What has been said of Gerard and Greenway may serve also for Father Garnet, who in his various examinations and other utterances assumes the truth of the government story, for neither had he materials to go upon except those officially supplied.
It is obvious that the conclusion to be drawn from the above considerations is chiefly negative. That the conspirators embarked on a plot against the state, is, of course unquestionable. What was the precise nature of that plot is by no means clear, and still less what were the exact circumstances of its initiation and its collapse. This only appears to be certain, that things did not happen as they were officially related, while the elaborate care expended on the falsification of the story seems to indicate that the true version would not have served the purposes to which that story was actually put.
FOOTNOTES:
[332] Criminal Trials, ii. 235. Mr. Jardine is here speaking expressly of the trial of Father Garnet, as reported in the book, but evidently intends his observations to extend to that of the conspirators as well.
[333] Ibid. 105.
[334] True and Perfect Relation, Introduction.
[335] Criminal Trials, ii. 113.
[336] The contemporary, Hawarde (Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata) gives a report of the trial of the conspirators, under the curious title "Al le arraignemente del Traitors por le grande treason of blowinge up the Parliamente Howse," which, although evidently based upon the official account, differs in two remarkable particulars. In the first place it gives a different list of the commissioners by whom the trial was conducted, omitting Justice Warburton, and including instead, Lord Chief Baron Flemming, Justices Yelverton and Williams, and Baron Saville. Moreover, Hawarde says that the king and queen "were both there in pryvate," an important circumstance, of which the True and Perfect Relation says nothing.
[337] Viz., on January 30th and 31st: not January 31st and February 1st, as Mr. Gardiner has it.