The mention of Gerard in the warrant arose from the fact that two years previously, namely on May 1, 1604, the first five conspirators, Catesby, Percy, Wright, Fawkes, and Winter, met "at a house in the fields beyond St. Clement's Inn, where," according to Fawkes' confession, "they did confer and agree on the plot; and they took a solemn oath and vowed by all their force to execute the same, and of secrecy not to reveal it to any of their fellows, but to such as should be thought fit persons to enter into the action, and in the same house they did receive the sacrament of Gerard, the Jesuit, to perform their vow and oath of secrecy aforesaid, but that Gerard was not acquainted with their purpose." This document is in the handwriting of Sir Edward Coke, but there appear in the original paper, just before the phrase exculpating Gerard, the words _huc usque_ (i. e. up to this). Coke read the passage to the judges, "up to this" but the words that would have freed Gerard from suspicion he withheld. "At length," continues Lingard, "the eight prisoners were arraigned. They all pleaded not guilty, not, they wished it to be observed, because they denied their participation in the conspiracy, but because the indictment contained much to which till that day they had been strangers. It was false that the three Jesuits had been the authors of the conspiracy, or had ever held consultations with them on the subject: as far as had come to their knowledge, all three were innocent." They maintained their own right to do as they had done, because "no means of liberation was left but the one they had adopted." Gerard and Greenwell escaped to the Continent, whereas Garnet, after sending a protestation of his innocence to the Council, secreted himself in the house of Thomas Abingdon, who had married a sister of Lord Mounteagle, the nobleman who had first put the authorities on the scent. According to Jardine (Criminal Trials, 67-70) much ingenuity was employed at the trial to prevent Mounteagle's name from being called in question. With Garnet were Father Oldcorne and Owen, a lay-brother, and also a servant named Chambers. Oldcorne was the chaplain of the house, but Hallam in his Constitutional History (I-554) says: "the damning circumstance against Garnet is that he was taken at Hendlip in concealment, along with the other conspirators." As Oldcorne and the two others had nothing whatever to do with the affair and as all the conspirators had been already shot or hanged, "the damning evidence" of perverting the facts of the case is against Hallam.