Finishing It Off

The publication of The King's Book spread the government version of the plot.

In the followng months several other Catholics with more tenuous ties to the conspirators were hunted down.

The head of the English Jesuits, Henry Garnet, had been told of the plot in advance in confession. He was unable to dissuade the plotters of their plans but could not reveal what he had learned since that would violate the seal of confession.

Garnet was captured in January, imprisoned, 'interrogated', and tried. He was trapped by his religious vows. Or perhaps he was trapped by those who arranged for him to hear of the plot in this way; in which case they must have found the fact that it was his Catholic faith which sealed his fate deliciously ironic. Since the Anglican Church had rejected the Catholic rite of sacramental confession, "no plea for the sacredness of secrecy could exonerate from the duty of revelation to proper authority to save the state from disaster"¹. In May, 1606 he was publicly executed (hanged, drawn, and quartered).

The conspirators' estates, in some cases involving grand country houses, were confiscated by the Crown.

The Catholic hierarcy in England would not be re-established until 1850.

Case closed....Wait. Not so fast...