Neither is it easy to understand how these amateurs contrived to do so much without a catastrophe. To make a tunnel through soft earth is a very delicate operation, replete with unlooked-for difficulties. To shore up the roof and sides there must, moreover, have been required a large quantity of the "framed timber" of which Speed tells us, and the provision and importation of this must have been almost as hard to keep dark as the exportation of the earth and stones. A still more critical operation is that of meddling with the foundations of a house--especially of an old and heavy structure--which a professional craftsman would not venture upon except with extreme care, and the employment of many precautions of which these light-hearted adventurers knew nothing. Yet, recklessly breaking their way out of one building, and to a large extent into another, they appear to have occasioned neither crack nor settlement in either.
We are by no means at the end of our difficulties. According to the tale told by Faukes,[151] all the seven miners "lay in Percy's house," never showing themselves while the work was in progress. This circumstance, to say nothing of the storage of powder barrels and timber, seems to imply that the premises were spacious and commodious. We learn, however, on the unimpeachable evidence of Mrs. Whynniard's servant,[152] that the house afforded accommodation only for one person at a time, so that when Percy came there to spend the night, Faukes, who passed for his man, had to lodge out. This suggests another question. Percy's pretext for laying in so much fuel was that he meant to bring up his wife to live there. But how could this be under such conditions?
Still more serious is another problem. When the mining operations were commenced, in December, 1604, Parliament was appointed to meet on the 7th of February following, by which time, as is evident, the preparations of the conspirators could not have been completed. While they were working, however, news came that the session was to be postponed till October. This information the conspirators appear to have received quite casually before Christmas, for it is said that on the strength of it, they thought they could afford to take a holiday.[153] Early in January they were again at work,[154] and they continued their operations thenceforth, without any circumstance intervening to interrupt or alarm them, of which we hear anything either from themselves or from subsequent writers. Nevertheless, it is quite certain that the Lords actually met on February 7th--that is while the mining operations were going on--and not only went through the ceremony of prorogation, but transacted some little business besides, Lord Denny being introduced and his writ of summons read.[155] It is equally incomprehensible that the miners should have known nothing of so startling an occurrence, or that knowing of it they should never have made the slightest mention thereof. It is even more difficult to explain how the Peers thus assembled, and their attendants, could have failed to remark the mine, then actually open, in premises belonging to themselves, or any suspicious features of earth, stones, timber, or barrels.