n charge of White
Webbs, _Gunpowder Plot Book_, article 188.) This house was ostensibly
taken for Anne Vaux, and was maintained at her expense; her sister
Eleanor, with her husband Mr Brooksby (whose alias was Jennings, and
who is described as "of low stature, red beard, and bald head"), being
often with her. Catesby was a frequent visitor. Anne Vaux had also a
house at Wandsworth, where she and Garnet occasionally resided.

These details, gathered from the evidence of Anne Vaux herself, James
Johnson, and others, do not, however, agree with some statements of
Gerard. He asserts that Mrs Brooksby was a widow, and was the real
mistress of the house; and he compares the two to the sisters of
Lazarus, "the two women who received our Lord"! It is impossible to
avoid seeing the tacit further comparison as to Garnet. When a Queen's
messenger arrived, Gerard writes, "rosaries, etcetera, all signs of
piety [!] are thrown into a cavern; the mistress is hidden away: on
these occasions the younger sister, the unmarried one, passed for the
mistress of the house." (Gerard to Aquaviva, quoted by Foley, _Records
of the English Province of the Society of Jesus_, volume 4, page 36.)
All the evidence, apart from this, tends to show that Brooksby was
alive, and that he and Eleanor were only visitors--though very constant
ones--at White Webbs, where Anne was the real mistress. In 1603, Garnet
was returned as living "with Mrs Brooksby, of Leicestershire, at
Arundell House. He hath lodgings of his own in London." (_Domestic
State Papers_, James the First, volume 8, article 50.) These lodgings
were in Thames Street. A large house at Erith was also a frequent
meeting-place of the recusants.

That Garnet was acquainted with the Gunpowder Plot from its very
beginning is a moral certainty, notwithstanding his earnest efforts to
show the contrary. He not only made assertions which he afterwards
allowed to be false; but he set up at different times two lines of
defence which were inconsistent. He had been told nothing: yet, he had
tried to dissuade Catesby and his colleagues from the execution of the
plot. If the first allegation were true, the other must have been
false. But Garnet's distinctly avowed opinions on the question of
equivocation make it impossible to accept any denial from him. He
believed that while, "in the common intercourse of life, it is not
lawful to use equivocation," yet "where it becomes necessary to an
ind