Garnet's first few years in England were spent meeting new priests in London, including John Gerard and Edward Oldcorne. Jesuits had been banished from England since 1585, and if discovered they risked being charged with high treason. Avoiding pursuers was therefore a recurrent problem, and Garnet was almost caught on several occasions. As a result of an almost disastrous meeting at Baddesley Clinton in 1591, when he and many others were almost captured together while renewing their vows, he reorganised the mission into eleven smaller groups, each assigned two weeks annually. Following Southwell's capture in June 1592, and the search of Anne Vaux and Eleanor Brooksby's rented house in Warwickshire, he wrote to Acquaviva to ask for an assistant who could succeed him as superior. Henry Walpole was thus dispatched, but was captured on his arrival in December 1593, and executed in York in April 1595. Garnet believed that it was his duty to observe (in disguise) the executions of his fellow priests, so as to secretly administer the last rites, and he may have been present at Southwell's execution at Tyburn in 1595. The latter's death was a significant blow for Garnet, who later wrote of the "intolerable burden of loneliness" he carried while in England.