Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/208

182 would conceal them from him now; and the continual intercourse 'twixt him and the chief actors, with his directions and letters by Winter and Wright to the King of Spain, by Fawkes to the Archduke, and by Sir Edward Baynham (Captain of the Damned Crew) to the Pope, shew that he could not but be acquainted, and one of the principal directors in it. . ..

'Garnet, being brought into a "fool's paradise," had divers conversations with Hall, his fellow-priest in the Tower, which were overheard by spies set on purpose. With which being charged, he stifly denied it; but being still urged, and some light given him that they had notice of it, he persisted still, with protestation upon his soul and salvation, that there had passed no such interlocution: till at last, being confronted with Hall, he was driven to confess.'

Garnet's manifold perjuries cannot, of course, possibly be excused or defended, and there is some satisfaction in knowing, as the above authorities demonstrate, that his lying did him and his a great deal of harm. At the same time, the stratagems to which the Government had recourse, in the efforts to entrap him, can hardly be commended, and Dr. Gardiner only speaks the plain truth when he exclaims: 'If all liars had been subject to punishment, it would have gone hard with those members of the Government, whoever they were, who, in order to involve the Jesuits in the charge of complicity