Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Garnett, Thomas (1575-1608)

638984Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 21 — Garnett, Thomas (1575-1608)1890Thompson Cooper

GARNETT, THOMAS (1575–1608), jesuit, born in 1575, was son of Richard Garnett, who had been a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and who was brother to Henry Garnett [q. v.] He was educated in the college of the English Jesuits at St. Omer, and in the English College at Valladolid, where he was ordained priest. Soon afterwards he came back on the mission, and was admitted by his uncle into the Society of Jesus on 29 Sept. 1604. In the following year he was arrested, committed to the Gatehouse, and thence transferred to the Tower. As he was a kinsman of the superior of the Jesuits, he was examined by secretary Cecil concerning the Gunpowder plot, then lately discovered, but as nothing could be proved against him, he was liberated at the end of eight or nine months, and banished for life in 1606. Venturing back to this country, he was apprehended and tried at the Old Bailey upon an indictment of high treason, for having been made priest by papal authority, and remaining in England, contrary to the statute of 27 Elizabeth. He was sentenced to death, and executed at Tyburn on 23 June 1608.

There is a photographic portrait of him in Foley's `Records,' taken from an original painting in the English College at Valladolid.

[Challoner's Missionary Priests, vol. ii.; Dodd's Church Hist. vol. ii.; Foley's Records, vols. ii. and vii.; Gillow's Bibl. Dict.; Oliver's Jesuit Collections, p. 100; Stanton's Menology; Tanner's Societas Jesu usque ad sanguinis et vitæ profusionem militans.]

T. C.