2. Being now able to assume that the confession ascribed to Bates was genuine, the further question arises whether Bates told the truth or not. We have, in the first place, Greenway's strong protestation that he had not heard of the plot from Bates. In the second place, Father Gerard adduces a retractation by Bates of a statement that he thought Greenway 'knew of the business.' Now, whatever inference we choose to draw, it is a curious fact that this has nothing to do with Bates's confession of December 4--the letter of Bates printed in the narrative of the Gerard who lived in the seventeenth century running as follows:-- "At my last being before them I told them I thought Greenway knew of this business, but I did not charge the others with it, but that I saw them all together with my master at my Lord Vaux's, and that after I saw Mr. Whalley," _i.e._ Garnet, "and Mr. Greenway at Coughton, and it is true. For I was sent thither with a letter, and Mr. Greenway rode with me to Mr. Winter's to my master, and from thence he rode to Mr. Abington's. This I told them, and no more. For which I am heartily sorry for, and I trust God will forgive me, for I did it not out of malice but in hope to gain my life by it, which I think now did me no good."[285] This clearly refers not to the confession of December 4, but to that of January 13,[286] in which these matters were spoken of, and it is to be noted that Bates does not acknowledge having spoken falsely, but of having told inconvenient truths. Bates's entire silence in this letter as to the confession of December 4 may receive one of two interpretations. Either Greenway was not mentioned in that confession at all--a solution which in the face of Salisbury's letter to Favat seems to be an impossible one--or else Bates knew that he had at that time made disclosures to which he did not wish to refer. It is, perhaps, not so very unlikely that he compounded for what would in any case be regarded as a great fault by disclosing a smaller one.