discovered a day or two before; and now they were gathered together some forty horse at Mr. Winter’s house, naming Catesby, Percy, Digby, and others; and told them, ‘their throats would be cut unless they presently went to join with them.’ And Mr. Abington said, ‘Alas! I am sorry.’ And this examinate and he answered him that they would never join with him in that matter, and charged all his house to that purpose not to go with them. He confesseth that upon the former speeches made by this examinate and Mr. Abington to Tesimond, alias Greenway, the Jesuit, Tesimond said in some heat ‘thus we may see a difference between a flemmatike [phlegmatic] and a choleric person!’, and said he would go to others, and specially into Lancashire, for the same purpose as he came to Hindlip to Mr. Abington.” [152][153] (The italics are mine.)
CHAPTER XLVII.
Father Henry Garnet, the chief of the English Jesuits, left London at the end of August, 1605,[154] and proceeded towards Gothurst (now Gayhurst), in the Parish of Tyringham, three miles from Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire.[A]
[A] The seat of Walter Carlile, Esquire, as has been already mentioned. I have to thank this gentleman for his courteousness in informing me that Gayhurst (formerly Gothurst) is three miles from Newport Pagnell. An excellent picture, together with descriptive account, of Gayhurst, is given in the “Life of Sir Everard Digby,” by one of that knight’s descendants. Gothurst contained a remarkable hiding-place, which was probably constructed by Nicholas Owen, the lay-brother of Father Garnet. According to Father Gerard, the friend of Digby, Gothurst was ten miles from Great Harrowden, the seat of the young Lord Vaux.
Now, who was Henry Garnet, whom the Attorney-General, Sir Edward Coke, described in Westminster Hall as “a man — grave, discreet, wise, learned, and of excellent ornament, both of nature and art;” but around whose name so fierce a controversy had raged for well-nigh 300 years? He was born in 1555, and brought up a Protestant of the Established Church; his father being Mr. Briant Garnet, the head master of the Free School, at Nottingham; his mother’s name was Alice Jay. Henry Garnet was a scholar of Winchester School, and the intention was to send him to New College, Oxford. However, he resolved to become reconciled to the Pope’s religion, and in 1575 joined the Jesuit Novitiate in Rome,
where the great Cardinal Bellarmine was one of his tutors.
Now, to the end that the claims of Truth and Justice, strict, severe, and impartial, may be met in relation to this celebrated English Jesuit, it will be necessary to repeat that as far back as about the beginning of Trinity Term (i.e., the 9th June, 1605), Catesby, in Thames Street, London — outside the Confessional — had propounded to Garnet a question, which ought to have put the Jesuit expressly upon inquiry. For that question was, in case it were lawful to kill a person or persons, whether it were necessary to regard the innocents which were present, lest they also should perish withal.
And this the rather, when Catesby on that very occasion “made solemn protestation that he would never be known to have asked me [i.e., Garnet] any such question as long as he lived.” — See “Hatfield MS.,” printed in “Historical Review,” for July, 1888, and largely quoted in the Rev. J. Gerard’s articles on Garnet, in “Month” for June and July, 1901.