 Chapter 1. Youth. London, Oxford. 1540-1566. The Campion family seemed to have been both gentlefolk and yeoman, and to have been widely scattered over the land, in Northamptonshire, Woolwickshire, Essex, Sussex, and Devon. Nothing is definitely known, at present, as to which branch of the Campion family the Blessed Edmund belonged. Unlike many of the martyrs of Tudor and Stuart times, he was what is called a born Catholic, in more accurate phrase, a born heathen, as we all are, but baptized in his parents' religion soon after his birth in London, on the Feast of St. Paul the Apostle, January 25, in the year 1540, New Style. Edmund had two brothers and a sister, none of whom played any great part in his afterlife. By the time he entered the Society of Jesus, his father and mother were both dead. His written expression is that he had hopes they died in full communion with the church. But evidently he did not know, being abroad, how it had fared with him in those terribly stormy days for Christian souls. Edmund Campion, Sr., was a bookseller, evidently in good standing, but not well to do. Some rich London guildsmen, probably of the grocers' company, for it was they who maintained him later, befriended the promising little boy at just the right moment when his father was reluctantly going to apprentice him to a trade, and he was sent at their joint expense to a good grammar school. Afterwards, under the same patrons, he entered Christ Hospital, then lately set up in Newgate Street, out of confiscated Franciscan funds and the generosity of Londoners, as the foundation of the sixteen-year-old king, Edward VI. Here the small Edmund, full of life and laughter, banded and belted, ran about in now extinct yellow petticoats, in one of the earliest pairs of those historic yellow stockings. He was thirteen and quite famous already in the schoolboy world of London for his learning and his attractive presence in speech, when Queen Mary Tudor, who had just seceded to the English throne, entered her city in state. Out of many hundred eligible youngsters, it was he who was chosen to stand up before her on a street platform, under the shadow of the old St. Paul's Cathedral, and shrilly welcome her in the Latin tongue. The Queen sat on a white horse, robed in gold embroidered dark velvet, crimson or purplish, with a great sword carried before her by the boyish Earl of Surrey, with eight thousand mounted lords and gentlemen on either side, all the glittering ambassadors and a bevy of beautifully appareled ladies. On certain figures in that splendid and noisy pageant, the child might have looked with pensive eyes had he been able to forecast his own future. As it was he cannot have failed to observe the Queen's younger sister, the thin, watchful spirited girl who was known as the Lady Elizabeth. Another was there of high office, though not of high descent, who was all goodness, piety and generosity, and may well have been drawn to notice Edmund Campion for the first time on that sunshiney afternoon in August 1553. This was Sir Thomas White, then Lord Mayor of London, a staunch Catholic. He was an unlearned man and childless, who became later co-founder of the Merchant Taylor School, an enricher of many towns. By 1555 he had opened his College of St. John Baptist, once a Cistercian house at Oxford. The grocers company at once approached him to admit their blue coat ward as a scholar. This he did and conceived almost as soon a marked attachment to him, and two years later, when Edmund was not yet 18, he made him a senior fellow. Campion's other early friends at the university were his first tutor, John Bevan and Gregory Martin, a foundation scholar like himself. These two showed towards him a lifelong devotion. Mary's troubled reign had covered the five most susceptible years of his youth and restored to the country despite its legal excesses, a definitely Catholic tone. Things were soon to change. War by statute against the mass was first declared in 1559. Edmund Campion had left Oxford by the time that St. John's, deprived of president after president by the royal commissioners, was swept away of all the dons who favored, or in any degree tolerated, the jurisdiction of that apostolic sea, would safeguard at the doctrine and honor of the blessed Eucharist. But while he lived in his university world, he lived untouched. He was not looked upon as a Catholic, nor was he such if his heart could be fully judged by his outward actions. Buried in literature, philosophy, and pleasant tutorial work, he had become, in his cultured indifference, what St. Jerome's accusing vision called a Ciceroanian, and not a Christian. A skin-deep Ciceroanian, however. There is only a bare possibility that on preceding MA in 1564, he escaped taking the wretched oath of supremacy, and thereby acknowledging the queen as head in spirituals as well as temperals within her realm of God. He stretched his conscience, as many were doing, thinking to help along the unity of faith, thereby defeating that unity for good and all. In almost unprecedented vogue at Oxford had served to blind him. He was so happy, so busy, so needed, so much at home there. Friends encouraged him, undergraduates flocked about him, and imitated his very gait and tone as they never have imitated anyone else except Newman. Campion was a famous Latin scholar, and he was a good Grecian, and a good Hebrewist. Greek and Hebrew was studied newly revived just before he was born. He spoke as well as he wrote. The flamboyant art of oratory, now almost extinct in our more quiet-colored century, was then much studied and admired. And Campion was famous for debates in addresses and in communes. When only twenty he had been called upon to preach, though a layman at the reburial of poor Amy Robsard, Lord Dudley's young wife, in the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin. In this he did with great grace and animation, and with no small display of tact, for rumors of a murder with a motive had already got abroad. Such prominence may have come to Campion through St. Thomas White's request. Sir Thomas had his associations with Cumnor. Four years later, Edmund Campion was able to put sincere love and sincere grief into a funeral oration, this time a Latin, not an English one, for the good and dear founder himself, whose body was solemnly interred in the chapel of his college. In September 1566, Queen Elizabeth made the first and happier of her two visits to Oxford, and the Queen's train was Dudley. Also a quieter, planer, less-noticed man, but one out of all comparison with him for astute power. This was Sir William Cecil, the Prime Minister. Afterwards known far and wide as Lord Burgley. There were farcists and tragedies for the Queen at Oxford. There were musical performances, theological disputations, and other academic sports. In front of the vast assemblage stood forth Master Campion of St. John's, alone in his rough hood and gown. As representative of the University, he welcomed smiling royalty and Dudley, now Earl of Leichester, Chancellor of the University, and royalty's magnificent favorite. Campion shone as well in the absurd discussions in natural science which followed. The Queen and Dudley marked him as they could not fail to do, for nothing could exceed the courtliness with which he had performed his task. The Chancellor sent for him in the court and expressed the Queen's goodwill, whereby Campion might bid through him for whatever performant he chose. But Campion always truly modest and full of ironic humor as well would ask of his patron nothing, he said, but his continued regard. The young Bookman had a real liking for the vicious worldly, liked by several sensitively good men then and since. Sir William Cecil also took instinctive interest in Campion and his eager dialectics. Altogether there was no more popular man in Oxford or elsewhere. Campion was on the hilltop of professional and personal success. In all this beautiful fountain play of the things which are seen, he was running the very gravest risk of spiritual ruin. Perhaps he could not know in his leaf hung hermitage what a tremendous muster his souls was going on now that the ancient church and the new statecraft were to fight it out in England. Queen Elizabeth's quarrel with the Pope was hardly more doctrinal than her royal fathers had been. She too would have been quite content to live all her days as a Catholic, provided that Catholicism would prove her slave. The battle was not between two known religions. On one side was conservative England with a belief, on the other the strong spirit of secularism, plus a few fanatics formed not by the English, but the continental reformation. Religion in itself troubled the court party as little as anything could possibly do. It was because the spirit of Catholicism seemed to them to threaten their particular kind of national pride and to interfere with their particular kind of worldly prosperity that Cromwell and one great Tudor reign, Berkeley and the other, tried to put it down. They wished to get good citizenship acknowledged, not as an ideal, but as the supreme ideal and they cared not how much else was shoveled out of the way. Their only use for religion was to bring it well under the authority of the law and the supremacy of the crown. They had no objection to high respectability, but a most violent objection to the supernatural life, because that gives to those who practice it a dangerous independence. Elizabeth wanted unity and peace. Her subjects were to be forced by statute to pray less and to pray all alike and to be thereby trained somehow to put sacraments and saints and the papacy out of their heads. English humankind were to forsake their happy wildlife as it were in the church universal and all become as if by magic one large tame pet lying in a ribbon collar on the royal hearth. This is a vision which has appealed to many another head of Commonwealth as desirable, though unaccountably difficult. Some worthy persons had brought themselves to believe that nothing to speak of happened at the Reformation. But at the time everybody understood in the clearest fashion that an old moral system which would not come to terms had been dropped and a more satisfactory one created. It was a working theory of that age all over Europe that a governor had the right to fix the belief of subjects. What was wanted in England was made to order out of the rags of ruined doctrine and discipline. Foreign Protestants raged over its externals as having too much of the old thing, but the bullying state riding roughshod over convocation and the laity was perfectly at ease, knowing that there was more than enough of the new thing to color the whole and to color it once and forever. There was no affection for continuity in these days except among the Romans. The attitude of their persecutors was that of men in a fury that any Englishman should dare to connect himself either with the world at large or with his country's own disclaimed yesterday. The state trials for instance bear this out in a score of places. Many an official answer resembles the one made to that interesting character, Blessed Ralph Sherwin, when he said truly that his coming back to his own land was to persuade the people to Catholic unity. You well know, so the council reproved him in Westminster Hall that it was not lawful for you to persuade the queen's subjects to any other religion than by her Highness's instructions is already professed. The received religion or as it was quite as often called the queen's religion was simply the new idea of nationalism torn away from relationship to the arch ideas of nations, which is the law of God. It was in practice no adoring angel at the altar, but a capable parish beetle at the door. Now this was never the Catholic conception of what religion has been or is meant to be. Happily many thoroughly patriotic Englishmen felt that no least out of Christian revelation, however much it stood in the way of Caesar, could with their consent be put by, and to keep it free they were willing to make themselves very disagreeable indeed to their revered sovereign, and to their more easygoing countrymen. With that rude definiteness which is ever their chief family trait, the better Catholics threw their full force against the oaths of supremacy and acts of uniformity as soon as they understood their meaning. The centuries passed since they proved that they had seceded in holding asunder what the queen would join together. Was it unreasonable that she punish the men who tried to spoil her dream? And almost the chief of these men, Edmund Campion, was destined to be, though years were to pass before he lent his whole heart to the works God willed him to do. CHAPTER II THE HOUR OF UNREST 1566-1570 Thousands who were comfortably placed in life and conscientious too had a great deal to suffer until things were made plain. Edmund Campion began to fret and argue and ponder and pray for light in secret for several years going about that most ingenious place as the leader lover called Oxford with heavy thoughts. Oxford itself, despite the ecclesiastical commission fixed there to worry it, was more Catholic in spirit than any other city in England. Nevertheless, Campion's temptation to conform was very great. We must remember that many of his first impressions and memories were Anglican. He was brought up during his early school life on the new liturgy, which came into operation before his tenth year. He knew now in manhood that to change about and forsake the state religion for the only church, which is as exacting as her master, would be to see the ruin of his happy career. His strong point in the beginning was not what is called brute courage. His was the nervous, hamlet-like temper, natural to students and recluses, which by a fatal error puts endless thinking into what needs only to be done. During these years, Campion read a great deal of theology, as in his position he was bound to do according to university rules. Where everything else except his inmost heart inclined him to heresy, the Fathers drove him back upon the fullness of revealed truth. The day which he spent with St. Augustine or St. Jerome or St. John Chrysostom was the day on which, to catch up the phrase of his friend and biographer, Father Robert Parsons himself a balloil man, he was ready to pull out this thorn of conscience. But on the morrow returned the old spirit of obstinacy and delay. Meanwhile the Anglican influence was gaining for Campion's dearest friend of many, Richard Chaney. The Lord Bishop of Gloucester was drawing him on towards his own ideals which were Catholic-minded, if not Catholic. The learned, gentle and lovable Chaney withstood with zest the risen Puritan Party, and in his hold on sound doctrine stood apart from all his colleagues on the Episcopal bench. He had been brought up as a Catholic and ordained according to the full Catholic ritual in 1534. The reminder is sometimes needed that Protestants did not shoot up full-grown, that all original Protestantism was made up of human material once Catholic. From first to last however, Chaney could not be forced to coerce the church which he had abandoned. In this he stood not, as has been stated, quite alone among the Elizabethan bishops. From Downum of Chester and Guest of Rochester shared his honorable abstinence, though in less degree. The moment Chaney was out of the way the Catholics on his diocesan ground hitherto say for mercilessly harried. He had been made a bishop against his will, displacing the true occupant of the sea when his friend, Edmund Campion, was two and twenty. In most years, Chaney followed Luther. Cranmer's more heretical doctrines, which prevailed on all sides in England, he thoroughly hated. He longed always for a reconciliation which was never to be and never can be. He longed to see the Catholics against the well-thought-out and off-repeated prohibition of their leaders between 1562 and 1606 do a little evil to procure a great good, namely smooth matters over, escape their terribly severe penalties, and in the end become able to leaven the lump of English error by the mere preliminary of attendance at the service of common prayer according to law in their own old parish churches. The book of common prayer, as he would remind them, was expressly designed to suit persons of various and even contradictory religious views, Catholic, not so very Catholic, ex-Catholic, non-Catholic, anti-Catholic. Campion often rode over the hills to Gloucester to sit by the Episcopal hearthfire, look on knee, and hear such theories as this, and sympathize with the lonely old man who saw visions, and had little else in his vexed life to content him. His strong double desire was to save by his own effort for the Church of England separated from Rome that great body of ancient belief and practice sure otherwise to be lost in the flood of invited Calvinism, and to secure Edmund Campion himself as his intellectual co-agitor and successor, as one of high gifts likely to drink in his thoughts and become his heir. The two were together not only in matters of dogma, but in all minor points. Cheney shared with Campion dislike of politics, telling the Council that in such matters he was a man of small experience and little observation. He kept his old priestly ideals and would never marry. Campion too chose to be a celibate. If he gave his heart to either Church, he saw even then that it must be an undivided heart, to him with his underlying tenderness towards the ancient faith and his dream of peacemaking through compromise which is so English, and just in these matters so mistaken. The mission thus opened out appealed, half reluctantly, yet not realizing the disloyalty of his act as he himself tells us, he allowed himself to receive from Cheney's hands deacons orders in the Church of England. His interior struggle from this day forth went from bad to worse. With the unaffected simplicity of his character he talked over his difficulties not only with Cheney, but with anyone at Oxford who seemed able to help him. As a consequence the grocers company whose exhibition he still held, heard rumors, grew uneasy and began to suspect him ending in 1568 by inviting Campion up to London to save his credit by preaching at Paul's Cross and publicly favoring as they expressed it, the religion now authorized. He begged for time and that being granted for more time he attended a court of the company in order to plead engagements and to say that he was not his own man. While deep in academic duties and at the service of undergraduate divers worshipful men's children he calls them. He was public orator and proctor in fact by now as well as fellow and tutor of this college. He never resided long enough to take his doctor's degree. He exacted from the company a written statement of the dogmas he was expected to avow and finding it impossible to subscribe to the hot heterodoxy thus laid down he cut his first tether by resigning his exhibition. His most brilliant colleague at St. John's Gregory Martin who had protested in vain against Campion's deaconate which was to cause the recipient extreme remorse for a long time had become a convert to Catholicism and sacrificed all his secular prospects. He wrote to his dear friend to warn him against ambition and to urge on him escape from moral bondage. Come the fervent letter cried if we too can but live together we can live on nothing. If this be too little I have money and if this also fails one thing is left they that so in tears shall reap in joy. Such earnest words though seeming wasted had their share in shaking Edmund Campion's arrest. With the summer term of 1570 his proctor had expired. He spent the long vacation in tutoring the eight years old Harry Vox eldest son of Lord Vox of Harrodon who afterwards beautifully redeemed his childish promise. The end of Michael must term found Campion face to face for the last time with that life which he had so loved and in which his scientific enthusiasm for letters he had been such a wonderful inspiration to young men. There was no conscious motive in his heart deeper than a thirst for such freedom has had become difficult in the puritanizing university. When he caught himself loose slipped out of it for good and took ship for Ireland. In the new move he had the approbation of Lester and the companionship of a much attached Oxford disciple Richard Stanhurst who is remembered by posterity only for his grotesque translation of Virgil. Campion may well have left home with the understanding that he should have a clear educational field in Dublin. But he arrived a little too late. The outlook had been very bright. Some good men then in power were eager for the revival of the extinct University of Dublin. An ancient papal foundation but ruined as all the great schools were most of them permanently some only temporarily by the religious changes. The chief supporters of the plan were enthusiastic far-sighted and most liberally inclined towards Catholics. Fear and prejudice therefore stepped in in the person of Elizabeth's Irish bishops. The Lord Chancellor Dr. Weston wrote privately to the Queen, deploring the popularity of the scheme and begging her to take the unborn foundation into her merciful motherly care. She followed that advice in token thereof. In due season arose Trinity College Dublin. As a complete checkmate to the earlier project quite safe forevermore from apist blight. Thus was Campion cheated of a continuance of his natural vocation in serving upon the staff of the new University. Two of his friends who had most concern in it were James Stanhurst, father of Richard and Sir Henry Sidney. Then Lord Deputy of Ireland who had preferred it lands and money. Lester would have provided Campion with a letter of introduction to Sir Henry his own brother-in-law. The latter's young son Philip was at this time a student in Oxford where his Governor Thomas Thornton of Christ Church afterwards Vice Chancellor had been constantly in Campion society. Sir Henry Sidney always bore himself most kindly towards Campion. The letter lived a more than welcome guest under the roof of James Stanhurst then recorder of Dublin and speaker of the local House of Commons. Stanhurst was the head of an Anglo-Irish family not openly Catholic since Queen Mary's reign. Indeed in his public capacity he had often sided against Catholicism although he was as friendly as Sidney himself to those who professed it. In the midst of this temporizing household Campion himself a temporizer came during the winter to be doubted by certain bigots outside. Very possibly he was too free-spoken. Campion came to Ireland believing in practically all Catholic dogmas even in the Eucharist and in the authority of the Council of Trent. The impression may have got abroad that this then unknown variety of Anglicanism differed little from the dangerous creed of times past. Lately discovered to be the proper business of the police. Whatever the reason Campion began to be a marked man. Sir Henry Sidney told Stanhurst with heat that so long as he was Governor he would see to it that no busy of them all should trouble him on Campion's account. Under this unpleasant circumstance of Espeol added to the disappointment he had just undergone the sensitive exile presently fell ill and got a most affectionate nursing from the Stanhursts till his strength revived. He started as soon to write a treatise on the subject of which his mind up to now had been full. The character and aim of the ideal youth at the universities. This day Juvenay Academico reminds us of a theme by another great oxonian who was in Dublin 300 years later and had also to face the heartbreaking failure of an Irish university dreamed of and not to be. Campion afterwards recast his fine little work and under its second form it is to be found among the few Apostola published after his death. His comely face and gracious manner were quickly taken into favour in his Dublin circle. While he was gaining a contrary repute on hearsay the few who had access to him nicknamed him the angel. Meanwhile hating idleness and bent on redeeming what may have looked like a foolish absence from Oxford Campion planned the composition of a brief history of Ireland. Friends helped him in inquiring out antiquities of the land. He was what we should call a thorough researcher. A bird by no means common in those early days. He went here and there among musty manuscript records of the city and from library to library in the country happily gathering in his materials for work. He had been some three months in Ireland when on a March midnight there came a sudden warning from the faithful Lord deputy who was on the point of leaving for England. Campion learned thereby that Weston the Chancellor had pursuance ready to arrest him the next morning. The priests acted at once and hurried their friend into the care of Sir Christopher Barnwall and Dame Marion Sherry his wife of Turbie House in the parish of Dunabate eight miles away. There breathless with the sudden flight through the dark the three devoted escorts left him in safety. End of chapter two recording by John Brandon. Chapter three of Blessed Edmund Campion. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by John Brandon. By Louise Imogene Guiney. Chapter three steps forward Ireland 1571. The Barnwalls were in feeling both more Catholic and more Irish than the Standhursts and they showed Edmund Campion a no less tender hospitality. The Great House was a beautiful and remote situation. Running in and out of it was a horde of laughing children including the 11 year old Janet who was to become Richard Barnwall's early dying wife. Campion loved the hearty night, their father and their lady mother whom he calls in very sooth a most gentle and godly woman. Though he mingled freely with the life of the family he was considerably given the great Garrett to write in and hide in. Here he began his little history First of all though he sent back a grateful missive in Latin to the men who had been so providently kind to him to the recorder he says, was I not fortunate in such friendship and patronage as yours? How good, how generous it was of you to take in an unknown stranger and to keep him all these months on the fat of the land you looked after my health as carefully as after Richard's unworthy of your love. He supplied me too with books and made the best possible provision for my time of study. May I perish if ever in this world outside my room in Oxford I had sweeter dealings with the muses. Up to this I have had to thank you for conveniences. Now I must thank you for my rescue and my very breath. Yes, breath is just the word. For they who succumb to these persecutors are want to be thrust into dismal dungeons where they inhale filthy fogs and are cut off from wholesome air. But now through you and your children's kindness I shall live, please God, most happily. The stress laid in this affectionate letter upon the writer's appreciation of personal care of privacy dear to students, of good diet and pure care, tells its own tale of physical delicacy. Campion was slight and billed and like many another tireless and quenchless spirit known to history, had no time really strong. He ends by asking that his Saint Bernard may be sent on to him and encloses a lively page for his friend Richard recalling the service rendered in snatching him from danger and conveying him to him. Is it not hard, Campion breaks out, that beholden to you as I am, I have no way of showing it. Meanwhile, if these varied relics have any flavor of the old Campion, their flavor is for you, you and your brother Walter. You up that whole night through and he summoned to us from his wife's side. Seriously I owe you much. I have nothing to write about unless you have time and inclination for a laugh, have you? Then hold your breath and listen. The day after I came here as I sat down to work into the bedroom versed a poor old soul, coming on what business I want not. She knew nothing of me so seeing me suddenly at her left took me for a ghost. Her hair rose on end. She went dead white. She stared aghast, her jaw fell. What is the matter? Quoth I, whereupon she almost collapsed with fright. Not a syllable could she utter, but made shift to flounce out of the room and pour into her mistress's ear how some sort of hideous specter had appeared to her on the top floor. This was repeated to me at supper. They called the little old thing and made her relate her scare. We all nearly died with laughter and I was established as quite alive. The book put together as was almost all campions lit wherever you work under highly disturbing conditions is unfinished and what there is of it is sketchy and out of proportion. One of its charms is its character drawing including the features with which after the fashion of living campion fits the situation by putting them into the mouths of his personages. He was a dramatic mind. He knew both history and human nature. The latter knowledge crops up everywhere in all that he wrote and spoke and did and supplied him with no small share of his power over others and the outstanding charm of the history of Ireland is its style, crisp, arresting, bright with idiom and idiom so noble and so much his own that one understands the almost breathless admiration with which his generation looked up to him and listened to him. But this spoke like the viewer of the present state. Written some seventeen years later by another gentle hearted Howard Spencer is all wrong in its theory that to get any footing in the modern world the mere Irish re must be anglicized. Campion did not know the Celts, their laws, nor their literature. He never came nearer to them than through chronicles written in scorn of them or the daily table talk wide of the mark of the English pale. Yet according to his opportunity he loved the country and the people and deplored that the descendants of a race of medieval scholars should be cut off from education. Afterwards he felt that his rather helter-skelter pamphlet represented limited knowledge and unformed opinion. He speaks of it as premature and wished when he lost the manuscript that it might perish rather than reach the public as it was. It bore a dedication to the Earl of Leicester, his singular good lord in the hope that it might make his trouble seem neither causeless nor fruitless. Or as he says again in plainer language, I render you, my poor book, as an account of my voyage. It was first printed without supervision from the author in a very muddled satisfactory way by Raphael Hollinshed in 1577. Then in more scholarly fashion by Sir James Ware in his ancient Irish histories, 1633. We all remember how useful Hollinshed's pages were to Shakespeare. The twenty lines or so of the famous description of Woolsey in Act IV, Scene II of Henry VIII is taken almost word for word from what Campion had written, and Hollinshed had incorporated in his chronicles. Nowhere in this little book begun and broken off at Tervy House and purposely non-committal in its religious expressions is there any sign that his author had already, as some have thought, returned to the church. For Parsons, his earliest biographer, whose facts concerning these years were supplied by Richard Stanhurst, says of Campion that his purity and devoutness in Ireland were marked, although he was not in the church. Father Pollen, summing up the evidence of these written pages, considers Campion near to the church, but distinctly avoiding a confession of faith. Chancellor Weston, a zealot of the most pronounced Protestant type, made a livelier pursuit after having been baffled by Campion's escape from Dublin. The latter found himself quite unable to lead any sort of orderly life, thanks to the restless hue and cry after him, and one day he recognized with a shock of horror the penalties to which he was exposing the generous friends so far unmolested, who were giving him shelter. His conscience would not allow him to come out with a flat denial of Catholic tenets or sympathies. His only alternative, after a half year in Ireland, was Flight Homeward. Here once more he was aided, though they were in great sorrow at his decision by his Anglo-Irish friends, those dear friends, whichever after he loved most entirely, and they him. Richard Stanhurst, a private tutor to the children of the Earl of Kildare, had acquaintance with the Earl's steward, Melchior Hussey. This man, a character by no means admirable, was about to embark at Draheda for a visit to England, and it was a range that Campion should be disguised to pass as his Irish servant. Thus in the month of May, putting himself under the special patronage of the national saint at adopting his name, Campion boarded the ship as Mr. Patrick. Officers of the law promptly appeared on the track of the quasi-papest, delaying the weighing of the anchor, annoying the crew, upsetting the cargo and questioning every passenger on deck, except the harmless-looking person who stood in a lackey's weed behind Hussey. Edmund Campion was a born actor. He put on and kept up a highly stupid expression while he was preying with might and main for St. Patrick's intercession in his great danger. He had cause to thank his new patron in heaven, although the party of searchers swooped upon his bags below deck, and carried off with them the rough draft of his precious manuscript, that history of Ireland, which he was to see no more for many a year. The early summer of 1571 was ill-starred. Various startling events had joined, like tidal waves, to list the misbehaving English government up to its highest pitch of alarm. Chief of these was the bull of deposition against Queen Elizabeth, issued by the Holy See after consultation with many temperate English advisors. John Felton, a gentleman of Southwark, posted a copy of it upon the palace gates of the Bishop of London on the morning of May 25, the Feast of Corpus Christi. By August, he was to pay for the bold act with his life. The Queen of Scots had newly arrived in England, London by the time Campion reached it, was in affirmant. Nothing was to be found there but fears, suspicions, arrestings, condemnations, tortures, executions. The Queen and Council were so troubled that they could not tell whom to trust, and so fell to rigorous proceedings against all, but especially against Catholics, whom they most feared, so that Campion could not tell where to rest in England, all men, being in fear and jealousy, one of another. Campion had not broken his old bonds, yet nothing interested him so powerfully as the things of religion. The love of God was lying in wait for him, and forced his hand. Of all possible places in London where he might have gone on the 26th or 27th of May, he chose Westminster Hall in order to attend the trial of Dr. John's story, former principal of Broadgate's Hall, Embrough College in Oxford, and that university's first regious professor of civil law. Dr. Story was very feeble for his years, which were sixty-seven. By a wretched breach of international law, he had been trapped at Antwerp, carried away from his wife and family to England, and arraigned for having feloniously and traitoriously comforted Richard Norton, his own friend, the old hero of the pilgrimage of grace. But the real cause of his arrest and execution was a much different matter. He was a troublesomely consistent person. He had spoken out in the House of Commons against the New Liturgy in the First Parliament of Edward VI, and against the Supremacy Bill in the First Parliament of Queen Elizabeth. He had been an ecclesiastical commissioner under Queen Mary. Fox, in the famous book of Martyrs, lies in the most reckless way about his part in those sordid bygone persecutions, and Holling's head and stripe, and many another historian, repeat Fox. Story was an honorable and even merciful man, but a man of his time. People were much of a piece in the 16th century when he came to holding to the grindstone the nose of the unwilling. There is this to be said, however, that the Marian courts dealt out death to heretics and malcontents, and candidly stopped there, and were not inspired to any cruelty more subtle. Whereas good Queen Vest not only dealt out death very much more liberally, but invented a poison for all the springs of life. Her statutes, terribly oppressive from the first, and did in what Burke calls the most hateful code framed since the world began. Penal laws, which especially from 1585 on, struck without mercy at Catholics in their rights of worship, property, inheritance, education, travel, professions, public service, and private liberties of every kind. Another point to be noted in passing is that Queen Mary persecuted her subjects for changing their religion. Her more ingenuous sister persecuted them for not changing it. Historians have not dwelt much upon the difference, but to a reader with some philosophy in him it will have no little weight. Doctor Story was executed five days after his trial, under even more horrible circumstances than were usual. Edmund Campion had left England after an exceedingly short stay. His standing watch in Westminster Hall had done more for him than many arguments and exhortations. It kindled a spark in him which made him, in Lord Falkland's phrase, ready for the utmost hazard of war. There was a cause to which he could run home. There was a vocation to which he could climb. These opened out before him as he stood in the surging indoor crowd. He was animated by that blessed man's example, says Parsons, to any danger and peril, for the same faith for which the doctor died. Edmund Campion lost no time. There had been enough of that sad old game, and he was 31 years old, with three quarters of his two brief life behind him. Now he was awake and had touched, in the dark, his heart's long patient master. He set out at once for the nearest stronghold of apostolic souls the English Seminary at Douay in Belgium. End of Chapter 3, Recording by John Brandon Chapter 4 of Blessed Edmund Campion This is LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Maria Fatima da Silva Blessed Edmund Campion by Louise Imogen Guinea. Cheney again, Douay 1571. Interrupted sea voyages were his fate. This time halfway across the channel his ship was hailed by a government frigate, the hare, which demanded to be shown the ship's sailing papers and the passports of her passengers. Campion had none. Moreover, as his religion was suspected, the dutiful Protestant frigate, Homeward Bound, promptly swallowed him bag and baggage. His generous friends in Ireland had forced upon him money for his needs and the captain who now kidnapped him found it convenient to keep the money, but kindheartedly let his prisoner lose himself in the streets of Douay. Other friends quickly made the losses good. On Campion's second attempt to reach Calais, all went well. It was not like his secular epitaph, so to speak, at court. It was not then a legal crime, though it soon became so, for a Catholic Englishman to leave the country fast, being made into a hell for him. The mighty Cecil treated this expatriation as quite voluntary. And it is a very great pity, he chose to say, looking into Richard Stanihurst's gratified eyes. For Master Campion was one of the Diamonds of England. The date of Campion's reconciliation to the church is unknown. It seems unlikely to have taken place in Ireland. He may have been absolved from his schism in London, or else as soon as he had reached Douay. There was a busy trade in walls still flourishing at that time between Flanders and England, and in the thrifty kindly towns of the exporting country, refugees formed a considerable part of the population. Douay, properly speaking, Douay was called Douay by its foster children. The creation of its English seminary was a master stroke of Dr William Allen, Canon of York, afterwards Cardinal once of Oriel College, Oxford, and Principal of St. Mary Hall. Indeed, Oxford may be said to have founded Douay. Allen was aided by many men of Mark, notably by his old tutor Morgan Phillips, and by the latter's bequeathed funds, also by the Flemish abbots and layfolk. Campion seems to have been the 18th arrival in the newly established House of Young, prayerful, enthusiastic men. He found there, as professor of Hebrew, his beloved Gregory Martin, and a learned colleague Richard Bristo, late fellow of Exeter College, the first of the seminarian priests to be ordained, two props and pillars of the foundation. There also was Thomas Stapleton, late fellow of New College, the most able Catholic controversialist of the age. Five of the 20 English students enrolled in 1571 joined the society of Jesus. The college destined to speedy and splendid development was affiliated to the Douay University established two years before it by Spanish magnificence under Papal Bull. Here then Edmund Campion came into his soul's haven, out of the swing of the sea. It was Dr. Allen's missionary policy that all his sons, before memory of them had grown dim at home, should write to their more undecided friends in England doing what they could to win them to the service of Christ in the Church Catholic. Campion sent a very long document to this end to his venerated and now esteemed friend Bishop Cheney, a wonderful letter in that live Elizabethan English, which was bold as surgery itself, yet charged with feeling. Associating his beliefs with Cheney's as the writer does he helps us to understand his own doctrinal position while in Oxford and in Dublin. He failed in both places, writes Father Morris, for the same reason. The position was a false one, for it was an effort to serve two masters and to live like a Catholic and teach the Catholic religion outside the pale of the Catholic Church. There is no end or measure. He now tells Cheney from Douay to my thinking of you, and I never think of you without being horribly ashamed. So often was I with you at Gloucester, so often in your private chamber with no one nearest when I could have done this business and I did it not. By this business he means confessing Catholic truth and urging Cheney to return to it. And what is worse, I have added flames to the fever by assenting and assisting. And although you were superior to me in your counterfated dignity in wealth, age and learning, and though I was not bound to look after the fizicking or dieting of your soul, yet since you were of so easy and sweet temper as in spite of your grey hairs to admit me, young as I was, to familiar intercourse with you, to say whatever I chose in all security and secrecy while you imparted me your sorrows and all the colonies of the other heretics against you. And since, like a father, you exhorted me to walk straight and upright in the royal road to follow the steps of the church, the councils and the fathers, and to believe that where there was a consensus of these there could be no spot of falsehood. I am very angry with myself that I neglected to you such a beautiful opportunity of recommending the faith. Through false modesty or culpable negligence, I did not address with boldness one who was so near to the kingdom of God. But as I have no longer the occasion that I had of persuading you face to face, it remains that I should send my words to you to witness my regard, my care, my anxiety for you, known to him to whom I make my daily prayer for your salvation. Listen, I beseech you, listen to a few words. You are 60 years old, more or less. Cheney was really 68. Of uncertain health, of weakened body, the hatred of heretics, the pity of Catholics, the talk of the people, the sorrow of your friends, the joke of your enemies, who do you think yourself to be? What do you expect? What is your life? When lies your hope in the heretics hating you so implacably and abusing you so roundly? Because of all heresy arcs, you are the least crazy. Because you confess the living presence of Christ on the altar and the freedom of man's will because you persecute no Catholics in your diocese because you are hospitable to your townspeople and to good men? Because you plunder not your palace and lands as your brethren do? Surely these things will avail much if you return to the bosom of the church, if you suffer even the smallest persecution in common with those of the household of faith, or join your prayers with theirs. But now, whilst you are a stranger and an enemy, whilst like a base deserter, you fight for an alien flag, it is in vain to attempt to cover your crimes with a cloak of virtues. What is the use of fighting for many articles of the faith and to perish for doubting of a few? He believes no one article of the faith who refuses to believe any single one. In vain do you defend the religion of Catholics, if you hug only that which you like, and cut off all that seems not right in your eyes. There is but one plane known road, not enclosed by your palings or mine, not by private judgment, but by the severe laws of humility and obedience. When you wonder from these, you are lost. You must be all together within the house of God, within the walls of salvation, to be sound and safe from all injury. If you wonder and walk abroad ever so little, if you carelessly thrust hand or foot out of the ship, if you stood up ever so small a mutiny in the crew, you shall be thrust forth. The door is shut, the ocean rose, you are undone. Do you remember the sober and solemn answer which you gave me when three years ago we met in the house of Thomas Dutton at Shireburn, where we were to dine? We were talking of Saint Cyprian. I objected to you in order to discover your real opinions. That synod of Carthage which erred about the baptism of infants, you answered it truly that the Holy Spirit was not promised to one province, but to the church. That the universal church is represented in the full council and that no doctrine can be pointed out about which such a council ever erred. Acknowledge your own weapons which you used against the adversaries of the mystery of the Eucharist. Here you have the most apostolic men collected at Trent to contend for the ancient faith of the fathers. All these whilst you live as you are living, anathematize you, hiss you out, excommunicate you, abjure you. Campion goes on to urge upon Cheney an outward adherence to the council which had discussed and resolved his own private beliefs. Especially now you have declared war against your colleagues. Why do you not make full submission without any exceptions to the discipline of these fathers? Once more consult your own heart, my poor old friend. Give me back your old beauty and those excellent gifts which have been hitherto smothered in the mud of dishonesty. Give yourself to your mother who begot you to Christ, nourished you, consecrated you, acknowledged how cruel and undutiful you have been. Let confession be the solve of your sin. Be merciful to your soul, spare my grief. Your ship is wrecked, your merchandise lost. Nevertheless seize the plank of penance and come even naked into the port of the church. Fear not but that Christ will preserve you with his hand. Run to meet you, kiss you and put on you the white garment. Saints and angels will sing for joy. Take no thought for your life. He will take thought for you who gives the beasts their food and feeds the young ravens that call upon him. If you but made trial of our banishment, if you but cleared your conscience and came to behold and consider the living examples of piety which are shown here by bishops, priests, friars, masters of colleges, rulers of provinces, lay people of every age, rank and sex, I believe that you would give up 600 Englands for the opportunity of redeeming the residue of your time by tears and sorrow. Pardon me, my venerated old friend, for these just reproaches and for the heat of my love. Suffer me to hate that deadly disease. Let me ward off the imminent danger of so noble a man and so dear friend with any dose, however bitter. And now if Christ give grace and you do not refuse, my hopes of you are equal to my love and I love you as passing excellent in nature, in learning, in gentleness, in goodness and as doubly dear to me for your many kindnesses and curtsies. If you recover your spiritual health, you make me happy forever. If you slight me, this letter is my witness. God judge between you and me, your blood be on yourself. Farewell from him that most desires your salvation. One phrase in this steel web of phrases from the pen of a returition with a heart shows that Campion knew of Cheney's sad and now complicated position in England. The letter was written November 1st 1571. A convocation had met in the preceding April on the heels of the act of uniformity to which Cheney was summoned in vain. It required the signing of the 39 articles and enacted under Archbishop Grindel's leadership. Many things equally hateful to Cheney such as displacement and defacement of altastones. A great symbol this, a no mere act of pillage. The abolition of prayers for the dead, the prohibition even of the sign of the cross in church. Cheney excommunicated for his willful absence afterwards sued by proxy for absolution for the sake of averting temporal penalties but he had nothing more to do with the hierarchy. Now you have declared war against your colleagues, shows that Campion had heard accurate news of all this. The moment may have seemed to Campion exactly favourable for such a strong appeal. One of Cheney's successes in his see declared it was certain he died a papist. This was contradicted by a lesser authority but yet a good one. If it were indeed certain, at least Edmund Campion, to whom the tidings would have been most consoling, never knew of it. It seems as if Cheney could not have answered that bugle call of a letter. He has said however to have kept it always and to have called it his greatest treasure. How these many cries of the heat of my love must have haunted his ear. It is hardly in human nature to value such a document at all and there are passages in it more ruthless after the manner of the time than any we have quoted, unless for the reflex reason that it does its intended work in the heart of the receiver. To have valued it either as a piece of literary cleverness or as a monument of misdirected concern would have been equally cynical and clean contrary to Cheney's known attitude towards his friend. It did not live to see Campion return to England, shunning the bigots and the unprincipled men in power to the last and sheltering the Catholics all he could, he shot himself up at Gloucester a whole high church party in himself wounded and at bay and there in 1579 he died and was buried in the glorious cathedral without an epitaph. The dream of his lifetime as well as Edmund Campion's sonship he had loved and lost. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of Blessed Edmund Campion This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Christopher Orem. Blessed Edmund Campion by Louise Imogen Guiney The Call to Come Up Higher In Allen's Apology for Seminarians there is a beautiful account of the ideals of Douay. Quote The first thought of the founders of the college had been to attract the young English exiles who were living in Flanders from their solitary and self-guided to a more exact method and to collegiate obedience and their next to provide for the rising generation in England a succession of learned Catholics especially of clergy to take the place of those removed by old age, imprisonment and persecution. Their design then was to draw together out of England the best wits from the following classes those inclined to Catholicism, those who desired a more exact education then could be obtained at Oxford or Cambridge where no art, holy or profane was thoroughly studied and some not touched at all. Those who were scrupulous about taking the oath of the Queen Supremacy, those who disliked to be forced as they were in some colleges of the English universities to enter the ministry and those who were doubtful which religion was the true one and were disgusted that they were forced into one without being allowed opportunity of inquiring into the other. End quote. The spirit of Duwe was not reactionary but the best spirit of the English Renaissance it had besides a character or atmosphere holy and bright not formed by mere human culture. It was as a garden enclosed and a fountain sealed. Campion found there a peace such as he had never known. He had already at Oxford given seven years to philosophy and six more to Aristotle, positive theology and the fathers. The study of scholastic theology was dead in Oxford. Campion now first took up the teachings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. He arrived in June and in August he bought a noble edition of the Summa for his own use in three volumes folio. This was discovered in 1887 by Canon Didio of Lille and is now at the Rohampton Navigiat. Several features make it a particularly interesting relic. Campion's signature with the date of his purchase on the flyleaf, various beautifully executed little drawings underlinings and a host of marginal notes in Latin. By far the most touching of these relates to what Saint Thomas quotes from Janadius on the baptism of blood. Blessed Edmund Campion wrote in a tall, bold hand over against the passage the one using word martyrdom. Canon Didio with that intimate touch of French sympathy calls it For nearly two years Campion followed the course of scholastic theology, taking his degree of bachelor in January 1573. He then received minor orders and was ordained subdeacon. All went happily for him at Douay. He was again at his old work and as ever he won the highest positions from those among whom he moved. In his Oxford days he had always held lofty standards before his pupils. Never too deliquious into sloth nor to dance away your time nor to live for rioting and pleasure but to give yourselves up to virtue and learning and to reckon this the one great glorious and royal road. But the feeling in the exhortations of his later life is tenfold deeper and strikes a far more haunting note of duty toward England and toward the church. This is a passage from the revised The Juvenay Académico which had first been sketched out years before in Dublin. Quote Any one of which is worth more than the empire of the whole world. Sleep not while the enemy watches. Play not while he devours his prey. Sink not into idleness and folly while his bangs are wet with your brother's blood. It is not wealth nor liberty nor station but the eternal inheritance of each of us, the very lifeblood of our souls, our spirits and our lives that suffers. See then, my dearest young scholars and friends, that we lose none of this precious time but carry hence a plentiful and rich crop enough to supply the public want and to gain for ourselves the reward of dutiful sons. Quote One of those who listened to these words was destined to become the pro martyr of the English Continental Seminarians, Kutbeut Main, a dear pupil of Campions, who as a deafen lad had come up to Oxford and St. John's, had first conformed to the new regulations and served as college chaplain, then awakened from his delusion and fled overseas for conscience's sake, not to escape danger but to be prepared for it in response to one of Campion's burning letters. This letter was intercepted but its perpet had reached him and decided him. In the spring of 1573, Campion found himself driven to a course that had not contemplated on coming to Douay. As he slowly saw his way, he followed it to horizon beyond horizon. He had many steps to take because in his thirst for perfection he had far to travel. He told Dr. Allen he wished to leave his present life, go on pilgrimage in the spirit of penance to the tomb of the apostles at Rome, and there seek admission into the society of Jesus. The medieval orders would have less traction for Campion. He was an intensely modern man. Now this was a severe blow to Allen, hardly less so to others of Campion's circle. Campion, the pride, the example, the hope of the seminary, to quit it for good and to quit it in order to join the most recent of religious communities, one which as yet had few English members. It was inexplicable. But Allen, like the great-hearted and broad-minded commander-in-chief he was, let him go without protest. He little foresaw that far from losing his most promising champion he was but lending him to better masters of the interior life than himself, and would receive his trained strength again in the English mission's spiritual day of battle. Campion set out on foot across the continent for Rome, along that road trodden by many a Saxon king and English saint to the apostles' shrine. His companions walked with him all the first day, but the next morning he sent them back and pushed on alone. Solitude was henceforth his choice whenever duty permitted. He must have had many strange adventures during that spring journey. We know of one of them, though not from him. At some point of the route, probably on the northern Italian border, he came face-to-face with an old friend, an Oxonian and a Protestant. A horseman first rode past the poor medicant on the highway, and then was prompted by some dim sense of recognition to return and speak to him. On realizing that it was really Edmund Campion whom he used to know in great pomp of prosperity, he showed much concern, proffered his goodwill and his purse, and begged to hear how Campion had fallen into that ill plight. But the pilgrim refused aid, and the other traveler heard something then and there of the quote, contempt of this world and the imminent dignity of serving Christ in poverty, and quote, which greatly moved him, and us also, adds Robert Parsons of Balliol, that remained yet in Oxford when the report came to our ears. A strange tale it must have seemed to those who knew their master of arts and all of his old fastidiousness. He was by now a saint in the making, and they were fast losing touch with him. Personal holiness is, so to speak, a mining country. Its progress and its wealth are underground, unguessed at by the careless passerby. A saint is a mystery because he walks so closely in the shadow of God, who is the great mystery. When Campion reached Rome and had paid his devotions to the holy places, he went to call upon Cardinal Gesualdi, who, as he stated afterwards, quote, having some liking of me, would have been the means to prefer me. But I, resolved what course to take, answered that I meant not to serve any man, but to enter into the society of Jesus, thereof to vow and to be professed, end quote. With this intention, Campion sought out the newly elected head of that society, Father Edward of Liège, whose surname was generally Latinized into Mir Curianus, from Mirchia, his native village. He was fourth in his office, having succeeded that great personality, St. Francis Borgia on St. George's Day, April 23rd, 1573. Biographers have represented that Campion had half years to lay in Rome before he was able to apply for admission to the society, but such was not the case. He promptly presented himself and was received as Mirchia's first recruit, and received not as a postulant, but as a novice. As Anthony Wood tells us, quote, he was esteemed by the general of that order to be a person every way complete, end quote. Four years later, Campion most affectionately thanked his own old tutor John Bavande for unasked introductions, help, and money which had been supplied since he came to Rome. He speaks of himself as, one whom you never knew could repay you, but who was at the point, so to speak, of death. You were munificent to me when I was going to enter the supplicul rest of religion. The aid he would not accept for himself on his journey from one friend, he had accepted in the city, and spent no doubt in almsgiving from another. Perhaps Bavande was abroad and heard of that incident which came to pass on the road. Certainly he was one from whom Campion could not in chivalry refuse whatever he chose to share with him. The society of Jesus had been founded only six years before Campion was born. It had as yet no English province, that is no members living under the English flag with the domestic government of their own. But Edwin Campion was already well known to the provincials on the continent who had a warm contest over him, every one of them wishing to add such a promising soldier to his own wing of the army of the Lord. As it fell out, Bohemia won. Campion was sedent as one of a company to Vienna and then from Vienna to Prague where the novitiate was with Father Avalonendo, confessor to the Empress, a man of wide experience. He was so deeply edified by his companion that he told Father Parsons long after it had kept him all his life much affection toward England and Englishmen. Prague was in a miserable, godless state. The Catholics were poor and few. The great university had perished, and all this was due to the ruin, moral and material produced by the preaching at the dawn of the 15th century of Jan Hus. That Hus got his socialistic ideas from Wycliffe was a fact never out of Campion's mind while in Bohemia, for he thought that England owed some reparation to a country which she had sought to spoil and he was more than willing to pay his part of that debt. THE WISHED FOR DAWN Bohemia 1573-1579 Campion stayed but two months at Prague as the small novitiate was removed to Brune in Moravia where the inhabitants were most hostile to Catholicism. The Bishop of Olmuz begged the Jesuits to help him so far as their rule permitted. Novices were sent out among the neighbouring villages to cataclyse and instruct the poor Catholics. And no one had so instant a success in this little enterprise as God's Englishmen. At the year's end his novice master, John Paul Campanus, became rector of the college in Prague and took Edmund Campion back with him. The latter left a good deal of his heart within the gray and austere walls of Brune as two of his charming letters show. In the old garden under a mulberry tree he had had a wonderful vision. Our lady stood there smiling at him and offering him a purple robe. He knew the poor tent of martyrdom. But for long hid it in his heart. At Prague Campion continued and increased his duet with a beautiful little treatise. He opened the October term with what was called a glorious heroration. As professor of rhetoric he wrote in 1574 a beautiful little treatise on that subject so familiar to him. His duty was to be first in the house to rise and lost to go to bed. He spent his recreation time cataclyzing children to the little or helping the cook in the kitchen. In January 1575 he set up at his college a branch confraternity of the immaculate conception or sadality of our lady, of which he became president. About the same time he made his first vows he was continually called upon for great college occasions and to pronounce public panagerics. Whatever had to be done says his pompous but sympathetic biographer Bombino was laid upon him. On getting a fresh task he would ask his superior in a spirit of perfect humility and confidence if he was thought strong enough to add that to the rest and if the answer were yes he shouldered the new duty at once much to the wonder of others. The continual bloom of health he writes gallantly to his dearest Parsons who had just entered the society. I have no time whatever to be ill in. Two sacred plays, six hours did it take to perform each of them came from Campion's truly dramatic pen in 1577. One was on the sacrifice of Abraham one on the melancholy career of King Saul it is a matter of much regret that these are lost. He seems also to have composed dialogues and scenes for his own scholars and to have put together at the same time his spirited account of the origin of the English schism in a narrative in Latin of the divorce of King Henry VIII from his wife and from the church it was printed by Harpsfield long after Campion's death. Meanwhile Rudolph II had succeeded to the imperial throne and the magnificently provided envoy who was sent to Prague bearing the congratulations of Queen Elizabeth was none other than Sir Philip Sidney. Sidney's mind was set upon seeing his old friend Campion and talking with him but he managed only with difficulty to carry out his wishes he went officially in the emperor's train to hear his friend not yet in priests' orders preach and on his return to England unguardedly spoke with delight of the sermon. Whenever Sidney visited the continent he was supposed to become tainted with the hankering after Catholicism though in all his public actions he was conspicuously Protestant. Campion who knew him from boyhood had given to misjudgment believed that he had almost won over the star of English chivalry. This young man so wonderfully beloved and admired he calls him in 1576 a testimony doubly interesting when we remember that Philip Sidney was then but three and twenty to the effect which his short life made upon all his contemporaries he had much conversation with me Campion's letter goes on and I hope not in vain for to all appearances he was most keen about it. I commend him to your remembrances at Mass since he asked the prayers of all good men and at the same time put into my hands arms to be distributed to the poor for him this trust I have discharged. He ends by hoping that some of the missionaries then going back to England from will have opportunity of watering this plant poor wavering soul. Father Parsons in his life of Campion tells us that Sidney professed himself convinced but said that it was necessary for him to hold on the course which he had hitherto followed. Such was the sad answer of Felix to St. Paul. Campion's thoughts had turned often of late to another friend Gregory Martin who had left overcrowded duet for the seminary newly founded in the heart of Rome in the ancient English hospice for pilgrims. Campion longed to turn his fellow priest into a Jesuit for he loved his own society in the extreme but that was not to be. A letter to Martin glowing with that interior fire which was shed out from Edmund Campion upon everything he touched ends most tenderly since for so many years we too had in common our college our meals our studies our friends and our enemies let us for the rest of our lives make a more close and binding union that we may have the fruit of our friendship in heaven for there also I will if I can sit at your feet after years filled with literary and academic labor in two colleges and blessed with marked growth and holiness Edmund Campion was ordained priest by the Archbishop of Prague his first mass was set on the feast of the nativity of our lady September 8 1578 following his generals express command he dismissed the old unhappy scruple about his oxford in it and it troubled him no more he was made professor of philosophy you are to know he pleasantly says that I am foolishly held to be an accomplished softest during the course of this year 1578 he wrote his last and most famous drama now lost on St. Ambrose in the emperor Theodosius which when acted made a tremendous stir more and more noted as a preacher a sower of eternity in the popular heart as well as the favorite orator when grandies died and were buried in state but all this time his mind and heart were far away no one ever practiced religious obedience in a more heroic spirit yet he secretly longed to throw his life and his labors directly into the balance for England's sake he knew what was going on there and his thought seemed never once to have turned towards the pikes or any political remedy his whole ambition was as he said in one letter to torture our envious foe with good deeds and in another to catch them by the prayers and tears at which they laugh his long dear Cuthbert Main of whom he had lost sight for a while had given up his life for the faith at Launston November 29 1577 he had been captured near Probus his wealthy host Francis Trejan was attained of pre-nune ivory and his children completely beggard this young west countrymen had a character all his own he had been charged with nothing but the exercise of his priestly functions and was offered his life on the day of his execution if he would but swear that the Queen was supreme head of the Church of England upon this continues the chronicle he took the Bible into his hands made the sign of the cross upon it kissed it and said the Queen neither ever was nor is nor ever shall be the head of the Church of England Campion had only recently heard the news in the August of 1579 one can read between the lines of a passage like this we all thank you much for your account of Cuthbert's martyrdom it gave many of us a divine pleasure wretched that I am how far has that novice distanced me may he be favorable to his old friend and tutor now shall I boast of these titles more than ever before within the next six months Edmund Campion was to see the beginning of his heart's desire Dr. Allen the founder of Douay was in Rome to organize the English college and there he brought all his persuasion to bear upon the general of the society of Jesus and his consultants the English Jesuits might be allowed to join the English secular priests and the pressing redemption of their distracted country there were the gravest reasons for and against the proposal but the answer given to Dr. Allen was that the society would do its best to supply missioners thence forward and that Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion should be sent first as forerunners of the rest Allen was naturally overjoyed while Mercura the father general wrote officially to Campion Superior at Prague Allen wrote a moving letter to Campion himself my father brother son he calls him make all haste and come my dearest Campion from Prague to Rome and thence to our own England and thence has it lost granted that our own Campion with his extraordinary gifts of wisdom and grace shall be restored to us prepare yourself then for a journey for a work for a trial the imaginations of Campion's comrades at Prague were touched to the quick by the prospect opening before their happy brother he thought by painting a garland of roses and lilies on the wall of Campion's little room just at the bed's head a white haired Silesian father James Gaul wrote in scroll fashion by night over the outer door of that same little room for such a romantic irregularity the old saint was reprimanded quite simply but I had to do it poor Campion who was shy had seen both these things before Campanus the sympathetic rector gave him his marching orders to start it once for Rome the fathers do verily seem to suspect something about me I hope their suspicions may come true he said God's will be done not mine the first English biographer who so well knew him and so much loved him being scarce able to hold tears for joy and tenderness of heart he went to his chamber and there upon his knees to God satisfied his appetite of weeping and thanksgiving and offered himself to his divine disposition without any exception or restraint whether it were to rack suffering or any other torment or death whatsoever Chapter 7 of Blessed Edmund Campion this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Maria Fatima the Silver Blessed Edmund Campion by Louise Imogen Guinea along March Rome Geneva hence 1580 from Prague to Munich and from Munich to Innsbruck Campion had the distinguished and very friendly company of Ferdinand brother of the reigning Duke of Bavaria afterwards he went on alone on foot as he was always glad to do as far as Padua here he took horse for Rome which he reached just before Palm Sunday April the 5th 1580 coming in grave priests garb we are told with long hair after the fashion of Germany he was informed by the father general that he was to start for England 9 or 10 days after Easter Campion begged neither to be superior of the expedition nor to have anything to do with the preparations and that during the fortnight he might be free from all except necessary cares in order to make a more devotional entrance upon the life ahead of him and the like did for their part and had done all the land before those other priests also of the English seminary says Parsons speaking of many secular afterwards martyred that were appointed by the superiors to go with us in this mission all these together used such notable and extraordinary diligence for preparing themselves well in the sight of God as was matter of edification to all Rome Rome was the most religious place at that time not only in its enduring associations but in the temper of the people one enlarge measure responsible for its spirit penance and prayer and loving charity to the poor was then living at San Girolamo opposite the old English hospital now turned into a college this was Saint Philip Mary the most venerated and enduring figure in all the great city he knew the successive little English bands when he passed them in the streets cheerful Saint Philip used to smile tenderly and give what must have been to them a thrilling greeting Hail little flowers of martyrdom the opening line of the Brevary hymn for holy innocence day Parsons and Campion and the secular clerics associated with them may have originated the custom of going over to San Girolamo for a special fatherly blessing before setting forth to almost certain death there is a tradition mentioned by Newman that one of that company did not care to seek Saint Philip's prayers and that afterwards he failed to persevere this is thought to be the lay student John Paschal or Pascal who is apparently of an unstable disposition and he is known to have foresworn the faith when his great chance came to profess it the Pope Gregory 13th showed and tiring and fatherly interest in all the missionaries and their traveling funds were his personal gift he wept over them in bestowing his parting bad addiction Campion set out this time with seven English priests Ralph Sherwin a former fellow of Exeter College among them also with two lay brothers and two students others joined them from Hans and Louvain some of them advanced in years and well known the party adopted the novel and almost their devil fashion of going on foot but mounted and riding privately in advance of it were its two eldest members one was the Holy Octogenarian Thomas Goldwell the Lord Bishop of St. Assif who had been offered by Queen Mary a transfer to the sea of Oxford and refused it he was destined to be the last survivor of the deposed and scattered Catholic hierarchy in England who had all but one refused the unheard of oath in 1559 and had all been deprived of their seas that same year Bishop Goldwell now 20 years afterwards was one of two who were living and his colleague Watson Bishop of Lincoln was in prison the other senior missionary was his companion Dr. Nicholas Morton cannon penitentiary of St. Peters who had done something already towards the making of English history the first little Jesuit group of three was commanded by Father Robert Parsons a born organizer a man of splendid resources afterwards celebrated and much loved and hated for convenience as for safety they all put on secular dress champion however would buy no new clothes but to raid himself in an old book ram suit with a shabby cloak when rallied on his highly ineligent appearance he remarked with the gay spirit so like that of another blissful martyr Sir Thomas More that a man going forth to be hanged need trouble himself little about the fashion this were bad beyond any modern idea of badness and it poured rain for the first nine or ten days champion the least robust of the party and the most poorly clad fell ill under such combined discomforts had to be lifted into the saddle of one of the very few horses which had been brought along for the sake of the infirm as soon as he was well enough he resumed of saying mass very early and of walking on in the later morning hours till he was a mile ahead of the rest to make his meditation read his office and say the litany of the saints before he should be overtaken he and his comrades planned their spiritual life day by day with the most careful regularity their talk was always of souls the harvest was their word for England or else the warfare in the chilly spring twilight's campion would push on ahead again to make his prayers alone and utter his zealous affections to his saviour without being heard or noted the route lay through Siena Florence Bologna in the latter city there was a week's delay due to an injury to father his leg the band of 12 was entertained by the Cardinal Archbishop of that sea who was the historian of the Council of Trent Gabriel Paliotto like Avulla Nado like many another Italian Paliotto loved the English where he a born Englishman he could not love them more wrote a gazario to Alan at that time when the national government was much more expressive and responsive than it is now at Milan in the early part of May the future confesses and martyrs were to find another and a greater also much affection towards them who received them most hospitably and even ask the English college further relays of guests in the future this was the great Archbishop Saint Charles Borough Mayo Bishop who had passed through Milan days before the walkers reached it had been in 1563 vicar general to Saint Charles and would have bespoken his interest in the little party the Reverend host complimented Ralph showing by asking him to deliver a sermon before him and as for champion he was required to discourse daily after dinner Saint Charles himself all the while whether vocal or silent was acting upon the pilgrims as a Susan quarter without saying a word he preached to us sufficiently says the ever appreciative Parsons and so we departed from him greatly edified and exceedingly animated how charming is the forgotten use of the last word meaning sold or as we still say heartened inspirited such indeed is the true function of the saints from Turing the little company made for Mount Senus and young middle aged and old Lester Lee climbed it and then among the torrents and boulders of that glorious scenery they came down into Savoy at Saint John Marien they found the roads blocked by the Spanish soldiery and that egg bell run across other disturbances caused by the religion raging in the Dauphiné as there was nothing to do but abandon the direct route they turned aside and entered Geneva the hotbed of Calvinism and the home of Theodore Beza the learned apostate who had succeeded to Calvin's leadership there was a close community of spirit between Geneva and the English Reformation however Switzerland then as now had liberal laws and any traveler Catholic or Protestant was free to pass and molested though not unquestioned three days in the city it looks decidedly like an alloy of mischief on the part of five of the English that they went to call in a body on Beza they were admitted as far as the court by Claudine his stolen wife whom they had all heard of and were not ill pleased to see when the famous gray beard came out they managed after passing their compliments to worry him with some telling controversial shots champion knew not how to be rude but showing found amusement ever afterwards in remembering how that honest fellow Patrick stored unlocked and talked cap in hand facing out such is showing shockingly boyish language in a private letter the old doting erratical fool the celebrity so described behaved rather vaguely and in the course of nature could not have been sorry to see the last of his procedures and of their wits sharpened with life in the open air he bowed them out with less abruptness than might have been expected indeed with a certain show of civility and went back to his books later showing and two other youngsters in a midnight discussion with some English Protestant students actually challenged Beza and all Calvindum to a trial of theologies with a drastic proviso that the defeated party should be burnt in the marketplace meanwhile champion in the role of Patrick did his shadow facing out other were these in Geneva besides finding an old university friend there who used him lovingly but reported that an alarm had been raised and encouraged the departure of the paladins these halting on a spur of the Jordan before nightfall with lake lemon spread beneath them said today and together that they were safely out of the city there seems to have been a good deal of curiosity or bravado mingled with a polemical zeal and champions always tend to conscience would have readily accepted if it did not suggest a suitable penance for the raid so often trudged nine steep contrite extra miles extreme troublesome we are told they were to the nearest shrine that of Saint Claude over the French border they entered Hans the last day of May 1580 for enhance with the soul if not the body of the college now driven partly for convenience partly by force of trouble out of do a that college was never reformed but the scholar exiles lift close together up and down the street still called who they is only the travelers were rapturously welcomed by all especially by the great Englishman whom the old narrative greatly calls Mr. Dr. Allen the president here at Hans the venerable Bishop of St. Assoff fell ill of a fever he was never again to cross the channel by the time he had fairly recovered rumors of his movements had naturally got abroad and the pope was unwilling to imperil so important and precious a person while still a convalescent at trans goldwell wrote to his holiness in person begging him to listen to no objections but to anoint at once three or four new bishops to shepherd their own needy church and he very touchingly assures the holy father knowing that the question of a fitting maintenance for them with the rise that God had so inclined the minds of all the English priests whom he knew to put up with their penniless and hunted daily lives and the vision of the gallows always before them that any of these once consecrated would be entirely contented to go on as poorly as he had gone here to fall like a bishop of the early church the application failed etiquette and routine prevailed says Simpson in summing up this incident in truth it was not that goodwill was lacking nobody on the Catholic side believed that the new sad order of things in England was going to last and consequently waiting and owning in a matter of this sort could not seem the disastrous mistake which it really was the upshot in any case was that the good bishop was recalled to Rome and there died and that for 30 weary years the poor flock struggled on without any qualified prelate to supply their crying spiritual wants and hold them together then the first provisional leader known as the arch was appointed and later came Vickers when finally the longed for miters was seen again in the land they had been absent too long the nominal link snapped the great native tradition was broken the titles of the ancient seas given up as if in sleep by their lineal heirs were never reclaimed so far as surface connection goes and it goes far with people in general who neither reason nor read but get all their ideas from what they see and hear this was the most tragic loss which could possibly have be fallen the post reformation church the English Benedictines kept the thread of their own dynasty in their hands but this did not affect the Catholic body and delay interest the stranger who could not destroy the life and blessing of the first born has had possession for three centuries and a half by royal grant of his home and of his very name end of chapter seven