If Catesby be regarded as the most responsible of the Gunpowder
conspirators, and Fawkes as the most courageous, Garnet may fairly be
considered the most astute. Like the majority of his companions, he was
a pervert. His father, Brian Garnet, was a schoolmaster at Nottingham,
and his mother's maiden name was Alice Jay. He was born in 1555,
educated at Winchester College, in the Protestant faith, and was to have
passed thence to New College, Oxford. This intention was never carried
into effect: his Romish biographers say, because he had imbibed at
Winchester a distaste to the Protestant religion; adding that "he
obtained the rank of captain [of the school], and by his modesty and
urbanity, his natural abilities and quickness in learning, so
recommended himself to the superiors, that had he" entered at Oxford,
"he might safely have calculated on attaining the highest academical
honours. But he resolved, by the grace of God, upon embracing the
Catholic faith, although his old Professors at Winchester, Stemp and
Johnson, themselves Catholic in heart, together with another named
Bilson, at first favourable, but afterwards hostile to Catholicity, made
every exertion to persuade him to remain." Unhappily for this rosy
narrative, the "other named Bilson," afterwards Bishop of Worcester and
Winchester, has left on record his account of the matter: namely, that
Garnet when at Winchester was a youth of such incorrigible wickedness,
that the Warden dissuaded his going to the University, for the sake of
the young men who might there be corrupted by his evil example. The
reader can accept which version he may see good. On leaving school,
Garnet proceeded to London, where for about two years he was employed as
corrector of the press by the celebrated law-printer, Tottel. At the
end of this time, he was received into the Church of Rome, and
subsequently travelled abroad, first to Spain, and afterwards to Rome,
where on 11th September, 1575, he entered the Society of Jesus. In the
Jesuit College at Rome he studied diligently, under Bellarmine and
others: and he was before long made Professor of Hebrew, and licenced to
lecture on mathematics. In 1586, on the recommendation of Parsons, he
was appointed to the Jesuit Mission to England, where he landed on July
7th. It is said that he was so remarkably amiable and gentle that
Aquaviva, the General of the Jesuits, objected to his appointment on the
ground that the post required a man of sterner and more unyielding
character. Bellarmine records that his sanctity of life was
incomparable; but Jesuits are apt to entertain peculiar notions of
sanctity. As was then usual, Garnet on coming to his native country
adopted a string of aliases--Walley, Darcy, Mease, Roberts, Parmer, and
Phillips. Walley, however, was the name by which he was best known.
Two years after he joined the Mission, he was promoted to be its
Superior. For some years he lived in the neighbourhood of London,
following various occupations to disguise his real calling, but chiefly
that of a horse-dealer. That he was implicated in the intrigues with
Spain before the death of Elizabeth, he never attempted to deny: but
during the lull in the penal legislation which followed the accession of
James, Garnet purchased a general pardon for all past political
offences. He was frequently at Harrowden, the house of Lord Vaux, whose
daughter Anne travelled everywhere with him, passing as his sister, Mrs
Perkins. About 1599, as "Mr Mease, a Berkshire man," he took the house
in Enfield Chase, named White Webbs, for the meetings of the Romanists,
after which he was "seldom absent from it for a quarter of a year
together." (Examination of James Johnson, servant in charge of White
Webbs, _Gunpowder Plot Book_, article 188.) This house was ostensibly
taken for Anne Vaux, and was maintained at her expense; her sister
Eleanor, with her husband Mr Brooksby (whose alias was Jennings, and
who is described as "of low stature, red beard, and bald head"), being
often with her. Catesby was a frequent visitor. Anne Vaux had also a
house at Wandsworth, where she and Garnet occasionally resided.
These details, gathered from the evidence of Anne Vaux herself, James
Johnson, and others, do not, however, agree with some statements of
Gerard. He asserts that Mrs Brooksby was a widow, and was the real
mistress of the house; and he compares the two to the sisters of
Lazarus, "the two women who received our Lord"! It is impossible to
avoid seeing the tacit further comparison as to Garnet. When a Queen's
messenger arrived, Gerard writes, "rosaries, etcetera, all signs of
piety [!] are thrown into a cavern; the mistress is hidden away: on
these occasions the younger sister, the unmarried one, passed for the
mistress of the house." (Gerard to Aquaviva, quoted by Foley, _Records
of the English Province of the Society of Jesus_, volume 4, page 36.)
All the evidence, apart from this, tends to show that Brooksby was
alive, and that he and Eleanor were only visitors--though very constant
ones--at White Webbs, where Anne was the real mistress. In 1603, Garnet
was returned as living "with Mrs Brooksby, of Leicestershire, at
Arundell House. He hath lodgings of his own in London." (_Domestic
State Papers_, James the First, volume 8, article 50.) These lodgings
were in Thames Street. A large house at Erith was also a frequent
meeting-place of the recusants.
That Garnet was acquainted with the Gunpowder Plot from its very
beginning is a moral certainty, notwithstanding his earnest efforts to
show the contrary. He not only made assertions which he afterwards
allowed to be false; but he set up at different times two lines of
defence which were inconsistent. He had been told nothing: yet, he had
tried to dissuade Catesby and his colleagues from the execution of the
plot. If the first allegation were true, the other must have been
false. But Garnet's distinctly avowed opinions on the question of
equivocation make it impossible to accept any denial from him. He
believed that while, "in the common intercourse of life, it is not
lawful to use equivocation," yet "where it becomes necessary to an
individual for his defence, or for avoiding any injustice or loss, or
for obtaining any important advantage, without danger or mischief to any
other person, there equivocation is lawful." He held, as some do at the
present day, that "if the law be unjust, then is it, _ipso facto_, void
and of no force:" so that "the laws against recusants--are to be
esteemed as no laws by such as steadfastly believe these [Romish rites]
to be necessary observances of the true religion... That is no treason
at all which is made treason by an unjust law." In other words, the
subject is to be the judge of the justice of the law, and if in his eyes
it be unjust, he is released from the necessity of obeying it! This is
simply to do away with all law at once; for probably no law was ever
made which did not appear unjust to somebody: and it lays down the grand
and ancient principle that every man shall do what is right in his own
eyes. We have heard a good deal of this doctrine lately; it is of
Jesuit origin, and a distinct contradiction of that Book which teaches
that "the powers that be are ordained of God, and whosoever resisteth
the power, resisteth the ordinance of God." Those who set up such
claims, however they may disavow it, really hold that Christ's kingdom
_is_ of this world, since they place it in rivalry to the secular
authority. "If thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but
a judge." One great distinction of the Antichrist is that he is _ho
anomos_, the Lawless One. Even further than this, Garnet was prepared
to go, and did go at his last examination. "In all cases," he said,
"where simple equivocation is allowable, it is lawful if necessary to
confirm it by an oath. This I acknowledge to be according to my
opinion, and the opinion of the Schoolmen; and our reason is, for that
in cases of lawful equivocation, the speech by equivocation being saved
from a lie, the same speech may be without perjury confirmed by oath, or
by any other usual way, though it were by receiving the Sacrament, if
just necessity so require." (_Domestic State Papers_, James the First,
volume 20, article 218.) Garnet asserted that Catesby did him much
wrong, by saying that in Queen Elizabeth's time he had consulted him as
to the lawfulness of the "powder action," which was "most untrue;" but
after the preceding extracts, who could believe their writer on his
oath? Poor Anne Vaux, who undoubtedly meant to excuse and save him,
urged that he used to say to the conspirators in her hearing, "Good
gentlemen, be quiet; God will do all for the best:" and Garnet's own
last confession admitted that "partly upon hope of prevention, partly
for that I would not betray my friend, I did not reveal the general
knowledge of Mr Catesby's intention which I had by him." (_Domestic
State Paper_, volume 20, article 12.) He allowed also that about a year
before the Queen's death, he had received two briefs from Rome, bidding
him not consent to the accession of any successor to her who would not
submit to the Pope: he had shown them to Catesby, and then burned them.
Catesby, said Garnet, considered himself authorised to act as he did by
these briefs; but he had tried vainly to dissuade him from so doing,
since the Pope had forbidden the action. (_Ibidem_, volume 18, articles
41, 42.) In September, 1605, Garnet led a pilgrimage of Roman Catholics
to Saint Winifred's Well, in returning from which, he and Anne Vaux
visited Rushton, the seat of Francis Tresham. Sir Thomas, his father,
was then just dead, and the widowed Lady Tresham "kept her chamber"
accordingly. They stayed but one night (Examination of Anne Vaux,
_Gunpowder Plot Book_, article 212), and then returned to Goathurst,
where they remained for some weeks, until on the 29th of October they
removed, with the Digbys and Brooksbys, to Coughton, the house of Mr
Thomas Throckmorton, which Sir Everard had borrowed, on account of its
convenient proximity to Dunchurch, the general rendezvous for the
conspirators after the execution of the plot. This journey to Coughton
was considered strong evidence against Garnet; and his meaning has never
been solved, in writing that "all Catholics know it was necessary."
(_Domestic State Papers_, volume 19, article 11.) At Coughton was the
Reverend Oswald Greenway, another Jesuit priest, who has left a
narrative of the whole account, wherein he describes the conspirators
and their doings with a pen dipped in honey. In the night between
November 5th and 6th, Bates arrived at Coughton with Digby's letter,
which afterwards told heavily against Garnet. Garnet remained at
Coughton until about the 16th of December, when at the instigation of
his friend Edward Hall (alias Oldcorne) he removed to Hendlip Hall.
Garnet and Hall made up between them an elaborate story describing their
arrival at Hendlip, and immediate hiding, on Sunday night, January 19th;
but this was afterwards confessed both by Hall and Owen to be false, and
Garnet was overheard to blame Hall for not having kept to the text of
his lesson in one detail.
Nicholas Owen, Garnet's friend and servant, committed suicide in the
Tower, on March 2nd, from fear of further torture. Mr Abington, who
had "voluntarily offered to die at his own gate, if any such were to be
found in his house or in that sheire," was condemned to death, but
afterwards pardoned on condition of never again quitting the county.
Made wiser by adversity, he spent the rest of his life in innocent study
of the history and antiquities of Worcestershire.
The remainder of Garnet's story is given in the tale, and is almost pure
history as there detailed. In his conferences with Hall, he made no
real profession of innocence, only perpetual assurances that he "trusted
to wind himself out" of the charges brought against him; and when Lord
Salisbury said--"Mr Garnet, give me but one argument that you were not
consenting to it [the plot], that can hold in any indifferent man's ear
or sense, besides your bare negative,"--Garnet made no answer. He
persistently continued to deny any knowledge of White Webbs, until
confronted with Johnson; and all acquaintance with the plot before his
receipt of Digby's letter at Coughton, until shown the written
confession of Hall, and the testimony of Forset and Locherson concerning
his own whispered admissions. When at last he was driven to admit the
facts previously denied with abundant oaths, he professed himself
astonished that the Council were scandalised at his reckless falsehoods.
"What should I have done?" he writes. "Why was I to be denied every
lawful [!] means of escape?" That the Government did not deal fairly
with Garnet--that, as is admitted by the impartial Dr Jardine, "few men
came to their trial under greater disadvantages," and that "he had been
literally surrounded by snares,"--may be allowed to the full; but when
all is said for him that honesty can say, no doubt remains that he was
early acquainted with and morally responsible for the Gunpowder Plot.
The evidence may be found in Jardine's Narrative of the Plot; to produce
it here would be to swell the volume far beyond its present dimensions.
One point, however, must not be omitted. There have been two raids on
the Public Record Office, two acts of abstraction and knavery with
respect to these Gunpowder Plot papers; and it can be certainly stated,
from the extracts made from them by Dr Abbott and Archbishop Bancroft,
that the stolen papers were precisely those which proved Garnet's guilt
most conclusively. A Manuscript letter from Dr Jardine to Mr Robert
Lemon, attached to the _Gunpowder Plot Book_, states that Mr Lemon's
father had "often observed to me that `those fellows the Jesuits, in the
time of the Powder Plot (not the Gunpowder Plot) had stolen away some of
the most damning proofs against Garnet.' That thievery of some kind
abstracted such documents as the Treatise of Equivocation, with Garnet's
handwriting on it--the most important of the interlocutions between
Garnet and Hall in the Tower--and all the examinations of Garnet
respecting the Pope's Breves, is quite clear. _The first thievery I
have proved to have been made by Archbishop Laud_; the others probably
occurred in the reigns of Charles the Second and James the Second, when
Jesuits and `Jesuited persons' had free access to the State Paper
Office." An old proverb deprecates "showing the cat the way to the
cream;" but there is one folly still more reprehensible--placing the cat
in charge of the dairy. Let us beware it is not done again.