 CHAPTER VIII. THE FIRST FRUITS OF THE JEJUIT MISSION 1581 Touching our society, all the Jesuits in the world have made a league cheerfully to carry the cross that you may lay upon us and never to despair your recovery while we have a man left to enjoy your Tibern. The challenge of Father Campion. The first day of December 1581 saw the wood of Tibern tree died with the blood of three martyrs, who short as their mission had been, had sown seed in England that was to bear brave fruit thereafter. Of the first of these, blessed Edmund Campion, it is hard to speak in a few words, but the charm of his personality and the adventurous character of his sojourn in this country makes one want to linger over the details of his story. But as that cannot be, we will try to follow him in the different phases of his career by glancing at a series of pictures, showing him at the more critical moments of his life. The first takes us back to the year 1553. On the day when Mary of England entered London through the Old Gate or Altar Gate, on her coronation procession, to the royal residence in the tower. It was a glad day for those citizens who had received the poor little nine days queen, Lady Jane Gray, in such grim silence a short time before. With the return of the true queen the evil days of unrest and disorder and changes of religion that were liked as little as they were understood would pass away, and so the Londoners greeted the dignified little lady who sat upon her white palfrey in a pearl embroidered robe of crimson velvet with shouts of unthamed joy. In the wide space outside St. Paul's Cathedral the procession comes to a standstill, and we see advancing from the midst of a crowd of blue coat boys from the recently established school in New Gate Street a bright-faced lad of 13 years who has been selected to make an oration in Latin, predicting the justice, mercy, and religion that had returned to England with the accession of the queen. And Mary Tudor smiles upon him graciously, little thinking, that less than thirty years later this charming boy with his ready tongue and nimble wit would have gained his martyr's crown as blessed Edmund Campion, the Jesuit priest and missionary. Five years later when the tragedy of Mary's reign was accomplished the Protestant religion was declared to be the faith of England we see young Edmund Campion again. He is fellow of his college at Oxford now. He is still famous for his eloquence, so famous indeed that he cares more for worldly arts and learning than for theology, and is content to take the oath of supremacy and to defer the consideration of serious matters till a more convenient season. So popular is he that a band of gallant youngsters like himself are proud to dub themselves, campionists, and to enroll themselves as his pupils. And when a great public display is to be made at Oxford on the occasion of the burial of the unfortunate Amy Robesart, it is Campion who makes the oration and wins the approval of Dudley, the future Earl of Leicester. Nay, in 1566 when Queen Elizabeth herself visits the university, he is selected to make the oration in honor. And though there are indications that he is getting uneasy as to his position under a queen of whose father he had already said that he destroyed the religion and commonwealth of England, the things of this world praise, popularity, ambition are as yet too strong for him. He has not abjured the faith in which he had been born, but like his parents and most other folks at that time, he has ceased to practice his religion. And so after he has made his successful disputation before the queen, we find him gladly accepting her patronage and the friendship of Leicester than her chancellor, who spoke of him in after days as one of the diamonds of England. Amidst the infinite praises of all men that were given to campion at this time, there came grave risk lest he should lose his immortal soul as their price. Yet while he longed to follow up the course so successfully begun and under Leicester's influence to become one of Elizabeth's most brilliant orators, his conscience ever tender left him no peace of mind. Fortunately, he had not ceased to pray for light, especially after the study of the fathers of the church, which his college course imposed on him. But for a while he compromised. He was at this time much under the influence of one Richard Cheney, Bishop of Gloucester, who persuaded himself that while loathing the doctrines of the established church, he might still hold office in the same if he privately believed in those of Catholicism and taught them as far as possible. And this subterfuge was now held out to campion as a means of taking orders. Still blinded by ambition and by a temperament naturally inclined to a peaceful settlement of naughty points, Edmund was induced to take so-called orders as a deacon in order to help Bishop Cheney and to use his powers of eloquence as a preacher. From that moment his conscience gave him no peace at all. Louder and louder grew the call to escape from his false position at any cost. And as so often happens his weak will was braced at this crisis by an apparently chance event, the grocers company whose exhibition largely maintained him at Oxford, uneasy as to his orthodoxy, suddenly demanded that he should preach a Protestant sermon at Paul's Cross. Perhaps the remembrance of his oration on that same spot fifteen years ago before a Catholic queen awoke in the young man's mind. Anyway, he refused the call, resigned his exhibition, and in the next year, 1569, left Oxford. For the next two years we find him in Ireland, living among Catholics as a Catholic, though still more concerned with plans for refounding a university at Dublin than with the propagation of the faith. Then came the sting of persecution to stimulate his dormant soul. His name was on the list of those to be apprehended as dangerous recusants after the posting of the Bull of Excommunication in 1570. And Campion, lately the admired orator and popular tutor of his college, becomes Campion the fugitive, though a merry and high-hearted one fleeing for his safety to Doway. Wither his chief friend, Gregory Martin, had been calling him for some time past. Here no doubt he was formally reconciled to the church, and became from henceforth one of her most ardent converts. Doway, full of enthusiasm as it was, could not satisfy a soul that was not only intent on the utmost for the highest, but was full of remorse for its past lukewarmness. After two years of study for the priesthood, we find him traveling the road to Rome in pilgrims' garb to seek admission to the society of Jesus. He has indeed cast the things of this world behind him, and has set his eyes steadfastly on the Eternal. Seven years later, when Father Campion had been, for five quiet years, a teacher of rhetoric in the Jesuit College at Prague, the call to action came. The probation had been a long one, and not seldom must that enthusiastic spirit, eager for active service, and fired by the rumors of persecution and martyrdom among his own people, have yearned for a share in the honors of the fight. And yet for five long years his work had been to teach boys Latin, to wash dishes in the kitchen, and to visit the prisons and hospitals of the town as a humble priest. Thus was this finely-tempered soul trained and disciplined for the one year of glorious work which lay before him in his native land. The call to action comes first in a letter from Dr. Alan, the founder of Daue, then at Rome in order to obtain the assistance of the Jesuits in the English mission. Generally, he writes to this beloved son of his, sent your brethren, after the flesh, call upon you, for though you hear not their words, God has heard their prayers. I, who am so closely connected with you, with them, and with our common country, both in the world and in the Lord, must not be the only one to keep silence, when I should be the first to call you. I do not stay to inquire what your own wish may be, since it is your happiness to live not by your own will, but by others. Our harvest is already great in England. Ordinary laborers are not enough. More practiced men are wanted, but chiefly you and others of your order. Prepare yourself for a journey, a work, a trial. You will have an excellent colleague, and though they still live who sought the trial's life, yet for some time past a door has been open to you in the Lord. May he send you to us as soon as may be. At once Father Campion held himself in readiness for the final call. On the night before it came, a certain simple old Jesuit had written over his cell the words Edmundus Campionius Martyr. And so, when interviewed by the rector of the college next day, the young father blushing at his kindly words said, the fathers seem indeed to guess something concerning me. I hope their suspicions may be true. So had the years of grace enabled a naturally timorous spirit to lay aside the fear of death and to face the dark future with unswerving courage, we here indeed, that on receiving the command to set forth, he, being scarce able to hold tears for joy and tenderness of heart, went to his chamber, and there upon his knees to God offered himself wholly to his divine disposition without any exception or restraint, whether it were to rack, cross, watering, or any other torment or death whatsoever. Father Campion's fellow worker on the mission was Father Robert Parsons, a man of very different character who after many hair-breath escapes, died at last in his bed. It is to his life of the martyr that we almost have our information about the latter, and it was he who disguised as the soldier preceded him to England a few days in advance. Such a peacock, such a swacker, writes Father Campion. In one of his natural happy-hearted letters to his superior, a man must needs have very sharp eyes to catch a glimpse of holiness beneath such a garb, such a look. Yet our minds cannot but misgive us when we hear all men, I will not say whispering, but crying the news of our coming. According to orders, I have stayed here at St. Omers to try if possible to fish some news as to Father Robert's success out of the carriers before I sail across. If I hear anything I will advise it, but in any case I will go over and take a part in the fight, though I die for it. On the feast of St. John the Baptist, 1580, Father Edmund Campion with the young lay-brother, Robert Emerson disguised as a jewel-merchant and his servant, landed at Dover, and was instantly apprehended by the searcher at the port, who took him to be a Mr. Allen, brother of the founder of Doway, and charged him before the mayor as a foe of the Queen's religion, sailing under a false name, as having been abroad for religion and for returning to propagate popery. But when Campion offered to swear he was not Allen, some indecision arose, the mayor withdrew to consider the matter, and presently to Campion. As he stood there praying for the intercession of his patron, St. John the Baptist, and to God for deliverance, came forth an old clerk from the mayor who said you are dismissed. Goodbye to you. Being so happily and unexpectedly delivered from Dover, says Father Parsons, he made all the haste he could to come to London, where he was greatly desired, and much prayer was made for him. The greatest solicitude was how he would do at his first arrival, for that he knew not where to go, but God provided better for him herein than he could possibly imagine. For coming to land upon the Thames side of London, there was there by God's providence a certain Catholic that partly by his person and apparel describe him before, and partly that he was accompanied by a little man named Ralph Emerson. He did suspect him to be the man he wanted, and so stepping to the boat side said, Mr. Edmonds, for so he was called, give me your hand. I stay here for you to lead you to your friends, with which speech Father Campion was wonderfully comforted. These things make us realize to some extent what was the state of England at that time, for an Englishman to be ordained abroad, and to return to his own land was not yet an act of treason. But the whole country was swarming with spies and watchers, ready to entrap those who did so. The marvel was that their vigilance was so long eluded. For on June 29, the Feast of St. Peter and Paul, we find Father Campion preaching to a band of enthusiastic Catholics in the great hall of a house near Smithfield. While the doors were guarded by gentlemen of worship and honor in place of porters, and this sermon on St. Peter's confession of faith, so stirred his hearers that each of them supposed that if this loose Catholic, or that sincere Protestant could be brought to speak with the preacher, the conversion of the wanderer would be secured. Hence Campion's coming was entrusted as a grand secret to half the world, and after a few days, which he well spent in conference with all comers, the council began to suspect what was on hand, and set on foot a diligent search for his apprehension. Thus the enthusiastic young Jesuit soon found his path strewn with dangers. He was warned that false brothers, pretended Catholics, would attend his sermons or his mass, so that he had to content himself with private conferences, and with saying mass secretly. A young Catholic, on his way to visit Capion and Parsons, was apprehended by a spy in the street, whereby the fathers were warned of their very present danger. At another time they only escaped by the good will of a constable, a Catholic at heart, who arrested another would-be visitor before he could reach their house, wither he was being followed by this same spy and informer. It was therefore thought best that Parsons and Campion should leave London separately, and begin their work in the country, where there was indeed much to be done. For by this time fear or indolence had caused many, who were Catholics at heart, to conform to the Protestant religion. And we must again remind ourselves that this cannot be wondered at, when we remember the very little encouragement they had to stand firm, the lack of sacraments, and of teachers, and on the other hand the harsh treatment, ruinous fines, and long imprisonment that were the lot of those who refused to conform. To such as these the Jesuits went forth to call upon them to separate themselves from heresy, and strong in the faith, renewed by sacramental grace, to face the consequences however bitter they might be. Just before they left London, there came in hot haste a Catholic named Pound, who urged that something should be written by the Fathers, that should disprove the rumour so industriously circulated by the Council that they had come to England for political purposes to preach treason towards the Queen. Upon which, being a man of singular good nature and easy to be persuaded to whatever religion or piety inclined towards, Father Campion rose from the company, took a pen, and in less than half an hour wrote the famous declaration addressed to the Council, known by his foes as, Campions Bragg and Challenge, which ends with these most touching words. Many innocent hands are lifted up for you daily and hourly by those English students whose posterity shall not die, which beyond the seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you to heaven or to die upon your pikes, and touching our society be it known upon you that we have made a league, all the Jesuits in the world, cheerfully to carry the cross that you shall lay upon us and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your tie-burn, or to be racked with your torments, or to be consumed with your prisons, the expenses reckoned, the etcher prize is begun. It is of God, it cannot be withstood, so the faith was planted, so it must be restored. Though this document was only written for a case of emergency, Pound was so delighted with it that he could not help publishing it broadcast among both friends and foes, with the result that his campion's name became more famous, the danger to his life and freedom rapidly increased. Meantime the two priests were busy enough, the country people were more tender of conscience than those who lived near the court, and did not hesitate to bring their scruples and doubts to the Jesuit fathers, even at great risk of detection. Letters written to Rome at this period give a vivid picture of the way in which the mission was carried on. When a priest comes to their houses, they first salute him as a stranger unknown to them, and then they take him to an inner chamber where an oratory is set up, where all fall on their knees and beg his blessing. If he says he must go on the morrow, they all prepare for confession that evening. The next morning they hear mass and receive Holy Communion. Then after preaching and giving his blessing a second time, the priest is conducted on his journey by one of the young men of the house. Sometimes says another letter. When we are sitting merrily at table, conversing familiarly on matters of faith and devotion, there comes a hurried knock at the door, like that of a pursuant. All start up and listen. We leave our food and commend ourselves to God in a brief ejaculation, nor is word or sound heard till the servants come to say what the matter is. The effect of the stirring words of the Jesuits was soon apparent. No one is to be found in these parts who complains of the length of services. If a mass does not last nearly an hour, many are discontented. A lady was lately told that she should be let out of prison if she would once walk through a church. She refused. She had come into prison with a sound conscience and she would depart with it or die. In the days of Henry, the father of this Elizabeth, the whole kingdom, with all its bishops and learned men, abjured their faith at one word of the tyrant. But now, in his daughter's days, boys and women boldly profess their faith before the judge and refuse to make the slightest concession, even at the threat of death. We hear, write the fathers themselves, that one month since more than fifty thousand names of persons who refuse to go to the heretical churches have been reported, we, although all conversation with us is forbidden, by proclamation, are yet most earnestly invited everywhere. Many take long journeys only to speak with us and put themselves and their fortune entirely in our hands. And Campion adds a personal touch. After begging for more laborers to be sent into the vineyard, I cannot long escape the hands of the heretics. The enemies have so many eyes, so many tongues, so many scouts and crafts. I am, in apparel to myself, very ridiculous. I often change it, and my name also. I read letters sometimes myself that, in the first front, tell news that Campion is taken, which, noised in every place where I come, so filleth my ears with the sound thereof, that fear itself hath taken away all fear. My soul is ever in my hands. Let such as you send for supply, premeditate, and make count of this always. Marry the solaces that are ever intermingled with these miseries are so great, that they do not only countervail the fear that may come, but by infinite sweetness make all worldly pains, be they never so great seem nothing. They will find consciences that are pure, courage invincible, zeal incredible, a work so worthy the number innumerable of every age and sex, both of high degree of main calling and of the inferior sort. Eighty years later the memory of the stirring sermons of Father Campion were still green in the North Country, where he was now preaching almost daily, though in imminent danger of apprehension. At Plainsco Hall he nearly fell into the hands of a pursuant, who followed him as he was walking through the garden to the house. But here he was saved by the quick action of a Catholic maid-servant, who treating him as though he had been an overbold farm-servant pushed him into the horse-pond, from which he emerged covered with green slime and quite unrecognisable. Meantime a bill was being rushed through Parliament which made it treason to absolve any Englishman, to convert him to potpourri, to move him there too, or to do any overt act tending that way. The saying or hearing of Mass was forbidden under penalty of two hundred marks and a year's imprisonment, and a system of fines for refusing to attend the Protestant services was imposed, which eventually ruined those who held to the faith, and became for half a century one of the great items in the budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the Whitsun Tide of 1581 Campion returned to London at Father Parsons' request to see to the printing of his book Ten Reasons, in support of his previous challenge to those who opposed the Catholic faith. Visiting Harrow, the home of one of his most zealous converts, from his various abodes in London, he would pass Tibern Gate, just beyond the present marble arch, where stood the triangular gallows ready for the weekly sacrifice of murderers, thieves, traitors, or priests. His first victim had been Dr. Story, whose martyrdom he had seen, and partly in honour of his memory, and that of other martyrs, partly because he knew it was to be one day the scene of his own conflict, he was wont to walk between the post bareheaded, and with a deep obeisance to the Tree of the Cross, of which it was the emblem. His active work on earth was getting very near as completion. In July 1581, his book secretly printed was openly published, and took the world by storm. We can only quote from it the last stirring words addressed to Elizabeth the Queen. Listen, Elizabeth mighty queen, I tell thee, one heaven cannot receive Calvin, and these thy ancestors, the kings of Christendom. Join thyself therefore to them, be worthy of thy name, of thy genius, of thy learning, of thy fame, of thy fortune. Thus only do I conspire, thus only will I conspire against thee. Whatever becomes of me, who am so often threatened with the gallows as a conspirator against thy life, hail thou good cross. The day shall come, Elizabeth, the day that will show thee clearly. Who loved thee best? The society of Jesus or the brood of Luther? Meanwhile there was one dogging his steps, the spy George Eliot, a renegade Catholic, who to escape the penalty of a charge for murder, hoped to win favor with the court by the capture of the notorious Jesuit. Finding that Campion had been sent for safety out of London, he discovered that he was about to visit at a house called the Moat at Lyford, the residence of a Mrs. Yate, and laid his plans accordingly. Acting under Parsons orders, however, the priest moved on next day to Oxford, and reached an inn on the outskirts of the city, where a number of university men had assembled to meet him. There he was overtaken by a priest named Ford, who had been one of Mrs. Yate's guests, and who now implored him to return and preach to a number of Catholics, who had come to the Moat after his departure, and who were bitterly disappointed at having arrived too late. His companion, rather Ralph Emerson, was strongly opposed to his return, but the father's cheery confidence overruled him, and Campion returned for the Sunday, July 16th, to find more than sixty Catholics, many of the Moxford men, waiting to hear mass, and to listen to his last, most wonderful sermon on the tears of Jesus over Jerusalem. But among that devoted throng, Nelt I, Eliot the traitor, who only hesitated to apprehend him in the very act of saying mass, because of the crowd of stalwart Catholic youths, by whom he was surrounded. Immediately after the sermon, he hurried away, and scarcely was the evening meal finished. He fore a watcher reported that the house was surrounded by armed men. Father Campion would have saved the rest by delivering himself up at once, but this was not allowed. With the two other priests, Ford and Collington, he was hurried into a secret room hollowed out of the wall above the gateway, where there was just room for a narrow bed upon which they lay side by side, with their hands uplifted in prayer. All the long, hot afternoon they heard the sounds of tapping and breaking wood, as every part of the house was searched in vain. When evening came, the magistrate, so hurriedly summoned by Eliot, he announced him as a gull, and asking pardon of his neighbor, Mrs. Yate, for the trouble he had caused her, took his departure, to her unmeasured and possibly too openly shown satisfaction. Outside hot recriminations ensued between Eliot and the searchers, whom the former accused of favoring the Catholics in their attempt. Frightened by the apprehension of one of their number, who had detected Eliot in the fact that he had no warrant for destroying or breaking down the walls of the house, they consented to return, and very nearly came right upon the fugitives, who had left their narrow quarters, and were in the midst of a torrent of thanksgiving and congratulation from the inmates of the house. They had just time to slip back, while Mrs. Yate reproached the magistrate, and insisted that she should be allowed her nights rest. To this he agreed, and she at once had her bed made up in the room, out of which opened the stair leading to the secret chamber. Weary with the vain search, and heavy with the ale so liberally supplied, the sheriff's men were soon asleep in the hall and passages, and escape might yet have been possible, had not Mrs. Yate, with incredible lack of caution, insisted that Father Campion should preach one more sermon to the little congregation he still assembled within her room. He was willing enough. But they, excited by his eloquence, lost all sense of danger, and when one of the priests fell on the stairway, they made a commotion which roused the guards. Once more the three priests escaped by the skin of their teeth, their hearers also dispersing through secret passages in the darkness, while the men searched Mrs. Yates' room thoroughly but in vain. The next morning, when Elliot Pail with this appointed fury was about to depart, ushered out by a servant who was in the secret all along, he suddenly struck the wall over the stairs, exclaiming, We have not broken through here yet. The man lost his nerve, stammered out that he should have thought enough had been broken, and showed such confusion that Elliot took an axe, smashed the wall, and disclosed the narrow passage in which lay the three priests, calm and composed, awaiting their fate. When we next see our martyr, he rides into London, the center of a great crowd, his elbows tied behind him, his hands in front, with a paper stuck on his hat upon which is written, Campion, the seditious Jesuit. The crowd cried out on Elliot by the name of Judas, but the priests had forgiven him for his share of the foul work. For when the wretched man said to him as they left Leifert, Mr. Campion, you looked cheerfully upon everybody but me. I know you are angry with me for this work, he replied, God forgive the Elliot for so judging me, 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. Cheerfully still he rides upon his way of sorrows, while some mock and others lament to see the land fallen to such barbarism as to abuse in this manner a gentleman famous throughout Europe for his scholarship and his innocencey of life, and this before any trial or any proof against him. Passing the cross and cheap side he bows his comely head in a reverend obeisance, crossing himself with his tight hands as far as he could, and so rides onward to the tower whose grim gates close behind him and bring him one step nearer to the end. When we next see Edmund Campion, he is standing once more as on a bygone occasion in the presence of the earls of Leicester and Bedford. He has been brought secretly from his dungeon known as Little Ease, where he could neither stand upright nor lie at length to be questioned by Leicester as to why he had come to England. Doubtless the earl remembered the gallant youth of bygone days and looked with interest on the eager face worn with four nights watching and discomfort as Campion readily made answer to his interrogations. He seems indeed to have convinced them that his only purpose was the propagation of the faith, for they told him they found no fault in him save that he was a papist. But that, said he modestly but with a glad look that was not to be mistaken, is my greatest glory. There was a rustle and a commotion at the door just then, and the prisoner to his astonishment found himself the object of an interested gaze of a richly dressed lady whose face he dimly remembered. What passed between Elizabeth and the Jesuit priest is recorded in Campion's own words at his trial. The queen asked him if he acknowledged her as his sovereign to which he emphatically replied in the affirmative as to whether the pope could lawfully excommunicate her, he refused to be the judge. Elizabeth with all her faults always loved luck in a man, and there is no doubt that she looked with no disfavor on the priest. Either then or later in the tower he was offered life, liberty, and high preferment in the Anglican church if he would denounce his faith. But when he steadfastly refused, either to abure himself or to give up the names of his Catholic friends and converts, she made no attempt to save him, even from the horrors of the rack. Once again we see him at a public conference with his fellow prisoners, Sherwin, and others, sitting on stools facing a table loaded with controversial literature, at which sit the most learned and protestant divines of that day. His arms are almost dislocated with the rack. His face is pale and drawn with physical pain, and with the anxiety caused by the persistent rumors that he has betrayed his friends, rumors that were groundless as far as any new information was concerned, but which were industriously spread abroad in order to injure his reputation with the Catholics. Yet in the so-called conferences the future martyr bore himself so calmly and gave such clear and weighty answers to the insulting and threatening questions hurled at him that even the Protestant bishops who were present declared that the discussions did more harm than good to their cause. They thought the rack was their better argument, and three times he was so cruelly used that when his jailer asked him in sheer pity and admiration of his pluck how his hands and feet felt, he answered with that brave sweet smile of his, not ill, because not at all. Finding it useless to try to shake his constancy thus, and fearing a reaction among the London populace, which was already making ballads in his praise, the council condemned him, with Sherwin and Bryant, to be executed at Tyburn on the first of the ensuing month of December. A curious fact is recorded of the judge who sat awaiting the return of the jury on that day. Pulling off his glove, he found all his hand and his seal of arms bloody, without any token of wrong, pricking, or hurt, and being dismayed, therewith, wiping, it went not away, but still returned. He showed it to the gentleman that sat before him, who can be witnesses of it to this day. The verdict of the jury, says an old writer, was the most unjust that ever was given in this land, where at already in 1582, not only England, but all the Christian world doth wonder, and which our posterity shall lament and be ashamed of. The three priests heard their condemnation in dignified silence. But when asked if they had ought to say, champion spoke these eloquent and unforgettable words. If our religion doth make us traitors, we are worthy to be condemned. But otherwise are, and have been, as true subjects as ever the Queen had. In condemning us, you condemn all your own ancestors, all the ancient priests, bishops, and kings, all that was once the glory of England, the Isle 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 by their degenerate descendants, in both gladness and glory to us. God lives, prosperity will live. Their judgment is not so liable to corruption as that of those who are now about to sentence us to death. In the splash and mud of a rainy December morning, champion was brought forth from his cell, glad in a gown of Irish freeze, and was taken to Col Harbour Tower where he found Sherwin and Bryant waiting for him. Outside the tower a vast crowd was already collected. Campion, nothing daunted, looked cheerfully, round, and saluted them. God save you all, gentlemen. God bless you, and make you all good Catholics. Then he knelt and prayed with his face towards the east, concluding with the words, In monestuous domine, commendo spiritum meum. There were two hurdles in waiting, each tied to the tails of two horses. On one Sherwin and Bryant were laid and bound. Campion on the other. As they were dragged through the gutters and filth, each hurdle was followed by a rabble of ministers and fanatics. These, however, were soon daunted by the wind and rain, and by the pace of the horses. There were intervals during which sundry Catholics spoke to Campion of matters of conscience and received comfort. One gentleman, like St. Veronica in another via de la Rosa, either for pity or affection, courteously wiped his face, all spattered with mire and dirt, as he was drawn most miserably through thick and thin. For which charity, says the priest, who saw it done, or happily some sudden moved affection, God reward him and bless him. As they passed the niche over the arch of Newgate where Studejad untouched the image of our lady, Campion with difficulty raised himself upon his hurdle and saluted her. A priest, who saw the martyrs on their way, constantly declared, they had a smile on their faces. And as they drew near Tyburn, they actually laughed. There was a cry raised among the people, but they laugh, they don't care for death. It had been a weary daybreak. But when they reached that place of execution, the sun shone out from the dark clouds upon the tiny group of martyrs and upon the great crowd assembled to see their end. Campion was the first to put his head into the halter, and standing thus upon the cart below, he declared emphatically that he died as a Catholic man and a priest for his religion, and in that alone was he found guilty. Then in the midst of the wrangling and questioning that the Protestant ministers kept up all around the scaffold, Father Campion quietly said his prayers. Once indeed when rudely interrupted and urged to say a prayer with his opponents, he looked up and said gently, 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 for me, and in my agony to say one creed. But when called on to pray for the queen, he gladly agreed, saying, I wish her a long, quiet reign with all prosperity. While he was speaking these last words, the cart was drawn away, and he, amid the tears and groans of the vast multitude, meekly and sweetly yielded his soul unto his Savior, protesting that he died a true Catholic. In accordance with the demands of the crowd, he was not cut down, till he had ceased to live. Sure when his fellow martyr kissed his blood upon the hands of the hangman, after the cruel work of quartering had been accomplished, and died with the words, Hesu, Hesu, Hesu, thee to me a Hesu upon his lips. And Bryant, a very fair young man, not more than twenty-eight years of age, praised God openly, that he had made him worthy to suffer death for the Catholic faith, in company with one whom he so revered. From the moment of his martyrdom, the pure and beautiful soul of Edmund Campion called others to their conversion. Already his bearing during the trial had been the means of the conversion of Philip, Earl of Arendelle. And as we shall see in a future chapter, it was a few drops of Campion's blood splashing from the cauldron onto his garment that turned Henry Walpole from a wavering Catholic into an ardent witness to the faith. With one verse from the epitaph, written by the latter, we must close this all-too-brief account of one of the most attractive of the band of martyrs. Blessed be God, which lent him so much grace. Thanks be Christ, which blessed this martyr so. Happy is he, which seeeth his master's face. Cursed all day that thought to work him woe. Bounden be we to give eternal praise, to Jesus' name, which such a man did raise. End of Chapter 8, Recording by John Brandon Chapter 9 of A Book of English Martyrs This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Brandon A Book of English Martyrs by E. M. Wilmot Buxton Chapter 9 Blessed Ralph Sherwin December 1st, 1581 Hesu, Hesu, Hesu, Estelmihi Hesus Last Prayer of Blessed Ralph Sherwin One of the most attractive, in its almost boyish simplicity of face and figure, of the statues of the martyrs now placed in Tyburn Chapel, close to the scene of their martyrdom, is that of Ralph Sherwin, the young secular priest, who at the age of 31 earned his crown as the companion in death of blessed Edmund Campion. He began life as a distinguished student of Exeter College, Oxford, where, like Campion, his public disputation won the favour of the Earl of Leicester, that patron of talented youth, and opened to him the gate of a brilliant career in the Anglican Church or at the bar. But in 1575, when he was 25 years of age, attracted irresistibly by the beauty and reasonableness of the true faith, Sherwin left all and went to join that fast increasing band at Dowie, which was preparing for a priesthood frequently crowned by martyrdom. Soon after his ordination, he was sent to Rome to help informing the English College, which nowadays is proud to claim him as its first martyr. During his three years there, the College was placed under the direction of the Jesuit Fathers, who made it their business to find out at once which of their scholars were willing to go on the English mission, which meant, as was well known, almost certain death. The first entry made can still be read in the annals of the College. 1579. Father Ralph Sherwin, English, a priest, aged 29, a student of sacred theology, declares and swears upon the holy scriptures that he is ready today rather than tomorrow at the intimation of superiors to proceed to England for the help of souls. So Ralph Sherwin was one of those chosen to accompany that notable group of missionaries, which set out for the English shores in 1580 and which included Blessed Edmund Campion and Father Parsons. Most of the journey was made on foot and was not without its perils, described with boyish delight by Father Ralph in a letter to his friends. The only thing that annoys him is the need of entering England in the disguise of a dashing young Frenchman, for he writes to his friend Ralph Bickley, well, my loving friend Ralph, even while I wrote these letters, came in Mr. Pascal, his lay companion, and the frip to Frenchify me. Oh, miserable time, when a priest must counterfeit a cutter! God gave us still priests' minds, for we go far astray from the habit here. Mr. Pascal Criath, you will never be handsome, and I tell him that was never priest handsome in this attire. Thus for Christ we put ourselves in colors, all which imperfections I hope he hath washed away with his blood. At Paris the parties separated, for rumours had already arrived to the effect of their names at appearance were well known to Walsingham and his spies. Still Father Sherwin writes in the highest spirits to Rome. Believe me, he says, that the nearer we get to the labours and perils of England, the more eagerly we advance upon the country commended to our zeal, and the burden laid upon our shoulders. When we next hear of him four months later, he is a prisoner in the Marshall Sea, loaded with heavy irons. What happened in the interval can only be gathered from two letters of Father Parsons written sometime later, says the first of these written to the rector of the English College. Your Sherwin, who burned with such zeal at Rome, with no less ardour of spirit, spent nearly six entire months preaching in various parts of the kingdom. In this work he enjoyed a very special grace and ascendancy, and it seemed as if divine providence meant to reward such great labours by disposing that he should be taken in the very act of preaching in London. The words sound almost ironic at the present day when suffering and death are regarded by an effeminate generation as the greatest evil that can happen. In those days men saw more clearly that the way of tribulation is the shortcut to eternal joy, and that oftentimes a noble death does more to win souls than the most strenuous life. In the second letter, Parsons describes his first meeting with Sherwin after they had parted in France. We passed the night together in spiritual conference, wherein he told me of his desire to die. The next day he came to tell me what danger we were in, and then went away to preach, for we had agreed that he should stay in London for the arrival of a certain gentleman who had asked for him, and in the meantime should occupy himself in preaching, and it was while preaching in Mr. Ross Carrick's house that he was captured. I think he was the first of our confraternity that was taken. The description of the young priest's first days of imprisonment is also taken from a letter of Father Parsons. When Sherwin was taken into the inner court of the prison, they fastened on him very heavy fetters, which he could scarcely move. The jailers then went away to see in what cell or dungeon he was to be confined. Unlooking round and fighting himself alone, he gazed up to heaven with a face full of joy and gave God tanks. Then looking down again at his feet loaded with chains, he tried whether he could move them. But when he heard the clank of the chains as he stirred, he could not help breaking out into laughter, and then again into tears of happiness, and with hands and eyes lifted up to heaven, betraying the greatness of his joy. This scene was witnessed by two heretics of the family of love, who were confined in a neighbouring part of the prison, and who were filled with astonishment, and who have again and again related its sense. And blessed Ralph himself, writing from prison, in almost boyish high spirits says, I wear now upon my feet and legs some little bells to keep me in mind who I am and whose I am. I never heard such sweet harmony before. Pray for me that I may finish my course with courage and fidelity. Within those prison walls, this joyous captive never ceased to carry on his work of winning souls. The heretics who have been mentioned above were only two among many whom the serene happiness of the young priest first amazed, then interested, and finally won over to the true faith. And many were the regrets when on the fourth of December, Sherwin was suddenly removed to the tower. The most awful ordeal that awaited the martyrs lay before him. And on December 15 we hear that he was put on the rack and severely tortured. What was the object of such cruelty? It seemed that the council was eager to obtain evidence against his host, Mr. Ross Carrick, then a fellow prisoner in the tower, against Campion, with information of his whereabouts, against the Queen of Scots, and especially as to the probability of an invasion of Ireland. With refined cruelty they lay the young priest almost torn asunder, yet silent save for the groans rung from him by the excruciating pain on the snow in the courtyard outside Ross Carrick's cell, hoping thus to frighten the latter into giving evidence. Next day the racking recommenced, but with it came interior consolation of a rare and intimate kind. He told his brother, who visited him in his cell, that he had been twice wracked, and the latter time he lay five days and nights without any food or speaking to anybody, all which time he lay as he thought in his sleep before our Saviour on the cross. After which time he came to himself, not finding any distemper in his joints, by the extremity of the torture. For more than a year this imprisonment lasted, though mental suffering now took the place of the old bodily racking. The news that Paschal, his special charge and pupil, who had also been sent to the tower, had apostasy, was a terrible grief to him. That this weak young man had thus earned the derisive scorn of the Protestants and was very ill received by them, was no consolation to his friend. Who used to say to him mournfully, Oh John, John little knowest thou, what thou shalt do before thou comest to it? Another trial was the being forced to attend the heretical services and sermons every Sunday until midsummer day, when in order to formulate some specific charge against him, he was asked by the Governor if he would attend the Protestant service of his own will. There followed some months of comparative peace. And these were used by Blessed Ralph in a preparation for death that earned even the admiration of his jailer, who would always call him a man of God and the best and devoutest priest that he ever saw in his life. He was tried, as we have seen with Blessed Edmund Campion and others, on a trumped-up charge of conspiracy in which no one believed least of all the Queen herself. And he received his condemnation with a cry of joy. This is the day which the Lord hath made. Let us exalt and be glad therein. God grant us humility, that we following his footsteps may obtain the victory. Are among the last words written by him to a friend? And once more the sweet ardour of his soul breaks forth in his exclamation to his fellow prisoner as they left the judgment hall two days before the end, looking up at the setting sun. Ah, Father Campion, I shall soon be above Yon fellow. His last words upon the scaffold were a most sweet prayer to our Lord Jesus, acknowledging the imperfection, misery, and sinful wickedness of his own nature. Even then his enemies could not leave him in peace, but called him traitor. To which he replied boldly, If to be a Catholic only is to be a traitor, then am I a traitor? Then putting aside with smiling dignity the efforts at controversy thrust upon him, he put his head into the halter, repeating the ejaculation. Hesu, Hesu, Hesu, esto mi Jesus. The multitude cried out to him, Good Mr. Sherwin, the Lord receive your soul. And so they kept crying, and could not be stayed even after the cart had been drawn away, and he had been sometime dead. You might, sir, with the same justice, charge the apostles with being traitors, for they taught the same doctrines that I teach, and did the same things for which you condemn me. Father Kirkman at his trial, it is tempting to linger over the stories of nine more martyrs who lay down their lives at Tyburn between December 1581 and May 1582, to tell of the sufferings of Father Bryant, under whose nails were thrust sharp needles to make him disclose where he had seen Father Parsons, who were thrown for eight days into a pit, a subterranean cave 20 feet deep without light, and who was only drawn out to be wracked till he swooned with pain, on whom Norton, the Rackmaster, made the infamous jest that he would make him a foot longer than God made him, or a blessed Thomas Ford, and blessed John Sharp, and blessed Robert Johnson Priests, who after their glorious passing are said to have appeared to Stephen Rousson a future martyr in the tower, and to have told him what pains their martyrdom had been to them, and with what joy they were rewarded. But we must pass on to a group of priests and others martyred at York between the years 1582 and 1586, which represents another phase of these years of persecution and triumph over death. The virulence of the persecution of Catholics in that city can be accounted for partly by the fact that it was the seat of the Northern Council, by which the Northern Counties was ruled, and which was under the presidency of the Earl of Huntingdon, a Protestant, and all the more bitter that he had given up the faith held at the cost of life by his Catholic ancestors, for he was a pole on his mother's side at a great grandson of blessed Margaret herself. The old faith was strong in the North, which had been left to some extent untouched by Protestant teaching, and had survived even the terrible consequences of the rising of earlier days, and it was to be the vain boast of Huntingdon that he would stamp it out in blood. On a certain morning in the spring of 1582, Mass had been said in the Castle Prison in York, other rather exceptional circumstances. The prisons of the ancient city were crowded at that time, and during the whole of the twenty years of Huntingdon's rule, with Catholics many of whom died in jail. For we are told on good authority that these prisons were dens of iniquity and horror. Some of them had no light and no ventilation. Several were partly under water, whenever there was a flood. To cheer and to encourage these brave sufferers for the faith, by bringing them food, both the body and soul, several priests were wont to visit the prisons in disguise, and among them Father William Hart and Father William Lacy were two of the most earnest and courageous. To them came one day a third, Father Thomas Bell, lately ordained and returned from abroad, who told him that he had once been himself confined in the Castle Prison for six years, for refusing to attend the Protestant Church, and had been put to the torture there by being hung up head downwards for three days. Now he was minded to sing high mass in that very prison, as an act of thanksgiving for his escape and subsequent ordination, in which office Father's Hart and Lacy joyfully promised to assist. Word was passed round the prison, and in the dark of early morning mass was said in the cell of a Catholic prisoner, in the presence of all those who had been able to leave their cells unobserved. It was just over when a certain prisoner who had been delayed in making his way to the cell fell over a bench. The noise roused the jailers, who found all in confusion and the lights but just extinguished. In the hurried search that followed, Father Hart managed to climb the outer wall and make his way through the moat to a place of safety. Bell also escaped, and in later years became an apostate to his everlasting shame. But Father Lacy, a gray-haired old man who now, a widower, had but lately been ordained after an honorable career in York as a magistrate and a married man, was taken as he was trying to follow his friends over the wall. When he was searched, his letters of orders were found upon him. A dangerous possession enough in those days, which however he accounted for by the fact that it was a difficult matter to convince many of his acquaintances, especially Protestants, that he was in orders, having lived in a married state so long, and having been absent from his country so short a time. There was little chance of escape for him, since he was well known to have constantly harbored priests as a layman, and to have only escaped imprisonment by wandering from one place to another in disguise. But as the act, which would have condemned him as a priest, ordained abroad, was not yet passed, they could only bring him in guilty of high treason by the answer he gave to the unusual blunt question. Will you acknowledge the Queen as Supreme Head of the Church? To which he replied, About this, and all other things, I hold with the Catholic Church and all good Christians. And so he passed, tranquilly, to the hurdle and the gallows. In the narrow turret room, that was his prison, he had for a time the consolation of the companionship of the young secular priest named Richard Kirkman. On his arrival in England, he had acted as a tutor, and carried on, meantime, very active missionary work at the house of that good confessor, Robert Deymoch, who died in prison in 1580, for refusing to attend the Protestant service. For some time, Father Kirkman carried on his work as a missionary among the veils of Northumberland and Yorkshire before he was tracked down and brought to York. Accused of being a papist and a traitor, he replied calmly, You might, sir, with some justice, charge the apostles with being traitors, for they taught the same doctrine that I now teach, and did the same things for which you condemn me. Nine months later saw the martyrdom of Father Hart, who thus fulfilled the prediction that he would be the fourth martyr of York, since blessed James Thompson had suffered there in the previous November. For a little more than a year, he had carried on his mission, winning by his zeal, his sweetness of nature, and his love for souls, the title of the Apostle of Yorkshire, while many people declared that he was like Father Campion himself in his eloquence and persuasiveness. We have seen him ministering at the risk of his life to the Catholic prisoners who crowded those terrible prisons of York. And six months after his escape from the castle on the morning of Father Bell's Mass, he was carrying on this good work from the house of Margaret Clitherow, of whom we shall presently hear more. Betrayed by a miserable apostate who attract him to the spot, he was taken on Christmas night as he lay sleeping quietly in his chamber, after five nights' hard work spent in hearing confessions and giving holy communion to his people. When dragged before the Lord President, Father Hart evidently showed such fearlessness and innocence in his replies that a certain nobleman, hearing he was accused of treason, said to Huntingdon, this man, my Lord, seems to me to be altogether guilless of any such crime. Nevertheless, he was thrown into an underground dungeon and loaded with chains in a vain attempt to deprive him of his joyousness of soul. A more successful means of torture was the report that the Dean of York had more than half converted him to the new religion in his disputations, the truth being as he was able to assure his anxious penitence that he had silenced his questioners on every point raised. His trial was the usual tissue of catch questions and injustice, and after his condemnation he gladly prepared himself for death. Throughout the many letters written to his spiritual children and others during these last days, breathed the most wonderful spirit of joy, almost indeed of mirth, at the thought of the honor to which his master had called him. Indeed in one of them he beseeches his friends to stay indoors on the day of his execution, unless they can assist at it with joyful face and tranquil mean. His end was harassed by the rude interruptions and railings of the Protestant ministers who were present, and who finally tried to insist that he should pray with them, presumably for his own conversion, since of their own righteousness they were well assured. But he only said gently, as I do not belong to your church, I may not pray with you, and then cried clearly to the thronging multitude below. This one request I earnestly make of all Catholics, that they pray for me and bear witness to all men, that I die a Catholic and for the Catholic faith, not for any crime or treason. His virtues were so illustrious, says one who knew him well, that they shone as the stars of heaven, and compelled the admiration not only of his friends, but even of his deadly foes. One of the jury men at his trial had been so struck by his holiness that he openly said to his colleagues that he would have no part in condemning one so innocent and holy. And he was, in consequence, thrown into prison, though a man of good name and much respected in York, even the porter of the prison. Callous and heart-hearted as he was was moved to tears when he saw the holy martyr dragged so cruelly to death. In spite of all the efforts of the magistrates, the people could not be hindered from carrying off his sacred relics, and proclaiming aloud his innocence and sanctity, though many were imprisoned for doing so. Another rites of him thus to Dr. Allen, his old master at Dowie. The week before Palm Sunday, William Hart gloriously poured out his blood for the Church of Christ and the authority of his vicar, a young priest, who, as you know, was both innocent, modest, learned, and holy. As he was being carried to execution, very many saluted him with the greatest kindness and love. Among them were two brothers of the noble family of Ingleby of Ripley, who are now in prison on this charge. For the Francis Ingleby, brother of those gallant gentlemen who was in that same year, ordained priest at Dowie, was another of those gay and high-spirited natures who had learned by the grace of God to meet a terrible death with a smile of welcome. For two years, his zeal for souls did a wonderful work in Yorkshire, and then in the spring of 1586 he was captured on his way to York by one of the president's men who saw a Catholic kneel to him and ask his blessing, and so made sure that he was a priest. Knowing him to be of high birth, they said to him, they marveled that he being a gentleman of so great calling, would abase himself to be a priest. He answered that he made more account of his priesthood than of all other titles whatsoever. Brought into the castle, he had a pair of fetters laid upon his legs at the prison door. The Catholic prisoners craved his blessing. With smiling countenance, he said, I fear me, I shall be overproud of my new boots. Meaning his fetters. After his condemnation, he showed such tokens of inward joy that the keeper said that he took no small pleasure to behold his sweet and joyful conversation. For his joy was such that his keeper, a very earnest Puritan, could not abstain from tears. Blessed William Hart, blessed William Lacy, and venerable Frances Ingleby, are probably all to be numbered among the many priests who were protected and harbored by that gallant gentlewoman, venerable Margaret Clitterow, the last of the long list of York martyrs who we have space to notice here. Brought up in her quiet while to do home in York in ignorance of the Catholic faith, Margaret's eyes were not opened until two or three years after her marriage with a rich tradesman of the city. Then her enthusiasm knew no bounds, and her one desire was to serve the church into whose borders she had been admitted. Her husband, though he took no risk himself, and remained on the safe side of Protestantism, was of Catholic family, and left both her and their children free to practice their faith. During the two years after her conversion, she had been imprisoned several times for refusing to attend the church. Assessor-Confessor Father John Marsh, who tells us full details of her life, the prison she had counted a most happy and profitable school, they persecuted her, and she thereby learned patience. They separated her from house, children, and husband, and she thereby became familiar with God. They sought to terrify her, and she thereby increased in the most glorious constancy and fortitude, in so much that her greatest joy was to be assaulted by them. The executions of the martyrs Lacy, Thompson, and Kirkman in 1582 stirred Margaret up to fresh enthusiasm for the cause of the faith. She had prepared a little room for priests close to her house in Davigate, where they could be freed from observation, and when that became unsafe another was made ready at some little distance. Here many away-faring priests on his way through York lay hidden, getting a much needed rest while Margaret kept guard. The living and the dead were thus both companions in her vigils, for many a dark night would see her walking barefoot to the place of execution outside Mickelgate, where she would kneel and pray for the fulfillment of her earnest wish, that if it were God's will she might give her life for the same Catholic cause. After the Penal Act of 1585, Margaret was in terror lest her confessor should command her not to harbour priests any longer, since it was now a defense punishable by death, and when he, moved by her eagerness, would not forbid it, she cried with joy. Now by God's grace all priests shall be more welcome to me than ever they were, and I will do what I can to set forward God's Catholic service. Then you must need to prepare your neck for the rope, he said smiling, to which he replied, God's will be done. But I am far unworthy of that honour. Quite suddenly, however, after nearly two years of freedom, an order came for Margaret's husband to appear before the council, and the sheriffs arrived to search the house. There were at that time two priests within the house. One newly arrived, the other acting as tutor to the Clitherow children and some of their friends. The former was hastily hidden by Margaret in a secret cellar, while the latter, who had only lately escaped from the castle prison, was unsuspectingly giving a lesson to his pupils. Before she could warn him, one of the searchers opened the door and seeing him teaching, suspected him to be a priest, and hurried back to tell the rest. The schoolmaster, thinking him to be a friend, opened the door to call him in. But when he perceived the matter, he shut the door again, and by that way, which was from the martyr's house to the chamber, escaped their pause. In their rage at these two escapes, the sheriffs took the future martyr, her children and her servants, and threw them into different prisons. Then by a cruel device, they took a young Flemish boy of ten or twelve years, whom Margaret had taken into her household, stripped him and threatened to beat him unmercifully, if he would not tell them all they asked. The terrified child confessed that his benefactress had harbored and maintained various priests, of whom he mentioned two by name, and even at length consented to take them to the priest's hole, empty now, however, of their desired prey. This was enough of them. But they could now secure a verdict of high treason against Margaret Clithero. The trial of this brave, high-spirited woman had this strange feature. After hearing her strenuous denial that she was guilty of maintaining enemies to her majesty, she said she knew very well that priests could not be so described. They asked her how she would be tried, to which she cheerfully made answer, having made no offense, I need no trial. Now as all the evidence against her rested on the word of a young child, Margaret might possibly have gained her acquittal, had she stood trial and pleaded not guilty. But she knew very well if the trial took place, her friends, her husband, and her children would be forced to give evidence against her, and she was determined that they should not have her blood upon their heads. The alternative was the terrible sentence enough, and this was now pronounced upon her. You must return from whence you came, and there the lowest part of the prison be stripped naked, laid down your back upon the ground, and as much weight laid upon you as you are able to bear. And so continue three days without meat or drink except a little barley bread and puddle water, and the third day be pressed to death, your hands and feet bound to posts, and a sharp stone under your back. Such cruelty seemed scarcely possible even in the sixteenth century, but Margaret heard the sentence unmoved, merely saying, if this judgment be according to your own conscience, I pray God send you better judgment before him. I thank God heartily for this. Even the judge ceased not to appeal to her to change her mind, but she was quite unmoved. She knew, of course, that her husband, as a Protestant, might easily be brought at the trial to betray many of the priests by name, and as her own martyrdom on this charge was certain either way, she chose the more cruel death to save him from the remorse of having in any way brought about her condemnation. He indeed, poor man, was beside himself with grief at this time. Will they kill my wife? he cried. Let them take all I have and save her, for she is the best wife in all England and the best Catholic. We will not linger over the dreadful details of her martyrdom. It is sufficient to know that her courage never failed, so that all who looked upon her marveled greatly, saying, Surely, this woman received comfort from the Holy Ghost. The sheriff tried his best to make her confess that she died for treason, but she replied, No, no, Mr. Sheriff, I die for the love of my Lord Jesus. Her sufferings lasted for fifteen minutes, and thus most victoriously, this gracious martyr overcame all her enemies, passing from this mortal life with marvelous triumph into the peaceable city of God. Her little daughter Anne, twelve years of age, after being imprisoned for refusing to betray her mother, was beaten and ill-used because she would not go to church. Then they falsely tricked her into going to hear a sermon by saying that if she refused, her mother would be put to death, after which they told the heartbroken child that Margaret was already dead. After suffering imprisonment for some time, she managed to escape from England, and became an Ursuline nun at Louvain. Her two brothers became priests, and thus by her descendants as well as by her own prayers in the city of God did venerable Margaret Clithero carry on the work so notably begun on earth. End of Chapter 10 Recording by John Brandon Chapter 11 of A Book of English Martyrs This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by John Brandon. A Book of English Martyrs by E. M. Wilmot Buxton Chapter 11 A Group of Lay Martyrs 1584-1601 They found him so merry in God and so joyful of the next day's banquet which he expected that they were all marvelously comforted and edified. The report of those who visited the prison of John Finch, the night before his martyrdom, the infamous act of 1585 against Jesuits, seminary priests, and other such like disobedient persons, the practical effect of which, as we have seen, was to outlaw the whole of the secular and regular clergy for 200 years, had also a far-reaching effect upon the laymen and lay women of the Catholic faith. For since the very presence of such priests in England was now high treason, it became an act of felony for any person to receive or to relieve one under any circumstances. Moreover, by one of its conditions the act laid down that any person not being a priest or deacon now being in any college or seminary abroad shall return within six months, and within two days of their return take the oath of supremacy, failing which they are guilty of high treason. The penalty for felony was hanging, for high treason hanging and quatering after being cut down alive, and this awful fate was faced on one charge or the other by five lay people. In the years 1583 and 1584, and by 17, between 1585 and 1588, there stand indeed on our model list more than seventy names of lay people, out of the two hundred and fifty-three persons who are awaiting the title of blessed. In this chapter we can but tell the story of very few of these, and so we'll choose those who belong to the most stirring times of the persecution, the period between 1584 and 1601. In those days when the Catholic press is beginning to send out its voice in this land with no uncertain sound, special interest is attached to the martyrdom of Venerable William Carter, hung and quartered at Tibern in January 1584 for the crime of printing Catholic books and pamphlets. He had already tasted imprisonment several times, either for printing such works or for not conforming himself in matters of religion, until in 1581 he gained a year of freedom by giving a heavy bond of surety that he would not depart the realm, but continue within three miles of his house in Hart Street, St. Olives, until he conformed into orders for religion and come into divine service established by active parliament. Also he shall not admit the access of any Jesuit, massing priest or seminary priest, or recusant, or keep any Catholic servant or partner. When a year later his house was raided by topcliff and found to contain vestments, chalices, crosses, and a large store of Catholic books, he might yet have escaped anything worse than long imprisonment, had it not been for the action of one of Walsingham's spies. This wretched creature, a gentleman by birth and received by Catholics as a Catholic, met Carter's wife in great grief at loss of him, and by a pretense of sympathy, wormed from her the admission that the mass furniture really belonged to a nobleman of high rank, from whom she now hoped to win help for her husband. This news was promptly sent to Walsingham, and Carter was thereupon cruelly wracked in order to make him betray those who had acted with him in the matter. But though nearly killed, nothing could be drawn from him but the name of Jesus. For eighteen months they kept William Carter in the tower, where he had the grief of hearing of his wife's death and of the poverty of his children. But courage never failed the brave little printer, though he must have longed for the day when his crown of glory should be won. He was condemned on an absolutely unjust charge of printing a book inciting Catholic English women to cut off the head of Elizabeth, as Judith did of Holofernes. Needless to say, the pamphlet did nothing of the kind, merely urging them to stay the progress of the sism by refusing to conform and go to the Protestant services. This fact was clearly proved by Carter in his defense, but to no avail. He was bullied and shouted down to such an extent that he could but say with a shrug of his shoulders, Well, God have mercy on me. I see what the end will be. By his side at the bar of judgment stood a priest, also waiting for conviction and sentence, to whom the martyr quietly turned and made his confession, knowing this would be his only chance before the end. And having received absolution, cheerfully awaited his execution which took place on the following day. His constancy and unselfish courage, in returning again and again after his many imprisonments to the dangerous task of printing and disseminating Catholic literature, rank him high upon the martyr list, and his epitaph might well be the words of his master. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy lord. John Finch, the Lancaster martyr, was another victim of that despicable band of spies who by pretending to be Catholics acted the part of Judas in the household of faith. He was a young yeoman who, with the aid of his sensible and thrifty wife, worked his farm for some years without caring very much for the great questions that were agitating the rest of England. Then somehow the call to conversion came. It may have been through the words of some hunted priest to whom, for the sake of charity, Finch had given a meal and a night's lodging. However it was, he became with his family a fervent Catholic, and to make up for the lost years of coldness, made it his special task to guide priests from one Catholic house to another. A dangerous bit of work that might well cost him life and liberty have discovered. To him there came one Christmas a certain man in the secret employ of the Earl of Darby, who told Finch that he was a Catholic at heart, and begged him to persuade two or more priests to his house. That they might church some wives in the neighborhood, near confessions, say mass, preach, and confer with some like himself, who were desirous to be Catholics and to be reconciled. Fortunately most of the priests in the north were engaged at the festival time in less dangerous districts. But Finch managed to get a certain father Oscliff to come to his house for such a desirable end. Meantime the wife of the traitor had sent her glove as signal to the Earl of Darby, who rode down to Finch's farm before it was light, and arrested both him and the priest in their beds. This was not the only act of treachery from which Finch had to suffer. Instead of being thrown into prison he was kept closely secluded in the Earl's own house, in order that more probability might be given to this statement that he had not only betrayed Father Oscliff into the hands of the enemy, but also the names of many other local Catholics whom he had seen at mass. Nothing shook his constancy, however. The Pope's holiness is head of the whole Church of God throughout the world, and it is impossible for any woman or layman to be head of any part thereof in spiritual causes, was his firm declaration, which so enraged the Earl that he up with his fist and gave the poor man a great blow in the face. After about a year he was thrown into prison at Salford, where he found many other Catholics, and here a veritable purgatory of trial began. For glorifying in his faith and especially in the martyrdom of Blessed Campion, whom he loved better than any man in the world, he was drawn to the Church with such fury and barbarous cruelty as though they had drawn a beast to the slaughter, taking him by the heels through the streets upon the stones, in such sort that his head was very sore, wounded, and all the stones be sprinkled with his blood. After that they thrust him into a deep, dark, cold, and stinking dungeon, which was in the midst of a bridge, where they pinched him with extreme hunger. Driven to despair, his courage suddenly gave way, and once at November Sunday, he attended mourning prayer at the parish church of Manchester. But his repentance was speedy, and his self-inflicted penance severe. Contriving to get rid of his keeper for a moment, he flung himself into the icy river, crying, yesterday I damped my soul, and today I will destroy my body. And so stood upon his feet the greatest part of his body being in the water, and there continued still, without moving, until they drove him out with stones, showing that his motive was not suicide, but penance for the weakness of the flesh. From that day he longed for the martyrdom that was to be his in a few months' time, and when he was condemned at Lancaster for high treason, he smiled, and gave thanks to God. It seemed indeed, as though for the moment of that brief fall and speedy contrition, he had been blessed and fortified in a rare but very wonderful way. For those of his friends who visited him on the eve of his death, found him so merry in God, and so joyful of the next day's banquet, which he expected, that they were all marvelously comforted and edified. Upon Friday, the twentieth day of April 1584, the executioners came at the appointed hour. This blessed man most joyfully bid them welcome, and thanked God for his infinite and innumerable benefits, especially for this death, which now he went to receive, exhorted all the people to the Catholic faith, and to good life, and desired a minister who was there not to trouble him. For I am not, quote he, of your religion, neither will I be for anything you can say. God give you grace to amend, and so used very few words, either upon the hurdle or upon the ladder, but continually occupied himself in secret prayers and meditation, until by glorious martyrdom his blessed soul forsook the body, and was made partaker of the everlasting and unspeakable joys. These two men are typical of the group of those who were condemned for high treason before the year 1585, when the new act made it still easier to secure victims, who could now be hung on a charge of felony for having given a seminary priest a cup of cold water in Christ's name. We have seen in the last chapter how Margaret Clithero suffered at York in 1586 for harboring priests, and that one of these latter had been Father Francis Ingleby, martyred some two months later on the same spot. One of those who saw him going to execution was a young man named Robert Bickerdijk, who had already been in prison on the charge of paying for a pot of ale for a weary and thirsty priest. There he had lain for a year before he was brought to trial and acquitted. This was in the summer of 1585, and when a year later Father Ingleby was on his way to execution, Robert Bickerdijk, going over the way to the toll booth, the minister's wife in the street, in his way, said to her sister who was with her, let us go into the toll booth and we shall see the traitorly thief come over on the hurdle. No, no thief, quote he, but as true as thou art. These chivalrous words cost him his life, for the lady never rested till she had obtained his committal to prison. Lest he should again escape, they asked him at his trial the bloody question, which had already brought the death of many. Whose part would you take if the Pope were to invade the realm? I cannot tell beforehand what I should do in time to come, said Robert cheerfully. But I should do, as it shall please God to put me in mind. For which words they railed and called him traitor and thereupon indicted him? But the jury perceiving malice in both the wicked judges and the merchants, which for what of true crime, would so imprudently buy their deceitful and bloody demand entangle him with some offensive matter, cleared him of all, and gave their verdict for his innocence. But the tigers were not thus to be bulked of their prey. I never rested till a less scrupulous jury found him guilty of high treason. So gross a case of injustice cost some stir in the place, even in those days. All the country was amazed to see this young man so unjustly made away. And some gentleman, meeting one of his judges, asked him whether the young man's answer that he would do in time to come, as it should please God to put in his mind, was treasoned by any statute, or law, or no. Which demand he took in great dodging, and said, you do us no less injury than the traitor did at the bar, when he asked us the same question. We are not sent hitherto to scan and dispute the statutes, but to give judgment against defenders. Our tale of the lay martyrs shall end with the story of a brave young waterman, and two faithful women martyred at Tyburn in 1588 and 1601. A certain young priest, named William Watson, had come over from Dowey, and had been arrested almost immediately after his arrival, and imprisoned in the Marshall Sea in 1586. He was soon released on condition of leaving England within a certain number of days, and while hesitating between duty and a desire for safety, was again seized by the infamous topcliff and flung into Bridewell jail. Then being yet somewhat lacking in fortitude, the poor young priest agreed to go once to the Protestant Church of Bridewell, and might have thus escaped further penalty of body, but his conscience quickly smote him, and he determined to do public penance by confessing his sin and weakness, publicly in that same place. For this he was thrown into a yet more grievous cell, and so tormented that in his loneliness and misery he again had almost yielded to the persuasions once more to go to the Protestant Church. At this point his unhappy condition of mind and body was reported to a certain gentlewoman named Margaret Ward, who at that time was companion to a Catholic lady of rank, then resident in London. Having obtained leave of her, Margaret Ward changed her dress, and taking a basket upon her arm full of provisions, went to the prison, but could not have leave to come at the priest, till by the intercession of the jailer's wife, whom Margaret had found means to make her friend, with much ado she obtained permission to see him from time to time and bring him necessaries upon condition that she should be searched on coming in and going out, that she might carry no letter to him or from him. This searching was so strictly observed for the first month that they even broke the loaves or pies that she brought him, lest any paper should thereby be conveyed to him. And all the while she was with him care was taken that someone should stand by to hear all that was said. We can well imagine, however, the comfort that the very presence of this visitor with her bright women's voice and encouraging looks brought to the weary and harassed young priest. After a time vigilance relaxed a little, in one day in hurried broken sentences, Watson told her that he had found a way by which, if he had a cord long enough for that purpose, he could let himself down from the top of the house where he was now imprisoned, and so make his escape. Next time Margaret Ward appeared in the prison she brought him a clean shirt, which she gave him folded up, for it contained a strong rope wherewith he could make his escape. She told him moreover, in guarded language, that between 10 and 11 o'clock at night a boatman would be waiting below to conduct him over Lamberth Marsh to the river, where a boat would be in readiness, and so left him in very good spirits for the forthcoming adventure. When Margaret Ward went to make sure that her boatman would keep his appointment, she found to her dismay that he had changed his mind. Nothing she could say, and no reward she could promise would induce him to take the risk of helping a priest, and so incurring the death penalty himself. As she was returning in sad perplexity to her mistress's house, she met a young Irish-serving man named John Roche, to whom she must have shown some kindness in past years, for he was much concerned at her downcast appearance and begged to be of some assistance to her. I dare not tell you, she replied, to his a matter of life and death. So much the more for telling me, said he, since I would willingly adventure my life to do you a pleasure. So you must do, John, if you would help me at all, said she. And that I gladly promise, he replied, at which she told him all her trouble. At once John Roche undertook to do all that was required, and that night he stood below the priest's prison, ready to conduct him to the boat that lay in readiness. But as Watson slid down the rope, he dislodged a stone or tile which fell with such a noise that the whole house was roused. Roche was hurrying Watson away as fast as he could across Lambeth Marsh, when they found the keeper running hard upon them. The priest gave up all hope, saying, sure we be undone, for yonder comes my keeper. But John Roche made him walk quickly on, and turning composately to the pursuer gave him good moral, so naturally that the man, after a hurried glance, in the half-darkness of the August night, ran on towards the river. Surely they will take me there, cried Watson despairingly, upon which the young waterman bade him stay and change clothes with him. And so pass on to the boat. This stratagem was perfectly successful as far as the priest was concerned, for he got safely away by boat in the serving man's clothes. But Roche, who probably ensured his safety by distracting the attention of his pursuers, was taken by them in the priest's cassock. He was examined what he was, for at first they thought he had been Watson the priest. But he confessed that he was a Catholic, and had hoped in the priest to escape, for which he was executed at Tibern. His happy lot was to die by the side of the mistress he had served so faithfully. When the rope was discovered, the jailer declared that it could have been brought into the prison by none but mistress Margaret Ward, and she was accordingly arrested early next day. They threw her into prison, and wrecked a cowardice vengeance on her for the priest's successful escape. She was flogged, and hung up by the wrists. The tips of her toes only touching the ground were so long a time that she was crippled and paralyzed. But these sufferings greatly strengthened the glorious martyr for her last struggle. Brought to trial at Newgate a week later, she confessed with a smiling countenance that she had provided Watson with the means of escape, and no threats of any kind could force her to give any information as to the whereabouts of the priest. Liberty was offered to her if she would ask pardon of the Queen's majesty and promised to go to church, in reply Margaret Ward refused to ask pardon for an offense against the Queen, which she had not committed, and expressed her belief that the Queen herself, if she had the compassion of a woman, would have done as much under similar circumstances. With regard to going to church, she said, I have been convinced for many years that it is not lawful to do so, and I would lay down many lives if I had them, rather than act against my conscience, or do anything against God and his holy religion. Her courage and cheerfulness must have put fresh heart into the devoted young servant who was condemned with her, and who suffered the pains of death, and earned the martyrs crowned with her on the 30th of August, 1588. The story of Anne Lyon, another brave Catholic gentlewoman, who laid down her life in the cause of the faith, is told by the dauntless and adventurous priest Father John Gerard, who, after undergoing every kind of torture and prison, and daring all manner of perils in the pursuit of his wonderful work of conversion and reconciliation, died at last peacefully in his bed. He tells us that Mistress Anne Lyon was the widow of a staunch Catholic who had given up a fine estate rather than conform and had lived abroad in poverty till his death. After that event, she returned to England and sought out Father Gerard, who saw in her simplicity and holiness of character combined with a good store of charity and wariness the very qualities he wanted, for a woman was needed, who should manage a house in which priests might find a refuge for a time when they had newly come to England or when they wanted to consult Father Gerard. Now head of the English mission. He wanted, moreover, someone to manage the money matters, take care of the guests and meet the inquiries of strangers, and this work Anne Lyon gladly accepted at his hands. She was one of those ardent souls whose delicate bodies seem almost too frail as sheath for the strong spirit within, but instead of repining at her physical weakness, it was to her a cause of joy, for as she once said to Father Gerard, Though I desire above all things to die for Christ, I dare not hope to die by the hand of the executioner, but perhaps the Lord will let me be taken in the same house as a priest, and then be thrown into a chill and filthy dungeon where I shall not be able to last out long. Her delight was in the Lord, comments Father Gerard, and the Lord granted her the desires of her heart. When Gerard escaped from the tower in 1597, by the daring and almost incredible feet of throwing a rope across the moat from the place of his imprisonment, Anne Lyon gave up the management of his house, for by that time so many people knew who she was that it would have been unsafe for him. He tells the rest himself. So a room was hired for her in another person's house, where she often used to harbour priests. One day it was the feast of the purification. She let in a great many Catholics to hear mass, a thing which she would never have done in my house. Good soul she was more careful of me than of myself. Some neighbours noticed the throng and called the constables. They went upstairs to the room, which they found full of people. The celebrant was Father Francis Page, S.J., who was afterwards martyred. He had pulled off his vestments before the priest hunters came in, so that they could not readily make out which was the priest. Accordingly they laid hold of him and began questioning him and others also. No one would own there was a priest there. But as the altar had been found ready for mass, they acknowledged that they had been waiting for a priest to come. While the Catholics and the persecutors were wrangling on this point, Father Francis Page, taking advantage of someone's opening the door, got away from those that held him and slipped out, shutting the door behind him. He then went upstairs to a place that he knew, where Mrs. Lyon had had a hiding place made, and there he ensconced himself. Search was made for him the whole house over, but to no purpose. So they took Mrs. Lyon and the richer ones of the party to prison and let the others go on bail. God lengthened out the martyr's life beyond her expectation. It was some months before she was brought to trial, on a charger harboring and supporting priests. To the question of guilty or not guilty, she made no direct answer but cried out in a loud voice so that all could hear her. My lords, nothing grieves me but that I could not receive a thousand more. She listened to the sentence of death with great show of joy and thanksgiving to the Lord God, though she was so weak that she had to be carried to court in a chair, and sat there during the whole of the trial. Being arrived at the place of punishment, some preachers wanted to tease her, as usual with warnings to abandon her errors, but she cut them short saying, away, I have no dealings or communion with you. Then kissing the gallows with great joy, she knelt down to pray and kept on praying till the hangman had done his duty. So she gave up her soul to God. It was at Tibern in the February of 1601 that God thus used the weak things of this earth to confound the strong.