Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/199

 CHAPTER XVI WAS FATHER GARNET GUILTY? ENRY GARNET, Superior of the Jesuits in England, was aged about fifty, or fifty-one, at the time of his death. He was the son of a schoolmaster at Nottingham; was brought up a Protestant, and educated at Winchester, where (according to Dr. Robert Abbott) he won a good name for himself as regards his scholarship, but a very bad one indeed as regards his moral conduct. His gross immorality was, it is asserted, so notorious that the authorities at Winchester intervened to prevent him going up to Oxford (New College). He proceeded, therefore, on leaving school, to London, where he became a corrector of the Press. After serving a printer for two years, he went abroad, became a Romanist, and in 1575 entered the Society of Jesus. Studying at Rome, Garnet soon became famous for his learning, and it was great regret on the part of those who knew him best in the Eternal City that he was eventually withdrawn