Res ipsa loquitur. Yea, the words of Edward Oldcorne speak for themselves. And from those words evident is it that it was the kingly prerogative of this disciplined, self-repressed, humblest of men, to know the truth as to the once atrocious plan: to know the truth and to be free.
For his language implies, and, his mind and his character being what they were, his language is intelligible on none other supposal than this: That at the very moment when his tongue gave utterance to this now famous flanking, evasive answer to his inquirer, he, even he, had possession of a power, a knowledge, a living consciousness, that he had been exalted to be the chosen agent of that Supreme Power of the Universe, to Whom by infinite right, Vengeance belongs: the chosen agent whereby the aforetime, but then no longer, stupendous Gunpowder Treason Plot had been, to all eternity, overthrown, frustrated, and brought to nought.[167]
CHAPTER LXVII.
Hence may we say, of a surety, has it been proved that Edward Oldcorne, Priest and Jesuit, used words which imply that, as a fact, he viewed the Plot ante factum, before the fact, and in the abstract merely.
That, being a man as good as he was clever, and as clever as he was good, he must have had his warranting reasons, his justifying reasons, his vindicating reasons for so doing, when such a course of action was obviously likely to be attended with danger from misinterpretation from both the fool and the knave; from both the man lacking thought and from the man lacking heart.
That such warranting reasons, such justifying reasons, such vindicating reasons would be found in the fact that Oldcorne knew the Plot was no longer a plot, but a scheme emptied and defecated of all evil, all murderous, all criminous, all sacrilegious quality. Nay, that it was a scheme sublimated and transfigured by his (Oldcorne’s) own superabounding merit and virtue in relation to the once diabolical, but then repented of, prodigious plan.
Therefore is the inevitable conclusion pressed upon us with resistless force, that, according to the changeless laws which govern man’s intellectual and moral nature, Oldcorne must have had some official or semi-official particular and private knowledge of the thirteen Gunpowder traitors’ heinous project, as distinct from and in addition to that merely personal, general knowledge, which he necessarily cannot have failed to possess in his
capacity of an ordinary English citizen: some professional or quasi-professional special, private knowledge, as distinct from that general, public, common knowledge, which every sane man then a subject of the British Crown could not help not being possessed of, at that very instant of time when Humphrey Littleton propounded to the great casuist Humphrey Littleton’s aforetime unhappy question.[A]