 Chapter 8 of Blessed Edmund Campion This is a LibriVox recording. While LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Blessed Edmund Campion by Louise Imogen Ginney Innisfittable Home, 1580 Sir Francis Walsingham had a wonderfully well-organized bi-system. Far superior, as Simpson remarks, to the attempts of the Spaniards in the same line. Therefore each of the missionaries was cautioned to travel under a name other than his own. Campion fell back upon his beloved alias of Mr. Patrick, as he had done for the brief visit to Geneva. His friends made him drop it as they neared the channel. Being Irish, it was doubly dangerous. Since here it reams, the home-goers got their first hearty news of the so-called Geraldine insurrection in Ireland, acted upon in July 1579, and crushed almost as soon by the masquerade Sir Mwick in Kerry. It had been nursed by European feelings against Elizabeth's policy in Flanders and her piracies on the high seas. And the great religious grudge found it a convenient opening. Dr. Nicholas Sander, who was not a papal legate, but stood nonetheless for the Pope's active goodwill in the matter, joined the expedition with James Fitzmorris, Spanish soldiers, Roman officers, ships and supplies. That expedition did not, as we know, dislodged Jezebel from her throne, but it gave sufficient heartbreak to our messengers of the Gospel of Peace, who are now sure to be mixed up with it in the popular mind. The situation was certainly an awkward one. It gave unique plausibility to Walsingham's claim that, to quote Father Poland, the preaching of the old faith was only a political propaganda. Father Robert Parsons faced the future on behalf of the rest in the spirit of a brave man. Seeing that it lay not in our hands to remedy the matter, our consciences being clear, we resolved ourselves with the apostle through evil report and good report to go forward only with the spiritual action we had in hand. And if God had appointed that any of us should suffer in England under a wrong title, as himself did, under the case of a malifactor, we should lose nothing thereby, but rather gain with him who knew the truth and whom only in this enterprise we desired to please. Danger was a spur and not a bridle to Campion's devoted will. But he began to foresee little fruit from labors on his native ground with so much fierce misunderstanding against him, and to fear that he had not done well and so gladly laying down what was, after all, steady and successful work in Bohemia. With this buzzing scruple he went to the President for advice. Alan replied that the work in Bohemland, excellent at all points as it had been, yet could be done by an equally qualified person, or at least by two or three such persons. Whereas in his own necessitous England, Campion would be given strength and grace to supply for many men. At reams during his waiting time, Campion preached one of his famous sermons to the students. It gave him a pathetic pleasure to be complimented upon his ready English, of which he had spoken little in private and not a word in public for eight years. His text is reported to have been Luke 12.49. I am come to send fire upon the earth, and what will I but that it shall be kindled? And at one point he cried out in so earnest a manner, Fire, fire, fire, fire, that those outside the chapel ran for the order buckets. But a careful reading of what was then spoken suggests quite a different passage of Holy Scripture as present in Campion's mind. His theme was the ruin wrought by the conflagration of heresy, now attacking a third generation of Christian souls, and to be put out, he says, by water of Catholic doctrine, milk of sweet and holy conversation, blood of potent martyrdom. Isaiah 64.11 runs, Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praise thee, is burned up with fire, and all our pleasant things are laid waste. This very passage had been alluded to in one of Campion's former exhortations, and may have been a favorite with him. The whole trend indeed in every part of this reams sermon bear out the thoughts not of the apostles' page, but of the prophets. Bishop Goldwell and Dr. Morton, the highest in office of the missionary party, remained at reams. Three Englishmen, a lay professor of law, and two priests joined in, to fill up the gap, and another Jesuit, who had been laboring in Poland. This was father Thomas Cottam, ordered home to restore his health, but destined, as were so many of his comrades for martyrdom. The little band of fifteen divided and sailed from different ports, Campion with Parsons and one lay brother, Ralph Emerson, headed for Calais as their point of departure, going by way of St. Omars, not a little encouraged to think that the first mission of St. Augustine and his fellows into our island was by that city. Here there was another Jesuit college. The Flemish fathers croaked friendly warnings in their ears, for it was common rumor in St. Omars that the Queen's Council had full information of the appearance, dress, and movements of the exiles, and had officers posted to way lay them on arrival. They had come on foot nearly nine hundred miles and were not likely to give up the object of their journey. But they took precautions. It was decided that Parsons should go first in military attire, accompanied from the Low Countries by a good youth who passed as his man George, and that if Parsons got safely to Dover, he was descent for Campion in the faithful little soul Ralph Emerson. An English gentleman living overseas for his conscience brought father Parsons his fine disguise, nothing less than a captain's uniform of buff leather with gold lace, big boots, sword, hat, plume, and all. Campion when he had gone sat down to write to the general of the society about him with his inevitably pictorial touch. Father Robert sailed from Calais after midnight. They got him up like a soldier, such a peacock, such a swaggerer, such duds, such a glance, such a strut. A man must have a sharp eye indeed. He adds, to catch any glimpse of the holiness and modesty that lurks there underneath it all. He goes on to explain how he is laying out money to buy numerous and silly clothes to dress up myself and Ralph, whereby to cheat the madness of this world. Father Parsons, like Campion himself in lesser roles, must have been a dramatic genius. For arriving at Dover on the 12th of June, and falling into the hands of the searcher, he so won him over by the mere swagger and strut aforementioned, as not only to be passed without inquiry, but to be helped to a horse to carry him to Gravesend. Thereupon the captain was quick to bespeak the interest of so unexpectedly polite a functionary in his friend Mr. Edmunds, described as a jewel merchant lying at St. Omers. And he gave the searcher a letter recommending London as a good market, to be forwarded post haste to that gentleman, and to be shown to the searcher again by Mr. Edmunds himself when he came over. And by the reception of that letter, Campion learned that Father Parsons was scot-free and speeded on his way. On the feast of his old college patron, St. John the Baptist, Mr. Edmunds, followed by Brother Ralph, his supposed servant, boarded the vessel bound for Dover. At daybreak they stepped ashore under the white cliffs, and there kneeling a moment in the shadow of a rock, Campion renewed his offering of himself without reserve or condition to the god of hosts for the dark warfare which lay before him. Meanwhile the dispositions of the searcher, who evidently put in no appearance, had undergone a forced change. He and the mayor of the town had been reprimanded by the council for letting Papus slip through their nets. Moreover there had been furnished by a spy a detailed description of Cardinal Allen's brother, who was about to pass through Dover on his way to Relitus in Lancashire. And as Gabriel Allen and Edmund Campion looked very much alike, our jewel merchant found himself instantly under arrest. With an accuracy which he was not in the least aware of, the mayor charged him and the lay brother of being foes to the Queen's religion and friends to the old faith, with sailing under false names and with returning for the purpose of propagating popery. Campion offered to swear that he was not Gabriel Allen but offered in vain. The mayor had a hasty conference and ordered a mounted guard to carry both prisoners up to St. Francis Walsingham and the council. All this time Campion was praying to God for deliverance and earnestly begging St. John the Baptist to intercede for him and his companion. They were waiting near the closed door of a room. Suddenly wrote Campion himself long after to the father general. Suddenly cometh forth an old man. God give him grace for his pains. Well, quote he, it is agreed you shall be dismissed. Fare you well. After which the two Jesuits left without further notice or opposition and travel as fast as ever they could to London. Father Parsons had reached the city not without adventure but without mishap a fortnight before. Yet as no word had been received since from him, Campion had no idea how to proceed or wither to go nor could he inquire without arousing suspicion. Fortunately Parsons had given to some watchful young Catholics a description of the jewel merchant and his man. Ralph Emerson was easily recognizable on account of his extremely short stature. Thus they had hardly touched the wharf at the heith before a stranger, Thomas Jay, stepped to the gangway with a welcoming gesture saying, Mr. Edmunds, give me your hand. I stay here for you to lead you to your friends. Under this guidance Campion reached London and Chancellery Lane where he was clothed and armed and provided with a horse. He must have been astonished to learn under whose roof he was so safe and so comfortable, for it was none other than that of the chief pursuant. Here was indeed a case of the bird nesty in the cannon's mouth. St. Augustine warns us that we are not to think that ungodly men are kept in this world for nothing, nor that God has no good purpose of his own to fill through them. One cause of the miraculous preservation of the ancient faith under Elizabeth lay in the fact that many an official, high and low of that time serving government, was in the pay of their recusant gentry. A strange situation it was, and by no means an infrequent one, when some of these, brought before the magistrates, would be discharged on the assurance of the bought over official that the prisoner was an honest gentleman thus averting all suspicion from the latter for the time being. The band of lay Catholics, some of whom Campion had known from boyhood like Henry Vo and Richard Stannerhurst were acting as friends, freely leaked together as occasion arose for the helping of priests and the furthering of religion. Their time, their thoughts, their self-sacrifice, their purses were at the service particularly of the Jesuits, persons habitually being described by St. Walter Mildmay in the Star Chamber as lewd runnigates, a sort of hypocrites, a rabble of vagrant friars. The leader of them all in his inspiring zeal, though not highest in station, was George Gilbert, a rich young squire only estates which were confiscated in the end, in Buckinghamshire and Suffolk. He was a convert, great rider and athlete, dear to many, but in secret a lover of apostolic poverty living for others. In short, a saint. He spent himself to the last breath for the faith as truly as if he had perished at Tiber and Tree. In banishment he still served the same cause by his forethought and generosity and the use of such worldly goods as were left to him, for he became responsible at Rome for the series of paintings of the English martyrdoms which gave their chief historical standing to the beatifications of 1886. Thus Gilbert, living and dead, was Blessed Edmund Campion's availing friend and lover. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of Blessed Edmund Campion This is a LibraVox recording, or LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org Recording by Elaine Conway England Blessed Edmund Campion by Louise Imogen Gwinnie Chapter 9 Scamishing the English Countess 1580 The devoted George Gilbert, his fellowship of young men and those whom they gathered together, met on the Feast of St Peter and Paul, June 29th, to hear the first time for the Campion Preach. It was no easy task to find a safe and suitable auditorium, but Lord Padgett, one of their own number, was daring enough to hire from Lord Norris, the hall of a great house in the neighbourhood of Smithfield. All the servants and porters were turned out for the occasion, and gentlemen took their places. Within a few days, however, rumours about Campion Sermon and about Campion were flying over the city. There were a number of spies about, instructed by the council, pretending to be lapsed Catholics or unsettled Protestants, and trying hard to bag such new and shining birds as the Jesuits. But Campion had a friend at court who warned him, and therefore held only private conferences in friendly houses with those whom he knew. The missionaries were sent to strengthen the wills of their wavering Catholics, and not primarily to make converts. Personal dealings with would-be converts were never attempted except a supplementary to the action of the lay helpers who took all the soundings and gave any need for catacysing. When Parsons, who had been away in the country, got back to town, Mr Henry Orton and Father Robert Johnson had been tracked and imprisoned. Through Slade, the apostate, informer, and it became plain to the rest of the little band gathered about Parsons and Campion that, for reasons immediate and remote, both fathers must be spirited away. Each went mounted, with a companion, Gervais Pierre Point, being Campion's guide, and at Hoxton in July the priests parted for their separate fields of action. Just before that, however, though arrived as a deputy to them, Mr Thomas Pound of Belmont, the best known perhaps of all the English prisoners for the faith, he was committed to jail sixteen times and past thirty years' endurance. Pound had managed to bribe the jailer of the Marshall Sea to let him out for this short journey, best anxious for the good repute of the fathers. He wrote a post-haste to tell them that enemies in London were spreading the report, that they had come over the political purposes, and that if in the midst of their apostolic work in the shires, they should be taken and executed, the government would be sure to issue pamphlets, as was its habit, defaming their motives and slandering the Catholic body. Therefore he begged both Jesuits to write a vindication of their presence and purpose in England, which, signed and sealed, might be given to the public if things came to the worst. The certain accusation and its answer had been debated before, and counseled by many clergy who had contented themselves with a green to swear, when called upon that they had no business whatever in hand but that of religion. But Campion now drew up his own document, then and there at a table where the others were talking. In it he declares that my charge is of free cost to preach the gospel, to cry alarm spiritual, that matters of state are things which appertain not to my vocation and I'll straightly forbid, things from which I do gladly estrange and sequester my thoughts. And never thinking of himself, to fired with confidence in his cause, he goes on to beg leave for a public presentment of the faith. He says in the course of this splendid little Philippic, I should be loath to speak anything that might sound of an insolent brag or challenge. In this noble realm, my dear country, it shows completely the partisan temper of the time that is his statement got exactly that name and no other fastened upon it. It was called everywhere Campion's brag and challenge and its modest author was content and ridiculed for the implication that his own powers were so very superior that he must of course get the better of others in any argument. Pound took his copy which Campion forgot to seal, back to London, read it in raptures, let it be seen, admired, talked about and transcribed. This was his curious way of keeping a secret. The result was that what was meant to meet a particular crisis and serve for a lost will and testament became his common property beforehand as any ballad sold in the streets. Live view measures were at once taken by the Bishop of Winchester and the state hypocritically urging conspiracy pounced upon a host of Catholic Lords and gentlemen. Yet Campion's little composition which bred all this fury only asked for three sorts of indifferent and quiet audience. One hearing before the Lords in Council on the relation of the church to the English government, the next before the head of houses of both universities, on the proofs of the truth of the Catholic religion, the last before the court spiritual and temporal, wherein I will justify the said faith by the common wisdom of the Law's standing. Then he pleads indifferent and almost affectionate words for a special audience of a noble grace, the Queen. In his candour and fearless simplicity he believed that opponents had only to hear to be convinced, thus crediting them with that honestness in religious matters which he possessed himself, and which only a very few of the best potistants of that day shared with him. Campion closes his appeal with a wonderfully beautiful reference to the vowed Seminarian priests and in a lofty music of good English worthy to stand by any passage of like length in the great prose classics, hearken to those which spend the best blood in their bodies for your salvation. Many innocent hands are lifted up and to heaven for you daily under hourly by those English students whose posterity shall not die, which beyond the seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge of the purpose, are determined to never to give you over, but either to win you to heaven or to die upon your pikes, and touching our society, be it known unto you that we have made a league, all the Jesuits in the world, your succession and multitude must overreach all the practices of England, cheerfully to carry the cross that you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, when we have a man left to enjoy your tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or to be consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun, it is of God, it cannot be withstood, so the faith was planted, so it must be restored. 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 rigor. I have no more to say, but to recommend your case, and mine to Almighty God, the searcher of hearts, who send us of his grace, and set us at accord before the day of payment, to the intent we may at last be friends in heaven, where all injuries shall be forgotten. Parsons work lay in Gloucester, Hereford, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, and Derbyshire, campions in the more southerly Midlands. The wandering leaf-ite, with his attendant gentleman, would approach at evening, and with caution, the friendly roof, either Catholic or the Protestant containing Catholics, and be received at the door as strangers, then conducting it to an inner room where all who seek the priest's ministrations kneel and ask for his blessing. That night all is got ready, and confessions are heard, instructions given, reconciliations effected, at dawn there is mass, preaching, and holy communion, and the travellers depart for the next household station. Most edifying accounts are given of the devotion of good married confessors, who were scattered all over the land. The Jesuits men met with many secular, whom we find in every place, whereby both the people is well served, and we much eased in our charge. These were the old Marian priests, active in obscurity. The harvest is wonderful great, so many show a conscience pure, a courage invincible, zeal incredible, a work so worthy, the number innumerable, of high degree, of mean calling, of every age and sex. The solaces that are ever intermingled with the miseries are so great that they do not only can't avail, the fear of what punishment temples so ever, but by infinite sweetness, make all worldly pains, be they never so great, seem nothing. The sake of these good people, which had lived before so many ages, in one only faith, day by day, running in and out of all the busy heroic toil, is the very thread of danger and alarm. We are sitting merrily at the table, conversing familiarly on matters of faith and devotion, for our talk is generally of such things. When comes a hurried knock at the door, we all start and listen, like deer when they hear the huntsman, if it is nothing, we laugh at our fright. Then there was Calumni, a far more difficult thing to accept than saying gay spirit. They tear and sting us with their venomous tongues, calling us seditious, hypocrites, yay, heretics too, which is much laughed at, the people hereupon is ours. And again the house where I am is sad, no other talk but of the death, flight, prison, or spoil of their friends, nevertheless they proceed with courage, very many even at this present, being restored to the church, new soldiers give in their names while the old offer up their blood, by which holy hosts and ablations God will be pleased, and we shall, no question, by him overcome. These are extracts from Campion's letters, and give a clear idea of his life during his visitations of 1580 to 1581. There were then many more manor houses, kept up as such, than there are now, most of those which Campion visited, had their hiding place or priest's halls, to which he could always fly, when safety demanded it. He settled a host of weak Catholics in their religion, and also received a great many conspicuous converts. It will be noted that the little Jesuit mission was directed to the gentry, this was not through accident or partiality or snobbery. The gentry had most personal weight, they were better able to protect a hunted man, and they were naturally supposed to have strict notions of honour. This last was a point on which everything depended, moreover the old spirit of feudalism was not so dead, but that through them all workedmen on their estates all connected by interest, with them in the towns could be reached and influenced. In a hurried campaign, every consideration of prudence and forethought would choose them, so to speak, as the outworks of the citadel. The country districts north and south were all still favourable to Catholicism, London, the University of Cambridge, and some larger towns and seaports, especially in the west were half Puritan or Calvinistic, half irreligious and indifferent. The ancient faith, as was well said by Sir Cathbert Sharp, for the most part still lay like leaves at the bottom of men's hearts, and if the vessel were ever so little stirred came to the top. A thoughtful living writer sums it up as his conclusion that England would have resumed the faith with a sigh of relief, had it not been for the resentment spread by the Catholic plotters. Considering the frightful circumstances of the body to which these men belonged, it is putting too great a strain, perhaps upon human nature, to expect smooth behaviour from every individual in it. The genuine plotters were few, against them stands the passionate loyalty of a persecuted minority, both all along and in the one great crisis. When the deliverer loomed up in the shape of the Philip's Armada, blessed and indulged, like a crusade of old, where were they? Supposed to be so sick of queen and country, hand in impoverished pocket, strengthening the national defences, cutlass on thigh, manning the English fleet. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Blessed Edmund Campion This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Elaine Conway, England. Blessed Edmund Campion by Louise Imogen-Guinny. Chapter 10 Many Labours and a Book 1580 Campion passed four months of pleasant weather in hard and happy work, moving about Northamptonshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire. Some lovely little spiritual adventure starred his path, and the paths of others, wherever he went. He must have seen more than once, from some, Hilly Road, afar off, even if he never entered it. The Tarrie City, branchy between towers, which was so dear to him to the last. In October of this year, 1580, he was bidden towards London as far as Uxbridge, farther he could hardly come, without the gravest peril, as the Privy Council were just issuing their third warrant for the capture of Jesuits. There he was joined by Father Parsons, and several other missionaries. A conference was held, it was represented that Norfolk and Lancashire were eager to claim Father Campion's administrations, and it was decided that he was to go to Lancashire, preferable as being not only father from London, and also more affected to the Catholic religion, but as having better private libraries, for they were now urging Campion to write again, this time something on the burning questions of the day, aimed particularly at the universities, where his challenge was still the staple of daily talk, and therefore to be written in Latin. We are not so sure nowadays that controversy does much good, but one reason for that may be that we have few Campions to carry it on, it is well to remember that people then read nothing else, except poetry. Campion's work was his famous disem ratione, proposite in causa fide, or as the title is given in its only modern translation, 1827, ten reasons for renouncing the Protestant and embracing the Catholic religion. At first the author was for calling his thesis heresy and despair the heresy desperata, his counsellors agreed amid laughter that it would be odd indeed to nail such a title as that to the mast, when heresy was so wonderful and flourishing, but according to Campion's own philosophy, there was no life in an argument, whose only premise is, as he once said, our curses, starvation and the rack. Here we come back at once to his root principle, which modern research so fully justifies in regard to the England of his own day. A gentleman saint, who uttered many an ironic, but never a contemptuous, word. Campion could not be persuaded that the received religion was a genuine thing. He believed that temporal interest alone led people to conform to the new alterations and restrictions, that the lay statesmen who were pushing things through were concerned not with doctrine, but only with negations of doctrine, and that on the other side nothing was so promising, nothing so gloriously fruitful as persecutions and martyrdoms. First and to last he had a strong dash of optimism. In this spirit he began his last treatise, writing it as best he could, depending on his memory, and on such books as country squires might have in their houses, and putting it together in among the almost incessant journeys, duties, fatigues and alarms of the next few weeks. The two Jesuit friends parted at Axbridge, with a tenderness of heart which in such a case, and so dangerous a time may be imagined. Gervais Pierpont conveyed Campion into Nottinghamshire to spend Christmas at Thorsby, his home fence into Derbyshire, where one of the young tempests succeeded as guide, and the gentleman who directed the Yorkshire part of the journey reached in safety the house of his own brother-in-law, Mr William Harrington, of Mount St John, near Thorsk, where the father was received with open arms. Here he settled down for less than a fortnight at his desk, among his notebooks at peace. But to have him in the house at all was to risk the contagion of the things of God. The eldest of the large family, a wild boy, his father's namesake, was quick to feel the spell of this most attractive guest, not only his eloquence and fire, says Father Henry Moore of Campion, but a certain hidden infused pair made his words strike home. Some of these simple words of every day struck home to the young William Harrington, so that fourteen years afterwards he found the palm branch of martyrdom growing green at fair for him on the public execution ground. At this very time of Campion's visit, the length of 1581, there was another lad of 14 or 15, John Pibb Bush, running about the streets of Thorsk, his native village, who may have gone to confession to the strange priest at the manor, and wandered at him, and knowing that he too was sealed as a future holocaust in the same immortal cause. From Mount St John, where he must have tasted much natural happiness, Campion travelled into Lancashire under the protection of a former pupil and his wife. There he was affectionately welcomed and cared for in each of eight great houses, where himself and his spiritual conferences were still a glowing tradition, sixty or seventy years afterwards. He had to live, think, write, and crowd. The local gentry drove from great distances, and slept in barns, only to hear and see him once. At Blaine's Coff Hall, the seat of the Worthingtons, the Persuvans would have discovered them, where he was walking in the open air, had it not been for the cleverness and splendid presence of mind of a faithful maid servant, standing hard by. She ran up against him, and a pretended fit of temper, and shoved him into a shallow pond. The Persuvans, sent out by the terrible Huntington, president of the North, to apprehend a distinguished cleric and scholar, naturally navigated that murder-covered yokel a second glance. While the Campion would have learned by now the fate of most of the enthusiastic band, who had travelled in his company, from Rome, all reams, to England, during the preceding summer. Five priests, including the lovable gay-hearted Sherwin, were languishing in sails and on the rack. Father Parsons, though hunted, was free. Following a suggestion of Campions, he set up a private printing press, in order that the ten reasons and other Catholic works of defensive controversy might be issued as they were needed. Publishing, like every other major industry open to the Catholics, was outlawed. Devotional and doctrinal books had to be brought out in this whole and corner fashion, if at all. Another of those lay associates of the mission, whose devotion and usefulness had been proved at every point, came forward to bear the brand of the new enterprise. The young Stephen Brinkley, Bachelor of Civil Law, called by Parsons a gentleman of high attainments, both in literature and in virtue, volunteered to become manager and head compositor, and amid many dramatic and exciting interruptions, carried his task through machinery. Types, paper, and the rest were bought, with money supplied by the ever-helpful George Gilbert. Brinkley himself, to avert suspicion, had to buy horses for his workmen, and attire them like persons of quality, whenever they went abroad. He quite knew what he was risking, after him still another night of letters, in a far less perilous field, offered himself in the person of Thomas Fitzherbert of Swinerton. Then newly married, long afterwards a priest, and rector of the English College in Rome, his not-underlightful duty was to verify the massive references, and authorities quoted in the margins of Campion's manuscript, this he did in a scholarly way, satisfactory to the scholarly author, who believed in research, and liked nothing at second hand. Lastly Parsons, as Campion's superior, recalled him to London in April or May, to see the little volume through the press, and cautioned him to put up only at-ins on the way, where happily he might pass as the gentleman in the parlor. Thirty miles or so north of the great city, Campion had one of his ever-recurring narrow escapes, a spy, hungu for a reward, had docked his steps on his way from York, at a certain town not named, a little boy who knew Campion, by sight overheard this man describing the father to a magistrate, and calling him Jesuit, a word the child had never heard. He ran straight to the tavern, where the Jesuit had put up and seceded, in finding him and warning him, so the bird was safely on the wing before the fowlers were in sight. Campion came to Westminster and Whitefriars, as set to work diligently as ever. With Father Robert he had frequent occasion to visit the Bellarmies of Uxenden, all near Harrow, a family under his roof, his old friend Richard Bristo, had died in the preceding autumn. Their later adversities and annihilation were only too typical of Catholic domestic history under Elizabeth, going to Harrow meant going up the Edgeway Road, and in the mouth of that road between Mastlands, facing the spot across the street where the Marble Arch Nastlands was the famous Tyburn gallows, this particular one had been put up new for Doctor Storey's execution ten years before. It had three posts set in a triangle, with connecting crossbars at the top, once every week, without intermission, batches of criminals perished there, even now, and with far greater frequency afterwards, holy and innocent men and women made up a large proportion of the criminals, and remembering these dear souls, and conscious that there was to follow them in confession of the King of Martyrs, Campion would always solemnly take off his hat, and pause in passing to salute Tyburn Tree. Meanwhile, in the quiet and seclusion of Dame Cecily Stoner's Park, near Henley, and in the Attics, which he bravely set apart for the purpose, the DeSerm Rationes got itself safely printed by Stephen Brinkley, at his seven honest men. Campion, with fine bravado, dated it from Cosmo Polis, and the distribution of it was as audacious as the dating. The first copies bound, about 400 in number, were hurriedly stabbed, instead of stitched, in time to go up Rocksford Commemoration, June 27th of that year. The Church of St Mary the Virgin was then used for all the acts, the accommodation of which a century later, the Sheldonian Theatre was built. When the company entered St Mary's, the benches were found littered with the seditious books, the dedication was to the studious collegians, flourishing at Oxford and Cambridge, and the use in question were just in the humour to read them, and read them they did, then and there, instead of attending to the important annual function going on. This rudeness bred protest and protest bred a lively scene. To understand it, we must recall that the undergraduate element was then, by comparison, the conservative element. Heads of houses, fellows and tutors, learned and popular men had been removed wholesale by the Elizabethan settlement of religion in favour of new men concisely described as extremists from Geneva, intellectually inferior to those who had been displaced, and representing a different spirit and different traditions. The student body looked on them with scorn, again to court another chief authority on this subject. The young oxonians did not bear easily the Elizabethan drill, and felt that if their liberty must be crushed they would feign have it crushed by something more venerable than the mushroom authority of the ministers of the Queen. They were as tinder, and Cambian's book was just the sort of spark to set them in a blaze. Excited government told off relays of clergymen to court Marshal and shoot it. Elmer, Bishop of London, wished to commission nine deans, seven archdeacons, and two regious professors of divinity, punished the tiny offender, but the actual ammunition brought into the field was not quite so imposing as all this. The answers were duly published, dealing in the most unmeasured personal abuse of Cambian. No attempt was made in any instance to rival either his religious fervour or his literary grace. His last labour with his pen made in short a very great and extremely prolonged style. Its fate was a romantic one from start to finish, for it was so quickly and thoroughly confiscated that not more than a couple of copies are now known to exist. Swipe the outcry, or because of it addition auto addition was called for. There have been nearly 30 reprints in the original Latin, and many translations into modern languages, inclusive of three beautiful translations into the good English Common in 1606, 1632 and 1687, one of which should be reissued for ten reasons, written under such immense difficulties, had all of Cambian seal and pith, and was a model of eloquence, elegance, and good taste. Mark Antony Muret, the greatest Latinist of the time, called it libellum orium, a golden little book, written by the very finger of God. Cambian had gone in his ardent, sensitive, rhetorical, compendious way over the whole ground of the credentials of that church which had had the allegiance of England for more than a thousand years. Scripture, the fathers, the councils, the evidence of human history, all drawn upon in the rest spirit of the new learning. The characteristic note of personal appeal to the Queen is not lacking here at the end. Cambian's theme is the church, and he quotes from the prophetizer, King shall be thy nursing fathers, and Queen's thy nursing mothers, and he names, as among the great monarchs, his joy it was to further the church in their day. Saint Edward the Confessor, Saint Louis of France, Saint Henry of Saxony, Saint Wenceslaslas, of Bohemia, Saint Stephen of Hungary, and the rest. Then he cries out to Elizabeth, most mighty Queen, to listen, for this prophet is speaking unto thee, is teaching thee thy duty. I tell thee, one heaven cannot gather in Calvin, and these, thine ancestors, join thyself therefore to them. I'll shout thou, stand unworthy of that name, of thine, thy genius, thy learning, thy fame, before all men, thy fortunes. To this end do I conspire, and will conspire against thee, whatever be tideeth me, who am so often menaced with the gallows as a conspirator hostile to thy life, all hail thou good cross. The day shall come, O Elizabeth, the day, that shall make it all together clear, which of the two did love thee best, the company of Jesus, or the brood of Luther. Hardly was the last of the original imprints bound and distributed, when the perseverance, in search of what was roughly but significantly enough, called massing stuff, pounced upon Stoner Park, and caught red-handed there, and carried off the two gentlemen, John Stoner and Stephen Brinkley, and four of the printers, one of whom, a poor frightened fellow, conformed and was let off at once. William Hardly ordained the year before, who had in person strewn the ten reasons over the benches of the university church, and who made special gifts and copies in various colleges, was arrested a little later, his fate was not exceptional, like that of his comrades just mentioned, who were eventually released on bail. He suffered at Tyburn, and his mother, heroic as the mother of the Maccabees, stood by his young body in its butchering, and thanked God aloud for her privilege, and so giving back to him such a son. Campions spent St. John's day marking the first anniversary of his return to England at Lady Bamington's, at Twyford in Buckinghamshire, a house not many miles from Stoner, on the other bank of the Thames. He stayed a little while at Bledlow, also, and at Wyninge, with the dormers, his whole heart bent, every moment of the time upon his father's business, but his free days were almost done. The outcry redoubled, now that he had again succeeded in catching public attention. Fresh and monstrously cruel measures were therefore taken against all papists, nor his lacking, wrote to Aquaviva, the tender soul, who too well knew himself to be the cause of many sorrows, but that to our books written with ink should succeed others daily published, and written in blood. Father Parsons prudently ordered him back to the North, that he heard each other's confessions and renewal of vows at Stoner, and said goodbye, exchanging hats as a parting gift, after the friendly fashion of their time. Campion was to ride straight away into Lancashire to get his manuscript and notes left behind his former companion Ralph Emerson, going with him, and he was then to partake himself to the fresh mission field in Norfolk. As it fell out, he soon spurred back after Parsons to tell him of a letter that moment received. It was from a gentleman named Yate, then a prisoner for his religion, honestly begging Campion to visit to life at Grange, in Berkshire, the gentleman's own estate, hard-buy, where his wife and mother still were, together with Edward Yate, and part of a proscribed community of English rickety nuns, driven back into England by troubles in the Low Countries. Father Parsons, knowing the hires to be a conspicuous one, and already supplied with chaplains, was unwilling to grant the permission, but eventually he gave in, warning the two others not to tarry beyond one night or one day, and as a precaution, putting Campion under the lay brothers' care and obedience, Parsons parted from him not without a rueful and affectionate word. You are too easygoing by far, he said to his friend and fellow soldier, purposely giving its least heroic name to that intentionally prodigal zeal for souls. I know you, Father Edmund, if they once get you there, you will never break away. CHAPTER 11 OF BLESSED EDMOND 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 Paula Massina. BLESSED EDMOND CAMPION On the morning of July 12, Father Edmund and Brother Ralph, faithful to agreement, were in their saddles again, leaving the pious household refreshed but lamenting. Of the two priests who formed part of it, one, Father Collington or Colleton, escorted them some distance on their way. Campion had already been waylaid, at an inn near Oxford, by many friendly tutors and undergraduates. When up galloped the other chaplain of Lyford, Father Ford, he was a Trinity College man who had entered due way just after Campion's arrival there and was to follow him closely to martyrdom. Ford brought news that a large party of Catholics had come over to Lyford to visit the nuns and distressed if missing Father Campion were clamoring for his return. The Oxford group had been begging their old champion to preach to them, which he would not do until public a place. They now added their entreaties to those of the deputy of the strangers and offered to join these at Lyford. Surely he who had given a whole day to a few godly nuns, who needed him but little, could not refuse a Saturday and Sunday to so many soiled souls of every stripe and color, thirsting for the waters of life. The suit was insistent. Campion was inclined to give in, but referred his admirers to Brother Emerson as his provisional superior. He, in turn, was overborn. It seemed much safer, after all, for the precious father to be among friends, while he, Ralph, went on alone to fetch the books from Mr. Richard Hotens in Lancashire. So back to Lyford Campion went, to the poor little lay brothers' everlasting regret. On the following Sunday morning, the ninth after Pentecost, Campion preached at the Grange on the Gospel of the Day, the peculiarly touching Gospel of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, the changed and faithless city which stoned the prophets and knew not, in her day, the things that were to her peace. No one present ever forgot that heart-shaking sermon laden as it was with pathos and presentiment. There was an audience of sixty, including the Oxonians. Unfortunately, it included also George Eliot, a man of the most evil personal repute, an apostate, and a government spy armed with plenary powers. He was then under a charge of murder, and was anxious to whitewash himself in the eyes of the Council by some conspicuous public service. He had once been a servant of the Ropers at Canterbury, a Mrs. Yates' honest cook, who had known Eliot there in his decent days, let him in without question, whispering what a treat was in store for him in the preaching of none other than Father Campion. Though the warrant for the apprehension of the Jesuit was in Eliot's pocket, he little thought to capture him so easily and so soon. A servant had accompanied him to the gate. Eliot went back to this person, nominally to dismiss him as a heretic, really to speed him to a magistrate at Abingdon, for a force of an hundred men to arrest Campion in the Queen's name. Then he went piously upstairs to Mass. Edmund Campion's lost Mass, so far as we know. That and the sermon passed by in peace, and Eliot himself left. Immediately after dinner an alarm was given by a watchman posted in a turret, who saw the enemy far off. Campion sprang up and started to leave at once, and alone, saying that his chances of escape might be fair, and that his remaining would only involve the household in his comfort and danger. But they all clung to him, assuring him that Lyford was full of cunning secret passages and hidey-coles. And into one of these, in the wall above the gateway, he was forthwith hurried by Ford and Collington, who laid themselves down by his side and crossed their hands over their breasts. Back came Eliot with the magistrate, a civil squire, and the neighborly Berkshire Yeoman, who loathed the work. He made them turn the whole house topsy-turvy, nor desist till even fall, then finding nothing they withdrew. However, they returned almost in the same breath, egged on by Eliot, who now would have the walls sounded. The Abington magistrate apologized to Mrs. Yate, not for the Queen's warrant, but for his associate, the madman, as he called him, who was carrying it out. The lady was an invalid. Thinking not altogether of herself, she railed and wept. The magistrate kindly soothed her fears, and allowed her to sleep where she pleased, undisturbed by his men and their din. She chose to have a bed made up close to the hiding place. She was conducted thither with the honors of war, and a sentinel was posted at the room door. The tapping and smashing went merrily on elsewhere until late at night, when, by her orders, the sheriff's baffled underlings made a fine supper, and being worn out, fell asleep over their cups, even as they were expected to do. Poor Mrs. Yate was either by nature the silliest of women, or else her nerves were upset by illness and trying circumstances. For she sent for Father Campion, as well as for all her other guests, who were in that part of the house, and requested him, as he stood by her bedside, of all possible things, to preach to them just once more. One could not in courtesy refuse a hostess, however unreasonable, who was risking so much for him, nor would it have been like him to refuse. Allen tells us that it was his invariable habit to preach once a day at the least, often twice, and sometimes thrice, whereby through God's goodness he converted sundry in most shires of this realm of most wisdom and worship, besides young gentlemen students and others of all sorts. Father Campion discharged his task. As the little congregation broke up, someone stumbled in the dark, and several fell. The snoring sentinel awoke, searchers with lanterns and axes, swarmed up from below. There was nothing to be seen. Lyford was not honeycombed in vain with hidden passages. The men at arms had been fooled too often, and were angry with Elliot. Yet that functionary knew that something was still really afoot, that the alarm was not a false one. On going down the stairs again he struck his hand upon the wall over it. We have not broken through here, he said. A loyal servant of the Yates, who was at his side, and who knew it was just there at the refugee's lay, muttered that enough wall had been ruined already, and then went deadly pale while Elliot's eye was still on him. The latter called in triumph for Smith's hammer, and banged it into the thin timber partition, and into the narrow cell. And thus was Father Edmund Campion taken at Lyford Grange at dawn of Monday, July 17th, in the year 1581. He was quite calm, quite cheerful. With him were apprehended the two priests, seven gentlemen, and two yeoman. Forster, the sheriff of Berkshire, hitherto absent arrived. As he was an oxonian, and almost a Catholic, and kindly disposed towards Campion, he waited to hear from the council what was to be done. On the fourth day orders came to send the chief prisoners up to London under a strong guard. Leaving the old moated house and its many occupants now distracted with grief, Campion took horse at the door and rode slowly off, Elliot prancing in triumph at the head of the company, though the common people saluted him as Judas all along the way. The first halt was at Abingdon. Sympathetic Oxford scholars had come down to see the last of the great light of the university under such black eclipse. Elliot accosted his victim at table. Mr. Campion, I know well you are wroth with me for this work. He drew out a beautiful answer, sincere, composed, half playful. A saint's answer. Nay, I forgive thee, and in token thereof I drink to thee. Yay, and if thou wilt repent and come to confession, I will absolve thee, but large penance thou must have. At Henley Campion saw in the crowd Father Parsons servant, and greeted him as he could without betraying him. Father Parsons was near at hand, but was wisely kept indoors. A young priest, Mr. Philby the Younger, as he was called, a native of Oxford, is said to have here attempted to speak to Campion. He was at once seized upon as a traitorous comforter of Jesuits, and added to the cavalcade. At Colbrooke, less than a dozen miles from London, came fresh instructions from the council. Sheriff Forster had treated his prisoners most honorably. They were now to be made a public show. Their elbows were tied from behind. Their wrists roped together in front, and their feet fastened under the horses. Their leader was decorated with a paper pinned to his hat, Father Parsons had of late, on which enlarged lettering was inscribed, Campion, the seditious Jesuit. And in the skies he was paraded through the chief streets of the great city on market day. The mob roared with delight. But the wiser sort, says Holland Shed, lamented to see the land fall into such barbarism as to abuse in this manner a gentleman famous throughout Europe for his scholarship and his innocence of life. In this before any trial, or any proof against him, his case being prejudged, and he punished as if already condemned. Stephen Brinkley somehow obtained, as a souvenir of a fellow prisoner that thick, dark felt hat, which had been so ignominiously labeled in the cause of Christ. Years afterwards, when in Belgium, he put it into a reliquary, out of love and veneration towards that most holy martyr of God, his father and patron. A piece of it is at Rowhampton in the Jesuit Novitiate. On reaching the tower, the life-free captives were given up to the governor, Sir Owen Hopton. Taking his cue, he had Campion thrust at once into little ease. The famous tower-hole, not high enough for a man to stand upright in, no long enough for him to lie down in. After four days of this misery, he was suddenly taken out, put in a boat at the trader's gate-steps, and rowed to the townhouse of the Earl of Lustre. This nobleman and Edmund Campion, who had seen so much of each other for several years, had been placed by events in silent conflict. There stood the Earl of Bedford with two secretaries of state. There stood Campion's host, who for one reason or another had never haunted Catholics with the fixed fury of Wallingsham and Burgley, and thereby did not displease his irresolute royal mistress. There, a theatrical circumstance, was that royal mistress herself, a gleaming, stately vision in a great chair, head and front of a not unfriendly little inquisition. To the questions heaped upon him, Campion gave frank answers. On the matter of allegiance, he seemed to satisfy the company, who told him there was no fault in him, save that he was a papist. That, he modestly interrupted, is my greatest glory. The queen smiled upon him, and offered him liberty and honors. But under conditions which his conscience forbade him to accept, when he was courteously dismissed, Lustre, probably with a kind motive, sent a message to Hopton to keep up the flatteries of the new policy. Hopton put on an almost affectionate consideration for his important prisoner, and so fast as he was prompted by artful degrees, he suggested to him a pension, a high place at court, and even the promise eventually of the miter and revenues of the primatial sea of Canterbury. Well did the council know, all along, the value of the stubborn and unpurchasable confessors of Christ. To cap the matter, in Campion's case, it was publicly announced, both by Hopton and by Wallingsham, who knew the untruth of their announcement, that the Jesuit was at the point of recantation and protestant orthodoxy, and in full sight of the future archbishop Rick, to the great content of the queen. It flew all over London that he would presently preach at Paul's Cross, and there burned the D'Chem Rossiones with his own hand. Eventually Hopton returned to first principles and doors, and inquired point-blank of Campion whether he would give up his religion and conform. The reply is easily imagined. A continued course of weedling was wasteful business. So thought the council, and three days after his strange and sudden sight of the queen's grace at Lesterhouse, Edmund Campion, first kneeling down at the door, and invoking the holy name for steadying of his manhood, was stripped and fastened to the rollers of the tower rack. Blandishments had failed to move him. They would try mortal pain, and see what that could do. Torture, nevertheless, was as much against the laws of England then, though not against the laws of some less humane countries, as it is now. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of Blessed Edmund Campion. This is a Libra Volts recording, or Libra Volts recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org, recording by Elaine Conway, England. Blessed Edmund Campion by Louise Imogen Gwinnie. Chapter 12 The Thick of the Frey, 1581. Campion, in between the working of the rollers, was asked his opinion of certain political utterances in the words of his old friends, Allen and Bristo, and of Dr. Sander, also whether he considered the queen true and lawful, or pretensed and deprived. He refused to answer. Physical anguish could be little worse than the ineffable boredom of these two never quiet questions. He was then asked by the Governor, the Rackmaster, and others present, by whose command and counsel he had returned to England, by whom in England he had been received and befriended, in whose houses he had said mass, heard confessions and reconciled persons to his church, where his recent books printed, and to whom copies were given. Lastly, what was his opinion of the Bull of Pius V against Queen Elizabeth, a letter written at the time to items in the above category. Houses were searched, persons of mark were apprehended, tried in the star chamber, and sentenced. Almost every man's or townhouse where Campion had been harboured, became known, and even the names of those Oxford Masters of Arts who had followed him to Leiford. The Government gave out that he had confessed upon the rack, and implicated his two trusting friends. The alleged facts naturally became a general scandal, and bread, grief, and horror among the Catholics who, no less than Protestants, were thus driven to believe them. The secrets were probably given up under panic by three serving men, and by Paul Gervais, Pierre Pointe. It was a common trick of the time, though not peculiar to it, to show a prisoner a lying list of names purporting to have been extracted from colleagues, so that he himself might be trapped into endorsing the suspicions held in regard to those names. But it is clear that Campion was brought to mention, only a few who, as he was aware, were formally known to his examiners as Catholic reclusants, and only after a solemn oath from the commissioners, that no harm could accrue to them in consequence of such supplementary mention. Even this he had every cause to regret. The gentlemen and gentle women on Lord Burley's lists were carefully informed, when arrested that it was Campion who had betrayed them, a cruel slander which he could refute only at the foot of the scaffold. Thanks to the reports, first of his backsliding, then of his treachery, his great reputation for the time being was clean gone. Having thus been given forth to the public as a knave, he was now to be set before them as a fool, and shown to be one who possessed neither sort of superiority, moral or mental. Many courtiers having a purely artistic interest in Edmund Campion, had bet that he might obtain the trance he had often asked for, of being heard in a disputation. This request was now suddenly granted. The conference was public, and came off of the Norman Chapel of the Tower, which was crowded. Two deans, Noel of St. Paul's, and today of Windsor, were appointed to attack Campion. He was to answer all objections as he could, but was forbidden to raise any of his own. Clark, the bitter Puritan preacher of Grey's Inn, and Whitaker, the regious professor of divinity in Cambridge, were the notaries. The line to be baited did not even know that there was to be a conference, until he was brought to it under a strong guard. Time for preparation had been denied him. Platforms and their tables spread with books of reference, pens and paper. One who was there tells us how easy and ready were his answers, how modest his mienne, how that high-spirited nature so bore the scorn, the abuse and the jests heaped upon him, as to win great admiration for the majority of those who heard him for the first time. He began by asking very pertinently whether this was a just answer to his challenge, first rack him, then to deprive him of books, notes and pen, lastly to call upon him to debate, and he added, wishing to be fully understood by the audience, that what he had asked for was quite another sort of hearing, a hearing under equal conditions before the universe is. During the course of this first conference he was twice most unfairly tripped up, once over a quotation in which he was right, though he could not then and there prove it, and again over a page of the Greek Testament, in such small type that he could not read it, and had to put it by when it was handed to him, thereby drawing down upon himself the ridiculous taunt that he knew no Greek. This he took silently and with a smile, at the end of the six hours he had more than stood his ground. The deans complained afterwards that a number of gentlemen present, neither unlearned nor ill-affected, considered that Master Campion had the best of it. Some common people who thought so too, and said so in the streets, paid dearly for their boldness, one of these gentlemen favorably impressed was Philip, Oliver Rundle, then in the flesh of worldly pride and pleasure. He was the real victory of the Jesuit apostle, for he received at that time and in that place the first ray of divine grace, strong enough to change gradually in him the whole motive and cause of that intensity of life, which never failed the Howard's, as he stood leaning forward in the foreground of the day, in that solemn interior, tall and young with his great rough and embroidered doublet, and his brilliant dark eyes held by the pathetic figure of Master Campion, how little could he have foreseen his own weary term of suffering in that gloomy fortress, and his sainted death there at the end of the years. There were three other conferences under like conditions, but in other quarters with full fresh adversaries, Campion was again appointed only to answer, never to oppose, that is to answer miscellaneous and disjointed objections against the Catholic Church, without ever being allowed to build up any harmonious apology for his own system. The last conference was notable for its brow-beating and threatening of a too successful adversary. The Bishop of London privately came to the conclusion that the verbal tournament was doing no good whatever to the sacred cause of protestantism. The Council agreed, and ended it. Towards the end of October, Campion was wracked for the third time, and with the utmost severity, so that he thought they meant this time to kill him, but his fortitude was unshaken. A rough and honest first cousin to the Queen, Henry Carey, Lord Hunston, growled that it were easier to pluck the heart out of Campion's breast, than to rest from him one word against his conscience. His arms and legs went quite numb after this final torture. The keeper, who was won over by his endearing prisoner, and was always as gentle with him as he dared to be, inquired next day how they felt. Not ill, said Father Edmund, with all of his old brave brightness. Not ill, because not at all. Never once until now had he been accused of any conspiracy, but he was a troublesome person. He must be silenced somehow. With a tardy inspiration, the Council bent all their strength to get out to Campion some acknowledgement that he had been mixed up with the Spanish-Roman expedition, and the Irish rising of the preceding year. Not a shadow of proof could, of course, be produced, for such a child. Then, as a final and sure means of indicting him on some other count than that of religion, and of urging his execution upon the Queen, Walsingham, with Burley's conevance, had the treasonable plot out of his own inventive head, and got false witnesses to accuse Edmund Campion of it, and swear his life away. The plot of Rhymes and Rome was described as an attempt to raise this addition, and dethrone and kill the Queen. It had an imaginary but recent date, 1580. Everybody or anybody, when found convenient, could be accused of so elastic a plot. It was first charged against some 20 priests and laymen in this year, 1581, but it was brought up against the yellow verandals four years afterwards, despite the fact that the supposed interests of the Church were the last things likely to win his attention at the time assigned. On all Saints' Day arrived in England a suitor for the hand of Queen Elizabeth, France's Duke of Alencon, King of the Netherlands, the short-lived heir to the throne of King Henry III of France, with that King, while Duke of Anjou, and with Alencon for nine years past, as for three years to come, Elizabeth had carried on negotiations, which ended in smoke, but she now announced that she would marry at last. Little Foggy, as he endearingly called him, was ugly to a degree, and many years younger than Her Majesty. He was brother-in-law to the Queen of Scots, who was Her Majesty's prisoner at Sheffield. The dominant, ultra-bigoted party took extreme alarm at the near prospect of toleration for Catholics, which such a role much suggested to them. To reassure them it might just now be most useful, thought the Council to hang a Jesuit or two. On the 14th of the month, Cambian and eight others were arraigned before the grand jury in Westminster Hall, for treasonable intents of the Queen's deprivation and murder. The secret and privy practices of sinister devices, befitting one led astray by the devil, had Edmund Cambian Clark made his re-entry into England, the Pope meanwhile being not only aware of his act, but his author and on-setter. He was commanded, as were all those left with him, in a common accusation, to plead guilty or not guilty. Up went all the right arms of those devotees and dead men to this world, who travelled only for souls, as Cambian himself called them. All but his so disabled by the wrack, that he could not stir it from the third cuff, in which it lay. But a quick witted comrade turned and took off the cuff, humbly kissing the sacred hand so wrung for the confession of Christ, and lifted it high to cry its own mute, not guilty with the rest. The Spanish ambassador, Don Bernardino de Mendoza, standing close by, with his secretary, saw, with a pang of pity, that all the fingernails were gone from Cambian's swollen hands. The trial proper began on the twentieth, before such a presence of people, of the more honourable wise, learned and best sought, as was never seen or heard of in that court, in ours or our father's memories before us. So wonderful an expectation, there was to see the end of this marvellous tragedy, of, such as they knew, in conscience, to be innocent. They all heard Ralph Sherwin say, and allowed clear voice, the plain ground of our standing here is religion, and not treason. Chief Justice Ray presided, a Catholic at heart, and wretched, ever after, over this unwilling day's work. The prosecuting officers for the crime were the Queen Sergeant, Edmund Anderson, Popham, afterwards Chief Justice, and Egerton, afterwards the First Lord Ellesmere. The chief witnesses were George Elliott, Anthony Mundy, many creatures named Sled and Caddy, probably as evil a quartet as existed in contemporary England, and worthy forerunners of oats and bedlow. They had nothing left to swear, as Cambian reminded the jury, neither religion, nor honesty. In no special order, but with much ardour and diligence, all the old tires and trivial accusations brought forward and pressed in, Cambian being spokesmen throughout for the defence, and his alert mind, despite his weakened body meeting them all and rooting them, he was charged with having seduced the Queen's subjects from their allegiance, and reconciled them to the Pope. He caught up the word, we reconcile them to the Pope. Nay, then, what reconciliation can there be to him, since reconciliation is only due to God? This word, reconcile, signedeth not to alloys usage, and therefore is rested against us in aptly. The reconciliation that we endeavoured was only to God, as Peter saith, reconcilia mini domino. Be ye consoled unto the Lord, Cambian was informed, yourself came as procurator from the Pope and Dr Alan, to break these matters to the English papists. So he rejoined that, in his homeward voyage from Rome, and to take him by his vow of obedience, as a Jesuit, the which, accordingly, I enterpised, being commanded thereto. He had dined with Dr Alan at dreams, with whom also after dinner I walked in his garden, and not one jot of our talk glanced to the ground, or state of England, as to the Pope. He flatly, with charge in commandment, excused me from matters of state and regiment, followed a change of tactics. Afterclaps make those excuses but shadows. For what meaning had that changing of your name, where too belonged your disguising? In apparel, what pleasure had you to roist it, in a velvet tat and a feather, above leather jerkin, and velvet finitions? Can that be seen a professed man of religion, which hardly become a layman of gravity? No, there was a further matter intended. Had you come here there for love of your country, you would never have wrought a haggamugger, had your intent been to have done well, never have aided the light. Through which came him replied that Saint Paul, in order that living he might benefit the church more than dying, but took himself to sundry shifts, but that especially the changing of his name was very oft unfamiliar, and that he sometimes thought it expedient to be hidden, lest, being discovered, persecution should ensue thereby, and the gospel be greatly forestalled. If these shifts were then approved in Paul, why are they now approved in me, he an apostle, I a Jesuit. The same cause common to us both. I wished honestly the planting of the gospel, I knew a contrary religion professed, I saw if I were known I should be apprehended, I changed my name, I kept secretly. I imitated Paul, was I therein a traitor, the wearing of a buffed jerkin, a velvet hat, and such like, is much forced against me, I am not indicted upon the statute of apparel, indeed I acknowledge an offence to Godwards for so doing, and there of it doth grievously repent me, and I therefore do know, penance, that you see me, this charming rejoinder, again how more like, was in allusion to his rough gown of Irish frieze, and a huge black nightcap, having half of his newly shaven face. After all this mere hectoring, some pieces of evidence were produced. One of these was an intercepted letter, which Campion himself had written, on the tower after his first, and comparatively moderate racking, while it was still possible to use his hands, it was addressed to the admirable, and truly holy, but fussy, Mr Thomas Pound, who, well with alarm, at the pretended portrayals, had written to demonstrate with the Balvin Campion, the Queen's his council now read this passage from Campion's humble reply, it greadeth me much to have offended the Catholic Hall so highly as to confess the names of some gentlemen and friends, in whose houses I had been entertained, yet in this I greatly cherish and comfort myself, that I never discovered any secrets that I declared, that I would not come wrack, come rope. The garment of the reader in court was an obvious one, what concerned more suspiciously were nearer and to treason than this letter, it must needs be some grievous, matter, and very pernicious, that neither wrack nor rope can ring from him, but to Campion's even more obvious answer was that there he spoke as one, by profession and calling a priest, vowed to silence in regard to what was made known in the confessional, and yet to press on the wrack to divulge secrets that communicated to him. These were the hidden matters, in concealing of which I so greatly rejoiced, to the revealing whereof I cannot, nor will not, be brought, come wrack, come rope. While chosen was this answer of Campion's, it has been pointed out, that if he had stated here that he had told on no one who was not already found out, he would have loosed the informers, and Mannhund is afresh on the whole Catholic community, until his other friends, who had not been found out, were run down. Instead of that he drew off attention by reminding the court that he could not repeat what had been sacramentally confided to him. Most of his hearers were either Catholic, or had been Catholic, and actriest. He spoke truth, but he skipped explanations, and such is, more often than not, the highest wisdom in this complex world. There were now read out certain papers containing oaths to be administered to persons ready to renounce their obedience to her majesty, and to be sworn of the papal allegiance alone. These were said to have been found in houses where Campion had looked, and for religion, been entertained. Hence they were of his composing. He objected that the administering of oaths was repugnant to him, and exceeded his authority. Neither would I commit an offence, so thought to my profession for all the substance and treasure in the world. He went on to say, assuming for his purpose that the precious papers were not forged, though they really were so, that there was no proof of their connection with himself, nor was it even pretended that they were in his handwriting. Anderson replied with singular perversity, O'Donnellus, you professed papist, coming to a house and then such relics found after your departure. How can it otherwise be implied, but that you did both bring them and leave them there? So it is flat, they came there by means of a papist, ergo, by your means, the logician in Campion dashed to the floor. Could it be shown that no the papist ever visited that house, but himself, if not, they were urging his inclusion before framing a minor, which is imperfect, he added, and proves nothing. Apparently Sergeant Anderson, who's sufficiently enraged by now, is highly judicial retort, is on record. If here, as you do in schools, you bring in your minor under conclusion, you will prove yourself but a fool, but minor or conclusion, I will bring it to purpose and on. Elliot then rose as witness, and gave his account to the Sunday sermon at Slyford. I, Master Campion, spoke of anormatis in England, and of a day of change soon coming. Welcome to the shaken and dispersed Catholics, dreadful to the heretical masters of the land. What day should that be? Broken the Queen's Council, but that wherein the Pope, the King of Spain, and the Duke of Florence, have appointed to invade this realm? Campion turned his eyes on Elliot, though Judas, Judas, as in all other Christian commonwealths. So in England, many vices and iniquities do a band, whereupon as in every pulpit, every protestant doth, I pronounced a great day, not wearing any temporal potentate, should minister, but wearing the terrible judge, should reveal all men's consciences, and try every man. Any other day than this God, he knows I meant not. So much for the astonishing evidence of this most astonishing war trials, one only under Pontus Pilate accepted. The chief count against the defantant was the old one of the bull of deposition, and the denied authority of the queen in spirituals, that fretted family skeleton trotted out once more. You refused to swear to the supremacy, an notorious token of any evil will out of the crown. Campion, who was surely what Antony Wood quaintly calls him, a sweet disposition, and a well polished man, stated his position once more loosely and with perfect temper, began by referring to what passed at the Earl of Leicester's London house, not long since it pleased Her Majesty to demand of me whether I did acknowledge her to be my queen or no. I answered that I did acknowledge her highness, not only as my queen, but also as my most lawful governess, and being further required by Her Majesty, whether I thought the Pope might lawfully etch Communicator or no, I answered, I confess myself an insufficient umpire between Her Majesty and the Pope, for so high a controversy, rather neither the certainty is yet known, nor the best divines in Christen and Dum stand fully resolved. I acknowledge her highness as my governess and sovereign, I acknowledge Her Majesty both in fact, and by right to the Queen, I confess an obedience due to the crown, as to my temporal head and primate. This I served then, so I say now, if I failed in all, I am now ready to supply it, what would you more? I will willingly pay to Her Majesty what is hers, yet I must pay to God what is his. Then as for etch Communicating Her Majesty, it was exacted of me admitting that etch's communication were of effect, and that the Pope had sufficient authority, so to do. Whether then I thought myself discharged of my allegiance or no, I said that this was a dangerous question, and that they had demanded this, demanded my blood. Admitting, why admitting, I would admit his authority, and then he should etch Communicator, I would then do as God should give me grace, but I had never admitted any such matter, neither ought I to be rested with any such suppositions, to all this no rejoinder was made. It was the identical position taken up by many another harassed matter. The prosecution next turned to the remaining prismas, using the same weak, wrong scour machine tactics, Cambion often putting in a word to heart and one, to defend another, to guide a third, at a certain point exclaimed, so great are the treasons that I and the others have wrought, that the jailer, who has us in charge, told me at night that would we but go to the Anglican services, they would pardon us straight away. Serrano, who reports this as the answered things in general, at the close of the proceedings, their issue being pre-arranged, Cambion was allowed to make a speech to the jurors, he eloquently begged them to seek the certainties, and to remember the character of the evidence brought before him. Alas, he was appealing to bought men, who dared not be true. The pleadings had taken three hours, the jury deliberated, or seemed to do so, for an hour or more. Public opinion in the hall, as at the tower conferences, was overwhelmingly in favour of Cambion, but the Portwell, as Alan Haweson came back, fearful to be found no friend of Caesar, bringing in a verdict against the whole company, as guilty of the certainties and conspiracies. The Lord Chief Justice spoke, Cambion and the rest, what can you say why you should not die. Then Cambion broke out into a brief appeal to the future and the past. A lyric strain, such as was not often heard beneath those ancient rafters, is sadly used to the spectacle of noble hearts in jeopardy. It was not our death that ever we feared, that we knew that we were not lords of our own lives, and therefore for want of answer, would not be guilty of our own deaths. The only thing that we have now to say is that if our religion do make us traitors, we are worthy to be condemned, but otherwise we are and have been us through subjects. As ever the Queen had, in condemning us, you condemn all your own ancestors, all the ancient priests, priests and kings, all that was once the glory of England, the island of saints, and the most devoted child of the sea of Peter, for what have we taught, however you may qualify it, with the odious name of treason, that they did not uniformly teach, to be condemned with these old lights, not of England only, but of the world, by their degenerate descendants, is both gladness and glory to us. God lives, posterity will live, their judgment is not so liable to corruption, as that of those who are not going to sentence us to death, after which the Lord, Chief Justice, pronounced the formula in use for all prisoners condemned to capital punishment. You must go to the place whence he came, there to remain until you shall be drawn, through the open city of London, upon hurdles to the place of execution, into there be hanged and let down alive, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight, then your heads to be cut off, and your bodies to be divided in four parts, to be disposed of at Her Majesty's pleasure, and to make God have mercy on your souls. Some of the campany raised a storm of protest, but a campion's voice rose above theirs, crying, We praise thee, O God! Jarwin seconded him with a shouted anthem of Easter tide. This is the day that the Lord hath made, at us rejoice, and be glad. Therein, like expressions of triumph, were presently taken up to the amazement of bystanders, then the doomed men were parted, and were all taken away. Edmund Campion be important a barge, on the Thames, and rode back to the tower, where he was heavily shackled, with irons, and a left alone. CHAPTER XIII. VICTORY. December 1, 1581. Even thus late fresh proffers were made to buy Campion over to the state religion. Such a circumstance, as he had claimed previously, is in itself a plain disproof of any treason. Hopton, who hated him, sent Campion's own sister to him, with the repeated offer of a very rich benefice. To the cell door came one day, none other than George Elliot, saying that he would never have trapped Father Edmund, had he thought that anything worse than imprisonment could be in store. He also told the man of God, whom he had wronged past reparation, that he stood in danger from the wrath of the Catholics, and feared their reprisals for his late actions. Campion persuaded him that they would never push revenge so far as to seek his life, but added that if Elliot were truly repentant, he should have a letter of recommendation to a Catholic Duke in Germany, who would employ and protect him. Dela Hayes, the keeper in the discharge of his office, had to stand close to the prisoner during this interview, and what he heard, sank into his mind and made him a convert. Outside the tower there was a ferment of excitement over this one of its inmates, and over the question whether the indignation of all Europe should be braved by carrying out his sentence. The Earl of Desmond, the accessory, and Dr. Sanders, the co-principal of the late Revolt in Western Ireland, were still hiding in woods in caves, and weathering the hardships which were to be dismally ended for both during the coming spring. Berkeley concisely said, in the finest Elizabethan spirit of punishing somebody, no great matter whom, when any row was made, that Campion and Sanders were in the same boat, and as they could not catch Sanders, they must hang Campion instead. The princely visitor was still at court, and high festival went on from day to day. The preoccupation of the Queen with him and his affairs was thought to be an excellent item of the programme, as it kept her from thinking of Campion and his fate. Delay was dreaded as a means of getting together of the great English nobles and the foreign ambassadors with petitions for Campion's release, and it was thought that the Queen would never resist any strongly worded request which so corroborated her own supposed secret feeling. The council still thought his destruction desirable. Meanwhile, instant appeal was made to the Duke by the Catholics generally to use his influence in Campion's behalf. He promised to intercede for him, and may have done so. At the last moment further pressure was brought to bear. His confessor was sent into the tennis court, where the Duke was about to begin a game, with this message, that the royal blood of France would be disgraced forever, if so foul a judicial murder were not checked. The little great personage thus accosted, as we are told by Bombino, stroked his face absentmindedly with his left hand, then raised his right hand with the racket in it, and called to the one opposite to him, play. But not another word did he answer to the tragic matter so thrust upon him. Birgley fixed upon November 25th a Saturday as the date for Campion's execution. Sherwin was appointed to die in his company, as representing the seminary at Reims. They were taken together one day into the Lieutenant's hall to face some endless argument or other. The opponent, by report of such as stood by, was never so holding up to the wall in his life. On the way back to their cells under guard, they crossed one of the tower courts. Ha! Father Campion said his young comrade, smiling at the welcome London sun. I shall shortly be above, young fellow. Even one hurried free breath of fresh air must have meant much to Campion. To be clapped up a close prisoner, as he had been from the first, meant that his windows were blocked, and their minimum of air strained through a narrow slanted funnel, lattest at his skyward end, and with but one tiny pane occasionally opened at the bottom. But these things, humanly intolerable, counted for little on the threshold of light and liberty everlasting. Delay of our death does somewhat dull me, wrote Sherwin, touchingly to a friend. Truth it is, I had hoped ere this, casting off this body of death, to have kissed the precious glorified wounds of my sweet Saviour, sitting in the throne of his father's own glory. There was a good deal of haggling and hesitation on the subject. By statute law any caught priest was hangable. But public opinion, as Simpson reminds us in a brilliant page, did not always run with the statute law. Moreover, Camden says especially that the Queen, who is supposed to have supervised and approved all he wrote, did not believe in the treasons charged to the silly priests. It is remarkable that the first defensive pamphlet put forth by the government after Campion's death was one in which the plot of Reims and Rome was prudently forgotten, the very matter of the indictment. By the time the day for the execution was finally set for Friday, the 1st of December, a third priest had been chosen from the waiting batch of victims as representing the English College at Rome. This was the blessed Alexander Bryant, who had applied from his prison cell for admission into the Society of Jesus, a fact not known to his persecutors. If the entry of his age in the Oxford matriculation list be correct, as is most likely, he was now only in his twenty-sixth year. He was grave and gentle in character, full of charm, and of the most extraordinary personal beauty. He had been carried off in the course of a descent on Father Parsons London Roos, starved and parched in the Marshall Sea, tortured by needles, and kept in the entire darkness of deep dungeons in the tower. Norton, the Rackmaster on three occasions, proceeded in his own phrase to make him a foot longer than God made him, yet he has that he stood still with express refusal that he would tell the truth. The truth meant information of the whereabouts of Father Parsons, a former tutor and devoted friend, and of the place where Parsons books were being printed. Bryant had been condemned the day after Campion's trial in Westminster Hall, where his angelic looks outlasting a hell of almost unique torment did not pass unnoticed by the public. Here, though some accounts say it was at the scaffold, he carried in the palm of his hand engaged upon often a little cross of rough wood which he had managed to whittle in his cell, and on which he had traced an outline in Charcoal of the figure of the Cusavine. Pedro Serrano, the Secretary of the Spanish Ambassador, saw it taken away from Bryant and heard him say, You can rest it from my hand, but never from my heart. Lot long afterwards George Gilbert died in Italy, kissing blessed Alexander's little cross, which he must have taken pains to buy back. These three, Father's Campion, Sherwin and Bryant, were led forth on a bitter morning, and bound to their hurdles, in the rain outside the tower gates. Campion's life for the past week had been nothing but fasting, watching and prayer, and he was never in more gallant spirits. God save you all, gentlemen! So he saluted the crowd on the first coming out. God bless you all, and make you all good Catholics. The two younger men were strapped down on one hurdle side by side, Campion alone on the other. The mud was thick in the unpaved streets of London, and the double span of horses, each flat hurdle being tied to two tails, went at a great pace through Cheepside, Newgate Street and Holburn. There were intervals, however, when the jolted and bemired prisoners were able to speak with their sympathizers, who surged in upon them, and thus saved them for the moment from the incessant annoyance of Clark and other accompanying fanatics. Some asked Father Campion's blessing, some spoke in his ear, matters of conscience. One gentleman courteously bent down and wiped the priest's battered face, for which charity or happily some sudden moved affection. May God reward him, says one analyst, who saw the kind deed done. The Newgate spanned the street where the prison named after it stood until yesterday, and in a niche of the Newgate was still a statue of Our Lady. This Father Campion referenced raising his head and his bound body as best he could, as he passed under. The three martyrs were seen to be smiling, nay laughing, and the people commented with wonder on their light-heartedness. A mile or so of sheer country at the end of the road, and Tibern was at hand, stark against a cloudy sky with a vast crowd waiting to see the sacrifice. More than three thousand horse, says Saurano, in the contemporary letter already quoted, and in infinite number of souls. And he goes on in the truest Catholic temper, speaking for himself, the ambassador, and their little circle to say, There is no one of us who had not envy of their death. Just as the hurdles halted, the sudden sun shone out and lit up the gallows with its hanging halters. Father Campion was set upon his feet, put into the hangman's cart, driven under the triangular beams, and told to put his head into the noose. This the first martyr of the English Jesuits did with all meekness. Then with grave countenance and sweet voice, he began to speak as he supposed he was to be allowed to do, according to custom. It took the text of Saint Paul. We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake. Sir Francis Knowles and other officials promptly interrupted him, and reminded him to confess his treason. So once more he must need say, I desire you all to bear witness with me, that I am thereof altogether innocent. I am a Catholic man and a priest. In that faith have I lived, and in that faith do I intend to die. If you esteem my religion treason, then am I guilty. As for other treason, I never committed in each. God is my judge. He spoke of the names which he had been hoodwinked into confessing, and protested that all the secrets held back were spiritual confidences, and that there were no secrets of another nature between his hosts and him. He also put in a plea for one Richardson, imprisoned on account of the decimraciones. Whereas he knew nothing whatever of that book. He then tried to pray, but a schoolmaster with lungs named Hearn hastily stepped forward and read a novel proclamation, first and last of its kind, declaring in the Queen's name that these men about to be executed were perishing not for religion, but for treason. Diligent reassertion in those days seems to have established anything as a fact. The lords and sheriffs present reverted to the bloody question. What did Master Campion think of the bowl of Pius Quintus and the excommunication of the Queen? And would he renounce the Pope of Rome? He answered wearily that he was a Catholic. One voice shouted, In your Catholicism all treason is contained. A minister came forward to bid the martyr pray with him, but with marked gentleness was denied his will. You and I are not one in religion, wherefore I pray you content yourself. I bar none of prayer, but I only desire them of the household of faith to pray with me, and in mine agony to say one creed. The creed was chosen to signify that he died for the confession of the Catholic and the apostolic faith. He endeavored again to pray, probably using aloud the words of some of the Vulgate psalm or ritual hymns, when a spectator called out angrily to him to pursue his devotions in English. I will pray unto God, answered Campion, with all himself in the answer, in the language which we both well understand. He was again interrupted and ordered to ask forgiveness of the Queen and to pray for her. But his sweetness and patience held out till the last. Wherein have I offended her? In this am I innocent. This is my last speech, and this give me credit. I have, and do pray for her. Pray you for Queen Elizabeth, was the insinuating query made often, and answered often, as here Campion said, yea, for Elizabeth your Queen, and my Queen, unto whom I wish a long quiet reign with all prosperity. He had barely finished this emphatic sentence when the cart was drawn away, the multitude with one accord swayed and groaned. Somebody in authority, one account names the Chamberlain of the Royal Household, Lord Howard of Effingham, mercifully forbade the hangman to cut the rope until he was quite dead. The other rope with which Campion was bound Parsons managed to buy, and he had it laid about his own neck when he came to die in 1610. It is now at Stoneyhurst that then frayed old cord some twelve feet long. Close to the quartering blocks stood a spectator, a young gallant of twenty-three, elder son of a Norfolk house, who had great gifts of mind, and was given to writing verses. His name was Henry Walpole. He was a Catholic, though it would seem a worldly one. His generous instincts of humanity, however, had led him to be friend hunted priests, and a love of Campion in particular was already kindled in him through this association, as the executioner threw the severed limbs of a blessed soul into the great smoking cauldron, to parboil them before they were stuck on spikes according to sentence. A few drops were splashed out upon Henry Walpole's doublet. The incident roused his mind and pierced his heart, and was to him the instant cry of his vocation. Like many another spiritual son of blessed Edmund Campion, a nearer to him than they, because he entered the society, he was granted the glory of following him through faults of his own, through innumerable hardships, and through martyrdom at York in April 1595 into the peace of paradise. Meanwhile the hangman had seized the second victim, saying, Come Sherwin, take thou also thy wages. That manly man looked upon the bare, bloody arm of the other, and eager to show some public veneration of his sainted leader, first bent forward and kissed it. Then he leaped into the cart, young Bryant presently endured death for the faith with an even calmer courage. The populace much wrought up over all three went home through the winter mists and tears. Most of them who had prejudices against the church lost them for good, and very many straight way entered her communion. The government sent forth publication after publication in lame defense of its action. Soon France, Austria, Italy were inundated with accounts of the event. These everywhere produced the deepest impression. At home a great tidal wave of conversion to the old church swept in. Campion's death, last and best of his wonderful missionary labors, bore the most astonishing fruit. The long storm of persecution raged at its full fierceness after 1581, and it burst over the heads not only of a far more numerous, but a far more heroic body. Edmund Campion's spirit had been built in good time, as it were, into the unsteady wall. Robert Parsons had an intense feeling for his first comrade in arms. I understand of the advancement and exaltation of my dear brother Campion and his fellows. Our Lord be blessed for it. It is the joyful news in one respect that ever came to my heart. The same feeling breaks out with powerful irony, addressing the Geneva-colored clerics, who so long harassed the martyred group of 1581. Their blood will, I doubt not, fight against your heirs and impiety many hundred years after you are passed from the world altogether. They are well bestowed upon you. You have used them to the best. And Alan, in a private letter, says on his part, Ten thousand sermons would not have published our apostolic faith and religion so winningly as the fragrance of these victims, most sweet both to God and to men. No remote mystic was Edmund Campion, but a man of his age, with much endearing human circumstance about him and in him, caring for nothing but the things of the soul. He had yet caught the ear and the eye of the nation. The tidings of his end meant much to many of the great Elizabethans. Not least personal was it, perhaps, to the lad Shakespeare, whose father had been settled as a stout recusant by the Warwickshire ministrations of Parsons. An aged priest, Gregory Gunn, came up before the council in 1585, his thoughts and tongue too busy in Campion's praise. The day would come, he said, when a religious house would stand as a votive offering on the spot where the only man in England had perished. There was still no sign of such a thing when Mr. Richard Simpson's great monograph was first published, and that was twenty years before Pope Leo XIII beatified the blessed Edmund Campion on December 9th, 1886. But now there is a convent with perpetual adoration in its little chapel and two bright English flags ever leaning against the altar on the ground of the London Tiber, and is it wonderful that the vision of a worthy memorial haunts the imagination of those who go there to pray for their country. Blessed Edmund Campion was a religious genius with a creative spirituality given to few, even among the canonized children of the fold. But in his kinship with his place and time, his peculiar gentleness, his scholarship lightly worn, his magic influence, his fearless deed and flawless word, he was a great Elizabethan too. He had sacrificed his fame and changed his career, he had spent himself for a cause the world can never love, and by so doing he has courted the ill will of what passed for history up to our own day. But no serious student now mistakes the reason why his own England found no use for her diamond other than the one strange use to which she put him. He is sure at last of justice. In the church that name of his will have a never-dying beauty, though it is not quite where it might have been on the secular roll call. To understand this is also to rejoice in it, for why should we look to find there at all those who are hidden with Christ in God.