The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter, Being a Proof, with Moral Certitude, of the Authorship of the Document / Together with Some Account of the Whole Thirteen Gunpowder Conspirators, Including Guy Fawkes

CHAPTER XLI.

Now, regard being had to the fact that this kneeling young Penitent was, with his own lips, avowing the commission in desire and thought of “murder most foul as at the best it is”[A] (and “we know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him”[B]), by confessing to a fellow-creature a wilful and deliberate transgression against that “steadfast Moral Law which is not of to-day nor yesterday, but which lives for ever”[C] (to say nothing of his avowal of the commission in act and deed of the crime of sacrilege,[D] in taking a secret, unlawful oath contrary to the express prohibitions of a visible and audible Institution which that Priest and that Penitent alike believed was of divine origin), I firmly, though with great and all-becoming deference, draw these conclusions, namely, that one of the plotters had already poured into the bending ear of his breathless priestly hearer glad tidings to the effect that he (the revealing plotter, whoever he was) had given that one supreme external proof which heaven and earth had then left to him for showing the genuineness of his repentance in regard to his crimes, and the perfectness of his contrition on account of his transgressions, by taking premeditated, active, practical, vigorous steps for the utter frustrating and the complete overthrowing of the prodigious, diabolical Plot.

[A] Shakespeare.

[B] St. John the Divine.

[C] Sophocles.

[D] Of course the Gunpowder Treason Plot was a “sacrilegious crime,” because it sought to compass the death of a king who was “one of the Lord’s anointed,” as well as because of the unlawful oath of secrecy, solemnly ratified by the reception of the Sacrament at the hands of some priest in a house behind St. Clement’s Inn, “near the principal street in London called the Strand.”— See “The Confessions of Thomas Winter and Guy Fawkes.” This house was probably the London lodging of Father John Gerard, S.J. Winter and Fawkes said that the conspirators received the Sacrament at the hands of Gerard. But “Gerard was not acquainted with their purpose,” said Fawkes. Gerard denied having given the conspirators the Sacrament.— See Gardiner’s “What Gunpowder Plot was,” p. 44. One vested priest is very much like another, just as one soldier in uniform is very much like another. So Fawkes and Winter may have been mistaken. Besides, they would not be likely to be minutely examining the features of a priest on such an occasion.

Furthermore; that it was because of the possession by Hammond of this happy intelligence, early on that Thursday morning, before sunrise, that therefore, in the Tribunal of Penance, “he absolved” poor, miserable (yet contrite) Ambrose Rookwood “for all in general”— “without any other circumstances.”

That is, I take it, without reproaching or even chiding him— in fact “without remark.”[A]

[A] Father Nicholas Hart (alias Hammond) appears to have been stationed with the Vauxes, of Great Harrowden, usually. Foley (iv., Index) thinks it probable that the Father Singleton, S.J. (alias Clifton), mentioned by Henry Hurlston, Esquire, or Huddlestone, of the Huddlestones, of Suwston Hall, near Cambridge; Faringdon Hall, near Preston, in Lancashire; and Millom, “North of the Sands,” was in reality Father Nicholas Hart (alias Hammond). I do not think so. For, according to the Evidence of Henry Hurlston (Foley’s “Records,” vol. iv., pp. 10, 11), who was at Great Harrowden, on Tuesday, November 5th, at five o’clock in the afternoon, Father Strange, S.J. (a cousin of Mr. Abington, of Hindlip), and this said Father Singleton, “by Thursday morning took their horses and intended to have ridden to Grote.” They were apprehended at Kenilworth. This Father Singleton is a mysterious personage whose “future” I should like to follow up. Was he the same as a certain “Dr. Singleton” who figures in the “Life of Mary Ward” vol. i., p. 443? and was he of the Catholic Singletons, of Singleton, near Blackpool?

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