Hence, could the great moralist, by a _complexus_ of intellectual acts, personal and vicarious, justly regard the whole band of plotters as transgressors released from the abstract guilt of their double crime. For it is a dictate of reason that the release of one joint debtor operates derivatively to the release, _ipso facto_, of all the rest. Now, if Oldcorne possessed a conscious realization that, through the _repentance, personal and representative_, of the Gunpowder plotters, that Plot was no longer a plot, then, to speak after the manner of men, he must have had that realization as the resultant of two particular kinds, aspects, or sides of _knowledge: ab extra_, from without, that is, passive knowledge, or communicated, in the _first_ step; and _ab intra_, from within, that is, knowledge active, or self-bestowed, in the _second_ step. Now, both passive knowledge and active knowledge here would imply, in the final analysis, a communication by some external mental agency, the agency of some living, intelligent being. It would be implied in the first case, directly; in the second case, indirectly. But, directly or indirectly, the source would be the same. Now, who can that aforesaid living, intelligent being, which reason demands, have been, if not _a repentant plotter himself_? Therefore, by irresistible inference, the Letter is surely, with moral certitude, traced home at last. CHAPTER LXX. Father Edward Oldcorne was racked in the Tower of London, “five times, and once with the utmost severity for several hours,”[172] in order that, haply, information might be extracted from him that would prove him to be possessed of a guilty knowledge of the Plot. But this princely soul had nothing of that kind to tell, so that King James and his Counsellors wreaked their lawless severity in vain.[A] [Footnote A: Torture, for the purpose of drawing evidence from a prisoner, was contrary to the Law of England. Brother Ralph Ashley, the servant of Father Oldcorne, who, I maintain, carried the warning Letters to Father Henry Garnet and Lord Mounteagle, was tortured, but without revealing anything apparently. Brother Nicholas Owen, the great maker of priests’ hiding-places and secret chambers in the castles, manor-houses, and halls of the old English Catholic gentry, was tortured with great severity; but he, too, seems to have revealed nothing. Owen “died in their hands,” but whether he was tortured to death or committed suicide in the Tower is a mystery to this day. One would like to see this mystery bottomed.] On the 7th day of April, 1606, at Redhill, one mile from the City of Worcester, on the London Road, “the silver cord was loosed, the golden bowl was broken, the pitcher was crushed at the fountain, the wheel was broken on the cistern.” For on that day, at that spot, the happy spirit of Edward Oldcorne mounted far, far beyond the fading things of time and space.[173]