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diff --git a/old/52731-0.txt b/old/52731-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 5b316ea..0000000 --- a/old/52731-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3509 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, Blessed Edmund Campion, by Louise Imogen -Guiney, Illustrated by Durden James - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: Blessed Edmund Campion - - -Author: Louise Imogen Guiney - - - -Release Date: August 5, 2016 [eBook #52731] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION*** - - -E-text prepared by Emmy, MWS, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team -(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by -Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - -Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this - file which includes the original illustrations in color. - See 52731-h.htm or 52731-h.zip: - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/52731/52731-h/52731-h.htm) - or - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/52731/52731-h.zip) - - - Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/blessededmundcam00guinrich - - - - - -The St. Nicholas Series - -Edited by the Rev. Dom Bede Camm, O.S.B. - - - -BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION - - “Go seek thy peace in war: -Who falls for love of God, shall rise a star!” - BEN JONSON - -[Illustration] - - - -Nihil Obstat. -D. BEDA CAMM - _Censor Deputatus_ - - -Imprimatur: -[Illustration] GULIELMUS _Episcopus Arindelensis - Vicarius Generalis_ - - -WESTMONASTERII, -_die 14 Januarii, 1908._ - - -[Illustration: Campion reading an Address of Welcome to Queen Mary. -_p. 3._] - - -BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION - -by - -LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY - -[Illustration] - - - - - - - -R. & T. Washbourne, Ltd. -Paternoster Row, London -And at Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow -1914 _All rights reserved_ - - - - - _Campiani Fratribus - e Provincia Angliæ Societatis Jesu Tribus - opusculum suum - grato affectu - Scriptor_ - - - - -PREFATORY NOTE - - -THIS little book leans much, as every modern work on the subject -must do, upon Mr. Richard Simpson’s monograph: _Edmund Campion, -Jesuit Protomartyr of England_. In many points supplementing or -contradicting that splendid though biased narrative, the present -writer has gratefully taken advantage of the researches of the Rev. -John Hungerford Pollen, S.J. It may also be useful to state that the -contemporary citations, when not otherwise specified, are from two -invaluable witnesses, Parsons and Allen. The translated passages have -been compared with the originals, and sometimes newly rendered. - - L. I. G. - -_St. Ives, Cornwall: Epiphany, 1908._ - - - - -CONTENTS - - - CHAP. PAGE - I. YOUTH: LONDON, OXFORD: 1540-1566 1 - II. THE HOUR OF UNREST: OXFORD, DUBLIN: 1566-1570 14 - III. STEPS FORWARD: IRELAND: 1571 27 - IV. CHEYNEY AGAIN: DOUAY: 1571 40 - V. THE CALL TO COME UP HIGHER: DOUAY, PRAGUE: 1571-1573 53 - VI. THE WISHED-FOR DAWN: BOHEMIA: 1573-1579 64 - VII. A LONG MARCH: ROME, GENEVA, RHEIMS: 1580 75 - VIII. INHOSPITABLE HOME: 1580 88 - IX. SKIRMISHING: THE ENGLISH COUNTIES: 1580 100 - X. MANY LABOURS: AND A BOOK: 1580 112 - XI. AT LYFORD GRANGE, AND AFTER: 1581 129 - XII. THE THICK OF THE FRAY: 1581 141 - XIII. VICTORY: DECEMBER 1, 1581 166 - - - - -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - - - CAMPION READING AN ADDRESS OF WELCOME TO QUEEN MARY _Frontispiece_ - - CAMPION IN HIS PROCTOR’S ROBES. GATEWAY OF ST. JOHN’S - COLLEGE, OXFORD, IN BACKGROUND _to face p._ 16 - - ‘P[ATER] EDMUNDUS CAMPIANUS, MARTYR’ ” 80 - - ‘WE HAVE NOT BROKEN THROUGH HERE!’ ” 128 - - CAMPION BEFORE QUEEN ELIZABETH ” 144 - - ‘NOT GUILTY!’ ” 160 - - - - -BLESSED - -EDMUND CAMPION - - - - -I - -YOUTH: LONDON, OXFORD: 1540-1566 - - -THE Campion family seem to have been both gentlefolk and yeomen, and -to have been widely scattered over the land: in Northamptonshire, -Warwickshire, Essex, Sussex, and Devon. Nothing is definitely known, -at present, as to which branch of the Campion family the Blessed -Edmund belonged. Unlike many of the martyrs of Tudor and Stuart times, -he was what is called a “born” Catholic: in more accurate phrase, a -born heathen, as we all are! but baptized in his parents’ religion -soon after his birth in London, on the Feast of St. Paul the Apostle, -January 25, in the year 1540, New Style. Edmund had two brothers, and -a sister, none of whom played any great part in his after life. By the -time he entered the Society of Jesus his father and mother were both -dead: his written expression is that he had “hopes” they died in full -communion with the Church; but evidently he did not know, being abroad, -how it had fared with them in those terribly stormy days for Christian -souls. - -Edmund Campion, senior, was a book-seller, evidently in good standing, -but not well to do. Some rich London guildsmen (probably of the -Grocers’ Company, for it was they who maintained him later), befriended -the promising little boy at just the right moment, when his father -was reluctantly going to apprentice him to a trade; and he was sent, -at their joint expense, to a good Grammar School. Afterwards, under -the same patrons, he entered Christ Hospital, then lately set up in -Newgate Street (out of confiscated Franciscan funds and the generosity -of Londoners), as the “foundation” of the sixteen-year-old king, Edward -VI. Here the small Edmund, full of life and laughter, banded and -belted, ran about in now extinct yellow petticoats, and one of the -earliest pairs of those historic yellow stockings. He was thirteen, and -quite famous already in the school-boy world of London for his learning -and his attractive presence and speech, when Queen Mary Tudor, who had -just succeeded to the English throne, entered her city in state. Out of -many hundred eligible youngsters it was he who was chosen to stand up -before her on a street platform, under the shadow of the old St. Paul’s -Cathedral, and shrilly welcome her in the Latin tongue. The Queen sat -on a white horse, robed in gold-embroidered dark velvet, crimson or -purplish, with the great sword carried before her by the boyish Earl of -Surrey, with eight thousand mounted lords and gentlemen on either side, -all the glittering ambassadors, and a bevy of beautifully apparelled -ladies. On certain figures in that splendid and noisy pageant the child -might have looked with pensive eyes, had he been able to forecast his -own future; as it was, he cannot have failed to observe the Queen’s -younger sister, the thin, watchful, spirited girl who was known as the -Lady Elizabeth. Another was there, of high office, though not of high -descent, who was all goodness, piety and generosity, and may well have -been drawn to notice Edmund Campion for the first time on that sunshiny -afternoon in August, 1553. This was Sir Thomas White, then Lord Mayor -of London, a staunch Catholic. He was an unlearned man and childless, -who became, later, co-founder of the Merchant Taylors’ School, and -enricher of many towns. By 1555 he had opened his College of St. John -Baptist, once a Cistercian house, at Oxford. The Grocers’ Company at -once approached him to admit their Blue-coat ward as a scholar; this -he did, and conceived, almost as soon, a marked attachment to him; -and two years later (when Edmund was not yet eighteen!) he made him a -Senior Fellow. Campion’s other early friends at the University were his -first tutor, John Bavand, and Gregory Martin, a Foundation Scholar like -himself. These two showed towards him a lifelong devotion. - -Mary’s troubled reign had covered the five most susceptible years of -his youth, and restored to the country, despite its legal excesses, -a definitely Catholic tone. Things were soon to change. War by -statute against the Mass was first declared in 1559. Edmund Campion -had left Oxford by the time that St. John’s, deprived of President -after President by the Royal Commissioners, was swept clean of all -the dons who favoured, or in any degree tolerated, the jurisdiction -of that Apostolic See which safeguarded the doctrine and honour of -the Blessed Eucharist. But while he lived in his University world, -he lived untouched. He was not looked upon as a Catholic. Nor was -he such, if his heart could be fully judged by his outward actions. -Buried in literature, philosophy, and pleasant tutorial work, he had -become, in his cultured indifference, what St. Jerome’s accusing vision -called a “Ciceronian,” and not a Christian: a skin-deep Ciceronian, -however. There is only a bare possibility that, on proceeding M.A. in -1564, he escaped taking the wretched Oath of Supremacy, and thereby -acknowledging the Queen as Head in spirituals as well as temporals -within her realm of England. He stretched his conscience, as many were -doing, thinking to help along the unity of faith, thereby defeating -that unity for good and all. An almost unprecedented vogue at Oxford -had served to blind him: he was so happy, so busy, so needed, so much -at home there. Friends encouraged him; undergraduates flocked about -him, and imitated his very gait and tone as they never have imitated -any one else except Newman. - -Campion was a famous Latin scholar; and he was a good Grecian and a -good Hebraist: Greek and Hebrew were studies newly revived just before -he was born. He spoke as well as he wrote. The flamboyant art of -oratory, now almost extinct in our more quiet-coloured century, was -then much studied and admired; and Campion was famous for debates and -addresses and encomiums. When only twenty, he had been called upon to -preach, though a layman, at the re-burial of poor Amy Robsart, Lord -Dudley’s young wife, in the University church of St. Mary-the-Virgin; -and this he did with great grace and animation, and with no small -display of tact, for rumours of a murder with a motive had already got -abroad. Such prominence may have come to Campion through Sir Thomas -White’s request: Sir Thomas had his associations with Cumnor. Four -years later, Edmund Campion was able to put sincere love and sincere -grief into a funeral oration (this time a Latin, not an English one) -for the good and dear Founder himself, whose body was solemnly interred -in the Chapel of his College. - -In September, 1566, Queen Elizabeth made the first and happier of her -two visits to Oxford. In the Queen’s train was Dudley; also a quieter, -plainer, less noticed man, but one out of all comparison with him -for astute power: this was Sir William Cecil, the Prime Minister, -afterwards known far and wide as Lord Burghley. There were farces and -tragedies for the Queen at Oxford, there were musical performances, -theological disputations, and other academic sports. In front of the -vast assemblage stood forth Master Campion of St. John’s, alone in his -ruff, hood and gown. As representative of the University, he welcomed -smiling royalty, and Dudley, now Earl of Leicester, Chancellor of the -University, and royalty’s magnificent favourite. Campion shone, as -well, in the absurd discussions in natural science which followed. -The Queen and Dudley marked him, as they could not fail to do; for -nothing could exceed the courtliness with which he had performed -his task. The Chancellor sent for him in private, and expressed the -Queen’s good-will, whereby Campion might bid, through him, for whatever -preferment he chose. But Campion, always truly modest and full of -ironic humour as well, would ask of his patron nothing, he said, but -his continued regard. The young bookman had a real liking for the -vicious worldling, liked by several sensitively good men, then and -since. Sir William Cecil also took instinctive interest in Campion and -his eager dialectics. Altogether, there was no more popular man in -Oxford or elsewhere. Campion was on the hilltop of professional and -personal success. - -In all this beautiful fountain-play of “the things which are seen,” he -was running the very gravest risk of spiritual ruin. Perhaps he could -not know, in his leaf-hung hermitage, what a tremendous muster of souls -was going on, now that the ancient Church and a new statecraft were to -fight it out in England. Queen Elizabeth’s quarrel with the Pope was -hardly more doctrinal than her royal father’s had been: she, too, would -have been quite content to live all her days as a Catholic, provided -that Catholicism would prove her slave. The battle was not between two -known religions. On one side was conservative England with a belief; -on the other the strong spirit of secularism, plus a few fanatics -formed not by the English, but the Continental Reformation. Religion in -itself troubled the Court party as little as anything could possibly -do. It was because the spirit of Catholicism seemed to them to threaten -their particular kind of national pride, and to interfere with their -particular kind of worldly prosperity, that Cromwell in one great Tudor -reign, Burghley in the other, tried to put it down. They wished to -get good citizenship acknowledged not as an ideal, but as the supreme -ideal, and they cared not how much else was shovelled out of the way. -Their only use for religion was to bring it well under the authority of -the law and the supremacy of the Crown. They had no objection to high -respectability, but a most violent objection to the supernatural life, -because that gives to those who practise it a dangerous independence. -Elizabeth wanted unity and peace. Her subjects were to be forced by -statute to pray less and to pray all alike; and to be thereby trained, -somehow, to put Sacraments and Saints and the Papacy out of their -heads. English humankind were to forsake their happy wild life, as it -were, in the Church Universal, and all become, as if by magic, one -large tame pet lying in a ribboned collar on the royal hearth. This is -a vision which has appealed to many another head of a commonwealth as -desirable, though unaccountably difficult! Some worthy persons have -brought themselves to believe that nothing to speak of happened at -the Reformation. But at the time, everybody understood in the clearest -fashion that an old moral system which would not come to terms had been -dropped, and a more satisfactory one created. It was a working theory -of that age, all over Europe, that a governor had the right to fix the -belief of subjects. What was wanted in England was made to order, out -of the rags of ruined doctrine and discipline. Foreign Protestants -raged over its externals, as having too much of the old thing, but -the bullying State, riding roughshod over Convocation and the laity, -was perfectly at ease, knowing that there was more than enough of the -new thing to colour the whole, and to colour it once and for ever. -There was no affection for “continuity” in those days except among -the “Romans.” The attitude of their persecutors was that of men in a -fury that any Englishman should dare to connect himself either with -the world at large, or with his country’s own disclaimed yesterday. -The State Trials, for instance, bear this out in a score of places. -Many an official answer resembles the one made to that interesting -character Blessed Ralph Sherwin, when he said truly that his coming -back to his own land was to persuade the people to Catholic Unity. “You -well know,” so the Counsel reproved him in Westminster Hall, “that it -was not lawful for you to persuade the Queen’s subjects to any other -religion than by her Highness’s instructions is already professed.” -The “received religion,” or, as it was quite as often called, the -“Queen’s religion,” was simply the new idea of nationalism torn away -from relationship to the arch-idea of nations, which is the law of -God. It was, in practice, no adoring angel at the Altar, but a capable -parish beadle at the door. Now this was never the Catholic conception -of what religion has been, or is meant to be. Happily, many thoroughly -patriotic Englishmen felt that no least jot of Christian revelation, -however much it stood in the way of Cæsar, could, with their consent, -be put by; and to keep it free they were willing to make themselves -very disagreeable indeed to their revered sovereign, and to their more -easy-going countrymen. With that rude definiteness which is ever -their chief family trait, the better Catholics threw their full force -against the Oaths of Supremacy and Acts of Uniformity, as soon as they -understood their meaning. The centuries passed since then prove that -they succeeded in holding asunder what the Queen would join together. -Was it unreasonable that she punished the men who tried to spoil her -dream? And almost the chief of these men Edmund Campion was destined -to be, though years were to pass before he lent his whole heart to the -work God willed him to do. - - - - -II - -THE HOUR OF UNREST: OXFORD, DUBLIN: 1566-1570 - - -THOUSANDS who were comfortably placed in life, and conscientious, too, -had a great deal to suffer until things were made plain. Edmund Campion -began to fret, and argue, and ponder, and pray for light in secret, -for several years going about “that most ingeniose Place” (as a later -lover called Oxford) with heavy thoughts. Oxford itself, despite the -Ecclesiastical Commission fixed there to worry it, was more Catholic -in spirit than any other city in England. Nevertheless Campion’s -temptation to conform was very great. We must remember that many of his -first impressions and memories were Anglican. He was brought up during -his early school life on the new Liturgy, which came into operation -before his tenth year. He knew now, in manhood, that to change about, -and forsake the State religion for the only Church which is as exacting -as her Master, would be to see the ruin of his happy career. His strong -point, in the beginning, was not what is called brute courage. His was -the nervous, Hamlet-like temper, natural to students and recluses, -which, by a fatal error, puts endless thinking into what needs only to -be done. - -[Illustration: Bld. Edmund Campion in Proctor’s robes. - -(Gateway of St. John’s College, Oxford, in background)] - -During these years Campion read a great deal of theology, as in his -position he was bound to do, according to University rules. Where -everything else except his inmost heart inclined him to heresy, -the Fathers drove him back upon the fulness of revealed truth. The -day which he spent with St. Augustine, or St. Jerome, or St. John -Chrysostom, was a day on which (to catch up the phrase of his friend -and biographer, Fr. Robert Parsons, himself a Balliol man) he was ready -“to pull out this thorn of conscience.” But on the morrow returned the -old spirit of obstinacy and delay. Meanwhile the Anglican influence -was gaining for Campion’s dearest friend of many, Richard Cheyney, -the Lord Bishop of Gloucester, was drawing him on towards his own -ideals, which were “Catholic-minded,” if not Catholic. The learned, -gentle and lovable Cheyney withstood with zest the risen Puritan party, -and in his hold on sound doctrine stood apart from all his colleagues -on the Episcopal Bench. He had been brought up as a Catholic, and -ordained according to the full Catholic ritual, in 1534. The reminder -is sometimes needed that Protestants did not shoot up full-grown, -that all original Protestantism was made up of human material once -Catholic. From first to last, however, Cheyney could not be forced to -coerce the Church which he had abandoned. In this he stood not, as has -been stated, quite alone among the Elizabethan Bishops, for Downham of -Chester and Ghest of Rochester shared his honourable abstinence, though -in less degree. The moment Cheyney was out of the way, the Catholics on -his diocesan ground, hitherto safe, were mercilessly harried. He had -been made a Bishop against his will, displacing the true occupant -of the See, when his friend Edmund Campion was two-and-twenty. In most -matters Cheyney followed Luther; Cranmer’s more heretical doctrines, -which prevailed on all sides in England, he thoroughly hated. He -longed always for a reconciliation which was never to be, and never -can be. He longed to see the Catholics (against the well-thought-out -and oft-repeated prohibition of their leaders, between 1562 and 1606) -do a little evil to procure a great good: namely, smooth matters -over, escape their terribly severe penalties, and in the end become -able to leaven the lump of English error, by the mere preliminary -of attendance at the service of Common Prayer according to law, in -their own old parish churches. The Book of Common Prayer, as he would -remind them, was expressly designed to suit persons of various and -even contradictory religious views: Catholic; not-so-very Catholic; -ex-Catholic; non-Catholic; anti-Catholic! Campion often rode over -the hills to Gloucester to sit by the episcopal hearth-fire, book on -knee, and hear such theories as this, and sympathize with the lonely -old man who “saw visions,” and had little else in his vexed life to -content him. His strong double desire was to save by his own effort for -the Church of England separated from Rome, that great body of ancient -belief and practice sure otherwise to be lost in the flood of invited -Calvinism; and to secure Edmund Campion himself as his intellectual -coadjutor and successor, as one of high gifts likely to “drink in -his thoughts and become his heir.” The two were together, not only -in matters of dogma, but in all minor points. Cheyney shared with -Campion dislike of politics, telling the Council that in such matters -he was “a man of small experience and little observation.” He kept -his old priestly ideals, and would never marry. Campion, too, chose -to be a celibate. If he gave his heart to either Church, he saw even -then that it must be an undivided heart. To him, with his underlying -tenderness towards the ancient faith, and his dream of peacemaking -through compromise, which is so English, and just in these matters so -mistaken, the mission thus opened out appealed. Half reluctantly, yet -not realizing the disloyalty of his act (as he himself tells us), he -allowed himself to receive from Cheyney’s hands Deacon’s orders in the -Church of England. - -His interior struggle, from this day forth, went from bad to worse. -With the unaffected simplicity of his character, he talked over his -difficulties not only with Cheyney, but with any one at Oxford who -seemed able to help him. As a consequence, the Grocers’ Company, whose -exhibition he still held, heard rumours, grew uneasy, and began to -suspect him, ending in 1568 by inviting Campion up to London to save -his credit by preaching at Paul’s Cross, and publicly “favouring,” -as they expressed it, “the religion now authorized.” He begged for -time, and that being granted, for more time. He attended a court of -the Company in order to plead engagements, and to say that he was -not his own man, while deep in academic duties and at the service of -undergraduates: “divers worshipful men’s children,” he calls them. He -was Public Orator and Proctor, in fact, by now, as well as Fellow -and Tutor of his College. (He never resided long enough to take his -Doctor’s degree.) He exacted from the Company a written statement -of the dogmas he was expected to avow; and finding it impossible to -subscribe to the hot heterodoxy thus laid down, he cut his first tether -by resigning his exhibition. - -His most brilliant colleague at St. John’s, Gregory Martin, who had -protested in vain against Campion’s diaconate (which was to cause the -recipient extreme remorse for a long time), had become a convert to -Catholicism, and sacrificed all his secular prospects. He wrote to his -dear friend to warn him against ambition, and to urge on him escape -from moral bondage. “Come!” the fervent letter cried; “if we two can -but live together, we can live on nothing. If this be too little, I -have money; and if this also fails, one thing is left: ‘they that -sow in tears shall reap in joy!’” Such earnest words, though seeming -wasted, had their share in shaking Edmund Campion’s rest. - -With the summer term of 1570 his Proctorate expired. He spent the -Long Vacation in tutoring the eight-years-old Harry Vaux, eldest son -of Lord Vaux of Harrowden, who afterwards beautifully redeemed his -childish promise. The end of Michaelmas term found Campion face to -face for the last time with that life which he had so loved, and in -which, with his scientific enthusiasm for letters, he had been such a -wonderful inspiration to young men. There was no conscious motive in -his heart deeper than a thirst for such freedom as had become difficult -in a Puritanizing University, when he cut himself loose, slipped out of -it for good, and took ship for Ireland. - -In the new move he had the approbation of Leicester, and the -companionship of a much-attached Oxford disciple, Richard Stanihurst, -who is remembered by posterity only for his grotesque translation of -Virgil. Campion may well have left home with the understanding that -he should have a clear educational field in Dublin, but he arrived -a little too late. The outlook had been very bright. Some good men -then in power were eager for the revival of the extinct University of -Dublin, an ancient Papal foundation, but ruined, as all the great -Schools were (most of them permanently, some only temporarily), by the -religious changes. The chief supporters of the plan were enthusiastic, -far-sighted, and most liberally inclined towards Catholics. Fear and -prejudice therefore stepped in, in the person of Elizabeth’s Irish -Bishops. The Lord Chancellor, Dr. Weston, wrote privately to the -Queen, deploring the popularity of the scheme, and begging her to -take the unborn foundation “into her merciful, motherly care.” She -followed that advice. In token thereof, in due season arose Trinity -College, Dublin, as a complete checkmate to the earlier project, quite -safe for evermore from Papist blight. Thus was Campion cheated of a -continuance of his natural vocation, in serving upon the staff of the -new University. Two of his friends who had most concern in it were -James Stanihurst, father of Richard, and Sir Henry Sidney, then Lord -Deputy of Ireland, who had proffered it lands and money. Leicester -would have provided Campion with a letter of introduction to Sir Henry, -his own brother-in-law. The latter’s young son, Philip, was at this -time a student in Oxford, where his governor, Thomas Thornton of Christ -Church, afterwards Vice-Chancellor, had been constantly in Campion’s -society. Sir Henry Sidney always bore himself most kindly towards -Campion. The latter lived, a more than welcome guest, under the roof -of James Stanihurst, then Recorder of Dublin, and Speaker of the local -House of Commons. Stanihurst was the head of an Anglo-Irish family -not openly Catholic since Queen Mary’s reign. Indeed, in his public -capacity, he had often sided against Catholicism, although he was as -friendly as Sidney himself to those who professed it. In the midst of -this temporizing household, Campion, himself a temporizer, came during -the winter to be doubted by certain bigots outside. Very possibly he -was too free-spoken. Campion “came to Ireland believing in practically -all Catholic dogmas, even in the Eucharist, and in the authority of -the Council of Trent.” The impression may have got abroad that his -then unknown variety of Anglicanism differed little from the dangerous -creed of times past, lately discovered to be the proper business of -the police! Whatever the reason, Campion began to be a marked man. Sir -Henry Sidney told Stanihurst with heat, that so long as he was Governor -he would see to it that “no busy knave of them all should trouble him,” -on Campion’s account. Under this unpleasant circumstance of espial, -added to the disappointment he had just undergone, the sensitive exile -presently fell ill, and got a most affectionate nursing from the -Stanihursts, till his strength revived. He started as soon to write -a treatise on a subject of which his mind, up to now, had been full: -the character and aim of the ideal youth at the Universities. This -_De Juvene Academico_ reminds us of a theme by another great Oxonian -who was in Dublin three hundred years later, and had also to face the -heartbreaking failure of an Irish University dreamed of, and not to be. -Campion afterwards recast his fine little work, and under its second -form it is to be found among the few _Opuscula_ published after his -death. His comely face and gracious manner were quickly taken into -favour in his Dublin circle. While he was gaining a contrary repute on -hearsay, the few who had access to him nicknamed him “the Angel.” - -Meanwhile, hating idleness, and bent on redeeming what may have looked -like a foolish absence from Oxford, Campion planned the composition -of a brief _History of Ireland_. Friends helped him in “inquiring -out antiquities of the land.” He was what we should call a thorough -“researcher,” a bird by no means common in those early days. He went -here and there among musty manuscript records of the city, and from -library to library in the country, happily gathering in his materials -for work. He had been some three months in Ireland when on a March -midnight there came a sudden warning from the faithful Lord Deputy, -who was on the point of leaving for England. Campion learned thereby -that Weston the Chancellor had pursuivants ready to arrest him the next -morning! The Stanihursts acted at once, and hurried their friend into -the care of Sir Christopher Barnewall and Dame Marion Sherry, his -wife, of Turvey House, in the parish of Donabate, eight miles away. -There, breathless with the sudden flight through the dark, the three -devoted escorts left him in safety. - - - - -III - -STEPS FORWARD: IRELAND: 1571 - - -THE Barnewalls were in feeling both more Catholic and more Irish than -the Stanihursts, and they showed Edmund Campion a no less tender -hospitality. The great house was in a beautiful and remote situation. -Running in and out of it was a horde of laughing children, including -the eleven-year-old Janet who was to become Richard Stanihurst’s -early-dying wife. Campion loved the hearty Knight, their father, and -their lady mother, whom he calls “in very sooth, a most gentle and -godly woman.” Though he mingled freely with the life of the family, -he was considerately given the great garret to write in and hide in. -Here he began his little _History_. First of all, though, he sent back -a grateful missive in Latin to the men who had been so providently -kind to him. To the Recorder, he says: “Was I not fortunate in such -friendship and patronage as yours? How good, how generous it was of -you to take in an unknown stranger, and to keep him all these months -on the fat of the land! You looked after my health as carefully as -after Richard’s, the son worthy of your love. You supplied me, too, -with books, and made the best possible provision for my time of study: -may I perish, if ever in this world, outside my room in Oxford, I had -sweeter dealings with the Muses!... Up to this, I have had to thank -you for conveniences; but now I must thank you for my rescue, and my -very breath,—yes, breath is just the word! for they who succumb to -these persecutors are wont to be thrust into dismal dungeons, where -they inhale filthy fogs, and are cut off from wholesome air. But now, -through you and your children’s kindness, I shall live, please God -... most happily.” The stress laid, in this affectionate letter, upon -the writer’s appreciation of personal care, of the privacy dear to -students, of good diet and pure air, tells its own tale of physical -delicacy. Campion was slight in build, and like many another tireless -and quenchless spirit known to history, at no time really strong. He -ends by asking that his St. Bernard may be sent on to him, and encloses -a lively page for his friend Richard, recalling the service rendered in -snatching him from danger, and conveying him to Turvey House. “Is it -not hard,” Campion breaks out, “that beholden to you as I am, I have -no way of showing it?... Meanwhile, if these buried relics have any -flavour of the old Campion, their flavour is for you ... you and your -brother Walter ... you, up that whole night through, and he, summoned -to us from his wife’s side. Seriously, I owe you much. I have nothing -to write about unless you have time and inclination for a laugh. Have -you? Then hold your breath, and listen! The day after I came here, as -I sat down to work, into the bedroom burst a poor old soul, coming on -what business I wot not. She knew nothing of me, so seeing me suddenly -at her left, took me for a ghost! Her hair rose on end; she went dead -white; she stared aghast; her jaw fell. ‘What is the matter?’ quoth I, -whereupon she almost collapsed with fright. Not a syllable could she -utter, but made shift to flounce out of the room, and pour into her -mistress’s ear how some sort of hideous spectre had appeared to her -on the top floor! This was repeated to me at supper. They called the -little old thing in, and made her relate her scare. We all nearly died -with laughter; and I was established as quite alive.” - -The book, put together, as was almost all Campion’s literary work, -under highly disturbing conditions, is unfinished; and what there -is of it is sketchy and out of proportion. One of its charms is its -character-drawing, including the speeches with which, after the fashion -of Livy, Campion fits the situation by putting them into the mouths -of his personages. His was a dramatic mind. He knew both history and -human nature: the latter knowledge crops up everywhere in all that -he wrote, and spoke, and did, and supplied him with no small share -of his power over others. The outstanding charm of the _History of -Ireland_ is its style, crisp, arresting, bright with idiom: an idiom so -noble and so much his own, that one understands the almost breathless -admiration with which his generation looked up to him and listened to -him. But this book, like the _View of the Present State_, written some -seventeen years later by another gentle-hearted Englishman, the poet -Spenser, is all wrong in its theory that to get any footing in the -modern world the “mere Irishry” must be Anglicized. Campion did not -know the Celts, their laws, nor their literature; he never came nearer -to them than through chronicles written in scorn of them, or the daily -table-talk, wide of the mark, of the English Pale. Yet, according to -his opportunity, he loved the country and the people, and deplored that -the descendants of a race of mediæval scholars should be cut off from -education. Afterwards he felt that his rather helter-skelter pamphlet -represented limited knowledge and unformed opinion; he speaks of it as -“premature,” and wished, when he lost the manuscript, that it might -perish rather than reach the public as it was. It bore a dedication -to the Earl of Leicester, his “singular good lord,” in the hope that -it might “make his travel seem neither causeless nor fruitless,” or, -as he says again in plainer language: “I render you my poor book as -an account of my voyage.” It was first printed, without supervision -from the author, in a very muddled, unsatisfactory way, by Raphael -Holinshed in 1577; then in more scholarly fashion by Sir James Ware, -in his _Ancient Irish Histories_, 1633. We all remember how useful -Holinshed’s pages were to Shakespeare: the twenty lines or so of the -famous description of Wolsey in Act IV, Scene 2, of _Henry VIII_, is -taken almost word for word from what Campion had written, and Holinshed -had incorporated in his _Chronicles_. - -Nowhere in this little book, begun and broken off at Turvey House, and -purposely non-committal in its religious expressions, is there any sign -that its author had already, as some have thought, returned to the -Church. For Parsons, his earliest biographer, whose facts concerning -these years were supplied by Richard Stanihurst, says of Campion that -his purity and devoutness in Ireland were marked, although he was not -in the Church. Fr. Pollen, summing up the evidence of these written -pages, considers Campion “near to the Church, but distinctly avoiding a -confession of faith.” - -Chancellor Weston, a zealot of the most pronounced Protestant type, -made a livelier pursuit after having been baffled by Campion’s escape -from Dublin. The latter found himself quite unable to lead any sort of -orderly life, thanks to the restless hue and cry after him; and one -day he recognized with a shock of horror the penalties to which he was -exposing the generous friends, so far unmolested, who were giving him -shelter. His conscience would not allow him to come out with a flat -denial of Catholic tenets or sympathies. His only alternative, after a -half-year in Ireland, was flight homeward. Here once more he was aided -(though they were in great sorrow at his decision) by his Anglo-Irish -friends, those “dear friends which ever after he loved most entirely, -and they him.” - -Richard Stanihurst, as private tutor to the children of the Earl of -Kildare, had acquaintance with the Earl’s steward, Melchior Hussey. -This man (a character by no means admirable) was about to embark at -Drogheda for a visit to England, and it was arranged that Campion -should be disguised to pass as his Irish servant. Thus, in the month -of May, putting himself under the special patronage of the national -Saint, and adopting his name, Campion boarded the ship as “Mr. -Patrick.” Officers of the law promptly appeared on the track of the -quasi-Papist, delaying the weighing of the anchor, annoying the crew, -upsetting the cargo, and questioning every passenger on deck except the -harmless-looking person who stood “in a lackey’s weed” behind Hussey. -Edmund Campion was a born actor. He put on and kept up a highly stupid -expression, while he was praying with might and main for St. Patrick’s -intercession in his great danger! He had cause to thank his new patron -in Heaven, although the party of searchers swooped upon his bags -below deck, and carried off with them the rough draft of his precious -manuscript, that _History of Ireland_ which he was to see no more for -many a year. - -The early summer of 1571 was ill-starred. Various startling events -had conjoined like tidal waves to lift the misbehaving English -Government up to its highest pitch of alarm. Chief of these was the -Bull of Deposition against Queen Elizabeth, issued by the Holy See -after consultation with many temperate English advisers. John Felton, -a gentleman of Southwark, posted a copy of it upon the palace gates -of the Bishop of London, on the morning of May 25, the Feast of -Corpus Christi: by August he was to pay for the bold act with his -life. The Queen of Scots had newly arrived in England. London, by the -time Campion reached it, was in a ferment. “Nothing was to be found -there but fears, suspicions, arrestings, condemnations, tortures, -executions.... The Queen and Council were so troubled that they could -not tell whom to trust, and so fell to rigorous proceedings against -all, but especially against Catholics, whom they most feared; so that -Campion could not tell where to rest in England, all men being in fear -and jealousy one of another.” - -Campion had not broken his old bonds, yet nothing interested him so -powerfully as the things of religion. The love of God was lying in wait -for him, and forced his hand. Of all possible places in London where -he might have gone on the 26th or 27th of May, he chose Westminster -Hall, in order to attend the trial of Dr. John Storey, former -Principal of Broadgates Hall (Pembroke College) in Oxford, and that -University’s first Regius Professor of Civil Law. Dr. Storey was very -feeble for his years, which were sixty-seven. By a wretched breach of -international law he had been trapped at Antwerp, carried away from -his wife and family to England, and arraigned for having “feloniously -and traitorously comforted Richard Norton,” his own friend, the old -hero of the Pilgrimage of Grace. But the real cause of his arrest and -execution was a much larger matter. He was a troublesomely consistent -person. He had spoken out in the House of Commons against the new -Liturgy in the first Parliament of Edward VI, and against the Supremacy -Bill in the first Parliament of Queen Elizabeth. He had been an -Ecclesiastical Commissioner under Queen Mary. Foxe, in the famous _Book -of Martyrs_, lies in the most reckless way about Storey’s part in those -sordid bygone persecutions, and Holinshed and Strype and many another -historian repeat Foxe. - -Storey was an honourable and even merciful man, but a man of his time. -People were much of a piece in the sixteenth century when it came to -holding to the grindstone the nose of the unwilling! There is this to -be said, however: that the Marian courts dealt out death to heretics -and malcontents, and candidly stopped there, and were not inspired -to any cruelty more subtle; whereas Good Queen Bess not only dealt -out death very much more liberally, but invented a poison for all the -springs of life. Her statutes, terribly oppressive from the first, -ended in what Burke calls the most hateful code framed since the world -began: Penal Laws which, especially from 1585 on, struck without -mercy at Catholics in their rights of worship, property, inheritance, -education, travel, professions, public service and private liberties -of every kind. Another point to be noted in passing is that Queen Mary -persecuted her subjects for changing their religion. Her more ingenious -sister persecuted them for not changing it! Historians have not dwelt -much upon the difference, but to a reader with some philosophy in him -it will have no little weight. - -Dr. Storey was executed five days after his trial, under even more -horrible circumstances than were usual. Edmund Campion had then -left England, after an exceedingly short stay. His standing watch -in Westminster Hall had done more for him than many arguments and -exhortations: it kindled a spark in him which made him, in Lord -Falkland’s phrase, “ready for the utmost hazard of war.” There was a -cause to which he could run home; there was a vocation to which he -could climb: these opened out before him as he stood in the surging -indoor crowd. “He was animated by that blessed man’s example,” says -Parsons, “to any danger and peril for the same faith for which the -Doctor died.” Edmund Campion lost no time. There had been enough of -that sad old game, and he was thirty-one years old, with three quarters -of his too brief life behind him. Now he was awake, and had touched, in -the dark, his heart’s long-patient Master. He set out at once for the -nearest stronghold of apostolic souls, the English Seminary at Douay in -Belgium. - - - - -IV - -CHEYNEY AGAIN: DOUAY: 1571 - - -INTERRUPTED sea-voyages were his fate. This time, half-way across the -Channel, his ship was hailed by a Government frigate, _The Hare_, which -demanded to be shown the ship’s sailing papers, and the passports -of her passengers. Campion had none. Moreover, as his religion was -suspected, the dutiful Protestant frigate, homeward bound, promptly -swallowed him, bag and baggage. His generous friends in Ireland had -forced upon him money for his needs, and the captain who now kidnapped -him found it convenient to keep the money, but kind-heartedly let his -prisoner lose himself in the streets of Dover. Other friends quickly -made the losses good. On Campion’s second attempt to reach Calais -all went well. He did not lack his secular epitaph, so to speak, -at Court. It was not then a legal crime, though it soon became so, -for a Catholic Englishman to leave the country fast being made into -a hell for him. The mighty Cecil treated this expatriation as quite -voluntary. “And it is a very great pity,” he chose to say, looking into -Richard Stanihurst’s gratified eyes, “for Master Campion was one of the -diamonds of England.” - -The date of Campion’s reconciliation to the Church is unknown. It seems -unlikely to have taken place in Ireland. He may have been absolved -from his schism in London, or else as soon as he had reached Douay. -There was a busy trade in wool still flourishing at that time between -Flanders and England, and in the thrifty, kindly towns of the exporting -country refugees formed a considerable part of the population. Douay, -properly speaking, Douai, was called “Doway” by its foster-children. -The creation of its English Seminary was a master-stroke of Dr. William -Allen, Canon of York, afterwards Cardinal, once of Oriel College, -Oxford, and Principal of St. Mary Hall. Indeed, “Oxford may be said -to have founded Douay.” Allen was aided by many men of mark, notably -by his old tutor, Morgan Phillipps, and by the latter’s bequeathed -funds; also by the Flemish Abbots and layfolk. Campion seems to have -been the eighteenth arrival in the newly established house of young, -prayerful, enthusiastic men. He found there as Professor of Hebrew, -his beloved Gregory Martin, and a learned colleague, Richard Bristow, -late Fellow of Exeter College, the first of the Seminarian priests -to be ordained: two props and pillars of the foundation. There also -was Thomas Stapleton, late Fellow of New College, the most able -Catholic controversialist of the age. Five of the twenty English -students enrolled in 1571, joined the Society of Jesus. The College, -destined to speedy and splendid development, was affiliated to the -Douay University, established some eight years before it by Spanish -munificence and a Papal Bull. Here, then, Edmund Campion came into his -soul’s haven, “out of the swing of the sea.” - -It was Dr. Allen’s missionary policy that all his sons, before memory -of them had grown dim at home, should write to their more undecided -friends in England, doing what they could to win them to the service -of Christ in the Church Catholic. Campion sent a very long document -to this end to his venerated and now ageing friend, Bishop Cheyney: -a wonderful letter, in that live Elizabethan English, which was bold -as surgery itself, yet charged with feeling. Associating his beliefs -with Cheyney’s as the writer does, he helps us to understand his own -doctrinal position while in Oxford and in Dublin. He failed in both -places, writes Fr. Morris, for the same reason: “the position was a -false one, for it was an effort to serve two masters, and to live like -a Catholic and teach the Catholic religion outside the pale of the -Catholic Church.” “There is no end or measure,” he now tells Cheyney -from Douay, “to my thinking of you; and I never think of you without -being horribly ashamed.... So often was I with you at Gloucester, so -often in your private chamber, with no one near us, when I could -have done this business, and I did it not!” By “this business” he -means confessing Catholic truth, and urging Cheyney to return to it. -“And what is worse, I have added flames to the fever by assenting and -assisting. And although you were superior to me, in your counterfeited -dignity, in wealth, age and learning, and though I was not bound to -look after the physicking or dieting of your soul, yet, since you were -of so easy and sweet a temper as in spite of your grey hairs to admit -me, young as I was, to familiar intercourse with you, to say whatever -I chose, in all security and secrecy, while you imparted to me your -sorrows and all the calumnies of the other heretics against you; and -since like a father you exhorted me to walk straight and upright in -the royal road, to follow the steps of the Church, the Councils, and -the Fathers, and to believe that where there was a consensus of these -there could be no spot of falsehood; I am very angry with myself that -I neglected to use such a beautiful opportunity of recommending the -Faith: that through false modesty or culpable negligence, I did not -address with boldness one who was so near to the Kingdom of God. But -as I have no longer the occasion that I had of persuading you face -to face, it remains that I should send my words to you to witness my -regard, my care, my anxiety for you, known to Him to whom I make my -daily prayer for your salvation. Listen, I beseech you, listen to a -few words. You are sixty years old, more or less” (Cheyney was really -sixty-eight), “of uncertain health, of weakened body; the hatred of -heretics, the pity of Catholics, the talk of the people, the sorrow -of your friends, the joke of your enemies. Who do you think yourself -to be? What do you expect? What is your life? Wherein lies your hope? -In the heretics hating you so implacably and abusing you so roundly? -Because of all heresiarchs you are the least crazy? Because you confess -the Living Presence of Christ on the Altar, and the freedom of man’s -will? Because you persecute no Catholics in your diocese? Because -you are hospitable to your townspeople, and to good men? Because you -plunder not your palace and lands, as your brethren do? Surely these -things will avail much, if you return to the bosom of the Church, if -you suffer even the smallest persecution in common with those of the -Household of Faith, or join your prayers with theirs. But now, whilst -you are a stranger and an enemy, whilst, like a base deserter, you -fight under an alien flag, it is in vain to attempt to cover your -crimes with the cloak of virtues.... What is the use of fighting for -many articles of the Faith, and to perish for doubting of a few?... He -believes no one article of the Faith who refuses to believe any single -one. In vain do you defend the religion of Catholics, if you hug only -that which you like, and cut off all that seems not right in your -eyes. There is but one plain, known road: not enclosed by your palings -or mine, not by private judgment, but by the severe laws of humility -and obedience: when you wander from these you are lost. You must be -altogether within the house of God, within the walls of salvation, to -be sound and safe from all injury; if you wander and walk abroad ever -so little, if you carelessly thrust hand or foot out of the ship, if -you stir up ever so small a mutiny in the crew, you shall be thrust -forth: the door is shut, the ocean roars: you are undone!... Do you -remember the sober and solemn answer which you gave me when three years -ago we met in the house of Thomas Dutton at Shireburn, where we were to -dine? We were talking of St. Cyprian. I objected to you (in order to -discover your real opinions) that Synod of Carthage which erred about -the baptism of infants. You answered truly that the Holy Spirit was -not promised to one Province, but to the Church; that the Universal -Church is represented in a full Council; and that no doctrine can be -pointed out about which such a Council ever erred. Acknowledge your own -weapons, which you used against the adversaries of the Mystery of the -Eucharist!... Here you have the most ... apostolic men collected at -Trent ... to contend for the ancient faith of the Fathers! All these, -whilst you live as you are living, anathematize you, hiss you out, -excommunicate you, abjure you.” Campion goes on to urge upon Cheyney -an outward adherence to the Council which had discussed and resolved -his own private beliefs. “Especially now you have declared war against -your colleagues, why do you not make full submission, without any -exceptions, to the discipline of these Fathers?... Once more, consult -your own heart, my poor old friend! give me back your old beauty, and -those excellent gifts which have been hitherto smothered in the mud -of dishonesty. Give yourself to your Mother who begot you to Christ, -nourished you, consecrated you; acknowledge how cruel and undutiful -you have been: let confession be the salve of your sin.... Be merciful -to your soul; spare my grief. Your ship is wrecked, your merchandise -lost: nevertheless, seize the plank of penance, and come even naked -into the port of the Church. Fear not but that Christ will preserve -you with His hand, run to meet you, kiss you, and put on you the white -garment: Saints and Angels will sing for joy! Take no thought for your -life: He will take thought for you who gives the beasts their food, -and feeds the young ravens that call upon Him. If you but made trial -of our banishment, if you but cleared your conscience, and came to -behold and consider the living examples of piety which are shown here -by Bishops, priests, friars, Masters of Colleges, rulers of Provinces, -lay people of every age, rank and sex, I believe that you would give up -six hundred Englands for the opportunity of redeeming the residue of -your time by tears and sorrow.... Pardon me, my venerated old friend, -for these just reproaches, and for the heat of my love. Suffer me to -hate that deadly disease; let me ward off the imminent danger of so -noble a man and so dear a friend with any dose, however bitter. And now -if Christ give grace and you do not refuse, my hopes of you are equal -to my love: and I love you as passing excellent in nature, in learning, -in gentleness, in goodness, and as doubly dear to me for your many -kindnesses and courtesies. If you recover your [spiritual] health, you -make me happy for ever. If you slight me, this letter is my witness. -God judge between you and me: your blood be on yourself! Farewell, from -him that most desires your salvation.” - -One phrase in this steel web of phrases from the pen of a rhetorician -with a heart, shows that Campion knew of Cheyney’s sad and now -complicated position in England. The letter was written November 1, -1571. A Convocation had met in the preceding April, on the heels of the -Act of Uniformity, to which Cheyney was summoned in vain. It required -the signing of the Thirty-nine Articles, and enacted, under Archbishop -Grindal’s leadership, many things equally hateful to Cheyney, such as -displacement and defacement of Altar-stones—(a great symbol, this, -and no mere act of pillage!), the abolition of Prayers for the Dead, -the prohibition even of the Sign of the Cross in church. Cheyney, -excommunicated for his wilful absence, afterwards sued by proxy for -absolution, for the sake of averting temporal penalties: but he had -nothing more to do with the hierarchy. “Now you have declared war -against your colleagues,” shows that Campion had heard accurate news of -all this. - -The moment may have seemed to Campion exactly favourable for such -a strong appeal. One of Cheyney’s successors in his See declared: -“It was certain he died a Papist.” This was contradicted by a lesser -authority, but yet a good one. If it were indeed “certain”, at least -Edmund Campion, to whom the tidings would have been most consoling, -never knew of it. It seems as if Cheyney could not have answered that -bugle-call of a letter. He is said, however, to have kept it always, -and to have called it his greatest treasure. - -How these many cries of “the heat of my love” must have haunted his -ear! It is hardly in human nature to value such a document at all (and -there are passages in it more ruthless, after the manner of the time, -than any we have quoted), unless for the reflex reason that it does its -intended work in the heart of the receiver. To have valued it either -as a piece of literary cleverness, or as a monument of misdirected -concern, would have been equally cynical, and clean contrary to -Cheyney’s known attitude towards his friend. He did not live to see -Campion return to England. Shunning the bigots and the unprincipled men -in power to the last, and sheltering the Catholics all he could, he -shut himself up at Gloucester, a whole High Church party in himself, -wounded and at bay: and there in 1579 he died, and was buried in the -glorious Cathedral, without an epitaph. The dream of his lifetime, as -well as Edmund Campion’s sonship, he had loved and lost. - - - - -V - -THE CALL TO COME UP HIGHER: DOUAY, PRAGUE: 1571-1573 - - -IN Allen’s _Apology for Seminaries_ there is a beautiful account of the -ideals of Douay. “The first thought of the founders of the College had -been to attract the young English exiles who were living in Flanders -from their solitary and self-guided study to a more exact method and -to collegiate obedience; and their next, to provide for the rising -generation in England a succession of learned Catholics, especially of -clergy, to take the place of those removed by old age, imprisonment, -and persecution. Their design then was to draw together out of -England the ‘best wits’ from the following classes; those inclined to -Catholicism; those who desired a more exact education than could be -then obtained at Oxford or Cambridge, ‘where no art, holy or profane, -was thoroughly studied, and some not touched at all;’ those who were -scrupulous about taking the Oath of the Queen’s supremacy; those who -disliked to be forced, as they were in some Colleges of the English -Universities, to enter the ministry; ... and those who were doubtful -which religion was the true one, and were disgusted that they were -forced into one without being allowed opportunity of inquiring into the -other.” The spirit of Douay was not reactionary, but the best spirit -of the English Renaissance. It had, besides, a character or atmosphere -holy and bright, not formed by mere human culture: it was as “a garden -enclosed, and a fountain sealed.” Campion found there a peace such -as he had never known. He had already, at Oxford, given seven years -to philosophy, and six more to Aristotle, positive theology, and the -Fathers. The study of scholastic theology was dead in Oxford: Campion -now first took up the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. He arrived in -June, and in August he bought a noble edition of the _Summa_ for his -own use, in three volumes folio. This was discovered in 1887 by Canon -Didiot of Lille, and it is now at the Roehampton Noviciate. Several -features make it a particularly interesting relic: Campion’s signature, -with the date of his purchase, on the flyleaf; various beautifully -executed little drawings, underlinings, and a host of marginal notes -in Latin. By far the most touching of these relates to what St. Thomas -quotes from Gennadius on the baptism of blood. Blessed Edmund Campion -wrote in a tall, bold hand, over against this passage, the one musing -word, “Martyrdom.” Canon Didiot, with that intimate touch of French -sympathy, calls it “_mot radieux et prophétique_.” - -For nearly two years Campion followed the course of scholastic -theology, taking his degree of Bachelor in January, 1573. He then -received Minor Orders, and was ordained Sub-deacon. All went happily -for him at Douay. He was again at his old work, and, as ever, he won -the highest opinions from those among whom he moved. In his Oxford -days he had always held lofty standards before his pupils: “never -to deliquesce into sloth, nor to dance away your time, nor to live -for rioting and pleasure ... but to give yourselves up to virtue and -learning, and to reckon this the one, great, glorious and royal road.” -But the feeling in the exhortations of his later life is tenfold -deeper, and strikes a far more haunting note of duty towards England, -and towards the Church. This is a passage from the revised _De Juvene -Academico_, which had first been sketched out years before in Dublin. -“Listen to our Heavenly Father asking back his talents with usury!... -Behold, by the wickedness of the wicked the house of God is devoted -to flames and to destruction; numberless souls are being deceived, -are being shaken, are being lost, any one of which is worth more than -the empire of the whole world.... Sleep not while the Enemy watches; -play not while he devours his prey; sink not into idleness and folly -while his fangs are wet with your brothers’ blood. It is not wealth nor -liberty nor station, but the eternal inheritance of each of us, the -very life-blood of our souls, our spirits, and our lives, that suffers. -See, then, my dearest young scholars and friends, that we lose none of -this precious time, but carry hence a plentiful and rich crop, enough -to supply the public want, and to gain for ourselves the reward of -dutiful sons.” One of those who listened to these words was destined to -become the proto-martyr of the English Continental Seminaries: Cuthbert -Mayne, a dear pupil of Campion’s, who as a Devon lad had come up to -Oxford and St. John’s, had first conformed to the new regulations, -and served as College Chaplain, then awakened from his delusion, and -fled over seas for conscience’ sake, “not to escape danger, but to be -prepared for it,” in response to one of Campion’s burning letters. This -letter was intercepted, but its purport had reached him, and decided -him. - -In the spring of 1573, Campion found himself driven to a course he -had not contemplated on coming to Douay. As he slowly saw his way, he -followed it, to horizon beyond horizon. He had many steps to take, -because in his thirst for perfection he had far to travel. He told -Dr. Allen he wished to leave his present life, go on pilgrimage, in -the spirit of penance, to the Tomb of the Apostles at Rome, and there -seek admission into the Society of Jesus. The mediæval Orders would -have less attraction for Campion: he was an intensely “modern” man. -Now this was a severe blow to Allen: hardly less so to others of -Campion’s circle. Campion, the pride, the example, the hope of the -Seminary, to quit it for good, and to quit it in order to join the -most recent of religious communities—one which as yet had few English -members! It was inexplicable. But Allen, like the great-hearted and -broad-minded commander-in-chief he was, let him go without protest. He -little foresaw that far from losing his most promising champion, he was -but lending him to better masters of the interior life than himself, -and would receive his trained strength again in the English Mission’s -spiritual day of battle. - -Campion set out on foot across the Continent for Rome, along that road -“trodden by many a Saxon king and English saint, to the Apostles’ -shrine.” His companions walked with him all the first day; but the next -morning he sent them back, and pushed on alone. Solitude was henceforth -his choice, whenever duty permitted. He must have had many strange -adventures during that spring journey. We know of one of them, though -not from him. At some point of the route, probably on the northern -Italian border, he came face to face with an old friend, an Oxonian, -and a Protestant. The horseman first rode past the poor mendicant on -the highway, and then was prompted by some dim sense of recognition -to return and speak to him. On realizing that it was really Edmund -Campion whom he used to know “in great pomp of prosperity,” he showed -much concern, proffered his good-will and his purse, and begged to hear -how Campion had fallen into that ill plight. But the pilgrim refused -aid; and the other traveller heard something then and there of the -“contempt of this world, and the eminent dignity of serving Christ in -poverty,” which greatly moved him: and “us also,” adds Robert Parsons -of Balliol, “that remained yet in Oxford, when the report came to our -ears.” A strange tale it must have seemed to those who knew their -Master of Arts and all his old fastidiousness! He was by now a saint -in the making, and they were fast losing touch with him. Personal -holiness is, so to speak, a mining country: its progress and its wealth -are underground, unguessed-at by the careless passer-by. A saint is a -mystery because he walks so closely in the shadow of God, who is the -Great Mystery. - -When Campion reached Rome, and had paid his devotions to the holy -places, he went to call upon Cardinal Gesualdi, who, as he stated -afterwards, “having some liking of me, would have been the means to -prefer me ... but I, resolved what course to take, answered that I -meant not to serve any man, but to enter into the Society of Jesus, -thereof to vow and to be professed.” With this intention, Campion -sought out the newly-elected head of that Society, Father Everard of -Liège, whose surname was generally Latinized into Mercurianus, from -Mercœur, his native village. He was fourth in his office, having -succeeded that great personality St. Francis Borgia, on St. George’s -Day, April 23, 1573. Biographers have represented that Campion had a -half-year’s delay in Rome before he was able to apply for admission to -the Society; but such was not the case. He promptly presented himself, -and was received as Mercœur’s first recruit, and received not as a -postulant, but as a novice. As Anthony Wood tells us, “he was esteemed -by the General of that Order to be a person every way complete.” Four -years later, Campion most affectionately thanked his own old tutor, -John Bavand, for unasked “introductions, help and money,” which had -been supplied since he came to Rome. He speaks of himself as “one whom -you knew never could repay you, but who was at the point, so to speak, -of death.... You were munificent to me when I was going to enter the -sepulchral rest of religion.” The aid he would not accept for himself -on his journey from one friend, he had accepted in the city (and spent, -no doubt, in almsgiving) from another. Perhaps Bavand was abroad, -and heard of that incident which came to pass on the road: certainly, -he was one from whom Campion could not in chivalry refuse whatever he -chose to share with him. - -The Society of Jesus had been founded only six years before Campion -was born. It had as yet no English “Province,” that is, no members -living under the English flag with a domestic government of their -own. But Edmund Campion was already well known to the Provincials on -the Continent, who had a warm contest over him, every one of them -wishing to add such a promising soldier to his own wing of the army -of the Lord. As it fell out, Bohemia won. Campion was sent as one -of a company to Vienna, and then from Vienna to Prague, where the -Noviciate was, with Father Avellanedo, Confessor to the Empress, a man -of wide experience. He was so deeply edified by his companion that, -he told Fr. Parsons long after, it had kept him all his life “much -affectioned” towards England and Englishmen. Prague was in a miserable, -godless state: the Catholics were poor and few: the great University -had perished: and all this was due to the ruin, moral and material, -produced by the preaching, at the dawn of the fifteenth century, of -John Hus. That Hus got his Socialistic ideas from Wyclif was a fact -never out of Campion’s mind while in Bohemia: for he thought that -England owed some reparation to a country which she had helped to -spoil, and he was more than willing to pay his part of that debt. - - - - -VI - -THE WISHED-FOR DAWN: BOHEMIA: 1573-1579 - - -CAMPION stayed but two months at Prague, as the small Noviciate was -removed to Brünn in Moravia, where the inhabitants were most hostile -to Catholicism. The Bishop of Olmütz begged the Jesuits to help him -so far as their Rule permitted. Novices were sent out among the -neighbouring villages, to catechize and instruct the poorer Catholics; -and no one had so instant a success in this little enterprise as “God’s -Englishman.” At the year’s end his Novice Master, John Paul Campanus, -became Rector of the College in Prague, and took Edmund Campion back -with him. The latter left a good deal of his heart within the gray and -austere walls of Brünn, as two of his charming letters show. In the old -garden, under a mulberry tree, he had had a wonderful vision: Our Lady -stood there, smiling at him, and offering him a purple robe. He knew -the portent of martyrdom, but for long hid it in his heart. At Prague -Campion continued and increased his Douay employments. He opened the -October term with what was called a “glorious peroration”. As Professor -of Rhetoric, he wrote, in 1574, a beautiful little treatise on that -subject so familiar to him. His duty was to be first in the house to -rise and last to go to bed; he spent his recreation-time catechizing -children, receiving converts, visiting the prison and the hospital, -or helping the cook in the kitchen! In January, 1575, he set up at -his College a branch Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, or -Sodality of Our Lady, of which he became president. About the same -time he made his first vows. He was continually called upon for great -College occasions, and to pronounce public panegyrics. “Whatever had -to be done,” says his pompous but sympathetic biographer Bombino, “was -laid upon him.” On getting a fresh task he would ask his Superior, -in a spirit of perfect humility and confidence, if he was thought -strong enough to add that to the rest? and if the answer were Yes, he -shouldered the new duty at once, much to the wonder of others. “I am -in a continual bloom of health,” he writes gallantly to his “dearest -Parsons,” who had just entered the Society; “I have no time whatever -to be ill in!” Two sacred plays (six hours did it take to perform each -of them!) came from Campion’s truly dramatic pen in 1577. One was on -the Sacrifice of Abraham; one on the melancholy career of King Saul. It -is a matter of much regret that these are lost. He seems also to have -composed dialogues and scenes for his own scholars, and to have put -together at this same time his spirited account of the origin of the -English schism, in a narrative (in Latin) of _The Divorce of King Henry -VIII from his Wife and from the Church_. It was printed by Harpesfield, -long after Campion’s death. - -Meanwhile Rudolph II had succeeded to the imperial throne; and the -“magnificently provided” Envoy who was sent to Prague, bearing the -congratulations of Queen Elizabeth, was none other than Sir Philip -Sidney. Sidney’s mind was set upon seeing his old friend Campion, -and talking with him; but he managed only with difficulty to carry -out his wishes. He went officially in the Emperor’s train to hear -his friend (not yet in priest’s orders) preach, and on his return -to England unguardedly spoke with delight of the sermon. Whenever -Sidney visited the Continent he was supposed to become tainted with a -hankering after Catholicism, though in all his public actions he was -conspicuously Protestant. Campion, who knew him from boyhood and was -not given to misjudgment, believed that he had almost won over the -star of English chivalry: “this young man so wonderfully beloved and -admired,” he calls him in 1576; a testimony doubly interesting, when -we remember that Philip Sidney was then but three-and-twenty, to the -effect which his short life made upon all his contemporaries. “He had -much conversation with me,” Campion’s letter goes on, “and I hope not -in vain, for to all appearances he was most keen about it. I commend -him to your remembrances at Mass, since he asked the prayers of all -good men, and at the same time put into my hands alms to be distributed -to the poor for him; this trust I have discharged.” He ends by hoping -that some of the missionaries then going back to England from Douay -will have “opportunity of watering this plant ... poor wavering soul!” -Fr. Parsons in his _Life of Campion_ tells us that Sidney “professed -himself convinced, but said that it was necessary for him to hold on -the course which he had hitherto followed.” Such was the sad answer of -Felix to St. Paul. - -Campion’s thoughts had turned often of late to another friend, Gregory -Martin, who had left overcrowded Douay for the Seminary newly founded -in the heart of Rome, in the ancient English hospice for pilgrims. -Campion longed to turn his fellow-priest into a Jesuit, for he loved -his own Society in the extreme; but that was not to be. A letter to -Martin, glowing with that interior fire which was shed out from Edmund -Campion upon everything he touched, ends most tenderly. “Since for so -many years we two had in common our College, our meals, our studies, -our friends and our enemies, let us for the rest of our lives make -a more close and binding union, that we may have the fruit of our -friendship in heaven. For there also I will, if I can, sit at your -feet.” - -After years filled with literary and academic labour in two Colleges, -and blessed with marked growth in holiness, Edmund Campion was ordained -priest by the Archbishop of Prague. His first Mass was said on the -Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady, September 8, 1578. Following his -General’s express command, he dismissed the old unhappy scruple -about his Oxford diaconate, and it troubled him no more. He was made -Professor of Philosophy. “You are to know,” he pleasantly says, “that -I am foolishly held to be an accomplished sophist!” During the course -of this year 1578, he wrote his last and most famous drama, now lost, -on St. Ambrose and the Emperor Theodosius, which, when acted, made -a tremendous stir. He became ever more and more noted as a preacher, -a “sower of eternity” in the popular heart, as well as the favourite -orator when grandees died and were buried in state. But all this time -his mind and heart were far away. - -No one ever practised religious obedience in a more heroic spirit; yet -he secretly longed to throw his life and his labours directly into the -balance for England’s sake. He knew what was going on there, and his -thoughts seem never once to have turned towards pikes, or any political -remedy; his whole ambition was, as he said in one letter, to “torture -our envious foe with good deeds,” and in another, “to catch them by -the prayers and tears at which they laugh.” His long-dear Cuthbert -Mayne, of whom he had lost sight for awhile, had given up his life for -the Faith at Launceston, November 29, 1577. He had been captured near -Probus; his wealthy host, Francis Tregian, was attainted of præmunire, -and his children completely beggared. This young Westcountryman had -a character all his own. He had been charged with nothing but the -exercise of his priestly functions, and was offered his life, on the -day of his execution, if he would but swear that the Queen was Supreme -Head of the Church of England. “Upon this,” continues the chronicle, -“he took the Bible into his hands, made the sign of the Cross upon -it, kissed it, and said: ‘The Queen neither ever was, nor is, nor -ever shall be, the Head of the Church of England!’” Campion had only -recently heard the news in the August of 1579. One can read between the -lines of a passage like this: “We all thank you much for your account -of Cuthbert’s martyrdom; it gave many of us a divine pleasure. Wretch -that I am, how far has that novice distanced me! May he be favourable -to his old friend and tutor! Now shall I boast of these titles more -than ever before.” Within the next six months Edmund Campion was to see -the beginning of his heart’s desire. - -Dr. Allen, the founder of Douay, was in Rome to organize the English -College; and there he brought all his persuasion to bear upon the -General of the Society of Jesus and his consultors, that the English -Jesuits might be allowed to join the English secular priests in the -pressing redemption of their distracted country. There were the gravest -reasons for and against the proposal, but the answer given to Dr. -Allen was that the Society would do its best to supply missioners -thenceforward, and that Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion should be -sent first as forerunners of the rest. Allen was naturally overjoyed. -While Mercœur, the Father-General, wrote officially to Campion’s -Superior at Prague, Allen wrote a moving letter to Campion himself: -“My father, brother, son,” he calls him, “make all haste and come, -my dearest Campion ... from Prague to Rome, and thence to our own -England.” ... “God, in whose hands are the issues, has at last granted -that our own Campion, with his extraordinary gifts of wisdom and grace, -shall be restored to us. Prepare yourself, then, for a journey, for a -work, for a trial.” - -The imaginations of Campion’s comrades at Prague were touched to the -quick by the prospect opening before their happy brother. One of these -bore witness to the fragrance of his own thoughts by painting a garland -of roses and lilies on the wall of Campion’s little room, just at -the bed’s head. A white-haired Silesian, Father James Gall, wrote in -scroll fashion, by night, over the outer door of that same little room: -“P[ater] Edmundus Campianus, Martyr.” For such a romantic irregularity -the old saint was reprimanded. He replied quite simply: “But I had to -do it!” Poor Campion, who was shy, had seen both these things, before -Campanus, the sympathetic Rector, gave him his marching orders to start -at once for Rome. “The Fathers do verily seem to suspect something -about me; I hope their suspicions may come true!” he said. “God’s will -be done, not mine.” And then, adds that first English biographer who -so well knew him and so much loved him: “Being scarce able to hold -tears for joy and tenderness of heart, he went to his chamber, and -there upon his knees to God satisfied his appetite of weeping and -thanksgiving, and offered himself to His divine disposition without any -exception or restraint: whether it were to rack, cross-quartering, or -any other torment or death whatsoever.” - - - - -VII - -A LONG MARCH: ROME, GENEVA, RHEIMS: 1580 - - -FROM Prague to Munich, and from Munich to Innsbrück, Campion had the -distinguished and very friendly company of Ferdinand, brother of the -reigning Duke of Bavaria. Afterwards he went on alone on foot, as he -was always glad to do, as far as Padua. Here he took horse for Rome, -which he reached just before Palm Sunday, April 5, 1580, coming “in -grave priest’s garb,” we are told, “with long hair, after the fashion -of Germany.” He was informed by the Father-General that he was to start -for England nine or ten days after Easter. Campion begged “neither -to be Superior of the expedition nor to have anything to do with -the preparations,” and that during the fortnight he might be free -from all except necessary cares, in order to make a more devotional -entrance upon the life ahead of him. “And the like did, for their part, -and had done, all the Lent before, those other priests also of the -English Seminary,” says Parsons, speaking of many seculars afterwards -martyred, “that were appointed by their Superiors to go with us in this -mission.... All these together used such notable and extraordinary -diligence for preparing themselves well in the sight of God ... as was -matter of edification to all Rome.” - -Rome was a most religious place at that time, not only in its enduring -associations, but in the temper of the people. One in large measure -responsible for its spirit of penance and prayer, and loving charity -to the poor, was then living at San Girolamo, opposite the old English -hospital, now turned into a College: this was St. Philip Neri, the -most venerated and endearing figure in all the great city. He knew -the successive little English bands; when he passed them in the -streets, cheerful St. Philip used to smile tenderly, and give what must -have been to them a thrilling greeting: “‘Hail, Little Flowers of -Martyrdom!’” the opening line of the Breviary Hymn for Holy Innocents’ -Day. Parsons and Campion, and the secular clerics associated with them, -may have originated the custom of going over to San Girolamo for a -special fatherly blessing before setting forth to almost certain death. -There is a tradition (mentioned by Newman) that one of that company did -not care to seek St. Philip’s prayers, and that afterwards he failed -to persevere. This is thought to be the lay student, John Paschall, or -Pascal, who was apparently of an unstable disposition, and is known to -have forsworn the Faith, when his great chance came to profess it. - -The Pope, Gregory XIII, showed untiring and fatherly interest in all -the missionaries, and their travelling funds were his personal gift. -He wept over them in bestowing his parting benediction. Campion set -out this time with seven English priests, Ralph Sherwin, a former -Fellow of Exeter College, among them; also with two lay brothers, and -two students. Others joined them from Rheims and Louvain, some of -them advanced in years and well known. The party adopted the novel and -almost daredevil fashion of going on foot; but, mounted and riding -privately in advance of it, were its two eldest members. One was the -holy octogenarian Thomas Goldwell, the Lord Bishop of St. Asaph, who -had been offered by Queen Mary a transfer to the See of Oxford, and -refused it. He was destined to be the last survivor of the deposed and -scattered Catholic hierarchy in England, who had all but one refused -the unheard-of Oath in 1559, and had all been deprived of their Sees -that same year. Bishop Goldwell now, twenty years afterwards, was one -of two who were living; and his colleague, Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, -was in prison. The other senior missionary was his companion, Dr. -Nicholas Morton, Canon Penitentiary of St. Peter’s, who had done -something already towards the making of English history. The first -little Jesuit group of three was commanded by Fr. Robert Parsons, a -born organizer, a man of splendid resources, afterwards celebrated, -and much loved and hated. For convenience, as for safety, they all -put on secular dress. Campion, however, would buy no new clothes, but -arrayed himself in an old buckram suit, with a shabby cloak. When -rallied on his highly inelegant appearance, he remarked with the gay -spirit so like that of another “blissful martyr,” Sir Thomas More, that -a man going forth to be hanged need trouble himself little about the -fashion! - -The roads were bad beyond any modern idea of badness, and it poured -rain for the first nine or ten days. Campion, the least robust of -the party, and the most poorly clad, fell ill under such combined -discomforts, and while crossing the Apennines had to be lifted into -the saddle of one of the very few horses which had been brought along -for the sake of the infirm. As soon as he was well enough he resumed -his daily habit of saying Mass very early, and of walking on, in the -later morning hours, till he was a mile ahead of the rest, to make his -meditation, read his Office, and say the Litany of the Saints, before -he should be overtaken. He and his comrades planned their spiritual -life, day by day, with the most careful regularity. Their talk was -always of souls: “the Harvest” was their word for England, or else “the -Warfare.” In the chilly spring twilights Campion would push on ahead -again, “to make his prayers alone, and utter his zealous affections to -his Saviour without being heard or noted.” - -[Illustration: “P(ater) Edmundus Campianus, Martyr.” p 73.] - -The route lay through Siena, Florence, Bologna. In the latter city -there was a week’s delay, due to an injury to Fr. Parsons’ leg. The -band of twelve was entertained by the Cardinal Archbishop of that See, -who was the historian of the Council of Trent: Gabriel Paleotto. Like -Avellanedo, like many another Italian, Paleotto loved the English. -“Were he a born Englishman, he could not love them more,” wrote -Agazzario to Allen, at that time when the national temperament was -much more expressive and responsive than it is now. At Milan, in the -early part of May, the future confessors and martyrs were to find -another and a greater, also “much affectioned” towards them, who -received them most hospitably, and even asked the English College for -other relays of guests in the future. This was the great Archbishop, -St. Charles Borromeo. Bishop Goldwell, who had passed through Milan -days before the walkers reached it, had been, in 1563, Vicar-General -to St. Charles, and would have bespoken his interest in the little -party. The reverend host complimented Ralph Sherwin by asking him to -deliver a sermon before him, and as for Campion, he was required to -discourse daily after dinner. St. Charles himself, all the while, -whether vocal or silent, was acting upon the pilgrims as a _Sursum -corda_. “Without saying a word, he preached to us sufficiently,” says -the ever-appreciative Parsons, “and so we departed from him greatly -edified and exceedingly animated.” How charming is the forgotten use -of the last word, meaning “souled,” or, as we still say, “heartened,” -“inspirited!” Such indeed is the true function of the saints. - -From Turin the little company made for Mount Cenis, and young, -middle-aged and old lustily climbed it; and then among the torrents -and boulders of that glorious scenery, they came down into Savoy. -At St. Jean Maurienne they found the roads blocked by the Spanish -soldiery, and at Aiguebelle ran across other disturbances, caused by -the wars of religion raging in the Dauphiné. As there was nothing -to do but abandon the direct route, they turned aside and entered -Geneva, the hotbed of Calvinism, and the home of Theodore Beza, the -learned apostate who had succeeded to Calvin’s leadership. There was a -close community of spirit between Geneva and the English Reformation. -However, Switzerland, then as now, had liberal laws, and any traveller, -Catholic or Protestant, was free to pass, unmolested though not -unquestioned, three days in the city. It looks decidedly like an -alloy of mischief on the part of five of the English that they went -to call in a body on Beza! They were admitted as far as the court by -Claudine, his stolen wife, whom they had all heard of, and were not -ill-pleased to see. When the famous greybeard came out they managed, -after passing their compliments, to worry him with some telling -controversial shots. Campion knew not how to be rude: but Sherwin found -amusement, ever afterwards, in remembering how that honest fellow -“Patrick” stood and looked and talked, cap in hand, “facing out” (such -is Sherwin’s shockingly boyish language in a private letter), “the -old doting heretical fool.” The celebrity so described behaved rather -vaguely, and, in the course of nature, could not have been sorry to -see the last of his besiegers, and of their wits, sharpened with life -in the open air. He bowed them out with less abruptness than might -have been expected—indeed, with a certain show of civility; and went -back to his books. Later, Sherwin and two other youngsters, in a -midnight discussion with some English Protestant students, actually -challenged Beza and all Calvindom to a trial of theologies, with -the drastic proviso that the defeated party should be burnt in the -marketplace! Meanwhile Campion, in the _rôle_ of “Patrick,” did his -share of “facing out” other worthies in Geneva, besides finding an old -University friend there, who “used him lovingly,” but reported that an -alarm had been raised, and encouraged the departure of the paladins. -These, halting on a spur of the Jura before nightfall, with Lake Leman -spread beneath them, said _Te Deum_ together, that they were safely -out of the city. There seems to have been a good deal of curiosity -or bravado mingled with their polemical zeal, and Campion’s always -tender conscience would have readily accepted, if it did not suggest, -a suitable penance for the raid. So off they trudged nine steep, -contrite, extra miles (“extreme troublesome,” we are told they were) to -the nearest shrine, that of St. Claude, over the French border. - -They entered Rheims the last day of May, 1580, for in Rheims was -the soul, if not the body, of the College now driven, partly for -convenience, partly by force of trouble, out of Douay. That College -was never re-formed: but the scholar-exiles lived close together, up -and down the street still called _Rue des Anglais_. The travellers -were rapturously welcomed by all, especially by the great Englishman -whom the old narrative quaintly calls “Mr. Dr. Allen, the President.” -Here at Rheims the venerable Bishop of St. Asaph fell ill of a fever. -He was never again to cross the Channel. By the time he had fairly -recovered, rumours of his movements had naturally got abroad, and the -Pope was unwilling to imperil so important and precious a person. While -still a convalescent at Rheims, Goldwell wrote to his Holiness in -person, begging him to listen to no objections, but to anoint at once -three or four new Bishops to shepherd their own needy Church; and he -very touchingly assures the Holy Father, knowing that the question of -a fitting maintenance for them would arise, that God had so inclined -the minds of all the English priests whom he knew to put up with their -penniless and hunted daily lives, and the vision of the gallows always -before them, that any of these, once consecrated, would be entirely -contented to go on as poorly as he had gone heretofore, like a Bishop -of the Early Church. The application failed. “Etiquette and routine -prevailed,” says Simpson, in summing up this incident. - -In truth, it was not that good-will was lacking. Nobody on the Catholic -side believed that the new sad order of things in England was going -to last, and consequently, waiting and postponing in a matter of this -sort, could not seem the disastrous mistake which it really was. The -upshot, in any case, was that the good Bishop was recalled to Rome, and -there died; and that for thirty weary years the poor flock struggled -on without any qualified prelate to supply their crying spiritual -wants and hold them together. Then the first provisional leader, known -as the Archpriest, was appointed, and later came Vicars Apostolic. -When finally the longed-for mitres were seen again in the land, they -had been absent too long. The nominal link snapped; the great native -tradition was broken; the titles of the ancient Sees, given up, as -if in sleep, by their lineal heirs, were never reclaimed. So far as -surface connection goes,—and it goes far indeed with people in general, -who neither reason nor read, but get all their ideas from what they -see and hear, this was the most tragic loss which could possibly have -befallen the post-Reformation Church. (The English Benedictines kept -the thread of their own dynasty in their hands: but this did not affect -the Catholic body, and the lay interest.) The stranger who could not -destroy the life and blessing of the firstborn has had possession, for -three centuries and a half, by royal grant, of his home and of his very -name. - - - - -VIII - -INHOSPITABLE HOME: 1580 - - -SIR FRANCIS WALSINGHAM had a wonderfully well-organized spy-system: far -superior, as Simpson remarks, to the attempts of the Spaniards in the -same line. Therefore each of the missionaries was cautioned to travel -under a name other than his own. Campion fell back upon his beloved -alias of “Mr. Patrick,” as he had done for the brief visit to Geneva. -His friends made him drop it, as they neared the Channel; being Irish, -it was doubly dangerous, since here at Rheims the home-goers got their -first tardy news of the so-called Geraldine insurrection in Ireland, -acted upon in July, 1579, and crushed almost as soon by the massacre -at Smerwick in Kerry. It had been nursed by European feeling against -Elizabeth’s policy in Flanders, and her piracies on the high seas; and -the great religious grudge found it a convenient opening. Dr. Nicholas -Sander, who was not a Papal Legate, but stood none the less for the -Pope’s active good-will in the matter, joined the expedition with James -Fitzmaurice, Spanish soldiers, Roman officers, ships and supplies. That -expedition did not, as we know, dislodge Jezebel from her throne, but -it gave sufficient heartbreak to our messengers of the Gospel of Peace, -who were now sure to be mixed up with it in the popular mind. The -situation was certainly an awkward one. It gave unique plausibility to -Walsingham’s claim that (to quote Fr. Pollen) “the preaching of the old -Faith was only a political propaganda.” Father Robert Parsons faced the -future, on behalf of the rest, in the spirit of a brave man. “Seeing -that it lay not in our hands to remedy the matter, our consciences -being clear, we resolved ourselves, with the Apostle, ‘through evil -report and good report’ to go forward only with the spiritual action -we had in hand. And if God had appointed that any of us should suffer -in England under a wrong title, as Himself did upon the case of a -malefactor, we should lose nothing thereby, but rather gain with Him -who knew the truth, and Whom only in this enterprise we desired to -please.” - -Danger was a spur and not a bridle to Campion’s devoted will. But he -began to foresee little fruit from labours on his native ground, with -so much fierce misunderstanding against him; and to fear that he had -not done well in so gladly laying down what was, after all, steady -and successful work in Bohemia. With this buzzing scruple he went to -the President for advice. Allen replied that the work in “Boemeland,” -excellent at all points as it had been, yet could be done by any -equally qualified person, or “at least by two or three” such persons, -whereas in his own necessitous England Campion would be given strength -and grace to supply for many men. - -At Rheims, during his waiting-time, Campion preached one of his -famous sermons to the students. It gave him a pathetic pleasure to be -complimented upon his ready English, of which he had spoken little -in private, and not a word in public, for eight years. His text is -reported to have been Luke xii. 49: “I am come to send fire upon the -earth; and what will I but that it shall be kindled?” and at one point -he cried out in so earnest a manner: “Fire, fire, fire, fire!” that -those outside the Chapel ran for the water-buckets! But a careful -reading of what was then spoken suggests quite a different passage -of Holy Scripture as present in Campion’s mind. His theme was the -ruin wrought by the conflagration of heresy, now attacking a third -generation of Christian souls, and to be put out, he says, by “water of -Catholic doctrine, milk of sweet and holy conversation, blood of potent -martyrdom.” Isaiah lxiv. 11, runs: “Our holy and our beautiful house -where our fathers praised Thee, is burned up with fire; and all our -pleasant things are laid waste.” This very passage had been alluded to -in one of Campion’s former exhortations, and may have been a favourite -with him. The whole trend, indeed, and every part of this Rheims sermon -bear out the thoughts not of the Apostle’s page, but of the Prophet’s. - -Bishop Goldwell and Dr. Morton, the highest in office of the -missionary party, remained at Rheims. Three Englishmen, a lay Professor -of Law, and two priests, joined in, to fill up the gap, then another -Jesuit, who had been labouring in Poland: this was Fr. Thomas Cottam, -ordered home to restore his health, but destined, as were so many of -his comrades, for martyrdom. The little band of fifteen divided, and -sailed from different ports: Campion, with Parsons and one lay brother, -Ralph Emerson, headed for Calais as their point of departure, going -by way of St. Omers, “not a little encouraged to think that the first -mission of St. Augustine and his fellows into [our] island was by that -city.” Here there was another Jesuit College. The Flemish Fathers -croaked friendly warnings in their ears, for it was common rumour -in St. Omers that the Queen’s Council had full information of the -appearance, dress and movements of the exiles, and had officers posted -to waylay them on arrival. They had come on foot nearly nine hundred -miles, and were not likely to give up the object of their journey. But -they took precautions. It was decided that Parsons should go first, -in military attire, accompanied from the Low Countries by a good youth -who passed as his man George; and that if Parsons got safely to Dover, -he was to send for Campion and the faithful little soul Ralph Emerson. -An English gentleman “living over seas for his conscience,” brought Fr. -Parsons his fine disguise: nothing less than a Captain’s uniform of -buff leather, with gold lace, big boots, sword, hat, plume, and all. -Campion, when he had gone, sat down to write to the General of the -Society about him, with his inevitably pictorial touch. “Father Robert -sailed from Calais after midnight.... They got him up like a soldier: -such a peacock! such a swaggerer!... such duds, such a glance, such -a strut! A man must have a sharp eye indeed,” he adds, “to catch any -glimpse of the holiness and modesty that lurk there underneath it all.” -He goes on to explain how he is laying out money to buy numerous and -silly clothes “to dress up myself and Ralph,” whereby “to cheat the -madness of this world.” Fr. Parsons, like Campion himself in lesser -_rôles_, must have been a dramatic genius, for arriving at Dover on -the 12th of June, and falling into the hands of the searcher, he so won -him over, by the mere swagger and strut aforementioned, as not only to -be passed without inquiry, but to be helped to a horse to carry him -to Gravesend. Thereupon the Captain was quick to bespeak the interest -of so unexpectedly polite a functionary in his friend “Mr. Edmunds,” -described as a jewel-merchant lying at St. Omers; and he gave the -searcher a letter recommending London as a good market, to be forwarded -post-haste to that gentleman, and to be shown to the searcher again by -“Mr. Edmunds” himself when he came over. And by the reception of that -letter Campion learned that Fr. Parsons was scot-free, and speeded on -his way. - -On the Feast of his old College patron, St. John the Baptist, “Mr. -Edmunds,” followed by Brother Ralph, his supposed servant, boarded the -vessel bound for Dover. At daybreak they stepped ashore under the white -cliffs, and there kneeling a moment in the shadow of a rock, Campion -renewed his offering of himself, without reserve or condition, to the -God of Hosts, for the dark “warfare” which lay before him. - -Meanwhile, the dispositions of the searcher (who evidently put in no -appearance) had undergone a forced change. He and the Mayor of the town -had been reprimanded by the Council for letting Papists slip through -their nets. Moreover, there had been furnished, by a spy, a detailed -description of Cardinal Allen’s brother, who was about to pass through -Dover on his way to relatives in Lancashire; and as Gabriel Allen and -Edmund Campion looked very much alike, our jewel-merchant found himself -instantly under arrest. With an accuracy which he was not in the least -aware of, the Mayor charged him and the lay brother of being “foes to -the Queen’s religion and friends to the old Faith; with sailing under -false names, and with returning for the purpose of propagating Popery.” -Campion offered to swear that he was not Gabriel Allen, but offered -in vain. The Mayor held a hasty conference, and ordered a mounted -guard to carry both prisoners up to Sir Francis Walsingham and the -Council. All this time, Campion was praying to God for deliverance, -and earnestly begging St. John the Baptist to intercede for himself -and his companion. They were waiting near the closed door of a room. -“Suddenly,” wrote Campion himself long after, to the Father-General, -“suddenly cometh forth an old man: God give him grace for his pains! -‘Well,’ quoth he, ‘it is agreed you shall be dismissed: fare ye well.’” -After which the two Jesuits left without further notice or opposition, -and travelled as fast as ever they could to London. - -Fr. Parsons had reached the city not without adventure, but without -mishap, a fortnight before. Yet as no word had been received since from -him, Campion had no idea how to proceed or whither to go; nor could -he inquire without arousing suspicion. Fortunately Parsons had given -to some watchful young Catholics a description of the jewel-merchant -and his man: Ralph Emerson was easily recognizable on account of his -extremely short stature. Thus they had hardly touched the wharf at the -Hythe before a stranger, Thomas Jay, stepped to the gangway, with a -welcoming gesture, saying: “Mr. Edmunds, give me your hand: I stay here -for you, to lead you to your friends.” Under this guidance Campion -reached London and Chancery Lane, where he was clothed and armed, and -provided with a horse. He must have been astonished to learn under -whose roof he was so safe and so comfortable: for it was none other -than that of the chief pursuivant! Here was, indeed, a case of the bird -nesting in the cannon’s mouth. St. Augustine warns us that we are not -to think that ungodly men are kept in this world for nothing, nor that -God has no good purposes of His own to fulfil through them. One cause -of the miraculous preservation of the ancient Faith under Elizabeth lay -in the fact that many an official, high and low, of that time-serving -Government, was in the pay of the Recusant gentry. A strange situation -it was, and by no means an infrequent one, when some of these, brought -before the magistrates, would be discharged on the assurance of the -bought-over official that the prisoner was “an honest gentleman”: thus -averting all suspicion from the latter for the time being. - -The band of lay Catholics, some of whom Campion had known from boyhood, -like Henry Vaux and Richard Stanihurst, were acting as friends, freely -leagued together, as occasion arose, for the helping of priests, -and the furthering of religion. Their time, their thoughts, their -self-sacrifice, their purses, were at the service particularly of the -Jesuits, persons habitually being described by Sir Walter Mildmay in -the Star Chamber as “lewd runagates,” “a sort of hypocrites,” “a rabble -of vagrant friars.” The leader of them all, in his inspiring zeal, -though not highest in station, was George Gilbert, a rich young squire -owning estates (which were confiscated in the end) in Buckinghamshire -and Suffolk. He was a convert, a great rider and athlete, dear to many; -but in secret a lover of apostolic poverty, living for others: in -short, a saint. He spent himself to the last breath for the Faith as -truly as if he had perished at Tyburn Tree. In banishment, he still -served the same cause by his forethought and his generosity in the use -of such worldly goods as were left to him: for he became responsible, -at Rome, for the series of paintings of the English martyrdoms which -gave their chief historical standing to the Beatifications of 1886. -Thus Gilbert, living and dead, was Blessed Edmund Campion’s availing -friend and lover. - - - - -IX - -SKIRMISHING: THE ENGLISH COUNTIES: 1580 - - -THE devoted George Gilbert, his fellowship of young men, and those whom -they gathered together, met on the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul, June -29, to hear, for the first time, Fr. Campion preach. It was no easy -task to find a safe and suitable auditorium; but Lord Paget, one of -their own number, was daring enough to hire from Lord Norreys the hall -of a great house in the neighbourhood of Smithfield. All the servants -and porters were turned out for the occasion, and gentlemen took their -places. Within a few days, however, rumours about Campion’s sermon and -about Campion were flying over the city. There were a number of spies -about, instructed by the Council, pretending to be lapsed Catholics or -unsettled Protestants, and trying hard to bag such new and shining -birds as the Jesuits; but Campion had a friend at court who warned -him, and therefore held only private conferences in friendly houses -with those whom he knew. The missionaries were sent to strengthen the -wills of the wavering Catholics, and not primarily to make converts. -Personal dealings with would-be converts were never attempted except -as supplementary to the action of the lay helpers, who took all the -soundings, and gave any needful catechizing. When Parsons, who had been -away in the country, got back to town, Mr. Henry Orton and Fr. Robert -Johnson had been tracked and imprisoned, through Sledd, the apostate -informer; and it became plain to the rest of the little band gathered -about Parsons and Campion that, for reasons immediate and remote, both -Fathers must be spirited away. Each went mounted, with a companion, -Gervase Pierrepoint being Campion’s guide; and at Hoxton, in July, the -priests parted for their separate fields of action. - -Just before that, however, there arrived as a deputy to them, Mr. -Thomas Pounde of Belmont, the best-known, perhaps, of all English -prisoners for the Faith: he was committed to gaol sixteen times and -passed thirty years in durance. Pounde had managed to bribe the -gaoler of the Marshalsea to let him out for this short journey. Most -anxious for the good repute of the Fathers, he rode post-haste to tell -them that enemies in London were spreading the report that they had -come over for political purposes, and that if in the midst of their -apostolic work in the shires they should be taken and executed, the -Government would be sure to issue pamphlets, as was its habit, defaming -their motives, and slandering the Catholic body. Therefore he begged -both Jesuits to write “a vindication of their presence and purpose in -England,” which, signed and sealed, might be given to the public, if -things came to the worst. The certain accusation and its answer had -been debated before, in council, by many clergy, who had contented -themselves with agreeing to swear, when called upon, that they had no -business whatever in hand but that of religion. But Campion now drew -up his own document then and there at a table, while the others were -talking. In it, he declares that “my charge is of free cost to preach -the Gospel ... to cry alarm spiritual;” that “matters of state are -things which appertain not to my vocation,” and are “straitly forbid”: -things “from which I do gladly estrange and sequester my thoughts.” And -never thinking of himself, but fired with confidence in his cause, he -goes on to beg leave for a public presentment of the Faith. He says, -in the course of this splendid little philippic: “I should be loath to -speak anything that might sound of an insolent brag or challenge ... in -this noble realm, my dear country.” It shows completely the partisan -temper of the time that his statement got exactly that name, and no -other, fastened upon it. It was called everywhere “Campion’s Brag and -Challenge,” and its modest author was contemned and ridiculed for the -implication that his own powers were so very superior that he must of -course get the better of others in any argument! - -Pounde took his copy, which Campion forgot to seal, back to London, -read it in raptures, let it be seen, admired, talked about, and -transcribed: this was his curious way of keeping a secret. The result -was that what was meant to meet a particular crisis, and serve for a -last will and testament, became as common property, beforehand, as -any ballad sold in the streets. Lively measures were at once taken -by the Bishop of Winchester; and the State, hypocritically urging -“conspiracy,” pounced upon a host of Catholic lords and gentlemen. Yet -Campion’s little composition, which bred all this fury, only asks for -“three sorts of indifferent and quiet audience”: one hearing before -the Lords in Council, on the relation of the Church to the English -Government; the next before the Heads of Houses of both Universities, -on the proofs of the truth of the Catholic religion; the last before -the courts spiritual and temporal, “wherein I will justify the said -Faith by the common wisdom of the laws standing.” Then he pleads in -deferent and almost affectionate words, for a special audience of -“her noble Grace” the Queen. In his candour and fearless simplicity -he believed that opponents had only to hear to be convinced, thus -crediting them with that earnestness in religious matters which he -possessed himself, and which only a very few of the best Protestants of -that day shared with him. Campion closes his appeal with a wonderfully -beautiful reference to the vowed Seminarian priests, and in a lofty -music of good English, worthy to stand by any passage of like length in -the great prose classics. “Hearken to those which spend the best blood -in their bodies for your salvation. Many innocent hands are lifted up -unto Heaven for you, daily and hourly, by those English students whose -posterity shall not die, which, beyond the seas, gathering virtue and -sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you -over, but either to win you to Heaven or to die upon your pikes. And -touching our Society, be it known unto you that we have made a league -(all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must -overreach all the practices of England!) cheerfully to carry the cross -that you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery while -we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your -torments, or to be consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned; -the enterprise is begun; it is of God: it cannot be withstood. So -the Faith was planted. So it must be restored. If these my offers -be refused, and my endeavours can take no place, and I, having run -thousands of miles to do you good, shall be rewarded with rigour, I -have no more to say, but recommend your case and mine to Almighty God, -the Searcher of Hearts: Who send us of His grace, and set us at accord -before the Day of Payment, to the intent we may at last be friends in -Heaven, where all injuries shall be forgotten.” - -Parsons’ work lay in Gloucester, Hereford, Worcestershire, Warwickshire -and Derbyshire; Campion’s in the more southerly Midlands. The wandering -Levite with his attendant gentleman would approach at evening, and -with caution, the friendly roof, either Catholic or, though Protestant, -containing Catholics, and be received at the door as strangers, -then conducted to an inner room, where all who seek the priest’s -ministrations kneel and ask for his blessing. That night all is got -ready, and confessions are heard, instructions given, reconciliations -effected; at dawn there is Mass, preaching, and Holy Communion; and -the travellers depart for the next household station. Most edifying -accounts are given of the devotion of good married Confessors, who -were scattered all over the land. The Jesuits met with many seculars, -“whom we find in every place, whereby both the people is well served, -and we much eased in our charge.” These were the old Marian priests, -active in obscurity. The “harvest is wonderful great”: so many show -“a conscience pure, a courage invincible, zeal incredible, a work so -worthy; the number innumerable, of high degree, of mean calling ... -of every age and sex.” “The solaces that are ever intermingled with -the miseries are so great that they do not only countervail the fear -of what punishment temporal soever, but by infinite sweetness make all -worldly pains, be they never so great, seem nothing,” for the sake of -“this good people which had lived before, so many ages, in one only -Faith.” Day by day, running in and out of all the busy heroic toil, is -the fiery thread of danger and alarm. “We are sitting merrily at table, -conversing familiarly on matters of faith and devotion (for our talk is -generally of such things) when comes a hurried knock at the door.... We -all start up and listen, like deer when they hear the huntsman.... If -it is nothing, we laugh at our fright.” Then there was calumny, a far -more difficult thing to accept in the same gay spirit. “They tear and -sting us with their venomous tongues, calling us seditious, hypocrites; -yea, heretics, too! which is much laughed at. The people hereupon is -ours.” And again: “The house where I am is sad: no other talk but of -the death, flight, prison, or spoil of their friends; nevertheless, -they proceed with courage. Very many, even at this present, being -restored to the Church, new soldiers give in their names, while the old -offer up their blood, by which holy hosts and oblations God will be -pleased. And we shall—no question!—by Him overcome.” These are extracts -from Campion’s letters, and give a clear idea of his life during his -visitations of 1580-1. - -There were then many more Manor-houses, kept up as such, than there -are now; most of those which Campion visited had their hiding-place -or “priests’ hole,” to which he could always fly when safety demanded -it. He settled a host of weak Catholics in their religion, and also -received a great many conspicuous converts. It will be noted that the -little Jesuit mission was directed to the gentry. This was not through -accident, or partiality, or snobbery. The gentry had most personal -weight; they were better able to protect a hunted man; and they were -naturally supposed to have stricter notions of honour: this last was -a point on which everything depended. Moreover, the old spirit of -feudalism was not so dead but that through them all workmen on their -estates, or connected by interest with them in the towns, could be -reached and influenced. In a hurried campaign, every consideration -of prudence and forethought would choose them, so to speak, as the -outworks of the citadel. - -The country districts north and south were all still favourable to -Catholicism. London, the University of Cambridge, and some larger towns -and seaports, especially in the West, were half Puritan or Calvinistic, -half irreligious and indifferent. The ancient Faith, as was well -said by Sir Cuthbert Sharpe, for the most part “still lay like lees -at the bottom of men’s hearts; and if the vessel were ever so little -stirred, came to the top.” A thoughtful living writer sums it up as -his conclusion that England would have resumed the Faith with a sigh -of relief, had it not been for the resentments bred by the Catholic -“plotters.” Considering the frightful circumstances of the body to -which these men belonged, it is putting too great a strain, perhaps, -upon human nature to expect smooth behaviour from every individual in -it. The genuine “plotters” were few. Against them stands the passionate -loyalty of our persecuted minority, both all along, and in the one -great crisis. When the deliverer loomed up in the shape of Philip’s -Armada, blessed and indulgenced like a crusade of old, where were they, -supposed to be so sick of Queen and country? Hand in impoverished -pocket, strengthening the national defences; cutlass on thigh, manning -the English fleet. - - - - -X - -MANY LABOURS: AND A BOOK: 1580 - - -CAMPION passed four months of pleasant weather in hard and happy work, -moving about Northamptonshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire. Some lovely -little spiritual adventure starred his path, and the paths of others, -wherever he went. He must have seen more than once, from some hilly -road afar off, even if he never entered it, - - “The towery City, branchy between towers,” - -which was so dear to him to the last. In October of this year, 1580, -he was bidden towards London as far as Uxbridge: farther he could -hardly come, without the gravest peril, as the Privy Council were just -issuing their third warrant for the capture of Jesuits. There he was -joined by Fr. Parsons and several other missionaries. A conference -was held: it was represented that Norfolk and Lancashire were eager -to claim Fr. Campion’s ministrations, and it was decided that he was -to go to Lancashire, preferable as being not only farther from London -and also “more affected to the Catholic religion,” but as having -better private libraries. For they were now urging Campion to write -again: this time something on the burning questions of the day, aimed -particularly at the Universities (where his Challenge was still the -staple of daily talk), and therefore to be written in Latin. We are not -so sure, now-a-days, that controversy does much good, but one reason -for that may be that we have few Campions to carry it on. It is well to -remember that people then read nothing else, except poetry! Campion’s -work was his famous _Decem Rationes Propositæ in Causa Fidei_, or, as -the title is given in its only modern translation (1827), _Ten Reasons -for Renouncing the Protestant, and Embracing the Catholic Religion_. -At first the author was for calling his thesis _Heresy in Despair: De -Hæresi Desperata_. His counsellors agreed, amid laughter, that it -would be odd indeed to nail such a title as that to the mast, when -heresy was so powerful and flourishing; but, according to Campion’s -own philosophy, there was no life in an argument whose only premisses, -as he once said, are “curses, starvation, and the rack.” Here we come -back at once to his root principle, which modern research so fully -justifies, in regard to the England of his own day. A “gentleman saint” -who uttered many an ironic, but never a contemptuous word, Campion -could not be persuaded that “the received religion” was a genuine -thing. He believed that temporal interest alone led people to conform -to the new alterations and restrictions; that the lay statesmen who -were pushing things through were concerned not with doctrine, but -only with negations of doctrine, and that on the other side, nothing -was so promising, nothing so gloriously fruitful, as persecutions -and martyrdoms. First and last, he had a strong dash of optimism. In -this spirit he began his last treatise, writing it as best he could, -depending on his memory, and on such books as country squires might -have in their houses, and putting it together in among the almost -incessant journeys, duties, fatigues and alarms of the next few weeks. - -The two Jesuit friends parted at Uxbridge, “with the tenderness of -heart which in such a case and so dangerous a time may be imagined.” -Gervase Pierrepoint conveyed Campion into Nottinghamshire to spend -Christmas at Thoresby, his home; thence into Derbyshire, where one of -the young Tempests succeeded as guide; and the gentleman who directed -the Yorkshire part of the journey reached in safety the house of his -own brother-in-law, Mr. William Harrington of Mount St. John, near -Thirsk, where the Father was received with open arms. Here he settled -down for less than a fortnight at his desk, among his note-books, at -peace. But to have him in the house at all was to risk the contagion -of the things of God. The eldest of the large family, a wild boy, his -father’s namesake, was quick to feel the spell of this most attractive -guest. “Not only his eloquence and fire,” says Fr. Henry More of -Campion, “but a certain hidden infused power, made his words strike -home.” Some of these simple words of every day “struck home” to the -young William Harrington, so that fourteen years afterwards he found -the palm-branch of martyrdom growing green and fair for him on the -public execution ground. At this very time of Campion’s visit, the Lent -of 1581, there was another lad of fourteen or fifteen, John Pibush, -running about the streets of Thirsk, his native village, who may have -gone to Confession to the strange priest at the Manor, and wondered at -him, unknowing that he, too, was sealed as a future holocaust in the -same immortal cause. - -From Mount St. John, where he must have tasted much natural happiness, -Campion travelled into Lancashire, under the protection of a former -pupil and his wife. There he was affectionately welcomed and cared -for in each of eight great houses, where himself and his spiritual -conferences were still a glowing tradition, sixty or seventy years -afterwards. He had to live, think, write, in a crowd. The local -gentry drove from great distances and slept in barns, only to hear and -see him once. At Blainscough Hall, the seat of the Worthingtons, the -pursuivants would have discovered him, where he was walking in the -open air, had it not been for the cleverness and splendid presence of -mind of a faithful maidservant, standing hard by. She ran up against -him, in a pretended fit of temper, and shoved him into a shallow pond! -The pursuivants, sent out by the terrible Huntingdon, President of the -North, to apprehend a distinguished cleric and scholar, naturally never -gave that mud-covered yokel a second glance. - -Fr. Campion would have learned by now the fate of most of the -enthusiastic band who had travelled in his company, from Rome or Rheims -to England, during the preceding summer: five priests, including the -lovable gay-hearted Sherwin, were languishing in cells and on the -rack; Fr. Parsons, though hunted, was free. Following a suggestion of -Campion’s, he set up a private printing press, in order that the _Ten -Reasons_ and other Catholic works of defensive controversy might be -issued as they were needed. Publishing, like every other major industry -open to the Catholics, was outlawed; devotional and doctrinal books had -to be brought out in this hole-and-corner fashion, if at all. Another -of those lay associates of the mission, whose devotion and usefulness -had been proved at every point, came forward to bear the brunt of the -new enterprise. The young Stephen Brinkley, Bachelor of Civil Law, -called by Parsons “a gentleman of high attainments both in literature -and in virtue,” volunteered to become manager and head compositor, -and amid many dramatic and exciting interruptions, carried his task -through. Machinery, types, paper, and the rest were bought with money -supplied by the ever-helpful George Gilbert. Brinkley himself, to avert -suspicion, had to buy horses for his workmen, and attire them like -persons of quality whenever they went abroad. He quite knew what he -was risking. After him, still another knight of letters in a far less -perilous field, offered himself in the person of Thomas Fitzherbert of -Swynnerton, then newly married (long afterwards a priest, and Rector -of the English College in Rome). His not undelightful duty was to -verify the mass of references and authorities quoted in the margins of -Campion’s manuscript: this he did in a scholarly way, satisfactory to -the scholarly author, who believed in research, and liked nothing at -second-hand. Lastly, Parsons, as Campion’s Superior, recalled him to -London in April or May to see the little volume through the press, and -cautioned him to put up only at inns on the way, where happily he might -pass as “the gentleman in the parlour.” - -Thirty miles or so north of the great city, Campion had one of his -ever-recurring narrow escapes. A spy, hungry for reward, had dogged -his steps on his way from York. At a certain town not named, a little -boy who knew Campion by sight overheard this man describing the Father -to a magistrate, and calling him “Jesuit,” a word the child had never -heard. He ran straight to the tavern where the “Jesuit” had put up and -succeeded in finding him and warning him! so the bird was safely on the -wing before the fowlers were in sight. - -Campion came to Westminster and Whitefriars, and set to work, -diligently as ever. With Father Robert he had frequent occasion to -visit the Bellamys of Uxenden Hall near Harrow, a family under whose -roof his old friend Richard Bristow had died in the preceding autumn. -Their later adversities and annihilation were only too typical of -Catholic domestic history under Elizabeth. Going to Harrow meant going -up the Edgware Road, and in the mouth of that road, between waste lands -(facing the spot across the street where the Marble Arch now stands), -was the famous Tyburn gallows. This particular one had been put up new -for Dr. Storey’s execution, ten years before: it had three posts set -in a triangle, with connecting cross-bars at the top. Once every week, -without intermission, batches of criminals perished there. Even now, -and with far greater frequency afterwards, holy and innocent men and -women made up a large proportion of the “criminals”; and remembering -these dear souls, and conscious that there he was to follow them in -confession of the King of Martyrs, Campion would always solemnly take -off his hat and pause, in passing, to salute Tyburn Tree. - -Meanwhile, in the quiet and seclusion of Dame Cecily Stonor’s park, -near Henley, and in the attics which she bravely set apart for the -purpose, the _Decem Rationes_ got itself safely printed by Stephen -Brinkley and his seven honest men. Campion, with fine bravado, dated -it from “Cosmopolis”; and the distribution of it was as audacious as -the dating. The first copies bound, about four hundred in number, -were hurriedly stabbed, instead of stitched, in time to go up for -the Oxford commemoration, June 27th of that year. The church of St. -Mary-the-Virgin was then used for all the “Acts,” for the accommodation -of which, a century later, the Sheldonian Theatre was built. When the -company entered St. Mary’s, the benches were found littered with the -“seditious” books. Their dedication was “to the studious Collegians -flourishing at Oxford and Cambridge,” and the youths in question were -just in the humour to read them; and read them they did, then and -there, instead of attending to the important annual function going -on! This rudeness bred protest, and protest bred a lively scene. To -understand it we must recall that the undergraduate element was then, -by comparison, the conservative element. Heads of Houses, Fellows and -Tutors, learned and popular men, had been removed wholesale by the -Elizabethan settlement of religion in favour of new men concisely -described as “extremists from Geneva, intellectually inferior to those -who had been displaced, and representing a different spirit, and -different traditions.” The student body looked on them with scorn. -Again, to quote another chief authority on this subject, “the young -Oxonians did not bear easily the Elizabethan drill, and felt that -if their liberty must be crushed they would fain have it crushed by -something more venerable than the mushroom authority of the Ministers -of the Queen. They were as tinder, and Campion’s book was just the -sort of spark to set them in a blaze.” The excited Government told -off relays of clergymen to courtmartial and shoot it. Aylmer, Bishop -of London, wished to commission nine Deans, seven Archdeacons, and -the two Regius Professors of Divinity to punish the tiny offender; -but the actual ammunition brought into the field was not quite so -imposing as all this. The answers were duly published, dealing in the -most unmeasured personal abuse of Campion. No attempt was made in -any instance to rival either his religious fervour or his literary -grace. His last labour with his pen made, in short, a very great and -an extremely prolonged stir. Its fate was a romantic one from start to -finish, for it was so quickly and thoroughly confiscated that not more -than a couple of copies are now known to exist. Despite the outcry, or -because of it, edition after edition was called for. There have been -nearly thirty reprints in the original Latin, and many translations -into modern languages, inclusive of three beautiful translations -into the good English common in 1606, 1632, and 1687, one of which -should be re-issued. The _Ten Reasons_, written under such immense -difficulties, had all of Campion’s zeal and pith, and was “a model of -eloquence, elegance, and good taste.” Marc Antony Muret, the greatest -Latinist of the time, called it _libellum aureum_, “a golden little -book, writ by the very finger of God.” Campion had gone, in his ardent, -sensitive, rhetorical, compendious way, over the whole ground of the -credentials of that Church which had had the allegiance of England for -more than a thousand years: Scripture, the Fathers, the Councils, the -evidence of human history, are all drawn upon, in the best spirit of -the new learning. The characteristic note of personal appeal to the -Queen is not lacking here at the end. Campion’s theme is the Church, -and he quotes from the Prophet Isaiah: “Kings shall be thy nursing -fathers, and Queens thy nursing mothers;” and he names as among the -great monarchs whose joy it was to further the Church in their day, -St. Edward the Confessor, St. Louis of France, St. Henry of Saxony, -St. Wenceslaus of Bohemia, St. Stephen of Hungary, and the rest. Then -he cries out to “Elizabeth, most mighty Queen,” to listen. “For this -Prophet is speaking unto thee, is teaching thee thy duty. I tell thee -one Heaven cannot gather in Calvin and these thine ancestors. Join -thyself therefore to them, else shalt thou stand unworthy of that name -of thine, thy genius, thy learning, thy fame before all men, and thy -fortunes. To this end do I conspire, and will conspire, against thee, -whatever betideth me, who am so often menaced with the gallows as a -conspirator hostile to thy life. (‘All hail, thou good Cross!’) The day -shall come, O Elizabeth! the day that shall make it altogether clear -which of the two did love thee best: the Company of Jesus, or the brood -of Luther!” - -Hardly was the last of the original imprints bound and distributed, -when the pursuivants in search of what was roughly, but significantly -enough, called “Massing-stuff,” pounced upon Stonor Park, and caught -red-handed there, and carried off, the two gentlemen, John Stonor -and Stephen Brinkley, and four of the printers, one of whom, a poor -frightened fellow, conformed, and was let off at once. William Hartley, -ordained the year before, who had in person strewn the _Ten Reasons_ -over the benches of the University Church, and made special gifts of -copies in various Colleges, was arrested a little later. His fate was -not exceptional, like that of his comrades just mentioned, who were -eventually released on bail. He suffered at Tyburn; and his mother, -heroic as the mother of the Macchabees, stood by his young body in its -butchering, and thanked God aloud for her privilege in so giving back -to Him such a son. - -Campion spent St. John’s Day (marking the first anniversary of his -return to England) at Lady Babington’s, at Twyford in Buckinghamshire, -a house not many miles from Stonor, on the other bank of the Thames. He -stayed a little while at Bledlow also, and at Wynge, with the Dormers, -his whole heart bent, every moment of the time, upon his Father’s -business. But his free days were almost done. - -The outcry redoubled, now that he had again succeeded in catching -public attention. Fresh and monstrously cruel measures were therefore -taken against all Papists. “Naught is lacking,” wrote to Acquaviva -the tender soul who too well knew himself to be the cause of many -sorrows, “but that to our books written with ink should succeed others -daily published, and written in blood.” Fr. Parsons prudently ordered -him back to the North. The two heard each other’s confessions and -renewal of vows at Stonor, and said good-bye, exchanging hats as a -parting gift, after the friendly fashion of their time. Campion was -to ride straightway into Lancashire to get his manuscript and notes, -left behind, his former companion Ralph Emerson going with him; and -he was then to betake himself to the fresh mission field in Norfolk. -As it fell out, he soon spurred back after Parsons to tell him of -a letter that moment received. It was from a gentleman named Yate, -then a prisoner for his religion, earnestly begging Campion to visit -Lyford Grange in Berkshire, the gentleman’s own estate, hard by, -where his wife and mother still were, together with Edward Yate, and -part of a proscribed community of English Brigittine nuns, driven -back into England by troubles in the Low Countries. Fr. Parsons, -knowing the house to be a conspicuous one, and already supplied with -chaplains, was unwilling to grant the permission. But eventually he -gave in, warning the two others not to tarry beyond one night or one -day, and as a precaution, putting Campion under the lay brother’s -care and obedience. Parsons parted from him not without a rueful and -affectionate word. “You are too easy-going by far,” he said to his -friend and fellow-soldier, purposely giving its least heroic name to -that intentionally prodigal zeal for souls. “I know you, Father Edmund; -if they once get you there, you will never break away!” - -[Illustration: “We have not broken through here!” [P. 134] - - - - -XI - -AT LYFORD GRANGE, AND AFTER: 1581 - - -ON the morning of July 12, Father Edmund and Brother Ralph, faithful -to agreement, were in their saddles again, leaving the pious household -refreshed, but lamenting. Of the two priests who formed part of it, -one, Fr. Collington, or Colleton, escorted them some distance on their -way. Campion had already been waylaid, at an inn near Oxford, by many -friendly tutors and undergraduates, when up galloped the other chaplain -of Lyford, Fr. Forde. He was a Trinity College man, who had entered -Douay just after Campion’s arrival there, and was to follow him closely -to martyrdom. Forde brought news that a large party of Catholics had -come over to Lyford to visit the nuns, and, distressed at missing Fr. -Campion, were clamouring for his return. The Oxford group had been -begging their old champion to preach to them, which he would not do -in so public a place; they now added their entreaties to those of the -deputy of the strangers, and offered to join these at Lyford. Surely, -he who had given a whole day to a few godly nuns, who needed him but -little, could not refuse a Saturday and Sunday to so many soiled souls -of every stripe and colour, “thirsting for the waters of life”? The -suit was insistent; Campion was inclined to give in, but referred his -admirers to Brother Emerson, as his provisional Superior. He, in turn, -was overborne. It seemed much safer, after all, for the precious Father -to be among friends, while he, Ralph, went on alone to fetch the books -from Mr. Richard Houghton’s in Lancashire. So back to Lyford Campion -went, to the poor little lay brother’s everlasting regret. - -On the following Sunday morning, the ninth after Pentecost, Campion -preached at the Grange on the gospel of the day, the peculiarly -touching gospel of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, the changed and -faithless city which stoned the prophets, and knew not, in her day, -the things that were to her peace. No one present ever forgot that -heart-shaking sermon, laden as it was with pathos and presentiment. -There was an audience of sixty, including the Oxonians. Unfortunately -it included also George Eliot, a man of the most evil personal repute, -an apostate and a Government spy, armed with plenary powers. He was -then under a charge of murder, and was anxious to whitewash himself -in the eyes of the Council by some conspicuous public service. He -had once been a servant of the Ropers at Canterbury; and Mrs. Yate’s -honest cook, who had known Eliot there in his decent days, let him in -without question, whispering what a treat was in store for him in the -preaching of none other than Father Campion! Though the warrant for the -apprehension of the Jesuit was in Eliot’s pocket, he little thought to -capture him so easily and so soon. A pursuivant had accompanied him to -the gate; Eliot went back to this person, nominally to dismiss him, -as a heretic, really to speed him to a magistrate at Abingdon for a -force of an hundred men to arrest Campion in the Queen’s name. Then he -went piously up-stairs to Mass, Edmund Campion’s last Mass, so far as -we know. That, and the sermon, passed by in peace, and Eliot himself -left. Immediately after dinner an alarm was given by a watchman posted -in a turret, who saw the enemy far off. Campion sprang up, and started -to leave at once, and alone, saying that his chances of escape might -be fair, and that his remaining would only involve the household in -discomfort and danger. But they all clung to him, assuring him that -Lyford was full of cunning secret passages and hiding-holes; and into -one of these, in the wall above the gateway, he was forthwith hurried -by Forde and Collington, who laid themselves down by his side, and -crossed their hands over their breasts. - -Back came Eliot with the magistrate, a civil squire, and the -neighbourly Berkshire yeomen who loathed the work. He made them turn -the whole house topsy-turvy, nor desist till evenfall; then, finding -nothing, they withdrew. However, they returned almost in the same -breath, egged on by Eliot, who now would have the walls sounded. -The Abingdon magistrate apologized to Mrs. Yate, not for the Queen’s -warrant, but for his associate, “the mad-man,” as he called him, who -was carrying it out. The lady was an invalid; thinking not altogether -of herself, she railed and wept. The magistrate kindly soothed her -fears, and allowed her to sleep where she pleased, undisturbed by -his men and their din. She chose to have a bed made up close to the -hiding-place. She was conducted thither with the honours of war, and -a sentinel was posted at the room door. The tapping and smashing went -merrily on elsewhere until late at night, when, by her orders, the -sheriff’s baffled underlings made a fine supper, and being worn out, -fell asleep over their cups, even as they were expected to do. Poor -Mrs. Yate was either by nature the silliest of women, or else her -nerves were upset by illness and trying circumstance, for she sent -for Fr. Campion, as well as for all her other guests who were in that -part of the house, and requested him, as he stood by her bedside—of -all possible things—to preach to them just once more! One could not -in courtesy refuse a hostess, however unreasonable, who was risking so -much for him; nor would it have been like him to refuse. Allen tells us -that it was his invariable habit to preach “once a day at the least, -often twice, and sometimes thrice, whereby through God’s goodness -he converted sundry in most shires of this realm of most wisdom and -worship, besides young gentlemen students, and others of all sorts.” - -Fr. Campion discharged his task. As the little congregation broke up, -some one stumbled in the dark, and several fell; the snoring sentinel -awoke; searchers, with lanterns and axes, swarmed up from below. There -was nothing to be seen: Lyford was not honeycombed in vain with hidden -passages. The men-at-arms had been fooled too often, and were angry -with Eliot. Yet that functionary knew that something was still really -afoot, that the alarm was not a false one. On going down the stairs -again he struck his hand upon the wall over it. “We have not broken -through here!” he said. A loyal servant of the Yates, who was at his -side, and who knew it was just there the refugees lay, muttered that -enough wall had been ruined already, and then went deadly pale while -Eliot’s eye was still on him. The latter called, in triumph, for a -smith’s hammer, and banged it into the thin timber partition, and into -the narrow cell. And thus was Father Edmund Campion taken at Lyford -Grange, at dawn of Monday, July 17th, in the year 1581. - -He was quite calm, quite cheerful. With him were apprehended the two -priests, seven gentlemen, and two yeomen. Forster, the Sheriff of -Berkshire, hitherto absent, arrived. As he was an Oxonian, and almost a -Catholic, and kindly disposed towards Campion, he waited to hear from -the Council what was to be done. On the fourth day orders came to send -the chief prisoners up to London, under a strong guard. Leaving the -old moated house and its many occupants, now distracted with grief, -Campion took horse at the door, and rode slowly off, Eliot prancing in -triumph at the head of the company, though the common people saluted -him as “Judas,” all along the way. The first halt was at Abingdon; -sympathetic Oxford scholars had come down to see the last of the great -light of the University under such black eclipse. Eliot accosted his -victim at table: “Mr. Campion, I know well you are wroth with me -for this work!” He drew out a beautiful answer, sincere, composed, -half-playful: a saint’s answer. “Nay, I forgive thee; and in token -thereof, I drink to thee. Yea, and if thou wilt repent, and come to -Confession, I will absolve thee: but large penance thou must have!” At -Henley, Campion saw in the crowd Fr. Parsons’ servant, and greeted him -as he could, without betraying him: Fr. Parsons was near at hand, but -was wisely kept indoors. A young priest, “Mr. Filby the younger,” as he -was called, a native of Oxford, is said to have here attempted to speak -to Campion; he was at once seized upon as a traitorous “comforter of -Jesuits,” and added to the cavalcade. At Colebrook, less than a dozen -miles from London, came fresh instructions from the Council. Sheriff -Forster had treated his prisoners most honourably: they were now to be -made a public show. Their elbows were tied from behind, their wrists -roped together in front, and their feet fastened under the horses; -their leader was decorated with a paper pinned to his hat—Fr. Parsons’ -hat of late—on which in large lettering was inscribed: “Campion, -the Seditious Jesuit.” And in this guise he was paraded through the -chief streets of the great city on market-day. The mob roared with -delight; “but the wiser sort,” says Holinshed, “lamented to see the -land fallen to such barbarism as to abuse in this manner a gentleman -famous throughout Europe for his scholarship and his innocency of life, -and this before any trial, or any proof against him, his case being -prejudged, and he punished as if already condemned.” Stephen Brinkley -somehow obtained, as a souvenir of a fellow-prisoner, that thick dark -felt hat, which had been so ignominiously labelled in the cause of -Christ. Years afterwards, when in Belgium, he put it into a reliquary, -“out of love and veneration towards that most holy martyr of God, his -father and patron.” A piece of it is at Roehampton, in the Jesuit -Noviciate. - -On reaching the Tower the Lyford captives were given up to the -Governor, Sir Owen Hopton. Taking his cue, he had Campion thrust at -once into Little Ease, the famous Tower hole not high enough for a man -to stand upright in, nor long enough for him to lie down in. After -four days of this misery he was suddenly taken out, put in a boat at -the Traitors’ Gate steps, and rowed to the town house of the Earl of -Leicester. This nobleman and Edmund Campion, who had seen so much of -each other for several years, had been placed by events in silent -conflict. There stood the Earl of Bedford, with two Secretaries of -State; there stood Campion’s host, who, for one reason or another, had -never hounded Catholics with the fixed fury of Walsingham and Burghley, -and thereby did not displease his irresolute royal mistress; there (a -theatrical circumstance!) was that royal mistress herself, a gleaming -stately vision in a great chair, head and front of a not unfriendly -little inquisition. To the questions heaped upon him Campion gave -frank answers. On the matter of “allegiance” he seemed to satisfy the -company, who told him there was no fault in him save that he was a -Papist. “That,” he modestly interrupted, “is my greatest glory.” The -Queen smiled upon him, and offered him liberty and honours, but under -conditions which his conscience forbade him to accept. - -When he was courteously dismissed, Leicester, probably with a kind -motive, sent a message to Hopton to keep up the flatteries of the new -policy. Hopton put on an almost affectionate consideration for his -important prisoner; and so fast as he was prompted, by artful degrees, -he suggested to him a pension, a high place at Court, and even the -promise eventually of the mitre and revenues of the primatial See of -Canterbury! Well did the Council know, all along, the value of these -stubborn and unpurchasable confessors of Christ. To cap the matter, -in Campion’s case, it was publicly announced, both by Hopton and by -Walsingham (who knew the untruth of their announcement), that the -Jesuit was at the point of recantation and Protestant orthodoxy, and -in full sight of the future Archbishopric, “to the great content of -the Queen.” It flew all over London that he would presently preach at -Paul’s Cross, and there burn the _Decem Rationes_ with his own hand. -Eventually Hopton returned to first principles indoors, and inquired -point-blank of Campion whether he would give up his religion, and -conform. The reply is easily imagined. A continued course of wheedling -was wasteful business. So thought the Council; and three days after -his strange and sudden sight of the Queen’s Grace at Leicester House, -Edmund Campion, first kneeling down at the door and invoking the -Holy Name for steadying of his manhood, was stripped and fastened -to the rollers of the Tower rack. Blandishments had failed to move -him; they would try mortal pain, and see what that could do. Torture, -nevertheless, was as much against the laws of England then (though not -against the laws of some less humane countries), as it is now. - - - - -XII - -THE THICK OF THE FRAY: 1581 - - -CAMPION, in between the working of the rollers, was asked his opinion -of certain political utterances in the works of his old friends Allen -and Bristow, and of Dr. Sander; also whether he considered the Queen -“true and lawful,” or “pretensed and deprived.” He refused to answer. -Physical anguish could be little worse than the ineffable boredom of -these two never-quiet questions. He was then asked by the Governor, -the Rackmaster, and others present, by whose command and counsel he -had returned to England; by whom in England he had been received and -befriended; in whose houses he had said Mass, heard Confessions, and -reconciled persons to his Church; where his recent book was printed, -and to whom copies were given; lastly, what was his opinion of the -Bull of Pius V against Queen Elizabeth? A letter written at the time to -Lord Shrewsbury by Lord Burghley, and still extant, shows that nothing -of moment could be got out of Campion. During the next fortnight, -however, there was poured into the ear of the Government information -regarding the second and third items in the above category. Houses were -searched; persons of mark were apprehended, tried in the Star Chamber, -and sentenced. Almost every manse or town house where Campion had been -harboured became known, and even the names of those Oxford Masters of -Arts who had followed him to Lyford. The Government gave out that he -had confessed upon the rack, and implicated his too trusting friends. -The alleged facts naturally became a general scandal, and bred grief -and horror among the Catholics who, no less than Protestants, were -thus driven to believe them. The secrets were probably given up, under -panic, by three serving-men, and by poor Gervase Pierrepoint. It was -a common trick of the time, though not peculiar to it, to show a -prisoner a lying list of names purporting to have been extracted from -colleagues, so that he himself might be trapped into endorsing the -suspicions held in regard to those names. But it is clear that Campion -was brought to mention only a few who, as he was aware, were formerly -known to his examiners as Catholic Recusants; and only after a solemn -oath from the Commissioners that no harm could accrue to them in -consequence of such supplementary mention. Even this he had every cause -to regret. The gentlemen and gentlewomen on Lord Burghley’s lists were -carefully informed, when arrested, that it was Campion who had betrayed -them: a cruel slander which he could refute only at the foot of the -scaffold. Thanks to the reports, first of his backsliding, then of his -treachery, his great reputation, for the time being, was clean gone. -Having thus been given forth to the public as a knave, he was now to be -set before them as a fool, and shown to be one who possessed neither -sort of superiority, moral or mental. - -[Illustration: Campion before Queen Elizabeth. _p. 138._] - -Many courtiers, having a purely artistic interest in Edmund Campion, -had begged that he might obtain the chance he had often asked for, of -being heard in a disputation. This request was now suddenly granted. -The conference was public, and came off in the Norman Chapel of the -Tower, which was crowded. Two Deans, Nowell of St. Paul’s, and Day -of Windsor, were appointed to attack Campion; he was to answer all -objections as he could, but was forbidden to raise any of his own. -Charke, the bitter Puritan preacher of Gray’s Inn, and Whitaker, the -Regius Professor of Divinity in Cambridge, were the notaries. The lion -to be baited did not even know that there was to be a conference, until -he was brought to it under a strong guard. Time for preparation had -been denied him; he was allowed the use of only such authorities as his -memory could furnish; pale and weary and rack-worn as he was, he was -given only a low stool to sit upon. The well-fed theological worthies -were ranged before him, their chairs standing on raised platforms, and -their tables spread with books of reference, pens and paper. - -One who was there tells us how easy and ready were his answers; how -modest his mien; how that high-spirited nature so bore the scorn, -the abuse, and the jests heaped upon him, as to win great admiration -from the majority of those who heard him for the first time. He began -by asking very pertinently whether this was a just answer to his -challenge, first to rack him, then to deprive him of books, notes and -pen, lastly, to call upon him to debate? and he added (wishing to be -fully understood by the audience), that what he had asked for was -quite another sort of hearing: a hearing under equal conditions before -the Universities. During the course of this first conference he was -twice most unfairly tripped up: once over a quotation, in which he was -right, though he could not then and there prove it; and again over a -page of the Greek Testament, in such small type that he could not read -it, and had to put it by when it was handed to him: thereby drawing -down upon himself the ridiculous taunt that he knew no Greek. This -he took silently, and with a smile. At the end of the six hours he -had more than stood his ground. The Deans complained afterwards that -a number of gentlemen present, “neither unlearned nor ill-affected,” -considered that Master Campion had the best of it. Some common people -who thought so too, and said so in the streets, paid dearly for their -boldness. One of these gentlemen favourably impressed was Philip, Earl -of Arundel, then in the flush of worldly pride and pleasure. He was the -real victory of the Jesuit apostle, for he received at that time and -in that place the first ray of divine grace, strong enough to change -gradually in him the whole motive and course of that intensity of life -which never failed the Howards. As he stood leaning forward in the -foreground of the daïs, in that solemn interior, tall and young, with -his great ruff and embroidered doublet, and his brilliant dark eyes -held by the pathetic figure of Master Campion, how little could he have -foreseen his own weary term of suffering in that gloomy fortress, and -his sainted death there, at the end of the years! - -There were three other conferences under like conditions, but in other -quarters, with four fresh adversaries. Campion was again “appointed -only to answer, never to oppose”; that is, to answer miscellaneous and -disjointed objections against the Catholic Church, without ever being -allowed “to build up any harmonious apology for his own system.” The -last conference was notable for its browbeating and threatening of a -too successful adversary. The Bishop of London privately came to the -conclusion that the verbal tournament was doing no good whatever to the -sacred cause of Protestantism. The Council agreed, and ended it. - -Towards the end of October Campion was racked for the third time, and -with the utmost severity, so that he thought they meant, this time, -to kill him; but his fortitude was unshaken. A rough and honest first -cousin to the Queen, Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, growled that it were -easier to pluck the heart out of Campion’s breast than to wrest from -him one word against his conscience. His arms and legs went quite numb -after this final torture. The keeper, who was won over by his endearing -prisoner, and was always as gentle with him as he dared to be, inquired -next day how they felt. “Not ill,” said Father Edmund, with all of his -old brave brightness, “not ill, because not at all!” - -Never once until now had he been accused of any conspiracy. But he -was a troublesome person: he must be silenced somehow. With a tardy -inspiration, the Council bent all their strength to get out of Campion -some acknowledgment that he had been mixed up with the Spanish-Roman -expedition, and the Irish rising of the preceding year. Not a shadow -of proof could, of course, be produced for such a charge. Then, as a -final and sure means of indicting him on some other count than that -of religion, and of urging his execution upon the Queen, Walsingham, -with Burghley’s connivance, hatched a treasonable plot out of his own -inventive head, and got false witnesses to accuse Edmund Campion -of it, and swear his life away. The “Plot of Rheims and Rome” was -described as an attempt to raise a sedition, and dethrone and kill -the Queen. It had an imaginary but recent date: 1580. Everybody or -anybody, when found convenient, could be accused of so elastic a plot. -It was first charged against some twenty priests and laymen in this -year 1581; but it was brought up against the Earl of Arundel four years -afterwards, despite the fact that the supposed interests of the Church -were the last things likely to win his attention at the time assigned. - -On All Saints’ Day arrived in England a suitor for the hand of Queen -Elizabeth: Francis, Duke of Alençon, King of the Netherlands, the -short-lived heir to the throne of King Henry the Third of France. With -that King, while Duke of Anjou, and with Alençon for nine years past -(as for three yet to come), Elizabeth had carried on negotiations which -ended in smoke; but she now announced that she “would marry at last.” -Little Froggy, as she endearingly called him, was ugly to a degree, -and many years younger than her Majesty; he was brother-in-law to -the Queen of Scots, who was her Majesty’s prisoner at Sheffield. The -dominant, ultra-bigoted party took extreme alarm at the near prospect -of toleration for Catholics which such a royal match suggested to -them. To reassure them, it might just now be most useful, thought the -Council, to hang a Jesuit or two. - -On the 14th of the month Campion and eight others were arraigned before -the grand jury in Westminster Hall. For “treasonable intents” of the -Queen’s deprivation and murder, these “secret and privy practices of -sinister devices,” befitting one “led astray by the devil,” had “Edmund -Campion, clerk,” made his re-entry into England, the Pope, meanwhile, -being not only aware of his act, but its “author and onsetter”! He was -commanded, as were all those lumped with him in a common accusation, -to plead Guilty or Not Guilty. Up went all the right arms of these -“devotaries, and dead men to this world, who travelled only for souls,” -as Campion himself called them: all but his, so disabled by the rack -that he could not stir it from the furred cuff in which it lay. But a -quick-witted comrade turned and took off the cuff, “humbly kissing the -sacred hands so wrung for the confession of Christ,” and lifted it high -to cry its own mute Not Guilty with the rest. The Spanish Ambassador, -Don Bernardino de Mendoza, standing close by with his secretary, saw, -with a pang of pity, that all the finger-nails were gone from Campion’s -swollen hands. The trial proper began on the 20th, before “such a -presence of people of the more honourable, wise, learned, and best sort -as was never seen or heard of in that court in ours or our fathers’ -memories before us ... so wonderful an expectation there was to see the -end of this marvellous tragedy ... [of] such as they knew in conscience -to be innocent.” They all heard Ralph Sherwin say, in a loud clear -voice: “The plain ground of our standing here is religion, and not -treason.” - -Chief Justice Wray presided, a Catholic at heart, and wretched ever -after over this unwilling day’s work. The prosecuting officers for the -Crown were the Queen’s serjeant, Edmund Anderson; Popham, afterwards -Chief Justice; and Egerton, afterwards the first Lord Ellesmere. The -chief witnesses were George Eliot, Anthony Munday, and two creatures -named Sledd and Caddy: probably as evil a quartette as existed in -contemporary England, and worthy forerunners of Oates and Bedloe. -“They had nothing left to swear by,” as Campion reminded the jury: -“neither religion nor honesty.” In no special order, but with much -ardour and diligence, all the old tiresome trivial accusations were -brought forward and pressed in, Campion being spokesman throughout for -the defence, and his alert mind, despite his weakened body, meeting -them all, and routing them. He was charged with having “seduced the -Queen’s subjects from their allegiance” ... and “reconciled them -to the Pope.” He caught up the word. “We ‘reconcile’ them to the -Pope! Nay, then, what reconciliation can there be to him, since -reconciliation is only due to God? This word [‘reconcile’] soundeth not -to a lawyer’s usage, and therefore is wrested against us inaptly. The -reconciliation that we endeavoured was only to God: as Peter saith, -_reconciliamini Domino_, be ye reconciled unto the Lord.” Campion was -informed: “Yourself came as Procurator from the Pope and Dr. Allen, -to break these matters to the English Papists.” So he rejoined that -in his homeward voyage from Rome, undertaken by his vow of obedience -as a Jesuit, “the which accordingly I enterprised, being commanded -thereto,” he had “dined with Dr. Allen at Rheims, with whom also -after dinner I walked in his garden ... and not one jot of our talk -glanced to the Crown or State of England.... As to the [Pope], he -flatly with charge and commandment excused me from matters of State -and regiment.” ... Followed a change of tactics. “Afterclaps make -those excuses but shadows.... For what meaning had that changing of -your name? Whereto belonged your disguising in apparel? What pleasure -had you to royst it [in] a velvet hat and a feather, a buff leather -jerkin, and velvet venetians?... Can that beseem a professed man of -religion which hardly becometh a layman of gravity? No: there was -a further matter intended.... Had you come hither for love of your -country, you would never have wrought a hugger-mugger; had your intent -been to have done well, you would never have hated the light.” To which -Campion replied that St. Paul, in order “that living he might benefit -the Church more than dying,” betook himself “to sundry shifts ... but -that especially the changing of his name was very oft and familiar” ... -and that “he sometimes thought it expedient to be hidden, lest, being -discovered, persecution should ensue thereby, and the gospel be greatly -forestalled.... If these shifts were then approved in Paul, why are -they now reproved in me?—he an Apostle, I a Jesuit ... the same cause -common to us both.... I wished earnestly the planting of the gospel; I -knew a contrary religion professed; I saw if I were known I should be -apprehended. I changed my name, I kept secretly: I imitated Paul. Was I -therein a traitor?... The wearing of a buff jerkin, a velvet hat, and -suchlike, is much forced against me.... I am not indicted upon the -Statute of Apparel!... Indeed, I acknowledge an offence to Godwards for -so doing, and thereof it doth grievously repent me, and [I] therefore -do now penance, as you see me.” This charming rejoinder (again, how -More-like!) was in allusion to his rough gown of Irish frieze, and a -huge black nightcap covering half of his newly shaven face. - -After all this mere hectoring, some pieces of “evidence” were -produced. One of these was an intercepted letter which Campion -himself had written from the Tower after his first and comparatively -moderate racking, while it was still possible to use his hands; it -was addressed to the admirable and truly holy, but fussy, Mr. Thomas -Pounde, who, wild with alarm at the pretended “betrayals,” had written -to remonstrate with Fr. Campion. The Queen’s Counsel now read this -passage from Campion’s humble reply: “It grieveth me much to have -offended the Catholic cause so highly as to confess the names of some -gentlemen and friends in whose houses I had been entertained. Yet in -this I greatly cherish and comfort myself: that I never discovered any -secrets there declared; and that I will not, come rack, come rope!” The -comment of the reader in court was an obvious one. “What can sound more -suspiciously or nearer unto treason than this letter?... It must needs -be some grievous matter and very pernicious, that neither rack nor -rope can wring from him!” But Campion’s even more obvious answer was -that there he spoke as one “by profession and calling a priest,” vowed -to silence in regard to what was made known in the Confessional, and -yet pressed, on the rack, to divulge secrets thus communicated to him. -“These were the hidden matters ... in concealing of which I so greatly -rejoiced, to the revealing whereof I cannot nor will not be brought, -come rack, come rope!” Well chosen was this answer of Campion’s. It has -been pointed out that if he had stated here that he had told on no one -who was not already found out, he would have loosed the informers and -man-hunters afresh on the whole Catholic community, until his other -friends, who had not been found out, were run down. Instead of that he -drew off attention by reminding the court that he could not repeat what -had been sacramentally confided to him. Most of his hearers were either -Catholic or had been Catholic, and acquiesced. He spoke truth, but he -skipped explanations: and such is, more often than not, the highest -wisdom in this complex world. - -There were now read out certain papers containing oaths to be -administered to persons ready to renounce their obedience to her -Majesty, and to be sworn of the Papal allegiance alone. These were -said to have been found in houses where “Campion had lurked, and for -religion been entertained;” hence they were of his composing. He -objected that the administering of oaths was repugnant to him, and -exceeded his authority: “neither would I commit an offence so thwart -to my profession, for all the substance and treasure in the world.” -He went on to say (assuming for his purpose that the precious papers -were not forged, though they really were so), that there was no proof -of their connection with himself, nor was it even pretended that they -were in his handwriting. Anderson replied with singular perversity or -dulness: “You, a professed Papist, coming to a house and then such -reliques found after your departure—how can it otherwise be implied -but that you did both bring them and leave them there? So it is flat -they came there by means of a Papist: _ergo_, by your means!” The -logician in Campion dashed to the fore. Could it be shown that no other -Papist ever visited that house but himself? If not, they were urging -a conclusion before framing a minor! which is imperfect, he added, -and proves nothing. Apparently Serjeant Anderson was sufficiently -enraged by now. His highly judicial retort is on record. “If here, as -you do in Schools, you bring in your minor and conclusion, you will -prove yourself but a fool. But minor or conclusion, I will bring it -to purpose anon!” Eliot then rose as witness, and gave his account of -the Sunday sermon at Lyford: how Master Campion spoke of enormities in -England, and of a day of change soon coming, welcome to the shaken -and dispersed Catholics, but dreadful to the heretical masters of the -land. “What day should that be,” broke in the Queen’s Counsel, “but -that wherein the Pope, the King of Spain, and the Duke of Florence have -appointed to invade this realm?” Campion turned his eyes on Eliot. -“Oh, Judas, Judas!... As in all other Christian commonwealths, so in -England, many vices and iniquities do abound ... whereupon, as in every -pulpit every Protestant doth, I pronounced a great day, not wherein -any temporal potentate should minister, but wherein the terrible Judge -should reveal all men’s consciences and try every man.... Any other -day than this, God He knows I meant not.” So much for the astonishing -“evidence” of this most astonishing of all trials, one only, under -Pontius Pilate, excepted. - -[Illustration: “Not Guilty!” _p. 151._] - -The chief count against the defendant was the old, old one of the Bull -of Deposition, and the denied authority of the Queen in spirituals: -that wretched family skeleton trotted out once more! “You refused to -swear to the Supremacy, a notorious token of an evil willer to the -Crown.” Campion, who was surely what Antony Wood quaintly calls him, -“a sweete Disposition, and a well-polish’d Man,” stated his position -once more, lucidly, and with perfect temper. He began by referring to -what passed at the Earl of Leicester’s London house. “Not long since -it pleased her Majesty to demand of me whether I did acknowledge her -to be my Queen or no. I answered that I did acknowledge her Highness -not only as my Queen, but also as my most lawful governess. And being -further required by her Majesty whether I thought the Pope might -lawfully excommunicate her or no, I answered: ‘I confess myself an -insufficient umpire between her Majesty and the Pope for so high a -controversy, whereof neither the certainty is yet known, nor the best -divines in Christendom stand fully resolved!... I acknowledge her -Highness as my governor and sovereign; I acknowledge her Majesty both -in fact and by right to be Queen; I confess an obedience due to the -Crown as to my temporal head and primate.’ This I said then; so I say -now. If then I failed in aught, I am now ready to supply it. What would -you more? I will willingly pay to her Majesty what is hers; yet I -must pay to God what is His. Then as for excommunicating her Majesty, -it was exacted of me (admitting that excommunication were of effect, -and that the Pope had sufficient authority so to do), whether then I -thought myself discharged of my allegiance or no? I said that this -was a dangerous question, and that they that demanded this demanded -my blood. Admitting (why admitting?) I would admit his authority, and -then he should excommunicate her, I would then do as God should give -me grace: but I never admitted any such matter, neither ought I to -be wrested with any such suppositions.” To all this no rejoinder was -made. It was the identical position taken up by many another harassed -martyr. The prosecution next turned to the remaining prisoners, using -the same weak, wrong, skirmishing tactics,—Campion often putting in -a word to hearten one, to defend another, to guide a third. At a -certain point he exclaimed: “So great are the treasons that I and the -others have wrought, that the gaoler who has us in charge told me at -night that would we but go to the Anglican services they would pardon -us straightway!” Serrano, who reports this, adds: “They answered -things in general.” At the close of the proceedings, their issue being -prearranged, Campion was allowed to make a speech to the jurors. He -eloquently begged them to seek for certainties, and to remember the -character of the “evidence” brought before them. Alas! he was appealing -to bought men, who dared not be true. - -The pleadings had taken three hours; the jury deliberated, or seemed to -do so, for an hour or more. Public opinion in the Hall, as at the Tower -conferences, was overwhelmingly in favour of Campion. But “the poor -twelve,” as Allen calls them, came back, fearful to be found “no friend -of Cæsar,” bringing in a verdict against the whole company as “guilty -of the said treasons and conspiracies.” The Lord Chief Justice spoke: -“Campion, and the rest, what can you say why you should not die?” Then -Campion broke out into a brief appeal to the future and the past, a -lyric strain such as was not often heard beneath those ancient rafters, -so sadly used to the spectacle of noble hearts in jeopardy. “It was -not our death that ever we feared! But we knew that we were not lords -of our own lives, and therefore for want of answer would not be guilty -of our own deaths. The only thing that we have now to say is, that if -our religion do make us traitors we are worthy to be condemned; but -otherwise we are and have been as true subjects as ever the Queen had. -In condemning us you condemn all your own ancestors, all the ancient -priests, Bishops and Kings: all that was once the glory of England, -the Island of Saints, and the most devoted child of the See of Peter. -For what have we taught (however you may qualify it with the odious -name of treason), that they did not uniformly teach? To be condemned -with these old lights, not of England only, but of the world, by their -degenerate descendants, is both gladness and glory to us! God lives. -Posterity will live. Their judgment is not so liable to corruption as -that of those who are now going to sentence us to death.” After which -the Lord Chief Justice pronounced the formula in use for all prisoners -condemned to capital punishment. “Ye must go to the place whence ye -came, there to remain until ye shall be drawn through the open city of -London upon hurdles to the place of execution, and there be hanged and -let down alive ... and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight; -then your heads to be cut off, and your bodies to be divided in four -parts, to be disposed of at her Majesty’s pleasure. And may God have -mercy on your souls!” Some of the company raised a storm of protest, -but Campion’s voice rose above theirs, crying: “We praise Thee, O God!” -Sherwin seconded him with the shouted anthem of Eastertide: “This is -the day that the Lord hath made: let us rejoice and be glad therein!” -Like expressions of triumph were presently taken up, to the amazement -of bystanders. Then the doomed men were parted, and were all taken -away, Edmund Campion being put in a barge on the Thames, and rowed back -to the Tower, where he was heavily shackled with irons, and left alone. - - - - -XIII - -VICTORY: DECEMBER 1, 1581 - - -EVEN thus late, fresh proffers were made to buy Campion over to the -State religion. Such a circumstance, as he had claimed previously, is -in itself a plain disproof of any treason. Hopton, who hated him, sent -Campion’s own sister to him with the repeated offer of a very rich -benefice. To the cell door came one day none other than George Eliot, -saying that he would never have trapped Fr. Edmund, had he thought -that anything worse than imprisonment could be in store. He also told -the man of God whom he had wronged past reparation that he stood in -danger from the wrath of the Catholics, and feared their reprisals for -his late actions. Campion persuaded him that they would never push -revenge so far as to seek his life, but added that if Eliot were truly -repentant he should have a letter of recommendation to a Catholic Duke -in Germany, who would employ and protect him. Delahays, the keeper, in -the discharge of his office, had to stand close to the prisoner during -this interview, and what he heard sank into his mind and made him a -convert. Outside the Tower, there was a ferment of excitement over -this one of its inmates, and over the question whether the indignation -of all Europe should be braved by carrying out his sentence. The Earl -of Desmond, the accessory, and Dr. Sanders, the co-principal, of the -late revolt in western Ireland, were still hiding in woods and caves, -and weathering the hardships which were to be dismally ended for both -during the coming spring. Burghley concisely said, in the finest -Elizabethan spirit of punishing somebody—no great matter whom—when any -row was made, that “Campion and Sanders were in the same boat, and as -they could not catch Sanders, they must hang Campion instead.” The -princely visitor was still at Court, and high festival went on from -day to day. The preoccupation of the Queen with him and his affairs -was thought to be an excellent item of the programme, as it kept her -from thinking of Campion and his fate. Delay was dreaded as a means -of getting together of the great English nobles, and the foreign -ambassadors, with petitions for Campion’s release; and it was thought -that the Queen would never resist any strongly-worded request which so -corroborated her own supposed secret feeling. The Council still thought -his destruction desirable. Meanwhile, instant appeal was made to the -Duke, by the Catholics generally, to use his influence in Campion’s -behalf: he promised to intercede for him, and may have done so. At the -last moment further pressure was brought to bear. His confessor was -sent into the tennis court, where the Duke was about to begin a game, -with this message: that the royal blood of France would be disgraced -for ever, if so foul a judicial murder were not checked. The little -great personage, thus accosted, as we are told by Bombino, stroked his -face absent-mindedly with his left hand; then raised his right hand, -with the racket in it, and called to one opposite to him: “Play!” Not -another word did he answer to the tragic matter so thrust upon him. - -Burghley fixed upon November 25, a Saturday, as the date for Campion’s -execution. Sherwin was appointed to die in his company, as representing -the Seminary at Rheims. They were taken together one day into the -Lieutenant’s Hall to face some endless argument or other. The opponent, -“by report of such as stood by, was never so holden up to the wall in -his life.” On the way back to their cells, under guard, they crossed -one of the Tower courts. “Ah, Father Campion!” said his young comrade, -smiling at the welcome London sun, “I shall shortly be above yon -fellow.” Even one hurried free breath of fresh air must have meant much -to Campion. To be “clapped up a close prisoner,” as he had been from -the first, meant that his windows were blocked, and their minimum of -air strained through a narrow slanted funnel, latticed at its skyward -end, and with but one tiny pane occasionally opened at the bottom. But -these things, humanly intolerable, counted for little on the threshold -of light and liberty everlasting. “Delay of our death doth somewhat -dull me,” wrote Sherwin, touchingly, to a friend. “Truth it is, I -had hoped ere this, casting off this body of death, to have kissed -the precious, glorified wounds of my sweet Saviour, sitting in the -Throne of His Father’s own glory.” There was a good deal of haggling -and hesitation on the subject. By statute law any caught priest was -hangable; but public opinion (as Simpson reminds us in a brilliant -page) did not always run with the statute law. Moreover, Camden says -expressly that the Queen (who is supposed to have supervised and -approved all he wrote) did not believe in the “treasons” charged to the -“silly priests.” It is remarkable that the first defensive pamphlet put -forth by the Government after Campion’s death, was one “in which the -plot of Rheims and Rome was prudently forgotten—the very matter of the -indictment!” - -By the time the day for the execution was finally set for Friday, the -first of December, a third priest had been chosen from the waiting -batch of victims, as representing the English College at Rome. This -was the Blessed Alexander Briant, who had applied from his prison -cell for admission into the Society of Jesus, a fact not known to his -persecutors. If the entry of his age in the Oxford Matriculation Lists -be correct (as is most likely), he was now only in his twenty-sixth -year. He was grave and gentle in character, full of charm, and of the -most extraordinary personal beauty. He had been carried off in the -course of a descent on Fr. Parsons’ London rooms, starved and parched -in the Marshalsea, tortured by needles, and kept in the entire darkness -of deep dungeons in the Tower. Norton, the Rackmaster, on three -occasions, proceeded (in his own phrase) to “make him a foot longer -than God made him,” yet he adds that “he stood still with express -refusal that he would tell the truth.” The “truth” meant information of -the whereabouts of Fr. Parsons, a former tutor and devoted friend, and -of the place where Parsons’ books were being printed. Briant had been -condemned the day after Campion’s trial, in Westminster Hall, where his -angelic looks, out-lasting a hell of almost unique torment, did not -pass unnoticed by the public. Here (though some accounts say it was -at the scaffold) he carried in the palm of his hand, and gazed upon -often, a little cross of rough wood which he had managed to whittle -in his cell, and on which he had traced an outline in charcoal of the -figure of the Crucified. Pedro Serrano, the secretary of the Spanish -Ambassador, saw it taken away from Briant, and heard him say: “You can -wrest it from my hand, but never from my heart.” Not long afterwards -George Gilbert died in Italy, kissing Blessed Alexander’s little cross, -which he must have taken pains to buy back. - -These three, Fathers Campion, Sherwin, and Briant, were led forth on -a bitter morning, and bound to their hurdles, in the rain, outside -the Tower gates. Campion’s life for the past week had been nothing -but fasting, watching and prayer, and he was never in more gallant -spirits. “God save you all, gentlemen!” so he saluted the crowd, on -first coming out: “God bless you all, and make you all good Catholics!” -The two younger men were strapped down on one hurdle side by side, -Campion alone on the other. The mud was thick in the unpaved streets -of London, and the double span of horses, each flat hurdle being tied -to two tails, went at a great pace through Cheapside, Newgate Street, -and Holborn. There were intervals, however, when the jolted and bemired -prisoners were able to speak with their sympathizers, who surged in -upon them, and thus saved them for the moment from the incessant -annoyance of Charke and other accompanying fanatics. Some asked Fr. -Campion’s blessing; some spoke in his ear matters of conscience; one -gentleman courteously bent down and wiped the priest’s bespattered -face: “for which charity, or haply some sudden-moved affection, may God -reward him!” says one annalist who saw the kind deed done. - -The New Gate spanned the street where the prison named after it stood -until yesterday; and in a niche of the New Gate was still a statue of -Our Lady: this Fr. Campion reverenced, raising his head and his bound -body, as best he could, as he passed under. The three martyrs were -seen to be smiling, nay, laughing, and the people commented with wonder -on their light-heartedness. A mile or so of sheer country at the end -of the road, and Tyburn was at hand, stark against a cloudy sky, with -a vast crowd waiting to see the sacrifice: “more than three thousand -horse,” says Serrano, in the contemporary letter already quoted, “and -an infinite number of souls.” And he goes on, in the truest Catholic -temper, speaking for himself, the Ambassador, and their little circle, -to say, “there was no one of us who had not envy of their death.” Just -as the hurdles halted, the sudden sun shone out and lit up the gallows -with its hanging halters. Fr. Campion was set upon his feet, put into -the hangman’s cart, driven under the triangular beams, and told to put -his head into the noose. This the first martyr of the English Jesuits -did with all meekness. Then, “with grave countenance and sweet voice,” -he began to speak, as he supposed he was to be allowed to do, according -to custom. He took the text of St. Paul: “We are made a spectacle -unto the world, and to angels, and to men: we are fools for Christ’s -sake.” Sir Francis Knowles and other officials promptly interrupted -him, and reminded him to confess his treason. So once more he must -needs say: “I desire you all to bear witness with me that I am thereof -altogether innocent.... I am a Catholic man and a priest: in that faith -have I lived, and in that faith do I intend to die. If you esteem my -religion treason, then am I guilty. As for other treason, I never -committed any: God is my judge.” He spoke of the names which he had -been hoodwinked into confessing, and protested that all the “secrets” -held back were spiritual confidences, and that there were no “secrets” -of another nature between his hosts and him; he also put in a plea for -one Richardson, imprisoned on account of the _Decem Rationes_, whereas -he knew nothing whatever of that book. He then tried to pray. But a -school-master with lungs, named Hearne, hastily stepped forward and -read a novel proclamation, first and last of its kind, declaring in -the Queen’s name that these men about to be executed were perishing -not for religion but for treason. Diligent reassertion, in those days, -seems to have established anything as a fact! - -The lords and sheriffs present reverted to “the bloody question”: -what did Master Campion think of the Bull of Pius Quintus and the -excommunication of the Queen? and would he renounce the Pope of Rome? -He answered wearily that he was a Catholic. One voice shouted: “In -your Catholicism all treason is contained!” A minister came forward -to bid the martyr pray with him, but with marked gentleness was -denied his will. “You and I are not one in religion: wherefore, I -pray you, content yourself. I bar none of prayer, but I only desire -them of the Household of Faith to pray with me, and in mine agony to -say one Creed.” The Creed was chosen “to signify that he died for the -confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith.” He endeavoured again -to pray, probably using aloud the words of some of the Vulgate Psalms -or ritual hymns, when a spectator called out angrily to him to pursue -his devotions in English. “I will pray unto God,” answered Campion, -with all himself in the answer, “in a language which we both well -understand!” He was again interrupted, and ordered to ask forgiveness -of the Queen, and to pray for her. But his sweetness and patience held -out till the last. “Wherein have I offended her? In this am I innocent: -this is my last speech: in this give me credit. I have and do pray for -her.” “Pray you for Queen—Elizabeth?” was the insinuating query, made -often, and answered often, as here. Campion said: “Yea, for Elizabeth, -your Queen and my Queen, unto whom I wish a long, quiet reign, with all -prosperity.” He had barely finished this emphatic sentence when the -cart was drawn away. The multitude with one accord swayed and groaned. -Somebody in authority (one account names the Chamberlain of the Royal -Household, Lord Howard of Effingham) mercifully forbade the hangman -to cut the rope until he was quite dead. That other rope with which -Campion was bound Parsons managed to buy, and he had it laid about his -own neck when he came to die, in 1610. It is now at Stonyhurst: a -thin, frayed old cord some twelve feet long. - -Close to the quartering-block stood a spectator, a young gallant of -twenty-three, eldest son of a Norfolk house, who had great gifts of -mind, and was given to writing verses: his name was Henry Walpole. He -was a Catholic, though, it would seem, a worldly one. His generous -instincts of humanity, however, had led him to befriend hunted priests; -and a love of Campion, in particular, was already kindled in him -through this association. As the executioner threw the severed limbs of -a blessed soul into the great smoking cauldron, to parboil them before -they were stuck on spikes, according to sentence, a few drops were -splashed out upon Henry Walpole’s doublet. The incident roused his mind -and pierced his heart, and was to him the instant cry of his vocation. -Like many another spiritual son of Blessed Edmund Campion (and nearer -to him than they, because he entered the Society), he was granted the -glory of following him, through faults of his own, through innumerable -hardships, and through martyrdom at York, in April, 1595, into the -peace of Paradise. - -Meanwhile the hangman had seized the second victim, saying: “Come, -Sherwin! take thou also thy wages.” That manly man looked upon the bare -bloody arm of the other, and eager to show some public veneration of -his sainted leader, first bent forward and kissed it; then he leaped -into the cart. Young Briant presently endured death for the Faith -with an even calmer courage. The populace, much wrought up over all -three, went home, through the winter mists, in tears. Most of them who -had prejudices against the Church lost them for good; and very many -straightway entered her communion. - -The Government sent forth publication after publication in lame -defence of its action. Soon France, Austria, Italy, were inundated -with accounts of the event; these everywhere produced the deepest -impression. At home, a great tidal wave of conversion to the old Church -swept in. - -Campion’s death, last and best of his wonderful missionary labours, -bore the most astonishing fruit. The long storm of persecution raged -at its full fierceness after 1581, and it burst over the heads not only -of a far more numerous, but a far more heroic body. Edmund Campion’s -spirit had been built in good time, as it were, into the unsteady wall. - -Robert Parsons had an intense feeling for his first comrade-in-arms. -“I understand of the advancement and exaltation of my dear brother -Mr. Campion, and his fellows. Our Lord be blessed for it! it is -the joyfullest news in one respect that ever came to my heart.” -This same feeling breaks out with powerful irony, addressing the -“Geneva-coloured” clerics, who so long harassed the martyr-group -of 1581. “Their blood will, I doubt not, fight against your errors -and impiety many hundred years after you are passed from the world -altogether.... They are well bestowed upon you: you have used them to -the best.” - -And Allen, in a private letter, says on his part: “Ten thousand sermons -would not have published our apostolic faith and religion so winningly -as the fragrance of these victims, most sweet both to God and to men.” - -No remote mystic was Edmund Campion, but a man of his age, with -much endearing human circumstance about him and in him. Caring for -nothing but the things of the soul, he had yet caught the ear and the -eye of the nation. The tidings of his end meant much to many of the -great Elizabethans: not least personal was it, perhaps, to the lad -Shakespeare, whose father had been settled as a stout Recusant by the -Warwickshire ministrations of Parsons. - -An aged priest, Gregory Gunne, came up before the Council in 1585, his -thoughts and tongue too busy in Campion’s praise. The day would come, -he said, when a religious house would stand as a votive offering on -the spot where “the only man in England” had perished. There was still -no sign of such a thing when Mr. Richard Simpson’s great monograph -was first published, and that was twenty years before Pope Leo XIII -beatified the Blessed Edmund Campion on December 9, 1886. But now -there is a Convent with Perpetual Adoration in its little chapel, and -two bright English flags ever leaning against the altar, on that ground -of the London Tyburn: and is it wonderful that the vision of a worthier -memorial haunts the imagination of those who go there to pray for their -country? - -Blessed Edmund Campion was “a religious genius,” with a creative -spirituality given to few, even among the canonized children of -the Fold. But in his kinship with his place and time, his peculiar -gentleness, his scholarship lightly worn, his magic influence, his -fearless deed and flawless word, he was a great Elizabethan too. He had -sacrificed his fame and changed his career. He had spent himself for -a cause the world can never love, and by so doing he has courted the -ill-will of what passed for history, up to our own day. But no serious -student now mistakes the reason why his own England found no use for -her “diamond” other than the one strange use to which she put him. He -is sure at last of justice. In the Church, that name of his will have -a never-dying beauty, though it is not quite where it might have been -on the secular roll-call. To understand this is also to rejoice in it: -for why should we look to find there at all, those who are “hidden with -Christ in God”? - - THE END - - - BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. - - - - -The St. Nicholas Series - -EDITED BY THE REV. DOM BEDE CAMM, O.S.B. - - -LIST OF VOLUMES - - BARNABY BRIGHT. By REV. DAVID BEARNE, S.J. (2 vols.) - THE STORY OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE. By A NUN OF TYBURN CONVENT. - FATHER MATHEW. By KATHARINE TYNAN. - JEANNE D’ARC: THE MAID OF FRANCE. By C. M. ANTONY. - ST. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY. By REV. ROBERT HUGH BENSON. - VITTORINO DA FELTRE: A PRINCE OF TEACHERS. By A SISTER OF NOTRE DAME. - THE LEGEND OF ST. CHRISTOPHER. By REV. CYRIL MARTINDALE, S.J. - GABRIEL GARCIA MORENO. By the HON. MRS. MAXWELL-SCOTT. - CARDINAL WILLIAM ALLEN. By REV. DOM BEDE CAMM, O.S.B. - BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION. By LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. - CARDINAL POLE. By J. M. STONE. - THE MAN’S HANDS. By REV. R. P. GARROLD, S.J. - THE STORY OF THE ENGLISH POPE. By F. M. STEELE. - MADGE-MAKE-THE-BEST-OF-IT. By M. E. FRANCIS. - FATHER DAMIEN OF MOLOKAI. By MAY QUINLAN. - - _Each volume is in Foolscap 8vo., and has Six Illustrations - reproduced by the three-colour process._ - - _Price per volume, 2s. net._ - - - - - * * * * * - - - - -Transcriber’s note: - -Obvious punctuation errors were corrected. - -Page 77, “Fowers” changed to “Flowers” (Little Flowers of Martyrdom) - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLESSED EDMUND CAMPION*** - - -******* This file should be named 52731-0.txt or 52731-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/2/7/3/52731 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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