The Gunpowder Plot: Terror & Faith in 1605 (49 page)

When one of the Councillors asked the obvious question: why could he reveal the conversation now, in order to save his own life, and not do so earlier, ‘in order to save the life of the King and peers of the realm’, Father Garnet gave the orthodox Catholic reply. Breaking the seal depended on the will of the penitent (Catesby in this case), not that of the confessor.

Catesby had decreed that, in the event of the Plot’s discovery, the matter of his confession was no longer to be regarded as sacred. If ever Garnet should be ‘called in question for being accessory unto such a horrible action’, either by the Pope, by his Superiors or by the English state, he would ‘have liberty to utter all that passed in this conference’. But there was no doubt that the image of the equivocating – deceitful, malevolent and ultimately self-preserving – Jesuit was only deepened further by this revelation. As Salisbury observed on 9 March, it was ‘a small matter’ whether Garnet himself lived or died. The important thing was to demonstrate the treasonable practices of the Catholics and ‘to prove to all the world’ that it was for this reason, not for their religious beliefs, that they should be ‘exterminated’.
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Some of the details of the Declaration may have been dictated or suggested by the government, notably the reference to Hugh Owen.
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Garnet stated that Guy Fawkes told him he
‘went over for Easter [to the continent] to acquaint Owen’, adding, rather naively – or perhaps confusedly, given his state – ‘which I never imagined before, nor thought any resolution to be in Fawkes’. But in general Garnet, while admitting to the fatal walking confession of Father Tesimond, stuck firmly to his thesis: his horror at the conspiracy, his sleepless nights after the confession, and his intense desire to get the Pope to forbid all such violent enterprises.

When the King was shown this confession in writing, he considered it ‘too dry’ and asked for something slightly more emotive. In particular, he wanted details of the nobles who were involved. But Garnet failed him on this subject yet again in his second Declaration.
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Catesby, he said, had been close to the Earl of Rutland, yet did not try to spare him from the explosion. Even if Catesby had had some idea of disabling the (Catholic) Earl of Arundel to keep him from Parliament, he had avoided the company of Lady Derby and Lady Strange ‘though he loved them above all others because it pitied him to think that they must also die’.

While Salisbury reported triumphantly in letters abroad that Garnet had declared the Powder Treason to be absolutely ‘justifiable’, this was at the very least a governmental equivocation. Garnet had justified his behaviour following the Catesby/ Tesimond confession: but he had never justified the conspiracy itself.

Some time before 11 March, Anne Vaux was taken into custody. She managed to disentangle herself from the trap laid by the government only to fall a victim to something she could not combat – sheer force. The keeper, Carey, using his mother as a go-between, had in his usual helpful fashion appointed a rendezvous at the Tower so that Anne might catch sight of Father Garnet, if not actually speak to him. But on her arrival Anne found the whole situation extremely suspicious. There were ‘such signs and causes of distrust’ that she cut short her visit, not even attempting to glimpse the Jesuit. Then, with that characteristic prudence which had enabled her to protect priests for so many years, she did not return to her own
lodgings, realising full well she would be followed. She went instead to Newgate prison, ostensibly to visit the Catholic prisoners there ‘unto which many of all sorts had continual access’.
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The stratagem infuriated the authorities, who had expected to be led towards a nest of recusants. Anne Vaux was arrested and ‘with some rough usage’ carried back to the Tower as a prisoner. This was highly unusual, as women were hardly ever committed to the Tower, and Anne Vaux, an unmarried gentlewoman, was not even suspected of being an active Plotter. In the Tower she was interrogated on two occasions, 11 and 24 March.
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Since Father Garnet was also undergoing further interrogations at the same time – including interviews with the King, who was delighted to discuss such theological (and treasonable) matters as the seal of the confessional – the intention was obviously to play one prisoner off against the other.

From Anne Vaux the government learnt of the existence of a recusant safe house at Erith in Kent, unknown to them before. Here her first cousin, Francis Tresham, had come between Easter and Whitsuntide in 1605 and talked to Father Garnet. Anne also confirmed various movements of the conspirators, including a visit of Catesby, Tresham and Tom Wintour to White Webbs when Father Garnet was present. She talked of going to St Winifred’s Well with Lady Digby and others she would not name: ‘she will not say that Whalley [Garnet] was there’. She mentioned the gathering for the Feast of All Saints at Coughton, although she protested she knew nothing of Father Garnet’s allegedly inflammatory prayer on the text: ‘Take away the perfidious people from the territory of the Faithful.’ She remembered the visit to Rushton shortly after the death of Sir Thomas when Lady Tresham had kept to her mourning chamber, although Francis Tresham had entertained them at dinner.

Unfortunately, all these movements described by Anne Vaux placed Father Garnet firmly in touch with Francis Tresham in recent years. This was nothing but the truth, but it suited Coke’s plans. The government had been put out by Francis Tresham’s inconvenient deathbed recantation on the subject of
Garnet and the Spanish Treason. Coke, with his agile and unscrupulous mind, intended to twist this truth into yet another denunciation of the evil doctrine of equivocation.

The government, however, had no intention of taking seriously Anne Vaux’s positive evidence about Garnet’s horror at the Powder Treason. They took what they wanted from her statements and ignored the rest. Yet Anne Vaux appended in her own hand a pathetic postscript to her first examination: she was sorry to hear ‘that Father Garnet should be any least privy to this wicked action, as he himself ever called it’, because he had made so many protestations to the contrary ever since. At her second examination, the Council was anxious that Anne should confirm that Garnet, while at White Webbs, had incited Francis Tresham to rebellion. Instead of this, Anne Vaux recalled the priest perpetually exhorting his friend to patience: ‘She remembereth that he used these words, ‘‘Good gentlemen, be quiet. God will do all for the best.’’ ’ As to toleration, Garnet had declared: ‘we must get it by prayer at God’s hands, in whose hands are the hearts of princes.’

Anne Vaux’s dignity and decency impressed the Councillors, although this would not inhibit Coke from introducing her name gratuitously into his prosecution speech at Garnet’s trial. In any case, by this time, the lewdly enjoyable story of their association had spread far outside the confines of the Council Chamber.

The trial of Mr Henry Garnet – as the government called him – took place on Friday 28 March at the Guildhall. It was, said Coke, the last act of that ‘heavy and doleful tragedy’ commonly called the Powder Treason. Before the tribulations of the Tower, Garnet had been much weakened by that ordeal at Hindlip and his physical condition was now very bad. It was unlikely that he could walk the distance to the Guildhall. This posed a problem which Sir William Waad solved by delivering the Jesuit in a closed coach. There were those who interpreted this unusual measure as fear of the Catholics among the
crowds – it had not been granted, for example, to the conspirators, many of whom were ‘of better birth and blood’ than Garnet. But it seems clear from Waad’s correspondence that it was Garnet’s weakness which provoked the change: he was, in Waad’s words, ‘no good footman’.
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The trial started at about nine-thirty in the morning and lasted, as in January, all day.
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The King was once again there ‘privately’, as were many courtiers, both male and female, including Lady Arbella Stuart and Catherine Countess of Suffolk. But there is no mention of Queen Anne (who had attended the Plotters’ trial) being present. Either tact, given her known Catholic sympathies, kept her away or else the Queen’s pregnancy – her eighth child was due in June – made the occasion unsuitable.

Father Garnet, throughout the trial, stood in something ‘like unto a pulpit’ which enabled the curious to feast their eyes on this creature of irredeemable evil who had planned to kill them all, but who appeared before them now in the guise of an unassuming middle-aged man with thinning hair who needed spectacles.

The indictment began by citing Garnet’s various aliases: ‘otherwise Whalley, otherwise Darcy, otherwise Roberts, otherwise Farmer, otherwise Philips’. This was a ploy which enabled Coke to make play with the fact that ‘a true man’ would never have had so many appellations. Garnet was described as ‘Clerk, of the profession of Jesuits’. The date chosen for his treason was 9 June 1605, when he was said to have conspired with the late Robert Catesby not only to kill the King and his son, but also to ‘alter and subvert the government of the kingdom and the true worship of God established in England’. After that, Garnet was accused of conspiring with Tesimond, and Thomas Wintour and other ‘false traitors’ including Catesby, to blow up and utterly destroy King, Prince Henry, Lords and Commons with gunpowder.

Garnet pleaded ‘Not Guilty’ and he was also allowed to object to a juror, John Burrell, a merchant like the other members of the jury. No reason had to be given for the
challenge,
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but presumably Burrell was a specially venomous anti-Catholic. After that, there was a brief – comparatively speaking – address from the Serjeant-at-Law. Then Sir Edward Coke got under way. From first to last, he was concerned to make it clear that the recent conspiracy had been dominated by the priests: ‘I will name it the Jesuits’ treason, as belonging to them…’ He indulged in a long historic survey of conspiracies in the previous reign, as well as the present one, in all of which, said Coke, the Jesuits, with their doctrines of ‘King-killing’ and ‘Queen-killing’, had been central. As for Garnet, he had had ‘his finger’ in every treason since 1586.

Coke spoke eloquently in order to cover up one tricky area in the prosecution case: the fact that Garnet had not actually been personally involved in the actions which had brought the other Plotters to their doom in the midlands. By English law, he was undoubtedly guilty of misprision of treason, as has been noted, since he himself had admitted to foreknowledge of the conspiracy; but the greater charge of treason needed a little more manipulation if it was to stick. Coke’s solution was to declare that Garnet as the ‘author’ of the Plot was immeasurably more sinful than the conspirators who were the ‘actors’ in it
(Plus peccat author quam actor).
Coke enlisted the Book of Genesis to his aid. Here the serpent received three punishments ‘as the original plotter’, Eve two ‘being as the mediate procurer’ and Adam only one, ‘as the party seduced’. Garnet was the serpent.

Having laid down these principles, Coke proceeded to flesh them out by outlining at length the course of the Powder Treason. He was concerned to leave out no recent conspiracy which could conceivably be used to cast odium on what had happened. Thus the Main and Bye Plots of 1603 were said to be joined with the Gunpowder Plot, like foxes joined at the tails, ‘however severed in their heads’.

At every stage, Garnet was said to be involved, whether in
March 1603, cheering on Catesby with a ‘warrant’ for his enterprise, or in the summer of 1605 when he was accused of sending Sir Edmund Baynham to Rome to get the Pope’s approval of the treason (the exact reversal of the truth). Then in late November at Coughton he had openly prayed ‘for the success of the great action’, and according to Coke prayer was much more than mere consent. Lastly, Coke denounced Garnet himself in terms which had become extended since his speech at the previous trial: where once he had referred to the ‘two Ds’ of the Jesuit sect, he now called Garnet ‘a doctor of five Ds, namely, of dissimulation, of deposing of princes, of disposing of kingdoms, of daunting and deterring of subjects, and of destruction’.

Coke now concentrated at some length on ‘dissimulation’ as represented by that Treatise of Equivocation, ‘seen and allowed [actually written] by Garnet’. Equivocation, said Coke, was an offence against chastity, since the tongue (speech) and heart (meaning) should rightly be joined together in marriage; equivocating statements were ‘bastard children’, conceived in adultery. This elaborate image gave Coke the opportunity to refer to Garnet’s own vows of chastity, which he had broken: ‘Witness Mrs Vaux for his chastity.’

Equivocation was certainly one of the two main prongs of the government’s attack. It was, however, when Coke came to the subject of Francis Tresham and his dying letter that he was able to denounce equivocation in the most effective terms. He asked permission to read the fatal letter aloud. This was the document which Tresham had ‘weakly and dyingly subscribed’. In the course of it Tresham exonerated Garnet from the Spanish Treason, mentioning, according to Coke, that he had not seen Garnet ‘for fifteen or sixteen years before’. This gave Coke an open opportunity to elaborate on the contradictory testimony of Garnet personally, as well as that of Anne Vaux, who was ‘otherwise a very obstinate woman’. Both had given evidence of ample meetings ‘within two years space’ and also many times before. According to Coke, Tresham had taken to heart the lessons of the ‘book of equivocation’, which had
been found in his lodgings, and given vent to ‘manifest falsehoods’ even as he lay dying.

Garnet, never having seen Tresham’s letter – despite the latter’s instructions that he should do so – was in no position to contradict Coke’s magisterial statements. But, for all Coke’s indignation about a man who would equivocate on his deathbed, poor Tresham had not actually done so. His letter in fact referred to the long gap before 1602, not 1605.
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All Garnet could do, however, was mutter lamely: ‘It may be, my Lord, that he meant to equivocate.’ It was just the kind of damaging admission that Coke wanted.