On 28 March, 1606, Fr. Henry Garnet, an English Jesuit, went on trial in London. He was accused of involvement in the famous “Gunpowder Plot” the previous year in which Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament and assassinate King James I.
A central plank of Garnet’s legal defense was that, although he was made aware of the Gunpowder Plot beforehand, he could not have done anything to stop it because he learnt about it only during the sacrament of confession. Given the near-total hysteria surrounding Catholicism in England at the time, one would expect the court to dismiss Garnet’s defense as popish nonsense and send him straight to the gallows.
Read Full Article »