< Continued from page 1

Garnet is Implicated, Arrested and Executed

Despite Guy Fawkes and Thomas Wintour stressing in their confessions that neither Greenway, Garnet or other Jesuits had any direct involvement in the plot, the prosecution at the trials presented an official government, and largely fictional, story of how the Jesuits had dreamt up, organised, recruited and supplied the plot, aided by statements from Tresham, who later admitted the truth, and Bates, who tried to implicate the Jesuits in return for his own survival.

Several priests, including Greenway, fled to Europe, but when Father Garnet was arrested on March 28th his fate was already sealed and he was executed on May 3rd. It only slightly helped the prosecutors that Garnet was overheard admitting in prison he'd known what Catesby was planning.
The Gunpowder Plot can't be blamed exclusively for Garnet's death. Just being in England was enough to get him executed and the government had searched for him for years. Indeed, much of his trial was concerned with his views on equivocation – a concept many people found strange and dishonest - rather than gunpowder. Even so, government lists of the plotters had Garnet's name at the top.

The Question of Guilt

For decades, much of the general public believed the Jesuits had led the plot. Thanks to the rigours of modern historical writing, this is no longer the case; Alice Hogge's statement "...perhaps the time has come to re-open the case against the English Jesuits...and restore their reputation" (A. Hogge, Accused: The Priests and the Plot, BBC History Magazine 71, p.

17) is noble, but already redundant. However, some historians have gone far the other way, calling the Jesuits innocent victims of persecution.
While Garnet and Greenway were persecuted, and while they didn't take any active part in the plot, they weren't innocent. Both knew what Catesby was planning, both knew their attempts to stop him had failed, and neither did anything else to stop it. This meant both were guilty of concealing treason, a criminal offence then as now.

Faith Versus Saving Lives

Father Garnet claimed he was bound by the seal of confession, making it sacrilege to inform on Catesby. But, in theory, Greenway had been bound by the seal of confession himself and shouldn't have been able to tell Garnet details of the plot unless he was himself involved, when he could mention it through his own confession. The question of whether Garnet learnt of the plot through Greenway's confession, or whether Greenway simply told him has affected commentator's views of Garnet ever since.
For some, Garnet was trapped by his faith; for others, the chance the plot might succeed sapped his resolve to stop it; for others going further still, he was a moral coward who weighed up breaking the confessional or letting hundreds of people die and chosen to let them die. Whichever you accept, Garnet was the superior of the English Jesuits and could have done more if he'd wished to.