Henry Garnet - England

England

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 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. Following Southwell's capture in June 1592, and the search of Anne Vaux and Eleanor Brooksby's rented house in Warwickshire, he wrote to Acquaviva to ask for an assistant who could succeed him as superior. Henry Walpole was thus dispatched, but was captured on his arrival in December 1593, and executed in York in April 1595. Garnet believed that it was his duty to observe (in disguise) the executions of his fellow priests, so as to secretly administer the last rites, and he may have been present at Southwell's execution at Tyburn in 1595. The latter's death was a significant blow for Garnet, who later wrote of the "intolerable burden of loneliness" he carried while in England.

In November 1593 Garnet travelled to the decrepit and decayed Wisbech Castle, requisitioned by the government in 1579 for the internment of Catholic priests. William Weston was held there. The castle's inhabitants were supported by Catholic alms and lived a relatively comfortable existence; Garnet was complimentary about Wisbech, calling it a "college of venerable confessors". The following year he mediated in a dispute there between secular and regular clergy (the latter represented by the Jesuits), which became known as the Wisbech Stirs. The argument was settled by the end of the year, but Garnet was concerned that reports of discontent at the Jesuit-administered English College in Rome and tension between some Catholic English exiles in Brussels might undermine his efforts to stabilise the situation.