Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/10

8 in former conspiracies, that I quote it herewith as an example of the danger of trusting to such biassed authorities:—

'Father Oswald 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 (of Jesus).'

From a perusal of this craftily worded apologia a casual reader might conclude that Greenway had, at the risk of his life, visited his unfortunate co-religionists merely out of a sense of duty in order to administer to them the Sacraments of their religion; and that, after fulfilling his mission, being disgusted with their conduct, he rode away at once. As a matter of fact, Father Greenway went to Huddington, where the conspirators then lay, at Catesby's express invitation, and with Garnet's permission, as was