But not yet had the Gunpowder Plot secured its latest or its saddest
victim. Soon after Sir Henry Bromley's departure from Hendlip, Mrs
Abington came to London, bringing Anne Vaux with her, and they took
lodgings in Fetter Lane, then a more aristocratic locality than now.
Here they remained for a few weeks, doing all that could be done to help
Garnet, and poor Anne continually haunting the neighbourhood of his
prison, and trying to catch glimpses of him, if not to obtain stolen
interviews, at the garden gate. But on the 10th of March the
authorities interfered, and Anne Vaux was a prisoner of the Tower.
Examined on the following day, she deposed that she "kept the house at
White Webbs at her own charge;" that she was visited there by Catesby,
Thomas Winter, Tresham, and others, but said that she could not remember
dates nor further names. She refused to admit that Garnet had been
there, but she allowed that she had been among the party of pilgrims to
Saint Winifred's Well, in company with Lady Digby and others whom she
declined to name. Lastly, she persisted in saying that she had known
nothing of the plot.
She was told--not improbably by Sir William Wade, and if so, we may be
sure, not very tenderly--that Garnet had been one of the chief
criminals. A few sorrowful lines remain showing the spirit in which she
heard it. They were written on the 12th of March.
"I am most sore to here that Father Garnet shoulde be ane wease pryue to
this most wicked actione, as himselfe euer cauled it, for that hee made
to mee maney greate prostertations to the contrari diuers times sence.
"Anne Vaux." [Gunpowder Plot Book, article 201.]
After this, Garnet gave up the fiction of his total ignorance of the
conspirators' object. In his fourth examination, on the 13th of March,
he said that on the demise of Queen Elizabeth, he had received a letter
from the General of the Jesuits, stating that the new Pope Clement had
confirmed the order of his predecessor that no such plot should be set
on foot, and that Garnet had accordingly done what in him lay to turn
Catesby from the idea. Catesby, however, thought himself authorised by
two briefs received by Garnet about twelve months earlier, commanding
the Roman Catholics of England not to consent to any successor of
Elizabeth who should refuse to submit to Rome. These Garnet had shown
to Catesby before destroying them. It is evident from these admissions,
not only that Garnet had been privy to the plot from the first, but also
that it was known at Rome, and controlled from the Vatican--forbidden
when success appeared unlikely, and smiled on as soon as it seemed
probable.
Shortly after this, a letter came from Anne Vaux--a letter which sadly
reveals the character of its writer, and shows how different life might
have been for this poor passionate-hearted woman, had she not been
crushed under the iron heel of Rome.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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