The Condition of Catholics Under James I. / Father Gerard's Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot

by John Gerard

The second accusation brought by the same writer,[207] is couched as follows: “Relying upon the fidelity of Gerard, who declares upon his conscience, that he has ‘set down Father Garnett's words truly and sincerely as they lie in his letter,’ Dr. Lingard has printed what is given by that writer, and from it has argued, with Greenway, that Garnett on the 4th of October, the date assigned to it both by Gerard and Greenway, was still ignorant of the nature of the Plot. The truth, however, is, that although the letter was written on the fourth, the postcript was not added until the twenty-first of October; that from this postscript the two Jesuit writers have selected a sentence, which they have transferred to the body of the letter; and then, concealing both the existence of the postscript and the date of the 21st, have represented the whole as written and dispatched on the 4th. The motive for this proceeding, especially on the part of Greenway, is obvious. That writer's argument is, that the Parliament had been summoned to meet on the 3rd of October, that Garnett had not heard of the intention to prorogue it to the following month (this, to say the least, is very improbable); that, [pg ccxxvi] for anything he could have known to the contrary, the great blow had already been struck, at the very time when he was writing; and, consequently, that, had he been acquainted with the intentions of Catesby and his confederates, he would never, at such a moment, have thought of proceeding, as he says he was about to proceed, towards London, and thus exposing himself to the almost inevitable danger of falling into the hands of his enemies.... Now the whole of this reasoning is founded on the assumption that the letter bore only the single date of the 4th. On the 21st, the supposed danger of a journey to London no longer existed. At that period, too, Garnett, instead of proceeding towards the metropolis, had not only removed in the opposite direction, from Goathurst, in Buckinghamshire, to Harrowden, the seat of Lord Vaux, in Northamptonshire, but was also preparing to withdraw himself still further from the capital, and by the end of the month, was actually at Coughton, in the neighbourhood of Alcester. In fact, what was written on the 4th, he had practically contradicted on the 21st, and to have allowed any part of the letter, therefore, to carry this later date, would have been to supply the refutation of the very argument which it was intended to support. Hence the expedient to which this writer has had recourse. The postscript and its date are carefully suppressed; and we are told that, looking at the contents of the letter, Garnett, when he wrote it, could have known nothing of the designs of the conspirators: ‘Quando scrisse questa lettera, che fu alli quattro d'Ottobre, non sapeva niente del disegno di questi gentilhuomini, altro che il sospetto che prima havea havuto’ (Greenway's MS., 51b). Without stopping to notice the falsehood contained in the concluding words of this sentence, and without intending to offer an opinion here, as to the principal question of Garnett's conduct, I may still remark that even the friends of that Jesuit universally admit him to have received the details of the plot from Greenway about the 21st; and that this fact alone may be regarded as supplying another and a sufficient motive both to the latter and to Gerard, for the suppression of that date.”

This note by Canon Tierney produced its effect on Dr. Lingard, and that historian, in the edition of his work published [pg ccxxvii] in 1849, remarks upon the matter as follows.[208] “The object for which this letter was made up in the shape which it thus assumes in Gerard's MS., is plain from the reasoning which both he and Greenway found upon it. They contend that, if Garnett had been privy to the conspiracy, he must have believed on the 4th that the explosion had already taken place on the 3rd, the day on which the Parliament had been summoned to meet; though no reason is assigned why he might not, as well as others, have been aware of the prorogation to the 5th of November, and they add that, under such belief, he would never have resolved to encounter the dangers of making, as he proposed to do, a journey to London, though in fact he made no such journey, but changed his route, and was actually, at the time in which he wrote, on his way to the meeting appointed at Dunchurch. Hence it became necessary to suppress the postscript, because it was irreconcileable with such statements. There was, moreover, this benefit in the suppression, that it kept the reader in ignorance (1) of the real date of the letter, the 21st of October, the very time when it is admitted that Greenway made to Garnett a full disclosure of the Plot; and (2) that Garnett took that opportunity of blotting out a most important passage in the letter written on the 4th, with a promise to forward the same passage later in an epistle apart; two facts which would furnish strong presumptions against the alleged innocence of the Provincial.”

One word in passing, in reply to the “two facts which would furnish strong presumptions against” Father Garnett's innocence. 1. Dr. Lingard has forgotten that “the full disclosure of the Plot” was made in confession, and that Father Garnett could make no use of it in any way, until the conjuncture arose when the penitent gave him leave. 2. It is true that a passage, written to Father Persons on the 4th October, was erased by Father Garnett on the 21st; but what presumption does this furnish? The “promise to forward the same passage later in an epistle apart,” could not mean that he would write him word of the Powder Plot when it was safe to do so. Is it likely that a conspirator would have written to his friend, with all the [pg ccxxviii] chances of a letter being intercepted, that they were proposing to blow up the Houses of Parliament? What would he have gained even had he but risked a phrase as oracular as that of the letter to Lord Mounteagle? Such a supposition assumes that Father Garnett was not only guilty of the Plot, but that he had lost all common sense and ordinary caution; and that he was indebted to the accidental return of his letter to his hands, seventeen days after he had written it, for an opportunity of destroying proof under his own hand that he was guilty. If this consideration is not conclusive, we have but to refer to the context, as given from the original by Mr. Tierney himself,[209] and our sense of the ridiculous must settle the question. Father Garnett must have been the most erratic of letter-writers, if he could insert a reference to the Gunpowder Treason, or to any other treason, between two such subjects as the choice of Lay-brothers and his own want of money. The letter ends as follows.

“ ‘I pray you send word how many Coadjutors’ ” [Jesuit Lay-brothers] “ ‘you will have. I have one, a citizen of London, of very good experience, which may benefit us, in buying and selling without taxes. But he is fifty years old: and I think it not amiss to have, at the first, some ancient men for such. Send your will herein.’

“A short but separate paragraph of three lines is here carefully obliterated.

“ ‘I am in wonderful distress, for want of the ordinary allowance from Joseph’ ” [Creswell, the Superior in Spain]. “ ‘I pray you write for all the arrearages, which, if it may all be gotten, I can spare you some. Thus, with humble remembrance to Claud’ ” [Aquaviva, the General], “ ‘Fabio, Perez, Duras, and the rest, I cease, 4o Octobris.’ ”

But let us address ourselves to the grave accusation made against Gerard and Greenway. That Dr. Lingard should have made such a statement at all is owing, first, to the fact that at the time when he was preparing the new edition of his History, he had no longer access to the manuscript of Father Gerard, [pg ccxxix] of which he had had the use[210] when originally compiling his work. The reader, who has Gerard's Narrative now beneath his eyes, can speedily convince himself of this fact. And, secondly, to a misunderstanding of Canon Tierney's note, for which that writer's expressions are to blame. If it had been true, as Dr. Lingard understood Mr. Tierney to say, that Gerard and Greenway drew the same argument from the date of Father Garnett's letter, their conduct would have been entirely indefensible, and they would have deserved the blame brought against them.

The truth however is, and in this lies an ample defence for both of them, that this is not so. Father Gerard quotes Father Garnett's letter only and solely to illustrate the state of the Catholics in England. For this purpose, the date of the letter he was quoting was entirely unimportant. Indeed, he originally quoted the letter without any date; and then he interlined the date of Oct. 4th, but laying no more stress upon it than he had laid on the dates of the other letters of July 24th and August 28th. For the same reason it would not occur to him to note that the passage respecting Ireland was taken from a postcript. It was enough for him that he gave Father Garnett's very words, as he declared “upon his conscience” that he did; and that he had Father Garnett's authority for the account that he was giving of the condition and state of feeling of Catholics. When he turned to the letter for a date, it was natural enough that he should take that which was endorsed upon it by Father Persons, who, having erased the date of the 21st which he had originally written upon it, had substituted the 4th, and “in another corner of the paper also, where it appears most likely to catch the eye, inscribed the same date thus, ‘4° 8bris.’ ”[211] As there is no ground for blaming Father Persons for thus endorsing a single date on a letter which continued to bear two, so neither is it reasonable to blame Father Gerard for quoting the letter under one date only. It is clear, therefore, that there is no accusation whatever against Father Gerard, and if Father Greenway had not drawn from the date of the letter the argument regarding Father Garnett, none would ever have been [pg ccxxx] made. It is gravely to be regretted that Mr. Tierney should have said that there was “a sufficient motive both to the latter and to Gerard for the suppression of that date.” This expression evidently misled Dr. Lingard, and led him erroneously to speak of “the reasoning which both he [Gerard] and Greenway found upon it.” Had Dr. Lingard not trusted to Mr. Tierney, but referred to Gerard's Narrative, he would have said of the whole charge that which he has said[212] of the alterations of names in the first part of the letter. Of this his expression is, “Had his object been only to present the public with an account of the persecution to which the English Catholics were at that moment subjected, there would not have been great cause to complain.” This was his only object,[213] and therefore there was, in Dr. Lingard's judgment, no great cause to complain.

Father Greenway derived his information of the letter from Father Gerard's Narrative, of which he was translator. Whether the argument he has founded on the date of the letter has any and what force is not here under discussion, but it is evident that he propounded it in good faith. The original letter was in existence to confute him. If he had seen it or noticed the postscript and its date, he would never have exposed himself to such a confutation. He was misled, innocently enough, but seriously, by the manner in which the letter appeared in Father Gerard's pages which he was translating.

In a word, the accusation is this. Gerard and Greenway found an argument on the fact that a letter of Garnett's was dated the 4th of October, when they knew that it was in his hands on the 21st. And the answer is this. Gerard may have known, but had no need to notice, the fact of the double date, as he founded no argument whatever upon it: Greenway, who did found an argument on it, had no reason for suspecting the existence of a later date on the letter.