On the third examination, which was on the 6th of March, both Garnet and Hall confessed White Webbs at last,—the former, that he had hired the house for the meetings of the conspirators, the latter that they had met there twice in the year. Garnet also allowed that Perkins was the alias of the Hon. Anne Vaux, to avoid whose indictment he afterwards said his confession had been made. It is evident, from several allusions in his letters, that Garnet was terribly afraid of torture, and almost equally averse to confronting witnesses. The first was merely human nature; the second speaks ill for his consciousness of that innocence which he repeatedly asserts.
But not yet had the Gunpowder Plot secured its latest or its saddest victim. Soon after Sir Henry Bromley’s departure from Hendlip, Mrs Abington came to London, bringing Anne Vaux with her, and they took lodgings in Fetter Lane, then a more aristocratic locality than now. Here they remained for a few weeks, doing all that could be done to help Garnet, and poor Anne continually haunting the neighbourhood of his prison, and trying to catch glimpses of him, if not to obtain stolen interviews, at the garden gate. But on the 10th of March the authorities interfered, and Anne Vaux was a prisoner of the Tower. Examined on the following day, she deposed that she “kept the house at White Webbs at her own charge;” that she was visited there by Catesby, Thomas Winter, Tresham, and others, but said that she could not remember dates nor further names. She refused to admit that Garnet had been there, but she allowed that she had been among the party of pilgrims to Saint Winifred’s Well, in company with Lady Digby and others whom she declined to name. Lastly, she persisted in saying that she had known nothing of the plot.
She was told—not improbably by Sir William Wade, and if so, we may be sure, not very tenderly—that Garnet had been one of the chief criminals. A few sorrowful lines remain showing the spirit in which she heard it. They were written on the 12th of March.
“I am most sore to here that Father Garnet shoulde be ane wease pryue to this most wicked actione, as himselfe euer cauled it, for that hee made to mee maney greate prostertations to the contrari diuers times sence.
“Anne Vaux.” (Gunpowder Plot Book, article 201.)
After this, Garnet gave up the fiction of his total ignorance of the conspirators’ object. In his fourth examination, on the 13th of March, he said that on the demise of Queen Elizabeth, he had received a letter from the General of the Jesuits, stating that the new Pope Clement had confirmed the order of his predecessor that no such plot should be set on foot, and that Garnet had accordingly done what in him lay to turn Catesby from the idea. Catesby, however, thought himself authorised by two briefs received by Garnet about twelve months earlier, commanding the Roman Catholics of England not to consent to any successor of Elizabeth who should refuse to submit to Rome. These Garnet had shown to Catesby before destroying them. It is evident from these admissions, not only that Garnet had been privy to the plot from the first, but also that it was known at Rome, and controlled from the Vatican—forbidden when success appeared unlikely, and smiled on as soon as it seemed probable.
Shortly after this, a letter came from Anne Vaux—a letter which sadly reveals the character of its writer, and shows how different life might have been for this poor passionate-hearted woman, had she not been crushed under the iron heel of Rome.
“To live without you,” she writes to Garnet, “it is not life, but death! Now I see my los. I am and euer will be yours, and so I humbly beseche you to account me. O that I might see you!”
Her second examination took place a few days later, on the 24th of March. She now acknowledged that Tresham Catesby, and Garnet, used to meet at her house at Wandsworth: and that Garnet was wont to say to them, when they were engaged in discussion,—“Good gentlemen, be quiet; God will do all for the best; and we must get it by prayer at God’s hands, in whose hands are the hearts of princes.” The confession was carried to Garnet. Poor frail, loving heart! she meant to save him, and he knew it. He wrote calmly underneath—
“I do acknowledge these meetings.—H. Garnett.” (Gunpowder Plot Book, article 212.)