[416] Eudaemon Joannes cites the renegade Alabaster as testifying to having seen a letter seemingly of his own to Garnet, which he had never written. (_Answer to Casaubon_, p. 159.) [417] _Narrative_, p. 54. [418] _Ibid._ p. 113. [419] Though we have not now to consider the question of Father Greenway's connection with the conspirators, it may not be out of place to cite his own account of this visit (_Narrative_, Stonyhurst MSS., f. 86 b): "Father Oswald [Greenway] went to assist these gentlemen with the Sacraments of the Church, understanding their danger and their need, and this with evident danger to his own person and life: and all those gentlemen could have borne witness that he publicly told them how he grieved not so much because of their wretched and shameful plight, and the extremity of their peril, as that by their headlong course they had given the heretics occasion to slander the whole body of Catholics in the kingdom, and that he flatly refused to stay in their company, lest the heretics should be able to calumniate himself and the other Fathers of the Society." [420] In this, as in some other respects, Mr. Jardine shows himself rather an advocate than an impartial historian. He holds that the complicity of the writer of the _Narrative_ with the plotters is proved by the intimate knowledge he displays concerning them, "their general conduct--their superstitious fears--their dreams--'their thick coming fancies'--in the progress of the work of destruction." (_Criminal Trials_, ii. xi.) There is here an evident allusion to the silly story of the "bell in the wall" (related by Greenway and not by Gerard), to which Mr. Jardine gives extraordinary prominence. He does not, however, inform us that Greenway relates this (_Narrative_, f. 58 b) and some similar matters, on the authority of "an acquaintance to whom Catesby told it shortly before his death," and that he leaves it to the judgment of his readers. Greenway's frequent and earnest protestations of innocence Mr. Jardine summarily dismisses with the observation that they are "entitled to no credit whatever" (p. xii). [421] _History_, i. 243. [422] _Dictionary of National Biography_ (Digby, Sir E.). CHAPTER IX. THE SEQUEL. AS we have already seen, the Gunpowder Plot formed no exception to the general law observable in conspiracies of its period, proving extremely advantageous to those against whom it was principally directed. No single individual was injured by it except those concerned in it, or accused of being so concerned. On the other hand, it marked an epoch in public policy, and irrevocably committed the king and the nation to a line of action towards Catholics, which up to that time they had hoped, and their enemies had feared, would not be permanently pursued.