[Footnote D: Of course the Gunpowder Treason Plot was a “sacrilegious crime,” because it sought to compass the death of a king who was “one of the Lord’s anointed,” _as well as_ because of the unlawful oath of secrecy, solemnly ratified by the reception of the Sacrament at the hands of some priest in a house behind St. Clement’s Inn, “near the principal street in London called the Strand.”——See “_The Confessions of Thomas Winter and Guy Fawkes_.” This house was probably the London lodging of Father John Gerard, S.J. Winter and Fawkes said that the conspirators received the Sacrament at the hands of Gerard. But “Gerard was not acquainted with their purpose,” said Fawkes. Gerard denied having given the conspirators the Sacrament.——See Gardiner’s “_What Gunpowder Plot was_,” p. 44. One vested priest is very much like another, just as one soldier in uniform is very much like another. So Fawkes and Winter may have been mistaken. Besides, they would not be likely to be minutely examining the features of a priest on such an occasion.] Furthermore; that it was _because_ of the possession by Hammond of this happy intelligence, early on that Thursday morning, before sunrise, that _therefore_, in the Tribunal of Penance, “he absolved” poor, miserable (yet contrite) Ambrose Rookwood “for all in general”——“without any other circumstances.” That is, I take it, without reproaching or even chiding him——in fact “without remark.”[A] [Footnote A: Father Nicholas Hart (alias Hammond) appears to have been stationed with the Vauxes, of Great Harrowden, usually. Foley (iv., Index) thinks it probable that the Father Singleton, S.J. (alias Clifton), mentioned by Henry Hurlston, Esquire, or Huddlestone, of the Huddlestones, of Suwston Hall, near Cambridge; Faringdon Hall, near Preston, in Lancashire; and Millom, “North of the Sands,” was in reality Father Nicholas Hart (alias Hammond). I do not think so. For, according to the Evidence of Henry Hurlston (Foley’s “_Records_,” vol. iv., pp. 10, 11), who was at Great Harrowden, on Tuesday, November 5th, at five o’clock in the afternoon, Father Strange, S.J. (a cousin of Mr. Abington, of Hindlip), and this said Father Singleton, “by Thursday morning took their horses and intended to have ridden to Grote.” They were apprehended at Kenilworth. This Father Singleton is a mysterious personage whose “future” I should like to follow up. Was he the same as a certain “Dr. Singleton” who figures in the “_Life of Mary Ward_” vol. i., p. 443? and was he of the Catholic Singletons, of Singleton, near Blackpool?] CHAPTER XLII. The other piece of Evidence that I wish to bring before my readers which tends to show that it was _one of the conspirators themselves that revealed the Plot_ is this:——