Victor R. Claveau, MJ
In May 3, 1606 Henry Garnet, a Jesuit Priest, was executed for alleged complicity in the Gunpowder Plot—a conspiracy which he wholeheartedly condemned but was powerless to prevent.
Henry, son of Brian and Alice Garnet, was born at Heanor, a market town of east Derbyshire, in the second half of the year 1555. His early childhood was spent, however, in Nottingham, where his father, had become the head master of the Free Grammar School in 1565.
Having been educated at Winchester, Henry was a brilliant linguist, expert in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. As a priest, his scholarly bent made him a natural devotee of theology and theological debate.
Certainly, Garnet was the opposite of a man of violence, believing that things were best settled by submission to the will of God. This applied to the reconversion of England to the Catholic Faith, political maneuvers, let alone armed uprisings, were much less likely to be efficacious than prayers, the maintenance of Catholic rituals and the celebration of holy Mass. Contemporaries also bore witness to his kindheartedness and compassion. He thought it his duty to attend (in disguise) the hideous public executions of his priests in order to administer the last rites to them if he could. Such ordeals filled this sensitive man with apprehension: would ne be able to act so bravely when his own time came?
The Gunpowder Plot was a failed attempt to murder England’s King James I (1566-1625) and blow up the Parliament on November 5, 1605. The plot was organized by Robert Catesby (c.1572-1605) in an effort to end the persecution of Roman Catholics by the English government. Catesby and others hoped to replace the country’s Protestant government with Catholic leadership. Around midnight on November 4-5, 1605, one of the conspirators, Guy [Guido] Fawkes (1570-1606), was discovered in the cellar of the Parliament building with barrels of gunpowder. Fawkes and twelve co-conspirators, who had spent months planning the murders, were tried and executed for treason. After being tortured, Fawkes revealed he was a participant in an English Catholic conspiracy to annihilate England’s Protestant government and replace it with Catholic leadership.
Robert Catesby (b. in or after 1572 – 8 November 1605) was the leader who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot. He had been counseled by Father Garnet and was given an express order that the English Catholics should live in peace and leave the reconversion of their country to Providence. But Catesby refused to accept the message in silence. “Instead, as they got up from the table, he referred pointedly to those who had grown weary of putting up with persecution. People were saying openly that such doctrines of non-resistance took away from the Catholics their spirit and energy, leaving them “flaccid and poor spirited”. Making it clear that he was speaking for others as well as himself. Catesby said that the English Catholics were now in a worse situation than slaves, despised by their enemies as ‘God’s lunatics.”[1]
The conspirators began to avoid Father Garnet’s company after the meeting so as to not receive his prohibition. “In late July—shortly before the Feast of Saint James, on July 25—Father Garnet discovered that he had failed. He had learned [under the Seal of the Confessional] the existence of a plan which was a “most horrible thing, the like of which was never heard of.’[2]
“Perhaps the correct priestly reaction was expressed most clearly by Father Garnet himself: ‘The confessor himself id bound to find all means to hinder and discover the treason.’[3] Even if Garnet could not use the knowledge specifically gained in the confessional, that did not mean that would have to remain passive and allow events to unfold.
“What Father Garnet did next made perfect sense under the Catholic rules. Immediately he wrote to his own general Aquaviva, in Rome. He said that he had prevented violence or ‘serious trouble’ breaking out on four separate occasions already, but that he remained perturbed on two counts. First, that those ‘in another country’ might ‘fly to arms’ which could cause others in England to join them in open rebellion. Secondly, and much more seriously, he wrote: ‘There is a risk that some private endeavor may commit treason or use force against the King.’[4] In this way all the Catholics might be obliged to join then in the fighting, to the ruin of the community. Yet again Father Garnet urged that the new Pope, Paul V, elected on 29 May, himself might issue a public brief against the use of ‘armed force’. In order not to mention his own heavy burden of knowledge, Father Garnet carefully suggested that the pretext for the Pope’s action could be the recent troubles among the recusants in Wales who formed a notoriously turbulent community.
“But Garnet did not leave his ‘hindering’ of the treason at that. He also asked the English Catholic emissary to Rome, Sir Edmund Baynham, to emphasize the need for a papal declaration.”
“In the course of the next fourteen weeks, Father Garnet allowed himself to be lulled into a sense of false security. Everything was in abeyance until the results of the Baynham mission was known. The nightmare scenario was not going to take place.[5]
Once the plot was foiled, the conspirators went on the run. On 6 November, Father Garnet received word by messenger from Catesby that once again showed that blind faith in the rightness of what he was doing—and had done—which was singularly out of touch with the reality of the recusant position. Catesby asked Father Garnet to excuse their rashness, but then proceeded to solicit Garnet’s assistance to raise a party in Wales, far from the center of government, Catholic support was believed to be vigorous. Garnet was appalled, and said, “We are all utterly undone.”[6]
Over time and under severe torture Guy Fawkes named his fellow conspirators. Each of them were eventually tried, found guilty of treason and were executed. Father Garnet was not named.
On January 27, Father Garnet, along with Father Edward Oldcorne (1561 – 7 April 1606) were taken after an eight-day sojourn in a tiny cramped space in Hindlip House, the home of Thomas Habington. The home was searched by Sir Henry Bromley, at which time a total of 11 priest holes were discovered. Discovered were the two priests along with two lay brothers, Nicholas Owen and Ralph Ashley.
Father Garnet was named as a traitor as he had administered the Sacraments to the plotters. He was brought to trail and the jury of wealthy London citizens took only fifteen minutes to deliver their verdict. Mr. Henry Garnet, chief of the Jesuits, was found guilty of treason for conspiring to bring about the destruction of the King and government by the “Powder Treason.” The prisoner was asked, according to the law, whether there was any reason why judgment should not be passed. Garnet merely referred himself to the mercy of the King and God Almighty. The judgment, duly pronounced, was that he was to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
Summary
The Protestant Revolt in 16th century England carried away centuries of Catholic influence in the minds and hearts of the English people. Gone was the sacramental life, replaced with Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, and thousands of “no-popery” sermons. The relentless desecration and destruction of Catholic monasteries and sacramentals all contributed to a generation which knew nothing else—a generation which believed the Pope to be the Antichrist, the Mass regarded as absurd and false, and recognizing two sacraments only—Baptism and a corrupted version the Eucharist. They suffered the forfeiture of their Catholic patrimony. Catholicism was no longer theirs; it was now foreign, belonging to another country, another world, at another time.
[1] Fraser, Antonia Faith and Treason, (New York: Doubleday, 1996), pp. 129-130.
[2] Ibid. pp. 129-130.
[3] The consequences of the seal of the confessional, where a priest must not divulge what he has learned even to save an innocent life, has always been seen as having great dramatic potential: of the various works in which it has been put to use, the most notable is the film I Confess (1953), with Montgomery Clift as a priest who hears the confession of a murderer and is subsequently charged with the crime; he cannot clear himself by violating the seal of the confessional.
[4] Father Henry Garnet in a letter to Aquaviva in Rome, 24 July 1605.
[5] Fraser, Faith and Treason, p. 132.
[6] Ibid, p. 181.