told his concealment of the names of his associates was useless, because they had betrayed themselves, "Then," rejoined the undaunted man, "it is superfluous to ask me." On the 8th of November, the very day on which the conspirators were overcome at Holbeach, he signed a deposition with a clear firm hand;
but two days after, when called on to sign another, he had become so shattered in nerve and muscle, that he could only trace his Christian name, Guido, in a tremulous scrawl, and attempted the surname in vain.
Bates, the servant of Catesby, was made of far meaner stuff. Under the operation of the rack he confessed anything that they pleased. Tresham was racked also, to obtain a confession of the guilt of the priests, and though he denied that they had any share in the plot, he admitted that Garnet and Greenway were privy to it. In his prison he was attacked by a violent complaint, and died on the 23rd of December, as it was strongly suspected, of poison. On the approach of death he signed a solemn recantation of the truth of his confession implicating Garnet and Greenway. He declared that he had made the confession only under the terror of fresh torture; and this declaration he gave to his wife, charging her to deliver it into the hands of Cecil herself.
Notwithstanding, a royal proclamation was issued on the 15th of January, 1606, for the seizure of the three Jesuits, Garnet, Greenway, and Gerard. The trials of the conspirators were delayed in order to be able to arraign the Jesuits with them, as well as Baldwin, another Jesuit, and Sir William Stanley and Captain Owen, who were still serving in the Netherlands. But as the Spaniards refused to give up the accused, and the capture of the three Jesuits appeared uncertain, the trials of the prisoners were ordered to take place on the 27th of January.
The trials, of course, excited intense interest, and the king, queen, and prince were said to be present, where they could see and hear without attracting public notice. The prisoners were eight, Sir Everard Digby, Robert and Thomas Winter, Rookwood, Grant, Guido Fawkes, Keyes, and Bates. Sir Everard Digby pleaded guilty, all the rest not guilty, on the ground that many things were included in the indictments which were not true. There were no witnesses called, but the written depositions of the prisoners and of a servant of Sir Everard's were taken as sufficient proof. The accused, for the most part, denied that the three Jesuits had any part in the plot, though they might more or less be aware of it; nor was there any proof brought forward or admission made which implicated the catholic body generally. On the contrary, it was too notorious that the catholics had everywhere shrunk from the conspirators with horror; and Sir Everard Digby, in his letters to his wife, written from the Tower, pathetically laments that the catholics everywhere, so far from supporting the conspiracy, shunned and condemned them, and adds that he would never have engaged in the design if he had not thought it lawful. The prisoners who pleaded, excused their conduct by the cruelty of the persecutions which they were enduring, the ruin and sufferings of their families, the violated promises of the king, and their consequent despair of any other termination of their oppressions, as well as their natural desire to effect the restoration of what they deemed the only true church. The earls of Salisbury and Northampton denied, on the part of the king, the breach of any promises; and the whole of the prisoners were condemned to the death of traitors, which they endured, in all its revolting severity, at the west end of St. Paul's Churchyard. Digby, Robert Winter, Grant, and Bates, on the 30th of January, and Thomas Winter, Fawkes, Rookwood and Keyes, next day.
Whilst these things had been in progress, the quest after the three Jesuits, Garnet, Greenway, and Gerard, had been unintermitted. After many adventures and narrow escapes, the two latter got clear off to the Continent, and the interest centred itself in the apprehension of Garnet. He had managed to conceal himself at Hendlip, near Worcester, in the house of Thomas Abingdon, whose wife was the sister of lord Mounteagle. Here his hiding-place might have been effectual, for it was furnished with all those contrivances so common in catholic houses at that time, and which yet remain in these old residences. But his retreat was known to that Humphrey Littleton who had concealed his cousin Stephen Littleton and Robert Winter at Hagley, and who, himself now in prison, betrayed the secret to win favour for himself. Sir Henry Bromley, a neighbouring magistrate, received an order to take an armed force, surround the house, and secure the hidden Jesuit. On his arrival Mrs. Abingdon put the keys of her house into his hands with the utmost frankness, and bade him satisfy himself. A rigorous search was instituted: every room, closet, and visible recess was minutely explored, whilst sentinels were placed on the constant watch in every passage and at every outlet. Three days passed without any discovery, and the magistrate began to suspect that the Jesuit had anticipated his arrival, and was gone; but on the fourth day two strange men suddenly appeared in a gallery. They were instantly seized, and proved to be Owen, the servant of Garnet, and Chambers, the servant of Oldcorne, another Jesuit. The vigilance of the guards had prevented the necessary supplies, and hunger had driven them from their retreat. The search now became most active: more secret chambers were discovered, and on the eighth day a trap-door, in a boarded floor, was detected, which led behind the fire-place up into the hole in the wall where Garnet and Oldcorne lay. They and their two servants were at once conducted to London and committed to the Tower.
The Jesuits and their servants there underwent the strictest examinations, but as nothing was drawn from them, Oldcorne, Owen, and Chambers were placed upon the rack. Garnet was not racked, but was threatened with it, to which he replied, "Minare ista pueris," threats are only for boys. As it was probably thought that nothing was to be hoped from Garnet through torture, a stratagem worthy of the inquisition was resolved on. It had been already practised on Fawkes and Winter with but moderate success: here it answered more completely. Garnet was well known to be a man of extraordinary learning, of consummate ability and address, and endowed with all the subtle ingenuity of the order to which he belonged. Even the rude and scurrilous Coke, in his speech on Garnet's trial, confessed that he was a man "having many excellent gifts and endowments by nature; by birth a gentleman, by education a scholar, by art learned, and a good linguist." Yet artful and circumspect as the order of Jesuits is popularly reputed to be, this masterly adept fell into the snare laid by Cecil, who
