But it was necessary for the purpose of affording a decent pretext for further penal legislation, long since agreed upon in the council, as well as to destroy the sympathy still felt at foreign courts for the persecuted English, that the blame of the foul conspiracy should be laid not on the inhuman laws which had driven gallant and loyal men into deadly conflict with the government, but on the church. As it was impossible to implicate any considerable number of the laity or the secular clergy, it was resolved to single out the few Jesuits then in the country, and through them the entire Order, as fitting objects of national hatred and universal obloquy. The trick was not new even then, though since much practised and refined. Its execution was consonant also with the parliamentary design of exterminating Catholicity in the three kingdoms. The old clergy, or, as they were called, “Queen Mary's priests,” were few, aged, and sure soon to die out in the course of nature, while the authorities had taken good care that they should leave no successors of native education. The Jesuits, on the contrary, were young men, generally scions of noble houses, gentle in breeding, and, from their continental training, thorough linguists, acute reasoners, and polished [pg 187] gentlemen. Their erudition made them feared by the half-taught sophists of the reformed prelacy, their refined manners secured their admission into the best families, and their noble enthusiasm defied the utmost severity of the Puritan and Episcopal magistrates. Their knowledge of the country was accurate, and, though they were accused by such hired defamers as Coke of using many aliases, the odium was not theirs, but the law's, that made their very presence in their native land treason. No religious community, it is well known, is the church, nor is she responsible for the conduct of each particular member, but the orders may be regarded as the vedettes of her grand army, and before it can be successfully attacked they must be driven in or captured.
Accordingly, one of the first steps taken by the king's advisers after the trial of the conspirators was to issue a proclamation for the arrest of Fathers Gerard, Greenway, and Garnett, three of the four Jesuit missionaries then known to be in England. In this official document it was alleged “to be plain and evident from the examinations that all three had been peculiarly practisers in the plot.” Now, let us examine for a moment upon what those grave accusations were based. Simply on confessions of the prisoners, for it has never been alleged that the slightest proof, documentary or oral, other than those and the admission of Father Garnett, the provincial, were ever produced to connect the priests with the conspiracy. The examinations were conducted with the most exquisite tortures, taken down by the creatures of the government, and afterwards mutilated and altered by the attorney-general to suit his own views. Fawkes, by special command of his majesty, was so frequently racked that he could not use a pen to sign his name, much less could he read what had been written for him, and Nicholas Owen, a lay-brother, was so stretched that his bowels protruded and he expired in the hands of his tormentors. Of Father Gerard, mention was made by two of the original plotters, Fawkes and Winter, in allusion to the oath of secrecy. The latter said that “the five administered the oath to each other in a chamber in which no other body was,” which the latter confirms more in detail.
“The five,” he says, “did meet at a house in the field, beyond S. Clement's Inn, where they did confer and agree upon the plot, and there they took a solemn oath and vows by all their force and power to execute the same, and of secrecy not to reveal it to any of their fellows, but to such as should be thought fit persons to enter into that action; and in the same house they did receive the sacrament of Gerard the Jesuit, to perform their vow and oath of secrecy aforesaid. But that Gerard was not acquainted with their purpose.”[108]
This last sentence was by order of Coke underlined with red, notated hucusque, and was carefully suppressed in the reading of the examination on the trial! The original document is still preserved in the Public Record Office, and how such an indefatigable student as Mr. Dixon could have overlooked this part of it is, to say the least, very suspicious. His version of the affair is as follows:
“An upper room of Widow Herbert's house was turned into a chapel; and when the priest was ready for his part, Catesby, Percy, Tom Winter, Jack Wright, and Fawkes assembled in the house—a quaint old Tudor pile at the corner of Clement's Lane—first in the lower room, where they swore each other upon the Primer, and then in the upper room, where they heard Father Gerard [pg 188]say Mass, and took from his hand the sacrament on that oath. Each of the five conspirators was sworn upon his knees, with his hand on the Primer, that he would keep the secret, that he would be true to his fellows, that he would be constant in the plot.”
Is this perversion of the facts of history accidental, or a piece of downright dishonesty? At first, overlooking the writer's known hostility to the Jesuits, and his insinuation about the priest being “ready for his part,” we concluded that the sentence describing how the conspirators were sworn was intended to commence after the word “Primer,” to preserve the unity of the action, but by inadvertence was put after the mention of the taking of the sacrament, thus conveying the false idea that the conspirators swore also after or during Mass; but, having had occasion to refer to the index, we find that we had done Mr. Dixon's dexterity injustice at the expense of his veracity. In seeking for the page of his book upon which this opaque statement appears, we find the following words in the index under the head “Gerard”—“administers the oath of secrecy to the Powder Plot conspirators in a house in Butcher's Row, p. 95.” Thus the author of Her Majesty's Tower, who, we presume, occupies a decent position among men of letters in his own country, not only cannot discover after the “occasional labor of twenty years” a most essential point of testimony bearing on the very subject to which his book is mainly devoted, but to make out a case against the much-hated Jesuits actually falsifies and perverts facts already known and admitted; doing in the year of grace 1869 gratuitously, what Coke in 1606 did for hire. Can the force of malice go further? Digby, who, it will be remembered, was subsequently admitted into the plot, on his trial went even further than the originators of it; and, in exculpating the Jesuit Order, was most emphatic in denying any knowledge of the conspiracy on the part of Gerard, either in its progress or, as far as he knew, at its inception. So much for Father Gerard's innocence as proved by others; the following is his own statement, made years after the occurrence when he was beyond the reach of English law, and subsequently affirmed in substance on his solemn oath:
“I have stated in the other treatise of which I spoke, that a proclamation was issued against those Jesuit fathers, of whom I am one; and, though the most unworthy, I was named first in the proclamation, whereas I was the subject of one and far inferior in all respects to the other. All this, however, I solemnly protest was utterly groundless; for I knew absolutely nothing of the plot from any one whatsoever, not even under the seal of confession, as the other two did; nor had I the slightest notion that any such scheme was entertained by any Catholic gentleman, until by public rumor news was brought us of its discovery, as it was to all others dwelling in that part of the country.”[109]
The treatise referred to in this extract is his Narrative, and in it Gerard takes frequent occasion to reiterate in the most positive manner, speaking in the third person, all knowledge of the conspiracy, even to saying Mass on the occasion alluded to by Fawkes. The house in Clement's Inn, he fully acknowledges, was used by him and his friends, among whom there were at least two priests during his absence; and we can well believe that the two prisoners were mistaken in his identity, as we have no evidence that they were familiar with his appearance or personally acquainted with him. However, this does not signify. Some priest undoubtedly celebrated Mass, and the question is, Did he administer the oath, or knowingly administer [pg 189] the sacrament in confirmation of it? Winter and Fawkes declare he did not; Digby, who was most intimate with Father Gerard, denied in open court that that Jesuit knew anything about the plot; and Gerard himself repeatedly, under the strictest forms known in his Order, asserts his entire innocence, and it has never even been hinted that any other priest was concerned in the early stages of the conspiracy. This matter may therefore be considered closed.
Now, it is equally certain that Fathers Garnett and Tesimond, alias Greenway, did become acquainted with the plot during its progress; but the information came to them under the seal of confession, and could not be revealed. It is unnecessary to support this proposition by argument, as its wisdom is now generally recognized by the civil law even in Protestant countries. Confidential communications to priest, doctor, or lawyer are at last held sacred. What was the extent of their knowledge, and what was their conduct on receiving the same? In Thomas Winter's public dying declaration, communicated by an eye-witness to the author of the Narrative, he said: “That whereas divers of the fathers of the society were accused of counselling and furthering them in this treason, he could clear them all, and particularly Father Tesimond, from all fault and participation therein.” “And indeed Mr. Thomas Winter might best clear that good father, with whom he was best acquainted,” adds Father Gerard, “and knew very well how far he was from counselling or plotting that business. For himself, having first told the father of it (as I have heard) long after the thing was ready, and that in such secret as he might not utter it, but with his leave, unto his superior only, the father, both then and after, did so earnestly persuade him, and by him the rest, to leave off that course (as his duty was), that Mr. Winter might well find himself in conscience to clear this father from his wrongful accusation of being a counsellor and furtherer of the plot.”[110]
This statement was also repeatedly confirmed by Father Tesimond, both in his writings and in his account of the matter soon after his escape, published by Joannes in his Apologia.