ccount of his
sufferings while in "the hoale" at Hendlip Hall, and of his present
condition in the Tower. Remarking that he was permitted to purchase
sherry out of his own purse, Garnet adds--

"This is the greatest charge I shall be at, for fire will soon be
unnecessary, if I live so long, whereof I am very uncertain, and as
careless... They say I was at White Webbs with the conspirators; I
said, if I was ever there after the 1st of September, I was guilty of
the powder action. The time of my going to Coughton is a great
presumption, but all Catholics know it was necessary. I thank God, I am
and have been _intrepidus_, wherein I marvail at myself, having had such
apprehension before; but it is God's grace."

On the third examination, which was on the 6th of March, both Garnet and
Hall confessed White Webbs at last,--the former, that he had hired the
house for the meetings of the conspirators, the latter that they had met
there twice in the year. Garnet also allowed that Perkins was the alias
of the Hon. Anne Vaux, to avoid whose indictment he afterwards said his
confession had been made. It is evident, from several allusions in his
letters, that Garnet was terribly afraid of torture, and almost equally
averse to confronting witnesses. The first was merely human nature; the
second speaks ill for his consciousness of that innocence which he
repeatedly asserts.

But not yet had the Gunpowder Plot secured its latest or its saddest
victim. Soon after Sir Henry Bromley's departure from Hendlip, Mrs
Abington came to London, bringing Anne Vaux with her, and they took
lodgings in Fetter Lane, then a more aristocratic locality than now.
Here they remained for a few weeks, doing all that could be done to help
Garnet, and poor Anne continually haunting the neighbourhood of his
prison, and trying to catch glimpses of him, if not to obtain stolen
interviews, at the garden gate. But on the 10th of March the
authorities interfered, and Anne Vaux was a prisoner of the Tower.
Examined on the following day, she deposed that she "kept the house at
White Webbs at her own charge;" that she was visited there by Catesby,
Thomas Winter, Tresham, and others, but said that she could not remember
dates nor further names. She refused to admit that Garnet had been
there, but she allowed that she had been among the party of pilgrims to
Saint Winifred's Well, in company with Lady Digby and others whom she
declined to name. Lastly, she