Henry Garnet, 1555-1606, and the Gunpowder Plot
Type
Book
Authors
Category
Biography
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Publication Year
1964
Publisher
Farrar Straus and Company, United States
Pages
466
Description
In May 1606, Henry Garnet, a Jesuit priest, was executed for alleged complicity in the Gunpowder Plot - a conspiracy which he wholeheartedly condemned but was powerless to prevent. His life's work and dramatic trial and death constitute a turning-point in the religious history of England; and the first biography, which has been in preparation for fourteen years, is both a major contribution to the study of the Elizabethan period and an adventure story as enthralling as any of our time.
Born in Derbyshire in 1555, Garnet was educated at Winchester and, after studying for the priesthood in Rome, returned secretly to this country in 1586, landing on the south coast near Folkenstone. At that time there was only one other Jesuit priest at liberty in England; and the story of the next twenty years, during which Garnet's companions grew to the number of forty-two, is one of nerve-racking danger. All priests went of necessity in disguise and under false names, and the various houses in which they stayed were apt to be raided and ransacked at a moment's notice. The hair-breadth escapes, the secret conferences, the arrests, tortures and executions described in this book are indeed the appalling truth that outdoes fiction. During these twenty years Garnet wrote long and regular reports to his Superior in Rome - and these letters,full of the minutiae of their daily lives, make this one of the most detailed and fascinating of Elizabethan biographies.
Philip Caraman, whose lives of John Gerard, William Weston and Henry Morse have all received the highest praise, makes masterly use of his massive and original sources. Both as history, and as a study of religious controversy, this is a work of incomparable excellence.
The Author
Philip Caraman is a member of the Society of Jesus. From 1948 to 1963 he was Editor of The Month. His works include translations from the Latin of two Elizabethan autobiographies, John Gerard and William Weston, an Elizabethan Anthology, The Other Face, and a seventeenth century biographical study, Henry Morse. Born in 1911, he was educated at Stonyhurst and Campion Hall, Oxford.
Taken from the inside flaps.
Born in Derbyshire in 1555, Garnet was educated at Winchester and, after studying for the priesthood in Rome, returned secretly to this country in 1586, landing on the south coast near Folkenstone. At that time there was only one other Jesuit priest at liberty in England; and the story of the next twenty years, during which Garnet's companions grew to the number of forty-two, is one of nerve-racking danger. All priests went of necessity in disguise and under false names, and the various houses in which they stayed were apt to be raided and ransacked at a moment's notice. The hair-breadth escapes, the secret conferences, the arrests, tortures and executions described in this book are indeed the appalling truth that outdoes fiction. During these twenty years Garnet wrote long and regular reports to his Superior in Rome - and these letters,full of the minutiae of their daily lives, make this one of the most detailed and fascinating of Elizabethan biographies.
Philip Caraman, whose lives of John Gerard, William Weston and Henry Morse have all received the highest praise, makes masterly use of his massive and original sources. Both as history, and as a study of religious controversy, this is a work of incomparable excellence.
The Author
Philip Caraman is a member of the Society of Jesus. From 1948 to 1963 he was Editor of The Month. His works include translations from the Latin of two Elizabethan autobiographies, John Gerard and William Weston, an Elizabethan Anthology, The Other Face, and a seventeenth century biographical study, Henry Morse. Born in 1911, he was educated at Stonyhurst and Campion Hall, Oxford.
Taken from the inside flaps.
Number of Copies
1
