The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter Part 18

[Footnote C: Thomas Throckmorton.]

[Footnote D: John Wright and Christopher Wright.]

[Footnote E: Ambrose Rookwood.]

[Footnote F: John Grant.]

Dr. Gardiner's "_History of James I._" (Longmans) contains a map showing the relative positions of these places.

On Wednesday, the 6th November, Fathers Garnet and Tesimond were at Coughton. Catesby, along with Percy, John Wright, Christopher Wright, Sir Everard Digby, Ambrose Rookwood, and others, was at Huddington. Catesby and Digby had sent a letter to Garnet.

Bates was the messenger, and was come from Norbrook, the house of John Grant, where the plotters rested in their wild, north-westward flight from Ashby St. Legers. For to Ashby the fugitives had posted headlong from London town on Tuesday, the "fatal Fifth."

Catesby and Digby urged Garnet to make for Wales.[A]

[Footnote A: Catesby had great influence over Tesimond, and it was Tesimond whom Catesby first informed of the Gunpowder Plot, in the Tribunal of Penance. Tesimond had a sharp and nimble, but probably not very powerful, mind. Catesby gave Tesimond permission to consult Father Henry Garnet as to the ethics of the Plot. Moreover, Catesby gave the Jesuits permission to disclose the particular knowledge of the Plot they had received, provided they thought it right to do so. This is how we come to know what pa.s.sed between Catesby and Tesimond, and then between Tesimond and Garnet. Tesimond had received from Catesby about the 24th July, 1605, in the Confessional, a particular knowledge of the Plot, in the sense that he was told there was projected an explosion by gunpowder, with the object of destroying the King and Parliament; but all particulars respecting final plans he did not know till a fortnight before the 11th of October, I think.]

After half-an-hour's earnest discourse together, Father Garnet gave leave to Tesimond to proceed to Huddington to administer to the wretched fugitives the rites--the last rites--of the Church they had so disgraced and wronged. Garnet remained at Coughton. Tesimond tarried at Huddington about two hours.

Tesimond arrived at Hindlip from Huddington in a state of the greatest excitement possible. He showed himself on reaching Hindlip to be a choleric man, while Father Oldcorne--who seems to have kept perfectly calm and cool throughout the whole of the momentous conference--Tesimond himself denounced, if he did not reproach, as being phlegmatic.

Tesimond, evidently, had been commissioned by Catesby,[B] at Huddington, to incite Mr. Abington, his household, and retainers, including (I take it, if possible) Oldcorne himself, to join the insurgents at Huddington, Holbeach, Wales, and wherever else they might unfurl the banner of "the holy war," or, in other words, the armed rebellion against King James, his Privy Council, and Government.

[Footnote B: Tesimond, in my opinion, was completely over-mastered by the more potent will of his penitent (?) Catesby. _Cf._, The case of Hugh Latimer and Thomas Bilney; Bilney made a Protestant of Latimer, who was Bilney's confessor. These afford striking examples of the power of psycho-electrical will force.]

Tesimond's mission, however, to Hindlip, proving fruitless, he thereupon rode towards Lancashire, in the hope of rousing Lancashire Catholics to arms, as one man, in behalf of those altars and homes they loved more than life.

CHAPTER XLVI.

Now, in this calm and dignified demeanour of Oldcorne, at Hindlip, which evidently so annoyed, nay, exasperated--because it arrested and thwarted--his younger brother Jesuit (both of whom, almost certainly, had known each other in York from boyhood), the discerning reader, I submit, ought in reason to draw _this_ conclusion, namely, that Edward Oldcorne was tranquil and imperturbable because, in regard to the whole of the unhappy business, that so possessed and engrossed the being of Oswald Tesimond, Edward Oldcorne's was a _mens conscia recti_--a mind conscious of rect.i.tude--aye, a mind conscious of superabounding merit and virtue.

So important evidentially do I think the diverse demeanour[149] of Tesimond and Oldcorne on this occasion, that I will transcribe from Jardine's "_Criminal Trials_"[150] Oldcorne's testimony of what took place at Hindlip Hall at this interview:--[151]

"Oldcorne confesseth that upon Wednesday, being the 6th of November, about two of the clock in the afternoon, there came Tesimond (Greenway) from Huddington, from Mr. Robert Winter's to Hindlip, and told Mr. Abington and him 'that he brought them the worst news that ever they heard,' and said 'that they were all undone.' And they demanding the cause, he said that there were certain gentlemen that meant to have blown up the Parliament House, and that their plot was discovered a day or two before; and now they were gathered together some forty horse at Mr. Winter's house, naming Catesby, Percy, Digby, and others; and told them, 'their throats would be cut unless they presently went to join with them.' And Mr. Abington said, 'Alas! I am sorry.' And this examinate and he answered him that they would never join with him in that matter, and charged all his house to that purpose not to go with them. He confesseth that upon the former speeches made by this examinate and Mr. Abington to Tesimond, alias Greenway, the Jesuit, _Tesimond said in some heat 'thus we may see a difference between a flemmatike [phlegmatic] and a choleric person!', and said he would go to others, and specially into Lancashire, for the same purpose as he came to Hindlip to Mr. Abington_." [152][153] (The italics are mine.)

CHAPTER XLVII.

Father Henry Garnet, the chief of the English Jesuits, left London at the end of August, 1605,[154] and proceeded towards Gothurst (now Gayhurst), in the Parish of Tyringham, three miles from Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire.[A]

[Footnote A: The seat of Walter Carlile, Esquire, as has been already mentioned. I have to thank this gentleman for his courteousness in informing me that Gayhurst (formerly Gothurst) is three miles from Newport Pagnell. An excellent picture, together with descriptive account, of Gayhurst, is given in the "_Life of Sir Everard Digby_," by one of that knight's descendants. Gothurst contained a remarkable hiding-place, which was probably constructed by Nicholas Owen, the lay-brother of Father Garnet. According to Father Gerard, the friend of Digby, Gothurst was ten miles from Great Harrowden, the seat of the young Lord Vaux.]

Now, who was Henry Garnet, whom the Attorney-General, Sir Edward c.o.ke, described in Westminster Hall as "a man--grave, discreet, wise, learned, and of excellent ornament, both of nature and art;" but around whose name so fierce a controversy had raged for well-nigh 300 years? He was born in 1555, and brought up a Protestant of the Established Church; his father being Mr. Briant Garnet, the head master of the Free School, at Nottingham; his mother's name was Alice Jay. Henry Garnet was a scholar of Winchester School, and the intention was to send him to New College, Oxford. However, he resolved to become reconciled to the Pope's religion, and in 1575 joined the Jesuit Novitiate in Rome, where the great Cardinal Bellarmine was one of his tutors.

Now, to the end that the claims of Truth and Justice, strict, severe, and impartial, may be met in relation to this celebrated English Jesuit, it will be necessary to repeat that as far back as about the beginning of Trinity Term (_i.e._, the 9th June, 1605), Catesby, in Thames Street, London--_outside the Confessional_--had propounded to Garnet a question, _which ought to have put the Jesuit expressly upon inquiry_. For that question was, in case it were lawful to kill a person or persons, whether it were necessary to regard the innocents which were present, lest they also should perish withal.

And this the rather, when Catesby on that very occasion "made solemn protestation that he would never be known to have asked me [_i.e._, Garnet] any such question as long as he lived."--See "Hatfield MS.,"

printed in "_Historical Review_," for July, 1888, and largely quoted in the Rev. J. Gerard's articles on Garnet, in "_Month_" for June and July, 1901.

On the 24th of July, 1605, Garnet had sent a remarkable letter to Rome, addressed to Father Aquaviva, the General of the Jesuits.--See "Father Gerard's Narrative," pp. 76, 77, in "_Condition of Catholics under James I._," edited by Rev. John Morris, S.J. (Longmans, 1872).

In this letter, which of course was in Latin, Garnet says--amongst other things betokening an apprehension of a general insurrectionary feeling among Catholics up and down the country in consequence of the terrible persecution which had re-commenced as soon as James I. had safely concluded his much-desired peace with Spain--"_the danger is lest secretly some Treason or violence be shown to the King, and so all Catholics may be compelled to take arms._"

Garnet then proceeds: "_Wherefore, in my judgment, two things are necessary, first, that His Holiness should prescribe what in any case is to be done; and then, that he should forbid any force of arms by the Catholics under Censures, and by Brief, publicly promulgated; an occasion for which can be taken from the disturbance lately raised in Wales, which has at length come to nothing._ It remains that as all things are daily becoming worse, we should beseech His Holiness soon to give a necessary remedy for these great dangers, and we ask his blessing and that of your Paternity." (The italics are mine.)

Now, by the word "censures" here, I presume, Garnet meant excommunication, that is, a cutting off from the visible fellowship of Catholics and (what would frighten every Catholic, whether his faith worked by love or fear, that is, whether it were a rational form of religion or a mere abject superst.i.tion) a deprivation of the Sacraments of his exacting Church, which are, according to Rome's tenets, the special means devised by the Founder of Christianity whereby Man is united to "the Unseen Perfectness."

CHAPTER XLVIII.

When Garnet penned this letter to the General of the Jesuits in Rome, he had, _outside the Confessional_, a general knowledge of the Gunpowder project from Robert Catesby.

Thus much is clear.

That is to say, Garnet had a great suspicion, tantamount to a general knowledge, that Catesby had in his head some b.l.o.o.d.y and desperate enterprise of ma.s.sacre, the object whereof was to destroy at one fell blow James I. and his Protestant Government.--See Gerard's "_Narrative_," p.

78.

_Garnet most probably in the Confessional even did not at first know all particulars._

That is to say, he did not know that it was intended to put thirty-six barrels of gunpowder in a cellar under the House of Lords--consignments of explosives which it was further intended were to be ignited, when Parliament met, by Guy Fawkes, booted and spurred, by means of a slow-burning match, which would give him one quarter-of-an-hour's grace to effect his escape to a ship in the Thames bound for Flanders: and that the young Princess Elizabeth was to be seized at the house of the Lord Harrington, in Warwickshire, and proclaimed Queen _after_ her parents and two brothers, Henry Prince of Wales and Charles Duke of York, had been torn and rent into ten thousand fragments.

But this able, learned, sweet-tempered, yet weak-willed, unimaginative, irresolute man _knew enough outside the Confessional_--which is the point we have to deal with here--to render himself liable to have been sent to the galleys by the Pope, if His Holiness could have laid hold of him, when, notwithstanding this atrocious knowledge, he actually refused to give ear to the arch-conspirator, even although Catesby, on Father Gerard's own admission, "offered sometimes to tell him [Garnet] that they [Catesby and his friends] would not endure to be so long so much abused, but would take some course to right themselves, if others would not respect them or could not relieve them."--Gerard's "_Narrative_," p. 78.

Truly "Evil is wrought by want of thought as well as by want of heart."

The fact that Garnet knew violence was likely to be shown to his lawful Sovereign, coupled with the fact that Garnet _might have learned all the particulars about that purposed violence_ had he not, through a negligence which can be only characterized as grossly criminal, pa.s.sively omitted, if indeed he had not actively declined, to obtain those particulars from the lips of the arch-conspirator himself--such facts make the case _up to the 24th of July, 1605, absolutely_ fatal against Garnet. And such facts can lead the unbiased mind of the philosophical historian (who does not care a pin about all the ecclesiastical spite, on either one side or the other, that ever was or ever shall be), can lead to one inevitable conclusion only: that Henry Garnet was justly condemned to death by an earthly tribunal for misprision, that is, for concealment, of High Treason _against the Sovereign power of his Country_. Although, being a priest, he ought to have been ecclesiastically "_degraded_" first, according to the provisions of the Canon law, and then handed over to the secular arm for condign punishment, according to the law of the outraged State.

For, "_Id certum est quod certum reddi potest_," that is, certain knowledge which can be reduced to a certainty.

Again, the d.a.m.ning evidence against Garnet is clenched by a letter that he sent to Rome, dated 28th August, wherein, amongst other things, he said: "And for anything we can see, Catholics are quiet, and likely to continue their old patience, and to trust to the King or his son for to remedy all in time."--Gerard's "_Narrative_," pp. 78, 79.

Now Garnet[A] was a man of most acute mind and very clear-sighted; but he was intellectually unimaginative as well as morally weak-willed. And such a man is never a far-sighted man.

[Footnote A: Garnet was a profound mathematician and accomplished linguist, amongst other acquirements.]

But as Garnet's moral character was almost certainly good on the whole, the conclusion that Justice suggests in reference to this letter of the 28th August especially is that, through intense grief and anguish of mind, Garnet had lost his head, and was not wholly responsible for either his words or actions.[B]

[Footnote B: After Father Tesimond had told Garnet (with Catesby's leave) of the Plot, thereby bringing the matter as a natural secret indirectly under the seal of the Confessional, Garnet could not sleep at nights. Now, sleeplessness, combined with carking care and keen distress of heart, would inevitably tend to unbalance even the very strongest of human minds, at least, temporarily. Tesimond told Garnet _generally_ of Catesby's diabolical plan "a little before" St. James'-tide (_i.e._, the 25th of July, 1605), at Fremland, in Ess.e.x, but by way of confession. The Government, however, it seems to me, from the report of the trial in Jardine's "_Criminal Trials_" and from Lingard, condemned Garnet _not_ because he did not reveal particular _knowledge_ he had received _in the Confessional from Tesimond_, but because he did not reveal _general knowledge_ he had _from Catesby outside the Confessional_. This, in fairness to James I., Salisbury, and the King's Council, should be faithfully borne in mind. Moreover, according to one school of Catholic moralists, in _either case_ the Government ought to have been communicated with _if_ Garnet could have done so without risk of divulging Tesimond's name. Indeed, Garnet himself took this view--the view which most princes and statesmen will prefer, I should fancy. Garnet, however, had not the machinery ready to his hand to carry _both views_ into practical effect.