[Footnote A: Father Oldcorne says that Tesimond reached Hindlip at two o’clock. Now, as Tesimond came _from_ Huddington, where, already, he had had an interview with Catesby, the conspirators must have reached Huddington _before_ two o’clock; probably they reached the mansion-house at twelve o’clock mid-day. Bates says that Tesimond was at Huddington half-an-hour; but Jardine says two hours. Query, what does “_Greenway’s MS._” say?] Again; Fawkes, we are told by Eudæmon-Joannes,[169] explained at the Trial of the conspirators why the prisoners pleaded “‘Not guilty,’ which was that the Indictment contained ‘many other matters, which we neither can, nor ought to countenance by our assent or silence,’ though none of them meant to deny that which they had not only voluntarily confessed before, _but which was quite notorious throughout the realm_.”[170] (The italics are mine.) Now, seeing that Oldcorne told Littleton that “_he knew nothing_” as to the “_end or object_” the plotters had in their Plot, nor “_the means which was to be used in it_,” when the whole of England, not to say Europe, had been ringing with a knowledge of _not only the end or object, but also the means_, for the last past few days, and perhaps weeks, at the very least, I draw this inevitable conclusion:—— That because Oldcorne was a man as morally good as he was intellectually clever, _he must have met his questioner’s inquiry with this nescience, by reason of some antecedent, official, and professional duty; or, at least, semi-official and quasi-professional duty, which had been imposed upon him, ab extra, from the outside, prior in time to Humphrey Littleton’s coming to him to be resolved of his doubts as to the moral rightness or wrongness of the Gunpowder Plot_.[171] In other words, that Oldcorne felt instinctively that he could recognise in _a private individual, like Humphrey Littleton_, no valid right, title, claim, or demand to call forth an answer, which might discover or disclose to Littleton the secret of the repentant Christopher Wright. Yea, neither in Justice, nor in Equity, nor in Honour could the grand Yorkshireman betray to Humphrey Littleton the secret of trust that in a semi-official, quasi-professional mode or fashion had come to be entrusted to him by another, as that other’s private property and exclusive possession. _That other was Christopher Wright, the penitent revealing plotter, and whomsoever he had, explicitly or implicitly, willed should share a knowledge of the mighty secret. But to none other or others beside. And certainly not to men probably prompted by sinister motives and crooked aims._ For a knowledge of truth in action, truth in the result, truth in the event, truth in the external, and every other kind of truth in relation to the Gunpowder[A] Plot, _integral or partial, was irrevocably held in trust_ by Edward Oldcorne, not for Humphrey Littleton, or the like of him, but for Christopher Wright and men that were true of heart.