Everything about Henry Garnet totally explained
Henry Garnet or
Garnett (
1555 –
May 3,
1606) was an
English Jesuit, executed due to his involvement in the
Gunpowder Plot of
November 5,
1605. He was the son of Brian Garnett, headmaster of
Nottingham High School from
1565 – c.
1575.
Early life
Born at
Heanor in Derbyshire, Garnet was educated at
Winchester and afterwards studied law in
London. Having become a
Roman Catholic, he went to
Italy, joined the
Society of Jesus in 1575, and acquired under
Bellarmine and others a reputation for varied learning. In 1586 he joined the mission in England, becoming superior of the province on the imprisonment of William Weston in the following year. In the dispute between the Jesuits and the secular clergy known as the
Wisbech Stirs (1595-1596) he zealously supported Weston in his resistance to any compromise with the civil government. In 1598 he was professed of the Jesuits' four vows. His antagonism to the secular clergy was also shown later, when in 1603 he, with other Jesuits, was the means of betraying to the government the
Bye Plot, contrived by
William Watson, a secular priest.
Garnet supervised the Jesuit mission for eighteen years with conspicuous success. His life was one of concealment and disguises; a price was put on his head; but he was fearless and indefatigable in carrying on his
evangelization and in ministering to the scattered Catholics, even in their prisons. The result was that he gained many converts, while the number of Jesuits in England increased during his tenure of office from three to forty. It is, however, in connection with the
Gunpowder Plot that he's best remembered.
Involvement in the Gunpowder Plot
Association with the conspirators
In
1602 Garnet received the brief of
Pope Clement VIII stating that the succession to the throne of persons unfavourable to the Catholic religion should be opposed. About the same time he was consulted by
Catesby,
Tresham and
Winter, all afterwards involved in the
Gunpowder Plot, on the subject of the mission to be sent to
Spain to induce
Philip III to invade England. According to his own statement he disapproved, but he gave Winter a recommendation to Father
Joseph Creswell, an influential person in
Madrid.
Moreover, in May
1605 he gave introductions to
Guy Fawkes when he went to
Flanders, and to
Sir Edmund Baynham when he went to Rome. The preparations for the plot had now been actively going forward since the beginning of 1604. On
June 9 1605, Catesby asked Garnet whether it was lawful to enter upon an undertaking which might involve the destruction of the innocent together with the guilty. Garnet answered in the affirmative, giving as an illustration the fate of persons besieged in a town in time of war. Afterwards, feeling alarmed, according to his own accounts, Garnet admonished Catesby against intending the death of not only innocents but friends and necessary persons for a commonwealth, and showed him a letter from the Pope forbidding rebellion. According to
Sir Everard Digby, however, Garnet, when asked the meaning of the brief, replied that "they (meaning the priests) were not to undertake or procure stirs, yet they hadn't the power to hinder any; neither was it in the Pope's mind that what was undertaken for Catholic good, should be. This answer, with Mr Catesby's proceedings with him and me, gave me absolute belief that the matter in general was approved, though the particulars were not known." However, as both men were endeavouring to to deflect suspicion from others, the exact degree of guilt of the various parties remains unknown.
Garnet learns of the plot
A few days later, according to Garnet, the Jesuit,
Oswald Tesemond, known as Greenway, informed him of the whole plot by way of confession. Garnet would later state that he disapproved of the plan, and urged Greenway to do his utmost to prevent its execution. Subsequently, after his trial, Garnet said he couldn't certainly affirm that Greenway intended to relate the matter to him in confession.
Garnet's conduct in keeping the plot a secret after Greenway's confession has been a matter of considerable controversy, not only between Catholics and Protestants, but amongst Catholic writers themselves. Father
Martin Delrio, a Jesuit, writing in
1600, discussed the exact case of the revelation of a plot in confession. Almost all learned doctors, he said, declared that the confessor could lawfully reveal it to authorities. But, he added, keeping the plot a secret was the safer and better doctrine, and more consistent with religion and reverence to the seal of confession.
According to Bellarmine, Garnet's zealous friend and defender, if the person confessing remains secretive, it's lawful for a priest to break the seal of confession in order to avert a great calamity. But he justified Garnet's silence by insisting that it wasn't incumbent to disclose a treasonable secret to a heretical king. According to Garnet's own opinion, a priest cognizant of treason against the state is bound to find all lawful means to discover it
salvo sigillo confessionis. Garnet hadn't thought it his duty to disclose the treasonable intrigue with the king of Spain in
1602, though he wasn't restricted by the seal of confession at that time. Too, although Garnet was perhaps bound by confessional secrecy with Greenway's information, he still had Catesby's revelations to act upon. Garnet appears to have taken a few steps to prevent the crime. He attempted to dissuade the conspirators and wrote to Rome in vague terms that he feared a calamity, which aroused no suspicions in that quarter. At the same time he wrote to Father Parsons on
September 4 stating that as far as he could see, the minds of the Catholics were quiet.
Garnet's movements immediately prior to the attempt were certainly suspicious. In September, shortly before the expected meeting of Parliament on
October 3, Garnet organized a pilgrimage to
St Winefride's Well in
Flintshire, which started from Gothurst (now
Gayhurst), Sir Everard Digby's house in
Buckinghamshire. The trip included visits to
Rokewood and stopped at the houses of John Grant and Robert Winter, three of the conspirators. During the pilgrimage Garnet asked for the prayers of the company for some good success for the Catholic cause at the beginning of Parliament. After his return, he went on
October 29 to Coughton in
Warwickshire, near where the conspirators were to have assembled after the explosion. On
November 6,
Thomas Bates, Catesby's servant and one of the conspirators, brought him a letter giving news of the failure of the plot and requesting advice. On the 30th Garnet addressed a letter to the government in which he protested his innocence with the most solemn oaths, as "one who hopeth for everlasting salvation".
Implication and arrest
It wasn't till
December 4, however, that Garnet and Greenway were, by the confession of Bates, implicated in the plot; and on the same day Garnet relocated from Coughton to Hindlip Hall, near Worcester, a house furnished with cleverly built hiding places. Here he remained for some time in concealment in company with another priest, Oldcorne, alias Hall, but at last on
January 30,
1606, unable to bear the close confinement any longer, they surrendered and were taken up to London, being well-treated during the journey by Salisbury's express orders. Garnet was examined by the council on
February 13 and frequently questioned during the following days, but refused to incriminate himself, and a threat to inflict torture had no effect upon his resolution. Subsequently, however, Garnet and Oldcorne were placed in adjoining rooms and enabled to communicate with one another. Eavesdroppers were able to gain information in this way on several occasions. Garnet at first denied all speech with Oldcorne, but subsequently on
March 8, confessed his connection to the plot. He was tried at the Guildhall on the 28th.
Trial and execution
Garnet was clearly guilty of
misprision of treason, an offence which exposed him to perpetual imprisonment and forfeiture of his property. (English law had no exemption for a religious figure whose actions permitted the execution of a preventable crime.) Strangely enough, however, the government passed over Garnet's incriminating conversation with Greenway, and relied entirely on the strong circumstantial evidence to support the charge of high treason. Garnet's trial, like most in those days, wasn't governed by modern rules of evidence and was influenced by the political situation. The case against Garnet was bolstered by general political bias against the Jesuits as a whole, who were viewed as having been complicit in former plots against the government.
He did himself no favours by giving indirect and misleading statements, and his adherence to the doctrine of equivocation [see:
Doctrine of mental reservation]. Garnet claimed that equivocation was only permitted in cases of necessary defence from injustice, or of obtaining some good of great importance when there's no danger of harm to others. His deceptions to the council were justifiable on the basis that had he been as forthcoming as his interrogators demanded, he'd have implicated many other Catholics and friendly Anglicans who would shortly have found themselves in great danger. Furthermore, the council's own conduct towards himself, and others imprisoned along with him, had included eavesdropping, coersion, forgery, perjury, fraud, and torture. Finally, the prosecution's attempt to force Garnet to incriminate himself was opposed to the spirit and tradition of English law.
His verdict a foregone conclusion, Garnet was declared guilty. Despite the irregular character of the trial, he accepted his sentence without complaint. Garnet fervently denied any part in the plot, and maintained to the last that he'd never approved of it. The king, who was concerned lest public opinion view Garnet as a martyr, allowed him to be tortured but once. On May 3, 1606, Garnet was taken on a hurdle to St. Peter's Churchyard where he addressed the assembled crowd: defending the character of Lady Anne Vaux, and refuting those who'd come, on the basis of a false rumor planted by the government, to see him recant his Catholicism. He died without struggling, and when his severed head was displayed, the crowd, rather than shouting, "God save the king!" grew ugly and turned on the executioner, forcing him to flee in haste.
Garnet's Straw
Immediately after his death the story of the "miracle of Garnet's Straw" began to circulate throughout Europe; according to which a blood-stained leaf of corn, retrieved as a relic by a devout Catholic who was present at his execution, developed Garnet's likeness. In consequence of the wide currency the story obtained,
Archbishop Bancroft was commissioned by the privy council to seize the relic and prosecute those involved. However, before this could happen it was given to the Spanish ambassador, who took it with him to the continent, wherein it came into the possession of the Jesuit house in Liege, before finally disappearing in the French Revolution, nearly 200 years after Garnet's death.
His name was included in the list of the 353 Roman Catholic martyrs sent to Rome from England in 1880, and in the 2nd appendix of the
Menology of England and Wales compiled by order of the
cardinal archbishop and the bishops of the province of Westminster by R Stanton in 1887, where he was viewed as a Catholic martyr. His cause was forwarded to Rome for investigation.
A passage in
Macbeth, (Act ii. Scene iii.), refers to equivocation. Garnet was the author of a letter on the
Martyrdom of Godfrey Maurice, alias John Jones, in Diego Yepres's
Historia particular de Ia persecución de Inglaterra (1599); a
Treatise of Schism, a manuscript treatise in reply to
A Protestant Dialogue belween a Gentleman and a Physician; a translation of the
Stemma Christi with supplements (1622); a treatise on the
Rosary; a
Treatise of Christian Renovation or Birth (1616).
Authorities
Of the great number of works embodying the controversy on the question of Garnet's guilt the following may be mentioned, in order of date:
