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Non Laudantur Nisi Peracta: Neville, Gunpowder Treason Discourse, and Macbeth

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Topic: Non Laudantur Nisi Peracta: Neville, Gunpowder Treason Discourse, and Macbeth

Source-Control Summary

Henry Neville's 2 March 1601 confession applies the Latin phrase non laudantur nisi peracta to the proposed Essex court enterprise and immediately glosses its political meaning: the action “would be interpreted by the successe.” He attributes the phrase to Tacitus. No exact Tacitean location has yet been recovered, so the attribution should remain Neville's documented attribution rather than be silently replaced.

The phrase has a consequential political afterlife. The Gunpowder Plot indictment tradition uses the expanded form quae non laudantur nisi peracta for treasons the plotters would avow only after successful execution. The indictment then describes their corporal oaths of secrecy and commitment. Later printed writers repeatedly apply the same maxim to secret policies, desperate facts, Powder Treason, massacres, and actions justified only after completion.

This makes the phrase a central conspiracy maxim rather than an isolated scrap of Latin. It also gives a focused Shakespeare comparison. Macbeth 1.7 turns on whether an assassination can contain its own consequences and catch / With his surcease success. Neville's prose says the enterprise would be interpreted by success; Macbeth imagines a deed whose hoped-for success would end judgment, then recognizes that judgment and consequence return upon the inventor.

1. Neville's 1601 Use

In the conference with Southampton and Sir Charles Danvers, Neville says he raised practical objections to the proposed armed approach to Elizabeth. His first characterization is:

“That this was an action of the nature of those which as Tacitus sayth non laudantur nisi peracta & would be interpreted by the successe.”

The sentence joins three things:

Neville does not present the Latin as a detached moral quotation. He uses it to describe an action whose political name—redress, enterprise, rebellion, or treason—would be fixed by its outcome.

2. The Gunpowder Plot Indictment Tradition

The Latin text of the Gunpowder indictment includes:

quae non laudantur nisi peracta

The surrounding charge says that the conspirators would acknowledge and approve the crimes only after accomplishment. English State Trials versions render the category as acts “not to be commended before they be done.”

The next portion of the indictment describes the conspirators agreeing to swear separate corporal oaths on the Gospels, receive the Eucharist, conceal the treason, and not abandon its execution without the consent of three conspirators.

That adjacency is important to the Neville project. Neville's confession contains both:

  1. non laudantur nisi peracta and interpretation by success; and
  2. a debate over requiring a collective oath before a political enterprise.

The Gunpowder prosecution likewise joins:

  1. quae non laudantur nisi peracta as a description of treason justified after success; and
  2. conspirators' oaths of secrecy and continued execution.

This does not show that one document borrowed from the other. It shows that Neville's language belongs to a recognizable early-Jacobean legal and political vocabulary for clandestine action, success, avowal, oath, and execution.

3. Printed Afterlife in EarlyPrint

EarlyPrint FTS searches recover the following exact or expanded variants:

DateTCPWorkImmediate use
1616A01883Godfrey Goodman, The fall of mansecret policy whose rules are concealed and whose actions receive a plausible excuse only after performance
1623A11075Francis Rous, Oile of scorpionsdesperate treason and religious violence discussed differently after defeat
1626A02487G. H., A comparison betweene ... Purim and ... Powder treasondesigns that would have been applauded if the plot had taken effect
1627A02484George Hakewill, An apologie of the power and providence of Godunjust attempts called virtues when fortunate in the event
1632A13078William Struther, A looking glasse for princes and peopleGunpowder success defined as the blow itself; acts praised when done and condemned when frustrated
1635A16342Robert Bolton, Two sermonsthe Powder Plot called the kind of act quae nunquam laudantur nisi peracta, expressly attributed to Tacitus

Goodman's 1616 context is especially clear:

“the actions cannot be iustified non laudantur nisi peracta ... being once performed then they will finde out some probable colour to excuse the offence”

Hakewill's 1627 formulation supplies the success gloss independently:

“vnjust attempts if they be fortunate in the event are called vertues”

The printed sequence documents how the maxim functioned: not simply “finish what you start,” but “completion and fortune allow a disputed act to be renamed, praised, or excused.” That is very close to Neville's own explanation that the proposed action would be interpreted by its success.

4. Macbeth 1.7: Assassination, Consequence, and Success

Macbeth begins his soliloquy by trying to imagine an assassination that ends with its performance:

MACBETH

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well

It were done quickly. If th' assassination

Could trammel up the consequence and catch

With his surcease success, that but this blow

Might be the be-all and the end-all here,

But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,

We'd jump the life to come.

He immediately reverses the fantasy of a self-contained successful deed:

But in these cases

We still have judgment here, that we but teach

Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return

To plague th' inventor.

Folger control: act 01 scene 07:12.

The comparison is conceptual and verbal:

NevilleMacbeth
an action non laudantur nisi peracta“If it were done when 'tis done”
the act interpreted by successeassassination imagined to “catch / With his surcease success”
practical objections and dangers defeat a simple outcome logicconsequence and judgment return to plague the inventor
a proposed approach to a monarch whose political name depends on executiona proposed murder of a monarch whose apparent success cannot end consequence

The play does more than repeat a maxim. It subjects the maxim's logic to moral and temporal analysis. Macbeth wants the deed to become praisable or at least secure by being successfully done; the soliloquy demonstrates why accomplishment cannot seal off interpretation.

5. Why the Combined Cluster Matters

Three independently controlled documents now occupy the same research field:

  1. Neville's 1601 confession: completion, success, conspiracy, and a proposed oath protecting the monarch.
  2. The 1606 Gunpowder indictment tradition: the same Latin maxim, successful avowal, treason, secrecy, and conspirators' oaths.
  3. Macbeth 1.7: regicide imagined as a deed that might end in its own successful completion, followed by returned judgment and consequence.

The value lies in the cluster's political specificity. Done, success, and oath are common words separately. Here they form a repeated analytical grammar for an enterprise against or around a sovereign: what must be sworn, what counts as execution, who will avow the action, and whether success determines its name.

6. Citations and Local Controls

Quoted Source Passages

The controlled passages are quoted above in sections 1-4: Neville's exact confession wording; the Latin indictment maxim; short EarlyPrint contexts; and Folger Macbeth 1.7 with its original line breaks. The indictment's full oath clause is summarized rather than reproduced at length.

7. Next Research

The origin question remains open but is now better defined. Search should extend beyond Tacitus editions to sixteenth-century political commonplaces, legal pleadings, emblem books, histories of conspiracy, and continental Latin prose. Variants to search include non laudantur nisi peracta, quae non laudantur nisi peracta, quae nunquam laudantur nisi peracta, and multa non laudantur nisi prius peracta. Every early hit should be recorded with date, attribution, genre, and whether successus, eventus, oath, treason, or conspiracy appears nearby.

Notes on Access