Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/280

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A History of the Gunpowder Plot

matter to Greenway, and received from him instructions to do whatever his master should order. On the other side, Greenway, in a paper which lies before me, declares on his salvation that Bates never spoke one word to him on the subject, either in or out of confession; and Bates himself, in a letter written before he suffered, asserts that he merely said it was his suspicion that Greenway might have known something of the plot. (2) On the 6th of November, Greenway rode to the conspirators at Huddington, and administered to them the Sacrament. He replies that, having learned from a letter written by Sir Everard to Lady Digby, the danger in which they were, he deemed it a duty to offer to them the aids of religion before they suffered that death which threatened them; that for this purpose he rode to Huddington, and then after a few hours, left them for the house of Mr. Abington at Henlip.'

But Lingard is, here, not very veracious. He never mentions that Greenway went to Hendlip with the express object of getting the household to join Catesby; nor does he mention that he afterwards designed to raise the Catholics of Lancashire. As for his going to Huddington merely to offer the Sacrament to the conspirators, he omits to state that he went thither with Garnet's leave, and at Catesby's express invitation. As to Greenway's oath that Bates lied, I can only say that I would sooner believe a humble serving-man, who had been seduced by his master into treason, than I would a prevaricator like Greenway, who was, with his Superior Garnet, an adept