The Gunpowder Plot: Terror & Faith in 1605 (48 page)

By the time of the second confession, long and ghastly sessions in the manacles produced some results (his physical condition may be judged by the fact that his stomach had to be bound together with an iron plate, and even that was not effective for very long). Little John admitted to attending Father Garnet at White Webbs and elsewhere, that he had been at Coughton during that All Saints visit, and other details of his service and their itinerary. However, all this was known already. Little John never gave up one single detail of the hiding-places he had spent his adult life constructing for the safety of his co-religionists.

The lay brother died early in the morning of 2 March. He died directly as a result of his ordeal and in horrible, lingering circumstances. By popular standards of the day, this was a stage of cruelty too far. The government acknowledged the fact in its own way by putting out a story that Owen had ripped himself open with a knife given to him to eat his meat – while his keeper was conveniently looking elsewhere – rather than face renewed bouts of torture. Yet Owen’s keeper had told a relative who wanted Owen to make a list of his needs that his prisoner’s hands were so useless that he could not even feed himself, let alone write.
⁵

The story of the suicide was so improbable that neither Owen’s enemies nor his friends, ‘so well acquainted’ with his character over so many years, believed it. Suicide was a mortal sin in the Catholic Church, inviting damnation, and it was unthinkable that a convinced Catholic like Nicholas Owen should have imperilled his immortal soul in this manner. This ‘false slander’ concerning his death was contrasted by Catholics afterwards with Little John’s calm and steadfast demeanour in the Marshalsea, when he certainly knew what lay ahead but showed no fear. Father Gerard called Nicholas Owen’s end a glorious martyrdom.
*
His jailer’s words were different but equally evocative: he said, ‘the man is dead: he died in our hands’.
⁶

The emollient handling of Little John’s master, Garnet, did not however cease immediately. With the exception of Sir William Waad’s angry ravings on the subject of Catholicism – which in any case the priest tried to bear patiently – Garnet considered himself well treated. Even his personal jailer (his ‘keeper’) appeared to be full of kindness towards him. One can imagine the Jesuit’s pleasure when this fellow, Carey, confessed that Garnet’s patient conduct had made such an impression upon him that ‘he had even conceived a leaning for the Catholic religion’.
⁷

As a kindness – which had to be kept, naturally, an absolute
secret – Carey volunteered to convey letters from Father Garnet out of the prison. Garnet took the opportunity to write to his nephew Thomas, the priest held in the Gatehouse. Then, as the ultimate favour, Carey placed Father Garnet in a cell in the Tower which had a special hole in it through which he could talk to the prisoner in the next cell. This was Father Hall – in other words the Jesuit Edward Oldcorne.

Perhaps Father Garnet should have been suspicious about such a helpful arrangement. He did not of course know of the government’s similar behaviour concerning Robert Wintour and Guy Fawkes. Unlike Gerard and Little John, both veteran prisoners, Garnet had never done time in captivity, thanks in large part to the inspired activities of Anne Vaux. Father Garnet, far from being the wily manipulator of government depiction, was, as Father Tesimond would sum him up, ‘a charitable man… ready to believe all things, and to hope all things’.
⁸
He was not a worldly person, and as such did not fear the Greeks bearing gifts.

As a result, from 23 February, John Locherson and Edward Fawcett, two government observers, were able to overhear a series of conversations ‘in a place which was made for this precise purpose’. (It was Locherson who had spied on Wintour and Fawkes.) The first conversation they reported introduced the name of Anne Vaux. Garnet had just heard that she was in London and was proposing to send her a note via Carey, who had offered to ‘convey anything to her’. It was Anne Vaux, said Garnet, ‘who will let us hear from all our friends’. There was an obvious risk for Anne in contacting her, but Anne – hopefully protected by the known ‘weakness’ of her sex – could play a vital role in passing on the recusant news. She could also supply Father Garnet with those necessaries which were essential to any kind of comfort in prison. Garnet proceeded to talk cheerfully to Oldcorne of his good relationship with Carey, how he had rewarded him financially already and proposed to go on doing so, quite apart from giving him ‘a cup of sack’ and another one for his wife. Garnet recommended Oldcorne to pursue the same course, including ‘somewhat’ for Mrs Carey.
⁹

The task of the eavesdroppers was from time to time complicated by aspects of daily life in the Tower. For example, a cock crowed and a hen cackled at exactly the same time outside the window of the cell, drowning the priests’ murmurs, and since the names of various peers such as Northampton and Rutland had been mentioned it was feared that vital confidences had been missed. Much of what the government’s men overheard was innocent and touching, rather than damaging, although Father Garnet’s admission to a human failing – that he had drunk too much wine on one occasion – would be held against him later. It emerged second or third hand in a letter by John Chamberlain, who had heard that the Jesuit was drinking sack in his confinement ‘so liberally as if he meant to drown sorrow’. The two priests also took the opportunity to confess to each other (as they had last done at Hindlip).
¹⁰

But there were promising passages in the spies’ report. Garnet was concerned to inform Oldcorne about the content of his examinations in front of the Council for the latter’s sake (what had and had not been admitted). He told his colleague that he expected to be interrogated further about certain prayers he had said at the time of the meeting of the last Parliament ‘for the good success of that business’. Garnet added to Oldcorne:
‘which is indeed true
’
.
The underlining of the last phrase in the report was done by Coke, who obviously intended to make out that Garnet had prayed for the success of the Powder Treason. What Garnet had actually prayed for was Catholic relief from persecution, but the phrase was all too easily twisted.
¹¹

Not only were Garnet’s intimate conversations being monitored, but his clandestine correspondence with his nephew Thomas in the Gatehouse and with Anne Vaux was being similarly vetted. It was simple for Carey to take to the governor the letters he had promised to ‘convey’. Some of these were copied and then taken onwards; some may have been altered; some letters may even have been forged altogether. Even those places where Father Garnet used orange juice to write the most secret passages were not safe. Waad was able to heat up the letter and read the contents, having either been forewarned by Carey, or else, as would be maintained later, made suspicious by the excessive size of the paper employed – a lot of it apparently blank – and the insignificant contents of the letters. However, words written in orange juice remain visible once they have been exposed to heat (as opposed to lemon juice, which becomes invisible once more when it is cold). These were some of the letters which were probably held back altogether.
*
12

Father Garnet’s correspondence was shaped round a number of domestic articles essential for the daily round of a middle-aged prisoner. To Thomas Garnet, the Jesuit sent his spectacles wrapped in a long piece of paper which was apparently blank. He accompanied them with a note asking for the spectacles to be set in leather – ‘and let the fold be fit for your nose’ – and provided with a leather case. It was Anne Vaux who duly returned the spectacles to him. Her covering letter contained the optimistic phrase: ‘If this come safe to you, I will write and so will more friends who would be glad to have direction.’ She asked for spiritual guidance for herself – Garnet had been her protégé, but also her confessor for over twenty years and she needed a replacement (it is clear from their letters that neither the priest nor the woman was under any illusions about what the inevitable end of his imprisonment would be). She concluded, not with a signature – too dangerous – but with the simple words: ‘O that I might see you.’
¹³

That, decided the authorities who read the letter, was easily arranged. In the meantime, Father Garnet replied with a series of letters, between 26 February and 1 March, to ‘his loving sister Alice’. In ink he acknowledged her presents of bedding and handkerchiefs, and asked for socks, a black nightcap and a Bible. In orange juice he warned her against the capture of more priests which might compromise the existing prisoners as well as themselves. ‘Take heed no more of our friends come in to danger. It will breed new examinations.’ He gave her practical
instructions for the reordering of the Jesuit organisation in England: Father Anthony Hoskins was to be the temporary Superior until a new one was chosen by the proper procedure.

As to Anne’s obligation to him as her Father Confessor, he released her from it. Garnet implied that he would understand if she now decided to leave for Flanders and the placidly devout life of a convent there, a tranquillity which Anne Vaux had certainly earned. Yet if she could manage to stay in England, while somehow still getting to Mass and Communion, ‘I think it absolutely the best.’ In this case, Anne, her sister Eleanor Brooksby, her nephew William (and presumably the young mother Dorothy Brooksby) should lie low for a while.

At the end of February Father Garnet told Anne Vaux that the Council could find nothing against him ‘but presumptions’. Such presumptions were not enough for a state trial since Parliament itself called for proper proof. Something better, something meatier would have to be established. The likelihood is that Father Garnet himself was put to the torture five days after the death of Little John on 7 March. As a result he made a ‘Declaration’ or confession the next day.
¹⁴

It is true that torture can take many forms, and it is not absolutely clear which form was used on Father Garnet, only that, in the words of Father Tesimond, ‘one suspects bad treatment somewhere’. Tesimond (who was by this time on the continent) believed that Garnet had been drugged, which would have been easy to achieve, given the draughts of sack he was imbibing, and which may explain the ease with which he was able to supply himself with wine. Then there was the question of sleep deprivation, an ageless technique of oppression which leaves no physical mark: Garnet was said to be confused, ‘heavy with sleep, so that he could scarcely hold up his head or keep his eyes open’ in front of the Commissioners. By early April, Garnet’s ‘partisans’ in Brussels were spreading the news that he had confessed only after ‘torments’, including starvation and lack of sleep. This caused great annoyance to the English Ambassador there.
¹⁵

It is possible the rack or manacles were merely shown to Father Garnet, and that imagination – the dread which had hung over him for so long – did the rest. The view does not however explain several references to a
second
proposed bout of torture which presuppose that a first one had already taken place. On 24 March Garnet himself protested that it was ‘against common law’ to torture someone over and over again for the same information, but the Councillors replied, ‘No, not in cases of treason,’ since that depended on the royal prerogative. In a letter to Anne Vaux of 11 April Garnet lamented the possibility of being tortured ‘for the second time’. He resolved to tell the whole truth rather than face such an ordeal, accepting that he would die ‘not as a victorious martyr’ (as had Little John) but as a penitent thief. Another letter to Father Tesimond also talked of ‘a second time’.
¹⁶

No great attention need be paid to the fact that Father Garnet at his trial agreed with Salisbury that he had been well treated. The dialogue (for which of course we depend on the official record, not on any Catholic version) went as follows: Had not Garnet been well treated since his arrest? ‘You have been as well attended for health or otherwise as a nurse-child’ (infant at the breast). Garnet then replied: ‘It is most true, my Lord, I confess it.’
¹⁷
Modern experience of show trials teaches us what to make of these public statements.

Torture of some sort did, however, make Father Garnet break at long last the seal of the confessional, which he had preserved with such agonies of conscience. His Declaration of 8 March was extremely dramatic.
¹⁸
By whatever method produced, it gave the government clear proof that, according to the law of England, Garnet had been guilty of misprision of treason – that is, of knowing about a treason in advance and not declaring it. And it was true, for in June 1605 Garnet had been told about Catesby’s proposed conspiracy by Father Tesimond. Although Father Garnet had taken many steps to avert what he considered to be a catastrophe, he had not actually told the King or the English Council.

In order to clear himself of the graver charge of actual
treason – that he had personally directed the Powder Plot – Garnet decided to tell his interrogators ‘the little that he knew’. Contrary to his previous denials, Garnet had known something of the plot beforehand, but he had heard it in such a way that, ‘up to that moment, it could never have been lawful for him, without most grave offence to God, to breathe a word to a living soul’. This was because the seal of the confessional was ‘inviolable’.
¹⁹
There was a direct conflict here between the common law of England – to which Mr Henry Garnet, born in Lancashire, was subject – and the doctrine of the Catholic Church – to which Father Henry Garnet, priest of the Society of Jesus, was bound. It was a conflict of loyalties which had been in theory possible ever since Father Tesimond came to him and made that walking confession.