After a time there came to Rome some of the English clergy, saying that they had received the Archpriest with amazement, and begging the Pope to withdraw him. The Pope was not in Rome, and Parsons took care that they should not reach him. He induced the papal authorities to arrest them, as rebels, and lodge them in the college controlled by the Jesuits; and when they persisted in appealing to a Roman tribunal, he secured the dismissal of the appeal. Later, a fresh batch of appellants came to Rome, and Parsons knew that their evidence would be very damning. Not only had the Jesuits, who controlled the moneys gathered for the support of the imprisoned priests, attempted to use this power to subdue them, but when the Pope had ordered that no more pamphlets should be written on the subject, Blackwell had refrained from publishing the decree until Parsons had time to issue one; and this one mendaciously purported to have been written by some "priests united in due subordination to the Archpriest." The secular priests had appealed to Elizabeth, and she had actually heard and set four of them at liberty, in order that they might plead their cause at Rome. They now had the support of the French embassy, and, in spite of all the libels which Parsons circulated concerning them and the English clergy generally, they won a partial victory. Blackwell was to remain Archpriest, but he was not to consult the Jesuits.
From this domestic but instructive feud we return to the action of the Jesuits in England. Under ten different names Garnet had continued, amid a hundred adventures, to elude his pursuers, and his colleagues were only a little less active. We cannot, however, do more here than attempt to trace their share in the political scheming which culminated in the Gunpowder Plot. The Jesuits in England carried out the suggestion of Parsons that, instead of putting their faith in the eventual accession and conversion of James of Scotland, they should teach the Catholics to look to Philip. In December 1601 we find Garnet meeting Catesby, Tresham, and Winter in the house of Anne Vaux at Enfield Chase, and discussing the question of a mission to Spain. The issue of it was that Winter and Father Greenway went to Madrid, and obtained a large sum of money from Philip III. It was intended for the relief of the poor Catholics, Garnet afterwards said: in which case we do not very well understand why he "misliked" the expedition, as he says.