Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/307

Rh persons to be suspected of having contrived it, and that the work of his Society in England would be ruined. If it succeeded, he had sense enough to see that its success could only be transitory, and that not only all the Protestants in England would rise up in arms against the conspirators, but even a great number of the English Romanists would refuse to join with men who had committed murder on such a terrible scale. Garnet's distress was acute in the extreme. As he himself has recorded, 'I remained in the greatest perplexity that ever I was in my life, and could not sleep at nights. . . . Good Lord, if this matter go forward, the Pope will send me to the galleys, for he will assuredly think I was privy to it.' This reference to the Pope proves how fearful he was lest, even in the case of the Plot's success, the whole business would be denounced and condemned by the Holy See. Moreover, some inkling of the fact that a plot was in process of manufacture seems even to have reached Rome, for during July, August, and September, 1605, Garnet received letters from Parsons, asking what was going on. During, so far as we can tell, the whole of September and October, 1605, Garnet remained near or in the company of Anne Vaux, and we may be sure that she must have noticed his perplexity of mind.