The Priests
William Allen
Born in 1532 in Lancashire William Allen went to university
at Oxford. By 1554 - during the reign of the Catholic Mary
I - he was the principal of one of the smaller colleges there.
But his opposition to the Reformation meant that soon after
the accession of Elizabeth I and the revival of Protestantism
he resigned his post, and moved to the Low Countries.
Allen returned to England for a little while in the early
1560s and, horrified by how quickly Protestantism was taking
root, started writing books defending the Catholic Church
and attacking Protestantism. In 1568 he founded the English
Catholic seminary at Douai, in the Netherlands. Its purpose
was to turn out missionaries to maintain the Catholic religion
in England and even reconvert the country. Many of the missionaries
were caught and executed.
In 1584 he denied that English Catholics were a political
threat to Queen Elizabeth and her government. He himself,
however, was closely engaged in discussions with the Pope,
Spain and the Catholic faction in France, about a Catholic
invasion of England. From the 1570s he was regarded as the
effective head of the English Catholic community and in 1587,
as Spanish plans were being drawn up for the invasion of England,
the Pope created him a cardinal. In 1588 he called on English
Catholics to overthrow the Queen in his Admonition to the
Nobility and People of England. William Allen died in 1594,
bitterly disappointed by the failure of the Armada.
Henry Garnett
Zoom
Henry Garnett, Adriaen Lommelin, mid 17th century. National
Portrait Gallery, LondonHenry Garnett was born in 1555,
and went to Winchester College, where he was said to be a
brilliant scholar. He probably left in 1571 for religious
reasons and in 1575 left England to join the Jesuit order.
Ordained in about 1582 in Rome, in 1586 he travelled back
to England with a fellow Jesuit, Robert Southwell. Garnett
soon made contact with other Jesuits in England, including
Weston, their leader. He also met the Vaux family soon after
his arrival, who were to be his protectors for the next twenty
years.
Following Weston's arrest, Garnett succeeded him as superior
of the Jesuit order. Thanks to the Vauxes, especially Anne,
Garnett evaded arrest for twenty years, during which many
of his colleagues, including Southwell, were caught and executed.
During the 1590s he had to try to sort out increasingly bitter
disputes between the Jesuits and other Catholic clergy in
England.
Garnett hoped for a more liberal attitude towards the Catholics
from James I. Though disappointed in his hopes, he followed
his instructions from Rome to do as much as he could to prevent
plots against the King. Garnett knew many of those involved
in the Plot very well and was aware of their determination
to do something.
He first learnt about the Plot in late July 1605, when a
fellow priest, Oswald Tesimond, explained to him (with Catesby's
agreement) what he had been told in the confessional by Robert
Catesby, so that they could discuss between them the issues
of conscience that it involved. Whether Tesimond's discussion
with Garnett had itself been a confession was an important
point much discussed later.
Garnett tried to stop the conspirators, but did not reveal
what he knew to the authorities. By October he may have thought
that the plans had been abandoned. He first heard of its discovery
at Coughton Court, in Warwickshire, the home of the Throckmorton
family, in a letter from Robert Catesby on 6 November. He
went into hiding immediately and was eventually captured in
January 27th 1606. His trial took place on 28 March and he
was executed on 3 May.
Many Catholics regarded Garnett as a martyr. A piece of straw
taken from the scaffold on which he was executed was said
to have miraculously acquired his image, and was venerated
as a relic. A process of canonisation as a saint was begun
but was never completed.
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