Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/210

184 not be forgotten that, in those harsh times, there would have been no precedent for such a course. Moreover, Garnet, as the head of a branch of a Society determined on subjugating England, was as much a national enemy as any Spaniard. The Jesuits were fighting hard to destroy the liberties of England, and it was necessary, therefore, to deal with them severely. In the interests of their Society, they would stop at no offence, however shocking, when occasion served. In removing Garnet, then, the Government of James I. only put to death a man whose existence at large in London constituted a ceaseless danger to the commonwealth. Moreover, it must not be forgotten, so far as our means at this late date of arriving at a correct idea of Garnet's position are concerned, that several of the most damning pieces of evidence against him have been removed by the loss of certain documents, taken by the Jesuits from the Collection of State Papers during the reigns of Charles II. and James II. As to this, Mr. David Jardine, in a letter to Mr. R. Lemon, dated November 17, 1857, says— 'That thievery of some kind abstracted such documents as the Treatise on Equivocation, with Garnet's hand-writing on it, the most important of the Interlocutions between Garnet and Hall in the Tower, and all the examinations of Garnet respecting the Pope's Breves, is most clear!'