EDMUND CAMPION By EVELYN WAUGH LONIJ':JN HOLLIS AND CARTER 1947 FIRST PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 1935 SECOND IMPRESSION NOVEMBER 19,n THIRD IMPRESSION JULY 1936 'CHEAP EDITION OCTOBER 1937 SECOND EDITION NOW REPUBLISHED BY HOLLIS AND CARTER LTD., 1947 Prmtn/ I[y Jarro/J & Sons, Ltd., Tbl Emptrl Presr, N.... TO _MARTIN C. D'ARCY, S.). SOMETIME MASTER OF CAMPION HALL, OXFORD CONTENTS AUTHOR'S NOTE I. THE SCHO!-AR II. THE PRIEST III. THE HERO IV. THE MARTYR PAGE vii APPENDIX I. CAMPION'S BRAG +9 97 159 2°9 21+ APPENDIX II. LIST OF BOOKS CONSULTED LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS EbMUND CAMPION-FROM A VERY RARE PLATE AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM frontisPiece TO FACE PAGR ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD, ABOUT 1566-FROM A DRAWING BY BEREBLOCK 2+ END PAGE OF COMMENTARY ON ARISTOTLE'S "PHYSICS" BEARING CAMPION'S SIGNATURE AT TOP AND BOTTOM. (PRESERVED AT CAMPION HALL) 25 QUEEN ELIZABETH-FROM THE "ERMINE" PICTURE BY NICHOLAS HILLIARD AT HATFIELD HOUSE 56 EARL OF LEICESTER-FROM A PAINTING IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY BY AN UNKNOWN ARTIST 57 POPE PlUS V-FROM A CONTEMPORARY PRINT 152 TITLE PAGE OF COPY OF "DECEM RATIONES" (PRESERVED AT CAMPION HALL) 153 ENGRAVINGS FROM "BRIEFE HISTORIE OF THE GLORIOUS MARTYR- DOM OF XII REVEREND PRIESTS": APPREHENSION, THE ROAD TO PRISON, TRIAL AND TORTURE, THE RACK, TYBURN, EXECUTION 184- MAP Of THE TOWER OF LONDON, DATED 1597 185 VI PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION In 1934, when Campion Hall, Oxford, was being rebuilt on a site and in a manner more worthy of its distinction than its old home in St. Giles's, I wished to do something to mark my joy in the occasion and my gratitude to the then Master, to whom, under God, I owe my faith. A life of the Blessed Edmund Campion seemed the most suitable memorial. The alternatives were either a drastic revision of Richard Simpson's excellent work, which had long been out of print and had been corrected in many particulars by subsequent research, or to attempt an entirely new book. I chose the latter but Simpson's strong foundations support my structure and it is to him that I owe the greatest debt. I received invaluable help from Father Basset and Father Booth, of Campion Hall. from the late Father Watts of Stonyhurst, Father Hicks of Fa.rm Street and Mr. Douglas Woodruff. I was privileged to use the copious collection of notes and documents collected by one of the Fathers at Farm Street for what would have been, had he lived, the definitive biography. There is great need for a complete, scholar's work on the subject. Thi.s is not it. All I have done is select the incidents which struck a novelist as im- portant, and relate them in a single narrative. vii Vlll PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION I t shall be read as a simple, perfectly true story of heroism and holiness. We have come much nearer to Campion since Simpson's day. He wrote in the flood-tide of tolera- tion when Elizabeth's persecution seemed as remote as Diocletian's. We know now that his age was a brief truce in an unending war. The Martyrdom of Father Pro in Mexico re-enactedCampion's in faithful detail. Weare nearer Campion than when I wrote of him. We have seen the Church drawn underground in country after country. In fragments and whispers we get news of other saints in the prison camps of Eastern and South-eastern Europe, of cruelty and degradation more savage than anything in Tudor England, of the same, pure light shining in darkness, uncomprehended. The haunted, trapped, murdered priest is our contemporary and Campion's voice sounds to us across the centuries as though he were walking at our elbow. EVELYN WAUGH 194 6 I THE SCHOLAR In the middle of March 1603 it was clear to everyone that Queen Elizabeth was dying; her doctors were unable to diagnose the illness; she had little fever, but was constandy thirsty, resdess and morose; she refused to take medicine, refused to eat, refused to go to bed. She sat on the floor, propped up with cushions, sleepless and silent, her eyes constandy open, fixed on the ground, oblivious to the coming and going of her councillors and attendants. She had done nothing to recognise her successor; she had made no provision for the disposal of her personal property, of the vast, heterogeneous accumulation of a lifetime, in which presents had come to her daily from all parts of the world; closets and cupboards stacked high with jewelry, coin, bric-a-brae; the wardrobe of two thousand outmoded dresses. There was always company in the little withdrawing room waiting for her to speak, but she sighed and sipped and kept her silence. She had round her neck a piece of gold the size of an angel, engraved with characters; it had been left to her lately by a wise woman who had died in Wales at the age of a hundred and twenty. Sir John Stanhope had assured her that as long as she wore this 2 EDMUND CAMPION talisman she could not die. There was no need yet for doctors or lawyers or statesmen or clergy. Lord Admiral Howard was one of her visitors. He knelt beside her and, with tears, implored her to take a little nourishment. They brought a bowl of broth and the Admiral coaxed her to take a spoonful or two from his own hands. But when he urged her to go to bed she refused angrily, breaking into a confused and violent tale of her nightmares. " If you were in the habit of seeing such things in your bed, as I do when in mine," she said, " you would not persuade me to go there." But she had not the strength to sustain her rage, and, when Cecil and the lawyers had left her, she shook her head piteously, saying, " My lord, I am tied with a chain of iron about my neck." The Admiral reminded her of her wonted courage, but she replied, desponding, "I am tied, I am tied; and the case is altered with me." The Council sent the Archbishop of Canterbury to her; he came with several other divines, eloquent, circumspect men who had made a great career in her church, to offer the consolations of religion; but their appearance roused her to fury. She rated them and sent them packing, crying that she was no atheist, but she knew full well they were but hedge priests. The women about her tried to attribute causes to her melancholy; it was due to the execution of Essex, the execution of Mary of Scodand, the pardon of Tyrone. She herself confided to Lady Scrope that, before the THE SCHOLAR 3 Court moved from Whitehall, she had seen a hideous vision of " her own body, exceeding lean and fearful in a light of fire." She had asked, too, for a " true looking- glass," which she had not seen for twenty years, and when it was brought fell exclaiming at all the flatterers that had so much commended her. All her life she had been surrounded by plots; plots to implicate her in Wyatt's rebellion, plots against her life, to murder her with fire balls, to poison the pommel of her saddle; many of them real enough, some fomented by agents provocateurs, some the inventions of forgers and informers, plots that had no existence except in the brains of Walsingham and the Cecils. Now in her last illness they took shape again, and assassins lurked for her in the darkness and behind the curtains. So she lay for nearly two weeks, until, lapsing into a stupor, she was carried to bed, where she died without speaking. The Archbishop returned to her at the end, and a movement of the hand was interpreted by her ladies-in-waiting as her consent to his presence. In these circumstances the TudO£ dynasty came to an end, which in three generations had changed the aspect and temper of England. They left a new aristocracy, a new religion, a new system of government; the generation was already in its childhood that was to gend King Charles to the scaffold; the new, rich families who were to introduce the House of Hanover, were already in the second stage of their metamorphosis from the freebooters of Edward VI's reign to the conspirators of 1688 and the sceptical, cultured oligarchs of the eighteenth 4 EDMUND CAMPION century. The vast exuberance of the Renaissance had been canalised. England was secure, independent, insular; the course of her history lay plain ahead; competitive nationalism, competitive industrialism, com- petitive imperialism, the looms and coal mines and counting houses, the joint-stock companies and the cantonments; the power and the weakness of great possessions. What was in Elizabeth's mind as she lay there through the silent hours, sane and despairing? The thought of another England that it had been in her hand.s to make ? Or did she contrast her present state, an old perjured woman, dying without comfort, with those early years when the future had been compact of hope and adven- ture; see the light on the river and hear again the splash of oars as Leicester's barge rode between green banks and pollarded willows, and the flowered damask trailed out in the water behind them; the torchlight at Kenil- worth and Rycote, the extravagant, irresponsible dances before the royal suitors, the bonfires kindling from crest to crest as the news travelled across country of the Armada's failure? . . . It had been a life of tumultuous drama, and it was ending, now, in silence; among all its incidents did she recall the afternoon of high summer when she had moved in a great retinue from Woodstock to Oxford, and, for the first time, held her court among the scholars of the University ? The visit had been twice postponed. Two years earlier-in IS64-she had been to Cambridge, where the' THE SCHOLAR 5 whole University had exerted itself in her entertainment, some of the more enthusiastic members even following her on the first stage of the return journey and attempting to make themselves agreeable to her-unsuccessfully, as things turned out-by performing a burlesque of the Mass, in which one of them, dressed as a dog, capered about the stage with a Host in his mouth. She had meant to proceed to Oxford at that time, but the plague, brought over by the defeated garrison from Dieppe, still hung about the city, and it was not until the summer of 1566 that it was thought safe for the eagerly expected visit to take place. Although it was vacation time, practically the whole University remained in residence for her coming. The Court was at the Palace of Woodstock, a short journey away, and at the end of August, on an afternoon of heavy rain, Leicester, who was now Chancellor of the Uni- versity, Sir William Cecil and a few companions rode over to make the final arrangements. Two days later- Saturday, 31st-the Queen followed them, attended by most of the Court and the Spanish Ambassador. Leicester came to meet her at W olvercote, the boundary of the University Liberties; with him were the Vice- Chancellor and the Heads of Houses ill their academic robes. It was a formidable afternoon. From the moment that the gay and chattering procession crossed into University ground, the character of their reception became manifest. That day, at any rate, there was to be no levity; nor was there to be any haste. The cavalcade 6 EDMUND CAMPION halted while the Provost of Oriel pronounced in labori- ously polished Latin an address of welcome, which can have been intelligible to very few of the attendant ladies and gendemen-the Earl of Warwick, Leicester's brother, a tough, middle-aged soldier; Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, aged sixteen, Cecil's son-in-law, but a child of the old nobility, soon to get into trouble for murdering a servant; young Edward Manners, Duke of Rutland-all sitting patiently on their horses while the phrases of the oration rose and fell in the best Ciceronian style. At length it came to an end, compliments were exchanged, and the procession moved off. A few miles further on another little cluster of notables was assembled-the Mayor of the City and the civic dignitaries. Here the speeches were in English, but at the North Gate another don was in wait for them, Mr. Deal of New College, with an oration in Latin. From the gate to Carfax the way was lined with kneeling and applauding scholars; this was the kind of thing to which the Court was accustomed, but at Carfax came another check, Lawrence the Regius Professor, with a composition in Greek. It was the finest oration, the Queen said, that she had ever heard in Greek; she was prepared for an exchange of pleasantries in the same language, but, in pity for the evident distress of her followers, she consented to postpone it until they reached their lodgings. The company moved on again, litter and hackney, but the speeches were not yet over. At the gates of Christ Church Mr. Kingsmill, the University Orator, was ready to welcome them. The Queen heard him to the end, but, grown slighdy testy THE SCHOLAR 7 by this tIme, merely remarked in acknowledgment, " You would have done well had you had good matter." The Court crossed the threshold of the House; they were now among the very buildings where most of them were to be quartered, but their h,pst .had not yet done with them. Four Doctors in their scarlet robes were observed advancing upon the royal party across the quadrangle, carrying a canopy; under this Elizabeth was led to church where, in sonorous English, prayers were offered in thanksgiving for her safe arrival; an anthem was sung to the music of cornets; after the anthem there were more prayers. At last, late in the evening, the weary courtiers were allowed to disperse, to see to their baggage and their beds, to wash and refresh themselves, while the young Queen stole away to her lodgings through the gathering shadows of Dr. Westphaling's garden. The visit lasted for six days. There were some lighter moments: a Latin play in Christ Church Hall, called Marcus Geminus, which the Queen did not attend (the Spanish Ambassador spoke so highly of it that she resolved to lose no more sport thereafter); an English play acted in two parts named Palemon and Arcyte, at the first night of which the stage collapsed, killing three people and injuring five more; on the second night a pack of hounds was introduced into the quadrangle, which moved the young scholars, confined to the upper stories, to such excitement that the Queen expressed her fear that they would fall out of the windows; there were several elaborate dinners; but for the most part the 8 EDMUND CAMPION entertainment was strictly academic; orations, sermons, debates, the presentation of Latin verses translated from the Hebrew, the conferring of honorary degrees. It was not until the third day, Tuesday, September 3rd, when the senior members had played their parts, that Edmund Campion made his appearance. He was then twenty-six years old, seven years younger than the Queen, but already a person of outstanding importance in the University. At the age of seventeen he had become a Fellow of St. John's, and almost immediately attracted round him a group of pupils over whom he exerted an effordess and comprehensive influence; they crowded to his lectures, imitated his habits of speech, his mannerisms and his clothes, and were proud to style themselves" Campionists." There had been a certain difficulty in choosing suitable subjects for debate, for the subject in everyone's mind at Oxford and on everyone's tongue was the Queen's change of religion; Cecil had carefully edited the list of propositions, eliminating Jewel's attempt to bring matters to an issue; it was well known that Oxford, and particularly St. John's, was predominantly Catholic in sympathy; the last thing that he wanted was to embarrass the occasion by arousing the theological passions that had flamed into disorder when Peter Martyr had been Professor of Divinity. Discussion was confined to strictly secular subjects, and to Campion fell the task of proposing" that the tides are caused by the moon's motion," and "that the lower bodies of the universe are regblated by the higher." Throughout his career Campion preserved a naive THE SCHOLAR 9 interest in natural science, and later, in the dark hours when he was fighting for his reputation in Hopton's Hall, he was willing to prove to his judges that the heavens were as hard as crystal. Now he seems to have treated the question at issue as a subordinate matter; all his eloquence, the delicate accent, the terse, stylish antitheses, the strong and accurate diction, that made him the model of the schools, was devoted to the praise of the Queen and the Vice-Chancellor. Speaking in Latin, he began: "One thing only reconciles me to the unequal contest, which I must maintain single-handed against four pugnacious youths; that I am speaking in the name of Philosophy, the princess of letters, before Elizabeth, the lettered princess." He praised the learning of her ancestors and her condescension in visiting her poor scholars; then he turned to the Earl of Leicester, who sat beside her, and reminded him that it was due to his godly and deathless benefactions that the University had thrown off its lethargy and was once more advancing in hope. "May God preserve these benefits to us; may He preserve," bowing left and right, .. your Majesty, your Honour; you our mother, you our protector-te quae /w.ec fads, te qui haec mones," at which the Queen, turning smiling in her seat towards the Earl, said: " You, my lord, must still be one." The balanced compliments succeeded one another, until, remarking that the poor scholars had no fit present to offer their visitors e)ICept what was within them, something from " the veins and bowels of philosophy," 10 EDMUND CAMPION Campion proceeded to his subject and briefly expounded the theory that the sea was constandy blown out with vapours, like water boiling in a pot. The speech was .the success of the afternoon. The Queen warmly applauded and commended Campion to Leicester, and later, when the Spanish Ambassador remarked that, though laudable, the speeches were, after all, well prepared beforehand, and the Queen assembled the most notable orators for an extempore debate at Merton, Campion was among them, and spoke on the subject of .. Fire n in a way to confirm her highest opinions of him. Before leaving Oxford, both Cecil and Leicester saw Campion privately, and promised him their patronage. He could hardly have been offered two more different patrons-the secretary, purposeful, cautious, self-con- trolled, indefatigable, middle-class, the man of the desk and the Council table; and the flamboyant courtier, swarthy and swaggering, magnificent, impulsive, a specticular horseman, a soldier; descended on one side from the great families of English history, Talbot and Beauchamp, on the other from the reckless, bloodstained house of Dudley; three generations of Dudleys, his grandfather, his father and his brother, had died on the scaffold; perhaps no one in Oxford doubted that Amy Robsart, whose obsequies four years before they had piously celebrated, had been murdered at his orders. At any hour he might become the Queen's husband. His was all the glamour of the great world that lay beyond the University Liberties; the pageantry and the high THE SCHOLAR II politics of the new reign. It was to him that Campion immediately attached himself. And Leicester did not neglect his satellite. At W ood- stock and Rycote, when the Court felt the need for a serious interlude, it was often Campion who was sum- moned to minister to them. For, though to the dazzled young scholar their world might seem something intangibly remote, those in power knew very well that they had need of men like Campion. There had been a grave purpose behind the visit to Oxford. For the past twenty-five years education in England had been in a state of disorder which threatened at any moment to become chaos. At the beginning of the century Erasmus had placed English scholarship above that of France or the Germanies, second only to Italy in its breadth of culture. It was to England that the University of Leipsic had turned for its professor of Greek; Colet, Grocyn, Lynacre and More were able to converse on terms of equality wiclrtlre leading men of Padua, and under their temperate and profound influence Oxford was emerging gradually, steadily, by a process of organic growth, from the cloistered formality of the Middle Ages into the spacipus, luminous world of Catholic humanism. With the Pope's encouragement Wolsey had taken over monastic revenues for the endowment of Chris(Church; Fox, Bishop of Winchester, instituted the first Greek lectult;!slftft in .the:tQur:.o..tip of Corpus; the faction,oC> l'rQjans' W;ho. were upp(2) d 1O.;the new learning, !:'eing gendy pressed into acquiesqalte by the King .and e J i hpRS. ,. C!Qse.correspondence was 12 EDMUND CAMPION kept with the great teachers of Italy, and the foundations were laid of a Renaissance which, illuminated by the poetic genius native to the country, might, in a genera- tion, have been one of the glories of Europe. All this ended abruptly and violently at Henry's break with the Pope. When the Church was in undisputed authority she could afford to wink at a little speculative fancy in her philosophers, a pagan exuberance of taste in her artists; now, when she was dciven to defend the basis and essential structure of her faith, there was no room for indulgence; controversy took first place among the Arts, and scholars became famous for their views on the Mass rather than their appreciation of classical poetry. More than this, the confiscators of ecclesiastical pro- perty made havoc of University finance. Education all over the country was dependent upon monastic and chantry foundations, and at their suppression grammar- school education in many districts came utterly to an end. Here and there the revenues of the dispossessed religious were kepI for public services, and a few reorganised grammar schools survived under charters of Edward VI, but in the great majority of cases the estates went direct to the courtiers. At Oxford the Colleges were a com- paratively new institution, and a large part of University life still centred in the halls which the various abbeys and priories maintained for ir students. These were all emptied; th ..pnpergraduates: deEend nt on monastic exhibitiof,1s ,.' 1te -turned adrift and the C911 ges them- selves' e tettained well-fpun.Ged apprehellSioT:$ of how long they wo dbe aljQwed.,tQ surV,iye.. The courtiers THE SCHOLAR 13 both of Henry VIII and Somerset had pressed for their abolition; the demand, in both cases, was resisted and rebuked, but the thirst for plunder was not slaked and it is possible that, if Edward VI had lived some years longer, both Universities would have come to grief. As it was, the visitors of Edward VI suppressed many of the exhibitions for poor students which had survived the acts of confiscation, and only the strenuous protests of the citizens saved Magdalen Grammar School from extinction. The College chapels were ransacked of Popish ornaments; the great reredos of All Souls was destroyed, and' New College windows only survived on the Fellows' promise to have them out, as soon as they could afford to replace them with plain glass; but it was upon books that the Anglicans particularly turned their disapproval. The whole of the Duke Humphrey's library was gutted and the shelves sold in the streets; the illuminated office books in Magdalen choir were hacked up with choppers, and from every College cart- loads of books were removed to be burned or sold as waste paper; a coloured initial was enough to convict the contents of Popery; a mathematical diagram of magic. When the visitors left, the collections of cen- turies had been irretrievably ruined. Better order was restored under Mary. Two new colleges, St. John's and Trinity, were founded, but the past could not be recalled. There was another upheaval at Elizabeth's succession, and numerous Catholics lost their chairs and fellowships; no one felt confidence in the rewards of scholarship. Politics and theology con- 14 EDMUND CAMPION cinued to sway University elections. A great tradition had been broken. Not for a hundred years was the University to know security, and it was to emerge from its troubles provincial, phlegmatic and exclusive; not for three hundred years was it to re-emerge as a centre of national life. Elizabeth and Cecil were well aware of these con- ditions. They had a genuine and deep respect for learn- ing, and one object of the visit had been to assure the scholars of royal favour. In this they were successful; the numbers taking degrees show a marked increase from this time. But there was another and more delicate mission. From its earliest days the University had been pri- marily a place for the training of churchmen. By the . statutes, Holy Orders were obligatory on aspirants for almost all the important offices. Sons of the aristocracy might keep term in the interests of culture, but the general assumption for the poor scholars was that they were qualifying as priests. Now Cecil and Elizabeth were finding it very hard to get suitable candidates for ministry in the new church. By the first acts of the reign they had made the Mass illegal and issued a Prayer Book based on the two experimental books of Edward VI. This had been done against the unanimous vote of Con- vocation, and it was followed by the resignation or deprivation of a considerable number of the clergy. It is impossible, through the absence of many of the records, to estimate at all accurately the number of parish priests who gave up their cures and drifted into penury THE SCHOLAR 15 or other employment-probably about five hundred- but the names of most of the higher clergy have been preserved, and these include the entire episcopate, with the exception of Kitchen of Llandaff, fifteen heads of colleges, ten deans, twelve archdeacons and forty-seven prebendaries. 1 The new church was thus starting its history with a painful shortage of qualified leaders. Those who preferred to accept the change and make careers for themselves in the establishment against which they had protested were not the most desirable of the old body; reluctant acquiescence was the best for which Cecil and Elizabeth could hope, except from one quarter where support was wholly unwelcome. They had no more ta te for the extremists of their own party than they had for the Catholics. Elizabeth's personal inclinations were towards something mildly ceremonious in public worship; she kept a cross and candles in her chapel, she preferred her ministers to be celibate and suitably vested, she liked to think that her church had retained something from the tradition of her ancestors. Had she been born in an age which offered no alternative, she would have conformed complacendy enough, for, apart from a pro- nounced deficiency in faith, hope and charity, she had in many ways a naturally Catholic temperament; Cecil, though more austere in taste, already divined in the theocratic system of Geneva and the wild oratory of St. Andrews the spirit that was later to wreck the monarchy; neither had any use for the fanatical Puritans. They needed, to guide their church through her difficult infancy, a new kind of cleric; sober, decently educated 16 EDMUND CAMPION men, with a proper devotion to the Crown and the Council, men of common sense who could see where their advantage lay, men of high repute who could over- ride the suggestion that religion had fallen to the manage- ment of knaves and eccentrics. Inevitably, it was to the younger members of the Universities that they turned; Campion seemed a man eminently suitable to their purpose. His charm and attainments were easily apparent; he was sprung from just that stock of London tradespeople where the chief strength of Protestantism lay; he was completely without resources, and had his way to make in the world. There was another young Oxford man who attracted their particular attention, a Fellow of Christ Church named Tobie Matthew. He was younger than Campion, barely twenty years old, and had had no part in the debates in the schools. It was not until Elizabeth's last day in Oxford that he was presented to her, when he made a farewell oration which attracted her so much that she nominated him her scholar. Cecil looked after him well; a splendid career lay before him. He became Canon of Christ Church four years later; in 1572., at the unusually early age of twenty-six, he was made President of St. John's, where he set himself to release the college from its obligation to receive poor scholars elected from the Merchant Taylors; four years later he was Dean of Christ Church, later Vice-Chancellor; from there he turned to the greater world, became successively Dean and Bishop of Durham, and, finally, Archbishop of York. He was a talkative little man, THE SCHOLAR 11 always eager to please, always ready with a neat, parsonic witticism; the best of good fellows, everywhere, except in his own family. When, on the Council of the North, he was most busy hunting down recusants, he was full of little jokes to beguile his colleagues. He was a great preacher. At first he kept no count of his sermons, but later, realising their importance, he scored them punctu- ally in a book; between his elevation to the Deanery of Durham and his death he preached 1,992 times. In James's reign he saw the trend of the times, and, alone among the bishops, voted in favour of conference with the lower House. He married admirably, a widow of stout Protestant principles and unique place in the new clerical caste, which had sprung naturally from the system of married clergy; Frances Barlow, widow of Matthew Parker, Junior; she was notable in her generation as having a bishop for her father, an arch- bishop for her father-in-law, an archbishop for her husband, and four bishops for her brothers. Tobie Matthew died full of honours in 1628. There, but for the Grace of God, went Edmund Campion. The visitors departed and the University settled down to its normal routine. At St. John's work started early with a lecture in logic at half-past six; at nine there was a Greek lecture; rhetoric at one or two; there were also University lectures once or twice in the week on divinity, grammar, physics and metaphysics. Mathematics was left to vacations. In hall the college dined at three tables, the Fellows and masters at one, bachelors and third-year 18 EDMUND CAMPION undergraduates at another, the choristers and students at a third; recreation was limited to the bow and arrow. At night the scholars slept in a single, large dormitory, two in a bed, until they were over sixteen years of age. The Fellows and tutors had their own rooms, which they shared with a scholar deputed to work for them. Every scholar was put under the particular supervision of a tutor, who directed his studies, saw that his hair was trimmed and his manners orderly, and, when necessary. corrected him with the birch. The founder of the college, Sir Thomas White, had lived until 1564, and up to his death he saw to it that the rules he had laid down were properly observed. He was a city magnate of modest education and simple piety; a childless old man who devoted the whole of his great wealth to benefactions. The last years of his life were quite overclouded by the change- of religion; he collected the sacred vessels from the college chapel and stored them away in his own house for a happier day, and was obliged to stand by helpl ss while the authorities perverted the ends of his own foundation; he saw the poor scholars whom he had adopted and designed for the priesthood trained in a new way of thought and ordained with different rites, for a different purpose. He had set down in his statutes that the day was to begin with Mass, said in the Sarum use; at Elizabeth's accession it ceased, never to be restored; he saw three of his Presidents, Belsire, Elye, and Stork, deposed by the authorities for their faith. 2 He died a comparatively poor man, out of favour at Court, out of temper with the times, and was buried THE SCHOLAR 19 according to Protestant rites; Campion speaking the funeral oration in terms which appear rather patronising. Perhaps in secret a Mass was said for him; it is impossible to say. There were still many priests in Oxford, and at this time the greater part of St. John's was Catholic in sympathy, but no record survives of any such act, and it seems probable that from the early days of Elizabeth until the counter-reformationary period, fifteen or twenty years later, Catholicism at Oxford was largely a matter of sentiment and loyalty to the old ways, rather than of active spiritual life. The best men, like William Allen, had left the University and the country. Those that remained honoured the Church in much the same way as the dons of the eighteenth century were to honour the House of Stuart. At Merton they enjoyed singing Popish hymns round the fire at night, as a later generation were to sing Jacobite songs. But the saying of Mass was a different matter. Whatever the sectional differences between the various Anglican groups, they were united in their resolve to stamp out this vita] practice of the old religion. They struck hard at all the ancient habits of spiritual life-the rosary, devotion to Our Lady and the Saints, pilgrimages, religious art, fasting, confession, penance and the great succession of traditional holidays-but the Mass was recognised as being both the distinguishing sign and main sustenance of their opponents. The objects specially connected with it, the vestments, plate and missals, were singled out for destruction; thealtarstones were taken for paving and cheese presses 3; they 20 EDMUND CAMPION ridiculed the Host in broadsheets and burlesques, called it by derisive nicknames, " Round Robin," " Jack in the Box" and " Wormes Meat." "Massing priests" is the phrase constantly used in Cecil's correspondence to designate the Marian priests; the right to have Mass said in a private chapel was one of the main questions at issue in the negotiations for Elizabeth's marriage with her Catholic suitors; one of the terms suggested for peace with Mary Stuart was that she should "abandon the Mass in Scotland and receive Common Prayer after the form of England." 4. It was one of the complaints against de Quadra that he had allowed strangers to hear Mass in the Embassy Chapel. Other instances of the kind can be quoted almost interminably; many will occur in the course of this narrative. On occasions the feeling found extravagant expression. In July 1581 the congregation in St. Peter's at Rome was startled by an infuriated Anglican tourist who attempted to snatch the Host from the priest's hand, while in November of the same year another Englishman upset the chalice and attempted to strangle the priest in S. Maria del Popolo. Opinion differed on the significance of the" Lord's Supper or Holy Communion " service which had been composed in its place; it was employed as an occasional service for communicants only; not as the central act of worship 6; the wording was devised so as to embrace, as far as possible, the conflicting theories of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Bucer, but it was explicit in its dissociation from the Catholic Mass. 6 It was on this very point-not of the Papal supr macy-that the con- THE SCHOLAR 21 dern ned heretics of Mary's reign went to the stake; men and women of noble resolution to whom the new church looked back as martyrs, worthy of the same veneration which Catholics paid to Fisher and More, and the record of whose sufferings, in F oxe' s highly inaccurate chronicle, was placed beside the Bible in the churches. The law at this period (1559-1570) was mild in com- parison with what it subsequently became; the priest, for saying Mass in public or private, was liable at the first conviction to one year's sequestration from his benefice and six months' imprisonment; at the second, to deprivation and a year's imprisonment; at the third, to imprisonment for life. Anyone inducing him to offend in this way was fined a hundred marks in the first case, four hundred in the second, and in the third for- feited his entire property and was imprisoned for life. But there do not appear to have been any convictions under this Act at Oxford. Later, in 1577, when the penalties were far heavier and more rigorously imposed, a Mr. Etheridge was arrested for having Mass said in his house; there seems, too, at that time, to have been a regular chapel frequented by Catholics in the cellars under the Mitre Inn; but during the time that Campion was in residence submission on this point may have been complete; the ambiguous attitude of himself and his contemporaries is easily explicable on the assumption that throughout the whole of this period they were entirely deprived of the sacraments. He probably had taken the oath of supremacy when he became ,B.A. in 1560; he must have put in a fairly 22 EDMUND CAMPION regular appearance at the Protestant services in the college chapel; in 1568 he committed himself more gravely by accepting ordination as deacon at the hands of his friend Cheney, Bishop of Gloucester. But it seems clear that he took this step to avoid rather than to invite prominence in ecclesiastical affairs. In this confused and ill-docu- mented decade, the Catholics, left without effective leadership, appear to have been dealing with the problem of conformity, each in his own way. It was one which varied gready in different parts of the country. Some refused the oath and went into exile; some paid the penalties of the law. Some, who were popular or locally powerful, avoided, year after year, taking the oath at all; some took the oath and meant nothing by it. That generation was inured to change; sooner or later the tide would turn in their favour again; a Protestant coup, such as was spoken of, to enthrone the Earl of Huntingdon might inflame a national rising and restore the old religion; the Queen might die and be succeeded by Mary Stuart; she might marry a Catholic; she might declare for Catholicism herself. In any case, things were not likely to last on their present unreasonable basis. It was one thing for a Government to suppress dangerous innovations-that was natural enough; but for the innovators to be in command, for them to try and crush out by force historic Christianity-j1at was contrary to all good sense; it was like living under the Turks. At the worst there would soon be a truce, and both parties would practise their religions without interference. So they muddled along, waiting for better times to come. THE SCHOLAR 23 In many places the priest would say Mass in his own house for the Catholics before proceeding to read Morning Prayer in the parish church; occasionally, it is said, he would even bring consecrated wafers and communicate his Catholic parishioners at the same time as he distributed to the Protestants the bread blessed according to the new rite. At Oxford the division was more sharply defined; there was a Catholic party in the majority, and a Protestant party in the ascendant. Campion hesitated between the two, reluctant to decide. What he wished was to be left in peace to pursue his own studies, to discharge the duties which soon fell on him as proctor and public orator, to do his best for his pupils. But he was born into the wrong age for these gentle ambitions; he must be either much more, or much less. By the statutes of the college he was obliged, if he wished to make his career in the University, to proceed to the study of theology and the acceptance of Holy Orders. He put it off as long as he could, concentrating at first upon Aristode and natural theology, where there was little to entangle him in the controversies of the day, but in 1567 he had, in the normal course, to proceed to the study of the Fathers. Here every sentence seemed to bear a topical allusion, and the deeper he penetrated into the minds of the Doctors, the further he seemed from the Anglican Church which he was designed to enter. He 6ed and doubled from the conclusions of his reason; nothing but ill was promised for him by the way he was being drawn; he prayed fervently, he consulted those 2.4 EDMUND CAMPION about him. Shrewd little Tobie Matthew was recognised as a specialist on the subject. Earnestly, man to man, Campion asked him how, with his deep knowledge of the Fathers, he could take the side he did. " If I believed them as well as read them," Matthew replied, " you would have good reason to ask." It was no longer a question of theology, but of morals. Campion could not, like Cheney of Gloucester, affect to recognise in Cecil's establishment the ancient church of Augustine and Thomas a Becket; nor could he, like Grindal, find it probable that the truth, hidden from the world for fifteen centuries, had suddenly been revealed in the last few years to a group of important F:nglishmen. Elizabeth and Cecil had refused their co-operation in the Council of Trent. England had been represented there, but by the dispossessed and fugitive Bishop GoldweU of St. Asaph. The continuity of English Catholicism sur- vived, but in the secret, illegal congregations of the remote countryside and among the ever-growing colonies of refugees in Rome, the Netherlands, and the Channel ports. The official Anglican Church had cut itself off from the great surge of vitality that flowed from the Council; it was, by its- own choice, insular and national. The question before Campion was, not whether the Church of England was heretical, but whether, in point of fact, heresy was a matter of great importance; whether in problems of such infinite magnitude human minds could ever hope for accuracy, whether all formulations were not, of necessity, SO inadequate that their differences were of no significance. THE SCHOLAR 25 Tobie Matthew's way lay smooth before him; it was not on his responsibility that the changes had been made; perhaps they were regrettable, but, since that was the condition of the times, it was the duty of a loyal English- man to throw in his lot with the Government and make the best of what was left. The new services were written in language which any man of culture might delight to enunciate; the points of variance, compared with the similarities, were not numerous. Campion loved his country and his countrymen; the way was easy for him to live among them in honour and authority; the ancient Cathedrals were still standing, scarred and scoured perhaps, but fine prizes in the Government's gift-massive, visible tokens of unity with the past; tides of honour were still to be won which had been bome by the saints and scholars of antiquity. In a world where everything was, by its nature, a makeshift and poor reflection of reality, why throw up so much that was excellent, in straining for a remote and perhaps unattain- able perfection? It was an argument which might be-which was- acceptable to coundess decent people, then and later, but there was that in Campion that made him more than a decent person; an embryo in the womb of his being, maturing in darkness, invisible, barely stirring; the love of holiness, the need for sacrifice. He could not accept. Now, when Campion most required tranquillity in which to adjust his vision to the new light that was daily becoming clearer and more dazzling, events outside his control, both at Oxford and in the world at large, became 26 EDMUND CAMPION increasingly obtrusive. Throughout the country dis- content with Cecil's policy became consolidated. Under the Tudor system of government there was no place for a legitimate opposition; it was forced into conspiracy or rebellion. Leicester was deeply involved in intrigue with the Duke of Norfolk and the Conservative peers; this party, though led in part by Protestants and impelled primarily by feudal distaste for the Queen's low-born advisers, looked to the Catholics as their main source of support. At the same time the Government was drifting towards an antagonism to Spain which could only result in war. In the spring of '68 Mary Stuart took refuge and was imprisoned in England; in the winter the Queen confiscated a fleet of Spanish treasure ships whiclJ had put into harbour in Plymouth and Southampton, carrying half a million ducats to the Duke of Alva. England and Spain were confront d with precisely similar problems in Ireland and the Netherlands, and both had reason to fear the damage the other would do to them among their disaffected subjects. In the event of war abroad or rebellion at home, Cecil felt that the Catholics constituted a grave menace. They were proving more stubborn in their faith than had at first seemed likely. Books of controversy, printed by the English exiles abroad, were finding their way into the country in disturbing quantities; up till now the Catholics had spent little time in detailed argument; when in power, they had judged their opponents on the grounds of authority and obedience; now the old faith was being restated in new and persuasive terms, applicable THE SCHOLAR 27 to a generation who had grown up without the heritage of instinctive respect for tradition, terms of reason and research. It would have been easy to show lenience to a moribund superstition, the sentimental regrets of an old generation that was rapidly dying out; here was some- thing unexpectedly vigorous and up to date, which must either suffer decisive and immediate defeat, or conquer. Accordingly, all over England the commissioners and magistrates were instructed to take a firmer line; at first no new legislation was used, but the law which before had beeR administered with some tact was everywhere more sternly enforced. More Catholics went into exile, among them Gregory Martin, Campion's closest friend for thirteen years, who had left Oxford to act as tutor in the Duke of Norfolk's family. The repression had begun which was to develop year by year from strictness to savagery, until, at the close of the century, it had become the bloodthirsty persecution in which Margaret Clitheroe was crushed to death between mill stones for the crime of harbouring a priest. Campion, although a deacon and nominal member of the Church of England, had made no secret of his spiritual wanderings; he had taken his doubts eagerly to anyone who he hoped might resolve them. He was not a reserved man; he loved argument; ideas, for him, demanded communication, and it was his particular genius to give them expression in lucid and memorable phrases. No one in Oxford can have been in any doubt of the way in which his mind was leading him. But even had this not been his method; had he, 28 EDMUND CAMPION instead, gone gravely about the duties of his office, lecturing, preaching, giving his advice at college meetings, and all the time waged a deep, interior argument, hearing anyone's views, never committing himself, until one day, his mind made up, he could star de his associates by a calm renunciation of all he had seemed to represent, he would have come under suspicion, now, when everyone watched his neighbour for signs of heterodoxy, by his familiarity with Richard Cheney of Gloucester. It was in this Bishop's library and at his table that half Campion's opinions were at this time formed. He was a virtuous, mild, learned, deeply embarrassed old gendeman of utterly different mind from his busy colleagues. He was the first high-churchman. His clergy regarded him as litde better than a Papist, for he supported the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation, which affirmed the miraculous character of the Mass, and differed from Catholic teaching on points to which only metaphysicians could attend; he believed in the freedom of the will and the efficacy of good wor s, and was denounced for preaching" very strange, perilous and corrupt doctrine, contrary to the Gospel." He was excommunicated by his fellow-bishops. He employed against his opponents just those arguments from the fathers and Councils which the Catholics could turn against him. Later from Douai, in 1572, Campion wrote to him one of his most eloquent letters, exposing the ignominy of his position. " . . . You are sixty years old, more or less, of uncertain health, of wealcened hody, the hatred of heret s, the pity of THE S C H 0 L A R 29 Catholit:s, the talle of the people, the sorrow of your friends, the jolce of your enemies. Against yout conscience you falsely usurp the name of hishop, by your silence you advance a pestilential sect whit:h you love not, strit:leen with anathema, cut off from the hody into whit:h alone the graces of Christ flow, you are deprived of the henefit of all prayers, sacrifices and sacraments. What do you thinleyourself to he? What do you expect? What is your life? Wherein lies your hope? " He urges him, with all the strength of his own new- found spiritual confidence, to make his surrender. But it needed more than a gentle heart and pious disposition to make a Catholic in that age; the old man stayed in his palace, increasingly lonely, maligned, distracted; deep in debt, sued by the Crown for "tenths"; he died, as far as is known, undecided, and was buried without tomb or memorial in his own Cathedral; he was succee ed, first, by a dunce, next, by an absentee; the litde work he had accomplished to preserve decency and toleration was quite undone, and thereafter there were few dioceses in England where the persecution was more ruthlessly pursued than in Gloucester. Early in the gathering storm, pressure was brought upon Campion to declare himself. A part of his income was derived from an exhibition paid by the Grocers Company of the City of London. As rum ours of his Popish sympathies began to spread, a demand was made by them that he should come to London and clear himself by preaching at St. Paul's Cross before Candle- mas. At first Campion asked for a postponement, and 30 EDMUND CAMPION the ordeal was put off until Michaelmas, when he would have had leisure to prepare his arguments. He was proctor at the time, an office which then involved heavy obligations in University and town. He resented this attempt of the city merchants to dictate to his conscience, and protested that declarations of the kind demanded were neither their business nor his; his duty lay at Oxford where he was a "public person . . . charged with the education of divers worshipful men's children." They suggested a less conspicuous place for his con- fession, the pulpit of St. Stephen's Church, Walbrook. He still refused and the company accordingly deprived him of his exhibition. There was no injustice in the sentence, nor did it involve any great hardship, for Campion was now in possession of a benefice given him by Cheney; he was fully alive to the ambiguity of the position into which he had put himself by becoming a deacon. Jt. was daily becoming more difficult for him to remain in England. Gregory Martin was writing to him from Douai, urging him to leave, before he compromised himself further. On August 1st, 1569, Campion's term of office as proctor came to an end. He punctually fulfilled his last duties, set things in order for his successor, and delivered the customary account of the year's work in his elegant, Ciceronian Latin. It was his last public act in the University. A period of uncertain duration 7 followed before he left Oxford, and then he did not go at once to join Gregory Martin at Douai; he does not appear to have THE SCHOLAR 3I contemplated becoming a priest at all; it is improbable, indeed, that he was as yet formally reconciled to the Church; by canon law he had put himself in a state of excommunication, and it is highly unlikely that, placed as he was, he could get into touch with anyone possessed of the necessary faculties to absolve him. He was, how- ever, openly Catholic by conviction, and recognised as one by friends and opponents. It remained to be tried, whether it was possible to readjust his life on this basis; whether there was any honourable life open to a Catholic layman. Only by slow stages was it revealed to Campion how complete was the sacrifice required of him. He had powerful friends and a brilliant reputation. Surely with these it must still be possible to make a career in the world, without doing violence to his religion? Surely it was not expected of him to give up all? The present of a book turned his thoughts towards Ireland; it was from Richard Stanihurst, one of his most devoted pupils; the boy's own first composition, a commentary on Porphyry. Stanihurst's father was Recorder of Dublin and Speaker in the Irish House of Commons, a prominent man in the project, then on foot, to establish an Irish University. Here, it seemed, was an opportunity exacdy suited to a man of Campion's attain- ments and antecedents. He was known to Sir Henry Sidney, the Lord Deputy. According to reports, the Reformation had, so far, made litde stir in Dublin; laws of supremacy and uniformity had been enacted, but no great pains were taken to enforce them. Sidney was known to be tolerant, if not sympathetic, and, except for 3 2 EDMUND CAMPION the Anglicised official class, everyone of importance still adhered to the old belief. Accordingly, with Leicester's approval, Campion repaired to Dublin, where he was warmly received by the Stanihursts. Sidney promised him protection from police interference. He was given lodging in the Stanihursts' Dublin house. Besides Richard, there was a daughter who later married Ussher, a clerk of the Court of Chancery, and became mother of a future archbishop; and an elder brother, Walter, already married, but apparently living at home. The company they kept was drawn from the official Govern- ment class, pardy civil servants sent out from England, pardy the sons of Anglo-Irish families, most of whom had been educated across the channel. They were on cordial terms with the neighbouring gentry, such as the Barnewells, and Richard later married one of the Barne- well daughters, thus allying himself to the Dunsanies and other prominent families of the Pale. Campion was accepted on terms of warm familiarity. At an early age his education had separated him from his own family; though he had two brothers of his own and a sister, they seem never to have played any part in his life; apparently he never had the inclination to marry; the schoolroom, the college dining-hall, the common room, the cloister, were his constant surroundings. He had seen something of the splendid, formidable life of the Court. With the Stanihursts, for the first and last time in his life, he tasted the happiness of a normal, cultured household. Here he shared the daily experiences of a busy and affectionate home circle; he enjoyed intelligent, topical conversa- THE SCHOLAR 33 cion; there was a good library and a study set apart for him to work in, and, ahead, the promise of distinguished employment, when the projected University took form. He settled in happily; he was at peace with his con- science, and, once more, on good terms with his sur- roundings. The ambition of serene scholarship and gende, sympathetic society, so rudely disturbed at Oxford, seemed once more attainable; outside, beyond the mountains, among bog and rock, raged the tumultu- ous, tribal life of the Irish people, Geraldines, Butlers and McCarthies prosecuting their endemic feuds; here, apart from all that, apart from the rancorotls jostling and the dark, high intrigues of the English Renaissance, lay the cosy, colonial world of the Pale; no hate, no bloodshed . . . He worked daily, coaching his old pupil, for his religion never overclouded his enthusiasm for learning and its rewards. "Proceed with the same pains and toil," he had written on receiving Richard Stanihurst's Porphyry, "hury yourself in your hooles, complete your course . . . keep your mind on the stretch . . . strive for the pri.{es which you deserve. . . . Only persevere, do not degenerate from what you are, nor suffer the lceen eye of your mind to grow dark and rusty." With the project of the Irish University in his mind, he prepared a discourse De Homine Academico, an elaborate portrait of the ideal student. This paper has not survived in its original form, but we have an oration delivered shortly afterwards at Douai on the same subject, which was probably derived from it. Here he insists upon the virtues of 34 EDMUND CAMPION piety, modesty, kindness, obedience, upon grace of deportment and civility of manners. The student's pronunciation must be specially cultivated, his mind "subde, hot and clear, his memory happy, his voice flexible, sweet and sonorous; his walk and all his motions lively, gendemanly, and subdued." His recreations are painting, playing the lute, singing at sight, writing music with facility and correctness. His first years at school are devoted to Latin, the rudiments of Greek, and the control of his own language, in which he must compose verses and epigrams. Later he must become a finished debater in philosophy, modelling himself upon Cicero; by his sixteenth year he must be able to write Greek iambics. He must master all histories, classical and modem, the ethics and politics of Aristotle and Plato, logic and natural science, so as to deserve the tide of" oracle of nature." His habits of study must be regular and collected; he must not " dull himself with unseasonable vigils" but allow seven hours' sleep at night and a proper attention to toilet and appearance. He must neither write licentious and amorous verses, nor fall into the puritanical extreme of eschewing the great literature of the past which occasionally bore this character. He must be a dialectician, an orator, an as trono- mer, and in his last year of study a master of Hebrew. He must be respectful to his superiors, generous in judgment of his equals, courteous and helpful to the obscure. This catalogue no doubt defines the aim which Campion was setting himself and, to a great extent, realising at this period. THE SCHOLAR 35 Soon afterwards he began work on a history oflreland. Recorder Stanihurst's library contained numerous uncollated scraps, journals, annals, books of correspon- dence; his conversation, too, was full of information of doubtful historical value. Campion knew no Gaelic; nor, probably, did anyone in his circle. His attitude towards the " mere Irish" was derived from the people among whom he lived, who were confident of their own superiority and the beneficence of their rule; they spoke of the unadministered, alien territories almost exacdy as their countertypes, the colonial officials of the nineteenth century, might speak of the bush lands of Africa; they retailed anecdotes of native savagery and superstition, and saw in English education the only cure for them; in Campion's own words, Ireland was .. much beholden to God for suffering them to be conquered, whereby many of their enormities were cured, and more might be, would themselves be pliable." The short history, begun at leisure but hastily scram- bled together in the end, under pressing distractions, is remarkable as being Campion's only complete work which has survived in the English language. The rest of his published work was in Latin. The sermons, upon which his contemporary fame most depended, were never taken down, and we can only guess at their character from rare, fragmentary quotations. The History of Ireland is a superb piece of literature, com- parable in vigour and rhythm to anything written in his day. With all its imperfections of structure and material, it is enough to show that, had Campion continued in the 3 6 EDMUND CAMPION life he was then planning for himself, he would, almost certainly, have come down in history as one of the great masters of English prose. From the lovely cadence of the opening sentences, describing the physical character of the country which .. lieth aloof in the West Ocean, in proportion lilce an egg, blunt and plain at the sides, not retKhing forth to sea in nooks and elbows of land as Britain doth," to the balanced, Ciceronian speeches at the end it is manifestly the work of a stylist for whom form and matter were never in conflict; there is no shadow of the effort and ostentation which clouds all but the brightest genius of the period. Three extracts, chosen almost at random, must suffice to suggest the flavour of the work: .. The people are thus inclined: religious,fran1c, amorous, ireful, sufferahle, of pains infinite, very glorious; many sorcerers, excellent horsemen, delighted with wars, great almsgivers, passing in hospitality. The lewder sort, both clerks and laymen, are sensual and loose to lechery ahove measure. The same, being virtuously bred up and reformed, are s h mirrors of Iwliness and austerity, that other nations retain but a show or shadow of devotion in comparison of them." " Clear men they are of skin and hue, but of themselves careless and bestial. Their women are well favoured, clear coloured, fizir headed, big and large, suffered from their infancy to grow at will, nothing curious of their feature and proportion of hody." THE SCHOLAR 37 .. , Loole, sir King; eye us well; it is not light prowess that has caused these valiant hodies to stOOp. Scythians were we, and the Pkts of Scythia-great substance of glory Z' z ,,, [odgetn Ul tnese two names. Campion's superiority to his contemporaries is well illustrated by comparing his work with another, anony- mous, history written at about this time and collected later by Holinshed. They are both paraphrasing from the same chapter by Giraldus Cambrensis. The one writes .. And here you may see the nature and disposition of this wkleed, effrenated, barbarous and un- faithful nation w/w (as Camhrensis writeth of them) they are a wkleed and perverse generation, constant always in that they are always inconstant, faithful in that they be unfaithful," and so on for the length of a column. Campion renders it in two sentences" Covenant and indent with them never so warily, yet they have been fOund faithless and perjured. Where they are joined in colour of surest amity, th.ere they intend to leill." So easily, inevitably, through page after page of this little book, barely more than a pamphlet, the melodious phrases fall into place. What a translator for the Vulgate was lost in Campion ! The work was dedicated to Leicester-for Campion still looked to him as his patron-in an inscription of exquisite grace. .. There is none that Icnoweth me ftmiliarly, but Ize lcnowetli withal how many ways I have been beholden to 3 8 EDMUND CAMPION your lordship. . . . How often at Oxford, how often at the Court, how at Rycote, Iww at Windsor, Iww hy letters, Iww by reports, you lzave not ceased to further with adv e, and to countenance with autlwrity, the Iwpe and expectation of fTW, a single student. Let every man esteem in your state and fortune the thing that best contenteth and serveth his imagination; hut surely to a judgment settled and rectified, these outward fel ities wh h the world gar.eth on, are there and therefore to be deemed praisable when they lodge those inward qualities of the mind, wh h (saving for susp ion of flattery) I was about to say are planted in your breast. Thirteen years to have lived in the eye and special credit of a prince, yet never during all that space to have abused this ability to any man's harm; to he enr hed with no man's overthrow, to be kindled neither with grudge nor emulation, to benefit an infinite resort of daily suitors . . . these are indeed the kernels for whit:h the shell of your nobility seemeth fitir and sightly. . . . This is the suhstance wh h malceth you worthy of the ornaments wherewith you are attired." Admirable prose, redolent of the security and good humour in which it was written; tender, and big with promise for the future. But this happy interlude proved brief and all the warm prospects illusory. A few subscriptions were raised for the new University; a site was suggested for it and a name-Plantolinum, in compliment of the Boleyn family; it was constandy discussed, but during the discussions it became clear that there were two' parties THE SCHOLAR 39 in Dublin, on the one side Sidney, Stanihurst and Campion, on the other the Protestant clergy under the leadership of the Chancellor, Dr. Weston. The question was referred back to Cecil and nearly a generation elapsed before the scheme at last took form in the institution of Trinity College. Anti-Catholic feeling, which at first had been scarcely perceptible in Ireland, was brought into life by the even of the succeeding months. In the winter of 1569 the rebellion of the Northern Earls had taken place in England; though feudal in essential character, it assumed a religious aspect when, as each place fell to the rebels, the Mass was restored there. Leicester had deserted the conspirators some time before; the Duke of Norfolk surrendered himself, and what had at one time threatened to be a widespread conservative reaction ended in a local adventure which never extended beyond a day's march of the traditional Percy and Neville territories; it was the last, forlorn protest of pre-Tudor chivalry. Mary Stuart was moved to the Midlands; the feudal levies melted away, and the Government forces setded themselves to a leisurely campaign of hanging in the affected areas. It had not caused serious alarm in Whitehall, but it had the effect of planting in the public mind the association of Catholicism with political treason which was to prove ineradicable for generations; the first sparks of that fierce and almost fatal conflagration which, stoked by Ridolfi and Guy Fawkes, was to -smoulder on, through the Titus Oates conspiracy and the Gordon riots, almost until modern times. 4 0 EDMUND CAMPION In the spring of 1570 there occurred another event that completely recast the Catholic cause; Pope Pius V excommunicated the Queen. It is possible that one of his more worldly predecessors might have acted differendy, or at another season, but it was the pride and slight embarrassment of the Church that, as has happened from time to time in her history, the See of Peter was at this moment occupied by a Saint. Pius was a Dominican Friar of austere observance and profound spiritual life ; as the Duke of Alva complained, he seemed always to expect events in the world to take place without human . agency. He chose a life of great loneliness; he lived in a little set of rooms removed from the great state apart- ments of the Vatican; he confided in no one and took counsel from very few; the Turks were threatening Christianity in the rear, her centre as torn by new heresies, his allies were compromising and intriguing, their purpose distracted by ambitions of empire and influence; in long vigils of silent, interior communion, Pius contemplated only the abiding, abstract principles that lay behind the phantasmagoric changes of human affairs. He prayed earnestly about the situation in England, and saw it with complete clarity; it was a question that admitted of no doubt whatever. Elizabeth was illegitimate by birth, 8 she had violated her coronation oath,9 deposed her bishops, issued a heretical Prayer Book and forbidden her subjects the comfort of the sacraments. No honourable Catholic could be expected to obey her. The Emperor, the Duke of Alva, the King of Spain, were shocked at his decision. He consulted THE SCHOLAR 4 1 nobody; he acted without any regard to the events of the moment. He had heard of the rising of the Northern Earls and had been delighted with it; he did not know whether it had succeeded. Every government main- tained its own secret lines of communication; his were far from efficient; it took three months or more for him to get a letter from England. He knew that there had been a rising, and that by now it was probably decided, one way or the other; rumours had, perhaps, reached Rome of its failure; he did not wait to hear them. The formalities were observed; in the first week of Lent a Court of Enquiry heard the evidence of twelve trust- worthy English witnesses; Elizabeth was charged and found guilty on seventeen counts 0; on February uth Pius pronounced the sentence which on the 25th was embodied in the Bull Regnans in Excelsis. Elizabeth was excommunicated and her subjects released from the moral obligations of obedience to her. Three months later, on Corpus Christi Day, May 25th, a manuscript copy of the document was nailed to the door of the Bishop of London's palace, in St. Paul's Churchyard, by Mr. John Felton, a Catholic gendeman of wealth and good reputation. He was tortured and executed. On the scaffold he made a present to the Queen of a great diamond ring which he had been wearing at the time of his arrest, with the assurance that he meant her no personal harm, but believed her deposition to be for her own soul's good and the country's. He was the first of the great company of Englishmen who were to sacrifice their entire worldly 4 2 EDMUND CAMPION prospects and their lives as the result of Pius V's proclamation. Hi contemporaries and the vast majority of subse- . quent historians regarded the Pope's action as ill-judged. It has been represented as a gesture of medirevalism, futile in an age of new, vigorous nationalism, and its author as an ineffectual and deluded champion, stumbling through the mists, in the ill-fitting, antiquated armour of Gregory and Innocent; a disastrous figure, provoking instead of a few buffets for Sancho Panza the bloody ruin of English Catholicism. That is the verdict of sober criticism, both Catholic and Protestant, and yet, as one studies that odd and compelling face which peers obliquely from Zucchero's 10 portrait at Stonyhurst, emaciated, with its lofty and narrow forehead, the great, beaked nose, the eyes prominent in their deep sockets, and, above all else, the serene and secret curve of the lips, a doubt rises, and a hope; had he, perhaps, in those withdrawn, exalted hours before his crucifix, learned something that was hidden from the statesmen of his time and the succeeding generations of historians; seen through and beyond the present and the immediate future; understood that there was to be no easy way of reconciliation, but that it was only through blood and hatred and derision that the faith was one day to return to England? That year, at any rate, the Bull came most opportunely to Cecil. There was now the best possible evidence to confirm anti-Catholic feeling. He drew up the list of THE SCHOLAR 43 members for the new House of Common and secured a body of uncompromising, Calvinistic opinion. Up till then Elizabeth had resisted his imposition of the Thirty- nine Articles; now she was forced to give way, and the Parliament won the first of their long series of Puritan victories over the monarchy. The measures against Catholics were tightened by another twist of the screw. Naturally enough, the importation of copies of the Bull was forbidden, but into the same Act a clause was introduced providing that" if any person after the same 1St July should talce upon him to absolve or ;.econcile any person . . . or if any shaD willingly receive and talce any such absolution or reconciliation" he incurred the penalties of high treason-execution and the confiscation of property. Gradually the discharge of the penal laws was put into new hands, and instead of the old-fashioned justices who usually knew and quite liked their Catholic neighbours and distrusted the innovations from West- minster, tPere rose to eminence a set of strict officials, party men put up by the Government with, at their back, a more odious rabble of spies and informers. All this was reflected in Ireland, and, with Sidney about to retire, Campion's security became increasingly pre- carious. It was finally upset by the first brief incursion into serious history of the preposterous and richly comic figure of Mr. Thomas Stukeley.l1 Even to the generation of Drake, Ridolfi and Hawkins he seemed a shady and irresponsible person. He was a middle-aged pirate of gende West Country origin, who, in the spring of 1570, put into harbour at Vivero de Galicia in Spain and, 44 EDMUND CAMPION calling himself a son of Henry VIII, offered to conquer Ireland for the Spanish throne. The King was but mildly interested in the suggestion; nevertheless, at request of an Englishwoman, sometime lady-in-waiting to Mary, the Duchess of Feria, with whom Stukeley had ingratiated himself, he consented to payoff the arrears of wages to Stukeley's crew, who had never expected to come to Spain, and were threatening mutiny. Stukeley hung about the Court and the Duchess' drawing-room all that year, but could persuade very few people to take him seriously; the ecclesiastics doubted the sincerity of his religious conversion, and refused to receive him into the Church; eventually Philip knighted him and sent him away, and for the time being he disappeared from diplomacy. But the reports of his activity served Cecil, in the alarmed state of the country, as material for a scare of invasion in Ireland. The authorities in Dublin were instructed to arrest suspected Catholics, nd at the beginning of March 1572. Campion, with his History still unfinished, became a fugitive. The Stanihursts took him out of town to the Barnewells at Turvey, a house naturally protected by water from surprise attack. There is no clear record of his movements in the next few months; he appears to have dodged back to Dublin in May, and from there to Drogheda; no doubt he lodged in the houses of various friends he had made, slipping away by night at news of the pursuivants' arrival, avoiding making any record that would be likely to incriminate his hosts. Finally, at the end of May, he THE SCHOLAR 4 embarked for England at the little port of Tredake, twenty miles from Dublin, disguised as a lackey and calling himself Mr. Patrick, in the service of Melchior Hussey, steward to Lord Kildare. Before sailing, the ship was searched by police officers. Campion himself escaped detection, but they rifled his luggage and confiscated the manuscripts. Among them. was the hastily completed History. There were other manuscript copies in existence, and eig\1t years later, shordy before his removal from Prague, he was in correspondence to recover one of them; probably it arrived too late. He assumed that his own copy had been destroyed, but it lay about in various offices and passed from hand to hand until, some ycars after its author's death, it appeared, mutilated, in Volume TI of Holinshed's Chronicles.12. As the ship gathered way and rolled through the stormy passage of the Irish Channel, Campion may well have seen in the loss of his book, with its elegant dedication to the Earl of Leicester, his final severance with the old life. Whatever achieve- ment lay ahead of him was not to be the achievement at which he had once aimed; the glory, transcendent and undying, not what he had sought. He spent a few weeks, unobtrusively, in England, and was in the crowd at Westminster Hall to witness the trial of Dr . Storey, a refugee whom Cecil had had kidnapped at Antwerp and brought home to suffer in old age under an insupportable charge of treason for the prominent part he had taken against the Protestants in Queen Mary's lieign. The condemned man was executed on June 1St 4 6 EDMUND CAMPION with peculiar ferocity; Cecil and the chief ministers stood close by while he was being disembowelled; the cries of agony made an agreeable theme for popular preachers such as F ulke, who quoted them as showing that their victim was .. manifestly void of patience, and no martyr, as the Papists did mightily boast of him." But on that day Campion was in mid-Channel on his way to Douai. There was a check in his journey; his boat was stopped, and he was taken aboard the Hare, an English frigate, and so back to Dover, but the captain was more concerned to keep Campion's purse than g,et his prisoner to London, so they parted company at the coast. Campion travelled to some friends in Kent, raised some money, and eventually crossed to Calais without further interference. r THB SCHOLAR 47 NOTES 1 These figures are based on Henry Gee's Elqahethan Clergy. I have not followed him in his estimate of the number of deprived parish priests for reasons that will be clear to anyone who follows his statement of the calculations by which it was reached. I In the case of Belsire it is possible that other causes con- tributed to his deposition. S Later generations have tried to attribute these acts of sacrilege to the Commonwealth, concealing the fact that Cromwell in this case merely completed the work of Elizabeth and destroyed what had been preserved only in defiance of the Anglican Bishops. Knollys to Cecil. Scottish Calendar. Ii This place was taken by a .. Morning Prayer" derived from the Office of Matins. · The Elizabethan prayer book differs in several particulars from that now used in the Church of England. It omits the manual acts of consecration and allows the minister to take home for his own use all the bread and wine left over, without distin- guishing between what has had the prayer of consecration said over it and what has not. The interpretation most in accordance with the phrasing of the service and the feeling of the time seems to be that it was not a mere commemoration, as the extreme Protestants held, but that the mystical properties of the sacrament were applied to the elements by and in the measure of the com- municant's faith, not by the priest's consecration. 7 Persons, writing from memory many years after the event, declares that Campion left England immediately, in August Is69. Simpson gives the date as December of the same year. This would mean that he crossed at the height of the scare during the rebellion of the Northern Earls, when Catholics were under suspicion and all ports watched. Hungerford Pollen gives it as December I S70, on the evidence of two letters dated from Oxford in the summer and winter of that year. It is possible that he resigned his fellowship and was allowed to keep on his private pupils and rooms in College. (This was allowed to Persons himself at BalHol.) The difficulty of accepting Hungerford Pollen's date is that it allows so short a time for all Campion did in Ireland. He seems to have acted as tutor in Lord Vaux's household for some time. Measures were taken against Catholics in Oxford in 1570. In January Wyott, sub-rector of Corpus, . 4 8 EDMUND CAMPION was imprisoned; in July Garnet was expelled from Balliol, in October Neal from Corpus. 8 By no system of law could Elizabeth pretend to legitimacy. By canon law, Henry VIII, even supposing his dispensation to marry Catherine to be invalid, could not have married Anne Boleyn, for her sister had been his mistress and an affinity thus established of just the kind that was troubling his conscience with regard to Catherine. English statute law also, explicitly, bastard- ised Elizabeth. 9 Elizabeth's coronation had, of course, taken place before the issue of the Prayer Book or the Acts enforcing its use. Whatever might be feared for the future, England was at that moment still a Catholic country and a Catholic Bishop, later deposed, had been persuaded to crown her. At the ceremony she took the following oaths :- Bishop: Will you grant and keep, and by your oath confirm'. . . the Laws, Customs and Franchises granted to the clergy by the glorious King St. Edward, your predecessor? Queen: I grant and promise to ohserve them. Bishop: Will you keep peace and godly agreement entirely accord- ing to your power, hoth to God, to the Holy Church, and to the people? Queen: I will keep it. Bishop: We heseech you . . . to preserve unto us and to the Churches committed to our charge all Canonical Privileges and due Law and Justice; to protect and defend us, as every good King in his Kingdom ought to he Protector and Defender of the Bishops and Churches under their government. Queen: With a willing and devout heart, I promise. . . that I will preserve and maintain to you and the Churches committed to your charge all Canonical Privileges, etc. 10 The picture's attribution to Zuccarelli is, beyond question, incorrect, for it is clearly done from the life, and Zuccarelli lived 150 years later. The name is probably a mistake for one or other of the brothers Zucchero, who flourished in Rome in Pius' time. 11 For a full and extremely funny account of this man, see The Celtic Peoples and Renaissance Europe, by Fr. David Mathew, to whom, here and later, I am deeply and obviously indebted. 12 A far better edition appeared in Dublin in 1633, taken from manuscripts in the Bodleian, the Couonian collection and the Heralds Office, by Sir James Ware. In this volume Campion's History is joined with an unfinished work by Meredith Hanmer, his old opponent. II THE PRIEST The Engish College at Douai, to which Campion now went, had already, in the three years of its existence, become a rallying point for Catholic refugees of the most varying characters and antecedents. When the first emigration took place at Elizabeth's accession, the exiles had dispersed allover Europe, going wherever they saw the best chances of employment or support; but, from the first, the Spanish Netherlands had attracted the greatest number, both by reason of their accessibility from England and the connections long established between the two countries by the wool trade. Several English scholars had beeu received at Belgian schools and cathedrals, and when Philip II carried out his father's project of founding a university at Douai, where his Flemish subjects might receive an education in their own tongue independent of French influence, an Englishman, Dr. Richard Smith of Merton, was made Chancellor, while later, another, Dr. Richard White, was made head of the law school established there by the Abbey of Marchiennes. Early in the history of the new university a house was formed for English students, where, in a very modest fashion, the great seminary had its origin. The founder and first President was Dr.-later 49 '0 EDMUND CAMPION Cardinal-William Allen of Oriel, a gendeman of ancient Lancashire family, thirty-six years old at the date of the foundation, 1568, who had left Oxford at the first religious changes, become a priest in Louvain, and had already attracted notice as a controversialist in defence of the doctrines of purgatory and indulgences. The object of the college was primarily to supply priests for the Catholic population of England, for, since the bishops were all either in prison or under detention, it was impossible for them, except very rarely with the con- nivance of their gaolers, to ordain priests; the system of education imposed by the Government made it increasingly difficult to train candidates for orders in England; in a few years the Marian priests would begin to die oUt and, as Cecil foresaw, the old Church would quiedy expire with them; that Catholicism did in fact survive--reduced) impoverished, frustrated for nearly three centuries in every attempt at participation in the public services; stultified, even, by its exclusion from the Universities, the professions and socialtife; but still national; so that, at the turn of opinion in the nineteenth century, it could re-emerge, not as an alien fashion brought in from abroad, but as something historically and continuously English, seeking to recover only what had been taken from it by theft-is due, more than to any other one man, to William Allen. His was a compelling and elaborate character. His prodigious power in human intercourse is clear from the uninterrupted success of the English college. He was dealing with men of every age and position; elderly THE PRIEST p e,,-professors and heads of houses; raw, embarrassingly enthusiastic converts; old-fashioned priests, schooled and ordained under the Marian regime, who came to him when they found their simple, rule-of-thumb dialectics insufficient to cope with their trained opponents; bitter fanatics whose fathers and brothers had died on the scaffold; later, when the seminary was recognised as a menace at Whitehall, spies, sent over by Walsingham to discover the secrets of the organisation-all these it was Allen's task to sift out and control; to estimate their capabilities and vocations, to turn some to work writing tracts and translating, to keep some as lecturers and send some across the Channel to martyrdom. Besides them, there were at Douai an increasing number of Englishmen and women who regarded the college as their centre, and its President as their leader; some were passing through, others more or less permanendy settled; great ladies like the widowed Countess of Northumberland ; humble, homeless artisans, all looked to Allen for encouragement. Throughout the whole period he was in constant anxiety about money and he was living among a foreign people. At Douai the exiles, at first popular enough, became, after a time, identified by the anti-Spanish faction with the vice-regal Government; at Rheims, where he moved for a time, they were disliked as English- men. Only by unremitting caution could the students avoid becoming embroiled in the local disturbances. But never was the regime of the college interrupted; whatever doubts secredy harassed the President, however tumultuous the immediate circumstances, however des- 2 EDMUND CAMPION perate the future, everything went on as before, English and imperturbable. Mass for the whole college was at five, all me priests celebrating daily; there was weekly confession and communion; twice a week they fasted, and even on ordinary days the fare was so meagre that two Belgians who had originally joined quickly removed elsewhere. The students were assumed to have some Latin before their arrival; they learned Greek and Hebrew; they took dictation from the scriptures; during the course they went through the New Testament sixteen times. The teaching was counter-reformatory; in theology and exegesis they concentrated almost entirely upon contro- versial texts; in their spiritual exercises they were prepared for sacrifice; they were being trained not as scholars and gendemen, but as missionaries and martyrs. Within a few years of its foundation the seminary was sending about twenty priests a year to England, of whom, before the end of Elizabeth's reign, l()ol had died on the scaffold. To critics at the time this yearly despatch to almost certain imprisonment or death, of relays of the finest youth of the Church, seemed a gruesome and intolerable waste. In 1584 the Jesuit General Aquaviva was to write that " to send missionaries in order to give edification by their patience under torture might injure many Catholics and do no good to souls." But Allen knew that the devotion of his seminarists, so gallantly squandered, sometimes, in a few weeks of ministry, was of more value than a lifetime of discreet industry. His was the humbler taSk of composing their epitaphs. One aim THE PRIEST H waS paramount to him, whatever its cost; the Church of Augustine, Edward the Confessor, Thomas of Canterbury and Thomas More must go on. But there was another side to Allen's activity; besides being a great University administrator, he was a man of affairs, the last of the English cardinal-politicians. There were unexplained absences, when, after a cautionary address, the President would leave his college for three months or so at Rome; there was a voluminous corre- spondence, written in cypher, with the great men of the age, the Duke of Guise, the Cardinal of Como, Don John of Austria, with Philip himself; there were secret visitors, of whom the students knew nothing except the clatter of hooves and the appearance of strange liveries in the courtyard; there were Mr. Egremont Radcliffe and an anonymous poisoner who, at their several times, came to assassinate him; a sure sign, in that century, of political eminence. From all these high affairs Allen's students were rigidly excluded. Political discussion was forbidden absolutely; Elizabeth's name was never mentioned in school or recreation, and in their lectures the Pope's deposing power might not be explained, even in hypo- thetical examples. As the door closed behind Sir Francis Englefield or the Papal nuncio, Allen would gather up the notes and cryptograms, the lists of disaffected noble- men, the tables tracing the descent of the Infanta Isabel- Clara from John of Gaunt, lock them away in his despatch box and turn with equal mind to the kitchen accounts of the college refectory or to some particularly 54 EDMUND CAMPION promising thesis which one of the tutors had left for his notice. The end was single, but the means devious and distinct. In that regular and generous mind there was no confusion. The college was still in its earliest phase at the time of Campion's arrival. It had not yet been granted the Papal subsidy which made possible the rapid expansion of the next few years. Seven priests and thirteen candidates for orders, living sparsely and precariously, constiu,lted the entire permanent community. Some were dependent on remittances sent out from England, others on grants from Philip and local patrons. There were other English students reading secular subjects at the Uni- versity, who lived near the college and resorted to it for their religious and social needs. Visitors and refugees came and went. Probably the total number of English in Douai at this time varied between 100 and 150. For Campion exile from England meant reunion with many old friends. There was Gregory Martin, who had twice written him urgent invitations to accept the duty that was now thrust upon him, and Richard Bristow, of Exeter, who had appeared before Elizabeth in the same debate, and on the same side as Campion, during her memorable visit to the University. These two were to devote the rest of their lives to the coUege, leaving behind them the great Douai Bible, the most accurate English translation of the Scriptures that had then appeared. There were also Risdon, White, and THE PRIEST n Dar ell , all Oxford men, in whose sympathetic and appreciative company many of the asperities of exile disappeared. For nearly two years Campion conformed to the congenial routine of the place. He read fOf his bacca. laureate in Divinity, and at the same time acted as professor of rhetoric, delivering model orations on most of the important occasions of the year, and having as one of his pupils Cuthbeft Mayne, who was to be the first martyr of the seminary priests. He received minor ord rs, and, in the normal course, would have proceeded direct to the priesthood. Responsible work lay at hand for him at Douai, pampWeteering, lecturing, translating, the very tasks which he had sought in vain at Dublin, and from across the Channel the continuous, insistent summons to the highest destiny of all. The copy of the Summa which Campion was using at this time survives at Manresa College, Roehampton; it is annotated in his own hand and opposite an argument on baptism by blood OCCUfS the single nwt propnete et radieux,2 "Martyrium." The persecution in England was still comparatively mild; the new Chufch attracted little enthusiasm, and the governing party proceeded with caution and reluctance; violent sentences wefe un- common and, where they occurred, could more often be attributed to motives of personal greed than of religious intolerance. But none knew bettef than Dr. Allen the fate that lay ahead of his seminarists. So long as the Church seemed to be on her death-bed, Cecil was content to cut off the necessaries of her life and leave hef to die 56 EDMUND CAMPION in peace. Deprived of the sacraments, England would be lost to the Faith in a generation. But as soon as the young priests, now patiendy conning their text books abroad, began to appear in their own country, to appeal to the old loyalties that lay deep in the heart of the people, to infuse their own zeal into the passive con- servatism over which the innovators had won a victory too bloodless to be decisive, the character of the Govern- ment would change. Martyrdom was in the air of Douai. It was spoken of, and in secret prayed for, as 1he supreme privilege of which only divine grace could make them worthy. But it was with just this question, of his own worthi- ness, that Campion now became preoccupied. There is no record of the date of his formal reconciliation with the Church, but it is reasonable to assume that it occurred immediately on his arrival from England. From then onwards he was admitted to the sacraments without which he had spent the past ten or twelve years of his life. From then onwards, for the first time in adult life, he found himself living in a completely Catholic com- munity, and, perhaps, for the first time, began to have some sense of the size and power of the world he had entered, of the distance and glory of the aim he had set himself. The faith of the people among whom he was now placed was no fad 'or sentiment to be wistfully disclosed over the wine at high table, no dry, logical necessity to be expounded in the schools; it was what gave them daily life, their entire love and hope, for which they had abandoned all smaller loyalties and TIiE PRIEST n affections; all that most men found desirable, home, possessions, good fame, increase, security in the world, children to keep fresh their memory after they were dead. Beside their devotion Campion saw a new significance in the evasions and compromises of his previous years. At Oxford and Dublin he had been, on the whole, very much more scrupulous of his honour than the majority; he had foresworn his conviction rarely and temperately; when most about him were wantonly throwing conscience to the winds and scramb- ling for the prizes, he had withdrawn decendy from competition; but under the fiery wind of Douai these carefully guarded reserves of self-esteem dried up and crumbled away. The numerous small jealousies of University life, his zeal for reputation, his courtship of authority, the oaths he had taken of the Queen's ecclesiastical supremacy, the d ference with which he had given assent to Cheney's view of conformity, his melodious eulogies of the Earl of Leicester, above all " the mark of the beast," the ordination which he had accepted as an Anglican deacon, now appeared to him as a series of gross betrayals crying for expiation, fresh wounds in the hands and feet of,Christ. He had come to Douai as a distinguished immigrant. At the time of his departure Cecil remarked to Richard Stanihurst, "It is a great pity to see so notable a man leave his country, for indeed he was one of the diamonds of England." Allen received him as a sensational acquisition. He had left England, it may be supposed, in a mood of some pride and resentment; he was 58 EDMUND CAMPION casting off the dust of iRgratitude, taking his high talents where they would be better appreciated. Now in this devout community, at the hushed moment of the Mass, he realised the need for other gifts than civility and scholarship; he saw himself as a new-born, formless soul that could come to maturity only by long and specially sheltered growth. There was now no question in his mind of finding scope for his abilities, but of preparing himself laboriously in self-knowledge and the love of God, to become capable lof the lowest service. This could not be done at Douai among his old friends of the senior common-rooms, and, as his course of studies drew to their close, his mind turned more and more towards the selfless discipline and vigilance of the rule of St. Ignatius, to the complete surrender sought in the prayer "Suscipe, Domine, universam meam lihertatem. Accipe memoriam, inteltectum atque voluntatem omnem . . ." Only thus, if ever at all, could he be worthy of the hangman and the butcher. Accordingly, soon after he took his degree on January 21St, 1573, he left for Rome with the intention, if God willed it, of entering the Society of Jesus. He travelled on foot, alone, as a poor pilgrim. Allen did nothing to hinder him. A less spacious mind might have resented the decision. In its earliest years, with its prestige still uncertain, his college was losing its most notable convert; the community were bereft of a magnetic and inspiring companion; it was possible that Campion would be permanently lost to the English Mission, for there was no English Province in r THE PRIEST 59 the Society and, although several English and Irishmen had joined the Society since its foundation, none had as yet been sent to work in their native countries. But to Dr. Allen the matter admitted of only one question: where would Campion best satisfy his particular spiritual needs? He knew that Douai had given him much, and that there was between them a bond oflove and gratitude which separation could not weaken. His struggling mission was in need of everything, and he knew that Campion's prayers would be for them, whether he was despatched to America or China, or confined for the rest of his days in the philosophy schools of Central Europ . Campion could help the English Mission best by realising his own sanctity. The ways were involved and manifold, but the goal was one. It was probably towards the end of February when Campion arrived in Rome. We do not know the exact date, nor have we much information about his life there until his departure at the end of June. We know that he visited Cardinal Gesualdi, was well received and offered preferment in the event of the Society deciding against his vocation. He had some conversation with the Cardinal on the subject of the Bull Regnans in Excelsis which will be referred to later. In his letters he mentions Father Ursnar and his old tutor, John Bavand, as his chief benefactors at this time. It is recorded that he performed the customary devotions of the pilgrimage with great zeal. He does not appear to have had an audience at the Vatican. 60 EDMUND CAMPION Pius V had died early in the previous year, his last months illumined by the great victory of Catholic arms at the battle of Lepanto. The danger which darkened the whole of the period, that in its distracted state Europe might fall to Islam, as North Africa and the Eastern Empire had fallen, though still grave, was no longer desperate. Calvinism in France and Lutheranism in Central Europe had reached their widest expansion. The Tridentine reforms were becoming effective in every branch of the Church's life. Pius' reign ended, if not in triumph, in hope more substantial than had been known for a generation. To the end he maintained his energy and austerity. His last public appearance, a few days before his death, was to make the arduous visit of the seven churches; one of his last acts was to check this procession in order to exchange a few words about their country with some English pilgrims. He was succeeded by Gregory XIII, a lawyer and efficient man of affairs who had taken orders late in life, after the birth of an illegitimate son. He had then come into contact with Borromeo and Philip Neri, and was profoundly influenced by the spiritual life which centred round them. He took up the work of Pius, pursuing it with method and discretion, reinforcing on all fronts the resistance to the Turks and the Reformers. Under him the new Calendar was introduced, which, denounced at first in all Protestant countries as an invention of anti- Christ, was gradually accepted in the subsequent two hundred years by each of them in turn. He was a friend of the Jesuits and remitted Pius' decree that they should THE PRIEST 61 sing the office in choir, thus preserving for them one of the characters given by their founder, which particularly distinguished modem from mediceval piety. In domestic government he encouraged a good standard of private morality by advancing men of orderly lives, but did not continue the more severe, puritanical measures of his predecessor under whom a wealthy layman had been publicly Bogged for adultery and a drove of harlots turned loose on the campagna to be massacred by bandits. His chief minister was Galli, Cardinal of Como, who played a more important r$le in the foreign politics of the period than Pius allowed to any subordinate. These two Popes, the saint and the administrator, may be taken to typify the change which had come over the Holy City, and was to determine her character through the succeeding centuries; the luxury and scepticism had gone, but with them something of the former chivalry and culture. The Popes were no longer patrons of art; their revenues were directed into stricdy practical channels, to build missions and to subsidise theological colleges; their entourage ceased to be of courtiers and connoisseurs, but was composed, instead, of soft-footed, bureaucratic clergymen; no buffoon was kept in the Vatican after the Council of Trent to remind the Pontiff of his human follies; instead, at his elbow there was always a confessor. At the time of Campion's visit to Rome the antiquities were already out of favour. Both Paul and Pius had regarded pagan sculpture with detestation, and a large part of the Vatican collection had escaped destruction 62 EDMUND CAMPION only by being bundled out of sight. The ruins, lately the resort of the dilettanti, which everywhere challenged the pilgrim's attention, were now valued?y the moralist for their edifying witness to the mutability of human achievement. Archceology found its pla,ce in the new order when, five years later, the first of the catacombs was excavated; here was something in the new fashion j all Rome crowded to the sunless galleries, promenading by candlelight between the interminable shelves of skeletons; scrawls were brought to light of first-rate controversial importance, affirming dogmas now in dispute, and were greeted with the enthusiasm which an earlier generation, secure in its orthodoxy, had squan- dered on the bronzes and marbles of ancient Greece. A few years before, Campion might have found some- thing to regret in the modern attitude, but now it commanded his whole sympathy. "Make the most of Rome," he wrote later to Gregory Martin. "Do you see the dead corpse of that Imperial City? What can he glorious in life, if such wealth and heauty has come to nothing? But who has stood firm in these wretched changes-what survives? The relics of the Saints and the chair of the Fisherman." We do not know where he lodged; perhaps with Father Usnar. Writing, some years later, to John Bavand, he recalls the kindness he was offered and the spirit in which he received it. "When I was in Rome did you not spend your entire self on me? On one from whom, to your knowledge, there could he no repayment; one just embar!cing from the world; ir. some sort, a dying man. II TI{E PRIEST 63 is a work of high compassion to hury the dead. . you ,vere munificent to me as I went to my rest in the sepukhre .1' t .. " 3 ' OJ re zgwn. These words, heavy with the imagery of the Ignatian exercises, were written when he was a professed priest, but they may well represent the mood in which he accepted the weeks of delay. In his mind he eagerly anticipated the noviciate j it was no reluctance on his part which held him in Rome, but the circumstance that the third General of the Jesuits, Francis Borgia, had recendy died and that the congregation was assembled to elect his successor. The Society had now been in existence nearly thirty- three years, and in that time had drawn to itself men from every degree of life-Faber the shepherd, Borgia the Duke of Gandia, Polanco the Jew. The first three Generals had been Spanish, but the membership included nearly every nationality; there had been several English- men, Br. Lambert, a lay brother in the time of Ignatius Loyola, Fr. Darbyshire, Fr. Good, Fr. Heywood, all three Oxford men with whom Campion probably had some acquaintance, Fr. Rastall, a great nephew of Sir Thomas More, and others. The Society knew no bounds to its work but those of the human race; its missionaries penetrated to India, China, Japan, Abyssinia and the New World; in the lecture halls of the ancient universities, in obscure provincial day schools, guarding the consciences of great ladies at court and of dying seamen on the bullet-swept decks at Lepanto, among galley-slaves and lepers, in council with Cardinals and 64 EDMUND CAMPION. men of affairs, wherever there were souls to be saved, these men of single purpose were making a way. In government the Society was, and is, a highly centralised autocracy under a General, elected for life & ; by the constitutions he is chosen not for any pre-eminent intellectual attainments or influence, but for " the habit of union with God" and experience in \ the Society's affairs. An Admonitor is appointed with him to be always at hand supervising and, when necessary, cor- recting his private conduct. He is resident in Rome, and, direct to him, come reports of the Society's work from all parts of the world; from him issue appoint- ments and orders. The congregation which elects him consists of the Provincial of every Province accompanied by two priests chosen by their fellows. As has been stated above, the congregation, thus composed, was assembled in Rome by the beginning of the year 1573, and after it had elected a Fleming, Mercurianus, as General, on April 2.3rd it proceeded among other business to review the candidates for entry and apportion them to their respective Provinces. No difficulty was made about Campion's reception-indeed his biographers claim that there was some competition for him-and it was eventually decided that he should join the Austrian Province under Fr. Magius. He was offered the series of questions addressed to every postulant: " Are you willing to feTWUN:e the worM, all possessions and alllwpe of temporal goods? Are you ready if necessary to beg your bread from door to door fOr the love of Jesus THE PRIEST 65 Christ? Are YlJ'lI. ready to reside in any country and to embrace any employment where your superior may thinlc. you to he most usefUl to the glory of God and the good of souls? Are you willing to obey in aU things in which there is eYiJmtly no sin, the superiors w/w /wId towards you the place of God ? Do you fiel resolved generally to renounce wit/wut reserve all t/wse things which men in general love and emhrace, and will you attempt and desire with all your strength wlzat our Lord Jesus Christ loved and emhraced? Do you consent to put on the livery of humiliation worn hy Him, to suffer as He did and for love of Him, contempt, calumnies and insults? " He assented and was received as a novice. In the middle of June the congregation dispersed, and Campion, in company with certain Spanish and German Fathers, travelled with his Provincial to Vienna, where they arrived in August. The noviciate was stationed at Prague, where, accordingly, Campion was now sent in company with Father James Avellanedo, the newly chosen confessor to the Empress. Mter two months there he was moved to Brunn in Moravia with five other novices, where he remained until September 1574, when he was again removed to Prague, which was to be his home for the succeeding six years. It was no part of the Jesuit system to station its forces in remote or congenial country. Other religious orders, training their members for other ends, have built their houses in the desert, on cliffs and desolate promontories above the sea, or high in secluded valleys where crest upon crest of tranquil upland stretch uninterrupted to the 66 EDMUND CAMPION horizon and dispose the mind to peace. The Jesuits' work lay in the crowded cities, wherever the conflict was hottest and the issue least sure, and it was for these very reasons that Prague and Brunn were chosen for the Austrian noviciate. Until the Hussite disorders at the bfginning of the preceding century, Prague had been the centre of . Middle-Europe for scholarship and culture. Inspired by Wykliffe, John Huss taught that" Universities, studies, degrees, colleges and professorships are pagan vanities, and of no more use to the Church than the devil," and during his brief period of eminence he was able to reduce the ancient University to ruin. Like the culture which it fostered, the University was international. Appealing to the particularist sentiment, in which the reformers of the next century were to find their chief support, Huss succeeded in driving out the foreign students who formed the strength and life of the place. To the number of several thousand they left the country and founded the University of Leipsic, while Huss was left rector over a few hundred Bohemians. This easy success tempted him to greater energy in the denunciations of Catholic teaching and organisation, which he had already begun from the pulpit of the Bethlehem Church. His counsels made for disorder rather than revolution, for, unlike Calvin and Luther, he suggested nothing to replace the system which he was attacking, and his conformity with some points of Catholic doctrine was as capricious as his dissent from others. But his supporters, by the pre rogatives which he himself affirmed, were at liberty to THE PRIEST 67 select and amplify whatever they found personally sympathetic in his teaching. His execution at Constance inflamed the anti-clerical and anti-royal sentiment of the Bohemian nobility who were soon at war wid1 their king and with one another. Hostilities, lasting fifteen years, impoverished the country and resulted in a decisive defeat to the extremists and a treaty generally acceptable to the more moderate reformers. The monarchy, however, was fatally weakened, became elective, and finally, in I )26, passed into the hands of Charles V, who absorbed it into the Empire. Fifty years of comparative peace followed, but the University never recovered its dignity. Lutheran teaching achieved an immediate popularity, and at the time of the Jesuits' arrival there the country was predominantly, if apathetically, Protestant. They came, at the Emperor's invitation, to take up the Church's battle on a losing front. From the time of Ignatius until the present day the Jesuit's training has retained its essential structure. The postulant is assumed to have attained a respectable standard of education before admission. For the two years of his noviciate his studies cease, and he devotes himself entirely to a routine designed to develop the character in holiness and obedience, after which he takes his first vows and resumes his studies for the priesthood. Campion, with his ample attainments in philosophy, rhetoric and divinity, was able to complete the course in five years, and said his first Mass on September 8th, 1578. 68 EDMUND CAMPION His exterior life during these five years is easily told. The routine was hard, but without the extreme physical austerities of some other systems. The first month of the noviciate, following the precept from which there has been no deviation, was spent in absolute solitude; here, disturbed by no human intercourse except that of his director, he followed the Spiritual Exercises, in meditation and scrupulous examination of conscience, and erased all previous experience in a detailed confession of his whole life. He then resumed the companionship of the other novices and shared with them the manual labour of the household, of which he has left an enthusiastic description in a letter written from Prague after he had become a professed priest. "Hi) could I help talcing fire at the rememhrance of that house (Brunn) where there were so many huming souls -fiery of mind, fiery of hody, fiery of word with the flame which God came upon earth to send, that it slwuld hum there always? 0 dear walls, that once enclosed me inyour company! Pleasant recreation-room, where we talked so holily! Glorious kitchen, where the hest of friends-John and Charles, the two Stephens, Sa/lit{i, Finnit and George, Tohias and Gaspar-fight lor the pots in holy humility and charity unfeigned! How often do I picture it; one retuming with his load from the farm; another from market; one sweating, sturdy and merry, under a sack of refuse, another toiling along on some other errand! Believe me, dearest hrethren, your dust and hrooms, chaff and loads are heh.eld with joy hy the angels. . . . Would that I had TleYer known any father hut the fathers of the Society ; THE PRIEST 69 no hrothers hut yourselves and my other hrotherl; no husiness hut that of ohedience ; no lcnowledge hill Christ :J:" d .. 5 crucZJK- . At Brunn their work brought the novices into frequent contact with the Moravians round them, who, like the Bohemians, were for the most part disaffected in religion. It was hoped that the enthusiasm of the Jesuits in their midst might prove infectious, and the young novices, following the classic "Experiments," were sent out to converse with them, begging from door to door, labour- ing in the hospitals and sick rooms, and tramping among the oudying villages to teach the catechism to children. This work, whose importance the Bishop of Olmiitz particularly urged, brought back some converts, but not in any remarkable number, and it soon became clear to the Provincial that his end would best be served by opening in that part of the Empire one of the schools which were already becoming famous throughout Europe. He chose Prague for its seat; accordingly, in September 1574, Campion was recalled there, and became Professor of Rhetoric, the first of a series of important posts which he held at the new school. From now, until his summons to Rome in 1580, Campion's activities were entirely educational. The Jesuits may fairly be said to have created a new system in teaching; their schools were the best equipped and the best staffed; their text books were the most modem and their curriculum the widest, but, more than anything else, it was their class-room method that won them the supremacy which they enjoyed throughout Europe from 7° EDMUND CAMPION this period until the eve of the French Revolution, so that even at times of the sharpest religious difference Protestant parents could be found sending their sons to them. Their own acute training gave them particular insight into the habits of the mind, and to them may be credited the discovery and application of the principle, now universally accepted, that a pupil will be able to retain more in his memory when he has acquired it in a mood of curiosity and imagination. However admirable the higher achievements of mediceval scholarship, its primary and secondary education had been pedestrian; a matter of teaching by rote an unvaried syllabus of rules and citations, and of enforcing defective attention with the rod; the facts and principles of knowledge were treated as the stones, laboriously laid, of a work whose nature would appear only towards the end of the ,building. The Jesuits sought to present everything as " having an immediate significance and intrinsic interest; they fostered competition and argument with the result that the driest grammatical questions became the subjects of hot debate. Wherever they went they encouraged oratory and acting; they paid particular attention to style of language and dexterity of wit, but chose the material of their exercises so that, in the course of them, knowledge was acquired, almost without effort. During his six years at Prague, Campion worked tire- lessly in the community and in the school. He was Professor of Rhetoric and later Professor of Philosophy, Praefectus Morum, Praefectus Cubiculi, Director of the Sodality of the Immaculate Conception, and Latin THE P R I EST 71 preacher; he gave frequent displays of oratory and wrote. and produced plays, some of great length, for all important occasions. When he became a priest, he was in great demand in the town as preacher and confessor, and still found time for visiting the prisons and hospitals. It became the fashion to employ him for important funeral orations. In 1577 a tragedy of his, on the subject of Saul, was produced with great splendour at the expense of the municipality before Elizabeth, the widow of Charles IX of France; it played for six hours, and was repeated next day at the request of the Emperor. During this time he received the news of six of his Oxford friends entering the Society, but the only Englishman with whom he appears to have had any contact (besides Father Ware, who was at the college with him), is Philip Sidney, who arrived in 1576 as English Ambassador to congratulate the Emperor Rudolph on his accession. It was natural that he should call upon Campion, who had been an associate of his father's in Dublin, and as a fellow-Englishman living near the centre of local affairs would be aJ.Jle to supply him with much information of the kind which Walsing- ham required, but he was emLarrassed to do so openly for fear of the spies who had already made mischief for him at the time of his visit to Venice. They did meet, however, more than once, and enjoyed long and serious discussions. Campion was left with the conviction, whether as a result of Sidney's impressionable nature or merely of his engaging manners, that his visitor was at 72 EDMUND CAMPION heart a Catholic and solicited John Bavand to pray for "the poor, wavering soul" of the magnificent young Englishman. He kept up a correspondence, of which part has Sur- vived, with and about his old friends and pupils. The references to English affairs are rare. No doubt his unhappy country was frequendy in his prayers, but, as far as his own life lay, the severance seemed complete; the probability was that he would remain at Prague until his death, following the same routine year after year, extending himself to the utmost in the work that lay immediately at hand. During his last months at Prague he was engaged in procuring a copy of his Hutory of Ireland, with the intention of revising it and preparing it for publication. These were the externals of his Jesuit vocation; of the other, interior life, the penances and rapt meditation, the prayer and communion, the inner struggles and victories, we know nothing except as their results -appear in his life. To the superficial observer there might seem to be little change. He was leading the old life which he knew and loved, living in a celibate community, maturing and polishing his scholarship, instructing, expounding, disputing as he had done before, more tenderly, perhaps, and more thoroughly, without trace of vanity and emulation, but to all appearances much tlre same man as he had been at Oxford and Dublin. The precise discipline of the Ignatian Exercises had served only to confirm him in the habit of life he had originally chosen. Then comes the interruption, for the origin of which THE PRIEST 73 it will be necessary to notice some recent events in Rome, and Campion suddenly emerges as a hero. It was an age replete with examples of astounding physical courage. Judged by the exploits of the great adventurers of his time, the sea-dogs and explorers, Campion's brief achievement may appear modest enough; but these were tough men, ruthlessly hardened by upbringing, gross in their recreations. Campion stands out from even his most gallant and chivalrous contemporaries, from Philip Sidney and Don John of Austria, not as they stand above Hawkins and Stukeley by finer human temper, but by the supernatural grace that was in him. That the gentle scholar, trained all his life for the pulpit and the lecture room, was able at the word of command to step straight into a world of violence, and acquit himself nobly; that the man, capable of the strenuous heroism of that last year and a half, was able, without any complaint, to pursue the sombre routine of the pedagogue and contemplate without impatience a lifetime so employed-there lies the mystery which sets Campion's triumph apart from the ordinary achievements of human strength; a mystery whose solution lies in the busy, uneventful years at Brunn and Prague, in the profound and accurate piety of the Jesuit rule. The letter which first informed Campion that he was going to England came from Dr. Allen, and in order to understand the circumstances of the mission it is necessary to review some of the events which had 74 EDMUND CAMPION occurred in the lives of the English immigrants at Douai and Rome since his departure. Cardinal Allen's college had increased greatly in size and importance, and was now in receipt of a large Papal subsidy which enabled it to support an average membership of rathH more than a hundred. Thirty or forty priests were ordained yearly, more than half of whom managed to cross the Channel into England, from where they sent reports of the great enthusiasm with which they were received by people of all classes, the hunger for the sacraments which still survived, and the eagerness with which they were sought by penitents desiring reconciliation. As a result of their labours, more Englishmen every year were coming abroad with the intention of becoming priests. It was to deal with some of this immigration that Pope Gregory decided to found an English seminary in Rome. There already existed a pious foundation of the Middle Ages, the Hospice in the Via di Monserrato, which housed numerous English exiles; it was now proposed to amplify this and create a regular seminary on the lines of Douai. The matter was put in the hands of Dr. Owen Lewis, sometime Fellow ofN ew College, later a colleague of Allen's at Douai, Canon of Cambrai, a distinguished jurist, who was in Rome at the time on legal business for his Chapter. Despite his education at Winchester and Oxford and his long sojourn abroad, Dr. Lewis stil1 retained a predominant devotion to his native Wales, and a wistful, Celtic strain in his character, which made him uneasy among the rigid Tridentine clergy who surrounded him. 6 At his and Bishop Goldwell's sug- 75 gestion a fellow-Welshman, Dr. Morys Clynog, was appointed Rector, a kindly, chatty, homesick, old man, whose emotional patriotism was not balanced, as in Dr. Lewis, by very weighty scholarship. Up to this time he had been in charge of the old-fashioned English Hospice where neither his discretion nor business ability had been very severely taxed. He had a deep affection and loyalty to men of his own blood, and it was his great joy to welcome them to the college; by 1579 he was able to number seven Welshmen among his students, with most of whom, in his Celtic enthusiasm for genealogy, he was able to claim personal kinship. For the thirty-three Englishmen who composed the remainder of the com- munity he could feel only the most tepid sympathy. The greater part of these had been sent to him from Douai, for during the years 1576-1579 the position of the English students in the Netherlands had become insecure. The Spanish Government was faced with a situation very similar to that which confronted Elizabeth in Ireland, and her advisers, despite her own expressed reluctance, had been quick to provide the Prince of Orange with help of the kind which later Philip was to give to the Earl of Desmond. The Calvinists in Douai were a small minority, but the richly deserved unpopu- larity of the Spanish garrisons aided their cause. The English students, being under direct Papal and royal patronage, and being moreover physically defenceless, found themselves an easy target for popular insult. The streets of the town became dangerous to them. It soon became clear that they would have to find a temporary THE PRIEST 7 6 EDMUND CAMPION home elsewhere. Cardinal Allen, accordingly, took as many of them as was possible into French territory at Rheims and sent the remainder to Rome. These young martyrs in training were of different mettle from the ordinary, docile seminarists of the Roman colleges, and me unremitting tact by which Dr. Allen managed to keep them all harmoniously at work was attested by their behaviour as soon as they were removed from his control. At the end of October 1578 two Italian Jesuits- Fathers Navarola and Capecius-were added to the staff of the Roman college; the English students could not fail to contrast their up-to-date efficiency with the slipshod, ramshackle mentality of their Rector, nor could the Fathers fail to prefer their keen-witted, generous English pupils to the moody Celts, but there is no reason to believe that they had any share in encouraging the dis- orders. The endemic antagonism of Welsh and English which, as the malcontents naively remarked in a petition to the Holy Father, dated from the days of King Arthur, was inflamed by the shameless advantage which the Rector gave to his countrymen in anything that lay in his power: better food, better rooms, better clothes. The English were soon in open rebellion; the ring- leaders marched to the Pope, and were refused admission; they went to the Cardinal of Como, who referred them to Cardinal Morone; Cardinal Morone told them to go back to their books. Accordingly, after a scene in the dining-hall, which came near to hloodshed, the whole body of them, at the beginning of Lent, 1579, marched THE PRIEST 77 out, with the intention of making their way back to Dr. AlIen at Rheims. The Jesuits openly sympathised with them, and began raising a collection to provide for their journey. At this juncture the Pope intervened and promised a change of management. They asked first for Dr. Morton or Dr. Bavand as Rector, but were refused; they then suggested the Jesuits, and this was allowed them; for nearly two hundred years the college remained under the control of the Society an Italian, Father Agazzari, was the first Rector. Allen was invited to Rome to help in the settlement. The disturbance had caused great anxiety to him and to Dr. Lewis, though it is typical of this godly man that he had made no reproach to the students for their ingratitude to himself, who had been the chief benefactor of the college, but was distressed only at the scandal that might be caused and the danger to the students if they under- took the journey to Rheims without proper precautions. Dr. Allen was on the whole in favour of entrusting the college to the Jesuits, but in the three months of his journey south, the temper of the students was again excited against their authorities. This time the complaint was more sober: that the Fathers, by their superiority to their predecessors, were gaining too great an influence over the more zealous students and would end by turning them into Jesuits instead of into English priests. Allen had already seen several of his most promising students, Campion among them, drawn into the Society away from direct partici- pation in the English mission. In each case he had 7 8 EDMUND CAMPION submitted, thinking it was for the individual's highest good, but it was another matter to expose an entire seminary college to this influence. If there was to be extensive recruiting for the Society among his students, it was fair that they should take their part in the work in England. In a series of long discussions with the General and the superiors of the Society, Allen pleaded his case and secured their agreement. In future English ] esuits should co-operate with Allen's priests, and arrange- ments were made for the immediate disposal of two fathers for the next mission. On December Sth he wrote with great joy to inform Campion that he was one of those who had been chosen to go. "Our harvest is already great in England: ordinary lahourers are not enough; more practised men are wanted, hut chiefly you and others of your order. The General has yielded to all our prayers; the Pope, the true fizther of our country, has consented; and God, in whose hands are the issues, has at last granted that our own Campion, with his extraordinary gifts of wisdom and grace, should he restored to us." 7 It was not until March that the Austrian Provincial would allow his departure. In the rime of waiting Campion continued without interruption in the normal order of the school, but there was the aura about him of one devoted to another destiny. A Salesian Father, James Gall, an ecstatic, came to the door of Campion's cell, on the eve of his departure, and inscribed above it P. Edmundus Campianus Martyr. Some days before another Father had painted the emblem of martyrdom, a THE PRIEST 19 garland of roses and lilies, on the wall at the head of Campion's bed. Campion left Prague on March 2.5 th, and travelling sometimes on foot, sometimes on horse, sometimes by coach, as the chances of the journey allowed, arrived in Rome on Easter Saturday, April 9th, 1580. He remained there until April 18th. During this time he made or renewed the acquaintance of his companions on the mission. Of these by far the most important both in Campion's life and the future history of his generation was the fellow-Jesuit, Robert Persons. They had met before at Oxfurd, and had lately exchanged letters. At their first encounter Campion had been proctor and Persons, as an undergraduate, six years his junior, had been required by the University rules to take the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy before him. He was known to have Catholic sympathies, and Campion had been ready to excuse him, but other authorities inter- vened and Persons took the oath, which he was to repeat later on becoming Fellow of Balliol. He was now, at CampIon's earnest request, appointed his superior during their mission. The materials for writing a life of Persons are not yet accessible, and until that day is thought to have arrived he must remain a shadowy and enigmatic figure. The little that is known of him is mostly derived from the utterances of his enemies. He was of humble, and, it was generally believed, illegitimate birth at Nether Stowey, in Somerset. He was educated by the help of the parish priest, who was reputed to be his father, first at Taunton 80 EDMUND CAMPION and later at St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, where he showed acute intelligence, if not scholarship, and inspired very strong feelings in all he met, either of affection or dislike. In 1574 he was obliged to resign his Fellowship in circum- stances of which religion had no share. He had apparently succeeded in antagonising the other dons by his popu- larity as a tutor and the licence he allowed himself in ridiculing them, but there is no reason to suppose that the charges which brought about his dismissal, of mis- appropriating college funds, were ever proved. He went to Padua to study medicine, but on the way stopped at Louvain, where he encountered Father William Good, under whose direction he seems to have experienced a profound and permanent conversion. He left Padua for Rome, entered the Jesuit noviciate on July 24th, 157S, and was ordained priest there three years later. He became Penitentiary at the Vatican, where he rapidly attracted the notice of his superiors, and was employed for a short time at the English college in the transition period between Clynog's administration and the assump- tion of management by the Society. After Campion's death he never returned to England, but busied himself in ecclesiastical and secular politics, in which his projects were seldom wholly successful. Legends inevitably accumulated about him, magnified by the extreme expressions of his friends and enemies, and in the vague and slightly sinister form in which he has descended to posterity he forms the prototype, rarely repeated, of the " subtle Jesuit" of popular superstition. It seems certain that in later life he interpreted very THE PRIEST 81 loosely the strict Jesuit rule against interference in politics; he seems, too, to have worked under the con- viction that all affairs, civil and ecclesiastical, could be more efficiently and conveniently managed by the Fathers of the Society. As a politician he proved wrong, but often, apparently, through ill-luck rather than bad judgment, as when the Raid of Ruthven upset his plans in Scotland; as an ecclesiastic he ended by antagonising a great body of the more responsible clergy. But iJ} all these matters the details, and perhaps the true facts, are hidden from us. We do know, however, that he completely captivated a man as astute in his human judgments as Dr. Allen; that he founded the school for English boys at St. Orner, which preserved Catholic education for three centuries of Englishmen and is the direct ancestor of Stonyhurst College, and that he composed the Spiritual Directory, which has proved a text book of sturdy piety to thousands of Catholics up to the present day. In the few days of preparation and leave-taking which succeeded Campion's arrival in Rome, the purpose on which they were being sent was fully and precisely explained to the two missionaries. A large part of their instruction was concerned solely with their vocation as members of the Society, for it had been the chief anxiety of the General, which had for so long made him hesitate in his decision to send men to England, how it would be possible to lead die life of a Jesuit in the peculiar con- ditions that prevailed there. They would be obliged to abandon their habits and travel in disguise, living among 82 EDMUND CAMPION laymen under assumed names and false professions of their business; they would be alone for long periods of time, entirely deprived of the corporate strength which was the chief advantage of membership of an organised Society; they would be without supervision and direction in a country where the ecclesiastical government had fallen into chaos and the only surviving bishop lived in imprisonment; they would be hindered, if not absolutely prevented, from making the periodic retreats in which they recuperated their spiritual powers. But the General had decid d to commit them to these dangers, and accordingly he drew up a special code of rules for their work. The objects of the mission were clearly defined and limited. It was for" the preservation and augmentation of the faith of the Catholics in England." So far from active proselytising among heretics, the missionaries were charged not only to avoid disputes with them, but to shun their company. They might treat WIth Catholics who had lapsed through compulsion or ignorance, but this work was subordinate to their primary duty of ministering to those who remained constant. They were forbidden, absolutely, to involve themselves in questions of state or to send back political reports. They must permit no conversation against the Queen in their presence, except perhaps in the company of those whom they held to be exceptionally faithful, and who had been tried a long time; and even then not without serious cause. 8 At this point a definition was required by the Fathers of the precise position of Catholics towards THE PRIEST 8; Queen Elizabeth. As early as 1573, during his first visit to Rome, Campion had had "orne conversation with Cardinal Gesualdi and had represented to him the difficulty in which loyal Englishmen had been placed by the Bull of Deposition. After Pius' death an inquiry had been sent to Rome to discover whether the Bull was still in force, and had elicited the following replies: that it had been issued in the hope of the kingdom being immediately restored to Catholicism, and in view of that occasion, and that as long as the Queen remained de facto ruler, it was lawful for Catholics to obey her in civil matters and co-operate in all just things; that she might honourably be addressed with her tides as Queen; that it was unlawful for any private person, not wearing uniform at\d authorised to do so as an act of war, to slay any tyrant whomsoever, unless the tyrant, for example, had invaded his country in arms; that in the event of anyone being authorised to put the Bull into execution, it would not be lawful to Catholics to oppose him. These judgments were now confirmed and epitomised in the statement cc that the BuO should always bind the Queen and the heretics; on the other hand that it should in no way hind the Catholics, as things then stood, hut only in the future when the puhlic lxecution of the Bull could he made." It was possible to deduce from this decision that the Catholics were a body of potential rebels, who only waited for foreign invasion to declare themselves. This Was the sense in which Cecil read it, for he was reluctant to admit the possibility of anyone being both a patriotic Englishman and an opponent of his regime. The 84 EDMUND CAMPION Catholics, however, concerned very little with matters of high politics and very much with their ordinary day_ to-day relations with their neighbours, accepted it eagerly, as permission to deny the royal authority only in so far as it forbade them the practice of their religion, and in all other matters to arrange their lives in harmony with their fellow-countrymen. It was in this sense only that the question interested Persons and Campion. It was the very antithesis of their mission to instruct Catholics in their duty in the hypothetical event of King Philip suddenly appearing among them at the head of a victorious army; they came to treat with distressed consciences, and Gregory's pronouncement enabled them to reassure scrupulous penitents who feared that by performing the norrpal duties of citizenship they had incurred the penalties of excommunication. A lay brother of the Society, Ralph Emerson, was appointed to accompany the two Fathers. With him, the party leaving for England now numbered fourteen, and represented all ranks of the Church; there was the aged Bishop GoldweU of St. Asaph, who with Dr. Morton, the Penitentiary of St. Peter's, travelled ahead by horseback; there were two laymen, one of them, John Pascal, a young gallant who had lately been hanging about the Vatican and making himself noticeable by his debonair manner; four elderly Marian priests from the English Hospice, one of them the old Prior of Man. chester; and three young priests from the college; so that the expedition began to assume the air of a crusade. Before leaving they were received in audience by the THE PRIEST 85 pope, and given special faculties for their work; they also visited Philip Neri and received his blessing. When the actual day for their departure came, they were attended by Sir Richard Shelley, the Prior of Malta, and almost the whole of the English colony of Rome, as well as a large number of Italian sympathisers, as far as the Ponte Molle, where solemn and affectionate leave was taken. These circumstances, far from unobtrusive, were duly notified to Walsingham by his agents, and the English Government was well aware what was on hand before the missionaries had reached the Channel ports. The first ten days of the journey were accomplished in heavy rain and over roads which were barely passable. The way led through Viterbo, Sienna, Florence, Bologna, Modena, Parma, PiaceDZa and Milan. At Sienna and Florence they were able to obtain lodging at Jesuit colleges; at Bologna, where they were delayed some days by an accident to Persons, they were entertained by Cardinal Paleotto, the Archbishop; after dinner Cam- pion was called upon to preach, which he did in his old academic manner, beginning with a quotation from Pythagoras, and comparing the ardours and consolations of the Christian life with those of the pagan. At Milan they spent eight days in the palace of Cardinal Borromeo, where a daily discourse was required of Campion. That huge and princely establish ent was well accustomed to visitors of every degree; it numbered over a hundred members of the regular household; there were Chamberlains, Almoners, Stewards, Monitors, Oblates, Discreets of the Confraternity, Prefects of 86 EDMUND CAMPION the Guest Chambers, all maintained and graded ill hierarchic order under the Praepositus, the Vicar and the Auditor-General. Three hundred guests a month, On an average, passed through these hospitable COurts. ) there all the ways and passages of the vast, ecclesiastical labyrinth seemed to intersect, and in the centre of it a living in ascetic simplicity among the lavish retinue, eating his thin soup, sleeping on his folding bedstead, wearing his patched hair shirt, moving with halting gait, chilly even in the height of summer, speaking in a voice so subdued that it was barely audible, grave and recol- lected as a nun, was the dominating figure of the great Cardinal. The pilgrims were received, entertained, blessed and sent on their way, and the immense house- hold went about its duties; in its splendour and order and sanctity, a microcosm of the Eternal Church. From Milan the party passed through Turin, crossed the Alps by the Mont Cenis hospice, and descended into Savoy, where they met the vanguard of a great rabble of Spanish troops, returning from Flanders. They pressed on as far as Aiguebelle, where it became clear that they would have to change their course, for not only was there a continuous stream of soldiers blocking the roads and commandeering provisions, but, they learned, the country round Lyons was in a state of anarchy as a result of the Huguenot rebellion. Accordingly they struck east of their original route, along the road through Geneva. As they approached the home of Calvinism, they put out of sight all evidence of their profession and disguised themselves, Campion with characteristic humility taking 88 EDMUND CAMPION they had received" to avoid all sarcasm and pr fer solid to sharp answers," as applying only to their behaviour in England, proceeded by a series of questions to show that, since the Calvinists admitted no inequality in ministry and governed their Church theocratically, while Elizabeth had appointed bishops and usurped for herself the entire jurisdiction of the Pope, the English Pro- testants were heretical even by his own standards. The ground of the discussion then shifted, and Beza recounted a number of stories, which subsequently proved to be false, about the iniquities of the Duke of Guise; but Campion, standing impatiendy by in his servant's livery, could retain himself no longer and insisted on bringing the subject back to essentials, offering to demonstrate numerous features of the Elizabethan church that were out of accordance with Beza's views. But Beza was not in the mood to waste an afternoon in his courtyard being catechised by a servant on questions of which there was little hope of agreement, so he called his wife to bring him another packet of letters, and took leave of the Fathers with remarkable courtesy of manner, promising to send them an English pupil of his, the son of Sir George Hastings, next-of-kin to the Earl of Huntingdon, who had greater leisure thaft himself for such discussions. Hastings never arrived, but in his place there came to visit them at their inn a Mr. Brown and a Mr. Powell, two keen Anglicans, with whom the priests struck up a relationship of some cordiality, arguing well into the night, promenading the streets, breakfasting together, THE PRIEST 89 and eventually enjoying their company for the first mile or twO of the journey north. It was by Mr. Powell's advice that Persons was dis- suaded from challenging Beza to a public disputation, the loser of which should be publicly burned alive in the market place. Thanks to him they left Geneva without embroiling themselves with the authorities, but could not be restrained from baiting an unfortunate clergyman whom they encountered, placidly conning a sermon, a mile out of the town. Campion and Fr. Bruscoe were ahead, and without introduction accosted the man and tackled him on the subject of Church government; at first he took them for sympathetic enquirers, but was speedily tied up on the question they had put to Beza of Elizabeth's ecclesiastical supremacy; he turned for support in his confusion to the rest of the party, who fell upon him with relish, contradicted him, tripped him up in his arguments, and left him breathless with indignation, his fingers vainly fluttering the pages of his sermon, while Mr. Powell attempted to excuse the eccentricities of the strange company in which he had been found. At the summit of a hill overlooking the city, the pilgrims paused and sang a Te Deum in acknowledge- ment of the enjoyable time they had spent there; and then, perhaps slightly in doubt of whether they had behaved with complete politeness, went .out of their way Over rough ground to do penance at the shrine of St. Claude, a place which, until its destruction during the French Revolution, was a great centre of devotion in that part of the country. From there they continued the 9° EDMUND CAMPION journey in buoyant spirits and, until near the end ) excellent health, to Rheims, where they arrived on the last day of May, having spent about six weeks on the way from Rome. While they were on the road it was Campion's praetice to say his Mass very early, and then, after reciting the ltinerarium with the others, to push on ahead for a few hours' solitary devotion, reading his breviary) reciting the Litanies of the Saints 9 and telling his beads. When this was over he would allow the rest to overtake him, and would spend the day laughing and talking until evening, when he would again slip away from them for his meditation and prayers. One of his particular jokes, in which they all shared, was the terror with which they looked towards England and the probability of a painful death. When they reached Rheims and caught up with Bishop Goldwell and Dr. Morton, they found that what had been fun to them had become a very grave matter to the Prelate. He was in his eightieth year and far from hardy; all his life he had been accustomed to soft living and deferential treatment. It had seemed easy enough during the wave of enthusiasm at Rome to volunteer for the expedition; he had left in an atmosphere of personal popularity which was novel and entirely agreeable to him; but the weeks of jogging along through water- logged high roads, of putting up at inns where the accommodation seemed totally inadequate for a person of his dignity, of not being recognised, of getting wet and having nothing dry to change into, above all of 9 1 reflecting as he lay sleepless on the wholly unsuitable beds which he was obliged to occupy, that each day's painful journey was taking him further from the life which he understood and nearer to those sufferings which had sounded so edifying when read aloud in the refectory, had effected a serious derangement of the bishop's system. At Rheims they received him with the utmost kindness; they were continually kissing his ring; but when they sought to be most complimentary they would applaud his courage by recounting with some- thing very like relish the appalling severity of the new penal laws on the other side of the Channel. After a few days of it he took to his bed and began writing to the Pope to express his doubts, whether he were pre- cisely the best person for the work in hand. He had already written from Bologna, saying it had come to his ears that the Bishop of Lincoln was now out of prison; was there any object in his going on? The answer conveyed to him by the nuncio in Paris was sharp; that even if the rumour were true, there was room in England for two bishops. Now he wrote twice, mentioning his willingness to go anywhere and endure anything at His Holiness' command, but suggesting an alternative plan; why should not one or two of these courageous young priests be made bishops? It was not a question of money; they would be content to live in the poverty of the primitive Church. To make matters worse, before there was time for a reply, plague broke out in Rheims, and the Bishop's agitation became frantic. Accordingly he setded matters THE PRIEST 9 1 I EDMUND CAMPION for himself and returned to Rome without permission, where he was greeted by a somewhat cold reception frOIl1 the Cardinal of Como. Dr. Allen allowed himself no recriminations, merely remarking that " it was better the old man should yield to fear now than later on, on the other side." The other, more disturbing, piece of information which greeted the pilgrims at Rheims was that, at about the same time as their departure from Rome, Dr. Nicholas Sander had been despatched as Papal nuncio, with five ships of men and arms, to assist the Geraldine rising in Ireland. The prudence of this step was more in doubt than the strict legality, for Ireland stood in a very different relation to the Holy See from that of England and Wales. Although it had once, in extremity, been admitted by King John, the Pop 's feudal jurisdiction over England had been constandy and resolutely denied. Ireland, however, was, in feudal law, unquestionably a Papal fief, and had always been recognised as such by the English monarchy; moreover, it had never been effectively conquered or administered; outside the Pale English control had been negligible. The Pope had a legal right of interference, such as Elizabeth neverenjoyed in the Netherlands, but to Campion, whose acquaintance with the country derived entirely from official circles in Dublin, the expedition seemed a shocking alliance with anarchy against the decent order of English jurisdiction, while to all the priests it was clear that Cecil's policy of identifying their cause with political treason would be greatly facilitated. They learned moreover that Walsingham' s agents had THE PRIEST 9; pIovided him with very complete descriptions of all the party, and that the Channel ports were being closely watched for their arrival. How little this intelligence depressed the optimism of the party may be judged by the fact that before they had been more than few days at Rheims the defection of Bishop Goldwell and Dr. Morton had been made up by two volunteers from the college, Dr. Ely and Father John Hart, and by Father Thomas Cottam, an invalid, who had been obliged by ill health to leave the Jesuit noviciate. Campion as usual was called upon to preach; he did so, and the sermon is notable as being the first time for many years that he had spoken in public in his native language. Dr. Allen waited the issue with some anxiety, but any difficulties he may have_expected were com- pletely overcome, and Campion spoke as fluendy and correctly as though he had never left England. The text which he chose was Ignem vem mittere in terram; once more employing the fire motive which appears frequently in his utterances, from his second debate before Elizabeth, through his letters to the novices at Brunn, to this memorable occasion when he cried the word so loudly that, Bombinus records, passers-by in the street took alarm and hastened to the water buckets. He had long conversations with Dr. Allen in which 1t was clear that neither of them expected to meet again. .. As for me," said Campion, " all is over. . . I have made a free oblation of myself to His Divine Majesty, both for life and death, and I hope He will give me grace and force to perform; and this is all I desire." 94 EDMUND CAMPION In this mood the missionaries separated to make their way, as best they could, in pairs and small companies, across the Channel. Dr. Brombury and Father Bruscoe went to Dieppe, Sherwin and Pascal to Rouen, Gilbert, Crane and Kemp to Boulogne, Ely, Rishton, Kirby, Hart and Cottam to Dunkirk. Persohs, Campion and the lay brother Emerson went to the Jesuit house at St. Orner. There were several English fugitives there; they and the Flemish Fathers attempted to discourage the crossing, saying that the vigilance at Dover was now so great that their immediate arrest was inevitable, but Mr. George Chamberlain, a man of some consequence, was more hopeful and, since it was clear that whatever dangers awaited them would tend to become more, rather than less, grave with delay, Persons decided on immediate action. Disguised as a soldier with buff and gold braid and a soldierly, swaggering manner, Persons set out from Calais commanding Campion and Emerson to wait, get what information they could at the quayside of their superior's fortune, and, if all had turned out well, follow without delay. For nine days they waited at St. Orner without news. Then a letter arrived, addressed by Persons to Campion in the capacity of jeweller, which he had decided to assume, urging him to come at once to London and market his wares. Accordingly Campion and Emerson set out, found a ship, and after four days in harbour waiting for a favourable wind, crossed on the evening of June 24th and landed at Dover before it was daylight. THE PRIEST 9J NOTES 1 This is the number, as near as can be calculated, of seminary priests actually executed and does not include the large number who died in prison and may reasonably be accounted martyrs, nor members of the religious orders such as Campion who began his preparation under Allen, or Briant, Cornelius, Filcock and Page, who became Jesuits only shortly before death. s Canon Didiot's phrase. S Original MS. in Campion's hand at Stonyhurst. Simpson's translation. fo In exceptional circumstances, which have never arisen, he may be deposed. Ii Schmidl: Historia SJ. Provo Bohem. e For a very moving description of Dr. Lewis' exile, see Fr. David Matthew's The Celtic Peoples and Rmaissance Europe, quoted in the last chapter. 7 Quoted by Simpson. He does not give details of original. S It is easy to imagine the difficulty of enforcing this discretion among people eager for a sympathetic hearing of the hardships . they were suffering under the penal laws, and the rule was later tightened by the omission of this modification. 9 A little book of Litanies to Our Lady, partly of Campion's own composition, is in existence. It was reprinted in 1887. Litaniae Deiparae Virginis Mariae ex patrihus et script. collectae. Rotlunagi apud E. CagniarJ, Typographum. Bihilopolam, 1887. III THE HERO In the nine years of Campion's absence from England William Cecil's position had become steadily stronger. He had been created Lord Burghley in 1571, and in the summer of the following year took the office of Lord Treasurer. He still kept control of the Star Chamber and of foreign affairs, while in 1574 he secured the appointment to his old position as Secretary of Sir Francis Walsingham, a man in absolute sympatliy with himself in the aims and methods of Government. In 1572. Norfolk had gone to the scaffold; with him had died the hopes of the Conservative Party. Mary Stuart's cause had come to final ruin in Scodand with the sur- render and death of Kircaldy and Maidand; she was a prisoner on English soil, and Cecil knew that with tact and patience he would, one day, persuade his mistress to order her execution. The Queen increased daily in popularity, particularly in London, the home counties and the ports, where she was accorded something nearly approaching divine honours. Cecil had her complete confidence. The Dudley circle, where it was now fashionable to be anti-French and Calvinist, might regard him with distrust, but the Queen drew a fairly clear distinction between the company with whom she amused 97 9 8 EDMUND CAMPION herself and those whom she allowed to manage the affairs of State. On the other hand, in foreign politics Cecil had not been so successful. He had not foreseen the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, 1572., which had broken the supremacy of the Huguenots; deprived of French help) the insurgents in the Spanish Netherlands were being reconquered, and he had counted upon them to distract Spanish attention from the unremitting provocation offered by the English buccaneers. A Spanish war was to the interest of neither country. So far from being, as he appeared to many of Campion's contemporaries, the Catholic Ghengis Khan, sweeping irresistibly over Europe, Philip, we now know, was an intensely con- scientious and far from competent bureaucrat, whom vast inherited dominions kept constantly embarrassed. No one knew better than himself the weakness that lay behind the elaborate facade of the Spanish monarchy; how vital despatches got delayed and lost in the huge secretarial system of the Escurial; how revenues melted away as they passed from hand to hand between their source and the Treasury; how <.>fficials in his remote territories wilfully misconstrued their orders; how posts requiring the highest abilities were distributed by titles of birth; how priests were continually interfering and admonishing about his responsibilities and destinies, how his own stiff conscience was always prompting him into courses radically opposed to common sense, how the salaries and pensions were in arrears, troops mutinying for lack of pay, and pious foundations petitioning for THE HERO 99 subsidies which he could not find heart to refuse. The last thing he wanted was to go to war, particularly with the English, whose formidable spirit he knew from the days when he had been their king. But the provocation had been c.ontinuous, from the earliest days when Cecil had sent Dr. Man as ambassador, a person of atrocious manners who had referred to the Pope in front of half the court as" a canting little monk." Then there had been the treasure which he had unloaded at Plymouth and Southampton, to convey under Eliza- beth's safe conduct for re-embarkation at Dover. She had rescinded the safe conduct and commandeered the entire booty. Then there were the slave traders. In accordance with his stern moral code Philip forbade his American colonists from enslaving the native Indians and from importing negroes. They resented this, and readily bought from Hawkins, although trade of any kind was forbidden them except with their Mother Country. Not only was Elizabeth cognisant of this contraband business, she was a partner in it. She had lent a ship of her own, unsuitably called the Jesus, for this very purpose. Bristol grew rich once more with the trade that St. Wulstan had suppressed there in the eleventh century. English galleys, laden with human cargo, plied regularly between America and West Africa, and on their return journeys, as often as not, stopped to sack a Spanish outpost or board a treasure ship. At this very time, the summer of the Jesuits' arrival, Drake was coming into home waters after three years of sensational good fortune in the Indies; Cecil had done 100 EDMUND CAMPION all in his power to discourage the expedition, even to insinuating an agent of his own into the crew with instructions to raise a mutiny and conjure unfavourable winds, but the man had been detected and hanged from the yard-arm, and Drake's arrival with a hold full of plunder was acclaimed as a national triumph by the Queen herself. At present Philip was occupied in Portugal, where the English as usual had been intriguing with the pretender; when that was settled he would have to turn his mind to a punitive expedition. There were numerous disturbing portents recorded on the eve of the Jesuits' arrival. In April the great bell of Westminster tolled of itself without human agency. In June there were thunderstorms of exceptional violence. A woman named Alice Perin, at the age of eighty years, gave birth to a prodigy with a head like a helmet, a face like a man, a mouth like a mouse, a human body, eight legs, all different, and a tail half a yard long, while in the same year another monster was reported from Stowe that was both male and female, with mouth and eyes like a lion. In May a pack of hounds was clearly visible hunting in the clouds over Wiltshire, while over the border in Somerset three several companies of sixty men each, dressed in black, marched in procession through the sky. Cecil, Elizabeth and most of the Court took serious notice of auguries and the events caused great anxiety for the Government's security. There was also the question of the Queen's projected marriage with the Duke of Anjou. In a general way, so long as Mary Stuart remained alive, everyone wished to THB HERO 101 see the Queen married, but the objections to every suitor, royal or common, seemed insuperable. For some years now, Casdenau, the French Ambassador, had been pressing forward the claims of the French prince. A personable agent, Simier, had been wooing her assidu- ously, and with some response. lizabeth had already been warned that the Duke was not physically pre- possessing, but his appearance, when finally he arrived, in the summer of 1578, startled the court. He was dwarfish in stature, with bandy legs, an enormous cleft nose and a profusion of pock marks. He was sexually perverted, and twenty years the Queen's junior. Con- trary to all expectation she was enchanted with him, played with him by the hour, fondled him, and called him " her little frog." They formed a macabre pair, for Elizabeth was now in middle age, her face was shrunken, revealing the large, masculine bones beneath it, she was extravagandy painted and dressed, while over all towered a crimson wig, stuck with jewellery, which, it was reputed, covered a head that was totally bald. The flirtation, however, was carried to extremes of demonstration, and the general opiniqn held that at last the Queen's capri- cious heart was fuitily won. But the difficulty, as with so many of her suitors, lay in the question of their faith. The Duke's mother, Catherine of Medici, was impatient of religious scruples, but the little fellow held out for his Mass, and negotiations were protracted until, four years later, the project was at last abandoned. Meanwhile, however, in the year with which we are dealing, the Catholics watched the affair with tragic eagerness, for it 102 EDMUND CAMPION was in that grotesque alliance that they saw the single, frail hope of their own survival. It is still generally believed in England that Elizabeth's anti-Catholic legislation was remarkable for its leniency,1 and that in an age of savage intolerance she and Cecil stood out as unique examples of enlightenment and moderation. It may, therefore, be convenient to approach the English Catholics 2 by means of a summary of their legal position. Some of these measures have been mentioned above. By the two Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity which established the Church of England, there was imposed a fine of one shilling for non-attendance at the parish church, the proceeds of which were to go to the poor of the parish. It was also made illegal to hold any service, except those contained in the Prayer Book. An oath of submission to the Queen's spiritual supremacy was formulated, which might be tendered to all officials and to anyone found attending an illegal service. The penalty for a second refusal of this oath was death. A later ordinance provided that anyone engaged in education, either as a schoolmaster or as a private tutor, must receive licence from the Bishop of the Diocese. A passport system at first hindered, and later prohibited, parents from sending their children to school abroad. This was the situation up till 1570, the date of the Bull of Excommunication. It was then made high treason (punishable, of course, with death) to bring into the country" any hull, writing or instrument obtained from the Bishop of Ronu," " to ahsolve or reconcile" any of THE HERO 1°3 the Queen's subjects, or to be absolved or reconciled. S To bring into the country or receive any object of devotion, .. tokens, crosses, pictures, heads or such. like vain things from the Bishop of Rome," was punishable by the confiscation of property. In 1581, to meet the emergency of Campion's mission, a further act was passed .. To retain the Queen Majesty's su/ljects in due ohedience." It reaffirmed the principle that it was high treason to reconcile anyone or to be reconciled to the Church and imposed a new scale of fines. For hearing Mass the penalty was 100 marks (£66 13s. ¥.) and a year's imprisonment. This clause is notable because it is the first time that the Mass is specifically proscribed. Hitherto the offence had been .. to sing or say any common or open prayer or to minister any S(Krament otherwise than is mentioned in the said hook" (the Elizabethan Prayer Book). The same Act provides that the penalty for not attending church shall be £1.0 per month, per head, for those over sixteen years of age. The object of this legislation was to outlaw and ruin the Catholic community. It will be seen that under the new code a family of four adults who elected to lead a regular Catholic life, attending Mass on days of obliga- tion and eschewing the Protestant services, were liable, if they were fortunate enough to keep out of prison, to a total yearly payment of over £15,500 (or in modem currency about £93,000). This sum was to be divided into three parts, one of which went to the Treasury, one to the informer, and one to the poor of the parish, but 10 4 EDMUND CAMPION there is no single instance on record of this last humane provision having been put into effect.. There was scarcely an estate in the country capable of sustaining an imposition of this size, nor, in fact, was any obliged to do so, for the Masses were said in secret, the vessels kept behind sliding panels, and the priests smuggled in and out of doors through concealed passages, but one infraction of the code could not in its nature be kept hidden-the refusal to attend Protestant services-and from 1580 onwards the enormous tax of £240 (abOUt £ 1,440 modem value) yearly for each adult member of a Catholic household was pretty regularly exacted; none but the wealthiest had any choice between sub- mission and destitution. The other penalties could not be enforced consistently. Some recusants were continually in and out of prison, some were left undisturbed for years together. The system was full of incongruities, such as Mass being regularly said in Marshalsea prison. Some provisions, such as that any man might be convicted of high treason who twice refused the oath of supremacy, seem never to have been put into force. Raids for proscribed objects- rosaries, religious pictures, crucifixes, etc.-took place . capriciously. First one district would be combed out and then another. Everything depended on local good- will and the activity of the professional informers. Of these the best known and most successful was Richard Topcliffe, who first appears in history in 157 8 . From then onwards he was in regular employment under the Government hunting out Catholics. To him was' THE HERO IO accorded the privilege unique in the law of England, or, perhaps, of any country, of maintaining a private rack in his own house for the more convenient examination of prisoners. Only once did he fall into discredit, towards the end of his public life, in 1594, when he was brought to court by a colleague, Thomas Fitzherbert. " For wkereas Fit{kerbert entered into honds to give £5.000 unto Topcliffe, if ke would persecute his fluher and his uncle unto death together with Mr. Bassett, from whom he expected legacies, Fit{kerhert pleaded tkat tke conditions were not fulfilled hecause tkey died naturally and Bassett was in fuD prosperity." 5 Evidence was given by Mr. Bassett himself that T opcliffe had done everything in human power to entrap him, and Coke, the Queen's attorney, confirmed him, testifying that Topcliffe had assiduously accused all three of Popery, but the court held that T opcliffe, for once, had been remiss in his duty and sentenced him to a short term in prison, of the injustice of which he complained bitterly, saying that it was enough to make the bones of Father Southwell dance for joy. He and others like him now proceeded about the country levying blackmail where they could, spying, bribing servants, corrupting children,s compassing the death of many innocent priests and the ruin of coundess gende families. The Catholics were defenceless at law, for their whole inherited scheme of life had been dubbed criminal; they lived in day-to-day uncertainty whether they might not suddenly be singled out for persecution, their 106 EDMUND CAMPION estates confiscated, their families dispersed and them- selves taken to prison or the scaffold. Three examples of the manner in which the law was enforced even in the milder days before the coming of the Jesuits may be taken from the accounts of Elizabeth's progress through Norfolk in 1578. The county was particularly strong in Catholics and they welcomed the opportunity to show their loyalty to the Queen. At Euston Hall, near Thetford, lived Edward Rookwood, a Catholic squire in the early twenties, newly married. Although there were many' more magnificent houses in the neighbourhood, the Queen chose to come out of her way to stay at Euston. The house was ill-equipped for the accommodation of her large reLlnue, but the young couple exerted them- selves to the utmost and, until the last morning, were hopeful that the visit had proved a success. When, however, Rookwood presented himself to kiss his guest's hand, he was roughly told to stand aside, was rated for being a Catholic, put under arrest and marched away to Norwich gaol. At first his Norfolk neighbours were inclined to attribute Rookwood's disgrace to the simplicity of his entertainment, but four days later the Queen crossed into their county to visit the former Lady Elizabeth Style, now married to Thomas Townshend of Braconash. Townshend had taken the oath of spiritual supremacy, but was related to several recusants and was on friendly terms with others. He lived in baronial splendour and the Court were here treated with the extravagance they THE HERO 10 7 expected, but the Queen took the opportunity of a party to have nine of her fellow-guests arrested under her host's roof and sent, like Rookwood, to Norwich, where the Court followed shordy. About a mile from the city a gentleman named Downes rode out to meet them. He was a Catholic of ancient family, lord of the manor of Erlham, which he held from the Crown by Petit Serjeantry or service of a pair of spurs. Mr. Downes presented the Queen with the spurs, fashioned in gold, and began to recite some complimentary verses of his own invention. He was curtly ordered to stand aside and follow the party into Norwich, where he was clapped into prison. These were the conditions of life, always vexatious, often utterly disastrous, of the people to whom the Jesuits were being sent, people drawn from the most responsible and honourable class, guilty of no crime except adherence to the traditional faith of their country. They were conditions which, in the natural course, could only produce despair, and it depended upon their individual temperaments whether, in desperation, they had recourse to apostasy or conspiracy. It was the work of the missionaries, and most particularly of Campion, to present by their own example a third, supernatural solution. They came with gaiety among a people where hope was dead. The past held only regret, and the future apprehension; they brought with them, besides theh:- priestly dignity and the ancient and indestruc tible- creed, an entirely new spirit of which_ Campion is the typ:i..-!P hivalry of Lepanto and th -- ---.--- 108 EDMUND CAMPION .....E>etry of La Mancha, light, tender, generous and ardent. After-mm there still were apostates and there were conspirators; there were still bitter old reactionaries, brooding alone in their impoverished manors over the injustice they had suffered, grumbling at the Queen's plebeian advisers, observing the forms of the old Church in protest against the crazy, fashionable Calvinism; these survived, sterile and lonely, for theirs was not the temper of Campion's generation who--not the fine flower only, but the root and stem of English Catholicism --surrendered themselves to their destiny without calculation or reserve; for whom the honourable pleasures and occupations of an earlier age were for- bidden; whose choice lay between the ordered, respect- able life of their ancestors and the faith which had sanctified it; who followed holiness, though it led them through bitter ways to poverty, disgrace, exile, imprison- ment and death; who followed it gaily. Campion's first action on landing on English soil was to retire out of sight of the men, faU on his knees and commend his cause to God; then as dawn was breaking he and Brother Ralph went to interview the" searcher," whose business it was to inspect all immigrants. Persons, as they learned later, had got through with his usual adroitness, not only unsuspected by the officials, but on terms of easy cordiality with them. Campion was less successful; there had been a warning to watch the ports for the arrival of Gabriel Allen, Dr. Allen's brother, who was reported to be on his way to visit his family at THE HERO 1<>9 Rossall. Campion and Ralph were therefore brought before the Mayor of Dover and interrogated; at first he seemed disposed to send them under guard to London, but unexpectedly changed his opinion and allowed them to go in freedom. They travelled by boat up the river to Hythe, in some doubt as to what their procedure should be on arrival in London; but Persons had arranged everything, and, as soon as they were moored to the quay, a man stepped on board, greeted Campion as " Mr. Edmunds" and led them immediately to a house in Chancery Lane where Mr. George Gilbert had lodgings. This was probably Campion's first meeting with Gilbert, but he was well known to him by repute. He was a wealthy layman, aged at this time twenty-eight, whose large properties in different parts of the country had been preserved and augmented during his long minority. He had been educated at London and Cam- bridge in strict Calvinist principles, being at one time particularly under the influence of Dr. Edward Dering, a prominent Anglican divine. At his coming of age he was handed over the unrestricted use of his fortune and sent abroad for the completion of his education. He was a good athlete, horseman and fencer, and his interests seem to have been mainly sporting until, at Paris, he came into contact with Father Thomas Darbishire, who converted him to Catholicism. He went to Rome, where he put himself under the direction of Persons, and rapidly became absorbed in his new religion. He wished to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but Persons 110 EDMUND CAMPION deflected his enthusiasm to England, where he now returned and made himself the centre of a group of Catholic laymen of his own kind. They took into their pay the London pursuivants and were able to meet and hear Mass freely; the house in Chancery Lane where he was now living belonged to Adam Squire, the chief pursuivant and son-in-law of the Bishop of London. He was on the point of marrying an heiress at the time of the Fathers' arrival, but now took a vow of chastity until England should publicly return to the Faith. One of the blessings with which p'ope Gregory had charged the Fathers was to this association of laymen, who were bound together by a vow to devote themselves to furthering tbe Church's progress, but do not appear to have constituted a sodality of the kind which was becoming common under Jesuit missions. Persons was away in the country at the time of Campion's arrival and had left word for him to await his return. During these eight or ten days Campion made the acquaintance of most of the chief Catholics and Catholic sympathisers in London. On the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, June 29th, he preached on the historic text Tu es Petrus before a large audience in the hall of Lord Norrey's house, hired for the occasion by Lord Paget, and daily interviewed a great number who came to him for advice. There seems to have been a friend 0: agent in Court, for he was successfully protected from the informers who attempted to get access to him in the guise of penitents, among the most dangerous of whom was one Sledd, who had been a servant in Rome THE HERO III and knew by sight many of the missionaries. Persons and Campion had two narrow escapes from this man, in one of which Father Robert Johnson, a Marian priest, was taken and later executed. It had become clear that the Fathers could not remain hidden for long in London, and on Persons' return he set about prepara- tions for 1heir work in the country. But first it was necessary to define the aims of the mission to the existing clergy and to discuss various tOpics of importance with the leading Catholics. Accord- ingly a conference, which has later been dignified with the name of the Synod of Southwark, was called in the second week of July at a small house on the South side of the river near St. Mary Overies. There were three or four Marian priests still at large in London, ministering in secret to the Catholic community; these--the names and exact number are not known-assembled under father George Blackwell, the future Archpriest, with several of the seminary priests who had arrived in safety, and some of the laity-a combination which old- fashioned professional churchmen, such as Bishop Goldwell, might have regarded askance. The questions debated were typical of the situation which confronted the missionaries. Persons was in charge of the proceedings. He first read to the meeting the instructions under which the missionaries were working, emphasising the prohibition of political action and declaring on oath his ignorance, until his arrival at Rheims, of Dr. Sanders' expedition in Ireland. The next question was one of vital irp.portance to the 112 EDMUND CAMPION laymen: the rule governing their attendance at Protes- tant services. A committeE' of the Council of Trent had already given a decision, but there had been no official promulgation of it (except to individuals here and there by Dr. Sanders) and many had found it convenient to profess ignorance. They could plead, with some reason, that there was nothing specifically anti-Catholic in the Morning Prayer, which would secure them immunity from persecution; it consisted of the recital of a creed identical with their own, readings from the scriptures, psalms and prayers mosdy translated from Catholic sources. In a great number of places the newly appointed clergy had no authority to preach, but had to content themselves with homilies, exhorting their flocks to virtue in unexceptionable terms. But no compromise was allowed. By the very importance which the Government attached to it, attendance at the new service constituted an act of adherence to the Elizabethan settlement; it was not merely partidpicio in sacris, but a formal admission of the spiritual supremacy of the State. Accordingly Persons pronounced an absolute prohibition which placed anyone observing the law outside the Catholic body, in the words, " So public an act as is going to the church, where profession is made to impugn the truth and to deface, alienate and bring into hatred Christ's Catholic Church, is the highest iniquity that can be committed." If anyone had remained in doubt of the missionaries' innocence of political motive, this verdict should have reassured them. If the object in their secret coming and TJIE JIERO II; going from house to house had been conspiracy; if, as was said by their enemies, they were using the confes- sional to prepare a concerted insurrection in support of Spain, they would have instructed their followers to equivocate with "mental reservations," to lie low, to attend the services, take the oaths, and then at the ap- pointed signal fall upon their unsuspecting neighbours; nothing would have been more recklessly imprudent, or fatal to their purpose, than to make their adherents advertise themselves publicly to the authorities. The next question was ecclesiastical. Up to the Reformation there was various slight differences of rite in different parts of the country, the Sarum use being the predominant one. There were now no more Sarum books printed and the priests arriving from abroad were all trained in the Roman rite. The old English one, moreover, was considerably stricter in matters of fasting than that generally followed on the Continent. The missionaries were asked whether any rule was to be observed universally throughout the country. The decision was that nothing should be altered f om the old customs, but that each district should retain its tradi- tionalobservance. There were various particular cases cited for discussion. father Cottam had been arrested at Dover and sent to London in charge of a fellow-traveller. The fellow- traveller was his colleague, Dr. Humphrey Ely, who under the name of Haward had crossed the Channel several times before, was well known at the port, and had a friend in the town who entertained him in ignorance of 114 EDMUND CAMPION his identity. Dr. Ely allowed Cottam to escape, but as a result had been arrested himself, and, with him, his host at Dover, who had gone surety for him. Father Cottam asked whether it,was his duty to give himself up and release his sureties; after some uncertainty the Synod decided he might; he did so with great cheerfulness, was imprisoned, and later died on the scaffold. There was also the case of Father Bosgrave, another Jesuit, who had joined the Society sixteen years before and had since been working in Poland, far out of touch with the course of events in England. Now, at his superiors' bidding, he returned to England, sent, by a singular irony, for the good of his health. He was arrested immediately he landed, and taken for examina- tion to the Bishop of London, who asked him whether he would go to church. "I know no cause to the contrary," he replied, and did so, to the great pleasure of the Protestant clergy, who widely published the news of his recantation. The Synod had only time to express their shame at his action before it broke up. The Catholics all shunned him, and Father Bosgrave, who retained only an imperfect knowledge of English, wandered about lonely and bewildered. Eventually he met a Cath,?lic relative who explained to him roundly the scandal which he was causing. Father Bosgrave was amazed, saying that on the Continent scruples of this kind were not understood, but that a Catholic might, from reasonable curiosity, frequent a Jewish synagogue or an Anabaptist meeting-house if he felt so disposed. As soon as it was made clear to him that the THE HERO 115 Protestants had been claiming him as an apostate, he was roused to action, and, saying that he would speedily clear up that misunderstanding, wrote a letter to the Bishop of London which had the effect of procuring his instant imprisonment. He was confined first in the Marshalsea and later in the Tower, from which he was moved only to his trial and condemnation for high creason, a sentence that was later commuted to banish- ment. He then returned to Poland and resumed his duties there, having benefited less by his prolonged stay in England than his superiors had hoped. As the little Council was coming to an end of its work a proclamation was issued by the Government which gave promise of further severe steps against the Catholics. This was dated July 15th; it announced, without giving confirmation of them, that there were rumours abroad of a Catholic League organised by the Pope and the King of Spain against the realm, and warned all loyal subjects to be " in good readiness, with their hodies and arms" while those "w/w have any unnatural affections are charged not to irritate Her Majesty to use the rod or sword of justice against them, from which, of her own natural goodness, she has a long time ahstained." It was, in fact, the preface to the Act already quoted "for retaining the Queen Majesty's subjects in their due ohedience," which was passed early in the following spring. The existing law was everywhere more rigorously enforced. Recusants who had been let out of prison on surety were now re-arrested. Watson, the aged Bishop of Lincoln, and F eckenham, the Abbot of 116 EDMUND CAMPION Westminster, together with several other deposed dignitaries of the old Church, who had been allowed from time to time a measure of uneasy liberty, were now taken to Wisbech Casde and entrusted to men very different from the easy-going and corruptible gaolers of the Marshalsea; no visitors were allowed thehl; no books except the Bible; they were kept apart from each other except at mealtimes, when their conversation was limited to bare civilities; they were obliged to find the expenses not only of themselves but of an Anglican chaplain who harangued them regularly in their cells and whose visits were as unacceptable as that of the harlot who was, on one occasion, locked up among them, not with the kindly, if misguided, notion of relieving their depression" but in order to damage the reputations of these aged men with the charge of incontinence. The common gaols were soon full, and in all parts of the country casdes were appointed for the reception of recusants-Banbury, Tremingham, Kimbolton, Port- chester, Devizes, Melbourne, Halton and Wigmore- and in their catalogues may be found many famous names which survive among the Catholic community to-day- Tichbome, Stonor, Arundel, Throckmorton and count- less others. In these circumstances the Fathers left London for the provinces. Gilbert equipped them magnificendy, giving each a pair of horses, a servant, the clothes suitable to a travelling gendeman and the substantial sum of £60 in ready money. He himself accompanied Persoqs for the first stage of his journey, while Campion went with THE HERO 117 another of the association, Mr. Gervase Pierrepoint. 7 All travelled together for the first day and spent the night at Hoxton, at that time a village outside the city, at the house of a Protestant, perhaps Sir William Catesby, whose wife was Catholic. They arrived at nightfall and were about to start out again next morning when they were met by Mr. Thomas Pounde, who had slipped prison and ridden after them. Pounde was a devout and intelligent man, of pronounced eccentricity. The circumstances of his religious conversion were remark- able. He had been born with wealth and powerful family connections, and for the earlier part of his life lived modishly and extravagantly at Court; his particular delight was in amateur theatricals, for which the fashion of the reign gave him ample scope. On one occasion he performed an unusually intricate pas seul before the Queen; it made a success with her and she called for a repetition. He complied, but, this time, missed his footing and fell full length on the ball-room floor. The Queen was more than delighted, gave out one of her uproarious bursts of laughter, kicked him, and cried " Arise, Sir Ox." Pounde picked himself up, bowed, backed out among the laughing courtiers with the words" Sic transit gloria mundi," and from that evening devoted himself entirely to a life of austere religious observance. Various attempts, friendly and penal, failed to draw him back to his former habits, and in 1574 he was put into prison, after which date he was seldom at liberty,8 except on rare occasions like the present one; his cell at the Marshalsea became a resort of Catholic 118 EDMUND CAMPION society, and it was there, in fact, that Persons had, On his arrival in London, first got into touch with Gilbert and the other members of the association. It is not clear how Pounde was able to get away from prison, perhaps by a trick Or by bribery, but it is mOst probable that he was let out on parole, for the regum at the Marshalsea was notoriously lax, and cases are even recorded of priests being allowed to spend the entire day at liberty, returning in the evening to sleep. He came with a very wise suggestion. The prisoners had been discussing the Jesuits' mission and the probability sooner or later of their capture; they feared that they might be taken and summarily executed without having the chance to plead their true intentions; the Government would be able to give their own account, forge confessions of treason, and no one would be in a position to contradict them. Accordingly Pounde asked the Fathers to draw up a written statement of their aims, which he would keep by him and publish in case of emergency. Persons and Campion agreed, and, sitting down there and then, each composed his own apologia, which Pounde carried back with him to the Marshalsea. Even now, after the passage of more than three centuries, when the battle is on another ground and against other enemies, it is impossible to read Campion's Brag without emotion. At that day, to the ruined men at the Marshalsea, who for years had heard no news except of failure and betrayal, no arguments except those of the Puritan chaplains, whose triumphant, derisive, substantially documented sermons they were often THE HERO 119 obliged to hear; men cut off from. the vivid Catholic life of Douai and Rome, who followed a loyalty which they them.selves could not explain, against not only the fashion and authority, but what seemed to be the massed scholarship and reason of their age--the letter was intoxicating. As has been said above, it was composed in great haste, when the saddle bags were already packed and the horses waiting to take Campion on his journey; he needed no time for reflection, for the matter had been ceaselessly in his thoughts since he left Prague; it is the work of half an hour. " To the Right Honourahle Lords of Her Majestie's Privy Council," it begins: "Right Honourahle, " Whereas I have come out ofGermanie and Boemelarid, heing sent hy my Superiours, and adventured myself into this nohle Realm, my dear Countrie, for the glorie of God and henefit of souls, I thought it like enough that, in this husie, watchful and suspicious worlde, I should either sooner or later he intercepted and stopped of my course. Where- JOre, providing for all events, and uncertaine what may hecome of me, when God shall haply deliver my hody into durance, I supposed it needftl to put this writing in a readiness, desiring your good Lordships to give it yr reading, JOr to know my cause. This doing, I trust I shall ease you of some lahour. For that which otherwise you must have sought for hy practice of wit, I do now lay into your hands hy plain.e confession." He proclaims that he is a priest and a Jesuit, sent under obedience to England, to preach the gospel, minister the 120 EDMUND CAMPION Sacraments and instruct the simple, .. in hrief, to crie alarme spiritual against foul vice and proud ignorance, w/urewith many my dear Countrymen are ahused." cc I never Izad mind, and am strictly forhidden hy our Fat/ur that sent me, to deal in any respect with matter of State or Policy of this realm, as things which appertain not to my vocation, and from which I do gladly restrain and sequester my t/wughts." He then states with extreme simplicity that the Catholic case is unanswerable. Up till then the issue had chiefly depended upon sentiment, anti-Spanish feeling on the one hand, loyalty to tradition on the other. He now makes the claim, which lies at the root of all Catholic apologetics, that the Faith is absolutely satisfactory to the mind, enlisting all knowledge and all reason in its cause; that it is completely compelling to any who give it an " indifferent and quiet audience." This was some- thing which had been consistently denied to it by the Elizabethan Government; accordingly he now appeals for an hearing before the Privy Council, with regard to its effect on " the common weal," before the Doctors and Masters of the Universities for its theology, and before the judicature for its legality. He concludes with a peroration, every sentence of which is aflame with his own fiery spirit: " Many innocent hands are lifted up to heaven for you daily hy t/wse English students, w/wst posteritie sluzll never die, which heyonJ seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, hut either to win you heaven, or to die upon your pilees. THE HEnO HI And touching our Societie, he it known to you that we ha'Ye made a league-all the Jesuits in. the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practices of England- ch.eerftlly to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyhurn, or to he racked with your torments, or con- sumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is hegun; it is of God, it cannot he withstood. So the faith was planted.. so it must he restored. " If these my offers he refused, and my endeavours can take no place, and I, having run tlwusands of miles to do you good, shall he rewarded with rigour, I have no more to say hut to recommend your case and mine to Almightie God, the Searcher of Hearts, who send us His grace, and set zd at accord hefore the day of payment, to the end we may at last he fiends in heaven, when all injuries shall he for- gotten." 9 It was characteristic of the two priests that Persons sealed his paper, while Campion left his open. Pounde read it that evening at the Marshalsea. Perhaps he showed it to some of the other prisoners. The effect, at any rate, upon his own somewhat volatile nature was instantaneous. There and then he set about the com- position of a challenge on his account, modelled upon Campion's; in the first instance, a brief thesis giving three reasons why Scripture should not be taken as the sole grounds of faith, which he followed, shortly after- wards, with an appeal for a form.al dispute before the Bishops and Council. Throughout the summer the prisoners at the Marshal- 122 EDMUND CAMPION sea had been obliged to listen to occasional exhortations from visiting Anglican divines. Now, on August 16th , the Bishop of London detailed two clergymen, Mr. Tripp and Mr. Robert Crowley, to act as regular chaplains. Litde is known of Mr. Tripp; Mr. Crowley was rapidly rising to prominence as a leading low-churchman; he was above the average of his fellows as a scholar and had attracted favourable notice by his detestation of his surplice, which he described as his" conjuring garment." Former missionaries had found their audience at the Marshalsea torpid and indisposed to argument. Mr. Tripp and Mr. Crowley met with lively opposition and, unwilling to miss any opportunity for pushing himself forward, Mr. Crowley set about a pamphlet in reply to Pounde's Three Reasons. But the Bishop of London had no desire to see the Marshalsea prison turned into a school of theological debate, and he quickly silenced Pounde by removing him to chains and solitary confine- ment in a cell in the half-ruined palace at Bishop's Stortford. In these circumstances, if not before, Pounde passed on the text of Campion's Brag to his fellow- prisoners. Copies were made and circulated rapidly from hand to hand; visitors to the Marshalsea carried them into the city and the countryside. They came to the notice of the Bishop of Winchester, the Sheriff of Wiltshire, and other Government men; whenever found they were destroyed and their possessors arrest;d, but the paper spread rapidly among friend and enemy. The document originally intended as a final vindication in case of Campion's arrest or summary execution thus THE HERO 12 3 became, as by its spirit and form was eminendy suitable, the manifesto of his mission. The result, both for good and ill, was a vast aug- mentation of Campion's fame. This, obscured now by his long absence abroad, had, even in the old days before his exile, been local and limited; he was known at the Universities and at Court, among scholars, men of affairs and men of fashion, but it is improbable that his name had ever reached the market towns and remote manors, where now it became fabulous. Both sides now looked upon him as the leader and spokesman of the new mission; his membership of the Society of Jesus cast over him a peculiar glamour, for, it must be remembered, the Society had, so far, no place in the English tradition. Many Englishmen could remember the day when the great estates were religious property; when friars tramped the roads from village to village, and monks, tonsured and habited, drove their animals to market and dispensed alms and hospitality to the destitute; many had had their earliest lessons from Dominican or Benedictine in the drowsy village schools; the desolate monuments of the old orders stood in every county; their names were familiar and their memory still sweet with the gentleness and dignity of a lost age. But" Jesuit" was a new word, alien and modem. To the Protestants it meant conspiracy. The country- man knew for himself the virtues and defects of the old monks; he had seen the methods by which the Royal Commissioners obtained their evidence, and he under- stood their motives perfecdy; but of the Jesuits he knew 12 4 EDMUND CAMPION nothing, except distorted and monstrous reports; that their founder was a Spaniard and that they were SWOrn to another allegiance than the Queen's. Stories of Spanish atrocities were eagerly devoured; the Jesuits were the vanguard of Spanish invasion; their business was to murder the Queen and the Council, and set the country in anarchy so that Philip could march in with the tortures of the Inquisition. Preposterous tales obtained credence of the Jesuits' rule and training and the enormous crimes daily committed behind their walls. The news that disguised Jesuits were now at large in the English countryside caused indignation and alarm, and those who had been apathetic in helping the authorities when the quarry was a Marian priest, now joined fiercely in the hunt. To the Catholics, too, it meant something new, the restless, uncompromising zeal of the counter-Reforma- tion. The Queen's Government had taken away from them the priest that their fathers had known; the simple, unambitious figure who had pottered about the parish, lived among his flock, christened them and married them and buried them; prayed for their souls and blessed their crops; whose attainments were to sacrifice and absolve and apply a few rule-of-thumb precepts of canon law; whose occasional lapses from virtue were expected and condoned; with whom they squabbled over their tithes, about whom they grumbled and gossiped; whom they consulted on every occasion; who had seemed, a generation back, something inalien- able from the soil of England, as much a part of their THE HERO us lives as the succession of the seasons-he had been stolen from them, and in his place the Holy Father was sending them, in their dark hour, men of new light, equipped in every Continental art, armed against every frailty, bringing a new kind of intellect, new knowledge, new holiness. Campion and Persons found themselves travelling in a world that was already tremulous with expectation. We have few details of this expedition. The two priests separated at Hoxton and met again three months later at Uxbridge; in the intervening time Persons had passed through Gloucester, Hereford, Worcester and up into Derbyshire; Campion had been in Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire. Both they and their hosts were careful to leave no record of their visits, and the letters in which the Jesuits reported progress to their superiors maintain strict anonymity for their converts; edifying anecdotes are related of " a certain noble lady" who was offered her liberty on the con- dition of once walking through a Protestant church, but indignantly refused; of" a young lady of sixteen" who was flung into the public prison for prostitutes on account of her courageous answers to the " sham Bishop of London"; of a "boy of, I believe, twelve years " who was inveigled into acting as page at a Protestant wedding, was inconsolable with shame until he was able to make his confession to a priest-but nothing is said to identify the protagonists. The only names that can be given with any certainty as Campion's hosts during this journey are Sir William Catesby of Ashby St. 126 EDMUND CAMPION Leger, Lord Vaux of Harrowden and Sir Thomas Tresham, a man of exceptional character, eventually brought to ruin for his faith, whose singular and brilliant taste in architecture may still be seen in the exquisite, unfinished mansion at Lyveden and the unique, triangular pavilion, planned and intricately decorated in honour of the Trinity, which stands, concealed and forlorn, among the trees that border the park at Rushton. It is possible, however, to form a tolerably clear, general impression of the journey from the letters already mentioned and the numerous sources of information about Elizabethan conditions. He travelled in fair comfort, mounted and equipped as befitted a gendeman of moderate means. He was attended by his servant, and more often than not by one or more of the younger members of the household where he had last stayed, but it was his habit for most of the way to ride in silence at some little distance from his companions, praying and meditating as he had done on the road to Rheims. Changes of horse and clothing were provided for him at different stages; he was constantly on the move, rarely, for fear of the pursuivants, stopping anywhere for more than one night. He must in this way have visited fifty or more houses during the three months. Along his road the scenes were familiar enough, but he was seeing them with new eyes; the scars of the Tudor revolution were still fresh and livid; the great houses of the new ruling class were building, and in sharp contrast to their magnificence stood the empty THE HERO 12 7 homesteads of the yeomen, evicted to make way for the "grey-faced sheep" or degraded to day-labour on what had once been their common land; the village churches were empty shells, their altars torn out and their ornaments defaced; while here and there through- out his journey he passed, as, with a different heart, he had often passed before, the buildings of the old monas- teries, their roofs stripped of lead and their walls a quarry for the new contractors. The ruins were not yet picturesque; moss and ivy had barely begun their work, and age had not softened the stark lines of change. Many generations of orderly living, much gentle association, were needed before, under another Queen, the State Church should assume the venerable style of Barchester Towers. But if the emotions of the journey were shame and regret, hope and pride waited for him at the end of the day. Wherever they went the priests found an eager reception. Sometimes they stayed in houses where only a few were Catholic. There was constant coming and going in the vast, ramshackle households of the day, and an elaborate hierarchy in the great retinues; there were galleries where the master never penetrated. It was natural enough that any respectable wayfarer should put up there for the night, whether or no he had any acquaintance with his host. " We passed through the most part of the shires of England," wrote Persons, "preaching and administering the sacra- ments in almost every gentleman's and nohleman's house that we passed hy, whether he was Catholit: or not, provided he had any CatkolU:s in his house to hear us. We entered 128 EDMUND CAMPION fOr the most part, as acquaintance or 1cinsfollc of some person that lived within the house, and when that failed us, as passengers or friends of some gentleman that accompanied us; and after ordinary salutations we had our lodgings, hy procurement of the Catholics, within the house, in some part retired from the rest, where putting ourselves in priests' apparel and furniture," 10 they heard confessions, perhaps preached, and very early next morning said Mass, gave communion and started on their way again, leaving the rest of the household in ignorance of their identity. At Catholic houses they found themselves guests of the highest honour, and there they sometimes prolonged their stay for a few days, until the inevitable warning of the pursuivants' approach drove them once more on to the road. In recent years most of the houses had been furnished with secret cupboards where were stored the Mass vestments, altar stones, sacred vessels and books; these "priest-holes" were usually large enough to provide a hiding-place for the missionaries in case of a sudden raid; in some cases there were complete chapels with confessionals and priest's room. Many houses sheltered one of the old Marian priests who had left his cure at Elizabeth's succession, and now lived in nominal employment as secretary and buder. At this early date these seculars had no -quarrel with the Fathers of the Society. The Jesuits, fresh from Rome and the Con- tinental schools, were as welcome to them as to their flocks; cut off, as they were, from episcopal control, from their reading and from intercourse with other clerics, they constantly found themselves confronted THE HERO 12 9 with problems to which their simple training afforded no solution; all these were brought to Campion and Persons. Their prayers were always for more Jesuits. " The pmsts of our country," wrote Campion, " heing themselves most excellent for virt and learning, yet have raised so great an opinion of the Society, that I dare scarcely touch the exceeding reverence all Catholics do unto us. How much more ir it requisite that such as hereafter are to he sent to supply, whereof we have great need, he such as may answer all mens expectation of them." And Persons: " It ir ahsolutely necessary that more of our Society should he sent. . . who must he very learned men, on account of the many entangled cases of conscience, which arire from rw one here having ample faculties, and from the difficulty of consulting the Holy See." 11 Campion found his Catholic hosts impoverished to the verge of ruin by the recusancy fines; often the household were in mourning for one or more of their number who had been removed to prison. "No other talk but of death, flight, prison, or spoil of friends," yet everywhere he was amazed at the constancy and devotion which he found. The lisdess, yawning days were over, the half-hour's duty perfunctorily accorded on days of obligation. Catholics no longer chose their chaplain for his speed in saying Mass, or kept Boccaccio bound in the covers of their missals. Driven back to the life of the catacombs, the Church was recovering their temper . No One now complained of the length of the services, a priest reported to Father Agazzari 12; if a Mass did not last nearly an hour they were discontented, and if, as 13° EDMUND CAMPION occasionally happened, several priests were together, the congregation would assist at five or six Masses in one morning. Word would go round the countryside that Campion had arrived, and throughout the evening Catholics of every degree, squire and labourer and deposed cleric, would stealthily assemble. He would sit up half the night receiving each in turn, hearing their confessions and resolving their difficulties. Then before dawn a room would be prepared for Mass. Watches were set in case of alarm. The congregation knelt on the rush-strewn floor. Mass was said, communion was given. Then Campion would preach. It needs litde fancy to reconstruct the scene; the audience hushed and intent, every member of whom was risking liberty and fortune, perhaps his life, by attend- ance. The dusk lightened and the candles paled on the improvised altar, the tree tops outside the window took fire, as Campion spoke. The thrilling tones, the pro- fusion of imagery, the polish and precision, the balanced, pointed argument, the whole structure and rich ornament of rhetoric which had stirred the lecture halls and collegiate chapels of Oxford and Douai, Rome, Prague and Rheims, inspired now with more than human artistry, rang through the summer dawn. And when the discourse had mounted to its peroration and the fiery voice had dropped to th quiet, traditional words of the blessing, a long silence while the priest disrobed and assumed once more his secular disguise; a hurried packing away of the altar furniture, a few words of THE HERO 13 1 leave taking, and then the horses' hooves clattered once more in the cobbled yard; Campion was on his way, and the Catholics dispe.rsed to their homes. The danger was increasingly great. "I cannot long escape the hands of the keretit:s," said Campion, in the letter quoted above, "the enemy have so many eyes, sO many tongues, so many scouts and crafts. I am in appar-el to myself very ridit:ulous; I often change my name also. I read letters sometimes myself that in the first front tell news that Campion is taken. . . . Threaten- ing edit:ts come forth against us daily. . . . I find many neglecting their own security to have only care of my .r. " saJet)'. More than once while Campion was sitting at dinner strangers would be heard at the outer doors. "Like deer when they hear the huntsmen" 13 the company would leap to their feet and Campion would be rushed into hiding. Sometimes it proved to be a false alarm; some- times the pursuivants would enter, question the inmates, and depart satisfied. The party would resume their meal and the interrupted conversation. Events of this kind were now a part of his life) but by the loyalty and discretion of his friends, and by his own resources, he escaped unmolested through the three-month journey, and his report ends in a triumphant mood. "There will never want in England men that will have care of their own salvation, nor such as shall advance other men's; neither shall this Church here ever fail so long as priests and pastOrs shall he found for tkeir sheep, rage man or devil never so much." 13 2 EDMUND CAMPION London was the centre of danger for the priests; the meeting of Campion and Persons was therefore brief. They reported progress, discussed plans, redistributed their resources; and parted again after the mutual can. fession and renewal of vows which was customary in the Society. There were other priests, seminarist and Marian, and probably several of their lay supporters at the Uxbridge meeting. The names have not been recorded. Father Hardey and Father Arthur Pitts were sent to the Universities. (Both were caught later by the authorities. Father Hartley was hanged.) There was some discussion of a project towards Scodand, later pUt into effect by Father Holt, which has no part in Cam- pion's story. His instructions were to proceed north to Lancashire, where many Catholic families were petition- ing for his services, and if circumstances permitted, to produce a literary work, a Latin tract addressed primarily to the Universities, which should follow up with solid argument the sensation made by the Brag. Persons remained in and about London. The search for him was incessant. A few weeks brought the news that Ralph Sherwin, most charming and devoted of the seminarists, had been taken, preaching in the house of a Mr. Ros- carock. Bosgrave, Hart and Cottam were already in prison; Bruscoe was arrested on Christmas Eve. By constant changes of disguise and name and daring effrontery in his choice of residence, Persons succeeded in remaining at liberty; sometimes he attached himself to the Spanish Ambassador, sometimes he bribed the pursuivants and lodged with them, on one occasion at THE HERO 133 least he seems to have stayed in one of the royal palaces. All the time he pushed on the work with unremitting zeal. A great need of the Catholic party in the con- troversy which their activity had aroused was a printing press. The difficulties were formidable; every trans- action, even the purchase of paper, was fraught with danger, and we shall see, when we come to examine Campion's Ten Reasons, how meagre PIe apparatus was, but a press of a kind he was able to procure, which he set up first at East Ham and later at Stonor Park, near Henley. The first production was an English com- position of his own, the Reasons Why Catholiques Reftse to attend the Protestant services. There is no evidence that this work attracted much attention, but its successor was more sensational. On December 30th and January 3rd, respectively, there appeared pamphlets by two Anglican clergymen, Mr. Charke and Mr. Hanmer. Hanmer was a Welshman, who in 1)67 had been chaplain of Christ Church at Oxford, and later became vicar of St. Leonard's Church in London, where he tore up and sold the memorial brasses. He seems to have been a cheerful, bombastic person, free from malice, with small sympathy for his Puritan colleagues. "A poor, dear soul," ather Fitsimon later described him, " much given to banqueting and drinking and jesting and scoffing." 14 Charke was a protege of Burghley's, and a man of far stricter disposition. He had got into trouble at Cam- bridge for declaring the episcopal system to be the invention of Satan. In the disputations at the Tower 134 EDMUND CAMPION he was later to prove one of Campion's most ill. mannered antagonists. 15 As might be expected, Charke's pamphlet was the more likely to prove damaging. It is entitled "An Answer to a Seditious Pamphlet lately cast about hy a Jesuit," and affords an instructive comparison both in style and matter with Campion's Brag. Briefly SUm- marised, Charke's points are: (I) The Church of Rome is the Church of Anti-Christ and her priests the priests of Anti-Christ, who take upon them" against the manifest word of God to offer a sacrifice for the quick and the dead." Campion had described himself as an " unworthy" priest; "to judge an evil servant hy his own mouth, he, that is worthy of so foul a priesthood, what shall he he worthy of? " (2) In old time the friars and monks used to name themselves Franciscans, Dominicans, etc., after "base and heggarly friars." Campion has the blasphemous presumption to take the name of Jesuit. (3) " They preach not the Gospel hut against the Gospel . . . their ministry of the Sacraments is the saying or singing of mass and corrupt haptism. (4) " Religion and politks in England are, through God's singular hlessings, preserved together in life, as with one spirit; he that doth take away the life of the one, dotn procure the death of the other. . . . Because he carrieth no sword he would he thought to carry rw weapon. But is not the trumpet worse than many swords? " (,) Natural and moral reason, to which Campion appealed, are" the two great enemies of trill religion and THE HERO 135 the great nurseries of Atheism and Heresy." Canon Law is " ludicrous." (6) Campion speaks of " innocent hands." How can they be innocent when" they crucify the Son of God again everyday in their most blasphemous sacrifice of the Mass" ? This was the Anglican case which the Jesuits were called to meet. Except in its fourth section, it was not formidable, but the author must have felt confident that in the state of the censorship and the fugitive condition of his opponents, they would find it impossible to publish a reply. Within a week Persons had his answer written and printed. His Censure of Hanmer and Charke was adequate to the occasion, though it affords little interest to a modem reader. Even in its own day its chief importance was the fact of its appearance. It was suddenly brought home to the Government that there was in their midst an effective machinery working against their interests, that their pamphleteers could no longer pour out whatever abuse and misrepresentation they pleased without fear of correction. The speed of Persons' reply made it clear that he was on the spot; this was not one of the tracts emanating from the seminaries abroad. Their alarm found expression in the proclamation dated January lOth, 1581, for" recalling her Majesty's subjects which under pretence of studies do live heyond the seas both contrary to the laws of God and of the realm, and against such as do receive or retain Jesuits and massing priests, sowers of sedition and of other treasonahle attempts." By this proclamation the relatives of seminarists had 13 6 EDMUND CAMPION to recall them, or lose all civil rights. It was illegal to send them any supplies. Jesuits and priests must he surrendered; anyone knowingly harbouring them Was guilty of sedition and treason. The Jesuits were already oudaws, and as regards the legal position of them and their hosts the proclamation made little change, but its significance was that by forcibly reaffirming the existing law, the Council was giving warning of a further increase of severity in its application. Already, on December loth, the Council had started in the case of Kirby and Cottam what was henceforth to be its consistent policy, of putting their religious prisoners to the torture. In the next four weeks, Sherwin, Johnson, Hart, Orton, Thomson and Roscarock were racked, Sherwin on two succeeding days. On January 25th Sir Walter Mildmay, in the House of Commons, rose to move the Bill for" the retaining of Her Majesty's subjects in due obedience" quoted at the beginning of this chapter. News of these events reached Campion in Lancashire and Yorkshire. About six months passed between the Conference at Uxbridge and Campion's return to London. They were spent, as before, in visiting Catholic houses of whose names we have some frag- mentary information. He spent Christmas with the Pierrepoints of Holme Pierrepoint; on the Tuesday after Twelfth-night he was in Derbyshire at Henry Sacheverell's, from whom he went to Mr. Langford, to Lady Foljambe of Walton, and to Mr. Powdrell, where he met George Gilbert, and perhaps received copies of Hanmer's and Charke's pamphlets. From there he THE HERO 137 visited Mr. Ayers of the Stipte. All this time he was under the conduct of Gervase Pierrepoint; in the third 'Week of January Mr. Tempest took him in charge and led him into Yorkshire. On January 28th he was at Yeafford as the guest of Mr. John Rookby. In the succeeding weeks he visited Dr. Vavasour, Mrs. Bulmer, Sir William Bapthorpe of Osgodby, Mr. Grimston (probably Mr. Ralph Grimston of Nidd, who was hanged seventeen years later for harbouring Father Snow), Mr. Hawkeworth and Mr. Askulph Cleesby. Tempest was then succeeded by a Mr. Smyth, who took him to his brother-in-law's, Mr. William Harrington of Mount St. John, where Campion made a stay of twelve days, and so impressed William, one of his host's six sons, that he became a priest, and was later hanged. From Mount St. John he travelled with a Mr. More and his wife into Lancashire, where almost the whole county was Catholic in sympathy. Here he stayed with the Worthingrons, Talbots, Heskeths, Mrs. Allen, widowed sister-in-law of the Cardinal, Houghtons, Westbys and Rigmaidens. In the middle of May he was summoned to return to London. These names are taken from Burghley's list, drawn up after Campion's arrest. It is far from complete, as will appear later from his letter to Lord Huntingdon. Prob- ably twice its number remained undetected, if, as it is reasonable to suppose, Campion maintained the practice of constant change of residence. It is significant that much of Burghley's information seems to be of places where Campion remained some days and thus risked 13 8 EDMUND CAMPION attracting the attention of Protestant informers; other names, such as Sir William Bapthorpe's and Dr. Vava- sour's, were already well known to the authorities; Vavasour had been in prison at Hull in the preceding August, and Bapthorpe had given a bond of £2.00 to the Archbishop for his good behaviour. His work in the north was apostolic, as it had been in the Midlands. Nearly a century later Father Henry More found that the tradition of Campion's passage was still fresh in Lancashire, and that Catholics still spoke of his sermons on the Hail Mary, the Ten Lepers, the King who went on a journey and the Last Judgment. Perhaps he was more free in his movements, as danger lost its novelty; he seems to have preached more openly and to larger audiences than he had dared do during his first journey. Besides this he was employed in writing the Ten Reasons. As we have noticed, the project was discussed at Uxbridge. Various suggestions had been made for its title, until Campion had proposed De Haeresi Des- perata-" Heresy in Despair"; it was a suggestion typical of the spirit of the missionaries; on every side heresy seemed to be triumphant; the Queen's Govern- ment was securely in power; the old Church was scattered and broken; they themselves were being hunted from house to house in daily expectation of death; their very existence was a challenge to the power of the State to destroy a living Faith. Leading Catholics, such as Francis Throckmorton, were discussing a treaty with the Government in which they proposed to com- THE HERO 139 pound their fines for a regular subsidy on condition of being allowed the quiet practice of their religion. All despaired of the restoration of the Church, and only begged sufferance to die with the aid of her sacraments. It was at this juncture that Campion gently proposed to examine the despair of heresy and show that all its violence sprang from its consciousness of failure. It is not certain why he changed his mind. Perhaps he felt that the issues were too grave for a display of high spirits; Charke, Hanmer and other Anglican critics had made great play with his "insolence" in taking upon himself, in the Brag, to challenge the com- bined scholarship of his country; it was necessary to show that his confidence was founded on the strength of his case, not of his own skill. Whatever the reason, the book, when it appeared, bore the title Decem Rationes, " Ten Reasons, for the confidence with which Edmund Campion offered his adversaries to dispute on behalf of the Faith, set before the famous men of our Universities." It was composed, for the most part, at Mount St. John, and the manuscript was sent to Persons soon after Easter. It was primarily for the purpose of seeing it through the press that Campion was called back to London at Whitsun. The difficulties of production were very great. The margins were copiously annotated with textual references, all of which would be scrutinised by his opponents; accuracy was of vital importance, for any slip would be eagerly advertised as evidence of dishonesty. A young convert, Mr. Fitz-Herbert, who was so far unsuspected 14 0 EDMUND CAMPION by the Government and was therefore able to work without embarrassment, undertook to verify the refer- ences, but both Campion and Persons were anxious that the author should have the final reading. Before the date of Campion's arrival in London, it had been found necessary to move the press from East Ham, for the search was closing in. In March, the servant of Roland Jenks, a stationer who helped supply Persons with materials, turned informer; Persons' lodgings were raided and most of his personal possessions seized; more serious still, Father Briant was arrested in a neighbouring house and taken to the Tower, where, after more than usually savage torture, he emerged only for his execu- tion. Shortly afterwards, one of Persons' workmen was arrested while on an errand in London, and racked, without success, to make him reveal the hiding-place of the press. In these circumstances' Persons removed to Henley, where Dame Cecilia Stonor, mother of the Sir Francis of the day, put her house at his disposal. It was well suited for the purpose, being hidden in woods and easily accessible by river from London and Oxford. Here the Decem Rationes was printed, under the supervision of Stephen Brinkley, who, with the four workmen, was subsequently arrested. Only four copies of the first edition are known to exist; one is in the possession of the Marquess of Bute, another is exhibited in the library at Stonyhurst 16 ; a third was in the possession of a Canon of Windsor in 1914; a fourth was discovered in 1936 in the sixpenny- box of a second-hand books hop and is now in THE HERO 14 1 Campion Hall library. At first sight the little volume -it is barely 20,000 words in length-shows little evi- dence of the difficulties under which it was produced. It has an elegantly spaced title page, decorated with a sacred emblem; the press-work is regular and the composition free from misprints. An expert examina- tion has revealed certain peculiarities. Since the work is in Latin, Roman type had been used (Persons' English tracts were in black letter), but the printers were working at the disadvantage of great poverty of materials; after the first pages the dipthong "iE," which occurs frequently, runs out, and is replaced by the italic "Ai." by " E," and even by "K" These substitutions become more frequent as we approach the end of signatures C, H and I, while at the begin- ning of the next signature the fount iE reappears, suggesting that the sheets were printed off and the type distributed and reset three times during the printing. There is no Roman query sign; black letter is used in its place. There is no Greek fount; Campion's Greek quotations have to be given in Roman italics. It is not surprising that, in these circumstances, the book took several weeks to print off, but it was ready in time for Commencement at Oxford, Tuesday, June 27th. The distribution was made by father Hartley, the priest mentioned above, who was in close association with Persons at this period. Copies were introduced into St. Mary's Church and placed on the benches. Campi9n's name 14 2 EDMUND CAMPION was still well remembered in Oxford. The polished Uvian style of the essay and the romantic manner of its appearance made an appeal to the University, where repeated repressive measures had failed to destroy traces of the old Faith, and, from the first, it beca e the centre of .controversy. In the present century it is difficult to understand the sensation which was aroused. The Church has vast boundaries to defend, and each generation finds itself called to service upon a different front. The apologetics of another century seem to be concerned with truisms and trivialities, and modern Catholics are unlikely to find much that is useful in the Ten Reasons. The thesis may be analysed as follows: (I) All heretics have been obliged to ,mutilate Holy Scripture in their own interest. The Lutherans and Calvinists have done this in several instances. (2.) In other cases they retain the text, but pervert the clear meaning of the passage. (3) The Protestants by denying the existence of a visible Church, deny, for all practical purpose, the existence of any Church. (4) The Pro- testants pretend to revere the first four General Councils, but deny many of their doctrines. (5) and (6) The Protestants are obliged to disregard the Fathers. (7) The History of the Church is continuous. The Protestants are without living tradition. (8) The works of Zwingli, Luther and Calvin contain many grossly offensive state- ments. (9) The Protestants are obliged to employ many empty tricks of argument. (10) The variety and extent of Catholic witness are impressive. This section contains THE HERO 143 the eloquent passage: "Listen, Eli{abeth, most powerful Quem . . . I tell thee; one and the same heaven cannot kold Calvin and the Princes whom I have named" (Eliza- beth's ancestors, and the great heroes of Christendom). " With these Princes then associate thyself, and so ma!ce thee worthy of thy ancestors, worthy of thy genius, worthy of thy excelunce in letters, worthy of thy praises, worthy of thy fortun.e. To this effect only do I lahour ahout thy person, and will labour, whatever shaD become of me, for whom these adversaries so often augur the gallows, as though I were an enemy of thy lift. Hail, good Cross. There will come, Elkaheth, the day that will show thee clearly which have lwed thee, the Society of Jesus or the offspring of Luther." 17 It was a work of its own day, nd the measure of its quality was the effect which it had on Campion's con- temporaries. Burghley took up the matter as one of gravity and instructed the Bishop of London to produce an answer; the Regius Professors of Divinity at both Oxford and Cambridge were enlisted, and before 1585 no less than twenty works had appeared, dealing either with the Brag, the Ten Reasons, or the Disputes in the Tower, which were their direct consequence. Catholic theologians, who are notoriously critical .of each other's work, combined to praise it. It was commended by the Cardinal Secretary of State, and Marc Antoine Muret, who, after a dangerous youth, was now established in honour at Rome, and enjoy d international pre- eminence as a Catholic humanist, described it as .. Libellum aureum, vere digito Dei scriptum" -" a 144 EDMUND CAMPION golden little book, truly written by the finger of God." Since his day it has been reprinted nearly fifty times. We have no exact information of Campion's move- ments in the two months which he spent in and about London. He was certainly at Stonor for part of this time, revising the proofs of the Ten Reasons. He appears to have frequented three lodgings in London, Mrs. Brideman's in Westminster, Mr. Barnes' in Tothill Street, and Lady Babington's in the White Friars. He also visited the Bellamys at Uxender Hall, Harrow-on- the-Hill, and made a few expeditions into the Midlands, to the Prices at Huntingdon, Mr. William Griffith at Uxbridge, Mr. Edwin East of Bledlow, Bucks, Lady Babington at Twyford, Bucks, Mr. Dormer at Wynge, and a Mrs. Pollard. The hunt was working nearer to him. The raid on Persons' headquarters in Bridewell had seriously embarrassed the two fathers. Since the new year there had been, as was mentioned above, a series of arrests in their immediate circle, and it was in a mood of resignation that Campion awaited the doom, which with the pitiless step of ancient tragedy, came daily closer to him. Persons records how, at this time, he and Campion sat up most of one night, reviewing their situation and speculating how they would acquit themselves when the ordeal came. Persons was to live on; his destiny was to lead him through many by-ways; his work was to be multi- farious, obscure, inconclusive, there were to be days of tumult and of impenetrable silence, ceaseless effort, THE HERO 145 partial victory, fame that was spread in doubtful accents. For Campion there was only glory; a name of triumph and pure light. But as the figure of Persons recedes from view down thc gloomy corridor of the Escurial, it is Campion's rope that he wears, knotted about his waist. 18 With the publication of the Ten Reasons the first part of Campion's task was accomplished. He had been in England, now, for over a year; that was his achieve- ment, that in all her centuries the English Church was to count one year of her life by his devotion; others were now ready to take over the guard; since Easter thirty of Allen's priests had crossed the Channel and landed successfully; the work would go on; Mass would still be offered in England, the growing generation would still learn the truths of the Faith; the Church of Augus- tine and Edward and Thomas would still live; for Campion there remained only the final sacrifice. His road to Harrow took him past Tyburn gibbet, and here, Persons records, he would often pause, hat in hand, " both because of the sign of the Cross and in honour of some martyres who had suffered there, and also because he used to say that he would have his combat there." On Tuesday, July 11th, Campion took his leave of Persons, intending to collect some papers which he had left at Mr. Houghton's house in Lancashire, and then proceed into Norfolk upon another round of visits. They made their mutual confessions and renewal of vows, and on parting exchanged hats-as, on leaving Prague, Campion had exchanged his gown with the 14 6 ED,MUND CAMPION rector, Campanus-a gesture, perhaps, signifying a particular solemnity and finality in the occasion. But in a short time Campion was back, to ask his superior's permission to break his journey at a house which lay almost direcdy on his route, Lyford Grange, near Faringdon in Berkshire. The proprietor, Mr. Yate, was then in London, a prisoner for his religion, and his mother lived at Lyford in the company of two priests named Ford and Collington, and some Brigittine nuns to whom he was giving protection. Yate had more than once begged Campion to visit them, but the household was notorious, and, since it was already liberally supplied with priests, Campion had hitherto declined. Now, however, that he was to pass so near them, Campion asked permission to stop there the night. Persons dis- trusted the plan. He knew Campion's gende courtesy and the tenacity of pious women. They would never let him leave. Campion's heart was set upon the visit; he promised to stay exacdy as long as Persons ordered; he offered to put himself under obedience to the lay- brother Ralph Emerson, who was to be his companion to Norfolk. On these terms Persons gave his per- mission, and the two parted, this time for life. All went well at Lyford. Campion behaved with complete discretion; he refused to preach or to be displayed in any way to the neighbours; he conferred with the good women, quiedy, one by one, said Mass for them e