both by Hall and Owen to be false, and
Garnet was overheard to blame Hall for not having kept to the text of
his lesson in one detail.

Nicholas Owen, Garnet's friend and servant, committed suicide in the
Tower, on March 2nd, from fear of further torture. Mr Abington, who
had "voluntarily offered to die at his own gate, if any such were to be
found in his house or in that sheire," was condemned to death, but
afterwards pardoned on condition of never again quitting the county.
Made wiser by adversity, he spent the rest of his life in innocent study
of the history and antiquities of Worcestershire.

The remainder of Garnet's story is given in the tale, and is almost pure
history as there detailed. In his conferences with Hall, he made no
real profession of innocence, only perpetual assurances that he "trusted
to wind himself out" of the charges brought against him; and when Lord
Salisbury said--"Mr Garnet, give me but one argument that you were not
consenting to it [the plot], that can hold in any indifferent man's ear
or sense, besides your bare negative,"--Garnet made no answer. He
persistently continued to deny any knowledge of White Webbs, until
confronted with Johnson; and all acquaintance with the plot before his
receipt of Digby's letter at Coughton, until shown the written
confession of Hall, and the testimony of Forset and Locherson concerning
his own whispered admissions. When at last he was driven to admit the
facts previously denied with abundant oaths, he professed himself
astonished that the Council were scandalised at his reckless falsehoods.
"What should I have done?" he writes. "Why was I to be denied every
lawful [!] means of escape?" That the Government did not deal fairly
with Garnet--that, as is admitted by the impartial Dr Jardine, "few men
came to their trial under greater disadvantages," and that "he had been
literally surrounded by snares,"--may be allowed to the full; but when
all is said for him that honesty can say, no doubt remains that he was
early acquainted with and morally responsible for the Gunpowder Plot.
The evidence may be found in Jardine's Narrative of the Plot; to produce
it here would be to swell the volume far beyond its present dimensions.
One point, however, must not be omitted. There have been two raids on
the Public Record Office, two acts of abstraction and knavery with
respect to these Gunpowder Plot papers; and it can be certainly stated,
from the extracts made fr