GUNTER
84
GUNTHER
could do nothing in virtue of his sacramental knowl-
edge. We have already seen that a proclamation for
his arrest was issued on 15 January, 1600, and on 151
January he was found stiff and unable to move, after
lying a week cramped in a hiding-hole with Father
Oldcorne, the martyr, in the house of Mr. Abington at
Hindlij), Worcestershire. At first Garnet successfully
withstood every attempt to incriminate him, but he
was finally thrown off his balance by stratagem. He
was shown a chink in his door through which he might
whisper to the cell of Father Oldcorne. Acting on the
hint, the two Jesuits conferred on the matters that lay
nearest to their hearts, making their confessions one to
another, and recounting what questions they had been
asked, and how they had answered; but spies, who
had been stationed hard by, overheard all this con-
fidential intercourse. After some days. Garnet was
charged with one of his own confessions, and when he
endeavoured to evade it, he found to his consternation
that all his secrets were betrayed.
Though the extant reports of the spies show that the subjects overheard were by no means fully under- stood. Garnet was made to beUeve that the evidence was fatal and overwhelming against others, as well as again.st himself. Not knowing now how to act, he thought that his onl\- course was to tell everything frankly and clearly, and so made use of the permission, which'Greenway "had given him, to speak about the secret in a case of grave necessit}-, after the matter had become public. The government thus eventually came to know the whole story. Though, in moments of supreme difficulty like these. Garnet seems somewhat lacking in worldly wisdom, it is hard to see where we can definitely blame him, considering the simplicity of his character and the continuous deceptions practised upon him, which were far more numerous than can be set forth here. If I had been in Garnet's place", wrote Dr. Lingard to a friend, " I think I should have acted exactly "as he did." In his public trial, on the other hand, he showed to advantage. Though at- tacked unscrupulously by the ablest lawyers of the day, and of course condemned, his defence was simple, honest, and convincing. His story could not be shaken.
After sentence he was long kept in prison, where further frauds were practised upon him. One of these was very subtle. Sir William Waade, Lieutenant of the Tower, wrote (4 Aijril, 1606) : " I hope to use the means to make him acknowledge . . . that the dis- course he had with Greenway of those horrible trea- sons was not in confession. I draw him to say he conceived it to be in confession"— as if that were the first step to an acknowledgement that in truth it was not so— " hoifsoever Greenway did understaiid it" (The Month, July, 1901). These last words about Green- way's dissenting from Garnet (which he never did), taken together with the presence in Waade's letter of an intercepted note from Garnet addressed to Green- way in prison (Greenway was really free and out of England), leads obviously to the inference that Waade had conveyed to Garnet the false information that Greenway was taken, and was alleging that he did not understand that their discourse was in confession. Garnet had in fact again been overreached, and had sent through his keeper (who feigned friendliness and volunteered to carry letters secretly) the note to Green- way, which had come into Waade's hands. If Garnet had not been clear about the fact of the confession both in mind and conscience, this note would most certainly have betrayed him; as it is, his letter, by its sincerity and consistency, offers to us convincing evi- dence of the truth of his story. Garnet's execution took place in St. Paul's churchyard, before a crowd, the like of which had never been seen before, on .3 May, 1606. As he had done at his trial. Garnet made a favourable impression on his audience. Being still un- der the illusions described above, he carefully avoided
every appearance of claiming beforehand the victory
of martyrdom, but this, in effect, rather increased than
diminished the lustre of his faith, piety, and patience.
The results of the plot on the fortunes of the English Catholics were indeed serious. The government made use of the anti-Catholic excitement to pass new and drastic measures of persecution. Besides a sweeping act of attainder, which condemned many innocent with the guilty, there was the severe Act 3 James I, c. 4, against recusants, which, amongst other new aggra- vations, introduced the ensnaring Oath of Allegiance. These laws were not repealed till 1840 (9 and 10 Vict, c. 59), though at earlier dates the Emancipation Acts and other rehef bills had rendered their pains and penalties inoperative. Still more protracted has been the controversy to which the plot gave rise, of which in fact we have not yet seen the end. The fifth of November was celebrated by law (repealed in 1859) as a sort of legal feast-day of Protestant tradition. Fawkes's Christian name has become a byword for figures fit to be burned with derision, and "the tradi- tional story" of the plot has been recounted again and again, garnished with all manner of unhistorical accre- tions. These accretions were confuted in 1897 by Father John Gerard in his " What was Gunpowder Plot", and so thoroughly that Mr. S. R. Gardiner thought himself bound to answer with his " What Gun- powder Plot was", which while professedly traversing Father Gerard's criticism, does not in truth attempt to re-establish "the traditional story", but only his (Gardiner's) own much more moderate account of the plot which he had previously published in his well- known History.
This is the main difference between the two critics. In truth "the traditional story" may be exaggerated, and in need of correction in every detail, which is Father Gerard's contention; and yet Gardiner's view, that truth will be found a short way beneath the surface, may also be valid and sound. The most sub- stantial divergence between the two is foimd in rela- tion to the time at which they conceive the government heard of the Plot. If. as P'ather Gerard thinks (and he is not at all alone in his opinion), the governnjent knew of it for some time before Monteagle's letter and yet allowed it to proceed, from that time it was no longer a conspiracy against the crown, but a conspir- acy of the crown against political adversaries, whom thevwere luring on, by some agent provocateur, to their doom. In the case of the Babington Plot, indeed, we have direct proof that this was done in the letters of the provocateurs themselves. In this case, however, direct proof is wanting, and the conclusion is inferen- tial only.
Discourse of the Discort-ri^ of the Gunpowder Plot, 1605. etc., etc.; True and Perfect relation of the proceedings against the late Traitors (reprinted in Stale Trials and translated into French and Latin — Actio in HenricumGamettum et cceteros): TheCalcn- dars of .State Papers and Hatfield Calendar {Hist. M8S. Commis- sion); Jardine, Criminal Trials, II (1832). and ^ Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, 1857; CiABDtnER, History of England [IHH3), 1; Idem, What Gunpowder Plot was (1889); The Life of a Con- spirator, being a biographt/ of .S'j'r Everard Digbj/, by one of his descendants (189.5); Gerard, What was Gunpowder Plot ilii^7); The Problem of the Gunpowder Plot (1897); (cf. The Month, 1894-1895. Dec. to May; 1896, May. June; 1897. Sept. Nov.); .Spink. The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Monteagle's Letter (1902); .Sidney, A History of the Gunpowder Plot (1904). For Father Garnet see Pollen. Father Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot (1888); The Month, 1888, cf. 1901. June, July). Eud.emon- JoANNES. Apologia pro R. P. H. Gamelto (1610); Abbott, /In/i- logia adversus A. Eudeemon-Joanne-m (1611); Casavbon. Epis- tola ad Frontonem Ducnum (Ep. 7:iO. ed. 1709). Also Diet. Nat. Biog., s. vv. Cateshw. Robert: Winter, Thomas; Garnet, Henry; Coke, Edward; Cecil, Robert; etc.
J. H. Pollen.
Gunter, William. See Morton, Robert.
Gunther, Blessed, a hermit in Bohemia in the eleventh century; b. about 955; d. at Hartmanitz, Bohemia. 9 Oct., 1045. The son of a noble family, he was a cousin of St. Stephen, King of Hungary, and is numbered among the ancestors of the princely
