What is Equivocation and how does Father Garnet connect to it?

equivocate /ɪˈkwɪvəkeɪt/From the Latin word aequivocare which meant "called by the same name."
To equivocate is to use ambiguous language so as to conceal the truth or avoid committing oneself.

Father Henry Garnet

Equivocation was a term that was used quite often as a complaint by the prosecution against Father Henry Garnet in his trial in 1606 for his participation in what's now called The Gunpowder Plot. It was a technique said to be often used by Catholics in Protestant England to obscure their true faith and protect the sanctity of the confessional. Equivocation in this sense was to tread the line between lying and incriminating oneself and others from violation of the law, as Catholicism was more or less illegal in England at the time. It basically boils down to the idea of not telling the WHOLE truth while avoiding telling a lie. For example, if a (Catholic) woman was interrogated for harboring a priest in her house she could say, "No sir, there's not a priest in my house." This could be TECHNICALLY true because a number of prominent Catholics had built what are called priest-holes that were hidden rooms UNDER the house. So technically it's not a lie and it's a cover to likely save lives. Conscience clear. 

This was particularly important for priests because the sanctity of confession was not at all recognized in England (because Catholicism was basically illegal there), so priests needed a way to equivocate to answer more or less honestly while protecting their confessed. 

Father Garnet's involvement to the Gunpowder Plot was a true tragedy, though you wouldn't have known that in 1606. Contrary to what the prosecution alleged during the trial, it's now believed that Garnet was approached by a Father Tesimond, another Jesuit priest in hiding in England, because Father Tesimond was disturbed by a confession he'd recently taken from one of his flock. Robert Catesby, who we now know to be one of the primary conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot, confessed to Father Tesimond some of the details around his participation in the brewing Plot. Because both Catesby's discussion with Tesimond and Tesimond's conversation with Garnet both occurred during an official confession, neither priest believed that they could alert the crown to the threat without divulging key information obtained in confession that would put their Catholic members at risk. Garnet actually later claimed that he urged Catesby to NOT continue with the plot and it's said that he'd written to his superiors in Rome warning them of the treachery and asked the Church to officially warn the English government of the plan. 

England, however, believed that Garnet and many Jesuits were involved in the conspiracy, which was sometimes contemporarily referred to as the Spanish Treason. There was a common rumor that the Jesuits, acting with instruction from the Spanish Catholics, were moving to undermine the Protestant rule of King James. Garnet was a particular target of the government because he was said to have written a treatise entitled A Treatise of Equivocation, but it's interesting to note that the treatise was originally titled A Treatise against lying and fraudulent dissimulation. 

In any case, Father Garnet spent weeks in hiding, a number of long days in a very small priest-hole, and was eventually arrested, tried, and executed by hanging, drawing, and quartering. 


Shakespeare's line in Macbeth "who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven" is believed to be an allusion to Father Garnet.