Henry Spink

“ Now, was Christopher Wright a conspirator whose early training was such as to lead him, on reflection, to regard as morally unlawful the taking of a secret oath such as the Gunpowder conspirators had bound themselves by, and one in whose heart emotions, not only of compassion but also of compunction, were likely to be awakened by the remembrance of that training as the day was about to dawn and the hour was about to strike when the awful tragedy would be consummated?
If a man’s character may be presumptively known by his friends, still more may it be presumptively known by his progenitors ”

“ The most formidable adversaries of the Jesuits far and away have been Roman Catholics of a particular type of mind. Blaise Pascal, that colossal genius, has been probably their most successful enemy.
Now, the unbiased historical philosopher is content not only to let the dead bury their dead but also to let theologian deal with theologian. To the historical philosopher, a Jesuit is a man and nothing more: nothing more, that is, so far as his being entitled to receive at the former’s hands the benefit of all those natural rights which belong to all members of the human species. ”

“ Now, when deep within the depths of the moral being of Christopher Wright there first arose that tender day-spring, a realization of guilt and shame: that crimsoned dawn, a sense of grief and sorrow for those two high crimes whereby his wretched conscious-self had been made darksome and deformed: acts, wondrous in the telling, in that soul had been indeed wrought out; regard being had to the overmastering power of Man’s conditioned yet free will. ”

“ Hence may we say, of a surety, has it been proved that Edward Oldcorne, Priest and Jesuit, used words which imply that, as a fact, he viewed the Plot ante factum, before the fact, and in the abstract merely.
That, being a man as good as he was clever, and as clever as he was good, he must have had his warranting reasons, his justifying reasons, his vindicating reasons for so doing, when such a course of action was obviously likely to be attended with danger from misinterpretation from both the fool and the knave; from both the man lacking thought and from the man lacking heart. ”

“ How little man can know of the Past which affords him evidence to hang even a dog on with absolute, as distinct from moral, certitude! (I wish especially not to be thought to imply any disrespect towards the great German people, whose love for him who is for all nations and all time fills me with the profoundest admiration. But Truth is no respecter of persons when it detects errors, or the probabilities of errors, on the part of such as should be “masters of those that know.”) ”

“ Mabie’s account sounds in one’s ears like a very echo of a recital of the facts and purposes of the Gunpowder Plot.
[167] — Now, as the conspirators were engaged in a joint-enterprise, it must be evident to every clear-minded thinker that the repentance of any one of the joint-plotters must have shed an imputed beneficent influence over and upon all the band. For just as no man liveth only to himself, and no man dieth only to himself, so, by a parity of reasoning, no man is morally resurrected only to himself. ”

“ But, on this being assured, he was bound likewise to remember that the tendency existed, and that he lived in a world not of angels, nor of machines, but of men — of men indeed who were not totally depraved, nor utterly corrupt, yet who were sorely wounded and weakened in intellect, heart, and will.
The crying want of the present day — as of Oldcorne’s day — is not only for men but for men who are statesmen. ”

“ Speaking for myself, both as a man and as a native of our great County of Yorkshire — whose sons are atviii once speculative and practical, imaginative and concrete — necessity, in the form of an imperative sense of duty, has been laid upon me, to declare, with unmistakable emphasis and straightforward directness, what I hold to be the Truth governing the subject-matter wherewith I have sought to deal. For Truth is that which is, and its contradictory is error. ”

“ For just wars and politics are not the pawns of a game that has been devised and patented by the devil. Just wars and politics are ethics working in the living present, in the wider field of human conduct. And, properly understood, they are, after their kind, and must be, if they are lawful to rational creatures, as noble and as much under the reign, rule, and governance of the Ideal Man as are those solemn acts of life which have been (amongst other purposes) devised to remind man of the transcendental nature of his origin and destiny. ”

“ But who is to determine which side has Truth and Right, and, therefore, the true and the just claim to paramountcy and sovereignty in South Africa?
Surely the answer is that people who have shown that they can rule Humanity because first they have themselves obeyed princely ideals of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. Nothing short of this can satisfy the universal conscience of mankind. ”

“ Let him hear that Truth and Right, although each is, in its essential nature, a simple unity, and therefore imperially exclusive in its claims, and therefore intolerant of plurality, of multiplicity, of diversity, yet that each of these high attributes of the eternal and the ideal is the mistress not only of man’s god-like intellect, but also of his heart and will. ”

“ Had Christopher Wright any entirely trustworthy friend, one who not only would prove a healing minister to a mind diseased with the leprosy of crime, but also be an able and ready helper for giving effect to an all but too late repentance? Was there anyone to whom he could have recourse, who was at once wise of head, sympathetic of heart, and skilful of hand? ”

“ By so doing, they will cause to be obliged to them all serious students of the Gunpowder Plot, which is of perennial interest and value to human beings, whether governors or governed, by reason of the intellectual, moral, and political lessons that with the truest eloquence — the eloquence of Fact — it teaches mankind for all time. ”

“ The peripatetic philosopher, on the other hand, who maintains the intrinsic moral character of certain actions, and who holds mordicus to the love of truth for its own sake, is not content to rest in a lie, however excusable, but endeavours, for the honour of humanity, to demonstrate that such apparent deviations from truth are not such in reality. For he perceives in them two meanings — whence the name Equivocation — one of which may be true, while the other is false. ”

“ Now, granting the family connection between Thomas Warde and Wright, there is no antecedent improbability, but the contrary, in the supposal that Christopher Wright, if and when stricken with remorse at the thought of his sworn part and lot in the iniquitous Gunpowder Plot, had recourse to this Thomas Warde, who was his connection, for trustworthy and effectual help in saving from a sudden and cruel death, haply himself and his confederates, but certainly his Sovereign and the Senators of his Fatherland, along with Heaven alone knows whom else beside! ”

“ And though it is true that, by the inexorable decree of the Universe, “The Guilty suffer,” each man for himself and not another, temporal punishment, searching, terrible, and keen, yet this is not the whole of the truth governing the perfected ethics of the matter. For “Man learns by suffering.” And guilt is pardoned on repentance, that is, on the observance and on the performance of certain equally decreed conditions. ”

“ The argument is that a man at once good and clever, like Edward Oldcorne, would not, according to the rules that govern human nature and daily experience, have clothed in words and then let loose to wander about the world seeking whom it might fall in with and victimize, a bare abstract proposition regarding the Plot, unless he had been first absolutely certain that the foundation-thing, the Plot itself, was too attenuated and ghost-like to work hurt or mischief to any human creature. ”

“ How sad to think that such a man should have so missed his way in the journey of life as to become so demoralized as to join in the Gunpowder Treason Plot; nay, in intention, to be the most deadly agent in that Plot. ”

“ Gladstone was himself a master in the science of Casuistry, the object that science has in view is to forge a palladium for Truth, and this at the cost of endless intellectual labour. Casuistry, properly understood, counts all mere intellectual toils as cheaply purchased, no matter at what cost, provided only that Truth herself — unsullied Truth — be saved. For, after its kind, in whatever sphere, Truth is infinitely more excellent than the diamond, neither is the ruby so lovely; while partial Truth, according to its degree, is not less true than the full orb of Truth. ”

“ And no man can be a statesman unless he has a wide and profound knowledge of human nature, and who, while he pities human nature and loves it, never makes the mistake of expecting too much from it. In other words, we require men who are humanists and humorists, as I cannot but think was the character of Edward Oldcorne.
Now, no man in England knew better nor recognised more fully (for he knew the virtually omnipotent transforming power of the precedent conditions of person, time, and circumstance) the truth of the propositions I have just enunciated than did Father Oldcorne. ”

“ Governments should confine their efforts to the calm and faithful attainment of these three ideals. Then they win respect and confidence, even from those who fear them but do not love. James and the first Earl of Salisbury, and that type of princes and statesmen, oscillate betwixt the two extremes, injustice and hysterical generosity, which is a sure sign of a lack of consciousness of absolute truth, justice, and strength. ”

“ For everlastingly was it the truth, that none could gainsay nor resist, that in relation to this matter, at any rate, it was the lofty privilege of Edward Oldcorne — indeed a man, if ever there were such, “elect and precious” — to have been made “a white soul:” to have been made a soul like unto “a star that dwelt apart.” ”

“ For had the Government stripped all English Papists of their lands and goods and driven them into the sea, Humanity scarcely could have complained of injustice or harshness, regard being had to the devilish wholesale cruelty of the Gunpowder Plot.
Contrariwise, the entire action of the Government resembles the action of a man in whose hand the stick has broken whilst he is in the act of administering upon a wrong-doer richly deserved chastisement. ”

“ The mind of each of the thirteen Gunpowder conspirators affords the intellectual philosopher and the moral philosopher rich food for thought. What a reflection from human nature is not the soul of these men, one and all — especially Catesby, Thomas Percy, Thomas Winter, Guy Fawkes, Ambrose Rookwood, and Christopher Wright. ”

“ And many are the times and many are the circumstances in this strangely chequered human life of ours, with its endless movements and its perpetual vicissitudes, when apparently conflicting and antagonistic duties can be in justice, equity, and honour reconciled on one condition only, namely, that man shall leave to Omniscience alone, “from Whom no secrets are hid,” a knowledge of the full orb of certain degrees of some particular kind of truth, governing some particular subject-matter under consideration. ”

“ Just as on some wild, tempestuous night, the full orb of the silvery moon is obscured to the eye of the gazer by a dark, driving cloud.
Now, it has been said that, partly, because Oldcorne inferred insincerity of heart in Humphrey Littleton, and, partly, because Oldcorne inferred in his questioner pernicious purposes in propounding the question he did propound respecting the moral lawfulness, or otherwise, of the Gunpowder Plot, therefore Oldcorne gave Littleton an answer sounding in partial — that is, in this case, in abstract, in speculative — truth alone. ”

“ That Christopher Wright was that revealing conspirator, the manifold considerations which the preceding pages of this Inquiry have established, I trust, will satisfy the intellect of my readers, seeing that those considerations, I respectfully but firmly urge, must be held to have built up a “probability” so high as to amount to that “moral certitude” which is “the very guide” of Man’s terrestrial life, in that it furnishes Man with those sufficient rules which direct his daily action. ”

“ I am afraid that when the Acts of the High Commission Court that sat in the King’s Manor, in York, under the Presidency of Queen Elizabeth’s kinsman, the Earl of Huntingdon, come to be published, we shall find that “the lads and lassies” of Yorkshire and Lancashire especially were very “backward in coming forward” to greet the rising of the Elizabethan ecclesiastical aurora which it was their special privilege to behold.
Mr. Thomas Graves Law knows about these invaluable historical documents, and I hope that he will undertake their editorship. He is just the man for this grand piece of work. ”

“ Ethelred L. Taunton, with twelve illustrations (Methuen & Co., 1901) , in some sort supplies a Life of Robert Parsons. But evidently the Jesuit Society is an enigma to Father Taunton, as to so many papists. A man must be a jurist and a statesman to understand the Jesuits. For their aim (me judice) , their noble aim, ever has been to make the “Kingdoms of the world the Kingdoms of God and of His Christ.”
If a delusion, surely a delusion merely, not a crime, the most puissant spirit among us must allow. ”

“ The practice of “going to the Protestant church,” as English Roman Catholics term the practice to this day, was deliberately condemned by the Council of Trent.
The cause of the historic controversy between the Jesuits and the Secular Priests in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. lies in a nut-shell. It was this: the Jesuits, and especially their extraordinarily able leader, Father Parsons, thought that the Secular Priests required watching. And so they did; and so do all other human creatures. ”

“ Given the tendency of human nature, English or foreign, to shield itself from unpleasant consequences at the expense of truth, it is unsafe to supply the public with a general principle, which, precisely on account of its universality, might be made to cover with some show of reason, many an unwarrantable jeu de mots. There are many exceedingly useful drugs which it would be unwise to throw into the open market. Hence, I quite recognise the partial validity of the objection to the doctrine in question. ”

“ It is never morally lawful to tell a lie, that is, to speak contrary to one’s mind, or to deceive by word contrary to that law of justice which bids a man render to all rational creatures their due.
To act a lie is as base and wicked as to tell a lie, and often more unmanly and contemptible besides: else might the deaf and dumb be unjustly deceived with impunity. ”

“ Besides the sufficient, indeed, yet inferior reason,207 grounded on the primal instinct of personal self-preservation, or, in other words, to put the matter bluntly, the mere brute instinct of not being entrapped, wisdom suggests that Oldcorne must — his moral character being what we know it was — have had a reason latent deep down within the depths of his conscious being, which was not only a sufficient but superior reason, not only a true but a sublime reason, for severing in this grave matter, and holding suspended, truth in thought from truth in action. ”

“ But, surely, Father Morris’s argument is feeble in the extreme when regard is had to the fact that poor Henry Garnet’s mind, from the 25th July, 1605, when he first heard from Tesimond, by way of confession, the general particulars of the Plot, down to the 4th of October, 1605, was a very weltering chaos of grief, distress, and perplexity. And, therefore, the most natural thing in the world was for him to exhibit a trifle of eccentricity in the style of his epistolary correspondence, in such trying circumstances, even with so acute and caustic a critic as Father Parsons. ”

“ And this the rather, when it is remembered that, the names of John and Christopher Wright were already unfavourably known to the Government; since during Elizabeth’s reign, in the year 1596, they, together with Catesby, Tresham, and others, had been put under arrest by the Crown authorities, who feared that on the death of Elizabeth these “young bloods” would, at what they deemed to be “the psychological moment” for the execution of their revolutionary designs, lead, sword in hand, the oppressed recusants in some wild, fierce dash for liberty. ”