But it may be as well
first to give the account of its production at the trial of Guy Fawkes
and the conspirators, Jan. 27, 1606. (See _State Trials_, vol. ii. col.
180.) After Coke had introduced under the seventh head of his speech, as
the fourth means for carrying on the plot, "their perfidious and
perjurious equivocating," there follows:--
"And here was showed a Book, written not long before the Queen's
death, at what time Thomas Winter was employed into Spain,
entituled, 'A Treatise of Equivocation,' which book being seen
and allowed by Garnet, the superior of the Jesuits, and
Blackwell, the Archpriest of England, in the beginning thereof
Garnet with his own hand put out those words in the title of
'Equivocation,' and made it thus; 'A Treatise against Lying and
fraudulent Dissimulation.' ... And in the end thereof, Blackwell
besprinkles it with his blessing, saying, 'Tractatus iste valde
doctus, et vere pius et Catholicus est. Certe S. Scripturarum,
patrum, doctorum, scholasticorum, canonistarum, et optimarum
rationum praesidiis plenissime firmat aequitatem aequivocationis;
ideoque dignissimus est qui typis propagetur, ad consolationem
afflictorum Catholicorum, et omnium piorum instructionem.'"
Coke referred to it again at Garnet's trial, March 28, 1606 (_State
Trials_, vol.
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