[A] This letter, I understand, is still extant, and is in the archives of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster. I wonder whether by any of the rigorous tests of modern science these “blotted out” words can be discerned. Probably they have some reference to the Plot. The late Rev. John Morris, S.J., thought they had not. But on this point I am obliged to differ, in toto, from that painstaking editor of much invaluable Elizabethan Catholic literature. See the learned Jesuit’s remarks on this letter of the 4th October, 1605, in “The Condition of Catholics under James I.” (Longmans), p. 228.
Father Morris contends that for Father Garnet to have inserted a reference to the Gunpowder Plot “between two such subjects as the choice of Lay-brothers and his own want of money,” would have been for Garnet to have exhibited a disposition “to be the most erratic of letter-writers.”
But, surely, Father Morris’s argument is feeble in the extreme when regard is had to the fact that poor Henry Garnet’s mind, from the 25th July, 1605, when he first heard from Tesimond, by way of confession, the general particulars of the Plot, down to the 4th of October, 1605, was a very weltering chaos of grief, distress, and perplexity. And, therefore, the most natural thing in the world was for him to exhibit a trifle of eccentricity in the style of his epistolary correspondence, in such trying circumstances, even with so acute and caustic a critic as Father Parsons.
I have said that about the 25th July, 1605 (St. James’-tide), Garnet had, by way of confession, the general particulars of the Plot, because I think that Garnet obtained from Tesimond final details of the Plot at Great Harrowden a fortnight before Michaelmas (11th October); in fact, after the return from St. Winefrid’s Well, in Flintshire, Wales.
It is, however, probable that about the 21st of October, at Gothurst, Tesimond may have made a further communication to Garnet, possibly in consequence of Garnet’s sending for Tesimond after he (Garnet) had received “the friend’s stay in the way.” For the old tradition was that Garnet first had particulars from Tesimond, by way of confession, about the 21st October. (See the earlier editions of Lingard’s “History.”) But, of course, this was an error by three months, Garnet first receiving at least general particulars from Tesimond about the 25th of July. (At some future date I may, perhaps, write an essay on “Garnet after the 21st October, 1605,” but at present I have not space to pursue this matter further.)
SUPPLEMENTA.
Supplementum I.
Guy Fawkes.