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St. Edmund Campion - Stone - 04-15-2021
Saint Edmund Campion: Priest and Martyr
B. January 25, 1540------D. December 1, 1581
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"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 be found for their sheep, rage man nor devil never so much."
"And touching our Societie, be it known to you that we have made a league----all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practices of England----cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So the Faith was planted: so it must be restored."
The year was 1566 in the reign of Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More had been Martyred and buried for almost a generation. By now merry Olde England was becoming drenched with the blood of Martyrs who died for the Faith, which was on the horizon, the bright horizon of Truth, to be for the sake of the Holy Roman Mass, the immemorial Mass given to the Church by Christ Himself and safeguarded by the Apostles and the sainted Popes, handed down to Catholics as their especial patrimony, not to be touched by innovation, apart from an occasional organic addition, neither a rupture nor a dissolving, whether by priest alone or committee, for it was, is sacred, to be held inviolable as promulgated by Pope St. Pius V and the Council of Trent, complete with anathemas, even for the suggestion of such a possibility, and in the words of English priest, Fr. Fabian Fortescue, "the nearest thing to Heaven."
I was reminded of the indispensable need of the Holy Roman Mass, the Traditional Mass as we now refer to it as I was coming out of church, this last Sunday in August, 2006 A.D. Three people were visiting the locale and had stopped in for Mass. As they exited just ahead of me they were enrapt in conversation, filled with awe. One of the women was almost moved to tears. Her words, as close as I can recall: "How beautiful is that Mass in Latin! I remember it from years ago, when we had it every day in our parish. We need it back again . . ." I dared not intrude . . . Since we do have the Mass, because it never went away------never officially abrogated by the Holy See despite the claims of the Modernists who are ever so willing to cite the modern tendencies in the useless and ceaseless documents from Rome, yet remain mute when the highest cardinals in the Vatican admit at last that such is the case, had always been the case------I am presuming wherever those visitors are from, they are even more impoverished than those of us in Maine, for they were so struck that there could be once again the Mass of the ages, the Mass that has given us countless Saints and Martyrs, and not this little runted stump, this banal imitation of the Anglican service or "mass" as some still call it, the Novus Ordo sacrilege, the "mass" so beloved by heretics and compromisers with the world. We have had this so-called "mass" or "mess" more like it, for a over generation now, and can anyone tell me how many Martyrs, apart from those Saints who were forced to endure it, how many Saints actually died for it, specifically for it? No, no one has yet to recount to me the number, even one. But lo! a time is coming fast upon us when the number of Martyrs, dry and otherwise, for the Roman Rite of Mass, the Mass of Tradition, will increase to the point where even the most sand-immersed ostrich will take note at last! For now it is a little dry martyrdom, the odd withering look from someone when they learn you attend the Mass of Tradition, as if you had an incurable contagion, the inconvenience of time and location, the uncertainty of when it will be taken away, for now . . . the time is coming when we will be known once more as recusants, in hiding, hunted down like heretics and a threat to the public order.
Elizabeth had gone to Oxford, where there were to be a round of speeches and debates, in the interest of garnering intellectuals for the Protestant cause. One such academic shone apart from the others that day, Edmund Campion, a spell-binding orator. The royal entourage, including the Earl of Leicester, close confidante of the Queen, met with him privately, promising him advancement in his endeavors. Campion was invited to speak on the need for learning at the Royal Court on several occasions. He did not as yet realize this heady atmosphere was not his future, for he was still practicing Anglicism and was indeed, preparing for the "priesthood" [Anglican orders are invalid] and had taken "the Oath of Supremacy". He had received the "deaconate" and because he had taken the Oath, he was already excommunicated in reality. His intellectual honesty and keen penetration of the facts at hand were to be his undoing as an Anglican and would be the instruments by which he would be ordained, instead, a Catholic priest in order to serve as a missionary in his own land, now blighted with the revolution against Pope and True Church and her most beautiful legacy, the Holy Mass.
In the course of his studies, Campion came upon the Fathers of the Church and from them, many of whom are Saints, he realized with certainty that the Church of Elizabeth and Cranmer was not the Church of St. Augustine and St. Thomas à Beckett. Now Campion, thoroughly honest, was also thoroughly frank and thus he discussed his disposition with everyone in a time when any leaning towards Catholicism was politically dangerous. Meanwhile a close friend of his at Oxford, Gregory Martin, had gone to Douay and suggested that Campion join him. Martin was a Catholic. It was now the summer of 1569, but still, Edmund Campion was not prepared to go the full way and was diligently looking for the so-called "middle way". This attempt failed when he saw that there was none and that "Anglicanism" just would not work. It was untenable without foundation in Tradition, in Scripture. And yet, when he knew that Catholicism was required for the salvation of his soul and that he must leave Oxford, he could not bring himself to go to Douay, where there was an English Catholic College. Rather, he accepted the invitation of an Irish family, the Stannihursts, as household tutor. There was discussion to establish a college in Dublin and he hoped to be part of that enterprise. This was where he wrote his History of Ireland. His life there was serene and appealing but even then the same religious and political divisions that had brought England to such turmoil were brewing in Ireland and before long, Campion found himself again almost a fugitive. Despite the tensions and conflict, Campion was certain of one thing, he was called to the priesthood, so two years after landing in Ireland he was sailing for Douay as a "religious heretic" to study with Richard Allen, the founder of the seminary there. He was there for two years when he felt drawn to the Jesuits, which Allen, later to be a Cardinal, encouraged him in because he thought it was better for his growth in sanctity.
Campion went to Rome where he was accepted by the Society of St. Ignatius or the Jesuits, and was sent to the novitiate in Prague. He studied and prayed and worked for five more years, and was ordained in in 1578, saying his first Mass that September. At the time the Jesuits were not established as missionaries in England, but Campion was bound to try, so he went in June of 1580, to find the Catholics still left in England, almost in despair, certainly demoralized and at the point of what can only be called desperation. Many of the more fervent Catholics were in prison, had been executed or sent into exile. Those who remained were so driven by hopelessness of ever being able to openly practice their faith that some of them joined plots whereby the Queen might be assassinated or otherwise dispensed with. This unfortunately lent credence to the government's claim that Catholics were seditious. In any event, setting aside the moral problems with sedition, these attempts would have been short-sighted and impractical since Anglicism was now inbred in most of the powerful and Elizabeth or no Elizabeth it would still be "the law of the land".
To quote Dr. Malcolm Brennan in his work, MARTYRS OF THE ENGLISH REFORMATION, p. 46:
Quote:"Seminary priests, following the bloody footsteps of Saint Cuthbert Mayne, had continued to filter into the country, and an unknown number of priests who had remained faithful since the reign of Queen Mary twenty years before, continued their perilous ministry. But so many of these were captured, and their visitations were so erratic and brief, and they had to remain in such secrecy, and recourse to them was so dangerous, and so many leading families had been ruined by confiscations and imprisonments and executions, that a mood of desolation oppressed the scattered flock.
"The way in which Saint Edmund announced new hope to English Catholics was clearly providential. After establishing their necessary contacts in London, and before beginning their ministry in the provinces, Saint Edmund and Father Robert Parsons, S.J., his friend and superior, were persuaded to write a brief defense of their purpose and case. The idea for this was proposed by Thomas Pounde, a Catholic gentleman imprisoned in the Marshalsea, a notoriously lax prison. He had escaped for the day, or bribed his way out, to caution the fathers that when they were captured------as was inevitable sooner or later------they might be executed summarily and false evidence of treason produced against them afterwards. Why not state your cause and your defense, he argued, before the event? They agreed and spent half an hour following his advice before proceeding on their separate journeys.
"Back at the Marshalsea, Pounde read Campion's paper, and its effect on him was intoxicating. He showed it to other prisoners, copies were made and found their way into London and indeed across England. It electrified Catholics with new confidence, and it established Campion as the leader and spokesman for the Catholic cause."
This paper became known as "Campion's Brag".
Father Campion, unaware of the sensation his paper caused, went about his missionary work, traveling in disguise by necessity, as a Catholic gentleman. He had opportunity to stop off at Protestant estates and unknown to the owner, administer the Sacraments to the Catholic servants, and even family members.
The "Brag" gave rise to refutations from government officials; Father Parsons had launched a counter-refutation before the end of the week. The Fathers had acquired a small printing press, but they deemed it of more benefit to souls for a larger sort of publication than a reproduction of the "Brag". Campion wrote Ten Reasons which was a well-documented, highly reasoned argumentation for Catholicism and was less easily disputed by the Protestants. Campion and Parsons were bold and daring. When the Anglican Oxfordians went to church they found copies on their seats!
1. 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 Protestants 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 statements.
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 eloquent passage: "Listen, Elizabeth, most powerful Queen . . . I tell thee; one and the same Heaven cannot hold Calvin and the Princes whom I have named [Elizabeth's ancestors, and the great heroes of Christendom]. With these Princes then associate thyself, and so make thee worthy of thy ancestors, worthy of thy genius, worthy of thy excellence in letters, worthy of thy praises, worthy of thy fortune. To this effect only do I labor about thy person, and will labor, whatever shall become of me) for whom these adversaries so often augur the gallows) as though I were an enemy of thy life. Hail, good Cross. There will come, Elizabeth, the day that will show thee clearly which have loved thee, the Society of Jesus or the offspring of Luther." . . .
We now cite extensively from the Waugh book referred to on the page, Campion's Brag:
Quote:The government's reply was a proclamation dated January 10, 1581, for "recalling Her Majesty's subjects which under pretense of studies do live beyond 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 treasonable attempts."
By this proclamation the relatives of seminarists had to recall them, or lose all civil rights. It was illegal to send them any supplies. Jesuits and priests must be surrendered; anyone knowingly harboring them was guilty of sedition and treason.
The Jesuits were already outlaws, 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 10, 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 25 Sir Walter Mildmay, in the House of Commons, rose to move the Bill for "the retaining of Her Majesty's subjects in due obedience".
. . . 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 fragmentary 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 . . . in the third week of January Mr. Tempest took him in charge and led him into Yorkshire. On January 28 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 harboring 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, Campion traveled with a Mr. More and his wife into Lancashire, where almost the whole county was Catholic in sympathy. Here Campion stayed with the Worthingtons, 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 . . . Probably 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 attracting the attention of Protestant informers; other names, such as Sir William Bapthorpe's and Dr. Vavasour'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 £200 to the Archbishop for his good behavior.
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. . . .
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 achievement, 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 Allens 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 Augustine 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 honor of some martyres who had suffered there, and also because he used to say that he would have his combat there." . . .
MARTYRDOM
[Father Campion, a naturally friendly and trusting person, had allowed himself to be on too familar terms with the people about him as he served as priest. He was captured at Lyford Grange, a Catholic house, by George Eliot, who had been a servant in two such households and had been jailed for rape and murder. To win his release he offered to inform on "religious services".-----Web Master]
. . . As SOON AS NEWS of the discovery reached him, the High Sheriff, Humphrey Foster, rode over from Aldermaston to take charge of the house. He saw to it that Campion and the other prisoners were decently used, and dispatched a messenger to the court for further instructions. Eliot, however, had anticipated him, arrived first with the news and was given, as was very clearly his right, full credit for the capture. Before Thursday he was back at Lyford with authority to bring Campion and the men taken with him to London as his own prisoners. The Sheriff was instructed to provide a guard.
In Eliot's absence there had been another arrest, of a fourth priest named William Filby, who unwittingly came to call at Lyford Grange and found the magistrates in possession.
The party set out on the twentieth, passed through Abingdon, and rested the first night at Henley. At every stage of the journey large numbers turned out to see them, some with open sympathy. Persons was still in hiding at Stonor; he sent his servant to see how Campion was looking, and the man brought back word that his gentleness and charm had already put him on easy terms with his captors. The party dined together at the same table. Campion chatted easily with them, as well as with several members of the university who had been allowed to approach him.
Eliot was ignored; neither magistrates nor soldiers troubled to hide their dislike of the man; once or twice on the road there had been hostile movements in the crowd as the informer passed, and cries of "Judas"; his first elation was exhausted; the praise which he had received at court sounded faint and distorted; it was almost as though this were Campion's triumph, and he the malefactor.
At last he could bear Campion's neglect no longer, and so broke out: "Mr. Campion, you look cheerfully upon everyone but me. I know you are angry with me for this work."
Then, perhaps for the first time since Sunday morning, when Eliot had knelt after Mass to receive the holy bread from his hands, Campion turned his eyes on him. "God forgive thee, Eliot," he said, "for so judging of me; I forgive thee and in token thereof, I drink to thee." He raised his cup, and then added more gravely, "Yea, and if thou repent and come to confession, I will absolve thee; but large penance must thou have."
According to Eliot, Campion warned him that no good would result from the service he had done; which prediction Eliot, as was his nature, took as a threat of Catholic vengeance; from that day he imagined he was being followed and bewitched, and, though no attempt was ever made at reprisal, went in fear of his life, so that the report gained credence that he had lost his wits.
At Henley, that night, after they had all retired to bed, there was a sudden wild shouting; the guards took alarm that an attempt was being made to rescue the prisoners; torches were brought and it was discovered that Father Filby was suffering from nightmare; he had dreamed that someone was ripping down his body and taking out his bowels.
They spent the succeeding night at Colebrook and there, on special instructions from the council, the character of the procession was altered. The prisoners were pinioned on their horses; their elbows being tied behind them and their wrists in front; their ankles were strapped together under the horses' bellies. Campion was driven on in front with a paper stuck in his hat reading "Campion the Seditious Jesuit: In this way they were paraded through the London streets, crowded for the Saturday market. At Cheapside, the statues at the foot of the old cross were all defaced by the Protestants, but the cross itself still stood beyond their reach. As he passed it, Campion made a low reverence. Finally they reached the Tower, where the Governor, Sir Owen Hopton, took them into his custody. Before he parted with the Berkshire guard, who had had no responsibility for his humiliation, Campion thanked them and blessed them. Then the gates of the Tower shut behind him.
The conditions of imprisonment in the Tower were very different from the sociable, haphazard life at the Marshalsea. The regulations for solitary confinement are on record; the windows were blocked up; light and ventilation came through a "slope tunnel," barred at top and bottom, so that nothing could be conveyed to the prisoner from outside. The lieutenant had to be present whenever a keeper entered the cell, and it was rarely possible, and then only under the strictest supervision, for prisoners to receive a visitor. In some cases, no doubt, severity was tempered by venality, but Campion was a prisoner of the highest importance, suspect of having wide, subterranean connections, and Hopton treated him with more than customary harshness. He was placed in the Little Ease, the cell, still an object of interest in the Tower dungeons, in which it was impossible for a full-grown man to stand erect or lie at full length. Here, crouching in the half-dark, he remained for four days. Then the cage was opened and he was summoned to emerge; under a strong guard he was led up to the level of the ground, out into the air and sunshine, across the yard to the water gate, where a boat awaited them; they rowed upstream among the ferrymen and barges and busy river traffic. Presently they reached Leicester House.
We cannot know what hopes may have stirred in Campion's heart as he recognized the home of his old friend and patron, as the guard led him through the familiar, frequented anterooms to the Earl's apartment. The doors were thrown open; the soldiers at Campion's side stiffened; they were in the presence of the Queen. Beside her chair stood Leicester, Bedford, and two Secretaries of State. The guards stood back and Campion advanced to make his salutations.
It was a singular meeting. The grime of the dungeon was still on Campion; his limbs as he knelt were stiff from his imprisonment.
The vast red wig nodded acknowledgment; the jewels and braid and gold lace glittered and the sunken, painted face smiled in recognition. They received him courteously, almost affectionately. "There is none that knoweth me familiarly," Campion had written to Leicester ten years earlier, "but he knoweth withal how many ways I have been beholden to your lordship. How often at Oxford, how often at the Court, how at Rycote, how at Windsor, how by letters, how by reports, you have not ceased to further with advice and to countenance with authority, the hope and expectation of me, a single student."
Campion had followed other advice, recognized another authority, in those ten years; he had lived in a different hope and expectation; he stood before them now as an outcast, momentarily interrupted in his passage from the dungeon to the scaffold. But, for the occasion, politeness was maintained.
They questioned Campion about his purpose in coming to England, about Persons, about his instructions from Rome. He answered easily and quietly; he had come for the salvation of souls. The harsh, peremptory tones of Elizabeth broke in; did he acknowledge her as his Queen or no? Campion replied that he did indeed recognize her as his lawful Queen and governess, and was bound to her in obedience in all temporal matters. She pressed him with the question of her deposition. He answered, with perfect candor, that it was a subject upon which theologians were still divided, and began to explain the distinction between the potestas ordinata and potestas inordinata of the papacy, and quoted the text "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." [Matt. 22:21; Mark 12:17; Luke 20:25]
But the politicians were not in the mood for a debate upon canon law. They were satisfied that he had no treasonable designs, and told him that they had no fault to find with him except that he was a papist.
"Which is my greatest glory," Campion replied. They then made the proposal for which he had been summoned. The past ten years should be forgotten; the road of preferment was still open; if he would publicly adjure his Faith and enter the Protestant ministry there was still no limit to the heights he might reach. The offer was kind in its intention. They had no desire to kill the virtuous and gifted man who had once been their friend, a man, moreover, who could still be of good service to them. From earliest youth, among those nearest them, they had been used to the spectacle of men who would risk their lives for power, but to die deliberately, without hope of release, for an idea, was something beyond their comprehension.
They knew that it happened; they had seen it in the preceding reign, but not among people of their own acquaintance; humble, eccentric men had gone to the stake; argumentative men had gone into exile in Germany and Geneva, but Elizabeth and Cecil and Dudley had quietly conformed to the prevailing fashion; they had told their beads and eaten fish on Fridays, confessed and taken Communion. Faith------as something concrete and indestructible, of such transcendent value that, once it was held, all other possessions became a mere encumbrance------was unknown to them; in rare, pensive moments shadows loomed and flickered across their minds, sentiment, conscience, fear of the unknown; some years Leicester patronized the Catholics, at others "the Family of Love"; Elizabeth looked now on the crucifix, now on a talisman; Bible and demonology lay together beside her bed. What correspondence, even in their charity, could they have with Campion?
He returned to the Tower, and, five days later, Leicester and Burghley signed the warrant to put him to the torture.
From now until December 1, when he was dragged out to Tyburn, Campion disappeared from the world. He was seen again at the conference in September with the Anglican clergy, and at his trial in November, but of the agony and endurance of those four months we have only hints and fragments of information. The little that we know was hidden from his contemporaries, and rumor was busy with his name.
First it was said that he had turned Protestant, had accepted a bishopric, and was about to make a public avowal of his apostasy and burn the Ten Reasons at St. Paul's Cross. Hopton himself seems to have been responsible for this report, and so authoritatively that it was made an official announcement at many of the pulpits of London. Then it was said that he had taken his own life; then that he had purchased his safety by accusing his former friends of treason. No one was allowed to see him. All over the country gentlemen were being arrested and charged with Catholicism on Campion's authority. His friends were thrown into despair and shame. The Protestants taunted them with their champion's treachery. Then he reappeared, at the conferences, at his trial, at Tyburn. In those brief glimpses they recognized the man whom they had known and trusted, the old gentleness, the old inflexible constancy. Opinion veered again; the confessions were challenged and could not be produced. They were denounced as forgeries. Only in recent years, when the archives are open and the bitter passions still, can we begin to pierce the subterranean gloom and guess at the atrocious secrets of the torture chamber.
Two things seem certain, that Campion told something and that he told very little. The purpose of his captors was to make him convict himself and his friends of treason, and in this they failed absolutely. Hardened criminals, at the mere sight of the rack, would break down and testify to whatever their jailers demanded. Campion, the gentle scholar, was tortured on three occasions and said nothing that was untrue; nothing to which he was bound in secrecy by the seal of confession; nothing which, in the actual event, brought disaster to anyone. He seems, however, to have made certain admissions with which his scrupulous conscience, always more ready with accusation than with excuse, troubled him on the scaffold.
These all dealt with the hospitality he had received during his mission. His first examination took place on July 30 or 31, and immediately afterwards Burghley wrote to Lord Shrewsbury that "he would confess nothing of moment." The subject upon which the council particularly desired a "confession" was the sum of £30,000 which he was reputed to have conveyed to the rebels in Ireland, how the money had been collected, how transferred. On this topic they could obtain no information. Immediately afterwards, however, they had knowledge of names of several people associated with Campion. On August 2 Burghley drew up a list of his hosts in Lancashire, on the fourth in Yorkshire, the sixth in Northamptonshire, and the seventh and fourteenth in Derbyshire. He attributed these to Campion's confessions. Thirty-two persons in all were questioned as a result of the lists, but in no case was the evidence considered strong enough for a conviction.
What importance Campion's admissions had in the compilation, and how those admissions were extorted, cannot be certainly known, but it is possible to make a conjecture.
The examiners were men proficient in every trick of their profession, and they were already well informed from other sources. For months the pursuit had been closing in; there had been other arrests; the two servants, taken at Lyford, had turned Queen's evidence. For over a year spies had been at work all over the country bribing and threatening; indiscreet conversations at the Marshalsea had been overheard; scraps of information from count- less sources had been collected and arranged. Before the examination began the Crown lawyers had a fair idea of Campion's movements.
All the devices of cross-examination were then employed. They would pretend to certain knowledge, where they had only a suspicion. "When you were at such-and-such a house you spoke about Mary Queen of Scots"; "No, we spoke only of religion"; "Then you were at that house"; they would quote to him spurious confessions of others; they would tell him of arrests that had not been made, of false betrayals. All the bluffs and traps which, in a court of law, will confuse a witness, cool-headed and protected by counsel, were now used upon a man stretched in the last extremity of physical agony.
It is certain that neither then, nor in his subsequent examinations, did Campion ever break down. He never blurted out all that he knew, anything his tormentors required of him, only so that he might be released from the unendurable pain. There are no signed depositions. It was the custom of the time for the clerk, seated beside the rack, to record all that the witness said; then, when he was released, as soon as his fingers could hold a pen, he was required to put his name at the foot of each sheet. The pitiful, straggling, barely recognizable signatures were then admissible as evidence. In Campion's case they could produce no such testimony; if in the last minutes before the senses failed, in the delirium of pain before unconsciousness gratefully intervened and he was taken inert from the rack; as the pitiless questioning went on and on and the body lost its dependence upon the will------if then he spoke of things that should have been kept secret, his first conscious act was to repudiate them; the confessions were useful as a bluff to use against other prisoners, but they were valueless in a court of law.
And, even so, it was very little that was wrung from him. . . . It was recognized that the itinerary was incomplete and the details inadequate. On August 7 the council dispatched to the Earl of Huntingdon a list of some of Campion's Yorkshire hosts with instructions to examine "bothe of them and others of their familyes and neighbourhood . . . how long he continued in their said houses or anie others, from where he came, whither he went and with whom; how often he or anie other jesuite or priest said anie masse in their houses . . . whether they themselves or anie other have heard masse or been reconciled or confessed."
On the back of the letter was a list similar to the one quoted: "Campion confesseth he was in the City of York at the house of D. Vavasour. Thither resorted soche of the neighbours as Mrs. Vavasour called her husband being then in prison. He was also at the house of one Mrs. Boulmer. He hath forgotten who brought him thither neither did he know the company" and so on.
The Vavasours were notorious recusants; their house would be under surveillance; Dr. Vavasour was in prison for his religion; it was a common practice to shut up a spy with the prisoners to gain their confidence; a secret note from his wife may have fallen into the jailer's hands. There are many ways in which the council might have information about Campion's visit. But of the details which only Campion could tell, the waverers who conformed in public to the state Church but came to him secretly for advice, there is not a word. "He hath forgotten who brought him thither." One can guess what efforts were made to stimulate his memory; what endurance and triumph is recorded in that phrase.
It will be seen from the above quotations that Campion very rarely admitted to having performed any priestly office, and without that admission the case against his hosts was extremely slender. The recent proclamation had made it treasonable to harbor a priest, but Campion had traveled in disguise and under an assumed name. In the open hospitality of the age, the mere fact of Campion having slept under a certain roof was not enough to convict the master of complicity. Persons's letter, quoted in the preceding chapter, shows that he frequently stayed, unsuspected, in the houses of irreproachable Protestants.
But the men who were now arrested and questioned on the authority of Campion's "confessions" had no means of judging the weakness of the case against them. They were told that Campion had betrayed them. The news reached Pounde in prison, and impetuous as ever, he wrote a letter to Campion, which his jailer accepted a bribe to deliver. The whole incident is obscure. He may have written in reproach or in inquiry about the authenticity of the "confessions:' In any case, the message was shown to Hopton who, having read it, told the man to deliver it to Campion and bring him back the answer.
This note has not been preserved, nor have we any exact transcript of its terms; it was quoted at the trial of Lord Vaux, Tresham, Catesby, and others before the Star Chamber as follows: "A letter produced, said to be intercepted, which Mr. Campion should seem to write to a fellow prisoner of his, namely, Mr. Pounde; wherein he did take notice that by frailty he had confessed of some houses where he had been which now he repented him, and desired Mr. Pounde to beg pardon of the Catholics therein, saying that in this he rejoiced, that he had discovered no things of secret, nor would he, come rack, come rope. Without Pounde's letter, to which it was a reply, this message is capable of more than one interpretation. Its value to the council was as evidence of conspiracy, "the things of secret" being taken as a political plot. The plainest and most probable meaning would seem to be that by "frailty", either of endurance or astuteness, Campion had been forced into admissions which he now repented, but that he had merely confirmed what they already knew and had given no new information to the inquisitors------nothing that had hitherto been secret to them. His anxiety was not to defend his own reputation, but to warn his friends against an attempt to bluff them, as he had himself been bluffed.
One other point must be noticed regarding the "confessions." At the beginning of his conferences with the Anglican clergy there was some discussion of Campion's treatment on the rack. Beale, the Clerk of the Council, asked if he had been examined on any point of religion. Campion answered, "that he was not indeed directly examined of religion, but moved to confess in what places he had been conversant since his repair into the realm." Beale replied, "that this was required of him because many of his fellows and by likelihood himself also, had reconciled divers of her Highnesses subjects to the Romish Church." To which Campion replied, "that forasmuch as the Christians of old time being commanded to deliver up the books of their religion to such as persecuted them, refused so to do, and misliked with them that did so, calling them traditores, he might not betray his Catholic brethren which were, as he said, the temples of the Holy Ghost."
Now Beale himself had been present at the racking; Hopton, Hammond, and Norton, the other examiners, were present in the conference room. The chief purpose of the meeting was to discredit Campion publicly in every way they could. And yet when he made this provocative comparison of himself with the Christian Martyrs in ancient Rome, no one retorted that he had betrayed his brethren, the temples of the Holy Ghost, and that out of his own mouth he was condemned as traditor. Instead the question was immediately dropped. The examiners did not wish to give Campion the opportunity of challenging the "confessions" that were being circulated under his name.
The conferences referred to above were four in number. They were held at the express orders of the council, who were anxious that Campion's challenge, contained in the Brag and in the Ten Reasons, should not seem to go unanswered. Aylmer, the Bishop of London, chose the disputants.
The first took place in the Tower of London on September 1. No opportunity was given to Campion to prepare himself; he was roused without warning, unfettered, and led from his cell. Sherwin, Bosgrave, Pounde, and some other Catholic prisoners were waiting under escort. They may well have supposed that their hour had come, and that they were being taken to summary execution. Instead they were marched to the chapel, where they found a formidable array drawn up to meet them. On one side a state box had been erected in which lounged members of the court and council; opposite stood a table littered with books and papers, behind which were enthroned two clergymen, in starched linen and voluminous, academic robes. They were Nowell, the Dean of St. Paul's, and Day, the Dean of Windsor; round them sat a number of chaplains and clerks, helping to arrange the notes and mark the passages to be quoted. Another table, and other high chairs, accommodated Charke and Dr. Whitaker, the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, who were to act as notaries. The Governor of the Tower sat with the rack-master and other officials; a large and varied audience filled every available space, for theological dispute was a popular recreation of the day. Some Catholics were in the crowd, one of whom took notes which furnished Bombinus with the material for his description. The official reports, both of this and the subsequent conferences, were not published until two years after Campion's death. The Anglicans had then the opportunity to revise them, and one editor, Field, admitted in his preface that "If Campion's answers be thought shorter than they were, you must know that he had much waste speech, which, being impertinent, is now omitted." Throughout all the conferences Campion shows constant anxiety that he is not being reported justly.
A little stool was set for him among the soldiers in the body of the court. He had now been in solitary confinement for five weeks; his second examination under torture had taken place ten days before and, although he was gradually recovering the use of his limbs, his health was broken. The Catholic witness reports that his face was colorless, "his memory destroyed and his force of mind almost extinguished: With unconscious irony the Dean of St. Paul's opened the discussion by blandly rebuking Campion for having, in his Ten Reasons, dared to accuse Her Majesty's most merciful government of "inusitata supplicia"------"uncommon cruelty"------and the Anglican bishops of offering "tormenta non scholas"------"tortures instead of conference."
Campion replied by protesting against the manifest inequality of the contest, his own lack of preparation, his deprivation of texts and notes. It was here that the subject of his "confessions" was raised, and hastily shelved, as described above.
The Deans then proceeded to the debate, the scheme of which was that they should propose the subjects, taken from the Ten Reasons, should state their argument in the form of a syllogism, and Campion should answer them. In this way, with a recess for dinner, they continued until nightfall. The chief topic was the Anglican defense of Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone. The report makes tedious and shameful reading, and the results were inconclusive. Campion was freely insulted, described as "os impudens" and "miles gloriosus," and any demonstration in his favor was instantly checked by the soldiers.
Only twice did he seem clearly to be in the wrong. He was unable to verify his quotation from Luther that described the epistle of St. James as "a thing of straw.' It occurred in the Jena edition, from which he had taken it, but not in the expurgated Wittenberg edition, with which he was now provided. The second occasion was when he became confused in a passage from the Greek Testament, and refused to continue the argument. His opponents eagerly seized upon this, and both now and later asserted that his much-advertised scholarship was spurious. Apologists have suggested that the type was too small for him to read, but the simplest explanation is that his Greek was, in fact, rather rusty. He was pre-eminently a Latinist. He had read Greek at Oxford and Douay, could quote it familiarly and write it in a clear and scholarly hand------of this there is abundant proof------but he had used it little at Prague, and, when he did so, spoke it with the Bohemian accent which was confusing in England. He regarded the conference as a test of the truth of his creed, not of his own accomplishments, and he was unwilling to compromise his case by straying on uncertain ground. At the end of the day, when the Catholics returned to the cells and the Deans to their comfortable lodgings, both sides were satisfied that they had had the best of it.
Eighteen days passed, but Campion, in his sunless dungeon, had lost count of time, and, lying in constant prayer, thought that it had been only a week, when he was again led out to debate. This time his opponents were Dr. Goode, the Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and William Fulke, the popular preacher whose delight at the execution of Dr. Storey has been reported earlier in this narrative. Fulke was a contemporary of Campion's, and had been his unsuccessful rival for the silver pen offered to the prize boy at the City schools. He was an enthusiastic opponent of the surplice, and had inflamed a riot at the university on that subject which led to his being sent down; he was triumphantly reinstated in 1567, but was again expelled for conniving at an incestuous marriage; court favor did not fail him, and in 1569 he was restored to his fellowship, became Leicester's chaplain, a Doctor of Divinity by royal mandate, and Master of Pembroke Hall, where he augmented the Master's stipend by cutting down the number of fellowships. From 1580 he was in regular employment as an official Anglican controversialist, both against Catholics and the more extreme Protestants of the "Family of Love."
On this occasion the conference took place in greater privacy, in Hopton's Hall, but the method was the same as before, the Anglicans stating their arguments and Campion objecting. In the morning the Anglicans set themselves to deny the existence of a visible Church; in the afternoon to prove that the Church was capable of error. As before, Campion was forbidden to take any lead, and when he attempted to press an argument was sharply reprimanded, "It is your part to answer, not to oppose"------and Campion replied wearily, "I have answered, but I wish to God I had a notary. Well, I commit it all to God."
In the afternoon the dispute veered again to justification by works. Campion asserted that children who died without sin were saved. The Anglicans maintained the contrary doctrine, that they were damned unless specially "elected"; that Baptism had no power to save. . . . Campion was never allowed to forget the difference of position between himself and his opponents.
Later in the afternoon the Anglicans were denying the Real Presence in the Mass, saying that the doctrine denied the bodily resurrection of Christ. Campion broke out impatiently, "What? Will you make Him a prisoner now in Heaven? Must He be bound to those properties of a natural body? Heaven is His palace and you will make it His prison."
. . . Campion was consistently refused the courtesies of debate. "If you dare, let me show you Augustine and Chrysostom:' he cried at one moment, "if you dare."
. . . A majority in the council favored Campion's execution; under the recent laws his office as
priest made him guilty of high treason, but respect for public opinion, both in the country and abroad, made them hesitate to bring him to the scaffold upon this charge alone. Walsingham was in Paris that summer, on an embassy connected with the Queen's marriage; he employed his leisure in interviewing various informers and renegade emigres, and on August 20 he was able to report to Cecil a popish plot for the conquest of Scotland which was being offered for sale at twenty crowns, but the council do not seem to have found it suitable. . . .
. . . On Tuesday, November 14, Campion, Sherwin, Kirby, Bosgrave, Cottam, Johnson, Orton, and Rishton were arraigned at the bar of Westminster Hall, and the preposterous charge was first read to them.
"I protest before God and His holy Angels," Campion replied, "before Heaven and earth, before the world and I this bar whereat I stand, which is but a small resemblance of the terrible judgment of the next life, that I am not guilty of any part of the treason contained in the indictment, or of any other treason whatever."
The jury was impaneled for the following Monday. "Is it possible," Campion said, "to find twelve men so wicked and void of all conscience in this city or land that will find us guilty together of this one crime, divers of us never meeting or knowing one the other before our bringing to this bar?"
"The plain reason of our standing here is religion and not treason," said Sherwin.
Sir Christopher Wray, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench: "The time is not yet come wherein you shall be tried, and therefore you must now spare speech . . . wherefore now plead to the indictment whether you be guilty or not."
When they were called to take the oath, Campion, as was mentioned above, could not lift his arm; his crippled hands were tucked into the cuffs of his gown, whereupon one of his companions drew up the sleeve, kissed his hand, and raised it for him.
Next day Collington, Richardson, Hart, Ford, Filby, Briant, and Short were arraigned in the same manner on the same charge.
The trial took place on November 20. Three gentlemen, originally impaneled as jurymen, refused their attendance, because they doubted that justice would have a free course that day; their places were filled with less scrupulous substitutes . . .
. . . Campion was now allowed to speak to the jury; he did so courteously, reasonably, hopelessly.
"What charge this day you sustain, and what accompt you are to render at the dreadful Day of Judgment, whereof I could wish this also were a mirror, I trust there is no one of you but knoweth. I doubt not but in like manner you forecast how dear the innocent is to God, and at what price He holdeth man's blood. Here we are accused and impleaded to the death. We have no whither to appeal but to your consciences." He showed how the most part of the evidence was general and vague, a matter of conjecture and capricious association. Only a few particulars had been precise and damning, and those had emanated from the gang. "What truth may you expect from their mouths? One hath confessed himself a murderer [Eliot], the other [Munday] a detestable atheist, a profane heathen, a destroyer of two men already. On your consciences, would you believe them -they that have betrayed both God and man, nay, that have left nothing to swear by, neither religion nor honesty? Though you would believe them, can you? . . . I commit the rest to God, and our convictions to your good discretions."
The jury retired. Ayloff was left alone on the bench, and, pulling off his glove, found all his hand and signet ring bloody, "without any wrong, pricking, or hurt." The jury returned with the inevitable verdict. The Lord Chief Justice demanded whether there was any cause why he should not pass sentence of death upon the prisoners.
It was then that Campion's voice rose in triumph. He was no longer haggling with perjurers; he spoke now, not merely for the handful of doomed men behind him, nor to that sordid court, but for the whole gallant company of the English Counter-Reformation; to all his contemporaries and all the posterity of his race:
"It was not our death that ever we feared. But we knew that we were not lords of our own lives, and therefore for want of answer would not be guilty of our deaths. The only thing that we have now to say is, that if our religion do make us traitors, we are worthy to be condemned; but otherwise are, and have been, as good subjects as ever the Queen had. In condemning us you condemn all your own ancestors------all the ancient priests, bishops and kings------all that was once the glory of England, the island of Saints, and the most devoted child of the See of Peter.
"For what have we taught, however you may qualify it with the odious name of treason, that they did not uniformly teach? To be condemned with these lights------not of England only, but of the world------by their degenerate descendants, is both gladness and glory to us.
"God lives; posterity will live; their judgment is not so liable to corruption as that of those who are now going to sentence us to death." The Lord Chief Justice answered: "You must go to the place from whence you came, there to remain until ye shall be drawn through the open City of London upon hurdles to the place of execution, and there be hanged and let down alive, and your privy parts cut off, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight; then your heads to be cut off and your bodies divided into four parts, to be disposed of at Her Majesty's pleasure. And God have mercy on your soul."
While the Lord Chief Justice's final commendation sounded, with peculiar irony, through Westminster Hall, the condemned men broke into the words of the Te Deum and were led back in triumph to their several prisons.
Next day the remaining seven priests were tried on Burghley's indictment and------except for Collington, who could prove that he was in Grays Inn in London when he was supposed to be at Rheims------were condemned in the same way.
An alibi for Ford, similar to Collington's, was offered by a priest named Nicholson, but the judges ordered the witness to be committed to prison, where he came near to death from starvation.
Campion lay in irons for eleven days between his trial and his execution. Hitherto his family have made no appearance in the story; now a sister, of whom we know nothing, came to visit him, empowered to make him a last offer of freedom and a benefice if he would renounce his Faith.
There may have been other visitors------for certain details of his life in prison, such as his statement, quoted above, that in his last racking he thought they intended to kill him, can only have reached Bombinus through the report of friends------but the only one of whom we have record is George Eliot.
"If I had thought that you would have had to suffer aught but imprisonment through my accusing of you, I would never have done it," he said, "however I might have lost by it."
"If that is the case," replied Campion, "I beseech you, in God's name, to do penance, and confess your crime, to God's glory and your own salvation."
But it was fear for his life rather than for his soul that had brought the informer to the Tower; ever since the journey from Lyford, when the people had called him "Judas," he had been haunted by the specter of Catholic reprisal.
"You are much deceived," said Campion, "if you think the Catholics push their detestation and wrath as far as revenge; yet to make you quite safe, I will, if you please, recommend you to a Catholic duke in Germany, where you may live in perfect security."
But it was another man who was saved by the offer. Eliot went back to his trade of spy; Delahays, Campion's jailer, who was present at the interview, was so moved by Campion's generosity that he became a Catholic. . . .
Campion's last days were occupied entirely with his preparation for death; even in the cell he was able to practice mortifications; he fasted and remained sleepless on his knees for two nights in prayer and meditation.
Sherwin and Briant had been chosen as his companions at the scaffold. They met at the Coleharbour Tower, early in the morning of December 1, [1581] and were left together while a search was made for the clothes in which Campion had been arrested; it had been decided to execute him in the buff leather jerkin and velvet venetians which had been so ridiculed at his trial. But the garments had already been misappropriated, and he was finally led out in the gown of Irish frieze which he had worn in prison.
It was raining; it had been raining for some days, and the roads of the city were foul with mud. A great crowd had collected at the gates. "God save you all, gentlemen," Campion greeted them. "God bless you, and make you good Catholics." There were two horses, each with a hurdle at his tail. Campion was bound to one of them, Briant and Sherwin together on the other.
Then they were slowly dragged through the mud and rain, up Cheapside, past St. Martin le Grand and Newgate, along Holborn to Tyburn. Charke plodded along beside the hurdle, still eager to thrash out to the last word the question of justification by faith alone, but Campion seemed not to notice him; over Newgate Arch stood a figure of our Lady which had so far survived the Anglican hammers. Campion saluted her as he passed.
Here and there along the road a Catholic would push himself through the crowd and ask Campion's blessing. One witness, who supplied Bombinus with many details of this last morning, followed close at hand and stood by the scaffold. He records how one gentleman, "either for pity or affection, most courteously wiped" Campion's "face, all spattered with mire and dirt, as he was drawn most miserably through thick and thin; for which charity or haply some sudden moved affection, God reward him and bless him."
The scene at Tyburn was tumultuous. Sir Thomas More had stepped out into the summer sunshine, to meet death quietly and politely at a single stroke of the ax. Every circumstance of Campion's execution was vile and gross.
Sir Francis Knollys, Lord Howard, Sir Henry Lee, and other gentlemen of fashion were already waiting beside the scaffold. When the procession arrived, they were disputing whether the motion of the sun from east to west was violent or natural; they postponed the discussion to watch Campion, bedraggled and mud-stained, mount the cart which stood below the gallows. The noose was put over his neck. The noise of the crowd was continuous, and only those in his immediate neighborhood could hear him as he began to speak. He had it in mind to make some religious exhortation.
"Spectaculum facti sumus Deo, angelis et hominibus," he began. "These are the words of St. Paul, Englished thus, 'We are made a spectacle unto God, unto His Angels and unto men,' [1 Cor. 4:9] verified this day in me, who am here a spectacle unto my Lord God, a spectacle unto His Angels and unto you men." But he was not allowed to continue. Sir Francis Knollys interrupted, shouting up at him to confess his treason.
"As to the treasons which have been laid to my charge," he said, "and for which I am come here to suffer, I desire you all to bear witness with me that I am thereof altogether innocent."
One of the council cried that it was too late to deny what had been proved in the court.
"Well, my Lord," he replied, "I am a Catholic man and a priest; in that Faith have I lived and in that Faith I intend to die. If you esteem my religion treason, then am I guilty; as for other treason I never committed any, God is my judge. But you have now what you desire. I beseech you to have patience, and suffer me to speak a word or two for discharge of my conscience."
But the gentlemen round the gallows would not let him go forward; they still heckled him . . .
In a few halting sentences he made himself heard above the clamor. He forgave the jury and asked forgiveness of any whose names he might have compromised during his examination; he addressed himself to Sir Francis Knollys on Richardson's behalf, saying that, to his knowledge, that man had never in his possession a copy of the book which the informers declared they had found in his baggage.
Then a schoolmaster named Hearne stood forward and read a proclamation in the Queen's name, that the execution they were to witness that morning was for treason and not for religion.
Campion stood in prayer. The lords of the council still shouted up questions to him about the Bull of Excommunication, but now Campion would not answer and stood with his head bowed and his hands folded on his breast. An Anglican clergyman attempted to direct his prayers, but he answered gently, "Sir, you and I are not one in religion, wherefore I pray you content yourself. I bar none of prayer; but I only desire them that are of the household of Faith to pray with me, and in mine agony to say one creed."
They called to him to pray in English, but he replied with great mildness that "he would pray God in a language which they both well understood."
There was more noise; the councilors demanded that he should ask the Queen's forgiveness.
"Wherein have I offended her? In this I am innocent. This is my last speech; in this give me credit------I have and do pray for her."
Still the courtiers were not satisfied. Lord Howard demanded to know what Queen he prayed for.
"Yea, for Elizabeth your Queen and my Queen, unto whom I wish a long quiet reign with all prosperity."
The cart was then driven out from under him, the eager crowd swayed forward, and Campion was left hanging, until, unconscious, perhaps already dead, he was cut down and the butcher began his work.
When the spectacle was over the crowd dispersed. An emotional witness records that several thousand were turned to the Faith by the events of that day. Many thousands there have been, but they were not in that assembly. The Elizabethan mob dearly loved a bloody execution, and any felon was the hero of a few hours, whatever his crimes. If any felt uneasy about the Queen's justice, there were gentler pleasures to attract their minds; in particular two Dutchmen, who were the rage of the moment; the one was seven feet seven inches in height, "comelie of person but lame of the legs (for he had broken them of lifting a barrel of beer)"; his companion was a midget who could walk between the giant's legs, wearing a feather in his cap; he had "never a good foot nor any knee at all and yet could dance a gallard, no arm but a stump on which he could dance a cup and after toss it about three or four times and every time receive the same on the said stump." With distractions of this kind the fate of the three priests was soon forgotten. One man, however, returned from Tyburn to Grays Inn profoundly changed: Henry Walpole, Cambridge wit, minor poet, satirist, flaneur, a young man of birth, popular, intelligent, slightly romantic. He came of a Catholic family and occasionally expressed Catholic sentiments, but until that day had kept at a discreet distance from Gilbert and his circle, and was on good terms with authority. He was a typical member of that easygoing majority, on whom the success of the Elizabethan settlement depended, who would have preferred to live under a Catholic regime but accepted the change without very serious regret. He had an interest in theology and had attended Campion's conferences with the Anglican clergy. He secured a front place at Tyburn; so close that when Campion's entrails were torn out by the butcher and thrown into the cauldron of boiling water, a spot of blood splashed upon his coat. In that moment he was caught into a new life; he crossed the sea, became a priest, and, thirteen years later, after very terrible sufferings, died the same death as Campion's on the gallows at York.
And so the work of Campion continued; so it continues. He was one of a host of Martyrs, each, in their several ways, gallant and venerable; some performed more sensational feats of adventure, some sacrificed more conspicuous positions in the world, many suffered crueler tortures, but to his own, and to each succeeding generation, Campion's fame has burned with unique warmth and brilliance; it was his genius to express, in sentences that have resounded across the centuries, the spirit of chivalry in which they suffered, to typify in his zeal, his innocence, his inflexible purpose, the pattern which they followed.
Years later, in the somber, skeptical atmosphere of the eighteenth century, Bishop Challoner set himself to sift out and collect the English Martyrology. The Catholic cause was very near to extinction in England. Families who had resisted the onset of persecution were quietly conforming under neglect. The Church survived here and there in scattered households, regarded by the world as, at the best, something Gothic and slightly absurd, like a ghost or a family curse. Emancipation still lay in the distant future; no career was open to the Catholics; their only ambition was to live quietly in their houses, send their children to school abroad, pay the double land taxes, and, as best they could, avoid antagonizing their neighbors. It was then, when the whole gallant sacrifice appeared to have been prodigal and vain, that the story of the Martyrs lent them strength.
We are the heirs of their conquest, and enjoy, at our ease, the plenty which they died to win.
Today a chapel stands by the site of Tyburn; in Oxford, the city he loved best, a noble college has risen dedicated in Campion's honor,
"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 be found for their sheep, rage man or devil never so much."
RE: St. Edmund Campion - Stone - 04-15-2021
Campion's Brag
Taken from here.
[Note: The English usage of his time is maintained throughout. There are no spelling errors.]
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE, the Lords of Her Majestie's Privy Council: Whereas I have come out of Germanie and Boëmeland, being sent by my Superiours, and adventured myself into this noble Realm, my deare Countrie, for the glorie of God and benefit of souls, I thought it like enough that, in this busie, watchful, and suspicious worlde, I should either sooner or later be intercepted and stopped of my course.
Wherefore, providing for all events, and uncertaine what may become of me, when God shall haply deliver my body into durance, I supposed it needful to put this writing in a readiness, desiringe your good Lordships to give it yr reading, for to know my cause. This doing, I trust I shall ease you of some labour. For that which otherwise you must have sought for by practice of wit, I do now lay into your hands by plaine confession.
And to ye intent that the whole matter may be conceived in order, and so the better both understood and remembered, I make thereof these ix points or articles, directly, truly, and resolutely opening my full enterprise and purpose.
i. I confesse that I am (albeit unworthie) a priest of ye Catholike Church, and through ye great mercie of God vowed now these viii years into the Religion of the Societie of Jhesus. Hereby I have taken upon me a special kind of warfare under the banner of obedience, and eke resigned all my interest or possibilitie of wealth, honour, pleasure, and other worldlie felicitie.
ii. At the voice of our General Provost----which is to me a warrant from Heaven, and Oracle of Christ----I tooke my voyage from Prage to Rome (where our said General Father is always resident) and from Rome to England, as I might and would have done joyously into any part of Christendome or Heathenesse, had I been thereto assigned.
iii. My charge is, of free cost to preach the Gospel, to minister the Sacraments, to instruct the simple, to reforme sinners, to confute errors----in brief, to crie alarme spiritual against foul vice and proud ignorance, where- with many my dear Countrymen are abused.
iv. I never had mind, and am strictly forbidden by our Father 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 thoughts.
v. I do ask, to the glory of God, with all humility, and under your correction, iii sortes of indifferent and quiet audiences: the first before your Honours, wherein I will discourse of religion, so far as it toucheth the common weale and your nobilities: the second, whereof I make more account, before the Doctors and Masters and chosen men of both universities, wherein I undertake to avow the Faith of our Catholike Church by proofs innumerable, Scriptures, Councils, Fathers, History, natural and moral reasons: the third before the lawyers, spiritual and temporal, wherein I will justify the said Faith by the common wisdom of the laws standing yet in force and practice.
vi. I would be loth to speak anything that might sound of any insolent brag or challenge, especially being now as a dead man to this world and willing to put my head under every man's foot, and to kiss the ground they tread upon. Yet have I such a courage in avouching the Majesty of Jhesus my King, and such affiance in His gracious favour, and such assurance in my quarrel, and myevi- dence so impregnable, and because I know perfectly that no one Protestant, nor all the Protestants living, nor any sect of our adversaries (howsoever they face men down in pulpits, and overrule us in their kingdom of grammarians and unlearned ears) can maintain their doctrine in disputation. I am to sue most humbly and instantly for the combat with all and every of them, and the most principal that may be found: protesting that in this trial the better furnished they come, the better welcome they shall be.
vii. Because it hath pleased God to enrich the Queen my Sovereign Ladye with notable gifts of nature, learning, and princely education, I do verily trust that----if her Highness would vouchsafe her royal person and good attention to such a conference as, in the ii part of my fifth article I have motioned, or to a few sermons, which in her or your hearing I am to utter----such manifest and fair light by good method and plain dealing may be cast upon these controversies, that possibly her zeal of truth and love of her people shall incline her noble Grace to disfavour some proceedings hurtful to the Realm, and procure towards us oppressed more equitie.
viii. Moreover I doubt not but you, her Highness' Council, being of such wisdom and discreet in cases most important, when you shall have heard these questions of religion opened faithfully, which many times by our adversaries are huddled up and confounded, will see upon what substantial grounds our Catholike Faith is builded, how feeble that side is which by sway of the time prevaileth against us, and so at last for your own souls, and for many thousand souls that depend upon your government, will discountenance error when it is bewrayed, and hearken to those who would spend the best blood in their bodies for your salvation. Many innocent hands are lifted up to Heaven for you daily by those English students, whose posteritie shall never die, which beyond seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you Heaven, or to die upon your pikes.
And touching our Societie, be it known to you that we have made a league----all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practices of England----cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So the Faith was planted: so it must be restored.
ix. If these my offers be refused, and my endeavours can take no place, and I, having run thousands of miles to do you good, shall be rewarded with rigour, I have no more to say but to recommend your case and mine to Almightie God, the Searcher of Hearts, who send us His grace, and set us at accord before the day of payment, to the end we may at last be friends in Heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.
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Mr. Greg Taylor's Conference on Campion's Brag