The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter, Being a Proof, with Moral Certitude, of the Authorship of the Document: Together with Some Account of the Whole Thirteen Gunpowder Conspirators, Including Guy FawkesSpink, Henry
History
The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter, Being a Proof, with Moral Certitude, of the Authorship of the Document: Together with Some Account of the Whole Thirteen Gunpowder Conspirators, Including Guy Fawkes
Spink, Henry
Gunpowder Plot, 1605; Monteagle, William Parker, Baron, 1574 or 1575-1622
(16) Father Henry Garnet, Oldcorne’s Superior, mysteriously changed his
purpose expressed on the 4th October, of returning to London; and on the
29th October went from Gothurst to Coughton, in Warwickshire. (I think
Garnet’s main reason for going to Coughton was in order to meet Catesby,
and endeavour to induce him to discard Percy’s counsel and to seek refuge
in flight.)
(17) Father Oldcorne evaded giving a direct answer as to the Plot, when
questioned by Littleton, after November 5th.
(18) Hence, the facts _both before and after_ the delivery of the Letter
are consistent with, and indeed converge towards, the hypothesis sought by
this Inquiry to be proved.
(19) The circumstance that Christopher Wright displayed a strangely marked
disposition to “hang about” the prime conspirator, Thomas Winter, _after_
the sending of the Letter, is a suspicious fact, strongly indicative of a
consciousness on Christopher Wright’s part of a special responsibility in
connection with the revelation of the Plot; as showing anxiety for
personal knowledge that the train of revelation lighted by himself had, so
to speak, taken fire.
(20) Christopher Wright lived not to tell the tale.
(21) Hence, the hypothesis is a theory established, with moral certitude,
mainly by Circumstantial Evidence, which latter “mosaics” perfectly.
(22) Finally, the crowning proof of the theory sought by this Book to be
established is found in these nine words of the _post scriptum_ of 21st
October, 1605, to letter dated 4th October, 1605, under the hand of Father
Garnet to Father Parsons, in Rome[A]: “This letter being returned unto me
again, FOR REASON OF A FRIEND’S STAY IN THE WAY, I blotted out some words
purposing to write the same by the next opportunity, as I will do
apart:”——The word “stay” here being used to signify “check.” _Cf._,
Shakespeare’s “King John,” II., 2: and see Glossary to Globe Edition
(Macmillan).
[Footnote A: This letter, I understand, is still extant, and is in the
archives of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster. I wonder whether by
any of the rigorous tests of modern science these “blotted out” words can
be discerned. Probably they have some reference to the Plot. The late Rev.
John Morris, S.J., thought they had not. But on this point I am obliged to
differ, _in toto_, from that painstaking editor of much invaluable
Elizabethan Catholic literature. See the learned Jesuit’s remarks on this
letter of the 4th October, 1605, in “_The Condition of Catholics under
James I._” (Longmans), p. 228.
Father Morris contends that for Father Garnet to have inserted a reference
to the Gunpowder Plot “between two such subjects as the choice of
Lay-brothers and his own want of money,” would have been for Garnet to
have exhibited a disposition “to be the most erratic of letter-writers.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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