Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/309

Rh Warde to warn Winter and advise him to escape, for all was discovered.

To arrange for the writing of the letter, Garnet needed an agent on whom he could thoroughly rely. He had one, and one only, close at hand, in the person of a woman, who was not only devoted to him personally, but who was to all intents and purposes, by virtue of her vow of obedience, a Jesuit herself. This person was Anne Vaux. Afraid to trust, in the first instance, the weak and crafty Tresham, Garnet probably sent Anne Vaux to Mounteagle and Warde, with the deliberate aim of devising means to stop the Plot. When I say that Garnet 'sent' Anne Vaux, he may have done it in such a way as not even to let her think that he was willingly betraying the conspiracy. She went to him for information as to what was going on, and he in return probably expressed himself shocked at hearing the rumours which she repeated to him, and advised her secretly to get certain of her friends to try and interfere. These friends must have been Mounteagle, Tresham, and Warde. With Mounteagle, Garnet was, possibly, in communication. They understood one another. Mounteagle comprehended the difficulties of Garnet's position, and what his views on the subject of the conspiracy really were. Garnet knew that Mounteagle was a traitor, who was also longing to stop the Plot, if he could find some way of doing so without incurring the anger of their co-religionists for