Jesuit Plots – Chapter VI. The Armada Against England
Continued from Chapter V. The Great Troubler.
Until 1870 when Prof. Froude published the Spanish Despatch, the Church of Rome denied that the Pope sent the Armada against England. Most Roman Catholics today still deny it.
Fortunately for the cause of truth, the original OFFICIAL DESPATCH from Rome to Philip II. of Spain, containing Spain’s and the Pope’s plans, has been found in the Spanish State Archives at Simancas, and published by the British Government.
The DESPATCH, dated February 24, 1586, is from Count Olivares, Spanish Ambassador to the “Holy See,” to Philip of Spain. It contains the replies of Pope Sixtus V. to Philip’s terms for undertaking the great expedition against England.
THE SPANISH AMBASSADOR’S REPORT FROM ROME TO PHILIP OF SPAIN, FEBRUARY 24th, 1586.
Philip II.’s First Point:
“Although His Majesty (Philip II.) has been at different times admonished by the predecessors of His Holiness to undertake this enterprise, he never felt so convinced of the great favour with which His Holiness so reasonably regards the enterprise.”
The Pope’s Reply:
“His Holiness returns infinite thanks to God that he (the Pope) has been the instrument of setting in motion His Majesty, to whom he gives many blessings for the zeal with which he is disposed to engage in an undertaking so worthy of the calling of the Catholic King.”
The Pope Sends an Armada Against England.
Philip’s Second Point:
“That the end and declared ground of the enterprise shall be to bring back that kingdom to the obedience of the Roman Church, and to put in possession of it the Queen of Scotland.”
The Pope’s Reply:
“His Holiness praises and agrees to what His Majesty here proposes.”
Philip’s Third Point:
“The third point submitted was in reference to the succession to the throne of England after the death of the Queen of Scotland.”
The Pope’s Reply:
To this point the Pope gave a doubtful answer.
Philip’s Fourth Point:
“The preparations which are necessary to resist those who in great numbers will endeavour to hinder it, make it requisite that His Holiness should contribute for his share, two millions of gold.”
The Pope’s Reply:
“His Holiness offers His Majesty as soon as the expedition has set sail for the enterprise against England to give 200,000 crowns, and he will give 100,000 more the moment the army has landed on the Island, and yet further 100,000 more at the end of six months, and in like manner after another six months 100,000 more; and if the War lasts longer, His Holiness will continue to give each year 200,000 crowns.” Spanish State Papers. Vol. IV. Brit. Mus, P. 393.
After the shattered ships of the Armada had returned to Spain, Philip II. wrote to the Roman Bishops, instructing them to cease their prayers for the success of the great Papal Expedition, as all was lost. He wrote:—
From the Escurial, Oct. 13th, 1588.
DURO II, p. 314, Brit. Museum Library.
A tremendous underground campaign is going on to-day in Britain to falsify our National History of the Reformation, Armada, and the Great War periods.
“THE SPANISH ARMADA— MYTH OF A RELIGIOUS WAR.”
Here is what the Roman Catholic Bishop Graham of St. Andrews wrote in 1913.
I suppose most of us who were reared in Protestantism were taught to believe that the Armada was a religious undertaking with the object of smashing Elizabeth and of making England Catholic again; and, implicitly or explicitly, we thanked God that the kingdom had been saved from the horrors of Popery and the Inquisition. Froude and Kingsley, and writers of that kind, have helped to keep alive this idea.”
Imagine a man who has been educated in the Church of Scotland, writing such an article! He was formerly a Presbyterian Minister. It demonstrates how Rome twists the outlook and intellect of an otherwise well-educated man.
In 1929 Cardinal Bourne and the Westminster Roman Catholic Federation threatened to boycott the History Books used in the L.C.C. schools if something like 1,250 pages as were written by Roman Catholics, were not altered to meet the Federation’s approval. They also threatened about 12 Publishers. Only one yielded.
Dr. G. G. Coulton, L.L.D., of Cambridge, providentially discovered the Roman Catholic volume containing the proposed alterations, and at once challenged the fitness and qualifications of the Roman Catholic historians to revise our history books. The Cardinal and the Federation then abandoned their campaign—at least openly. They could not face a modern scholar like Dr. Coulton.
Sir John Laughton, who edited the Armada Papers for the Navy Records’ Society, was a Roman Catholic, and married a Spanish Roman Catholic lady from Cadiz. His sympathies naturally were with the Jesuits, and not the British.

THE ARMADA.
THE POPE’S ATTEMPT, 1588.
In the Armada Papers, original documents of the period compelled him to quote Captain Fenner’s letter to Walsingham from sea, Aug. 4th, 1588, attributing the final defeat to great storms; yet in his own personal comments Laughton goes against the documents written by Howard, Fenner, and the Commanders who were there, and ridicules the fact that Providence finally scattered the Spanish Armada in the storms that followed, after the English Fleet had turned back.
In his introduction to the State Papers re The Armada, published by the Navy Records Society, Laughton says:—
“But, in fact, much of the nonsense that has been talked grew out of the attempt to represent the War as religious; as a crusade instigated by the Pope to bring England once more into the fold of the True Church. In reality, nothing can be more inaccurate.”
This sneer coming from the Professor of Modern History, London University, who was previously at Portsmouth Naval College, teaching young Naval Officers! Who appointed him? Here is a clear case of Jesuit wire-pulling in making Government appointments,
The great Spanish authority, Captain Duro, in his book, The Armada Invincible, published in 1885, states that 63 Spanish ships were lost, 35 of them without any trace! Surely this fact in itself shows the violence of the storms, when so many ships went down without other ships seeing them. Captain Duro also confirms the fact that great storms broke out when the English Fleet gave up the chase. The Spanish Commander-in-Chief, Medina Sidonia, in his Official Report states that:
August 4th, 1588.
Capt. Thos. Fenner, who commanded the Queen’s ship NONPAREIL, confirmed the truthfulness of the traditional account. In his letter from sea to Walsingham on August 4th, 1588, he wrote:
Signed from the good ship “NONPARIEL.”
Thos. Fenner.
Howard to Walsingham, August 8th (O.S.), 1588. Armada Papers, I1., p. 59, Laughton.
“I think they dare not return (to Spain) with this dishonour and shame to their King and overthrow of their Pope’s credit. A Kingdom is a great wager; and if God had not been our best friend, we should have found it so. I pray to God that we may all be thankful to Him for it, and that it may be done by some order, that the world may know we are thankful to Him for it.”
Signed “Howard.”
Drake to Walsingham, August 8th, 1588, II, p. 61.
Signed “Fra. Drake.”
Laughton, II, p. 68.
Written aboard your Majesty’s good ship ‘REVENGE.’
August 8th, 1588.” Signed “Fra, Drake.”
*The original letters are at the Public Record Office. Domestic Eliz, 1588 A.D.
THE COLLISION OFF PLYMOUTH; THE HAND OF GOD.
A remarkable proof of the truthfulness and accuracy of Froude, Kingsley and other English historians’ account of the Armada has been supplied by Capt. Duro, an officer serving in the Spanish Navy in 1885 A.D.
In his book, La Armada Invincible, he brings together a collection of contemporary Spanish documents and letters, and with innocent necromancy he calls the dead Spanish Commanders up from the bottom of the English Channel, North Sea and Western Ocean, and from their graves in Spain, and makes them play their drama over again.
He confirms the truthfulness of the English records of those wonderful Providential incidents in the great five days’ battle in the Channel and North Sea, and of the sudden outbreak of the great gale in the North Sea, when Howard’s and Drake’s fleets were out of food and ammunition and unable to follow the fleeing enemy further. He tells how Sir John Hawkins (Achins as they call him) had altered the design of the English ships by lowering the high castles at bow and stern, increasing the length and narrowing the beam, so that when they ran up before the wind to pour a broadside into the Spaniards, they could turn back and sail right against the wind, whilst the clumsy Spanish ships were unable to follow, and became a helpless target to these tormenting tactics, which riddled their hulls with shot. He tells of the collision off Plymouth on the first day of battle, between the Santa Catalina and Admiral Pedro de Valdez’s flagship, and of the subsequent capture by Drake of the disabled ship and the Admiral, with her tons of gunpowder and ammunition which Drake so sorely needed.
The little Roebuck of Brixham, loaded the powder and shot on board and raced after the English fleet, distributed it amongst the needy ships and in the ensuing battles Drake and Howard fought and defeated the Spaniards with their powder and shot. He also states that the English fired four shots to one fired by the Spaniards. Capt. Duro also tells us that the Spaniards saw the English beacon fires on the hill tops flashing the news of the arrival of the Armada in the Channel. Duro, Brit. Mus. Lib.
Spanish State Papers, IV, 441, 480.
Then swift to East and swift to West the warning radiance spread.
High on St. Michael’s Mount it shone, it shone on Beachy Head.
Far on the deep the Spaniard saw along each Southern shire,
Cape beyond cape, in endless range, those twinkling points of fire—Macaulay.
AN ANSWER TO THE NATION’S PRAYERS.
Here was a clear case of a national deliverance in answer to national Prayer in a time of great danger. When the news spread that the Spanish Armada had arrived in the English Channel we are told that as the Fire Beacons flashed the news from hill top to hill top, from Cornwall to Scotland, that the whole nation cried to God that He Who covered Israel on that night when the destroying Angel passed over Egypt, would spread His wing over England and shield her from the Popish destroyer of nations.
That was a night never to be forgotten in England, as the news spread that the Armada was in the Channel. The first answer to the nation’s prayers came in the capture of the Spanish flagship Rosario off Plymouth, with her tons of gunpowder, which the English Fleet so sorely needed.
Then again, in a succession of battles in the Channel and North Sea and finally in the destruction of the Armada in a succession of great gales. The Spanish Commander in-Chief, in his official report stated that Providence seemed to favour the English Fleet. In that appalling defeat, 63 Spanish ships were lost, 37 without trace, along with 20,000 sailors and soldiers. Most of the survivors died of fever on landing, including some of the chief Admirals.
The awful tragedy was too vast to be disclosed to the Spanish nation at once. When at last the terrible fact was fully known the nation was smitten down by the blow. Philip, stunned and overwhelmed, shut himself up in his closet in the Escurial and would see no one. The young grandees who had gone forth but a few months before, confident of returning victorious, were sleeping at the bottom of the English Seas and Western Ocean amid hulks, cannon and money chests.
The tragedy of the Armada was a great sermon preached to the Popish and Protestant nations. The text of that sermon was, that England had been saved by a Divine Hand. All acknowledged the skill and daring of the English Admirals and the patriotism and bravery of the English sailors and soldiers, but all at the time confessed that these alone could not have saved the throne of Elizabeth. The Almighty Arm had been stretched out, and a work so stupendous had been wrought, as to be worthy of a place by the side of the wonders of all time. There was a consecutiveness and a progression in the acts, an unity in the drama, and a sublimity in the terrible but righteous catastrophe in which it issued, that told the least reflective that the Armada’s overthrow was not merely by chance, but the result of arrangement and plan. Even the Spaniards themselves confessed that the Divine Hand was upon them; that One looked forth at times from the storm cloud that pursued them, and troubled them. Christendom at large was solemnized; the ordinary course of events had been interrupted; the heavens had been bowed and the Great Judge had descended upon the scene. Whilst dismay reigned within the Popish kingdoms, the Protestant States joined in a chorus of thanksgiving.
On August 4th, 1918, the British Parliament after four years of national adversity and appalling loss of life, went in a body to St. Margaret’s Church and called upon God Almighty to help and deliver the nation. Four days later, on August 8th, at the Battle of Amiens, the German line was broken for the first time; 20,000 prisoners and 400 guns were captured.
From that day the British Armies never looked back. In battle after battle they swept everything before them until November 11th, when Germany cried for Peace. Explain it as men will, this actually transpired, following that day of Prayer. The God of Israel still lives to-day, and will hear the prayers of the nation when she confesses and forsakes her national sins and idolatry.
THE EARL OF ARUNDEL PRAYS FOR THE SUCCESS OF THE ARMADA.
At the very time the English Fleet was fighting a life and death battle in the Channel, Philip, Earl of Arundel, a Roman Catholic prisoner in the Tower of London, employed a Roman Priest named Bennett to celebrate Mass and to pray unceasingly for 22 hours for the success of the Armada.
Evidence to this effect was produced against the Earl of Arundel at his trial in 1589 as proof that he was a traitor to his country. The record is in State Trials. The Church of Rome has beatified him as a martyr for his religion. She points to his pious texts cut in the stone walls of the Tower of London as evidence of his piety. The Warders of the Tower do not believe that all those inscriptions are genuine. They think they were added in later years; probably during the time of Laud and Charles and James II, when the Jesuits had a free hand in Government Offices and in the Tower. How could these unskilled prisoners cut those inscriptions in the hard limestone of the Tower walls without stonecutter’s tools?
The author’s attention has been recently drawn to the statement of Professor Callender, who succeeded Sir John Laughton as Professor of History at Greenwich Royal Naval College, that the story of the storm breaking out after the English Fleet ran out of ammunition and food, and was forced to turn back, is a myth. This, of course is the Jesuit story of the Armada. They term it “re-written history,” and the strange thing is Jesuits have succeeded in planting Anglo-Romanists and Roman Catholics in the Professors’ Chairs of some of our great Universities and Naval Colleges, where they teach Jesuit “history”! When Professor Callender’s attention was drawn to the foregoing letters by a member of Greenwich College staff, he contended that he had been misunderstood! He had not, as his written assertions were full of ridicule of the story of the Storms destroying the Armada, The Author has a copy of the Professor’s letter.
1592-3. This year was passed an Act for punishment of Protestant Nonconformists who refused to attend Divine Service at the Church of England, as by Law established.
1593. Act for Discovery of Spies and Traitors.
The wording of this Act shows that there was some great underlying cause for it. The Vatican letters reprinted herein tell us what it was.
Gibbon in his Decline and Fall tells us that the Statute Laws of any country always indicate the crimes prevalent in the age in which the laws were passed. The Statute Laws of Queen Elizabeth’s reign therefore indicate the crimes common in her days.
The wording of this Act shows that even after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the peril of the country from Romish Spies and Traitors grew worse and worse.
Plots of the Jesuits Holt, Yorke and Walpole, to Kill Queen Elizabeth, 1593-94 A.D.
Father Henry Walpole was one of a band of at least seven Jesuits who were involved in 1594 A.D. in a great Plot to murder Queen Elizabeth; namely Fathers Robert Parsons, William Holt, Creighton, Garnet, Archer, Southwell and Henry Walpole, all Jesuits, and Cardinal Allen, the Duke of Parma and Philip II of Spain. All of these are named in their various Confessions.
Many touching tales are told in Roman Catholic Truth Society pamphlets about the sufferings of Southwell whilst in prison. Much is made of the beautiful poetry which he is supposed to have written whilst in prison.
Unfortunately for these tales, Father Garnet, S.J., who was Superior of the Jesuits in England when Southwell was imprisoned, has left it on record that Father Southwell had neither ink nor paper during his imprisonment. So that settles that falsehood. There is about as much truth in it as in the legend that Henry Walpole, S.J., cut his name in the granite walls of the Salt Tower in the Tower of London.
Henry Walpole was arrested at Bridlington on December 6th, 1593, on the next day after landing secretly at night from Flanders, where he had been a Chaplain in the Spanish Army, serving under the Duke of Parma. He at once confessed that he was a Jesuit father. He was put on trial in the Spring, 1595, at York, charged before the Court with “Being with the King of Spain, with the Jesuits Parsons and Holt and other rebels and traitors to the Kingdom.” He was found guilty, sentenced to death, and hanged on April 17th, 1595.
Many false legends have accumulated round Walpole’s and Southwell’s names in Roman Catholic literature. These tales were written by Fathers Gerrard and Hart, Jesuits, both prisoners in the Tower in Elizabeth’s day.
One is that Walpole was cruelly racked fourteen times and under the stress of the rack in the Tower had made his incriminating Confessions.
Fortunately for the cause of truth his Confessions are still preserved in the Public Record Office, Chancery Lane, London. His signature is at the bottom of every page of his last Confession of July, 1594, and in as clear and firm a hand as those signed in April, three months earlier. Had he been strained and crippled on the rack, his signature would have clearly shown a shaky hand. The same false stories have been circulated about Father Southwell’s sufferings in the Tower.
In the Salt Tower of the Tower of London, someone has engraved Henry Walpole’s name on the wall. Misinformed guides point it out as the work of Walpole himself. The Warders of the Tower do not believe it is the work of Walpole, but of some impostor in later years. Walpole wrote out about four Confessions, the first in April and the last in July, 1594. Here are a few points from his July, 1594, Confessions, as given to the Council or Cabinet.
CONFESSIONS OF FATHER HENRY WALPOLE, S.J. JULY, 1594.
He confessed that he:
(2) That “Father Garnet, S.J. or Father Southwell, S.J, have sent over (news) to Rheims to Father Holt, S.J.
(3) That “Cardinal Allen, Parsons and Holt receive all their intelligence by Verstegan.” (Father Garnet’s agent at Antwerp).
(4) That “Before coming to England only heard what Father Parsons told him and others in Spain—that someone in England had confessed that they had a purpose to kill her Majesty.”
(5) That he “Was subordinated to Father Garnet, Superior of the Jesuits here.”
All signed by Walpole in a clear firm hand.
P.R.O., S.P., 12/249.
The Tower of London Authorities in August, 1933, stopped the false Jesuit History Lectures in the Tower by Mr. Walter Bell, a writer on the staff of the Daily Telegraph. He had painted Walpole as a martyr of religious persecution. The Warders had reported him to the Governor, after a strong protest by one of the party he was conducting over the Tower. This gentleman produced a photostat copy of Walpole’s Confession to the consternation of the lecturer, who was relating the Jesuit story of Walpole’s sufferings. This lecturer also skipped over the stories of all Jesuit Plotters who had figured in Tower history, such as Garnet, the Gunpowder plotter.
How could those Jesuits, Philip, Earl of Arundel, and others, cut those inscriptions in the hard limestone of the Tower walls without steel stone-cutters’ tools? The Tower Warders think they were added in later years during the reigns of Charles I and II, and James II. They also declare that the romantic underground tunnels so much talked of in Roman Catholic literature never existed. Modern excavations during reconstruction or rebuilding has failed to bring any tunnels to light. The stories associated with the “tunnels” are also fiction.
The Plot of the Jesuits Edmund Yorke and William Holt to Kill Queen Elizabeth, 1594 A.D.
Before the Earl of Essex and Lord Cobham,
P.R.O. S.P. 12/249. August 21st, 1594,
The next time, Dr. Gifford and Worthington, Throgmorton and Charles Paget were present. They promised me 40,000 crowns, and told me many at Court would be glad and were looking for it. Throgmorton said that if his brother had been a man of any resolution, it would have been done. I promised that if they would give me a resolute man to execute the part, to further and rescue me if he could, and they promised me Richard Williams, Trogmorton’s cousin; I asked time to consider; they said they made me the offer as an honour and bade me not undertake it unless I were resolved.
They solemnly swore me to perform the service and Father Holt confessed me, and gave me the Sacrament. Williams swore to kill the Queen, and I to aid him and to do it if he failed, by poisoned arrow, pistol, or rapier. They hoped for help from Captain Duffield and Bushell who served Lord Strange. Moody, Tipping and Garret are coming over to kill her, and if the English fail, a Walloon and a Burgundian from Stanley’s Regiment are to be employed.” “EDMUND YORKE.”
All documents concerning the arrest, trial and execution of this Jesuit have completely disappeared from our Public Records, except this Confession, written in Father Edmund Yorke’s own hand. The full Confession consists of 81\2 pages of foolscap. It has only been recovered in recent years, as a result of careful research among the old State Papers. This confession must have escaped the eyes of the Jesuit purloiners in the Old State Paper Office in past years.
Sir Edward Coke, Attorney General at the Gunpowder Plot Trial mentions this plot of Edmund Yorke and gives details. K.B., 8/61, Gunpowder Plot Trial, P.R.O.
It had happened only 10 years before. Even Bishop Mandell Creighton doubted the York Case, owing to the absence of all records and documents at the Record Office. York’s Confession, spoken of by Coke, has since been discovered at the Record Office. (S.P. 12/249. August 21st, 1594).
The Acts of Privy Council, 1567-1570, concerning the Jesuit Thos. Heath episode in Rochester Cathedral in 1567; June, 1583-1586, covering the Throgmorton-Cardinal Allen-Parsons-Parry Plot periods; August 26th, 1593-October 1st, 1595, covering the Jesuits York and Henry Walpole Plots; and January 1st, 1602 to 1613, covering the Gunpowder Plot period—all are missing.
Jardine, the author of Criminal Trials, thinks they disappeared during the times of Archbishop Laud and James II, when Jesuits had a free hand amongst the State Papers.
In the case of Bloody Queen Mary’s reign, the author found the long strips of parchment had been cut and sewn together again where damaging documents had been cut out. The sequence number was broken just at the point where past records state that a dated document should have been found, yet the catch-words read right on.
Dr. J. S. Brewer, a Record Office Calendarer, in a letter to the Daily News in 1863, stated: “In the eventful reign of Queen Mary, the name of Bishop Bonner does not once occur!” Bonner not once mentioned in the Record Office papers, after a five years’ record of blood—278 burnt at the stake in five years! Is this not evidence that Queen Mary’s papers have been stolen or destroyed?
In 1859, Wm. Barclay Turnbull, a Roman Catholic convert, was appointed by Lord Romilly, Master of the Rolls, to edit the Foreign State Papers of Edward VI’s and Mary’s reigns. Public protests signed by thousands compelled him to resign in January, 1861.
In July (The Times, 9, 10 and 11) he sued the Protestant Alliance for libel and lost the case, after a three days’ hearing. Father Stevenson, another pervert, was immediately appointed in his place. He became a Jesuit in 1882.
The Protestant Alliance Monthly Letter of March 16th, 1863, contained a list of 23 documents stated to be missing from the State Papers. Lord Romilly’s support could not save Turnbull in the face of alarmed public opinion. But why did Lord Romilly appoint a Roman Catholic to edit State Papers for these two reigns above all others?
Jesuit Spies in the English Cabinet, 1597 A.D.
In 1597, nine years after the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, Philip II of Spain and the Jesuit Father Robert Parsons, plotted to send a second Armada against England, coinciding with an invasion of Ireland at the same time.
The Jesuit Parsons’ letters to Philip giving full details of his Plot and of the conspirators in England and Ireland, were found in the Spanish State Archives, in 1862, and copies brought to England where they are now deposited in the Old State Paper Office, Chancery Lane, and others in the British Museum.
The following is an extract marked No. 648 in The Calendar of Spanish State Papers under the date of June, 1596, State Paper 839:—
648. Father Robert Parsons to Martin de Idiaquez, (Philip’s Foreign Minister) Parsons says:—
Here we have a case of a Jesuit spy in the Cabinet itself, and the head of the Spy System in England was Father Henry Garnet, Superior of the Jesuits in England! He was hanged nine years later for being a plotter in the great Gunpowder Plot in 1605. His great collaborator, Father Gerard escaped to the Continent where he died shortly after.
The Roman Catholic Biographer, Gillow, says:—‘ This holy man passed to his eternal reward, May 3rd, 1606, aged 51.” “Holy man” yet he gave the sacrament to the other Gunpowder Plotters, the day before Parliament was to be blown up. He knew the secret from confessions of the Plotters and actually worked in the cellar.
Professor A. O. Meyer of Rostock University, in his book The Catholic Church under Queen Elizabeth, says of the Jesuit Parsons, “I give none of the letters of the leading Jesuit, Robert Parsons, of which I have made repeated use, being as they are one of the chief sources of information for the History of Catholicism in England.” Pref. p. ix.
No doubt Professor Meyer realized that if he were to publish the Plot letters of Parsons in his book, no Roman Catholic would translate it into English. He states that he left the publishing of these letters to Father John Pollen, S.J., the Editor of The Month. Of course Father Pollen never published them!
All of these Plots prove that the Popes and the Priests of the Church of Rome in their secret attitude to the British Empire are the same venomous rattlesnakes as in the days of Queen Elizabeth. All of these Plots have been hidden from the English people, both Roman Catholic and Protestant.
Only men in well-informed official circles and a few University Professors know about the recently recovered Plot Documents from the Vatican Archives, Transcripts of which are now deposited at the Public Record Office.
THE GREAT GUNPOWDER PLOT, A.D. 1605.
1604. This year an Act for the due execution of the Statutes against the Jesuits, Seminary Priests, etc. (1 James 1, c.4) confirm the existing laws, drawn up for the safety of the kingdom.
The Pope and the Jesuits were furious because a Protestant king had succeeded to the Throne. The Jesuits expelled from England because of their political intrigues.
1605 A.D. After the death of Elizabeth in 1603, England and Scotland united as “The Kingdom of Great Britain,” with James I as King. Pope Clement VIII, on learning of Elizabeth’s illness, early in 1603, sent to Father Garnet, Provincial of the Jesuits in England, two Bulls, one to the Roman Catholic clergy, and the other to the English Roman Catholic nobility and laity.
These Bulls enjoined that as soon as Elizabeth should depart this life they were to permit none to ascend her throne unless he swore to do his utmost to uphold and advance the Roman Catholic faith.
On James I ascending the throne and declaring himself a Protestant, the Jesuits set to work and hatched the Gunpowder Plot. The chief conspirators were Catesby, and six other English gentlemen, and the Jesuit priests Garnet, Greenway, Oldcorne, and Guy Fawkes, a soldier in the service of Philip of Spain.
The conspirators hired a cellar under the Parliament House, and filled it with thirty-six casks of gunpowder. In May, 1605, all was ready except the firearms requisite for those in the Midlands who intended rising against the king. Before entering on the final stage of this hellish plot the conspirators retired into an inner chamber and heard Mass and received the Sacrament from Father Gerard. Gerard afterwards wrote that they were all very religious men.
The thirty-six barrels of gunpowder would have sent the Parliament and its buildings to their long home. On the evening before November 5th, a party went down the cellars of the Parliament House and commenced a hunt. Soon they came to the cellar in which everything was prepared and here they found Guy Fawkes actually preparing for the coming explosion. The conspirators fled to the country and several perished in desperate fighting.
The Jesuits Garnet, Oldcorne, Owen and Ashley, fled and hid at Hindlip Hall, a Jesuit Retreat in Worcestershire. It took the Sheriff eight days to find them in the eleven Hiding-holes in the house. Gerard and Tesimond, the two other Jesuit conspirators escaped to the Continent. Catesby, Sir Everard Digby, Grant, Rookwood and other gentlemen were also arrested. All were convicted and hanged except the two who escaped to the Continent.
Naturally the Jesuits ever since have done all in their power to save their reputation, but the Confessions of Garnet, Superior of the Jesuits in England, settled the question. The following Confession is copied from his most important and definite one in his own hand, still; preserved at the Old State Paper Office.
On April 4th, Garnet wrote out the following remarkable confession addressed to the King; the original M.S. is still in the Record Office. S.P. 14/20, April 4th, 1605. P.R.O.
In testimony hereof I have written this with my own hand, 4th April.” HENRY GARNET, S.J.
See Jardine’s Criminal Trials, Vol. II, p. 322-23.
Cardinal Bellarmine styles Garnet as a “Martyr.” Mission, the traveller, tells us he saw Garnet’s portrait in the hall of the Jesuit’s College in Rome, and by his side an angel who shows him the open gates of Heaven.
Foley, the Jesuit author of Records of the English Province, includes Ballard of the Babington Plot, and Garnet and Oldcorne, the Gunpowder Plotters, in his list of Martyrs for religion! Vol. III, pp. 823-833. He also includes along with Bishop Challoner, Mary Queen of Scots as a Martyr for religion. Vol. III, p. 716.
Travels in Italy, II., Part 1, p. 173.
Garnet confessed his guilt but Archbishop Laud never confessed at all at his execution in 1645. Prynne and other mutilated victims were there but no word of confession from Laud. See p. 153.
The Penal Laws against Roman Catholics became so harsh in consequence of this plot that none were permitted to remain in London who professed to be Roman Catholics.
The Gunpowder Plot led to still more severe measures. Acts were passed for the better discovering and repressing of Popish traitors, and to prevent and avoid dangers which may grow; also a new Oath of Allegiance. On May 3, 1606, the following Act was passed by Parliament.
The Jesuits Gerard and Greenway escaped to the Continent. Both were rewarded by high appointments in Rome. Gerard administered the Sacrament to the conspirators the night before the Parliament and King were to be blown up. The Roman Catholic biographer Gillow says: “This holy man passed to his eternal reward. May 3, 1606. Age 51.”
After the execution of the Jesuit Gunpowder Plotters Oldcorne and Garnet, the most absurd tales of miracles performed, in vindication of their innocence, and as an undoubted sign from heaven were industriously circulated by the Jesuits in England and in foreign countries, viz. that after Oldcorne had been disembowelled, according to the usual sentence in cases of treason, his entrails continued burning sixteen successive days, though great quantities of water were poured upon them to extinguish the flames. It was asserted too, that immediately after Garnet’s execution, a spring of oil suddenly burst forth at the Western end of St. Paul’s Churchyard, on the spot where the “saint” was martyred.
In order to stop the circulation of these absurd stories the Privy Council took proceedings against those who circulated these tales. Criminal Trials II, p. 345—Jardine.
(To be continued.)