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 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 bloody and desperate enterprise of massacre, 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, passively 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 damning 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.

[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]

[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 Essex, 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. Therefore Garnet, to my mind, was eminently justified in not divulging the particular knowledge he had from Tesimond by way of confession. For according to the teaching of Thomas Aquinas, the Christian Aristotle, a natural secret may be indirectly protected by the seal of the Confessional if the priest promises so to protect it. I conclude, however, that (1) according to the dictates of right reason the promise may be either implied or expressed, and (2) that in the case of overwhelming necessity the promise may be broken, as in the case of High Treason, if the priest can avoid, with absolute certitude, exposing the name of the depositor of the wicked secret. It was because Garnet could not avoid exposing Tesimond’s name practically that he was justified in not acting upon his own abstract principles in relation to the knowledge he had from Tesimond by way of confession.

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