On the 24th of July, 1605, Garnet had sent a remarkable letter to Rome, addressed to Father Aquaviva, the General of the Jesuits. — See “Father Gerard’s Narrative,” pp. 76, 77, in “Condition of Catholics under James I.,” edited by Rev. John Morris, S.J. (Longmans, 1872).
In this letter, which of course was in Latin, Garnet says — amongst other things betokening an apprehension of a general insurrectionary feeling among Catholics up and down the country in consequence of the terrible persecution which had re-commenced as soon as James I. had safely concluded his much-desired peace with Spain — “the danger is lest secretly some Treason or violence be shown to the King, and so all Catholics may be compelled to take arms.”
Garnet then proceeds: “Wherefore, in my judgment, two things are necessary, first, that His Holiness should prescribe what in any case is to be done; and then, that he should forbid any force of arms by the Catholics under Censures, and by Brief, publicly promulgated; an occasion for which can be taken from the disturbance lately raised in Wales, which has at length come to nothing. It remains that as all things are daily becoming worse, we should beseech His Holiness soon to give a necessary remedy for these great dangers, and we ask his blessing and that of your Paternity.” (The italics are mine.)
Now, by the word “censures” here, I presume, Garnet meant excommunication, that is, a cutting off from the visible fellowship of Catholics and (what would frighten every Catholic, whether his faith worked by love or fear, that is, whether it were a rational form of religion or a mere abject superstition) a deprivation of the Sacraments of his exacting Church, which are, according to Rome’s tenets, the special means devised by the Founder of Christianity whereby Man is united to “the Unseen Perfectness.”
CHAPTER XLVIII.
When Garnet penned this letter to the General of the Jesuits in Rome, he had, outside the Confessional, a general knowledge of the Gunpowder project from Robert Catesby.
Thus much is clear.
That is to say, Garnet had a great suspicion, tantamount to a general knowledge, that Catesby had in his head some bloody and desperate enterprise of massacre, the object whereof was to destroy at one fell blow James I. and his Protestant Government. — See Gerard’s “Narrative,” p. 78.