Philip Marlow Sidney

“ It is this common ignorance that has helped Jesuits, and other interested persons, in their task of trying to obscure the history of the Plot as much as possible, with the view of inducing the modern world to call into question the accuracy of the facts, and by hook or by crook trying to clear the name and fame of Father Henry Garnet, and other Jesuit priests, from the imputation of the possession of a guilty knowledge of Robert Catesby's proceedings. ”

“ All these ingenious attempts, however, to question the authenticity of the traditional story have ignominiously failed; and with more original evidence before us to-day than has hitherto been the case, we are able, at last, to form a fairly comprehensive view of the whole of the conspiracy concocted to blow up the Parliament House, and those in it, with gunpowder, on November 5, 1605, and to plunge the country, at the same time, into a state of civil war. ”

“ The vexed question as to Father Garnet's complicity in the Plot—about which a furious controversy has raged ever since the time of his death—is a matter upon which sufficient light has been shed to enable us, at last, to form an accurate opinion of his conduct. That he was no martyr to the secrecy of the confessional is evident, for it can be shown that he was well aware of the proceedings of the conspirators from sources of information frequently given to him outside the confessional box. Father Garnet's personal character, too, has clearly been overrated by Jesuit writers ”