Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/277

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Behind the Scenes
247

accessory before the fact to the Gunpowder Plot. Considering, however, that he had absolved the conspirators at Huddington, when they were actually engaged in levying open war against the State, it must surely be allowed that the Government treated him very leniently. Certainly, he was far more guilty of misprision of treason than had been Father Oldcorne, who was tortured and hanged, and whose name is not even included in Sir William Waad's black-list.

Father Greenway, S.J. As Garnet confided to Oldcorne in the Tower, it was (for several reasons) a fortunate thing for the Roman Catholic cause that Greenway, or Tesimond, successfully escaped abroad. Had he been captured (and tortured), he would probably have been made to reveal information of a damning nature both as regards his own and his Superior's knowledge of the Plot. He would, moreover, if captured, most certainly have shared Father Garnet's fate.

Although generally known in history by the name of Greenway, this Jesuit's real name was Oswald Tesimond, and Greenway, like Beaumont, was only one of his aliases. Born in 1563, he entered the English College at Rome in 1580, and became a Jesuit four years later. He studied for some time at Madrid, and then entered England in the spring of 1598. In 1603 he became 'professed' of the four vows of his Society. The day after the fatal Fifth of November