This Sunday, Wilkinson’s Auctioneers of Doncastle, England will sell a 17th century copy of a book that appears to be bound in human skin. Even odder, the binding appears to some to show a human face.

The book, A True And Perfect Relation Of The Whole Proceedings Against The Late Most Barbarous Traitors, Garnet A Jesuit And His Confederates, describes the death of Father Henry Garnet, a Jesuit who was executed in 1606 for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot. According to The Guardian,

Garnet’s involvement in the plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament was controversial. He claimed he knew about the conspiracy but was not involved. Some scholars now believe that he was most likely trying to prevent the action against James I rather than conspiring against him.

Sid Wilkinson, the auctioneer, is a man who clearly knows the value of a little pre-auction publicity. He said, “It’s a little bit spooky because the front of the book looks like it has the face of a man on it, which is presumed to be the victim’s face.”

That last presumption seems odd until one learns that Garnet’s face was already the subject of English Catholic legend. As H.L. Rogers described it in 1965,

[There] was a head of straw stained with Garnet’s blood at his execution and obtained by a young Catholic, John Wilkinson. He took it to the tailor’s house; and some time later it was noticed that Garnet’s blood had congealed on one of the husks into a form resembling Garnet’s own portrait. In Catholic eyes Garnet was a martyr, and this miraculous straw became celebrated.

Rogers quotes Robert Pricket’s 1607 book, The Iesuits Miracles, or new Popish VVonders. Containing the Straw, the Crowne, and the VVondrous Child, with the Confutation of them and their follies, which includes these verses:

For when he [Garnet] died, oh thing most strange to tell,
To a Taylors wife, a scipping silkman beares,
A straw whereof, bloud from a traytor fell.
She thereon weepes, ruthfull deuotions teares,
To sight thereof she then her husband brings,
And ouer it, a mournefull durge he sings.

This holy rellicke, whilst (they say) she kept,
Some craftier knaue, then her poor plaine goseman:
To see that straw, deuoutly stealing crept.
And well to search each part thereof began,
At last whil’st he, to looke himselfe inclines,
Behold forsooth, a miracle he finds.

For (though not) in the inward huske or rine,
Garnets dead face (at London bridge) appeares,
This wonder proues he was indeed diuelline.
And all his workes, for treason doubtlesse cleares,
Some Popish painter cunningly did trace,
On Garnets straw, false Garnets trayterous face.

Though the fateful piece of straw was, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “carefully preserved by the English Jesuits at Liège,” it “was lost during the troubles of the French revolution.” Nor does an engraving from the title page of Pricket’s book help much:

For anyone really curious, the best source of information about Garnet’s appearance may well be the proclamation for his arrest, which describes him thus:

Henry Garnet, alias Walley, alias Darcy, alias Farmer, of a middling stature, full faced, fat of body, of complexion fair, his forehead high on each side, with a little thin hair coming down upon the middest of the fore part of this head; his hair and beard griseled. Of age between fifty and three score. His beard on his cheeks close cut, and his chin very thin and somewhat short. His gait upright, and comely for a feeble man.

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UPDATE (12/3/07): Here’s a portrait of Garnet that shows up on several websites without attribution: