when they drank the ale that the baron provided for a wedding which he had made from bad grain. It killed over 200 people.

There was another one I vaguely recall in Wales where the mold toxins just made the peasants sick and that made them think the baron was evil so they murdered him and his family.

Then there were a bunch of Catholics that gave up their titles and I could have used those, etc.

Since I was the imaginary wife of the imaginary son acting on behalf of him the poetry is sometimes attributed to William Vaux. The most famous poem is
this one immediately below. You will notice I carefully avoid any thing which determines my sex, just like in most of the sonnets. I think that I may have used the theme of this poem in one of the plays.

The Aged Lover Renounceth Love

After the book was published the name lay unused for at least a score of years and then we used it for England's spy network. Being Anne Vaux went off and on for 30 years.  

I wonder if I could use any of the titles that I used to use?  What do you think? 

You probably want some proof. I'll have to find some.  I'm afraid that this one was so under our complete control that the cover up was complete and very effective. No compromises were needed and so there were none. It may just be near impossible to find any flaws in the records or the recorded history.

Maybe what wasn't done will work as proof. If you trace the Vaux family you will find that most branches of the family just dead end. You will find members who wrote like the bard and you will find references to members who were patrons of the bard. And then in a few years almost everyone in the lineage just disappears. The lineagefell into abeyance for several hundred years and nobody used it. Who are all those people named Vaux? I can tell you this. When I was heading up internal intelligence for Queen Elizabeth half of England's spies used at least one of the names on that family tree. We could easily bring in as many spies as needed into any situation without raising suspicions by just bringing in Vaux relatives. In a way you could say the Vaux family was MI-5.

I started to read the origin of the Vaux family and it's vaguely familiar. I jumped to the second paragraph and half way through reading a forty word sentences I said to myself  'Wait a second I remember writing this':

Her husband, whom she had married not long before she obtained her letters of denization, was slain at the battle of Tewkesbury after which he was attainted and his property forfeited, but not even his death shook
Catherine Vaux's loyalty: she stayed by the Queen during her imprisonment in the Tower and on Margaret's release in 1476 went with her into exile (as she had done earlier in the 1460s), living with her until her death six years later.

Isn't it total high drama and a plot worthy of the bards plays. Since Queen Elizabeth had asked me to give the family a 'rich' history I did exactly as I was commanded. Want some more? Just scroll down this page and you will be amazed and delighted. It's a one page play. 

I do hope you enjoy it because
it took me two days to write up the history and including all those despicable men and all those devoted women. Most family lineages are as dry as a laundry list but the Vaux's will make you cry a bucket full of tears. Oh, there is your evidence I was the bard in the form of the outline of an unwritten but typical play of the bards.


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