Henry Garnet (sometimes Garnett; July 1555 – 3 May 1606) was an English Jesuit priest executed for high treason for having had advance knowledge of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot and refusing to violate the Seal of the Confessional by notifying the authorities.
Born in Heanor, Derbyshire, he was educated in Nottingham and later at Winchester College before he moved to London in 1571 to work for a publisher. There he professed an interest in legal studies and in 1575, he travelled to the continent and joined the Society of Jesus. He was ordained in Rome some time around 1582. In 1586 Garnet returned to England as part of the Jesuit mission, soon succeeding Fr William Weston as Jesuit superior, following the latter's capture by the English authorities.
Garnet established a secret press, which lasted until late 1588, and in 1594 he interceded in the Wisbech Stirs, a dispute between secular and regular clergy. Garnet preferred nonviolent resistance to the religious persecution Catholics faced in England. He accordingly approved of the disclosure by Catholic priests of the existence of the 1603 Bye Plot, and repeatedly exhorted English Catholics not to plot violent regime change.
In the summer of 1605 Garnet met with Robert Catesby, a member of the gentry who, unknown to him, planned to assassinate the Protestant King James I. The existence of Catesby's Gunpowder Plot was revealed to Garnet by a fellow Jesuit priest, Oswald Tesimond, on 24 July 1605, but as the information was received under the seal of the confessional, canon law prevented Garnet and Tesimond from telling the authorities under penalty of immediate excommunication. Instead, Garnet pleaded with Catesby to cancel what he was plotting. Garnet also wrote to his superiors in Rome, urging them to order English Catholics not to use violence.
When the plot failed Garnet went into hiding, but he was eventually arrested on 27 January 1606. He was taken to London and interrogated by the Privy Council, whose members included John Popham, Edward Coke and Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury. Imprisoned in the Tower of London, his conversations with fellow prisoner Edward Oldcorne were monitored by eavesdroppers, and his letters to friends such as Anne Vaux were intercepted. His conviction, announced at the end of his trial on 28 March 1606, was a foregone conclusion. Criticised for his use of equivocation, which Coke called "open and broad lying and forswearing", and condemned for not warning the authorities of what Catesby planned, he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. He was executed on 3 May 1606.
Henry Garnet (or Garnett) was born some time around July 1555 at Heanor in Derbyshire, son of Brian Garnet (or Garnett) and Alice (née Jay). He had at least five siblings: two brothers, Richard and John, and three sisters, Margaret, Eleanor and Anne, all of whom became nuns at Louvain. He was uncle to Saint Thomas Garnet SJ. Henry studied at the grammar school in Nottingham where, from 1565, his father was master. Following his election as a scholar on 24 August 1567, in 1568 he entered Winchester College, where he apparently excelled. His love of music and "rare and delightful" voice were complemented by an ability to perform songs without preparation, and he was reportedly also skilled with the lute.
Fr Thomas Stanney wrote that Garnet was "the prime scholar of Winchester College, very skilful in music and in playing upon the instruments, very modest in his countenance and in all his actions, so much that the schoolmasters and wardens offered him very great friendship, to be placed by their means in New College, Oxford."
Garnet did not enter New College; instead, late in 1571, he left Winchester for London. There he worked for a legal publisher, Richard Tottell, as a proof-reader and corrector. He often dined with John Popham, who as Lord Chief Justice was to preside over the trial of the Gunpowder Plotters, men whose association with Garnet would eventually prove so fateful. Although Garnet professed to Popham an interest in legal studies, in 1575 he sailed for Portugal with Giles Gallop, to enter the Society of Jesus.
The two men travelled to Rome and on 11 September 1575 were accepted into the church at Sant'Andrea della Valle. Garnet studied under the theologian Robert Bellarmine, who, together with Christopher Clavius, praised his abilities. He was ordained sometime around 1582 and stayed in Rome as a professor of Hebrew, lecturing also on metaphysics and mathematics. He was also an English confessor at St Peter's, but in May 1584 his academic career was curtailed when, perhaps as a consequence of a petition from the Jesuit superior for England William Weston,
Robert Persons asked that he be sent to England. The Superior General Claudio Acquaviva, who saw Garnet as his successor, refused this request. He thought Garnet more suited to "the quiet life" than that which awaited him in England, but on 2 May 1586 he relented and allowed him to leave. Appointed superior for the journey, Garnet travelled with Robert Southwell, leaving for Calais on 8 May. He landed near Folkestone early in July 1586.
After meeting the Jesuit superior for England William Weston at a London inn, Garnet, Southwell and Weston travelled to Harlesford, near Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Spending just over a week at the home of Richard Bold, they engaged in prayer and masses, and also took confessions. They discussed their mission in England, deciding to meet each year in February and August (later changed to Easter and autumn). Weston also gave the two men details of Catholic houses that would shelter them.
Acquaviva had instructed that should anything happen to Weston, Garnet was to succeed him as superior in England, which he did when only days after leaving Harlesford, Weston was captured en route to London. Acquaviva had also given Garnet permission to print pro-Catholic literature, and so early the next year he met Southwell in London to discuss the establishment of a secret press, which was probably located somewhere around a former Augustinian hospital near Spitalfields. It lasted until late 1588 and was responsible for A Consolatory Letter to All the Afflicted Catholikes in England, author unknown, and An Epistle of Comfort, by Southwell.
From a friend's window in Ludgate Hill, Garnet witnessed the November 1588 procession to a thanksgiving service at Old St Paul's Cathedral, celebrating the failed Spanish invasion. Spain's actions gave Garnet much cause for concern, "For when we thought that there was an end to these disasters by which we are already nearly destroyed, our hope was suddenly turned to sorrow, and now with redoubled effort the overseers are pressing upon us". People were allowed to spectate from windows only if their loyalty to Queen Elizabeth I was guaranteed by the householder. In a letter to Acquaviva, Garnet said that many of his supporters thought that he was more concerned for the Queen than her Calvinist ministers.
In light of the Armada's destruction, he also wrote to the general to ask for advice on two versions of a proposed oath to allow Roman Catholics to swear their allegiance to the Queen. The government's version required that Catholics reject the pope's authority over Elizabeth, whereas the Catholic version proposed that they recognise her authority and "would wish with every effort to struggle to thwart and to fight to the death all those who will in any way endanger the life of her Highness". The Privy Council rejected the latter.
Garnet's first few years in England were spent meeting new priests in London, including John Gerard and Edward Oldcorne. Jesuits had been banished from England since 1585, and if discovered they risked being charged with high treason. Avoiding pursuers was therefore a recurrent problem, and Garnet was almost caught on several occasions. As a result of an almost disastrous meeting at Baddesley Clinton in 1591, when he and many others were almost captured together while renewing their vows, he reorganised the mission into eleven smaller groups, each assigned two weeks annually.