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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029429838 
 
EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 % §i0gntp^u. 
 
 BY 
 
 EICHAED SIMPSON. 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 
 
 14 HENRIETTA STREET,. COVENT GARDEN, LONDON ; AND 
 20 SOUTH FEEDEEICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 
 
 1867. 
 
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 LONDOK : 
 
 KOBSOX AND SON. CltKAT NOI'.TIMCKN I'r.lNTTXO WORKS, 
 
 ^A^•CI1AS ROAll, N.W. 
 
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PREFACE. 
 
 The first eight chapters of the following Life were printed off 
 from time to time, as they appeared in the Ranibler in the years 
 1861 and 1862. When the Ramller changed into the Home and 
 Foreign Revieiv this work was dropped, and was only resumed in 
 November 1866. 
 
 Campion has had so many biographers that a new one may 
 be expected to state his reasons for telling again a tale so often 
 told. They are very simple. In the course of my researches 
 among diflTerent archives, I found a quantity of unpublished 
 matter that had never been seen by the former biographers ; and 
 in reading over the earliest and most authentic memoirs I found 
 so many points obscured by phrase - making, misunderstood 
 through ignorance of England, or misrepresented through the 
 one-sidedness of those whose information was depended upon, 
 that there seemed ample room for another book on the same 
 subject. 
 
 I have to express my obligations to the Jesuit Fathers at 
 Stonyhurst, who had the kindness to send the mss. relating to 
 Campion to London for my convenience ; to Charles Weld, Esq., 
 who took the trouble to copy from a lis. at the Gesu in Rome the 
 whole of Bombinus' unpublished additions and corrections for his 
 biography ; and lastly, to Father Victor de Buck, BoUandist, of 
 Brussels, for several references to rare books, and for encourage- 
 ment, without which the work would never have been resumed. 
 
 The Bibliographical Appendix and the references in the notes 
 will be a suflicient indication of the authorities which I have 
 followed. 
 
 Clapham, Dec. 21, 186G. 
 
LIFE 
 
 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Edmund Campion, the protomartyr of the English Jesuits, 
 was born in London on St. Paul's day, January 25, 15|^, 
 the thirtieth year of Henry VIII., a year marked by the sup- 
 pression of the great religious houses in England, and the 
 inauguration of a persecution of which, forty years after. 
 Campion was to be a victim, as well as by the solemn papal 
 approval of the Society of Jesus, of which he was to be an 
 ornament. His father was also Edmund Campion, citizen 
 and bookseller of London. " His parents were not wealthy 
 in the riches of this world, but very honest. and Catholic," 
 says Father Parsons. Campion himself was not so certain of 
 this ; he only " hopes" that they died in the faith. They 
 had four children, a girl and three boys, of whom Edmund 
 was either eldest or second. He and his youngest brother 
 took to books ; the other preferred adventure, and took a 
 wife, who was occasionally left to herself while her husband 
 served in the wars.* 
 
 When Edmund was come to "years of discretion," that 
 is, when he was nine or ten, his parents wished to apprentice 
 him to some merchant ; but some members of one of the 
 London companies — Parsons thinks that of the merchant ad- 
 venturers, but I think the grocers — having become acquainted 
 with the " sharp and pregnant wit" that he had shown from 
 his childhood, induced their guild to undertake to maintain 
 him "at their common charges to the study of learning." He 
 was sent first to some London grammar-school, and after- 
 
 • See Note A at end. 
 
2 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 wards to the new foundation of Edward VI. at Christ Church, 
 Newgate Street, — if we may call it his foundation; but a 
 new religion had brought in new notions of merit and re- 
 paration ; it was ample satisfaction for the theft of a hog to 
 bestow its feet in alms. Just three weeks before he died, 
 Henry VIII. not only atoned for his wholesale pillage of the 
 church, but acquired the honours of a founder and benefac- 
 tor, by restoring St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield, to the ser- 
 vice of God and the poor ; and his son followed his example 
 by founding schools with some of the confiscated Church 
 property, according to the lesson first taught by Cardinal 
 Wolsey, and since repeated with variations by most of the 
 European governments. Christ-Church Hospital, or the Blue- 
 Coat School, was one of these foundations. 
 
 In those days there seems to have been a common con- 
 cursus among the London grammar-schools, as if they had 
 formed a, university. Cami^ion is said " ever to have borne 
 away the game in all contentions of learning proposed by 
 the schools of London ;" a fact which he would occasionally 
 " merrily mention" in after life, not without some talk of the 
 prizes he had gained. His "championship" was acknow- 
 ledged ; and so when Queen Mary, on her solemn entry into 
 London, August 3, 1553, had to pass by St. Paul's School, 
 it was none of the " Paul's pigeons " that was selected to 
 address her, but Campion, as the representative of London 
 scholarship, was brought from Newgate Street to make the 
 requisite harangue. Minds that had faith in functions would 
 have triumphed in the prospects which that day opened to 
 the Church. They could not admit that the enthusiasm could 
 be so soon cooled. They noted with admiration the long 
 procession : the lords marching three and three together ; 
 the ambassadors surrounded with crowds of their own country- 
 men, and each attended by one of the privy councillors — 
 the Spanish Ambassador for greater honour attended by St. 
 John the Lord Treasurer ; the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas 
 "White, who was afterwards to be Campion's great patron ; 
 the Earl of Arundel, bearing the sword before the queen ; 
 the queen herself, " in a long-sleeved robe of crimson velvet, 
 with side-sleeves and train of the same, enriched with gold 
 embroidery and precious stones ;" followed by her sister, the 
 Lady Elizabeth, and a hundred and sixty other ladies, — 
 duchesses, countesses, dames, mistresses, and maids. Eight 
 thousand horsemen rode in the procession, and the Tower guns 
 kept firing from the first moment the queen passed under 
 Temple Bar till she reached the old fortress ; the roofs and 
 streets were crowded with citizens singing, playing organs, 
 
HE GOES TO OXl'ORD. 6 
 
 and shouting, " God save Queen Mary !"* It was in the midst 
 of this tumult that little Campion had to spout his address, 
 and to share the honours of a day when good-humour ruled, 
 and criticism was mute except to applaud. The queen is 
 said to have been much pleased with him, and the people 
 cheered him heartily, though they probably did not hear a 
 word he said ; for at thirteen he had not that " sweet, modu- 
 lated, full, sonorous bass voice"t which afterwards inspired 
 hearts with so high resolves, though there might have been 
 the faciei grata venustas, a youthful beauty against whose 
 rhetoric the people could not hold argument, and anticipa- 
 tions of excellence to make citizens proud of their young 
 champion. 
 
 When Sir Thomas White founded St. John's College, 
 Oxford, the Grocers' Company dealt with him to admit this 
 youth as a scholar, " which he did most willingly after he 
 was informed of his towardliness and virtue." The Com- 
 pany gave him an exhibition for his maintenance. In 1557, 
 when the college was increased. Campion became junior fel- 
 low; for the founder had conceived a special affection for 
 him, and he had in very short time grown to be much known 
 for his wit, and especially for his grace of speech and gift of 
 eloquence, in which he was thought to be the best man of 
 his time. 
 
 In November 1558, Queen Mary and Cardinal Pole died. 
 Elizabeth succeeded, set up chiefly by the forwardness and 
 forces of the Catholic nobility and people, who at that day, 
 says Parsons, were without comparison the stronger party, 
 but were content to act thus, partly on the hope of Elizabeth 
 continuing in the CathoHc religion, of which she had made 
 much demonstration while her sister lived, and partly on a 
 certain politic persuasion that this was the less evil, the best 
 way to preserve peace, and exclude a foreign succession to 
 the crown. But within a few weeks the new queen had for- 
 bidden the Host to be elevated in her presence, had chidden 
 her preachers for their doctrine, and had excited such sus- 
 picion that a Bishop could hardly be procured to crown her. 
 After her coronation she quite threw off the mask, and by a 
 packed party in the " beardless parliament," and a majority 
 of one voice in the House of Lords, from which, by threats 
 and cajolery, she had caused the chief Catholic nobles to ab- 
 sent themselves, against the unanimous decision of the Bi- 
 shops, and the expressed wishes of Convocation, she substi- 
 tuted the Anglican Establishment for the Catholic Church. 
 But it was a long time before the law written on paper be- 
 
 • • See Note B. t See Note C. 
 
4 EDJlUIsD CAMPION. 
 
 came transfused into the habits and life of the English ; the 
 utmost address and ingenuity, the most imperturbable patience, 
 were requisite to enforce it step by step, first in one place, 
 then in another, upon the divided and isolated population of 
 the country. 
 
 The change was not immediately felt at Oxford, espe- 
 cially by the undergraduates ; the authorities did not want 
 to make Oxford a desert by forcing too many consciences ; 
 no oath was required of Campion till he took his degree in 
 1564. By that time the seductions of the university, a host 
 of friends, and a large following of disciples had entangled 
 him. His eloquence was a dangerous gift ; as junior in the 
 act of February 19, 1564, he was orator in the schools, "at 
 which time," saj's Anthony a Wood, " speaking one or more 
 most admirable orations, to the envy of his contemporaries, 
 he caused one of them, Tobie Mathew, to say, that rather 
 than omit the opportunity to show his parts, and dominari 
 in una atqiie altera conciiinculd (to be cock in a spouting- 
 match or two), he took the oath against the supremacy of the 
 Pope and against his own conscience." In this envious 
 stab of Tobie's there is some truth to poison the wound. 
 The orator's success tempted him to desert theology, to which 
 he had addressed himself from his boyhood, and to become 
 a humanist ; and why should a humanist and a layman trou- 
 ble himself with the quarrels of Pope and queen ? His own 
 path of duty was plain ; he was more certain that he ought 
 to obey his superiors, and fulfil his engagements with his 
 pupils, than he could be about the abstract question of the 
 Pope's supremacy. The more certain duty eclipses the less ; 
 and as a mere layman he had no particular call to certify 
 himself more securely on so very inconvenient a point. 
 Nevertheless, though he took the oath himself, he sometimes 
 saved othersfrom doing so. " 1 knew him at Oxford," says 
 Parsons, " and it was through him that the oath was not 
 tendered to me when I took my M.A. degree."* 
 
 Still, however loth, he was obliged, by the statutes of the 
 college, to enter on the study of theology ; but he managed 
 to find a respite, and to stave oflf the urgent questions. He 
 began with natural theology, and read it up from Aristotle 
 — Aristotle saj^s nothing about the Pope's supremacy. Then 
 he went on to positive theology, tlie old settled dogma, which 
 had not much to do with the controversies of the day. Then 
 he determined to spell through the Fathers, where he could 
 not expect to find much about these crabbed points ; this 
 I gather from his own statement: "First I learned grammar 
 
 * See Note D. ♦ 
 
ST. John's college. 5 
 
 in my native place ; then I went to Oxford, where I studied 
 philosophy fur seven years (1557-1564), and theology for 
 about sis — Aristotle, Positive Theology, and the Fathers."* 
 
 After he had taken his degree he had hosts of pupils, who 
 followed not onlj^ his teaching but his example, and imitated 
 not only his phrases but his gait. He filled Oxford with 
 " Campionists ;" he became, like Hotspur, the glass wherein 
 the youth did dress themselves, whose speech, gait, and diet 
 was the cop)^ and book that fashioned others. Among these 
 Campionists was Robert Turner, afterwards rector of the 
 University of Ingoldstadt, who speaks of his master as the 
 one qui stilum meuni, prius disjectum et libere efiuentem extra 
 Oram artis et ratiunis, redegit in qtiadrum, aut aptius ad 
 normam hanc rectam exegit ; he had pinched up, and pulled 
 out, and squared into shape his pupil's slovenly style. An- 
 other was Richard Stanihurst, poet, historian, and divine ; 
 and another, Henry, son of Lord Vaux of Harrowden. None 
 of them approach their master in his brief and brilliant 
 phrases, and forcible and lifelike epithets ; but they gathered 
 round him and formed a classical public, a brotherhood of 
 scholars, to excite, to appreciate, and to applaud. 
 
 St. John's College was at that time a nursery for Catho- 
 lics. The founder, Sir Thomas White, a Catholic, who as 
 Lord Mayor of London in 1553 had done good service against 
 Sir Thomas Wyatt's rebellion, and who in Elizabeth's first 
 Parliament had protested that "it was unjust that a religion 
 begun in such a miraculous way, and established by such 
 grave men, should be abolished by a set of beardless boys," 
 — was still alive to superintend its foundation. When Eliza- 
 beth abolished the Mass, Dr. Alexander Belsire, whom Sir 
 Thomas had appointed first president of his college in 1555, 
 was deprived by the Royal Commissioners, for Popery, in 
 1559 or 1560 ; and then White took away all the cruci- 
 fixes, vestments, and holy vessels that he had given, and hid 
 them in his house, to be restored in happier times. f Bclsire's 
 successor. Dr. William Ely, who was elected by the scholars 
 and confirmed by White, was as much a Catholic as his pre- 
 decessor; but he managed to hold his post till 1563 without 
 acknowledging the queen's supremacy. In that year the 
 oath was tendered to him, and he was ejected. William 
 Stock, Principal of Gloucester Hall, succeeded Ely, but was 
 also ejected in a year for Popery. In 1564 Sir Thomas White 
 made John Robinson president; he remained so for eight 
 years, till July 1572, when, White being dead, and the 
 Puritan Home, Bishop of Winchester, having succeeded in 
 
 * See Note E. t See Note F. 
 
EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 upsetting White's arrangement which deprived the Bishops 
 of that see of the visitation of the college and vested^ it in 
 trustees, of whom one of the first was to have been William 
 Roper, the descendant of Sir Thomas More,* the character of 
 the college imderwent a complete change. Tobie Mathew 
 was made president (1572), the suspected Papists (nine out 
 of twenty) were ejected from the fellowships, and their places 
 were filled by Puritans. Such is always the end of attempts 
 to graft Catholic institutions upon the Establishment; a 
 generous impulse is caUed forth, foundations more or less 
 liberal are made, matters go on well while the personal pre- 
 sence of the founder overlooks them ; but when he dies, his 
 spirit departs, and his foundation reverts to the true repre- 
 sentatives of Anglicanism, the High Churchman or the Puri- 
 tan. The unsoundness of the constitution which requires the 
 constant supervision of a man of genius, is shown by its col- 
 lapse imder his successors. There is no home for any thing 
 Catholic in the Establishment. It would be ridiculous to look 
 for the spirit of Sir Thomas 'White, or of Edmund Campion, 
 in the present society of St. John's College, Oxford. 
 
 In the times I am speaking of, that society, if we may 
 believe Yepes, Bishop of Tarracona, never would have the 
 Lord's Supper celebrated in their chapel, nor would go else- 
 where in search of it. If they had not the same objection to 
 the Common Prayer, they avoided all topics of religious dis- 
 pute, devoted themselves to philosophy and scholarship, and 
 made Campion promise not to compromise himself in his 
 public disputations. They were all waiting for something to 
 turn up ; waiting like the drunken man for the door to come 
 round to them, instead of shaking off their lethargy and 
 walking out through the open door. They were waiting for 
 Burghley to die, or for Elizabeth to die or to marry a 
 Catholic husband, or for the King of Spain to come and de- 
 pose her ; waiting for fortune to change for them, instead of 
 trying to change their own fortune ; and forgetting that fate 
 unresisted overcomes us, but is conquered by resistance. 
 They might have been reproached, like the Athenians of old : 
 "Will you for ever go sneaking about, and asking, 'What 
 news ? ' What can be more disgraceful news than that an 
 heretical woman is putting down the Catholics, and usurping 
 their inheritance ? Is Elizabeth dead ? No, i' faith, but she 
 is very sick ; and what matters it to you ? If she were dead, 
 you would soon set up another Elizabeth, through j'our sloth 
 and poltroonery. For this one has not made herself what 
 she is ; it is you that have built her up." It was this English 
 
 * See Note G. 
 
SIR THOMAS WHITE. 7 
 
 dilatoriness, this provisional acquiescence in wrong, this 
 stretchiag of the conscience in order that men might keep 
 what they had, which lost England to the Church, as it has 
 since lost many a man who was quite convinced that he 
 ought to be a Catholic, but waited till his conviction faded 
 away. The Catholics waited for the times to mend; and 
 they waited till their children were brought up to curse the 
 religion of their fathers, till they had been robbed piecemeal 
 of their wealth and power, and found themselves a waning 
 sect in the land they had once occupied from sea to sea. 
 
 Campion's first public oratorical display at Oxford was in 
 1560, at the re-burial of poor Amy Robsart, Robert Dudley's 
 murdered wife, who had been hastily stowed away at Cumnor, 
 till the people muttering about her husband having caused 
 Foster, his servant, to throw her down-stairs and break her 
 neck, in order that he might enjoy the Queen's favours more 
 freely, — as afterwards he did during his whole life, — induced 
 him to display his love and grief by a magnificent funeral in 
 St. Mary's Church, Oxford, when Dudley's chaplain, Dr. 
 Babington,* made her funeral oration. But either more than 
 one oration was made over her grave, or the event was com- 
 memorated in the different colleges ; for Parsons says that 
 " Edmund Campion was chosen, though then very young, to 
 make an English oration in lier funerals, which he performed 
 with exceeding commendation of all who were present." I 
 have already mentioned his successes in February 1564. In 
 the same year Sir Thomas White died, and, ia conformity with 
 his will, his body was brought from London to Oxford, " with 
 great celebrity and amarvellous concourse of people, on account 
 of the fame of his virtues and charities ;" and because he was 
 a known Catholic, and had done much to defend and advance 
 his religion, therefore (says Parsons) Campion was chosen to 
 make the funeral oration in Latin ; and in it he so well "im- 
 proved" the alms-deeds of Sir Thomas, "that he wonderfully 
 moved his audience to esteem such pious deeds," and " ap- 
 palled much for many days the new-fangled preachers of that 
 time," who used to disparage the merit of good works, and 
 had not yet arrived even at the moderate Anglican view, that 
 a few of them do no harm.f 
 
 A copy of this oration is preserved at Stonyhurst ; it is 
 in very idiomatic and elegant Latia, and my translated ex- 
 tracts give no idea of its excellence. The author begins with 
 a rhetorical picture of the grief of the thirty towns which 
 White's munificence had enriched, and then turns to the 
 simplicity which governed this liberality. " What magnifi- 
 
 * See Note H. t See Note I. 
 
8 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 cent generosity it was for a wholly unlettered man to found 
 this great home of literature, for a man without learning to 
 patronise the learned, for a wealthy citizen to adopt so many 
 strangers when he had no children of his own, and to give 
 all he had to aliens !" He enlarges on White's childlessness, 
 and declares that it was providential, not natural : "Where- 
 fore ? he was freed from this care that he might be whoUy 
 unencumbered for another; and this other care he so entirely 
 embraced, that for the last ten years he has devoted aU his 
 thoughts, all his means, all his labour upon us ; when away 
 from Oxford his soul was here, waking or sleeping he only 
 thought of us. As soon as his last fatal paralysis attacked 
 him, he immediately sent off for one of us. Our president 
 was away, and I was sent instead. .As soon as he saw me, 
 the old man embraced me, and with tears spoke words that 
 I could not hear with dry eyes, and cannot repeat without 
 weeping. The sum was, that we should take every care that 
 the college was not harmed, that wc should be in charity among 
 ourselves, and educate the youth intrusted to us liberally 
 and piously. We were to tell him if there was any thing as 
 yet unfinished, for ho was prepared to supply what was need- 
 ful ; and there was yet time to make fresh regulations, or to 
 repeal, remove, or change the old. He had provided for us 
 in his will, and hoped that his wife and William Cor dell, his 
 executors, would take care of us. He begged that we would 
 not pray for his recovery, but for faith and patience in his 
 last moments ; and nothing annoyed him so much as wishes 
 for a renewal of health."* Then there is an apostrophe to 
 Sir Thomas, and a summary of his charities — the foundation 
 of Merchant-Tailors' School in London, the restoration of 
 Gloucester HaU, and the foundation of St. John's College, 
 Oxford. " He has beaten all of us students with our holy 
 ways, our sacred teaching, our pious talk, and our sacri- 
 legious life. In this man's tongue, manners, and gait, there 
 was nothing polished, dressed up, painted, affected, or false ; 
 aU was bare, open, pure, sincere, chaste, undefiled." He and 
 Sir Thomas Pope were the only private persons who had 
 founded colleges ; but he did it at a time when there were 
 few incentives to such an act ; " when literature was despised, 
 was in prison, in poverty, and in despair, half dead with sor- 
 row, nearly washed out in tears." 
 
 The next great occasion of Campion's oratorical triumphs 
 was in 1566, during the queen's visit to the university. The 
 shows with which Oxford entertained her are of a piece with 
 those which she afterwards witnessed at Kenilw"orth, and 
 
 • See Note J, 
 
THE OXFORD 11EVEI>S. 9 
 
 which Sir Walter Scott has made familiar to us. Wherever 
 she went, inscriptions were put up in her honour ; one that 
 was set up over the gate of Christ Church made a painful im- 
 pression on Campion. That college was one of Wolsey's two 
 magnificent foundations. " That at Ipswich" (says Campion) 
 " was destroyed by Henry. The other at Oxford is without 
 comparison grander than any college in Europe, and endowed 
 with an income of about 3000L At the present day Henry 
 is called its founder, simply because he did not upset it and 
 confiscate its revenues after the cardinal's death. Witness 
 the verses carved in great letters over the entrance when 
 Elizabeth made her visit ; the last line of the inscription was. 
 Imperfecta tui subiens monumenta parentis ('Enter the un- 
 finished monument of your father'). I never saw any thing 
 more miserable ; the memory of the noble patron obliterated, 
 and the honour given to one who bad violated every principle 
 of honour, trampled under foot all laws, human and divine, 
 and destroj'ed the religion and commonwealth of England."* 
 Campion did not make allowance for the tendency which he 
 exemplified in his own mind. In organised bodies honour- 
 able actions are attributed to the recognised head of the body, 
 as the individual prowess of soldiers and skill of ofiicers swell 
 the general's credit, while the general's victories are set down 
 to the king. The courtly Anglican naturally refers the foun- 
 dation of Christ Chui'ch to Henry, the independent church- 
 man to Wolsey ; but its real founders were the men who had 
 set up the small monasteries out of the revenues of which 
 Wolsey, with the king's pej-mission, endowed his colleges. 
 But the real founders were not a representative body ; they 
 were a mere catalogue of names, without meaning or coher- 
 ence, and their honour was going a-begging till some one 
 appropriated it. Churchmen claimed it for the churchman, 
 politicians for the king, according to the usual rule in such 
 cases. Kopa^ KopuKi. According to our individual bias, we 
 select somewhat arbitrarily our representative men ; and I 
 see nothing to wonder at in Campion, a churchman, selecting 
 Cardinal Wolsey, or in the Oxibrd coui-ticrs flattering the 
 father of their sovereign mistress. 
 
 Besides these speaking scrolls, "the whole university 
 forced itself every way to make the best show they could in 
 all kinds of learned and liberal exercises, as orations, dis- 
 putations, preaches, comedies, tragedies, and the like." There 
 were farces and rough horse-pranks, which Elizabeth relished 
 amazingly; there were sour theological disputes "mode- 
 rated" by John Jewel of Sarum ; and a discussion of phy- 
 
 * Sec Note K. 
 
10 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 sical philosophy, in which Campion bore the chief share. 
 But he had his share in the other revels, " whereof myself," 
 says Parsons, "was then an eye-witness, though some six or 
 seven years behind Mr. Campion in standing and in age." 
 Wood says that he welcomed the queen in the name of the 
 university, at her first entry into the city, as thirteen years 
 before he had welcomed Queen Mary to London. His opi- 
 nions would not be against him at court. The queen noto- 
 riously hated the Puritans, and had a taste for many of the 
 externals of the old religion, towards the professors of which 
 she exhibited the moderation of endeavouring to win them 
 by gentle means without exasperating them.* Campion's 
 state of mind, however obnoxious to Jewel or Tobie Mathew, 
 would make him the more interesting to a political coquette 
 who prided herself on her powers of fascination. Neverthe- 
 less his friends extorted from him a promise to avoid all 
 controverted points in his orations. Nor was the council 
 less anxious to keep such disputes from the queen's ears. 
 The documents remaining in the State-Paper OfEcef are an 
 amusing proof of the industry with which the queen's ad- 
 visers incubated over this important point. One list of 
 questions in Sir William Cecil's hand carefully eschews all 
 theology, and begins with the inquiry, " Why is ophthalmia 
 catching, but not dropsy or gout ? " Another paper, which 
 probably contains Jewel's scheme, proposes to affirm as many 
 heresies as could be stuffed into the budget. The scheme 
 finally adopted by the council was a clever one for committing 
 the university to the political theology of the court. Its 
 questions in divinity are, " Whether subjects may fight 
 against wicked princes?" " The ministry is not an external 
 power." In moral philosophy, "Princes should be declared 
 by succession, not by election ;" " The rule of the king alone 
 is better than that of law alone." The political nature of the 
 so-called religious movement in England is well indicated by 
 these questions, and it shows some liberality in the govern- 
 ment, that they were allowed to be canvassed at the univer- 
 sity in the presence of the queen. 
 
 It must have been a relief to his friends to find that 
 Campion was only to be the oracle of two physical mysteries 
 — "Whether the tides are caused by the moon's motion?" 
 and " Whether the lower bodies of the universe are regulated 
 by the higher ?" He was respondent ; that is, he had first 
 to expose his arguments briefly, then to listen and reply to 
 the objections of his opponents. This display came off on 
 September 3, 1566, before the queen and the handsome Lord 
 
 * See Note I.. t See Note M. 
 
HIS SPEECH. 1 1 
 
 Robert, " tlie chick that sitteth next the henne,"* not yet Earl 
 of Leicester, but chancellor of the university, the consoled 
 widower of Amy Robsart, and almost a recognised suitor for 
 the queen's hand, whose familiarity encouraged her faithful 
 Commons, two months afterwards, to petition her to marry, 
 even going so far as to designate him for her husband, " if she 
 intended to marry a subject." But Elizabeth took offence, 
 and commanded him on peril of his life not to aspire to 
 such a thing.f As yet, however, the drama was not " Love's 
 Labour lost," and so the adulatory Oxonians could treat him 
 almost as if he were king, without making the queen jealous. 
 Before this loving pair Campion was called out to dispute, 
 Mr. Bully being moderator, Campion respondent ; Day, Mey- 
 rick (a peppery Welshman, made Bishop of Man in 1573), 
 Richard Bristow (afterwards a Catholic, and a dear friend of 
 Campion, one of the founders of Douai College, and the 
 author of the celebrated "Motives"), and Adam Squii'e, the 
 attacking party. In his opening speech Campion shows more 
 rhetoric and tact than knowledge. " The only thing that 
 reconciled him to the unequal contest, which he had to main- 
 tain single-handed against four pugnacious youths, was the 
 thought that he was speaking in the name of Philosophy, 
 the princess of letters, before Elizabeth, a lettered princess, 
 whose blessed ancestors were adepts in science, who set 
 her the example of visiting the poor scholars." Then he 
 addressed the magnificent chancellor, whose godly and death- 
 less benefactions to the university he could not deny if he 
 would, and ought not to conceal if he could. It was he who 
 had raised Oxford from her lethargy, and encouraged her 
 progress. " May God preserve these benefits to us ; may 
 He preserve your Majesty [to the queen], your Honour [to 
 Dudley], — ^you, our mother ; you, our protector, — you, who 
 do these things ; you, who advise them," &c. This Ciceronian 
 see-saw was great clap-trap no doubt, but it eflfected its pur- 
 pose. The queen was visibly afi"ected, and turned with smiles 
 to Lord Robert, — "You, my lord, must still be one;" words 
 of no great weight, but which thrilled through an ambitious 
 heart, and kindled in it no imkindly feeling to the young 
 orator, who was perorating to so much better purpose than 
 when, six years before, he was pronouncing the panegyric of 
 poor Amy Robsart. Campion did not notice the queen's 
 interruption, but proceeded with his pendulum : " You, who 
 preserve us ; you, who honour us; you, who give us security; 
 you, who give us happiness." If bene esse is better than 
 esse, Campion certainly preferred the chancellor to the queen, 
 
 * See Note N. t See Note O. 
 
12 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 and she showed how deeply she was in love by smiling at the 
 preference. "For all these things," continued the speaker, 
 "we have no money, or dresses, or such-like presents to give; 
 we can only give what we have within us, something from 
 the veins and bowels of philosophy." Then he eviscerates 
 philosophy after this fashion: "The moon rules the tides. 
 How do you know ? The astronomers tell us that she rules 
 moisture ; the physicians, that the humours of the body flow 
 more freely at the changes of the moon ; the naturalists, that 
 she expands the sea-water. Directly beneath her, therefore, 
 the sea is always blown out with vapours, like water boiling 
 in a pot. This is the cause of tides." "With equal brevity 
 he infers that "the heaven rules all lower bodies," and con- 
 cludes by asking his hearers' best attention for the sturdy 
 youths who are to oppose him. This shows the low ebb of 
 knowledge at Oxford, where an opinion was asserted which 
 had been exploded three centuries earlier in the continental 
 schools. " The ancients said," writes St. Thomas,* " that 
 certain winds are generated in the sea which cannot break 
 loose, but cause the ebb and flow ; but this opinion is false." 
 After the dispute, the queen exjDressed her admiration of 
 Campion's eloquence, and commended him particularly to 
 Lord Robert, who willinglj' undertook to patronise the scholar. 
 Campion certainly deserved some gratitude for the confession 
 he had drawn from the queen ; and his religious tendencies 
 were not then offensive to Dudley, who "was for some years 
 the secret friend of the PajDists against the Protestants, till 
 he was for policy persuaded by Lord North and his other 
 friends to step over to the Puritans against both."f He 
 therefore sent for Campion, told him how grateful he ought 
 to be to the queen, who had commissioned Dudley to find out 
 what she could do for him ; he was urged to use this favour 
 while it lasted, and to increase it by cultivation. "Do not 
 be too modest," he said, " for it is not only the queen's com- 
 mand but my own inclination to befriend you. Ask what 
 you like for the present. The queen and I will provide for 
 the future.":[: But Campion would not make any particular 
 request. The friendship of the chancellor, he said, was worth 
 more than all gifts. Dudley of course was pleased to gain a 
 brilliant client at no cost. For four years from this time the 
 Earl of Leicester (Dudley's new title) showed him uolittlekind- 
 ness, as Campion acknowledges in liis dedication of his History 
 of Ireland to the earl in May 1571; — "There is none that 
 knoweth me familiarly, but he knoweth withal how many ways 
 I have been beholden to your lordship. The regard of your 
 
 • Seo Note V. t See Note Q. % See Note R. 
 
CAMPION AND ROBERT DUDLEY. 13 
 
 deserts and of my duty hath easily won at my hands this tes- 
 timony of a thankful mind. I might be thought ambitious 
 if I should recount in particular the times and places of your 
 several courtesies to me. How often at Oxford, how often at 
 the court, how at liycot, how at \Vindsor, how by letters, 
 how by reports, you have not ceased to further with advice, 
 and to countenance with authority, the hope and expectation 
 of me, a single student. Therefore, in sum, it shall suffice me 
 to acknowledge the general heap of your bounties, and for 
 them all to serve your honour frankly, at least with a true 
 heart. Let every man esteem in your state and fortune the 
 thing that best contenteth and serveth his imagination ; but 
 surely to a judgment settled and rectified, these outward feli- 
 cities which the world gazeth on are there and therefore to 
 be deemed praiseable when they lodge those inward qualities 
 of the mind, which (saving for suspicion of flattery) I was 
 about to say are planted in your breast. Thirteen years to 
 have lived in the eye and special credit of a prince, yet never 
 during all that space to have abused this ability to any man's 
 harm ; to be enriched with no man's overthrow, to be kindled 
 neither with grudge nor emulation, to benefit an infinite re- 
 sort of daily suitors, to let down your calling to the need of 
 mean subjects, to retain so lowly a stomach, such a facility, 
 soinild a nature in so high a vocation, to undertake the 
 tuition of learning and learned men, — these are indeed the 
 kernels for the which the shell of your nobility seemeth fair 
 and sightly ; this is the sap for whose preservation the bark 
 of your noble tree is tendered ; this is the substance which 
 maketh you worthy of those ornaments wherewith you are 
 attired ; and in respect of these good gifts, as I for my part 
 have ever been desirous to discover an officious and dutiful 
 mind towards your lordship, so will I never cease to betake 
 the uttermost of my power and skill to your service." 
 
 Campion's admiration of Leicester is certainly a weak 
 point in his character. His great superiority of intellect 
 and his scholarship were united, say his biographers, with 
 great modesty, and an easy pliability to the wishes of others. 
 Protestant and Catholic writers alike praise his humility, his 
 sweetness, his amiable manners, and his maidenly meekness. 
 Charity thinks no evil, and reverence gives honour to great 
 place. If St. Alphonsus might dedicate a book with fulsome 
 flattery to Tanucci without suspicion to his sanctity and sim- 
 plicity, I do not see how we can quarrel with Campion for 
 this preface, though we know now that his patron had mur- 
 dered his wife in 1560, by means of that exquisite villain 
 Sir Richard Yarney, and had become so notorious to the more 
 
14 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 knowing ones, that when Elizabeth proposed him for a hus- 
 band of Mary Queen of Scots, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton 
 wrote to beseech her in visceribus Ghristi to prevent it, if 
 she did not want her council to be opprohrium hominum et 
 abjectio plebis, infamous for forcing a queen to marry a mur- 
 derer, a poisoner, and a sorcerer. 
 
 But these crimes were not public ; those were days of 
 more than ordinary hypocrisy, and the secret workings of 
 intrigue were harder to discover. Leicester appeared open 
 and free, his manners were engaging, his treatment of de- 
 pendents liberal. He was unpopular with his monopolies ; 
 but if any one had a suit to recommend, Leicester was the 
 mediator ; if a poor scholar had written a treatise, Leicester 
 was his patron; if a Bishop sighed for his temporalities, 
 Leicester was the man to get them. A position like his 
 creates a circle of admirers blind to faults, and incredulous 
 to rumours of inconsistent conduct. 
 
 Parsons remembers " the infinite praises that of all men 
 were given to Campion at this time." When the queen 
 asked Guzman, the Spanish ambassador, what he thought of 
 the Oxford exercises, " Very well," he replied ; " but I marvel 
 not thereat considering the variety of good wits and talents 
 there discovered, and that all the speakers came very well 
 prepared beforehand ; but I should desire to hear somewhat 
 done extempore and without preparation." On this a num- 
 ber of men were at once sent for to Merton College, where, 
 in presence of the ambassador, Dudley, Cecil, and others, 
 they were made to dispute upon " fire." " No wonder they 
 wax warm with such a subject," said Guzman. " Campion 
 bore away most praise in this sudden encounter, as he did a 
 little after for a certain rare oration that he was forced to 
 extemporise before the queen at Woodstock, in which he 
 was like to have lost himself utterly, partly through the 
 haste, partlj'' by the sudden great pomp wherewith the queen 
 come forth to hear him, until after a few moments (as he was 
 wont to tell) he remembered that she was but a woman, and 
 he a man, which is tbe better sex, and that all the splendour 
 and pomp which glittered in his eyes was but transitory 
 vanity, and had no substance in it, by which, and similar 
 cogitations, he was emboldened to go through with his speech, 
 to the great contentation of the queen and court, and his 
 own high commendation." 
 
 Cecil, as well as Dudley, took great interest in Campion's 
 success, and " invited him v/ith many hopes and promises to 
 follow that course." Four years afterwards, wheii Campion 
 had left England, Cecil said to Campion's pupil, Stanihurst, 
 
HIS INTERNAL STRUGGLE. 15 
 
 " It is a very great pity to see so notable a man leave his 
 country, for indeed he was one of the diamonds of England." 
 Yet in 1581 Cecil was the chief author of his death, against 
 the wishes of others of the council, as Parsons was told " by 
 one that heard with his own ears the consultation about that 
 matter." On the whole, in 1564, Campion was the most 
 popular man in Oxford, where no man envied his triumphs. 
 He did not reside long enough to take his doctor's degree ; 
 but he was made proctor and public orator, the highest posts 
 compatible with his standing. 
 
 All these successes, says F. Parsons, put Campion into 
 exceeding danger, by enticing him to follow a course of 
 which his conscience disapproved ; " for he was always a 
 sound Catholic in his heart, and utterly condemned all the 
 form and substance of the queen and council's new religion ; 
 and yet the sugared words of the great folks, especially of 
 the queen, joined with pregnant hopes of speedy and great 
 preferments, so enticed hiTn that he knew not which way to 
 turn." His youth, ambition, desire to satisfy the expectations 
 of his friends, and emulation at the advance of his equals 
 and inferiors pulled him back ; while remorse of conscience, 
 fear of hell, and an invincible persuasion of the truth of the 
 Catholic doctrine and the falsehood of the Protestant opinion, 
 pushed him onwards. He determined to compromise matters 
 by temporising ; his internal combat was long and dangerous, 
 for he lacked the aid of the Sacraments and of spiritual direc- 
 tion ; and though he prayed earnestly for light, yet he still 
 hearkened to both sides inwardly, to see whether he could 
 find sufficient reasons to allow his conscience to follow in 
 peace the course to which his worldly interests so strongly 
 inclined him. 
 
 This was the case also with Parsons for some years, and 
 with many others, especially at the universities ; — with young 
 men, well accommodated in fellowships or otherwise, and pro- 
 voked by infinite inducements to seek the preferments which 
 the place and the country yielded, or at least to keep what 
 they had ; yet feeling that the religion on which these pre- 
 ferments depended was doubtful and therefore dangerous : 
 hence they Hved in great toil and torment of mind, loth to 
 lose the hope of salvation, glad to hold their commodities 
 without molestation of conscience, if it might be, ever in 
 suspense, ever ready to listen to any reason that promised to 
 remove their scruples. 
 
 The only safe anchor in this troubled water was, in Par- 
 sons's opinion, the study of the Fathers. " Whatever we had 
 heard or conceived in the whole day for pulling out this 
 
16 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 thorn of conscience, and for smoothing the way to be Pro- 
 testant, either by good fellowship and conversation with 
 Protestants themselves, or by hearing their sermons or read- 
 ing their books, all this was dashed by one hour's reading of 
 some work of the old holy doctors, and the wound of con- 
 science was made green again, and as grievous as ever, by 
 every page which spake of virtue and austerity, or of ques- 
 tions of controversy, which were settled there as clearly as 
 if the Fathers had distinctly foreseen the tumults of these 
 days." 
 
 It was in 1567 that Campion, having exhausted Aristotle 
 and natural theology, had to turn to these authentic reporters 
 of the Christian tradition ; and for three whole yearshe was 
 distracted with the various arguments for and against the 
 open profession of his Catholic belief. He had begun with 
 a conscientious examination of the controverted doctrines one 
 by one ; the unhistorical and illogical character of the new 
 tenets was soon discovered ; and as truth begets truth, and 
 as a mind once cheated ever suspects fraud, he examined the 
 points which he had been used to take for granted ; here too 
 the ground failed beneath him. But the consequences of his 
 step were too fatal to his worldly interests to allow of any 
 hurry. He consulted his friends. He went to any one, no 
 matter what his views, who professed to be able to tell 
 him something ; but every conference pushed him on a step 
 further.* 
 
 An extract from his Decern Rationes will illustrate this : 
 "When I was young," he says, " John Jewell, the Calvinist 
 leader in England, was impudent enough to challenge the 
 Catholics to a proof of their respective tenets from the works 
 of the Fathers of the first six centuries. The' challenge was 
 accepted by some well-known men then in exile and poverty 
 at Louvain. I venture to say that Jewell's craft, ignorance, 
 roguery, and impudence, as exposed by those writers, did 
 more good to the Catholic cause than any thing within my 
 remembrance. A proclamation was immediately posted on 
 the doors that none of the answers should be read or kept, 
 though they had been squeezed out by a direct challenge. 
 Every thinking man could see plainly that the Fathers were 
 Catholic 
 
 " Once also I familiarly questioned Tobie Mathew, now 
 your greatest preacher, whose learning and good disposition 
 endeared him to me, and asked him to tell me sincerely how a 
 man who was such an assiduous student of the Fathers could 
 take the side which he defended as true. He answered, ' If I 
 
 • See Note S. 
 
RICHARD CHENEY. 17 
 
 believed them as well as read them, j'ou would have good 
 reason to ask me.' This is perfectly true ; and I think he 
 must still be of the same mind." 
 
 This challenge naturally called up Tobie, who answered in 
 a concio apologetica, which Wood quotes, and which Parsons 
 describes as rather vehement and rhetorical than with any 
 show of sincerity. Of course he denied the charge. " Who 
 affirmed it ? Edmund Campion the Jesuit. And who denies 
 it? Tobie Mathew the Christian. I avouch that neither 
 sleeping or waking, standing or sitting, by day or by night, 
 at home or abroad, in jest or in earnest, did I ever say it." 
 However, Campion who had asserted it was dead for his 
 faith, and Mathew was enjoying benefices and prospects which 
 might be risked by the story being believed. And accord- 
 ing to Parsons, Campion's friend Stanihurst declared that 
 he had heard it from Campion at the very time of its oc- 
 currence. 
 
 Another of Campion's Christ-Church friends was reputed 
 to be as cunning in the Scriptures as Mathew in the Fa- 
 thers ; this was Tarleton the governor of the young Sir Philip 
 Sidney. He professed to prove his religion from the Bible 
 alone, without the Fathers. Campion and he had an argu- 
 ment, in which "each party was to allege bare Scripture, 
 only allowing the aid of tongues, comparison of text with text, 
 and prayer." When Campion had produced many strong 
 passages on the Catholic side, and had shown that they could 
 not be evaded in Greek or Hebrew, and perceived that Tarle- 
 ton could not bring any so clear for his side, and could only 
 oppose wrangling interpretations out of his own head, Cam- 
 pion, says Parsons, resolved fully that, seeing botli Scriptures 
 and Fathers were wholly against the Protestant side, he would 
 never follow it for temporal respects. 
 
 Campion had access to Leicester's ante-room whenever 
 he pleased ; here perhaps he met with Richard Cheney, the 
 Bishop of Gloucester, a man of congenial nature, tastes, and 
 studies. Cheney was a mild, persuasive, old man, very dif- 
 ferent from the rest of the Elizabethan Bishops, from whom 
 he held aloof, as if he had been of a different communion. 
 In the Convocation of 1553 he had tried to commit the 
 Anglican body to the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantia- 
 tion, but he was so far from being either Lutheran or Cal- 
 vinist in other respects that in 1568 his flock complained of 
 the " very strange, perilous, and corrupt doctrine, contrary 
 to the Gospel,"* which he preached in his cathedral of Bristol, 
 where his own fanatical clergy withstood him to the face. 
 » See Note T. 
 
18 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 He warned his hearers that the new writers differed from 
 each other, and were therefore not safe guides, but that the 
 old fathers and doctors alone were to be followed ; that any 
 heretic might avouch Scripture, and that controversy would 
 be endless without the appeal to the Fathers ; that Luther 
 wrote a very ill book against free will, which Erasmus an- 
 swered well ; and that the consent of the Fathers was the 
 only test by which he would be tried. 
 
 There was one more statement with which Cheney's 
 Puritanical accusers were scandalised, though it was ad- 
 dressed, not so much to the Puritans, as to those numerous 
 loose Catholics who would not give up the old faith, but 
 were unwilling to submit to the penalties for not going to 
 church. There was always a large party of this sort in 
 England ; and in 1562 some of their chief men had consulted 
 the Fathers of the Council of Trent upon the matter, and 
 had asked whether they might not with a safe conscience 
 attend the common prayer and preaching. A committee 
 was appointed to reply, who firmly but kindly pronounced it 
 quite inadmissible for any Catholic to assist at the " new ser- 
 vice, the offspring of schism, and the badge of hatred to the 
 Church."* But one proclamation was quite insufficient to 
 remove the deep-rooted prejudice. The decision was con- 
 firmed by St. Pius V. in 1566, and Dr. Harding and Dr. 
 Sanders were sent over to publish it afresh ;t it was solemnly 
 recognised in a council of priests, convened by Parsons and 
 Campion in July 1580, again promulgated by Cardinal 
 Toletus, June 14, 1581 ; enforced in a circular of Dr. Allen, 
 written by the Pope's direction, in 1592, and finally con- 
 firmed by Paul V. in a Brief addressed to the English Catho- 
 lics in September 1606. J Besides all this, many books were 
 printed, and many more circulated in manuscript, on the 
 same question. From this we may judge how many English 
 Catholics persisted in thinking that they might save their 
 freedom and their goods by being present at common prayer 
 and sermons. Cheney encouraged this idea. He would have 
 recoiled from subverting what remained of Catholic faith. 
 He only undermined it. He did not deny that attendance at 
 the Protestant services was like bowing down in the house 
 of Eimmon ; but he quoted the example of Naaman to show 
 that political motives might excuse a man's presence at a 
 worship which his conscience abhorred. 
 
 " A question may be asked between the young maid and 
 Naaman, whether a godly man may be at idol-service with 
 his body, his heart being with God, without offence or sin ? 
 " See Note U. f Sec Note V. + See Note W. 
 
HE IS ENTANGLED. 19 
 
 I say he may ; and because you shall not thiak I am of this 
 opinion only, I will bring you Peter Martyr, a learned man, 
 and as famous as ever was in our time, being your own doctor 
 [he had been Professor of Divinity at Oxford] ; he says a man 
 may be present without offence. His words are these : ' Non 
 enim simpliciter et omnibus modis interdictum est hominibus 
 ne in fanis prissentes adsint, dum profani et execrandi ritus 
 exercentur.' " 
 
 This was just the doctrine that Campion wanted. The two 
 men agreed in execrating the innovators, and yet maintain- 
 ing the duty of remaining in the Establishment. Was it not 
 the ancient national Church, founded by apostolic authority, 
 to be the repository of the faith and sacraments ? If her 
 vineyard was now usurped by the beasts of the forests, if 
 the wild-boar was uprooting her vines, should her children 
 forsake her in her affliction ? No ; though heretical Calvin- 
 ists occupied her pulpits, her children need not desert their 
 old homes. If Naaman might attend his king to the house 
 of Rimmon, much more might we accompany our tyrant to 
 our own churches, though heretics for a season occupied our 
 places, and botchers had disfigured our ancient rites. Thus 
 was the instance of Naaman generalised into a universal 
 dispensation for all sects to huddle together, provided it was 
 within the stone walls built for God's service in Catholic 
 times. With all his patristic learning, I suppose Cheney 
 had never lighted on the words of St. Hdary :* " It is iU that 
 a love of walls has seized you ; it is ill that your veneration 
 for Gf-od's Church lies in houses and buildiags ; it is iU that 
 under this plea ye insinuate the name of peace. Is there 
 any doubt that Antichrist is to sit in these ? Mountains and 
 woods and lakes and prisons are to me more safe ; for in 
 these the prophets, sojourning or sunk, still by God's Spirit 
 prophesy." 
 
 The acquaintance soon ripened into affection ; Campion 
 was continually visiting Cheney at Gloucester, reading in 
 the Bishop's study, and borrowing books from his library, 
 enjoying the- closest famiharity, sharing the old man's 
 sorrows, and listening to his complaints of the calumnies 
 that assailed him. The Bishop exhorted his young friend 
 never for a moment to swerve from the royal road of Church 
 Councils and Fathers, and ever to put full faith in_ their con- 
 sent. Campion saw the inconsistency of this advice, yet he 
 allowed himself to be persuaded. He saw that the weapons 
 which Cheney wielded against Puritans might be better used 
 by Catholics against Cheney; he saw, and hesitated; yet be 
 » See Note X. 
 
20 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 could not make up his mind to tell Cheney his doubts, to 
 warn him of the untenableness of his position, or to entreat 
 him, now that he was so near the kingdom of Grod, to take 
 but one more step and secure it for ever. 
 
 Indeed, so far from Campion influencing his friend, 
 Cheney had, on the contrary, fixed his eyes upon Campion as 
 the man to carry on his work. Cheney alone of the Eliza- 
 bethan Bishops had the slightest pretensions to orthodoxy ; 
 alone confessed the living presence of Christ upon the altar, 
 and the freedom of man's will ; alone refused to persecute the 
 Catholics of his diocese,* or to waste his episcopal property 
 by leases, exchanges, sales of lands, of timber, or even of the 
 lead oif the church-roof. He was planting that school in 
 the Establishment whose latest fruits are the present Trac- 
 tarians. Campion was to water what he had planted. He 
 yielded half reluctantly to the Bishop's persuasions, and 
 suffered himself to be ordained deacon, so as to be capable of 
 preferment, and to be able to preach ; not thinking, as he 
 afterwards said, " that the matter had been as odious and 
 abominable as it was." 
 
 As soon as he was ordained, troubles began to beset him. 
 Inwardly, " he took a remorse of conscience and detestation 
 of mind." Outwardly, his familiarity with Cheney, and the 
 reports of his opinions, made him suspected by his London 
 friends. He still held his exhibition from the Grrocers' Com- 
 pany, when in 1668 rumours of his heterodoxy reached the 
 court of assistants, and they began to question him.f Their 
 records say that " to accord and clear the suspicions con- 
 ceived of Edmund Campion, one of the Company's scholars, 
 and that he may utter his mind in favouring the religion 
 now authorised, it is agreed that between this and Candlemas 
 next he shall come and preach at Paul's Cross, in London, or 
 else the Company's exhibition to cease, and be appointed to 
 another ; and that he shall have warning thereof from Mr. 
 Warden." Campion disliked the ordeal proposed; and a 
 subsequent entry states that he, " being one of the Company's 
 scholars, and suspected to be of unsound judgment in reli- 
 gion, petitioned them to postpone " the " clearing of himself 
 herein by preaching at Paul's Cross unto Michaelmas." This 
 was agreed to. Afterwards Campion attended a court of the 
 Company "to know their pleasure as to this business;" he 
 expressed great disinclination to preach at the Cross, and en- 
 treated, at all events, to be allowed more time for prepara- 
 tion. The court, taking in good part that he did not abso- 
 lutely refuse, offered that he should preach first " at a less 
 
 » See Note Y. t See Note Z. 
 
GREGORY MARTIN. 21 
 
 notable place than Paxil's Cross," namely, St. Stephen's 
 Church, Walbrook. Campion objected to this on the plea of 
 being "a public person that could not do what he would, 
 and, besides, charged with the education of divers worship- 
 ful men's children," and asked for a longer time. The Com- 
 pany would not consent to this, so he requested a note in 
 writing, containing the precise demands they had to make ; 
 when finding that he could not comply with them, he re- 
 signed his exhibition, to which the Company appointed 
 another man. 
 
 But he was soon to make a still more important resigna- 
 tion. Fully occupied as he must have been with his aca- 
 demical duties — he was Proctor in 1568-69 — and with his 
 pupils, and devoted as he was to the course of education, his 
 duties did not occupy his whole attention, or stifle his mis- 
 givings of conscience and his distress. When he retired into 
 himself, his thoughts were none of the pleasantest. He is 
 reported to have declared more than once that soon after his 
 ordination he began to feel extraordinary mental anguish : his 
 orders appeared " disorders," whose only cure was Catholicism. 
 The dignities he once dreamed of had lost their allurements. 
 If his ambition had once been to continue Cheney's work, 
 and to succeed to his bishopric, now he plainly saw how 
 Babylonish a captivity those gilded chains disguised. He 
 was one of those favoured men whose falls are the direct 
 occasions of their rise, and who may truly exclaim, " felix 
 culpa!" 
 
 " benefit of ill, now I find true 
 That evil is by evil still made better, 
 And ruined love, when it is built anew. 
 Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater." 
 
 The Grocers were driving him, his conscience was 
 goading him, and his dearest friend was beckoning him 
 away. Campion and Gregory Martin had been college 
 companions for thirteen years, where they had their meals, 
 their books, their ideas in common ; they had studied under 
 the same masters, had loved the same friends, were hated by 
 the same enemies. Martin, like Campion, was a man of 
 mark, " of extraordinary modesty and moderation," " the 
 Hebraist, the Grecian, the poet, the honour and glory" of 
 St. John's College. He had accepted a place in the Duke of 
 Norfolk's family as governor to his boys ; and though Philip, 
 afterwards Earl of Arundel, did him no present credit, the 
 young nobleman bore witness, by his holy death in 1595, to 
 the good husbandry of his early tutor. In 1569, when the 
 duke's troubles about the Queen of Scots began, all his house- 
 
22 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 hold were commanded to attend common prayer and ser- 
 mons ;* Martin, therefore, fled oyer the seas, and became a Ca- 
 tholic. But before he left he wrote to Campion to warn him 
 against the ambition that was leading him astray into the 
 wide path where so many great wits had perished in those 
 evil days. He begged him not to fear for poverty ; their 
 friendship was too pure to admit such difficulties. "If we 
 two can but live together,-" he wrote, "we can Kve on 
 nothing ; if this is too little, I have money ; if this fails, one 
 thing is left, — ' Qui seminant in lacrymis, in esultatione me- 
 tent,' — they that sow in tears shall reap in joy."t 
 
 Thus driven and thus drawn, Campion left Oxford, on the 
 feast of St. Peter in Chains, August 1, 1569, on the termina- 
 tion of his proctorial office, of which he rendered an accouxit 
 in the usual Latin oration. 
 
 • See Note A A. f See Note B B. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 If it liad been to any authority that had the right to inquire 
 into his theological opinions, and not to a mere company of 
 London tradesmen, ridiculously erecting themselves into a 
 tribunal of orthodoxy, that Campion excused himself from 
 acknowledging his opinions, on the plea of being " a public 
 person, charged with the education of divers worshipful men's 
 children," it might have been inferred that he strangely in- 
 verted the values of his duty as a minister and his duty as a 
 professor. And the inference would not have been far wrong; 
 he was disgusted with himseKfor having accepted the Angli- 
 can diaconate, and wished to forget it, and to live as a simple 
 layman. But in the cause of education and of letters his 
 enthusiasm never for a moment slackened ; he strenuously 
 recommended his pupils to complete the whole circle of 
 sciences; "not to deliquesce into sloth, nor to dance away 
 their time, nor to live for rioting and pleasure ; but to serve 
 God, to bridle their passions, to give themselves up to virtue 
 and learning, and to reckon this the one great, glorious, and 
 royal road."* To one of his scholars, Richard Stanihurst, 
 who two years after his matriculation at Oxford had pub- 
 lished a commentary on Porphyry, f he was quite dithyrambic 
 in his congratulations, and in his " triumph that their uni- 
 versity should possess a youth of Stanihurst's rank, learning, 
 and goodness, capable almost in his teens of competing with 
 able men in maturity." "Proceed," he said, "with the 
 same pains and toil, bury yourself in your books, complete 
 your course, abjure the snares of vice, keep your mind on the 
 stretch, give yourself to your country, strive for the prizes 
 which you deserve." He anticipated a splendid future for 
 such precocious attainments, when they had been matured 
 and completed by methodic study; when "wit had been 
 mellowed with judgment, judgment with wisdom, and wis- 
 
 * See Note 1. t See Note 2. 
 
24 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 dom with age." " Only persevere," he said ; " do not dege- 
 nerate from what you are, nor suffer the keen edge of your 
 mind to grow dull and rusty. 1 speak thus warmly, not be- 
 cause I mistrust you, but because it is my duty to be anxious 
 for the fame of men like you."* 
 
 When he finally left Oxford, it was not because he was 
 weary of a university life, but because the opposition to his way 
 of thinking was becoming too strong, and at the same time 
 because he thought he saw an opening for a wider career in 
 Dublin. The new religion was daily gaining ground at the 
 English university, the whole machinery of which was in the 
 hands of men who were both able and desirous to make it the 
 stronghold of the rising Puritanism. But at Dublin, the old 
 university, which had been commenced by Pope John XXI. 
 at the prayer of Alexander Bigmore, the Archbishop, and 
 which, as Campion tells us,t had kept its terms and com- 
 mencements solemnly, and had been never disfranchised, but 
 only through variety of time discontinued, and now, since 
 the subversion of monasteries, utterly extinct, was to be 
 begun anew : a motion was made in the parliamentary session 
 of 1570 to erect it again. The chief mover in this restora- 
 tion was the Recorder of Dublin and Speaker of the House 
 of Commons, James iStanihurst, the father of Campion's 
 pupil, and at that time a zealous Catholic:}: Sir Henry 
 Sidnejr, the Lord Deputj', was owned by Father Parsons 
 to be "a very honourable, calm, and civil gentleman, no- 
 thing hot in the new religion, but rather a great friend to 
 Catholics ;" and Dr. Weston, the Lord Chancellor, was de- 
 lated to the Privy Council in England by Loftus, the Protes- 
 tant Archbishop, for his lack of zeal in promoting the Gospel. § 
 The career which the constant supervision of the Privy 
 Council, and the puritanical zeal of such men as Horn, 
 Bishop of Winchester, and Tobie !5Iathew, were fast closing 
 against Campion at Oxford, seemed to him to be opening 
 with better auspices at Dublin. Thither, therefore, with the 
 approbation of the Earl of Leicester, he betook himself, in 
 company with Richard Stunihurst; and arrived there on St. 
 Bartholomew's day, Aug. 25, 1569, according to Parsons ; or 
 rather 1570, for his letter to Richard Stanihurst was written 
 from St. John's College in December 1569. He was cor- 
 dially received by his pupil's father, and domiciled in his 
 house, where he is said to have lived a kind of monastic life, 
 and to have exhibited such purity and modesty of demeanor, 
 that the Dublin people called him "the angel." Here he 
 employed himself partly " in exercises of learning with 
 
 * See Note 3. f See Note 4. J See Note 5. § See Note 6. 
 
THE MODEL ACADEMICIAN. 25 
 
 Richard Stanihurst, and in controversies against the heretics 
 of that time," and partly in setting forth his ideal of what a 
 university education should be. He wrote a discourse, De 
 Homine Acadevdco, which has not survived in its original 
 form, but in the still more valuable shape of an oration, 
 written when his views had been corrected by his submission 
 to the Church, and pronounced in the presence of Dr. Allen, 
 the founder of our Douai seminary, and of all the professors 
 and miscellaneous students of that model institution. I shall 
 not scruple to depart a little from the order of time, and to 
 quote this oration in this place, where the subject leads me 
 to speak of Campion's private views on education. 
 
 In the first place, then, his ideas on this subject were not 
 changed by his submission to the Church ; he imported into 
 her what he had learned outside her, without any material 
 alterations. " I will try," he says, " out of my observations 
 made dviring many years, in many places, and on many 
 minds, — out of what I have learned in a wide and varied 
 intercourse with men, — to make a kind of pencil sketch of 
 the university man."* This sketch was not intended merely 
 for the lay ideal, but for that of the ecclesiastical student, 
 whose education, " up to his twenty-third year, when he be- 
 gins his theology," is placed before us in a model whose 
 different members are all culled from real examples, and 
 which, though perhaps as a whole unattainable by any in- 
 dividual, is yet the ideal towards which all should strive, 
 according to their various powers. It is to be noticed that 
 there is no thought of two models, one by which some select 
 ecclesiastics should be duly prepared to cope with the great 
 questions of the day, in a manner in which it would be dif- 
 ficult to suppose a seminary capable of instructing them, and 
 another model, which should be that of the seminaries in- 
 tended to fit the students for work among the poor and illite- 
 rate, on the principle that, most men being imeducated, and 
 only the few refined, accomplished, and large-minded, the 
 clergy in general should be trained, not on the model of the 
 few, but so as best to meet the capacities and characteristics 
 of the many ; a principle which itself assumes that refine- 
 ment unfits for rough work, that boors can best teach boors, 
 and that "who drives fat oxen should himself be fat." On 
 the contrary. Campion proposed one single model to the 
 students at Douai, themselves drawn from every class of life, 
 and earnestly exhorted all of them, without exception, to 
 place it before their eyes as the real aim of their studies ; 
 though at the sam.e time he bade them not be disheartened 
 • See Note 7. 
 
26 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 if they failed, because almost all must fail more or less, 
 scarcely aay one could quite attain the first place : " but he 
 that falls short of it has not therefore failed ; he may still 
 be an excellent academician though he has not gained the 
 first prize. There are lower seats of honour, even though 
 the consul's chair, or the prince's throne, is not reached. . . . 
 Therefore," he says to the college students, " with great 
 courage and great hope strive in this literary contest, that 
 you may approach as near to the likeness of our model youth 
 as OUT times and circumstances will permit." The various 
 requirements of the priesthood were not to be met by edu- 
 cating the young men for their various employm.ents, some 
 in one way, some in another. All were to have the benefit 
 of the best form of education, and their future course was to 
 be determined, not by the differences of the schools where 
 they were brought up, but by their various proficiency in the 
 realisation of the one model of excellence proposed to all. 
 
 As it is necessary for the orator to take account of all the 
 external circumstances which might conduce to the efiiciency 
 of his ideal youth, he begins with his social and personal ad- 
 vantages. He is supposed to be "rich, gently nurtured, of 
 knightly stature, healthy, and muscular," — according to Sir 
 Thomas More's fancy, who always wished that any particu- 
 larly handsome man he saw might be a priest, because he 
 would make so impressive a show ct the altar. Moreover, 
 his mind is supposed to be " subtle, hot, and clear ; his me- 
 mory happy ; his voice flexible, sweet, and sonorous ; his 
 walk and all his motions lively, gentlemanly, and subdued ; 
 and the whole man seeming a palace fit for wisdom to dwell 
 in." He is supposed to have been born of Catholic parents, 
 and to have learned his religion with his alphabet. To have 
 been taught, not by a hedge schoolmaster, but by one of the 
 great scholars of the day, whose method had become a second 
 nature to the pupil. His pronunciation was especially cared 
 for in his boyhood, and when he grew older he easily acquired 
 the nice turns of eloquence. His first years at school were 
 devoted to Latin, to the rudiments of Greek, and to a mastery 
 over his native tongue, in which he had to write verses and 
 epigrams. His other accomplishments were painting, play- 
 ing the lute, singing at sight, writing music with facility 
 and correctness, quickness in summing, readiness in answer, 
 and practice in writing. 
 
 In the school of philosophy he had become a good debater, 
 and had devoured most of the works of Cicero. He had en- 
 larged his knowledge of Greek, and had become a finished, 
 even an inspired, poet ; "so did he poise his iambics, so lightly 
 
THE MODEL ACADEMICIAN. 27 
 
 did his lyrics leap." And these gifts were set off and made 
 lovely hy a simple, open, and tractable nature, and a true in- 
 clination to piety. 
 
 These studies carried him to his sixteenth year. In the 
 next seven years he completed his course of philosophy, he 
 finished Latin oratory, and studied the eloquence of the Greeks. 
 He road all histories, those of his own country, then the lioman, 
 then the Greek, and lastly the annals of other nations. Moral 
 and political philosophy he studied, chiefly in Aristotle and 
 Plato. He ran through mathematics, and learned all that 
 he judged useful for his purpose out of every subject of science. 
 This variety was so methodised that it involved no confusion 
 or hesitation ; he was at once " a perfect poet, and an orator 
 that seemed to have digested and assimilated Cicero ; a logi- 
 cian who coidd refute Chrysippus, and yet so perfect in physics 
 as to deserve the title of oracle of nature ; so deep in history, 
 and so ready at all points, that he seemed to know every thing. 
 And he had attained this position, not by the precocity, but 
 by the fertility and fullness, of his talents ; by the use of ex- 
 cellent masters, of a well- stored library, and of continual in- 
 dustry, — by labour in learning, method in labouring, and 
 constancy in his method." 
 
 I am only collecting the intellectual characteristics of Cam- 
 pion's model. It must be understood that he insists on the 
 collateral necessity of moral virtues in as great perfection as 
 the mental attainments. But these traits I leave out, as 
 common to all serious writers on education. The only two 
 precepts of intellectual and literary abstinence that I fkid are 
 the following : " He did not stuff himself with promiscuous 
 reading, nor burden himself with the carcasses of books. He 
 did not dull himself with unseasonable vigils, but allowed him- 
 self seven hours for sleep at night. He washed thoroughly, 
 and dressed carefully, before he began his studies, at which 
 he always stood, in his own solitary ceU." In general lite- 
 rature there was one subject which he always avoided : he 
 was " a poet who had never written and never read amatory 
 compositions" — those loose and profligate writings, the object 
 of which is, not to inform, but to excite evil passions, and of 
 which the type is Ovid's "Art of Love." But he had not avoided 
 the great masters of literature on account of the incidental al- 
 lusions to this matter ; and in Campion's days there were few 
 emasculated editions specially for the young. He had at his 
 fingers' ends " the majesty of Virgil, the festal grace of Ovid, 
 the rhythm of Horace, and the buskined speech of Seneca." 
 He was an orator who knew how to tickle, or to strike, or to 
 astonish, or to convince ; an historian who knew the matter 
 
28 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 in detail, geograptically and chronologically, and in its unity; 
 a good Grecian ; a dialectitian capable of appreciating, dis- 
 tinguishing, and illuminating all he touched ; a philosopher 
 familiar with the deepest secrets of nature ; an astronomer 
 who could read off the solar system like a book ; and in his 
 last year he became a good Hebrew scholar. 
 
 During all this time his religious exercises had included 
 not only the assistance at sermons and catechisms, but private 
 conferences with theologians, and the perusal of contemporary 
 Catholic authors, especially those who treated of the disputed 
 doctrines in a pure and clear style. Thus he had acquired a 
 knack of religious controversy, and an insight into the prin- 
 ciples of heresy, that enabled him to repel with facility, know- 
 ledge, and intelligence, whatever attack was made upon his 
 religion. 
 
 With respect to his moral attitude towards his feUow- 
 students, Campion makes his model youth eager to bestow 
 his friendship on any schoolfellow who was despised for his 
 poverty or obscurity of birth, but honourable for his virtues. 
 He was always on the watch for opj^ortunities to do a kind- 
 ness to his companions, to look after their condition, to help 
 them in their lessons, to mend their pens, to call them to the 
 class, to visit them in the infirmary, and to talk pleasantly to 
 them. He was quiet and smooth in speech, nimble and aban- 
 doned at play, collected and serious at study, gentle and civO. 
 to all, and very respectful to his elders. He was severe in 
 his judgment upon himself, lenient to others; he found some- 
 what to praise in every thing, and never gave a simple cen- 
 sure. Yet he always maintained the principle that kindness 
 should be kept clear of flattery, and truth defecated from 
 bitterness. 
 
 And among the motives by which Campion urges each 
 hearer to follow this model, we find not only the good he 
 would do to himself, to his companions, and to the Church, 
 but the figure which he would make in his country. He 
 invokes not only religion, but patriotism, to enforce his teach- 
 ing. And it is certain that education was the great " social 
 science" of the sixteenth century, and that schoolmasters and 
 scholars then held the position which in these days has been 
 occupied by the princes of physical science and discovery. 
 The restoration of learning was felt to be the great present 
 want of the world. The most pious Popes and prelates, and 
 the most far-sighted politicians and princes, were unanimous 
 in this conviction. Campion had devoted himself head and 
 heart to the movement, in which he saw nothing bad except 
 the attitude of hostilit}- which in some quarters it had assumed 
 
THE MODEL ACADEMICIAN. 29 
 
 towards the Church. But this, he was convinced, was a mere 
 accident, utterly inadequate to throw a doubt on the intrinsic 
 value and excellence of learning itself. Hence, instead of 
 disparaging it because of its abuse, he only showed himself 
 more enthusiastic in his endeavours to convert it to its legi- 
 timate use. In one of his historical writings* he mentions 
 with complacency the revival of the " salutary knowledge of 
 the three tongues," and the consequent disrepute into which 
 "the subtleties of the old theologians and grammarians" had 
 fallen ; and while lamenting the " evils which the young stu- 
 dents had with characteristic precipitation imported into this 
 excellent movement," and blaming those who, after turning 
 to the best account the leisure purchased for them by the 
 liberality of prelates and abbots, employed their attainments 
 to ridicule their patrons, who had paid their battel-bills, he 
 yet saw that the only remedy was to bring the race of " igno- 
 rant ecclesiastics, simple preachers, and old-fashioned monks," 
 to a speedy end by a radical change in their education. And 
 how radical was the change he meditated, is abundantly 
 shown by the ideal model which he proposed to the president, 
 professors, and students of the great seminary at Douai, when 
 compared with the picture which Erasmus draws of the eccle- 
 siastical education of his day. 
 
 Campion had hoped to become a pioneer of Irish " civi- 
 lity" in the new University at Dublin; but the scheme failed. 
 Though contributions were laid together, Sir Henry Sidney 
 proffering 201. in lands, and 100?. in money, and others fol- 
 lowing after their abilities and devotions ; though Master 
 Ackworth had devised a new name for it — Plantolinum, from 
 Plantagenet, or Bulleyne, in honour of Elizabeth's mother ; 
 " yet while they disputed of a convenient place for it, and of 
 other circumstances, they let fall the principal." The chief 
 cause of failure was the underhand opposition of the Chancellor 
 and some of the Bishops, who did not wish to see such an in- 
 stitution founded by Sidney and Stanihurst, or intrusted to 
 Campion, who, though not then received into the Church, 
 was suspected to be a Papist, and only saved from arrest 
 through the protection of Sidney, who secretly promised James 
 Stanihurst that, while he was Governor, " no busy knave of 
 them all should trouble him for so worthy a guest as Mr. 
 Campion," and performed it most honourably while he 
 remained in Ireland. Weston, the Irish Chancellor, wrote 
 to Cecil, the Lord Treasurer, March 12th, 1570,t that the 
 motion for founding a university was universally well liked ; 
 yet that the device, direction, and foundation of so godly a 
 * See Note 8. t See Note 9. 
 
30 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 deed was a most -worthy work for so virtuous, bountiful, and 
 careful a sovereign and prince, and would conservate to per- 
 petual memory her Majesty's godly zeal to true religion and 
 learning, and her merciful motherly care over her poor and 
 rude subjects here. The work, thus taken out of the hands of 
 the local authorities, and committed to Elizabeth, was brought 
 to a conclusion twenty-five years afterwards by the foundation 
 of Trinity College, Dublin. 
 
 After his educational projects were finally nipped by the 
 departure of Sidney from DubHn, March 2-5, 1571, Campion 
 had to devise some other method of accounting for his absence 
 from England. He therefore devoted ten weeks at this time 
 to a hasty knocking together of a History of Ireland, which, 
 read by the light of the circumstances under which it was 
 conceived, is almost as much a pamphlet to prove that edu- 
 cation is the only means of taming the Irish as a serious 
 history. 
 
 The work* is dedicated to his " singular good lord" and 
 patron, Leicester, the chancellor of his university, to whom 
 he says, that, in order that his travel into Ireland might seem 
 neither causeless nor fruitless, he had thought it expedient, 
 as one of his lordship's honourable charge, to yield him that 
 poor book as an account of his poor voyage. He hoped it was 
 not the last or the best gift he should ofi'er ; but he was sure 
 that it had been " more full of misavoury toil for the time 
 than any plot of work he ever attempted." It was long be- 
 fore he coidd find a copy of " Gerald of Wales ;" and what 
 this writer left untouched, he had been forced to piece out 
 by the help of foreign writers who incidentally touched 
 upon Ireland, and by a number of brief extracts of rolls, 
 records, and scattered papers, to handle and lay all which 
 together he had not in all the space of ten weeks. He con- 
 fesses, in his epistle to the loving reader, that, ever since his 
 first arrival at Dublin, he, with the help of various gentle- 
 men, had inqidred out antiquities of the land. But he had 
 no help from real Irish sources ; though the native chronicles 
 were " full fraught of lewd examples, idle tales, and genealo- 
 gies, et (jvicquid Grqi'da mendax audet in historia," yet he 
 was persuaded he might have sucked thence good store of 
 matter, had he found an interpreter, or understood their 
 tongue, which is so hard that it would have required a study 
 of more years than he could spare months. He intended his 
 book to be only a contribution to the subject, and desired the 
 Irish antiquaries "hereafter at good leisure to supply the 
 want of this foundation, and polish the stone rough-hewed to 
 
 ' See Note 10. 
 
HISTORY OF IRELAND. 31 
 
 their hand," which, rough as it was, would have been much 
 worse proportioned if the author had not been helped with 
 the familiar society and daily table-talk of James Stanihurst, 
 who, " beside all courtesy of hospitality, and a thousand loving 
 turns not here to be recited, both by word and written monu- 
 ments, and by the benefit of his own library, nourished most 
 effectually" the writer's endeavour. 
 
 To the ordinary reader, the most interesting parts of the 
 work win always be those which consist of the writer's own 
 observations upon the soil and the inhabitants of Ireland, 
 which " lieth aloof in the West Ocean, in proportion like an 
 egg, blunt and plain at the sides, not reaching forth to sea in 
 nooks and elbows of land as Britain doth." From these 
 chapters I will give some extracts, since the book is scarce, 
 as specimens of Campion's English style, in his own day 
 greatly admired : 
 
 " The soil is low and waterish, and includeth divers little islands, 
 environed with bogs and marishes : highest hills have standing pools 
 in their top. The air is wholesome, not altogether so clear and 
 subtle as ours of England. Of bees good store ; no vineyards, con- 
 trary to the opinion of some writers, who both in this and other 
 errors touching the laud may easily be excused, as those who wrote 
 of hearsay. Cambrensis in his time complaineth that Ireland had 
 excess of wood, and very little champagne ground ; but now the 
 English pale is too naked. Turf and sea-coals is their most fuel. It 
 is stored of kine ; of excellent horses and hawks ; of fish and fowl. 
 They are not without wolves, and grey-hounds to hunt them, bigger 
 of bone and limb than a colt. Their kine, as also their cattle, and 
 commonly what else soever the country engendereth (except man), is 
 much less in quantity than ours of England. Sheep few, and those 
 bearing coarse fleeces, whereof they spin notable rug mantle. The 
 country is very fruitful both of corn and grass ; the grass, for default 
 of husbandry, not for the cause alleged in Polychronicon, groweth so 
 rank in the north parts that ofttimes it rotteth their kine. Eagles 
 are well known to breed here, but neither so big nor so many as 
 books tell. . . . Horses they have, of pace easy, in running wonder- 
 ful swift. Therefore they make of them great store, as wherein at 
 times of need they repose a great piece of safety. ... I heard it veri- 
 fied by honourable to honourable that a nobleman offered, and was 
 refused, for one such horse an hundred kine, five pounds lands, and 
 an eyrie of hawks yearly during seven years. . . . Only because a frog 
 was found living in the meadows of Waterford somewhat before the 
 conquest, they construed it to impoi-t their overthrow. . . . Generally 
 it is observed, the further west, the less annoyance of pestilent crea- 
 tures ■ the want whereof is to Ireland so peculiar, that whereas it 
 lay long in question to whether realm, Britain or Ireland, the Isle of 
 Man should pertain, the said controversy was decided, that forasmuch 
 
32 
 
 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 as venomous beasts were known to breed therein, it could not be 
 counted a natural piece of Ireland. Neither is this property to 
 be ascribed to St. Patrick's blessing, as they commonly hold, 
 but to the original blessing of God, who gave such nature to the 
 situation and soil from the beginning. And though I doubt not 
 but it fared the better in many respects for that holy man's prayer, 
 yet had it this condition notified hundreds of years before he was 
 born.'"* 
 
 "With regard to the dispositions of the people, whom he 
 divides into those of English descent and the mere Irish, he 
 writes as follows : 
 
 "The people are thus inclined : religious, frank, amorous, ireful, 
 sufferable, of pains infinite, very glorious, many sorcerers, excellent 
 horsemen, delighted with wars, great alms-givers, passing in hospi- 
 tality. The lewder sort, both clerks and laymen, are sensual and 
 loose to letchery above measure. The same, being virtuously bred 
 up and reformed, are such mirrors of holiness and austerity, that 
 other nations retain but a show or shadow of devotion in comparison 
 of them. As for abstinence and fasting, which these days make so 
 dangerous, this is to them a familiar kind of chastisement ; in which 
 virtue and divers otliers how far the best excel, so far in gluttony 
 and other hateful crimes the vicious they are worse than too bad. 
 They follow the dead corpses to the grave with bowlings and bar- 
 barous outcries, ])itiful in ap])carance, whereof grew, as I suppose, 
 the proverb to iveep Irish. The uplandish are liglitly abused to 
 believe and avouch idle miracles and revelations vain and childish. 
 Greedy of praise they be, and fearful of dishonour : and to this end 
 they esteem their poets who write Irish learnedly, and pen their son- 
 nets heroical, for the which they are bountifully rewarded : but if 
 they send out libels in dispraise, thereof the gentlemen, especially 
 the mere Irish, stand in great awe. They k^ve tenderly their foster- 
 children, and bequeath to them a child's portion, whereby they nou- 
 rish sure friendship, so beneficial everyway that commonly five hun- 
 dred kine and better are given in reward to win a nobleman's child 
 to foster. They are sharp-witted, lovers of learning, capable of any 
 study whereto they bend themselves, constant in travail, adventurous, 
 intractable, kind-hearted, secret in displeasure. 
 
 Hitherto the Irish of both sorts, mere and English, are affected 
 much indifi'erently, saving tliat in tliese, by good order and breaking, 
 the same virtues are far more pregnant : in those others, by licen- 
 tious and evil custom, the same faults are more extreme and odious. 
 I say, by licentious and evil custom, for that there is daily trial, of 
 good natures among them, how soon they be reclaimed, and to what 
 rare gifts of grace and wisdom they do and have aspired. Again, 
 the very English of birth, conversant with the brutish sort of that 
 people, become degenerate in short space, and are quite altered into 
 * See Note 11. 
 
CHARACTER OF THE IRISH. 33 
 
 the worst rank of Irish rogues ; such a force hath education to make 
 or mar."* 
 
 The mere Irish are quite another people from the Anglo- 
 Irish ; not that it must be supposed that their manners are 
 now the same as Cambrensis describes ; indeed, Campion 
 wishes it to be observed " how much Ireland is beholden to 
 Grod for suffering them to be conquered, whereby many of 
 these enormities were cured, and more might be, would 
 themselves be pliable." He first notices the damnable super- 
 stition of leaving the right arm of male infants unchristened 
 (as they say), that it might give a more ungracious and 
 deadly blow; and tells a story of a monk demanding of a 
 grave gentleman who was confessing to him whether he were 
 faultless in the sin of homicide. " He answered that he never 
 wist the matter to be heinous before ; but being instructed 
 thereof, he confessed the murder of five — the rest he left 
 wounded, so as he knew not whether they lived or no." He 
 cites Strabo, who asserts that they ate human flesh, counted 
 it honourable for parents deceased to be eaten by their chil- 
 dren, and lived together promiscuously without regard to 
 kindred. Though, since St. Patrick's days, Christianity has 
 never ceased, yet it had but a lax hold before the conquest, 
 especially in matrimonial matters. And this was a fault not 
 corrected even in Campion's time : 
 
 " Yea, even at this day, where the clergy is faint, they can be 
 content to marry for a year and a day of probation, and at the year's 
 end to return her home upon any hght quarrels, if the gentlewoman's 
 friends be weak and unable to avenge the injury. Never lieard I of 
 so many dispensations for marriage as these men show. I pray God 
 grant they be all authentic, and builded upon sufficient warrant."t 
 
 The writer then continues the list of their old customs, 
 their faithlessness and perjury, their oaths upon St. Patrick's 
 staff, and the barbarous ceremonies of crowning the king of 
 Ulster. Then he turns to " their trade at this present :" 
 
 " Clear men they are of skin and hue, but of themselves careless 
 and bestial. Their women are well favoured, clear coloured, fair- 
 handed, big and large, suffered from their infancy to grow at will, 
 nothing curious of their feature and proportion of body. Their in- 
 fants of the meaner sort are neither swaddled nor lapped in linen, 
 but folded up stark naked into a blanket till they can go, and then 
 if they get a piece of rug to cover them they are well sped. Linen 
 shirts the rich do wear for wantonness and bravery, with wide hang- 
 ing sleeves pleated — thirty yards are little enough for one of them. 
 They have now left their saffron, and learn to wash their shirts — four 
 or five times in a year. Proud they are of long crisped glibbes, and 
 
 * See Note 12. t See Note 13. 
 
 D 
 
34 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 do nourish the same with all their cunning : to crop the front 
 thereof they take it for a notable piece of villany.* 
 
 Shamrocks, water-cresses, roots, and other herbs they feed 
 upon. Oatmeal and butter they cram together. They drink whey, 
 milk, and beef-broth. Flesh they devour without bread; corn, such 
 as they have, they kee|> for their horses. In haste and hunger they 
 squeeze out the blood of raw flesh, and ask no more dressing thereto ; 
 the rest boileth in their stomachs with aqua vita;, which they swill in 
 after such a surfeit by quarts and pottles. Their kine they let blood, 
 which, grown to a jelly, they bake and overspread with butter, and 
 so eat it in lumps. 
 
 One office in the house of great men is a tale-teller, who bring- 
 eth his lord on sleep with tales vain and frivolous, whereunto the 
 number giveth sooth and credence. So light are they in believing 
 whatsoever is with any countenance of gravity affirmed by their supe- 
 riors, whom they esteem and honour, that a lewd prelate within these 
 few years, needy of money, was able to persuade his parish that St. 
 Patrick in striving with St. Peter to let an Irish Gallowglas into 
 heaven had his head broken with the keys ; for whose relief he ob- 
 tained a collection. 
 
 Without either precepts or observation of congruity they speak 
 Latin like a vulgar tongue learned in their common schools of leech- 
 craft and law, whereat they begin children, and bold on sixteen or 
 twenty years, conning by rote the aphorisms of Hippocrates and the 
 Civil Institutions, and a few other parings of these two faculties. I 
 have seen them where they kept school, ten in some one chamber, 
 grovelling upon couches of straw, their books at their noses, them- 
 selves lying flat prostrate, and so to chant out their lessons by piece- 
 meal, being for the most part lusty fellows of twenty-five years and 
 upwards. 
 
 Other lawyers they have liable to certain families, which after 
 the custom of the country determine and judge causes. These con- 
 sider of wrongs offered and received among their neighbours, be it 
 murder, or felony, or trespass. All is redeemed by composition, ex- 
 cept the grudge of parties seeking revenge ; and the time they have 
 to spare from spoiling and proyning, they lightly bestow in parley- 
 ing about such matters. The Breighoon, so they call this kind of 
 lawyer, sitteth him down on a bank, the lords and gentlemen at 
 variance round about him, and then they proceed. They honour 
 devout friars and pilgrims, suffer them to pass quietly, spare them 
 and their mansions, whatsoever outrage they show to the country be- 
 side them. To rob and prey their enemies they deem it none offence, 
 nor seek any means to recover their loss, but ever to watch them the 
 like turn. But if neighbours and friends send their cators to pur- 
 loin one another, such actions are judged by the Breighoons aforesaid. 
 Toward the living they are noisome and malicious ; the same being 
 dead, they labour to avenge eagerly and fiercely. They love and 
 trust their foster-brethren more than their own."t 
 
 * See Note 14. f See Note 15. 
 
mS ELOQUENCE. 35 
 
 Campion next descants on what was then a national vice, 
 now happily supplanted very generally by the contrary vir- 
 tue, — the vice of impurity. He concludes his sketch with the 
 truly Irish sentence : " One man I heard named which hath 
 (as he caUeth them) more than ten wives in twenty places." 
 
 " There is among them a brotlierhood of Carrows, that profess to 
 play at cards all the year long, and make it their only occupation. 
 They play away mantle and all to the bare skin, and then truss them- 
 selves in straw or in leaves ; they wait for passengers in the high 
 way, invite them to a game upon the green, and ask no more but 
 companions to hold them sport. For default of other stuff they 
 pawn portions of their glybbe, the nails of their fingers and toes, . . . 
 which they lose or redeem at the courtesy of the winner. 
 
 When they fancy and favour they are wonderful kind. They 
 exchange by commutation of wares for the most part, and have ut- 
 terly no coin stirring in any great lords' houses. Some of them be 
 richly plated. Their ladies are trimmed rather with massy jewels 
 than with garish apparel. It is counted a beauty in them to be tall, 
 round, and fat. The inheritance descendeth not to the son, but to 
 the brother, nephew, or cousin german, eldest and most valiant. For 
 the child being oftentimes left in nonage, or otherwise young and 
 unskilful, were never able to defend his patrimony, being his no 
 longer than he can hold it by force of arms. But by the time he 
 grow to a competent age, and have buried an uncle or two, he also 
 taketh his turn, and leaveth it in like order to his posterity. This 
 custom breedeth among them continual wai-s and treasons."* 
 
 Campion s History, hardly longer than a pamphlet, and 
 scarcely pretending to greater dignity than that of mere an- 
 nals, is more interesting for the light that it throws upon the 
 writer's own opinions and powers than as a contribution to 
 general science. With much of the'; credulity of his day he 
 combined a clear insight into the main principles of historical 
 criticism ; and he summarily explodes many a fable by a 
 comparison of dates, or by showing that the various testimony 
 on which it rests reduces itself to a multiplied echo of a single 
 authority. But the most striking thing about the book is the 
 vast dramatic power of the speeches which he introduces, ac- 
 cording to the custom of the historians of his day. The taste 
 which we have here is sufficient to make us regret both that 
 the tragedies which he afterwards pi-oduced at Prague were 
 written in Latin, and that they are lost. Some of his orations 
 only want metre to be comparable with those of his great 
 dramatic contemporaries. Take the following for specimens. 
 The iirst is a speech of Roderic, a chief of Scythian red- 
 shanks, blown with a few refugees upon the coast of Ireland, 
 of whose king he demands hospitality : 
 » See Note 16. 
 
36 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 " Not as degenerate from the courage of our ancestors, but in- 
 clining ourselves to the bent and sway of fortune, we are become 
 suppliants to Ireland that never before have humbled ourselves to 
 any. Look, sir king : eye us well ; it is not light prowess that has 
 caused these valiant bodies to stoop. Scythians we are, and the 
 Picts of Scythia— great substance of glory lodgeth in these two 
 names. What shall I tell of the civil tumult that hath made us 
 leave our home 1 or rip up old histories to make strangers bemoan 
 us 1 Let our vassals and children discourse it at large and leisure — 
 if perhaps you vouchsafe us any leisure in the land, to which effect 
 and purpose our infinite necessities pray your favours— a king of a 
 kino-, men of men. Princes can consider how near it concerneth 
 their honour and surety to prop up the state of a king defaced by 
 treason, and men will remember, nothing better beseemeth the nature 
 of man than to feel by compassion the griefs of men. Admit, we 
 beseech you, these scattered relics of Scythia. If your realms be 
 narrow, we are not many. If the soil be barren, we are born to 
 hardness. If you live in peace, we are your subjects. If you war, 
 we are your soldiers. We ask no kingdom, no wealth, no triumph 
 in Ireland. We have brought ourselves, and left these casualties 
 with the enemy. Howsoever it like you to esteem of us, we shall 
 easily learn to like it, when we call to mind not what we have been, 
 but what we are."* 
 
 The following is a speech of an Irish king, calling upon his 
 countrymen to complete the overthrow of the Danish invaders, 
 begun by the assassination of the Danish chief : 
 
 " Lordlings and friends, this case neither admitteth delay nor 
 asketh policy. Heart and haste is all in all, while the feat is young 
 and strong, that of our enemies some sleep, some sorrow, some curse, 
 some consult — all dismayed. Let us anticipate their fury, dismem- 
 ber their force, cut off their flight, occupy their places of refuge and 
 succour. It is no mastery to pluck their feathers, but their necks ; 
 nor to chase them in, but to rout them out ; to weed them, not to 
 rake them ; nor to tread them down, but to dig them up. This 
 lesson the tyrant himself hath taught me. I once demanded him 
 in a parable, by what good husbandry the land might be rid of cer- 
 tain crows that annoyed it. He advised to watch where they bred, 
 and to fire the nests about their ears. Go we then upon these cor- 
 morants that shroud themselves in our possessions, and let us destroy 
 them so that neither nest, nor root, nor seed, nor stalk, nor stubb 
 may remain of this ungracious generation. "-|- 
 
 One more extract I must give, as being an exact repro- 
 duction in English of Campion's Latin style. It is from the 
 Earl of Kildare's defence of himself against Wolsey, who 
 accused him of conniving at his kinsman the Earl of Des- 
 mond's treasons : 
 
 • See Note 17. t See Note 18. 
 
HIS ELOQUENCE. 37 
 
 " Cannot tbe Earl of Desmond shift, but I must be of counsel 1 
 Cannot he be hid, except I wink 1 If he be close, am I his mate ? 
 If he be friended, am I a traitor t This is a douglity kind of accusa- 
 tion which they urge against me, wherein they are stabled and mired 
 at my first denial. You would not see him, say they ;— who made 
 them so familiar with mine eyesight 1 Or when was the Earl within 
 my view 1 Or who stood by when I let him slip, or where are 
 the tokens of my wilful hoodwinking 1 ' Oh, but you sent him word 
 to beware of you :' — who was the messenger ? where are the letters ? 
 See how loosely this reason hangeth. Desmond is not taken ; well ; 
 we are in fault : why 1 Because you are. Who proves it ? Nobody. 
 What conjectures 1 — so it seemeth. To whom 1 — to your enemies 
 who told it them. What other ground ? None. Will they swear 
 it ? They will swear it."* 
 
 I have thought it worth while to give these specimens of 
 an eloquence that succeeded beyond that of all contemporary 
 rivals in transfusing the vigour and polish of Cicero into a 
 language that was only struggling into form. Campion's 
 fame in England was built upon his eloquence ; and it is only 
 by the speeches of this Irish History, which his scholar Stani- 
 hurst calls " tickled-tongued," because its author "did learn 
 it to speak,"t and by the report of his defence at his trial, that 
 we can estimate a power which appears to have swayed all 
 who listened to him. 
 
 He finishes his History with two speeches, which he pro- 
 fesses to report from his own notes, as near as he could, in 
 the same words and sentences in which he heard them. 
 They are the speeches of James Stanihurst, Speaker of the 
 Commons, and of Sir Henry Sidney, the Lord-Deputy, at the 
 prorogation of the Parliament, December 12, 1570. I must 
 quote so much of them as refers to the project of the Dublin 
 University, and the subsidiary schools which were to be 
 founded in every diocese : 
 
 " Surely, says James Stanihurst, might one generation sip a 
 little of this liquor, and so be induced to long for more, both our 
 countrymen that live obeisant, would ensue with a courage the fruits 
 of peace whereby good learning is supported ; and our unjust neigh- 
 bours would find such sweetness in the taste thereof as it should be 
 a ready way to reclaim them. In mine experience, who have not 
 yet seen much more than forty years, I am able to say that our realm 
 is at this day an half deal more civil than it was, since noblemen and 
 worshipful with others of ability have used to send their sons to 
 England to the Law, to Universities, or to Schools. Now when the 
 same schools shall be brought home to their doors that all that will 
 may repair unto them, I doubt not, considering the numbers already 
 brought up beyond the seas, and the good already done in those few 
 * See Note 19. t See Note 20. 
 
38 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 places where learning is professed, but this addition, discreetly made, 
 will foster a young fry, likely to prove good members of this com- 
 monwealth, aud desirous to train their children iu the same way. 
 Neither would it be a small help to the assurance of the crowu of 
 England, when babes from their cradles should be inured under 
 learned schoolmasters with a fine English tongue, habit, fashion, dis- 
 cipline, and in time utterly forget the affinity of tlieir unbroken bor- 
 derers, who possibly might be won by this example, or at the least 
 wise lose the opportunity which now they have to infect others. And 
 seeing our hap is not yet to plant an University here at home, .... 
 meseemeth it is the more expedient to enter so far forth as our com- 
 mission reacheth, and to hope for the rest."'* 
 
 The portion of Sidney's reply that related to the schools 
 and university is as follows : 
 
 " To you belongeth the quickening of this godly statute. . . Show 
 yourselves forward and frank in advancing the honour, wealth, ease, 
 and credit of your counties ; envy not to your posterity the same 
 path that yourselves have trodden. . . . Had your opinions matched 
 with mine concerning the University .... no doubt the name and 
 rejjutation thereof would have been a spur to these erections (the 
 Schools), as nurses for babes to suck in till they might repair thither 
 to be weaned. But I trust your consents therein are only suspended 
 for a time, and that so much good labour shall not be utterly lost 
 and frustrate. What though certain imperfections cannot as yet be 
 salved 1 What though a sum arise not to make a muster of colleges 
 the first day ? What though the place be not also commodious ? 
 What though other circumstances infer a feeble and raw foundation ? 
 These are indeed objections of the multitutle, whose backwardness 
 breedeth an unnecessary stop in this our purpose. But your wisdoms 
 can easily consider that time must ripen a weak beginning ; that 
 other Universities began with less, that all experience telleth us so ; 
 — shall we be so curious or so testy that nothing will please us but 
 all in all, all-absolute, all-excellent, all-furnished, all-beautified, all- 
 fortified in the frame and infancy thereof? I remember a tale of 
 Apuleius his ass,'who being indifli^rently placed between two bottles 
 of hay, because he could not reach them both at once, forbare them 
 both. Let us not so do, but content ourselves by little and little to 
 be fed as the case requireth."f 
 
 But Campion was not allowed to finish his History in 
 peace. Though not yet reconciled to the Church, he lived 
 openly as a Catholic, and Dr. Weston, the Lord Chancellor, 
 and the other high commissioners had therefore resolved to 
 apprehend him ; but, as the persecution was not then very 
 rigorous, they were stayed for a time by the authority and 
 credit of his friends, especially of Sidney. But the years 
 1569 and 1570 were most disastrous both to the present and 
 
 * See Note 21. f See Note 22. 
 
PERSECUTION. 39 
 
 future of the English Catholics. The ill-advised and worse- 
 contrived rebellion of the North had failed, and Elizabeth's 
 ministers had behaved as men usually do when recovering 
 from a crisis of great danger and greater terror. The queen 
 had been further exasperated by the declaratory bull of St. 
 Pius v., which Felton had pasted up on the Bishop of Lon- 
 don's gates on the feast of Corpus Christi, 1570. It was be- 
 coming clear to Elizabeth's advisers that her political salva- 
 tion required the destruction of Mary of Scotland ; and they 
 and the queen were egging-on the Duke of Norfolk to his 
 treason, for which he lost his life. And now the attention of 
 the Court was especially turned to the designs of Spain upon 
 Ireland. The French ambassador learnt in London, early in 
 January 1571, that Philip II. had submitted to the Pope, as 
 suzerain of the island, the tender of the Irish crown, made 
 to him by Stukeley in the name of the people, who were 
 anxiously looking for him ; that the Pope had bidden him 
 Grod-speed, on condition of his reestablishing the Catholic 
 religion ; and that 10,000 men were to be sent over.* Before 
 February 12th, Elizabeth had written to Sidney to stay his 
 departure, and to order him to provide for the defence of the 
 country, promising to send him directly all the aid he wanted.f 
 In these circumstances, even Sidney's influence could no 
 longer insure Campion's safety. But he did what he could ; 
 when Campion was to be seized early the next morning, Sid- 
 ney warned him, by a private message at midnight, to pro- 
 vide for his own safety. James Stanihurst, therefore, pro- 
 cured him a refuge with Sir Christopher and Lady Barnewall, 
 at Turvey, eight miles from Dublin. Richard and Walter 
 Stanihurst conducted him through the darkness, and com- 
 mitted him to the hospitable care of his new hosts. This was 
 about March 17th, a week before Sidney left Ireland, " with 
 innumerable hearty prayers and wishes for his return," to 
 find waiting for him at Chester the queen's letter, which 
 ordered him, too late, to remain at his post. 
 
 From Turvey, Campion wrote to James Stanihurst, March 
 19th: 
 
 " Great is tlie fruit which 1 gather botli from your affection and 
 from your esteem ; from your affection, that in these hard days you 
 are as careful of me as if I had sprung, like Minerva from Jupiter, 
 out of your head : from your esteem, because, when I was well nigh 
 turned out from house and home, you considered me worthy not only 
 of your hospitality, but of your love. . . . It was your generosity and 
 goodness to receive a stranger and foreigner into your house ; to 
 keep me all these months on the fat of the land ; to look after my 
 * See Note 23. t See Note 24. 
 
40 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 health as carefully as after your son Richard's, who desei-ves all your 
 love ; to furuish me with all conveniences of place, time, and com- 
 pany, as the occasion arose ; to supply nie with books ; to make 
 such good provision for my time of study, that away from my rooms 
 at Oxford I never read more pleasantly. After this one would think 
 there was nothing more to come ; but there was more. As soon as 
 I saw you heard the first rustlings of the storm which was sure to 
 blow to a hurricane if I stayed longer in sight of the heretics at 
 Dublin, you opened to me this secret hiding-place among your coun- 
 try friends. Till now, I had to thank you for conveniences ; now I 
 have to thank you for my safety and my breath — yes ; breath is the 
 word. For they who strive with those persecutors are commonly 
 thrust into dismal dungeons, where they draw in filthy fogs, and 
 are not allowed to breathe wholesome air. But now through your 
 and your children's kindness I shall live, please God, more free from 
 this peril, and, my mind tells me, most happily. First of all, your 
 friend Barnewall is profuse in his promises. When he had read your 
 letter, he was sorry for the hardness of the times, but was as glad of 
 my coming as if I had done him a great favour. As he had to go 
 into Dublin, he commended me to his wife, who treated me most 
 kindly. She is surely a very religious and modest woman. I was 
 shut up in a convenient place within an inner chamber, where I was 
 reconciled to my books. With these companions I lie concealed in 
 my cell."* 
 
 The letter ends with compliments to Stanihurst's sons, 
 and with a request to have his St. Bernard sent to him ; on 
 the same day he wrote a more familiar letter to his pupil 
 Richard : 
 
 " It is hard that, however grateful I feel, I cannot show it. 
 But I know you neither need nor desire repayment ; so I only give 
 you my wishes for the present ; the rest when I get back to the land 
 of the living. Meanwhile if these buried relics have any flavour of 
 the old Campion, their flavour is for you ; they are at your service. 
 I am infinitely obliged to you and 3'our brother Walter for the pains 
 you lately took on my behalf. You, up all night ; he, torn from his 
 wife's arms besides ! Seriously, I owe you much. I have nothing 
 to write about, unless you have time and inclination to laugh. Tell 
 me — you say nothing. Listen, then. The day after I came here I 
 sat down to read. Suddenly there broke into my chamber a poor 
 old woman, who wanted to set the things to rights. She saw me on 
 her left hand, and knowing nothing about me, she thought I was a 
 ghost. Her hair stood on end, her colour fled, her jaw fell, she was 
 struck dumb. What is the matter ? I asked. Frightened to death, 
 she almost fainted ; she could not speak a word ; all she could do was 
 to throw herself out of the room ; she could not rest till she had told 
 her mistress that there Avas some hideous thing, she thought a ghost, 
 writing in the garret. The story was told at supper time ; the old 
 
 * See Note 25. , 
 
PERSECUTION. 41 
 
 woman was sent for, and made to tell her fright ; every body died 
 of laughing, and I proved to be alive and no ghost."* 
 
 Marcli 19th, I find Campion at Turvey ; in May, at Dublin ; 
 and in the beginning of June, at Drogheda. All this time 
 he was dodging the pursuivants, whom the commissioners, 
 exceedingly offended at being beguiled of their prey, sent to 
 search and to lay wait over all Ireland, His inexhaustible 
 hilarity carried him well through all, and in the intervals of 
 flight he employed himself in " huddling up in haste" the 
 materials he had collected for his History. The observa- 
 tions and descriptions which I have quoted from this work 
 show us with what reserves to admit the assertions of his 
 biographers that he led a kind of monastic life in Ireland. 
 He says that at Turvey he lived " as though in a cell ;" and 
 he asks for his St. Bernard. Still he was not a man like St. 
 Bernard, who had never seen the ceiling of his room, nor 
 the snowy mountains which overlooked a place where he had 
 long lived. His sweetness of temper is shown not to have 
 been incompatible with a spicing of satirical and caustic 
 humour. His mind is shown to have been too solid to be 
 unhinged by the revulsion which commonly accompanies a 
 conversion. A book like this, so laborious, so clear, so genial, 
 written in haste and hurry by a man homeless and hiding 
 from pursuivants without, and in the turmoil of a religious 
 change within, — turning his own house out of windows, 
 looking into his own chest, and tumbling up and down what 
 he found there, and yet composing as clearly and forcibly as 
 if he had nothing else to think of, — is a sign of steadiness 
 both of head and heart. Most men are hurried by the first 
 blush of conversion into an abnegation of judgment which 
 rejects no fiction in which the element of piety is strong. 
 Campion throughout insisted upon his right of judging for 
 himself in all matters where human judgment has course, — ■ 
 witness his excellent chapter on the legend of St. Patrick's 
 Purgatory,t and the very decided intimations which he gives 
 in many places of his ojiinions upon the policy or the lawful- 
 ness of a rebellion founded upon a Papal excommunication, 
 and upon the validity of the Pope's claim to the suzerainty 
 of Ireland, and the disposition of the English crown. But I 
 shall have to return to this latter subject. 
 
 Gregory Martin, whose letter had much to do in drawing 
 Campion from Oxford, wrote again to him in Ireland. " I 
 remember," says Campion, " how earnestly you called upon 
 me to come from Ireland to Douai ; how you admonished 
 
 * See Note 26. t See Note 27. 
 
42 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 me ; how effectual were your words."* But Campion was 
 again as much driven as drawn. Seeing, says Parsons, tlrat 
 he could hardly escape the commissioners long, and must en- 
 danger his friends, he resolved to return to England in dis- 
 guise. On his flight from Dublin in March he had called 
 himself Mr. Patrick, out of devotion to the apostle of the 
 country. By this assumed name he passed in his various 
 wanderings and concealments, till he finally took ship at 
 Tredah, or Tredake, a little port twenty miles from Dublin, 
 "apparelled in a laquey's weed," as servant to Melchior 
 Hussey, the Earl of Kildare's steward, who was then on his 
 way to England. 
 
 As there was some suspicion that he might be on hoard, 
 some officers were sent to search the ship for him. As they 
 asked for him by name, he thought he could not escape, 
 and his surprise was too great to allow him to take any pre- 
 cautions ; so he stood quietly on tlie deck, while the officers 
 ferreted out every nook and corner, examined the crew, 
 tumbled the cargo up and down, with plentiful curses 
 upon the seditious villain Campion. There he stood in 
 his menial livery, and saw every body but himself strictly 
 examined ; while he called devoutly upon St. Patrick, whose 
 name he had assumed, and whom, in consideration of the 
 protection he then gave, he ever afterwards invoked in similar 
 dangers. He escaped, but not his manuscripts. " My History 
 of Ireland," he afterwards wrote, " I suspect has perished ; 
 it made a good-sized and neat volume ; the heretical officers 
 seized it :"t but after this cross, says Richard Stanihurst,J it 
 wandered " in mitching wise" through sundry hands, till at 
 last it was published in vol. ii. of Holingshed's Chronicles, in 
 1586, and in Sir James Ware's Ancient Irish Histories in 1633. 
 
 But, in spite of these crosses, as he had lamented the being 
 forced to leave England, he was now full as sorry, says Par- 
 sons, to leave Ireland, because of the new and dear friends 
 to whom he had become attached in that country. When 
 the officers had finished their search, the ship was allowed to 
 sail ; and, after " an indifferent prosperous voyage," he landed 
 in England, to miss the Irish hospitality, but not to miss that 
 which lie chiefly sought to avoid, the prying inquisitions of 
 the queen's officers, and of the provincial Dogberries. On 
 the east of St. George's Channel "he found," says Parsons, 
 "nothing but fears, suspicions, arrestings, condemnations, 
 tortures, executions, for the risings of the Earls of Northum- 
 berland and Westmoreland, and of Lord Dacres, and for the 
 publication of the Bull. The Duke of Norfolk was im- 
 
 * See Note 28. f See Note 29. % See Note 30. 
 
DR. STOKEY. 43 
 
 prisoned, and other gi;eat men restrained to their houses, 
 as the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Arundel, suspected of 
 favouring the Queen of Scots, lately arrived in England ; and 
 a new conspiracy was just discovered in Norfolk, for wliich 
 Mr. John Throgmorton and others were executed in If) 70. 
 The queen and council were so troubled that tliey could not 
 tell whom to trust, and so fell to rigorous proceedings against 
 all, l)ut especially against Catholics, whom they most feared ; 
 so that Campion could not tell where to rest in England, all 
 men being in fear and jealousy one of another." Therefore 
 he resolved to fly for good over sea, as he saw that there was 
 no longer secure living for Catholics without compromising 
 their conscience. 
 
 If it were not that the dates attached to Campion's pub- 
 lished works are hopelessly corrupt, I might be tempted, see- 
 ing that Campion dated his History from Drogheda, June 
 9th, 1571, to doubt Parsons' declaration, that he witnessed 
 the arraignment and trial of Dr. Storey, which took place 
 in Westminster Hall on the 26th of May in the same year. 
 Even the correction of eleven days for the New Style will not 
 help us. It may be, however, that he purposely jiost-dated his 
 work, perhaps for the purpose of concealing from the officers 
 the real time of his departure from Ireland. At any rate. 
 Father Parsons can hardly be deceived in the fact that Cam- 
 pion was present at this celebrated trial ; and we must over- 
 look the minor difficulties of a few days' discrepancy in the 
 dates. 
 
 Dr. Storey was a civilian,* who had taken a prominent 
 part in the ecclesiastical acts of the reign of Mary, and after 
 her death had fled into the Low Countries to escape the ven- 
 geance of Elizabeth and Cecil It was by what he had done 
 in England, not, as Parsons supposes, by what he did in 
 Flanders, that he had made himself obnoxious to them. 
 " Understanding," says this writer, " that many heretical 
 merchants who had traffic in those countries used to bring 
 in wicked books to infect the Catholic people," he first com- 
 plained, and then accepted the office of inquisitor, to search for 
 the contraband prints. On this the English heretics conspired 
 to capture him. Cecil and Leicester contrived the plot. The 
 King of Sjjain having authorised Alva to set up an office at 
 Antwerp for the search of all English ships entering or leav- 
 ing that port, one VViUiam Parker, a wool-draper and mer- 
 chant, said to be a brother of the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 was largely bribed by Cecil and the council to profess that 
 he had fled from England for his faith, and to solicit Alva for 
 
 * See Note .31. 
 
44 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 the office. The duke was well pleased to have so distin- 
 guished a dependent, and, finding him qualified, he gave him 
 the post. As soon as he was installed, he named for his as- 
 sistant Dr. Storey, then living in great poverty at Louvain, 
 with a wife and four young children, besides nephews and 
 nieces, dependent upon him ; this led him to accept the ap- 
 pointment, though his friends told him it was an odious office, 
 quite unworthy of him. As soon as this was done, fliree 
 agents of Cecil in the Low Countries, named Mershe, Lee, 
 and Saltanstall, together with Parker and one Pigot, con- 
 trived that a ship, suflficiently provided, should enter the port 
 of Antwerp, and that Dr. Storey, when visiting her for pro- 
 hibited goods, should have the hatches fastened down upon 
 him, and be carried off to England. The plot miscarried, 
 through the indiscretion of Pigot, and the loyalty of a sailor, 
 who informed Parker of the design, thinking that he was to 
 be the victim. But afterwards three merchants trading to 
 Antwerp — Roger Ramsden, Martin Bragge, and Simon 
 Jewkes — were bribed by the council to make another attempt, 
 and succeeded in capturing both Parker and Storey. No one 
 but Mershe and Cecil knew of Parker's treachery ; and, to 
 keep up appeai-ances, l)oth men were kept prisoners, and both 
 arraigned together in May 1571, for having traitorously com- 
 forted Richard Norton the traitor at Antwerp. But the real 
 reason why Storey was to be put out of the way was his con- 
 duet under Queen Mary, and in Elizabeth's first Parliament, 
 where he had said, " I see nothing that I should be sorry for; 
 but am rather sorry that I have done no more, and that I had 
 not more earnestly given my advice to spare the little twigs 
 and shoots, but to .strike more boldly against the roots and 
 great branches."* In plain terms, not to light fires to burn 
 costermongers and cobblers, but to make examples of such 
 tall plants as the Lady Elizabeth and Sir William Cecil. 
 
 Campion, says Parsons, heard Storey prove " that he had 
 committed nothing treasonable or punishable in going to 
 Flanders, and living under a prince who would allow him the 
 exercise of his religion, which he could not have in England; 
 and that, being there, he might accept and exercise the oflice 
 of inquisition and search against all such, though they were 
 English, as offended the common laws of the Catholic Church 
 (whereof he was a member, and to which he owed more par- 
 ticular obedience than to his country or prince) or the laws 
 of Flanders. Moreover, that any subject whatever, on so just 
 an occasion as religion, might renounce his naturalisation, and 
 betake himself to the subjection of another prince, as he had 
 
 * See Note 32. 
 
THE ENGLISH SEMINARY. 45 
 
 betaken himself to the subjection of the Catholic King of 
 Spain, and that consequently they could not proceed against 
 him for it. And even if this were not allowed, yet, as the fact 
 for which he was indicted was committed in another country, 
 and he taken there by fraud, and brought into England by 
 force only, he was not punishable for it in England." 
 
 He was executed June 1, 1571 (June 12, new style), with 
 circumstances of unusual cruelty. But the trial had been 
 enough to drive Campion from England — not to escape the 
 danger, but to prepare himself to meet it more usefully. Being 
 neither priest nor divine, he thought himself of little use at 
 present, and therefore determined to go at once to Douai, and 
 was already half across the Channel on the day of Storey's 
 death. But in mid-channel his ship was stopped by the 
 Hare, an English frigate cruising there, which despatched 
 a boat to see that the ship's papers were regular, and that each 
 passenger had his passport. Campion had no document of 
 the kind, and his fellow-passengers, though they knew nothing 
 about him, svispected he might be a Catholic. This was 
 enough ; he and his baggage were carried off to the Hare, 
 and brought to Dover, where the captain took possession of 
 all the money contributed by Campion's friends in England 
 and Ireland, and having occasion to go to London, would needs 
 carry his prisoner with him : " albeit," says Parsons, " by the 
 event that ensued, it seems it was rather a show to justify the 
 taking the money, which he wanted to keep, than from any 
 desire to get his prisoner to London, where he might find 
 some friend to aid him in recovering his purse, seeing in those 
 days there was nothing so rigorous laws against leaving the 
 realm as afterwards were devised." Campion, suspecting this, 
 began directly to linger behind ; each of them, without speak- 
 ing a word, comprehended what the other wanted, and an 
 understanding was soon established. Campion turned round, 
 and walked off towards the east ; his companion pursued him 
 westwards. The fugitive obtained a fresh supply of money 
 from some friends in Kent, and succeeded in getting over to 
 Calais without molestation. 
 
 Dr. Allen's splendid foundation at Douai was now begin- 
 nino- to flourish. Since the first years of Elizabeth's reign 
 the scholastic towns of Flanders, where the mercantile classes 
 were so closely connected with England by the wool-trade, 
 had become a second country to English refugees, a great 
 colony of whom were established at Louvain. Richard Smith, 
 D.D., of Oxford, was professor in that Flemish university, 
 till he was transferred by Philip IL, in 1562, to Douai, 
 where he was made Provost of St. Peter's, and consequently 
 
46 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 Chancellor of the University. In like manner "William 
 Allen and Thomas Stapleton, who became doctors and pro- 
 fessors at Louvain in 1566, removed to Douai in 1568, where 
 Allen began his college with the pecuniary assistance of 
 Morgan Phillips, his old tutor at Oriel College ; of John de 
 Vendcvillc, then Professor of Law at Douai, afterwards Bishop 
 of Tournai ; of the Abbots of St. Vaast in Arras, Marchi- 
 ennes,and Anchin; and of Eichardot Bishop of Arras, and with 
 the personal cooperation of Dr. Pichard Bristow, student of 
 Christ Church, Oxford; Edward Risheton or Risdon (not the 
 journalist of the Tower, and continuator of Sanders, but one 
 who afterwards joined the English Carthusians at Bruges), 
 John Marshall, John White, Jeremy (alias Simon) Collier, 
 Philip Raycostian, a Belgian ; Dr. Thomas Baily, and Dr. 
 Lawrance Webb, both of Cambridge ; and Dr. Thomas 
 Stapleton, who, however, accepted no post in the college.* 
 On Campion's arrival in 1571, the foundation already num- 
 bered some 150 members, of whom eight or nine were doc- 
 tors or licentiates in theology. The reasons of this rapid 
 growth will be easily understood from Cardinal Allen's own 
 account of the " motives and accidents" which had drawn the 
 men togethcr.f The first thought of the founders of the col- 
 lege had been to attract the young English exiles who were 
 living in Flanders from their solitary and self-guided study to 
 a more exact method, and to collegiate obedience ; and their 
 next, to provide for the rising generation in England a succes- 
 sion of learned Catholics, especially of clergy, to take the 
 place of those removed by old age, imprisonment, and perse- 
 cution. Their design, then, was to draw together out of Eng- 
 land " the best wits" from the following classes : those in- 
 clined to Catholicism ; those who desired a more exact edu- 
 cation than could be then obtained at Oxford or Cambridge, 
 " where no art, holy or profane, was thoroughly studied, and 
 some not touched at all ;" those who were scrupulous about 
 taking the oath of the queen's supremacy ; those who dis- 
 liked to be forced, as they were in some colleges of the Eng- 
 lish universities, to enter the ministry, " a calling contempti- 
 ble even to their own conceit, and very damnable in the 
 judgment of others," the dread of being forced into which had 
 (in 1581j yielded to the new college " many, yea some scores, 
 partly before, partly after their entrance into that trade ;" 
 and those who were doubtful which religion was the true one, 
 and were disgusted that they were forced into one without 
 being allowed opportunity of inquiring into the other. Be- 
 sides these educated persons, grammar-schools from all parts 
 
 * See Note 33. f See Note 34. 
 
THE ENGLISH SEMINARY. 47 
 
 of the realm yielded youths, who after full training in the 
 college became as useful as the others. 
 
 A hundred and fifty such converts, all of whom had 
 made some sacrifices, and some of whom had sacrificed all 
 they had for religion, were a real power, because tliey had 
 fallen into the hands of a man who, with all his political 
 blunders — to use the mildest term — had a true genius for ec- 
 clesiastical government. William Allen was not the man to 
 let the force that was in an educated convert run to seed, or 
 to allow him to stand all day idle in the market-place for want 
 of employment. The ingenuity of his machinery for economis- 
 ing the power of which he disposed may be appreciated from 
 the following example. Most people feel two things about a 
 recent convert. First, that it is a pity he cannot be locked up 
 till his exaltation is over, and till his ordinary prudence has 
 resumed its seat ; and next, that it is still worse economy to 
 repress the energies of the first months of his conversion, and 
 to prevent him exerting his influence over his friends till time 
 has diminished, if not destroyed it. One of Allen's rules was, 
 that, while those who were now forgotten in their old circles 
 busied themselves in writing books, or in instructing the 
 scholars, the young men, whose memories were still fresh in 
 the affections of those they had left at home, should write 
 letters to move them to attend to the salvation of their souls, 
 and to beseech them not to damn themselves wilfully, under 
 pretence of preserving their property for themselves and their 
 children. The letters by which Gregory Martin had drawn 
 Campion to Douai are only specimens of the practical utility 
 of this rule. And before he left Douai, Campion obtained 
 some results from the same practice. He wrote to certain 
 special friends of his in England, some Catholics and some 
 Protestants, with such fervour, that some of them were 
 moved by his words to leave all and follow him to Douai. 
 To this rule of Dr. Allen we are indebted for perhaps the 
 most beautiful of all Campion's compositions, — his letter to 
 Cheney, the Bishop of Gloucester (Nov. 1, 1571), "whom," 
 says Parsons, " he doth so rattle up (yet with great modesty 
 and show of reverence, and hearty good will), that it may 
 easily appear how abundantly God had imparted His Holy 
 Spirit unto him, for his letter is truly apostolic." 
 
 For his old friend Cheney was now in deep disgrace. 
 While the pursuivants were hunting Campion in Ireland, 
 they were also following Cheney in England. In April 1571 
 Cheney was summoned to convocation ; in the third session 
 he was excommunicated* for not appearing, by himself or by 
 * See Note 35. 
 
48 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 his proctor, and his archdeacon was sent with a pursuivant to 
 attach him. He was censured for contempt ; though he was 
 in London at the time, he would not appear, and afterwards 
 he went ovit of London without the archbishop's leave. 
 But, after a little time,* he sent his chaplain with letters of 
 proxy to sue for absolution, which was granted. It is suffi- 
 cient to look at the visitation articles of Archbishop Grindal, 
 whereby the prelates in this convocation tried to sweep away 
 all the lingering remnants of the old religion, to know why 
 Cheney absented himself from it. The Communion was no 
 longer to be put into the communicant's mouth, but into his 
 hands; all ceremonies or gestures not prescribed in the Prayer- 
 book were to cease ; people were to communicate three times 
 a year, not, like the Papists, at Easter or Christmas, but on 
 Ash- Wednesday, and one of the tiuo Sundays before Easter, 
 Whitsunday, and Christmas. All altars were to be pulled 
 down, and the altar-stones defaced, and put to some common 
 use. All prayers for the dead, at funerals or commemorations 
 of the dead, to cease ; no person was to be allowed to wear 
 beads, or to pray upon them in Latin or English, or to burn 
 candles on the feast of the Purification, or to make the sign of 
 the cross as he entered the church. f 
 
 These articles of visitation were only the logical deve- 
 lopment of the Act of Uniformity, the enforcing of which 
 throughout the English counties stands in such startling com- 
 plication with the reports of rebellion in the pages of the Ca- 
 lendar of State-Papers for the latter part of the year 1569. Up 
 to 1570 Catholic practices had been allowed to linger in the 
 Establishment ; now, after the defeat of the northern rebels, 
 the Puritans found themselves strong enough to repress by 
 force what they had hitherto been obliged to connive at. 
 But Cheney would not sanction by his presence, even though 
 he was only there to protest, a convocation which was to de- 
 stroy all that he loved in Anglicanism ; he retired to Glouces- 
 ter, and, though he took measures to remove the excommu- 
 nication, which would have entailed all kinds of material 
 disasters, he never afterwards had any thing to do with his 
 brother-bishops. After eight years, he died as he had lived, 
 leaving it doubtful whether he was reconciled to the Church 
 or not. One of his successors in the see, Godfrey Goodman, 
 said that " it was certain he died a Papist, and bred up his 
 servants Papists, as he had been informed by one of them 
 with whom he had spoken ;"J but Campion wrote in 1581, two 
 years after the Bishop's death : " A conventicle in London 
 attempted to exclude the clause, ' He descended into hell,' 
 
 * See Note 36. f See Note 37. % See Note 38. 
 
HIS RESIDENCE AT DOUAI. 49 
 
 from the Creed, as I was told by an eye-witness, Richard 
 Cheney, a most miserable old man, evil-entreated hy robbers 
 without, who yet entered not his father's house."* Still, the 
 old man might have been reconciled, but " secretly, for fear 
 of the Jews," and a thousand accidents might have prevented 
 the publication of the fact. Certainly, his memory was not 
 in benediction with the Protestants; he was buried in his 
 cathedral, but no memorial was erected to him ; and, as if to 
 avenge the Puritans, whom he had troubled, on the Papists, 
 whom he had spared, after his death there was no county in 
 England where more malicious cruelty was exercised on 
 Catholics than in Gloucestershire. I will reprint Campion's 
 letter in the Notes at the end of the volume. f 
 
 During the time that Campion spent at Douai, he com- 
 pleted his course of scholastic theology, took the degree of 
 Bachelor of Divinity, received minor orders, and was or- 
 dained sub-deacon.]; He was employed also as a professor 
 in the college, for he speaks of Cuthbert Mayne, the proto- 
 martyr of the seminaries, as having been his pupil there. 
 He had, moreover, not only to teach the rules, but also to set 
 the example of eloquence ; and Parsons tells us that, after an 
 oration of his upon the angels, on St. Michael's Day, Doctor 
 Matthajus Gallenius, the chancellor of the university, declared, 
 Profecto nostra patria nonfert tale ingenium — truly, our coun- 
 try does not produce such a wit, — " which, though an exagge- 
 ration, considering the great store of rare and eminent men 
 that Belgium yields daily to the world, yet shows his opinion 
 of Master Campion, to whom he was a perfect stranger." 
 
 We have one oration, and part of another, that were pro- 
 nounced here. The first, De Juvene Academico, I have already 
 discussed. Here I will only add the peroration, in which he 
 exhorts all these Douai students to try to realise his ideal of 
 an academic young man : 
 
 "Listen to our heavenly Father asking back His talents with 
 usury ; listen to the Church, the mother that bore us and nursed us, 
 imploring our help ; listen to the pitiful cries of our neighbours in 
 danger of spiritual starvation ; listen to the howling of the wolves 
 that are spoiling the flock. The glory of your Father, the preserva- 
 tion of your mother, your own salvation, the safety of your brethren, 
 are in jeopardy, and can you stand idle 1 If this house were blazing 
 before your eyes, what would you think of the young reprobate who 
 sang, or grinned, or snapped his fingers, or rode cock-horse on his 
 cane in the common crisis ? Behold, by the wickedness of the wicked 
 the house of God is devoted to the flames and to destruction ; num- 
 berless souls are being deceived, are being shaken, are being lost ; any 
 
 * See Note 3d. f See Note 40. % See Note 41. 
 
 E 
 
50 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 one of which is worth more than the empire of the whole world. Do 
 not, I pray you, regard such a tragedy as a joke ; sleep not while 
 the enemy watches ; play not while he devours his prey ; relax not 
 in idleness and vanity while he is dabbling in your brothers' blood. 
 It is not wealth, or liberty, or station, but the eternal inheritance of 
 each of us, the very life-blood of our souls, our spirits, ana our lives 
 that suffer. See, then, my dearest and most instructed youths, that 
 you lose none of this precious time, but carry a plentiful and rich 
 crop away from this seminary, enough to supply the public wants, 
 and to arain for ourselves tlie reward of dutiful sons." 
 
 The other oration belonging to this period, De Laudibus 
 Scripturce Sacrce, is very imperfect, and what remains is not 
 worth preserving. The speaker maintains the most rigid 
 theory of verbal and syllabic dictation. The following simile, 
 however, is aptly and prettily introduced : 
 
 " At Down, in the noble island of Ireland, amongst the relics of 
 St. Brigit was found a concordance of the four Evangelists, beauti- 
 fied with mystical pictures in the margent, whose colours and work- 
 manship at the first blush were dark and unpleasant, but in the view 
 wonderful lively, and artificial. Is not this most like to the style of 
 Scripture t which seemeth to him, who only looketh in at the door, 
 to speak unlearnedly and pedantically ; whereas whoso diligently 
 studies it finds the truth of the Prophet's praise, ' Thy words are like 
 fire, and like a hammer that breaketh the rook.' "* 
 
 After spending more than a year at Douai, Campion be- 
 came dissatisfied with his position. His biographers attribute 
 this solely to his desire of penance and perfection. His chief 
 study was to acquire the true science of the saints, the know- 
 ledge of Grod and of himself. But the more his knowledge of 
 self increased, the more unhappy he became about that mise- 
 rable Anglican diaconate. From the first it had given him 
 the most painful scruples, which only grew more painful as his 
 self-knowledge grew deeper, his learning more extensive, and 
 his virtue more mature. He called it " the mark of the beast ;" 
 and the thought of being impressed with " this infamous cha- 
 racter" and " profane mark of ministry" grew at last too bur- 
 densome to be lightened by counsel of learned friends, or by 
 his own study. So he determined to break entirely with the 
 world, to make a pilgrimage to SS. Peter and Paul at Rome, 
 and, by their good help, to become a Jesuit. He heard, as 
 his foreign biographers add, an interior voice commanding 
 him to repair to the see of Peter, where he should be told 
 what to do. He resolved to obey, and immediately felt such 
 inward comfort, that he determined not to wait a day. 
 
 A diligent study of Campion's writings does not bring to 
 
 * See Note 42. 
 
HE LEAVES DOUAI. 51 
 
 light much evidence of this effect of his Anglican orders upon 
 his mind ; but it throws light on a divergence between his 
 views and those of Dr. Allen, which I am disposed to think 
 had almost as much to do with his leaving Douai as his scruples 
 or his vocation. I need not trace here the development of 
 the weak point in Dr. Allen's character ; a point in which he 
 suffered the usual penalty of exiles, — entire ignorance of the 
 movements and feelings of his country, and the crystallisa- 
 tion of his brain in those feelings with which he first left 
 England. In Mary's reign Philip II. was king of England, 
 and loyalty to him was a proper sentiment. Allen preserved 
 this sentiment all his life, and not without reason, for he 
 lived within the Spanish king's dominions, and was a depen- 
 dent on his bounty ; and he allowed it to lead him into his 
 disgraceful defence of the treachery of Sir William Stanley 
 at Deventer, and to the composition of the more disgraceful 
 pamphlet which he intended to be distributed throughout 
 England as soon as the Armada should have achieved its first 
 success.* But I will not enter upon this point now, as I shall 
 have to discuss Campion's present political views more fully 
 in the next chapter. 
 
 But whatever divergence there might have been politi- 
 cally between Allen and Campion, there was no interruption 
 to their friendship. Even the resolution of his most promis- 
 ing subject to leave him did not alienate the affections of the 
 great founder of the English seminary. With a vast harvest 
 to gather in, and only few labourers to send ; with every in- 
 terest of heart and mind concentrated on the conversion of 
 England — it would have been very excusable if he had been 
 grievously offended at Campion's desertion, and all the more 
 at his entrance into the Society of Jesus, which as yet had 
 taken no part in the English mission. We might perhaps 
 have expected Allen to offer the most strenuous opposition 
 to the step, to show himself for years afterwards a bitter 
 'enemy of the Society, and to guard himself against any future 
 loss of his students by forbidding them to learn from Its pro- 
 fessors, to listen to its preachers, or to perform its spiritual 
 exercises. But he was too large-hearted and far-sighted to 
 be swayed by such petty jealousies ; he counted on receiving 
 back his loan with interest, and, though he had to wait a while, 
 his calculations did not fail him in the end. 
 
 As soon as Campion had determined to depart from 
 Douai to Kome, and had fixed the day for starting, his pre- 
 parations did not occupy much time. He went on foot as 
 a poor pilgrim. He allowed his friends to accompany him 
 * See Note 43. 
 
52 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 one day's journey, but would receive no other assistance or 
 protection. The rest of his journey he accomplished alone, 
 and never afterwards spoke of its incidents. But he was 
 met on the road by an old Oxford acquaintance, a Protestant, 
 who had known him "in great pomp and prosperity," and 
 who on his return from a tour to Eome came across a pil- 
 grim in a mendicant's dress. They passed each other with- 
 out recognition ; but the traveller, struck with some familiar 
 expression, rode back to see who the poor man was. He 
 soon recognised him, dismounted, shook hands, exhibited the 
 greatest sympathy, and asked whether he had fallen among 
 thieves that he was in such a plight. When he heard that it 
 was all voluntary mortification, he pooh-poohed the idea as 
 unworthy of an Englishman, fit only for a crazy fanatic, and 
 absurd in a man of moderate means and a frame not over 
 robust ; so he pulled out his purse, and told Campion to 
 help himself The pilgrim refused, and, says Parsons, " made 
 such a sj^eech of the contempt of this world, and the eminent 
 dignity of serving Christ in poverty, as greatly moved the 
 man, and us also his acquaintance that remained yet in Ox- 
 ford, when the report came to our ears." Campion arrived in 
 Rome in the autumn of 1572. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Campion's biographers, Parsons, Bombinus, Bartoli, and More, 
 who write rather to edify their readers than to trace the cha- 
 racter and opinions of the subject of their memoirs, tell us 
 nothing of what occurred to him at Rome beyond his con- 
 formity to the pious usages of pilgrims, his gradually-formed 
 conviction that he was called to be a Jesuit, and his admis- 
 sion into the order at the end of April 1573. It appears, 
 however, by his own statements, that he had already made up 
 his mind about his vocation when he first arrived ; so that 
 all the stories about the interior voice which miraculously 
 directed him in answer to his protracted devotions, and the 
 severe trial which he made of its authenticity, are shown to 
 be at least great exaggerations, if not pure fancies. 
 
 " On my first arrival into Rome," he said at his trial, in 
 November 1581, "which is now about ten years past, it was 
 my hap to have access to [Cardinal Gesualdi, of St. Cecilia], 
 who, having some liking of me, would have been the means 
 to prefer me to any place of service whereunto I should have 
 most faculty; but I, being resolved what course to take, 
 answered that I meant not to serve any man, but to enter 
 into the Society of Jesus, thereof to vow and to be professed." 
 
 Then Gesualdi began to question him about the Bull of 
 Pius V. against Elizabeth. Not that any hesitation was felt 
 at Rome about its propriety, or any doubt of the ultimate 
 success of the poKcy ; the Cardinal simply wished to know 
 what had been the effect of this step. If it had failed, like 
 the Bull of Paul III. against Henry VIII., that failure was not 
 calculated to produce discouragement. Had not the Israel- 
 ites, when they marched by God's express command against 
 the men of Benjamin, been tvrice overthrown before they 
 conquered ? Still, there was some wish to make its bearings 
 on the Catholics as easy as possible. "Being demanded 
 farther," Campion continues, "what opinion I had conceived 
 of the BuU, I said, it procured much severity in England, and 
 
54 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 the heavy hand of her majesty against the Catholics ; where- 
 unto the Cardinal replied, that he doubted not it should be 
 mitigated in such sort as the CathoUcs should acknowledge 
 her highness as their queen without danger of excommuni- 
 cation." This, Campion urged, could not be construed as an 
 offence, much less as treason. But it was objected to him, 
 that he had only asked for a mitigation of the Bull in favour 
 of the Catholics, leaving the excommunication of the queen 
 still in force and undetected ; and his privity thereto was 
 treason. " My privity thereto," he replied, " enforceth not 
 my consenting, nay, rather it proved my disagreement, in 
 that I said it procured much severity : and therefore, being 
 here published before I could detect it (for who knew not 
 that the Queen of England was excommunicated ?), it ex- 
 cused my privity and exempted me from treason."* 
 
 Campion urges that his conduct rather implied dissent 
 from than agreement "with the Bull. That this disagree- 
 ment was a fact, not a mere plea, he might have proved 
 from his History of Ireland, had the book been forth- 
 coming. Just as the writers of the sixteenth century show 
 that Otho of Freising disagreed with the temporal policy 
 which had been pursued by Gregory YIL, because he per- 
 sisted in calling the risings against the excommunicated 
 emperor by the name of " rebelKon," so Campion might have 
 produced the strong terms of condemnation in which he had 
 spoken of those Irishmen who had risen against Elizabeth 
 and Henry VIII. Shane CNeU is a " wretched man," who 
 " quenched the sparks of grace that appeared in him with 
 arrogancy and contempt agaiast his prince. "-f Lord Thomas 
 Fitzgerald, Deputy of Ireland, who, upon the receipt of false 
 intelligence that his father had been put to death in Eng- 
 land, had risen in arms, is represented by Campion as say- 
 ing : " If aU the hearts of England and Ireland that have 
 cause thereto would join in this quarrel, — as I trust they will, 
 — then should he (Henry) be a by-word — as I trust he shall 
 — for his heresy, lechery, and tyranny, whereia the age to 
 come may score him among the ancient princes of most abo- 
 minable and hateful memory." This is language quite in 
 conformity with that of the Bull of Paul III. ; yet Campion's 
 comment on it is, " With that he rendered up the sword (of 
 state), and flung away like a bedlam, adding to his shameful 
 oration many other slanderous and foul terms, which, for 
 regard of the king's posterity, I have no mind to utter."J 
 Can we doubt how the man who spoke in these terms of the 
 risings in Ireland would have quaMed the rebellion of the 
 * See Note 44. f See Note 45. t See Note 40. 
 
THE BULL OF PIUS V. 55 
 
 Nortli in 1569, if it had been necessary for him to mention it 
 in his history ? Or can we doubt why, in his history of the 
 divorce, he simply mentions the excommunication of Henry 
 without a word about the sentence of deposition, which was 
 the real focus of the controversy ? 
 
 It is not to be supposed that Campion had shut his mind 
 against the great Roman question of the day. His History 
 of Ireland proves that he was fully instructed in the claims 
 of the Popes to the temporal supremacy of all Christian king- 
 doms. He not only narrates but he believes, that " when 
 Ireland first received Christendom, they gave themselves into 
 the jurisdiction, both spiritual and temporal, of the See of 
 Rome;"* and he tells how Adrian IV. conferred the temporal 
 lordship upon Henry II. ; how that Pope, " an Englishman 
 born, who, having in his youth taken a painful pilgrimage 
 into Norway, and reduced the whole land unto Christianity, 
 learned distinctly the state of Ireland" from the Norsemen 
 who repaired thither, through whose intercourse with the 
 wild and furious natives religion ran great danger of being 
 defaced ; " for though Christ were believed and taught, yet 
 the multitude eft-soon grew to a shameless kind of liberty, 
 making no more of necessary points of doctrine than served 
 their loose humour." Moreover, " Henry II., building upon 
 the Pope's favour, his born subject, had sent ambassadors to 
 Rome in the first year of his reign, asking leave to attempt 
 the conquest of Ireland." Adrian had such trust in the 
 king, that he not only gave him leave to conquer the island, 
 but conferred on him a kind of legatine power of correcting 
 its religious abuses. Accordingly, the invasion took place ; 
 the reformation was enacted in the eight articles of the synod 
 of Cashel ; and the Irish clergy, in obedience to the papal 
 Bulls, " denounced curse and excommunication to any that 
 would maliciously gainsay or frustrate" the temporal right 
 over Ireland that the Popes had given to Henry.f 
 
 In the authentic documents connected with this trans- 
 action, we do not find a word about the self-donation of the 
 Irish to the Pope ; the right that he claimed over Ireland he 
 derived from the alleged fact that " all the islands which are 
 enlightened by Christ, and have submitted to the doctrine of 
 Christianity, are unquestionably St. Peter's right, and be- 
 long to the jurisdiction of the Holy Roman Church." J But 
 John of Salisbury, who was Henry's envoy, tells us the ground 
 of this " unquestionable" right. " At my prayer," he says, 
 "Adrian IV. granted Ireland to Henry II., to be held by 
 right of inheritance. . . . For by ancient right all islands 
 « See Note 47. t See Note 48. J See Note 49. 
 
56 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 are said to belong to the Roman Church hy the donation of 
 Gonstantine."* 
 
 All that we find expressed in the BuU is, that the Popes 
 had an unquestionable right over all Christian islands; the 
 grounds on which this right was rested varied with the 
 variations of public opinion. At one time the pretended do- 
 nation of Constantine was alleged ; but when there was a 
 growing disposition to question the right of Constantine to 
 give, if he ever had given, a right which he had never pos- 
 sessed, and which perhaps he could not transmit to his suc- 
 cessors if he had possessed it, the claim was grounded on the 
 vote by which the people had once for all exercised their 
 right of electing their lord, and then abdicated it for ever. 
 But the Popes themselves seem to have founded their right, 
 first on the feudal law, then on the ground of divine right, 
 because they were Vicars of Christ in His temporal as well 
 as in His spiritual power ; and then on the ground of the 
 necessity of this right for the government of the Church, 
 after controversialists had shown that they were Vicars of 
 Christ in those powers only which He had exercised while 
 upon earth. t 
 
 If the Pope could give Ireland to Henry because " all 
 islands belonged to the Roman See," the same reason was 
 equally applicable to England. But Campion was far from 
 allowing this. He mentions the fact that King John " made 
 a personal surrender of both his realms in way of submission" 
 to the Pope ; " and after his assoiLment received them again. 
 Some add," he continues, " that he gave away his kingdom 
 to the see of Rome for him and his successors, recognising to 
 hold the same of the Popes in fee, paying yearly therefore a 
 
 thousand marks Sir Thomas More, a man in that 
 
 calling and office likely to sound the matter to the depth, 
 writeth precisely, that neither any such writing the Pope can 
 show, nor were it eifectual if he could."J Sir Thomas More 
 was clearly a favourite ofCampiion. In his history of Henry's 
 divorce he talks of the " incredible experience in affairs and 
 penetration of intellect" which the chancellor displayed, and 
 of his " sublime and almost divine wisdom ;"§ and this ap- 
 peal to his authority on the subject of the Pope's rights over 
 England is decisive of the appellant's opinion. 
 
 The Bull of Paul III. against Henry VIII. was not pub- 
 lished in More's lifetime ; indeed, Paul was not yet Pope. Still, 
 More knew of the right of the Pope to settle the legitimacy of 
 marriages and of their issue, and his claim to adjudicate upon 
 the succession of the crown. Nevertheless, both More and 
 
 * See Note 50. f See Note 51. J See Note 52. § See Note 53. 
 
THE BULL OF PIUS V. 57 
 
 Fislier were willing enough to bind themselves to obedience 
 to the law of succession defined by the statute, which gave 
 the crown to the issue of the union of Henry with Anne 
 Boleyn, though they refused to swear that the marriage of 
 Catherine had been null and void from the first ; and More, 
 after his condemnation, avowed his belief that Parliament 
 had gone beyond its province in the two questions of the 
 supremacy and the divorce. That is to say, they recognised 
 the right of the three estates to give the crown of England 
 to whom they chose, legitimate or not, but did not recognise 
 the right to define the spiritual questions of the sacrament 
 of marriage, and of the ecclesiastical supremacy. They must 
 have held the opinion that the Church had power only over 
 spiritual things, and not over civil and temporal matters. 
 
 That this opinion was deeply rooted in the English laity 
 of the day, is clear from what we read in Hall's Chronicle 
 about the general fast ordered by Wolsey on occasion of the 
 sack of Rome by the Constable Bourbon in 1527, that the 
 clergy in general neglected it ; while the laity, to show their 
 grudge against the spirituality, not only refused to observe it, 
 but said that the Pope was worthily served for being such a 
 "ruffian" as to exceed his powers in meddling with temporal 
 dominion.* 
 
 Accordingly, when Paul III., in 1538, deprived Henry 
 of his realm ; laid all places where he might go under an 
 interdict ; declared all his children by Anne, and the children 
 of his supporters, to be infamous, illegitimate, and incapable 
 of inheriting ; forbad his subjects to obey him ; forbad all 
 Catholics to have any commercial dealings with him or his 
 party ; ordered all ecclesiastics to depart the realm, and the 
 nobles to rebel ; declared all treaties between him and other 
 sovereigns null and void ; and ordered that all his supporters, 
 wherever caught, should be made slaves to the person captur- 
 ing them, — his Bull found very little response in England.f 
 Not so, however, in the parts nearer the Scottish border, 
 where, as an eye-witness tells us, J even down to 1550, the 
 name of the Pope of Eome was so venerated by the people, 
 that whatsoever they were told he had said or done was to 
 them as good as an oracle, or a dispensation of Providence. 
 But in other parts of the country the Bull was entirely dis- 
 regarded. 
 
 When EHzabeth succeeded to the throne, she took good 
 care to profit by the experience of her father. She took the 
 line of comprehension, not of exclusion, and required obedi- 
 ence only, not a conscientious conviction of the purity of her 
 * See Note 54. t See Note 55. j See Note 56. 
 
58 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 origin. She founded her rights to the crown solely on the 
 authority of Pariiament, which had confirmed her father's 
 testament. In the act of February 9, 1 559, for recognising 
 the queen's just title to the crown, there was no clause to 
 assert the validity of her mother's marriage, which had been 
 declared null in 1553 ; she contented herself with her par- 
 liamentary title : thus leaving liberty of conscience to those 
 who, like More and Fisher, maintained the Pope's supreme 
 right in spiritual matters, but at the same time acknowledged 
 the supreme right of the civil government in all temporal 
 matters, to the extent of bestowing the crown even on per- 
 sons of base birth, though there were legitimate candidates 
 for the throne. On a similar principle, Elizabeth claimed 
 her ecclesiastical supremacy, not as a right inherent in the 
 crown, but as a grant expressly made by the authority of 
 the Legislature.* Here Fisher and More would have stopped ; 
 they could never concede the right of Parliament to make 
 such a grant, though they might possibly have come round 
 to Margaret Roper's distinction, and admitted the king's 
 supremacy over all ecclesiastical persons, so far as " the Word 
 of God permitted," in opposition to the extravagant claims 
 of the canonists. 
 
 But neither Paul IV. nor St. Pius V. were disposed to 
 admit any compromise ; they both joined issue with Eliza- 
 beth in maintaining that as illegitimate she could only suc- 
 ceed to the throne through their dispensation ; and they were 
 both ready to make all sacrifices to maintain the theory of 
 the indefinite supremacy of the Pope, not only over spiritual 
 affairs, but (directly or indirectly) over temporal matters 
 also. Paul died in 1559 ; and his successor, Pius IV., tried to 
 open communications with Elizabeth, and sent two ambas- 
 sadors, first, ParpaHa, in May 1560, bearing a letter, in which 
 the Pope exhorted her to obedience, and promised her "what- 
 soever she might desire for the establishing and confirming 
 her princely dignity, according to the authority, place, and 
 office committed to him by God."t But neither Parpalia nor 
 his successor, Martinego, in May 1561, was allowed to enter 
 England, chiefly on the ground that it was " manifest that, 
 allowing the authority of the Pope according to such juris- 
 diction as he claimeth, there wiU follow a great peril to the 
 security and truth of her majesty's undoubted title to the 
 crown," and that, though Martinego swore that he would do 
 nothing prejudicial to the crown or state, yet the thing was 
 already done. " The Pope hath, even at this instant time in 
 Ireland, a legate who is publicly joined already with certain 
 * See Note 57. f See Note 58. 
 
THK BULL OF PIUS V. 59 
 
 traitors, and is occupied in stirring a rebellion, having 
 already, by open acts, deprived the queen of her right and 
 title there ;" and it was believed that the envoy was to 
 try to " stir up a rebellion in the realm by colour of reli- 
 gion." 
 
 While the Pope thus encroached on Elizabeth's political 
 rights, she and her council were more than even with him 
 in encroaching on the spiritual liberties of her subjects. 
 There was no moderation ; in the midst of the blind passions 
 of the moment, it appeared necessary to force men to re- 
 nounce the Mass, in order to demonstrate to the Pope how 
 little authority he had over the succession of the English 
 crown; and the establishment of heresy by civU. violence 
 seemed the natural answer to the attempt to control the civil 
 succession of the crown by ecclesiastical power. The passions 
 of both parties were excited, and there was no room for 
 moderate counsels to gain a hearing. To disapprove of the 
 Pope's civil proceedings, was to approve of Elizabeth's eccle- 
 siastical alterations ; to take up a moderate line insured per- 
 secution from both parties. 
 
 Among those who were driven from England by the 
 ecclesiastical violence of the first years of Elizabeth, by far 
 the greatest theologian was Thomas Stapleton, who attempted 
 to introduce some moderation at least into the theory of the 
 relations between the papal authority and civil governments. 
 He denounced the two extremes, — the opinions both of those 
 who claimed for the Pope authority over princes, because all 
 temporal power was derived from him, and of those who 
 derived this papal authority from the gift of the emperors. 
 He disclaimed any temporal suzerainty of the Pope over 
 princes, and he denied that the Pope had any right to de- 
 throne them for any merely civil cause. The Pope could not 
 justly interfere with temporal governments, except when they 
 were hostile or detrimental to the Catholic religion ; and in 
 this case he had precisely the same right of interference as 
 one state has in respect to another state whose internal con- 
 dition is such as to be a serious danger to its neighbours. 
 He may intervene either against the people, when they are 
 about to elect a prince who will probably tamper with their 
 religion, or against such a prince when he is on the throne. 
 And he has two methods of interfering against the prince ; 
 first indirectly, through the people or parhament, whom he 
 may excite to throw ofi" the authority of their prince, and to 
 dethrone him ; and secondly, in case this does not succeed, 
 through want of power or want of will on the part of the 
 people, then he must take a more direct method, and give 
 
60 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 the realm to some Catholic prince, or proclaim that the first 
 man who can conquer it shall have it.* 
 
 Stapleton did not adapt his theory to the beginning of 
 the quarrel with Elizabeth, but to the situation, as he found 
 it existing after the lapse of a few years ; and at Rome his 
 theory, though it was not based on the broad ground occu- 
 pied by the Popes of that age, yet served quite as well as 
 theirs for the course they were following. It did not signify 
 whether a theologian declared them to have a direct, or only 
 an iadirect, right of interfering in the temporal afiairs of 
 other states, provided interference was defended ;f and Staple- 
 ton was as acceptable as a Bozius would have been, when his 
 practical conclusion tallied so exactly with that of the most 
 fervid adherents of the direct right of the Pope in temporal 
 matters. His programme was carried out to the letter ; and, 
 indeed, he is mentioned by subsequent writers as one of those 
 English divines on whose information Pius V. chiefly relied 
 — Harding, Stapleton, Morton, and "Webbe.J 
 
 Pius V. then, knowing how his predecessor's attempts to 
 send an agent to Elizabeth had failed, changed his plan, and 
 began to address himself to the people ; so, after having de- 
 clared the queen a heretic in the Bull Regnans in excelsis, 
 which was dated in February 1569, but not promulgated tiU 
 the next year, he sent in 1569 Dr. Nicolas Morton into Eng- 
 land, " to declare by ApostoHc authority to certain illustrious 
 and Catholic men, that Elizabeth, who then wore the crown, 
 was a heretic, and therefore had lost all right to the do- 
 minion and power which she exercised upon the Catholics, 
 and might be properly treated by them as a heathen and 
 publican; and that they henceforth owed no obedience to 
 her laws or commands. By this declaration many of the 
 higher classes were led not only to consult their own inter- 
 est, but to consider by what means they could deliver their 
 brethren from the tyranny of the heretics. And they hoped 
 that all the Catholics would join them with aU their forces 
 in this pious design. But though the affair turned out con- 
 trary to their hopes, either because all the Catholics did not 
 yet properly know that Elizabeth was legally declared a 
 heretic, or because God had determined to punish still more 
 heavily the revolt of England, yet their design was a praise- 
 worthy one, and was by no means without a certain suc- 
 cess."! 
 
 The success attained was the rebellion of the great earls 
 of the North, in 1569. Its failure did not discourage the 
 English advisers of Pius V. They soon picked up a new 
 
 •See Note 59. f See Note 60. {See Note 61. ^ See Note 62. 
 
THE BULL OF PIUS V. 61 
 
 leader, the Duke of Norfolk, whom they assumed to be a 
 sound Catholic, and to whose standard they fondly expected 
 the whole realm to rally ; it only required that the Pope's 
 pleasure and censure should be once authentically known 
 to the Catholics, and there would be no place for resistance ; 
 and afterwards the whole difficulty might be settled by a 
 marriage between the Duke of Norfolk and Queen Mary of 
 Scotland.* 
 
 Persuaded by these representations, which had more 
 weight with the Pope than the prayers of Maximilian-f- and 
 other princes, who were likely at least to know something of 
 the probable issues of the course, Pius V. publicly launched 
 his Bull against Elizabeth, in which were reasserted in the 
 strongest terms all the papal claims which had ever found 
 their strongest antagonists ia England. The Pope alone is 
 appointed " prince over all nations and all realms, to pluck 
 up, to destroy, to dissipate, to crush, to plant, and to build." 
 The conduct of Elizabeth, the " pretended queen," is con- 
 trasted with that of her sister Mary, the "legitimate queen," 
 of England, whose policy had made all foreign connection 
 hateful even to the Catholics. Elizabeth is declared a heretic, 
 and therefore excommunicate, and " deprived of her pre- 
 tended right to the said kingdom, and all and every dominion, 
 dignity, and privilege;" all her subjects are for ever absolved 
 from all allegiance to her ; all are commanded " not to dare 
 to obey her, and her monitions, commands, and laws;" all 
 who do so are anathematised with her. J 
 
 This Bull, says Sanders, was obeyed by one or two Ca- 
 tholics {unus et alter), who sacrificed their lives in publish- 
 ing or asserting it. The rest, either because they did not 
 acknowledge the legality of its publication, and observed 
 that the neighbouring princes and commonwealths made no 
 difference in their relations with the queen ; or because, 
 when Pius V. died, they did not know that his successor had 
 renewed and confirmed the Bull ; or, at least, through fear 
 (though they alleged the former excuses), — remained in their 
 obedience ; and their opponents braved the whole thing as a 
 bugbear to fright babes with.§ 
 
 A very able Catholic lawyer of the period will add to 
 Sanders' list of reasons. "I have been often told," says 
 Wniiam Barclay, " by noblemen and men of good life, that 
 the divine precept of honouring kings had struck such deep 
 root in their minds, that no Bulls or indulgences to the con- 
 trary could alleviate the scruples they felt, or give them a 
 feeliag of internal security in violating so clear and plain a 
 
 * See Note 63. f See Note 64. t See Note 65. § See Note 66. 
 
62 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 precept of natural and divine right as the allegiance they 
 owed and had sworn to their prince."* And he represents the 
 people telling the Pope, that as he is not the superior of the 
 king in temporals, he cannot forbid their temporal obedience 
 to the king. He is but the interpreter, not the enactor, of 
 the Divine law, and therefore his interposition is only requi- 
 site when something obscure has to be cleared up, not in 
 cases which need no explanation. Therefore, when the com- 
 mand is " to render to Caesar what is Casar's, and to God 
 what is God's," and "to be subject and obedient to princes 
 and powers," it is the Pope's business to define what is Caesar's 
 and what is God's, but not to forbid subjects to give anything 
 whatever to Caesar, for this is not to interpret but to abrogate 
 the law. To define that our obligation of obedience to the 
 prince is comprised within the limits of temporal matters, 
 while aU spiritual afiairs are reserved to the jurisdiction of 
 the Vicar of Christ, or that no king is to be obeyed when he 
 commands things contrary to the law of nature or of God, or 
 to good manners, is the Pope's right ; but when he merely 
 commands men "in no way to obey their prince, or his 
 monitions, commands, and laws," he cannot be obeyed, be- 
 cause this is not interpreting but annulling the divine pre- 
 cept, and beyond the papal power, as determined by the 
 canons. The same reasoning applies still more strongly to 
 the abrogation of allegiance. When men are commanded to 
 withdraw their allegiance from a prince, because obedience 
 to him may hinder their spiritual good, they may reply, 
 that this evil is merely an accident, which may be lament- 
 able, but cannot be hindered. God's command is to obey 
 the prince "with patience in well-doing." If he misuses 
 his power, God wiU punish him ; his subjects may not trans- 
 gress God's plain command for any presumed advantage. 
 Again, the Pope's absolution from the oath of allegiance only 
 breeds a scruple about his power ; for it is known that he 
 cannot dispense with the Divine law. God commands obe- 
 dience to the Pope in spiritual matters, to the king- in tem- 
 poral afiairs. This obedience -will stdl be paid in spite of 
 the denunciations of the Bull, which are fearful enough ; but 
 the fear of an unjust excommunication will never force peo- 
 ple to do that which they know to be against the law of 
 God.f Sanders (whom Camden follows, p. 186) and Barclay 
 are sufficient witnesses of the reasons which induced the 
 Catholics of England to treat the Bull as a dead letter. That 
 Campion shared the common opiaions of his brethren I have, 
 I think, made evident. Like them, he at least hesitated 
 
 * See Note 67. f See Note 68. 
 
THE BULL OF PIUS V. 63 
 
 about tlie Bull ; lie doubted whether it justified Catholics in 
 throwing off their allegiance ; it put him into the same 
 sceptical attitude which precluded any kind of decisive politi- 
 cal partisanship. 
 
 Its effect on Elizabeth and her government was, on the 
 other hand, most decisive. That persecution which drove 
 Campion first from Ireland and then from England was the 
 immediate result ; and within two years it had produced a 
 crop of penal laws, the first instalment of that sanguinary 
 code which in process of time nearly effaced the Catholic 
 Church from this island.* No wonder that Campion, when 
 asked his opinion about the Bull, declared that it procured 
 much severity in England, and the heavy hand of her ma- 
 jesty against the Catholics. But no representation that 
 Campion could make was likely to procure the reversal of a 
 policy that was carried out in spite of the most earnest re- 
 monstrances of the emperors and kings on whom the Popes 
 chiefly depended. 
 
 I do not know whether Campion went so far as to 
 think, with most thinking persons of the period,t that Paul 
 III. and St. Pius V. sacrificed the Church of this country 
 to their desire of maintaining in their integrity all the 
 temporal prerogatives exercised or claimed by their pre- 
 decessors, and that if they had frankly relinquished that 
 temporal suzerainty which was the chief ground of the 
 hesitations of their adherents, they would have given con- 
 fidence to their friends, and disarmed their merely political 
 foes. As affairs were managed, they rendered simply im- 
 possible the coexistence of the government of Henry VIII. 
 and Elizabeth with the obedience of their subjects to the 
 supreme authority of the Pope ; and those princes had no 
 choice but either to abdicate, with the hope of receiving back 
 their crowns, Kke King John, from the papal legate, or to 
 hold their own in spite of the Popes, and in direct and avowed 
 hostility to them. After the indications which those princes 
 had already given, it must have been a singular view of 
 human nature which could lead St. Pius V. to expect Eliza- 
 beth to take the first course, as he did, even so late as 1571. J 
 
 This expectation of success, founded on the enthusiasm 
 of the English exiles at Rome, is the real answer to the 
 charge, that in this business the Popes showed themselves 
 equally ignorant of the teachings of history, and forgetful of 
 the principles which the canon law lays down, after St. 
 Augustine, for the excommunication of mighty delinquents: 
 " Censures do no good, except when the person censured has 
 * See Note 69. t See Note 70. J See Note 71. 
 
64 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 few followers. When the disease has seized multitudes, the 
 good have no remedy but grief and groans ; . . . otherwise in 
 plucking up the tares they may chance to pull up the wheat 
 also ; . . . . indeed, when the contagion of sin has infected a 
 whole multitude, the severe discipline of Divine mercy is 
 necessary ; for counsels of separation are both futile and hurt- 
 ful, and sacrilegious ; for they become impious and proud, 
 and cause more disturbance to the weak good than correction 
 to the determined bad."* 
 
 But the evil had spread too far, and so in endeavouring 
 to preserve a temporal prerogative that had always been dis- 
 puted, and had more often failed than succeeded in practice, 
 while in theory it was open to grave objections, those Popes 
 lost England to the faith, and were so far from securing the 
 prerogative for which thej' contended, that in the contro- 
 versy with France in the nest century it was resigned, not 
 without debate, but without any great struggle. If Henry 
 VIII. and Elizabeth had been treated with the same deli- 
 cacy and circumspection that Lewis XIV. experienced, the 
 end might have been very different to what it was ; and if 
 Lewis had been treated like Henry VIIL, the most Christian 
 king, would probably have proved as bad a churchman as the 
 Defender of the Faith. 
 
 The long sojourn of Campion in Rome before he at- 
 tempted to carry out his resolve of entering the Society of 
 Jesus, is accounted for by the Society being then without a 
 head, while its third great congregation was assembled to 
 elect a successor to St. Francis Borgia, the third general, 
 who had died October 1, 1572, very soon after Campion's 
 arrival in the city, and exactly five months after the death 
 of St. Pius V. The choice fell upon Everardus Mercurianus, 
 of Liege, April 23, 1573; and a few days afterwards Cam- 
 pion presented himself as the new general's first postulant. 
 No further trial of his vocation was required than the pro- 
 bation he had imposed upon himself; he was forthwith 
 accepted ; but as there was then no English " nation" in the 
 Society, the various provincials disputed who should have 
 him, and he was at last allotted to Lawrence Maggi, or 
 Magius, of the Austrian province. " He was incredibly com- 
 forted," says Parsons, " with this battle of the provincials for 
 the possession of his body, because he saw that he was no 
 more his own man, but in the hands of others, who, under 
 God, would dispose of him better than he could do for him- 
 self; he was perfectly indifferent to all functions, and all 
 countries ; but as his own inclination was for a country 
 
 * See Note 72. 
 
HE BECOMES A JESUIT. 65 
 
 where he might strive against heresy, he was glad that 
 Bohemia had been allotted to him. He thought that Eng- 
 land owed some reparation to a countr}- which had been first 
 infected by the disciples of Wiclifle." 
 
 Campion was a man of common opinions, which he could 
 urge and adorn with all the resources of rhetoric and the 
 wealth of eloquence, and was consequently more dependent 
 on authorit}^ for his ideas than upon any depth of research or 
 originality of thoiight, and must have hailed the new obe- 
 dience he had undertaken as a happy deliverance from him- 
 self. In England he had held, as we have seen, the popular 
 opinions upon the papal sovereignty which had been inherited 
 by the English Catholics, through Sir Thomas More, from 
 generations of politicians. At Douai he must have found 
 these opinions treated as nearly heretical, and the contrary 
 doctrines energetically preached ; still we find him at Rome 
 with his old opinions, refusing any political place that Cardi- 
 nal Gesualdi had to ofier, and taking refuge from the storms 
 of debate in a society where all his energies might be devoted 
 to his own religious perfection, and to those scholastic em- 
 ployments which he ever cultivated, even in the midst of his 
 greatest religious difficulties. In this I trace the same cha- 
 racter which so long drowned scruples at Oxford in various 
 pursuits, good in themselves, but not so when used to put 
 oflP that important inquiry which ever loomed threateningly 
 upon his horizon. So now by his entrance into the Society of 
 Jesus he adjourned, but he did not solve, the question of the 
 temporal supremacy of the papal sovereignty, which was 
 once again to confront him, and to claim a decision which he 
 could not give chough he was to die for refusing it. 
 
 The congregation of the Society came to an end in the 
 middle of June 1573. Soon afterwards Magius, the Austrian 
 provincial, with certain Spanish and German fathers, and 
 Campion, left Rome for Vienna, where they arrived in Au- 
 gust ; Campion was immediately sent on to Prague, where 
 the novitiate then was, in the company of Father James 
 Avellanedo, the newly-appointed confessor to the empress. 
 This father was afterwards known to Parsons at Madrid, and 
 often told him "how exceedingly he was edified in all that 
 journey with the modesty, humility, sweet behaviour, and 
 angelical conversation of F. Campion," for whose sake " he 
 remained ever after much affectioned to our whole nation." 
 
 It would take me too far out of my way to trace the im- 
 portation of the half political heresy of Wicliffe into Prague ; 
 its adoption and propagation there by John Huss ; the 
 tumults to which it led ; the overthrow of the famous univer- 
 
 F 
 
66 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 sity, which, indeed, was a natural result of a doctrine which 
 taught that " universities, studies, degrees, colleges, and pro- 
 fessorships are pagan vanities, and of no more use to the 
 Church than the devil ;''* and at last the persecution in which 
 a remedy was sought for these evils, and which Campion 
 thus defends : " Huss would not have been punished except 
 the pestilent liar had been captured in the act of running away, 
 which the Emperor Sigismund had forbidden him to do on 
 peril of his life, and except he had violated the conditions 
 which he had accepted from the Emperor, and had thus 
 nullified his passport. Huss's maHce was too hasty, and he 
 was caught. He was commanded to present himself at Con- 
 stance to answer for the barbarous tragedies he had enacted 
 in his own laud of Bohemia ; he despised the prerogative of 
 the council, he sought security from CiEsar ; Caesar signed 
 the agreement, the Christian world, greater than Caesar, 
 rescinded it ; the heresiarch would not repent ; he perished. 
 Jerome of Prague stole to Constance •with nobody's protec- 
 tion. He was taken, he made his appearance, he spoke, he 
 was treated with great kindness, he went freely wherever he 
 liked, he was healed, he abjured his heresy ; he relapsed, he 
 was burnt."f 
 
 Cochlseus, in the first quarter of the next century, had 
 still to deplore the fall of the University of Prague, which had 
 once been the boast of Bohemia, and also that of the Catholic 
 religion, which was so low that it would be di£B.cult for it 
 ever to recover its ancient state. + Still half a century passed, 
 and in 1570 religion had made no advance ; men doubted 
 whether it ever coxild. The Bohemian Catholics were few, 
 and all of the poorest classes ; the only wealthj' persons of 
 that religion at Prague were the Italian merchants, who 
 united in a confraternity to assist the priests. § The emperor 
 also was Catholic, and had sent the Jesuits to the town, 
 bidding them relj' on his assistance in case of any tumults. 
 But the influence of the new order was only gradually felt. 
 The toil of all the labourers only produced a harvest of 
 seventy souls in 1573, in 1574, of fifty; in 1575 a few 
 apostate priests were reconciled, one or two Hussite ministers, 
 and forty-three laymen ; and so on till 1580, when the whole 
 influence of the court was lent to them, and 584 converts 
 responded to their call. That was the first year of any dis- 
 tinct significance. A few years before Campion had ex- 
 claimed, "Surely this commonwealth will either return, 
 through God's mercy and the help of the saints, to the unity 
 of the Roman Church, or else, through the wrath of God, 
 
 * See Note 73. f See Note 74. J See Note 75. § See Note 76. 
 
BOHEMIA. 67 
 
 Satan will triumph, and it will be overwhelmed in the thick 
 and horrible darkness of new sects, and will perish."* So 
 evenly did the balance seem to hold itself. But within 
 another fifty years the restoration of religion was carried out 
 in such a rough-and-ready way as probably sowed the seeds 
 of calamities still to come ; for minds forced into acquiescence 
 will always hand down the tradition of the original wrong, 
 and future generations will avenge the persecution of their 
 fathers. t "In 1620," says Cardinal Carafa, "the delegates 
 began to restore religion in Bohemia, first at Prague, where 
 they were not entirely without success, though it fell short of 
 their hopes ; yet the people could not complain of want of 
 instruction ; every one might converse with a monk or a 
 priest as long as he chose. But the people did not seem to 
 want him ; they were more impressed when some of the 
 chief inhabitants were exiled : it was hard to leave their 
 property, harder to leave their friends, hardest of all to be 
 sent to live in an unknown place. Several of the higher 
 classes were converted in this manner, and many of the stifl'er 
 religionists followed in their wake ; but the rest, though 
 forced to close their shops and to forego all trading, only 
 sought to gain time, though every now and then some few 
 became Catholic. The Archbishop's toil was strangely un- 
 productive ; many laid the blame on the Calvinists ; but the 
 Hussites and Lutherans were as slow : the real truth was, 
 they were waiting to see which side would prevail, when 
 Tilly's victory at the White Mountain put an end to their 
 doubts." The Cardinal afterwards records how much easier 
 it was found to convert the fanatical Calvinists and Lutherans 
 of the Rhenish provinces than the indifferent people of 
 Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria.:): For " it is easier to pass 
 from one extreme to another than to move from the middle 
 point of equilibrium. A conceited Calvinist or stiff Lutheran 
 wiU sooner become Catholic than a lukewarm and easy 
 Lutheran, who always promises well, but never seriously in- 
 quires for the truth, for which he does not care." 
 
 Campion's first residence at Prague was of very short 
 duration ; within two months of his arrival there the novitiate, 
 into which he had not yet made his formal entrance, was 
 removed to Briinn in Moravia, a city where the prospects of 
 Catholicism were even more gloomy than at Prague. The 
 very names of Pope and Catholic were in execration ; magis- 
 trates and people were alike Protestant, the latter riotous 
 and unruly. The clergy of one of the great churches was 
 Catholic, that of the other alternated between the two reli- 
 * See Note 77. f See Note 78. j See Note 79. 
 
68 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 gions : in 1570 a single energetic Jesuit had been sent there, 
 who continued to preach in spite of the tumults that his pre- 
 sence excited. But the Bishop of Olmiitz, the diocesan, saw 
 that one father was not sufEcient for the work, and had 
 therefore procured the removal of the novitiate from Prague 
 to Briinn, in hopes of being able to utilise the exercises of 
 the novices and the spare time of the fathers. 
 
 Accordingly, Oct. 10, 1573, John Paul Campanus, Mas- 
 ter of Novices, and John Vivarius, his socius, conveyed Cam- 
 pion and five other novices from Prague to Briinn, where 
 they were soon joined by six more from Vienna. But in the 
 following January the Bishop died, and for ten years the 
 establishment was in continual peril : its goods were seized, 
 its funds confiscated, its members accused before the tribu- 
 nals, and its suppression decreed by the emperor, though the 
 commissioners would not promulgate the edict.* But after 
 much inconvenience and continual changes of residence, the 
 foundation was gradually consolidated, and in process of time 
 was able to erect an enormous college with seven quadrangles, 
 now turned into a barrack. 
 
 Here Campion spent the year of his probation. One of 
 the first acts required of him was to inscribe in the album 
 or blank book of the novitiate certain particulars about him- 
 self, his family, and his education, as prescribed in the third 
 and fifth chapters of the Constitutions of the Society. I have 
 already extracted most of the details, so I shall only print 
 here that which I have omitted, f " I have a deliberate in- 
 tention," he says, " of living and dying in this Society of 
 Jesus. And this is my present determination, even although 
 I had not determined it before, by no man's advice, but of 
 
 my own proper motion I have a tolerably happy 
 
 memory, an understanding sufiiciently penetrating, and a 
 mind inclined to study. For this purpose, as also for the 
 other duties of the Society, 1 am tolerably robust." The 
 rules of the Society were such as to make the novitiate an 
 institution of great power and influence in a town like 
 Briinn. The " six experiments" can mostly be turned to 
 missionary purposes. According to the rule, the novice was 
 to spend one month in complete retirement, during which he 
 was to perform St. Ignatius's spiritual exercises ; another 
 month was devoted to the hospitals, where he had to make 
 himself a slave to the sick inmates ; for another month he 
 had to beg alms for the novitiate from door to door, and to 
 learn to bear the insults and the practical jokes of vagabonds ; 
 for another month he had to take his turn in all the most 
 
 * See Note 80. f See Note SI. 
 
LE'ITBRS TO THE NOVICES. 69 
 
 menial employments of tlie house ; and at least a month was 
 to be spent in catechising chUdren and ignorant persons, 
 either publicly or privately. This was precisely that for 
 which the Bishop of Olmiitz wished to have the novitiate at 
 Briinn ; this exercise therefore superseded many of the others, 
 and the novices were scarcely settled before their master 
 began to send them round into all the neighbouring villages 
 to teach the Catechism. All had great success, but Campion 
 was ever noticed to be the most successful, and the villages 
 around Briinn contained many converts that he had led to 
 the Church. 
 
 To show with what hearty fervour Campion entered into 
 these exercises, and how utterly he gave himself body and 
 soul to the new life he had undertaken, I need only quote 
 the two following letters, which he subsequently wrote to the 
 novices at Brunn, after he had taken his vows, and had re- 
 turned to the college at Prague. 
 
 " How mucli I love you in the bowels of Jesus Christ, my dearest 
 brethren, you may conclude from this, that in spite of my daily oc- 
 cupations, which scarce leave me time to breathe, I have managed 
 to steal time from the midst of my functions and cares to write to 
 you. How could I do otherwise, directly I heard of a sure messenger 
 to Briinn ? How could I help firing up with the remembrance of 
 that house, where there are so many burning souls, fire in their mind, 
 fire in their body, fire in their words — the fire which God came to 
 send upon the earth, that it might alwaj'S burn there 1 dear walls, 
 that once shut me up in your company ! Pleasant recreation-room, 
 where we talked so holily ! Glorious kitchen, where the best friends 
 — John and Charles, the two Stephens, SaUitzi, Finnit and George, 
 Tobias and Gaspar — fight for the saucepans in holy humility and 
 charity unfeigned ! How often do I picture to myself one returning 
 with his load from the farm, another from the market ; one sweating 
 stalwartly and merrily under a sack of rubbish, another under some 
 other toil ! Believe me, my dearest brethren, that your dust, your 
 brooms, your chafl[', your loads, are beheld by angels with joy, and 
 that through them they obtain more for you from God than if they 
 saw in your hands sceptres, jewels, and purses of gold. Would that I 
 knew not what I say ; but yet, as I do know it, I will say it ; in the 
 wealth, honours, pleasures, pomps of the world, there is nothing but 
 thorns and dirt. The poverty of Christ has less pinching parsimony, 
 less meanness, than the emperor's palace. But if we speak of the spi- 
 ritual food, who can doubt that one hour of this familiar intercourse 
 with God and with good spirits, is better than all the years of kings and 
 princes ? I have been about a year in religion, in the world thirty- 
 five ; what a happy change, if I could say I had been a year in the 
 world, in religion thirty-five ! If I had never known any father 
 but the fathers of the Society ; no lirothers but you and my other 
 brothers ; no business but the business of obedience ; no knowledge 
 
70 EDMUND C.iltfPION. 
 
 but Christ crucified ! AVould that at least I had been as happy as 
 you, who have entered the vineyard of Christ in the morning of 
 your lives ! I almost envy Cantensis and (Jharles, who have been 
 brought in so young that tliey can spend their childhood with the 
 child Jesus, and can grow up with Him, and increase to the perfect 
 strength of the fulness of Christ. Rejoice therefore, my brethren, 
 at the good you enjo_y, and at the greatness of the honour God has 
 done you. Let the remembrance of this be ever present to you, to 
 resist the devil, the world, the flesh, and the difficulties and storms 
 of all tem])tations. If we are not very stupid and senseless, let us 
 say from our hearts, ' It is no great thing that I should serve God ; 
 but it is really a great thing that God should have willed to have me 
 for a servant.' I thank you all most heartily for the extraordinary 
 charity which I experienced when with you, and when away from 
 you, by your letters and remembrances, and at my departure as I 
 was setting ofl"; especially I thank Melehior — and who else is it 
 that I named before ? — my dearest brother, my friendly rival, my 
 compeer in the society, but how high above me in merits ! His 
 letters gave me and will give me the greatest pleasure ; so did the 
 things he spoke about in his two epistles. I will join with the 
 Father Rector in drawing up a plan, and after the affair is set in 
 order, I will write out the whole for him, before the feast of the An- 
 nunciation, I hope. Stephen the Hungarian said that he would 
 write, but has never written a word. AYith my whole heart I con- 
 gratulate George and Charles, who have lately made their vows. 
 These are strong chains, my brethren, and most strongly do they 
 bind you to our Lord. Who shall tear you from His hands 1 Shall 
 this triple cord be broken by that miserable devil who is so impo- 
 tent that he could not even di'own the swine without leave ? Who, 
 then, is he that he should be able to overthrow the image of God ? 
 Never can he do so, unless we ourselves blot out the image, and con- 
 spire with him to our own mischief. I have spent a long time in 
 writing to you — is that the first bell for schools 1 I must leave off ; 
 and to-morrow is the feast, when I shall be fully occupied, so I don't 
 think I shall be able to write more ; however, I will take the next 
 opportunity. I thank my dearest brother Cantensis, whose letter 
 gave me the greatest ])leasure, and I thank my God who has given 
 him so good a mind at his age. I received from him the pictures, 
 the Agnus Dei, and the relics of our holy father Ignatius — a great 
 treasure, for which I return great thanks. I salute you all in Christ 
 Jesus from the bottom of my soul. My last request is, that you 
 would humbly beg F. Iteetor and F. Aijuensis to pardon my long 
 silence ; they must ascribe it to my fault, and not to my forgetful- 
 ness of their kindness to me. I commend myself to the prayers of 
 you all. Farewell. 
 
 Prague, Feb. 26, 1575."* 
 
 "Although the words of men, my dearest brethren, ought to 
 * See Note 82. 
 
LETTERS TO THE NOVICES. 71 
 
 have mucli less weight and influence with you than that Spirit who 
 without sound of words whispers in your ears, yet since this work 
 of love is not altogether useless or unnecessary, your charity will 
 cause you to receive this fraternal letter, the witness of my love 
 and duty, with your usual kindness. I write not to you as though 
 you required the spur, for wherever you go your hearts are ever set 
 upon every virtue ; but that I, while I employ my time in writing 
 to you may spur myself, and may enjoy the perfume of the remem- 
 brance of your affection, and may testify my affection towards you. 
 And I would that as I speak, and as you perform, so you might 
 speak and I perform. For I know what liberty there is in obedi- 
 ence, what pleasure in labour, what sweetness in prayer, what dig- 
 nity in humility, what peace in conflicts, what nobleness in patience, 
 what perfection in infirmity. But the difficulty is to reduce these 
 virtues to practice. And this is your work, to run over a portion of 
 your earthly course in the chariot of Paradise. I, as the poet says, 
 will follow as I can, non passibus equis. My dearest brethren, our 
 life is not long enough to thank Christ for revealing these mysteries 
 to us. Which of us would have believed, vmless He had called him 
 and instructed him in this school, that such thorns, such filth, such 
 misery, such tragedies, were concealed in the world under the feigned 
 names of goods and pleasures 1 Which of us would have thought 
 your kitchen better than a royal palace "i your crusts better than 
 any banquet ? your troubles than others' contentment ? your con- 
 flicts than their quiet ? your crambs than their abundance 1 your 
 vileness than their triumphs and victories ? For I ask you whether, 
 if you could all your lives, as they would like, feed your eyes on 
 spectacles, and changes of scene and of company, your eyes would 
 be the stronger ? If you fed your ears with news, would they be 
 the fuller ? If you gave your mind its lusts, would it be richer 1 If 
 you fed your body with dainties, could you make it immortal ? This 
 is their blunder who are deceived by vanities, and know not what a 
 happy life means. For while they hope and expect great things, 
 they fancy they are making vast progress, and not one in a hundred 
 obtains what he dreamed ; and if perchance one obtains it, yet after 
 making allowance for his pains, and his loads of care, the slipperiness 
 of fortune, his disgraceful servility, his fears, plots, troubles, annoy- 
 ances, quarrels, crimes, which must always accompany and vex the 
 lovers of the world, he will doubtless find himself to be a very base 
 and needy slave. One sigh of yours for heaven is better than all 
 their clamours for this dirt; one colloquy of yours, where the angels 
 are present, is better than all their parties and debauched drinking- 
 bouts, where the devils fill the bowls. One day of yours consecrated 
 to God is worth more than all their life, which they spend in luxury. 
 My brethren, run as you have begun ; acknowledge God's goodness 
 to you, and the dignity of your state. Can any pomp of kings or 
 emperors, any grandeur, any pleasure, I will not say equal, but even 
 shadow forth your honour and consolation ? They (I speak of the 
 good among them) fight under Christ their king, with their baggage 
 
72 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 on their back ; you are eased of your burdens, and are called with 
 the beloved disciple to be familiar followers of your Lord. They 
 are admitted to the palace, you to the presence chamber ; they to 
 the common pasture, you to the choicest banquets ; they to friend- 
 ship, you to love ; they to the treasury, you to the special rewards. 
 Think what difficulties they have who even live as they ought in this 
 naughty world ; then you will more easily see what you owe to His 
 mercy in calling you out of infinite dangers into His society. How 
 hard it is for them to follow Christ when He marches forth in haste 
 against His enemies, who have wives in their bosoms, children on 
 their shoulders, lands on their backs, cares on their heads, whose 
 feet are bound with cords, whose spirits are well-nigh smothered. 
 Is not your happiness great, whom the King marshals by His side, 
 covers with His cloak, clothes and honours with His own livery 1 
 What great thing is it for me to have left friends for Him who left 
 heaven for me 1 What great thing for me to be a servant to my 
 brethren, when He washed the feet of the traitor Judas ? What 
 wonder if I obey my fathers, when He honoured Pilate t What 
 mighty thing for me to bear labours for Him who bore His cross for 
 me ? What disgrace if I a sinner bear to be rebuked, when He an 
 Innocent was curst, spit upon, scourged, wounded, and put to death 1 
 Whenever we look into the glass, my brethren, we see clearly that 
 the temptation of no pleasure, the fear of no pain, should pluck us 
 from the arms of such a Jilaster. You see I have nearly filled my 
 paper, though I have plenty to do ; it is time to check myself, and 
 to remit you to that Teacher who by His sacred influences can im- 
 press these things much more strongly than I can on your minds. 
 Hear Him, for He hath the words of eternal life. 
 
 For my part, I kiss not you only, but the prints of your footsteps, 
 and I beg you to give a poor needy wretch an alms of the crumbs 
 that fall from your table. 
 Prague, Feb. 19th 1577."* 
 
 Such was the spirit in which he performed these services, 
 " poor in seeming, rich in fruit, and in discipline for minds 
 elated with success ; they break the assaults of pride, they 
 dispel the fanciful clouds of vanity, and remind poor unstable 
 humanity of its worthlessness and mortality. To visit the 
 hospitals, to attend to the sick, to follow them to their graves; 
 to endure the peevishness of the sufferers, their dirt, their 
 groans, their stink ; and to learn to feel horror and disgust 
 at no poison, no filth, no corruption but the filth of sin." 
 In these exercises the political difficulties of Campion were 
 not solved, but overshadowed for the time by the over- 
 whelming importance of the business of religion. For grace 
 does not supplant nature, nor dispense with the necessity of 
 worldly prudence and common sense. 
 
 * See Note 83. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The unchequered life of Campion at Briinn and Prague has 
 been chronicled with greater minuteness by his Bohemian 
 brethren than his short agony in England by his own coun- 
 trymen.*-' The historians of the Society in Bohemia reckon 
 the one great glory of the novitiate of Prague and Briinn to 
 have been the preparation of Edmund Campion for his mar- 
 tyrdom. They tell us, that before he left Briinn he was 
 warned of the death lie was to die. This fact, unmcntioned 
 by his English biographers, is partly confirmed by his own 
 letters, which show that he went to England fully impressed 
 with the certainty of his fate. ■ This presentiment was unrea- 
 sonable, if Campion only considered what had taken place in 
 England, where, among the bishops and priests and laymen 
 who had died in prison or beneath the gaUows, not more 
 than one or two had as yet suffered for religion alone. The 
 murder of Dr. Storey was to satisfy an old grudge ; Felton 
 was hanged for pasting up Pius the Fifth's Bull on the Bishop 
 of London-'s gates ; Thomas Woodhouse, hanged in 1573, was 
 so forward in anathematising the Queen's supremacy that 
 Burghley considered him mad, and only had him hanged to 
 be rid of his importunity ; Cuthbert Maine, Campion's pupil 
 at Douai, was murdered, ostensibly for being in possession of 
 a document which the English judges chose to call a Bull, 
 but really in order to enable them to convict in a prcemunire 
 certain gentlemen who had harboured him, and to enrich 
 one of the Queen's cousins with the estates of Mr. Tregian.**'^ 
 Nelson was hanged in 1578 for saying that the Queen was a 
 heretic and schismatic — expressions which had a terrible 
 meaning to princes with insecure titles in days when it was 
 almost of faith that no schismatic or heretic had any civil 
 rights at all, much less the right to rule over Catholics. The 
 case of Sherwood was similar ; and though these executions 
 evinced a firm determination in the English government to 
 treat as a traitor any one who used of the usurping head of 
 
74 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 the Anglican Cliurch terms which implied that she had no 
 right to the place she claimed, yet thej^ could not have given 
 solid grounds for anticipating the persecution which was to 
 follow in the teeth of the repeated declarations of the govern- 
 ment, that freedom of conscience in all purely spiritual matters 
 was and over would be resj)ected. Schmidl, however, tells 
 us that Campion's presentiment of martyrdom was grounded 
 upon a vision he saw in the garden at Briinn, where the 
 Blessed Virgin, in lilvcness as she is painted in the picture at 
 Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, attributed to St. Luke, — copies 
 of which had been distributed by St. Francis Borgia to the 
 various novitiates, — appeared to him in an old mulberry-tree, 
 and exhibited to him a purple cloth, which he understood to 
 be a sign that he was to shed his blood for religion. 
 
 Sept. 7, 1574, John Paul Campamis, the novice-master 
 of Briinn, was appointed Rector of the House at Prague ; 
 after waiting a month to complete his year, he carried off 
 with him Campion and two other novices, "in the coach of 
 Chancellor Pernstein ;" for these progresses of the humble 
 fathers in the trappings of civil state are dwelt upon with a 
 comjjlaccncy which reminds one of the Jewish chronicles of 
 the royal procession of Mordecai through the streets of 
 Suza. 
 
 October 18, the studies were solemnly commenced at 
 Prague. Campion was made Professor of Rhetoric, and 
 opened the schools with a " glorious panegyric," which 
 Schmidl, in 1747, was able to read at Prague. And now 
 began a series of routine labours, which are rather tedious 
 even to describe. He was loaded with of&ces ; besides being 
 Professor of Rhetoric, he was matutinus excitator, and noc- 
 turnus visitator, and worked in the kitchen for recreation. 
 He went to bed half an hour before the other fathers ; but he 
 had to rise and ring for the nightly examination of con- 
 science, and after the lapse of a quarter of an hour to ring 
 again for the lights to be put out. After another quarter of 
 an hour, he looked into each cell to see that all were in bed, 
 and all caudles extinguished. In the morning he rose half 
 an hour before the rest; he rang the bell to rouse them, and 
 went to each cell to awaken the inmate and light his candle. 
 After fifteen minutes he repeated his visits, to see that all 
 were dressing ; then he rang for prayers, and again for ending 
 them. It was his place to see that all were decently covered 
 in bed, and to report all habitual defaulters. After his 
 prayers, meditation, mass, and private study, he went down 
 to the class-room to teach rhetoric, and to form the minds of 
 the rising aristocracy of Bohemia. His method was rigidly 
 
THE PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC. I 5 
 
 Ijrescribed to him : the object of his lessons was to teach the 
 use of language, and to cultivate the faculty of expression in 
 prose and verse ; the art of speaking, the stjde of writing, 
 and the store of rhetorical materials and commonplaces were 
 to be his care. In speaking and style, Cicero was to be al- 
 most the only model ; for matter, his storehouses were to be 
 history, the manners and customs of various nations, the 
 Scriptures, and a moderate stock of illustrations from arts 
 and sciences. 
 
 In class, he first made his scholars repeat a passage they 
 had learned out of school-hours ; then the monitors collected 
 the written exercises, which he looked over and corrected. 
 While he was thus occupied, the boys were trying to imitate 
 a passage of a poet or an orator which he had set them, or to 
 write a brief account of a garden, a church, a storm, or any 
 other visible object ; to vary a sentence in all possible ways ; 
 to translate it from one language into another; to write Grreek 
 or Latin verses ; to convert verses from one metre into an- 
 other ; to write epigrams, inscriptions, epitaphs ; to collect 
 phrases from good authors ; to apply the figures of rhetoric 
 to a given subject ; or to collect all the topics or common- 
 places that are applicable to it. After this came a summary 
 of the former day's lesson, and then the lecture of the day, on 
 one of Cicero's speeches, was read, and the boys were examined 
 upon it. The composition of the lecture was to be on a given 
 pattern. First, he was to explain his text, and to discriminate 
 the various interpretations of it. Next, he was to elucidate 
 the writer's art, and to display his tricks of composition, in- 
 vention, disposition, and style ; the reasons of his dignity, his 
 persuasiveness, or his power, and the rules of verisimilitude 
 and illustration which he followed. Thirdly, the professor had 
 to produce parallel or illustrative passages from other authors. 
 Fourthly, he was to confirm the author's facts or sentiments 
 by other testimony, or by the saws of the wise. Fifthly, he 
 was to illustrate the passage in any other way he could think 
 of. Each lecture did not necessarily include all these points ; 
 but such was the range and the order prescribed for the 
 points that were adopted. 
 
 After two hours thus spent in school, the scholars retired 
 to play, and the professor to the kitchen to wash the dishes. 
 Then came his dinner, followed by his hour of recreation — 
 that innocent hour of guileless wit and harmless fun, which 
 always leaves so pleasing an impression on the remembrance 
 of the visitor to any convent who has been privileged to wit- 
 ness the inner life of its inmates. After this, the professor 
 spent two more hours with his class. First his scholars re- 
 
76 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 peated the heads of the morning lecture ; then he gave them 
 a lesson on one of Cicero's rules of rhetoric. The rule was 
 first explained ; then the similar rules of other authors were 
 discussed and compared ; then the reason of the rule was in- 
 vestigated ; next it was illustrated by passages from the best 
 authors in prose or verse ; then any passages or curious 
 facts that served to illustrate it were adduced ; and lastly, 
 the professor explained how the rule was to be applied in the 
 various circumstances of modern life and society. All this 
 was to be done in the choicest language and most picked 
 phrases, so that the master's example might profit, as well as 
 his precepts. 
 
 According to the rule, the second afternoon-hour was oc- 
 cupied with Greek. Campion was not Greek Professor, not 
 because he was unacquainted with the language, but perhaps 
 because he knew less of it than the Ruthenians and other 
 Eastern Europeans who were to be found in the college. The 
 familiar way in which he quotes it in his letters, and the easy 
 fluency of his Greek calligraphy, are sufficient evidence of his 
 scholarship. It was, perhaps, fortunate that in this language 
 no one had obtained a Ciceronian monopoly. Demosthenes, 
 Thucydides, Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, INazianzen, Basil, and 
 Chrysostom occupied the throne in common. 
 
 On holidays, the exercises were more exciting : they were 
 either historical lectures, disputes on questions of scholarshijj, 
 or brief dramatic scenes. Every Saturday there was a repe- 
 tition of the week's lectures. The chief aim was to give 
 facility of speech and eloquence of style. All great days 
 were celebrated with epigrams, inscriptions, or copies of 
 verses ; every month an oration was pronounced, and a play 
 acted, in the chapel and hall. The boys' minds were always 
 on the alert ; and the life and soul of the whole method was 
 the Professor of Pthetoric, who wasatonce the rule, the model, 
 and the moderator of the exercises, and who had to keep the 
 hall, the refectory, and the chapel alive with daily, weekly, 
 and monthly exhibitions of his pupils. 
 
 I suppose that the three great levers of the Jesuit educa- 
 tion were, excitement of interest, concentration of attention, 
 and application of principles to present controversies. They 
 saw that they had to do battle for the intellectual and moral 
 supremacy of the world with the new spirit of inquirj^ which 
 had its roots in the religious innovations of Luther and Calvin, 
 the assertion of political liberties, the literary enthusiasm of 
 the Humanists, and the scientific school, which cidminated in 
 Bacon. The science and boldness of the leaders in this fight 
 extorted the admiration of their most determined opponents. 
 
JESUIT EDUCATION. 77 
 
 " Behold also the Jesuits," writes Sir Edwin Sandys in 1599, 
 after a tour through Europe, " the great clerks, politicians, 
 and orators of the world, who vaunt that the Church is the 
 soul of the world, the clergy of the Church, and they of the 
 clergy; do stoop also to this burden (of education), and require 
 it to be charged wholly upon their necks and shoulders. In 
 all places wherever they can plant their nests, they open free 
 schools for all studies of humanity. To these flock the best 
 wits and principal men's sons in so great abundance, that 
 wherever they settle other colleges become desolate, or fre- 
 quented only by the baser sort, and of heavier metal ; and in 
 truth, such is their diligence and dexterity in instructing, 
 that even the Protestants in some places send their sons unto 
 their schools, upon desire to have them prove excellent in 
 those arts they teach." But this, he continues, is only a bait; 
 their real object is " to plant in their scholars with great ex- 
 actness and skill the roots of their religion, and nourish them 
 with an extreme hatred and detestation of the adverse party." 
 " Presuming, perhaps, of the truth beforehand, and labouring 
 for no other thing than the advancing of their party, they 
 endeavour by all means to imbreed such fierceness and obsti- 
 nacy in their scholars as to make them hot prosecutors of 
 their own opinions, impatient and intractable of any contrary 
 considerations, as having their eyes fixed upon nothing save 
 only victory in arguing. For which cause, to strengthen in 
 them those passions by exercise, I have seen them in their 
 bare grammatical disputations inflame their scholars with 
 such earnestness and fierceness, as to seem to be at the point 
 of flying each in the other's faces, to the amazement of those 
 strangers which had never seen the like before, but to their 
 own great content and glory, as it appeared."®'^ 
 
 It was Campion's business to excite and direct this literary 
 enthusiasm. For the first he was well fitted by his own san- 
 guine and disputatious temperament, and for the second by 
 his extensive knowledge, his exquisite taste, and his rare ora- 
 torical power.*' A portion of his rhetorical course has been pre- 
 served, and from it I will collect a few of bis remarks. The 
 two first parts of rhetoric, he says, the invention of argu- 
 ments, and their arrangement, may be learned from any good 
 ^.j-iter— indeed, the more authorities we have the better; but 
 for style we must follow one man only. It must be learned by 
 imitation, for it does not come by nature ; but we cannot imi- 
 tate all good writers at once. He is nowhere who is every 
 where ; if you chase two hares at once, you catch neither. 
 Cicero, then, is not to be our chief, but our only model; not 
 that we are to copy him unreasonably, like some would-be 
 
78 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 Ciceronians who mimic him like monkeys, but do not take 
 after him like children — who quote whole pages, and lug in 
 his words where they are least wanted ; the proj)er way is, if 
 we like his sentiment, to clothe it in our own words ; if we 
 like his words, to use them naturally, not as if the words were 
 every thing and the meaning nothing, and as if all we had to 
 say could onljr be expressed in a certain circle of pretty and 
 plausible phrases. On the contrary, we should first think 
 about the thing, then about the words. Beginners may write 
 letters in direct imitation of one of Cicero's, or a speech like 
 one of his ; to continue the practice betrays either poverty of 
 invention, or slavish imitation. It is foolish also to suppose 
 that we may use no words but those authorised by Cicero, as 
 if he had written on every conceivable subject, or as if we had 
 all that he had written. Even now every fresh fragment of 
 his that we discover adds to the list of his words. We must 
 not copy his works, but himself; we must try to enter into his 
 taste, to hear with his ear, and to speak as he spoke. It is 
 absurd to reject all words that have not his authority. If he 
 uses perpessio and not jmssio, and resipiscentia instead of 
 loceniteiitia, we need not innovate on our theological terms, 
 nor need we restore the words sacrament andLtestament to their 
 classical meanings. Campion's Ciceronian propensities were 
 under the sway of common sense. 
 
 Among the other employments of Campion were those of 
 the president and legislator of the " Confraternity of the Im- 
 maculate Conception," which he founded in January 1575. 
 These confraternities, which were established in every college 
 of the Jesuits, served many purposes. They were the means 
 of introducing a more thorough conformity to Roman cus- 
 toms : thus at Prague, one of Campion's rules was that every 
 member of his society should forego the Bohemiam liberty of 
 communicating in both kinds. They also gave the opportu- 
 nity of a more thorough supervision of the best scholars, to 
 whom it was a special honour and privilege to be admitted 
 into these select assoLiations. Campion's foundation flourished 
 wonderfully, and afterwards branched into three great so- 
 dalities. Its name, however, was changed when it was incor- 
 porated into the Archconfratcrnity of the Salutation at the 
 Roman College. 
 
 Besides these various duties. Campion had to compose a 
 Latin oration or a play for almost every important occasion. It 
 may be supposed that with this he was Uterarum parcissimus, 
 most stingy in his correspondence ; but what letters he wrote 
 he composed with some care, as is proved by the foul copies 
 of several that are preserved amongst the Stonyhurst Manu- 
 
HIS EXERCISES. 79 
 
 scripts. " In these most godly and Christian exercises," says 
 Parsons, "he passed his time, doing good to as many as he 
 could, and omitting no occasion or labour to increase his merit 
 for life everlasting. He preached pubUcly, made exhortations 
 in private, road in the schools, taught the Christian doctrine 
 unto children, heard confessions, visited prisons and hospitals 
 of sick men, and at the death of sundry great persons made 
 such excellent funeral orations as astonished the hearers." 
 "Whatever had to be done," says Balbinus, " was laid upon 
 him. His companions thought it a miracle that one man could 
 bear so many loads ; but whenever a new task was laid upon 
 him, he used to go to the superior, and ask whether he really 
 thought him strong enough to bear it. If the answer was 
 affirmative, Campion made no delay or excuses, but immedi- 
 ately did what he was told, because, even when the question 
 was about his own physical strength, he had more confidence 
 in the rector's judgment than in his own." And his labours 
 did him no harm ; he was never better in health. " Why 
 should I not be well, dearest Parsons ?" he wrote ; " I have no 
 time to be ill." " The greatest and only difiiculty that the fa- 
 thers at Prague had with him for a time," says the same friend, 
 " was to appease his conscience about the scruple of the Pro- 
 testant diaconate, the memory of which profane degree and 
 schismatical order tormented him every time he thought of it, 
 and bred an afiliction which could not be cured by telling him 
 (what he also knew right well himself) that it was no order, 
 degree, nor character at all, seeing that the man who laid his 
 hands upon him was no true bishop, and consequently had no 
 authority to give any such order more than a mere layman, 
 but .acted only in apish imitation of the Catholic Church, for 
 a show to the people as though thej^ had holy orders among 
 them. But indeed themselves do not so esteem thereof that 
 any character was given, as in Catholic ordination, by imposi- 
 tion of hands ; for amongst them a man may be a priest or 
 minister for a time, and then a soldier or craftsman again. ; 
 whilst the Puritans flatly deny all spiritual authority of 
 bishops. Therefore, though the sin was great for a Catholic 
 man, especially such as Campion then was, to receive any 
 ordination at the hands of any such heretical, schismatical, or 
 excommunicate persons, yet he mu.st believe that this sin was 
 now fully forgiven, so that he should trouble himself no more 
 with the memory of it, but put it wholly out of his mind, and 
 proceed cheerfully in God's service." These argxmaontswould 
 cheer him for a time, yet ever and anon the " mark of the 
 English beast" would sadden him again ; nor was he wholly 
 cured till the absolute command of the General came from 
 
80 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 Rome to trouble himself no more about the scruple, and until 
 he was made both deacon and ^Driest by the Archbishop of 
 Prague, for by receiving this true character the imaginary 
 one was blotted out from his memory. 
 
 After this general summary of Campion's life at Prague, 
 I wiU give a chronicle of his chief actions there. In October 
 1574, he opened the School of Rhetoric ; in January 1575, he 
 founded the Confraternity of our Ladj' ; in' 1575 and 1576, he 
 heard of several of his old Oxford friends entering the Society 
 at Rome — Robert Parsons of Balliol, William Weston of All 
 Souls', Lane of Corpus Christi, Henry Garnet and Griles Wal- 
 lop of New College, and Thomas Stephens. "Of all these our 
 being in Rome," says Parsons, " and entering together into 
 the Society, when I written to good Father Campion, he wrote 
 to me again of his wonderful joy, and hope that God would 
 one day use mercy towards our country, and restore the Ca- 
 tholic faith again, as also vouchsafe to serve Himself of some 
 of our labours to that happy end, seeing He had so wonder- 
 fully drawn so many together in one purpose and place for 
 His holy service. And withal he insinuated again his own 
 desire to be employed that way when God pleased ; though 
 in the mean time he were contented where he was ; and not 
 unprofitable altogether for England, for that now and then 
 there passed that way, by reason of the Emperor's court, 
 certain English gentlemen, who, finding him there, were 
 content to deal with him in matters of religion, and departed 
 commonly far better instructed and persuaded than when 
 they came thither." 
 
 In 1.576 Campion was transferred to the Convictor's Col- 
 lege, where he added the duties of Prcefectus morum and 
 Prcefectus cuhiculi to his former functions. At the opening 
 of the autumn scholastic term he made a panegyric of St. 
 Wenceslaus, the patron of Bohemia, whose feast it was. The 
 oration, which was much admired, may be found among his 
 opuscula.*"^ This year also brought him into contact with the 
 celebrated Sir Philip Sidney, who had been sent by Elizabeth 
 to Prague to congratulate the new EmjDeror Rudolph on his 
 accession. Sir Philip, who was only one-and-twenty, had 
 been in Venice during the year 1574. and his familiarity 
 with Catholics there, especially with his cousin Shelly, the 
 English prior of Malta, had excited the misgivings of his 
 friends to such an extent that his tutor, Hubert Languet, 
 then agent for the Duke of Saxony at the imperial court, 
 wrote to warn him about it, — " I see that your friends have 
 begun to suspect you on the score of religion, because at 
 Venice you were so intimate with those who profess a differ- 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY. 81 
 
 ent creed from your own. I will write to Master Walsing- 
 ham on the subject, and if he has entertained such a thought 
 about you, I will do what I can to remove it ; and I hope 
 that my letter will have sufficient weight with him not only 
 to make him believe what I shall say of you, but also endeav- 
 our to convince others of the same. Meanwhile, I advise you 
 to make acquaintance where you now are (Vienna) with the 
 French ministers, who are learned and sensible men ; invite 
 them to visit you, and hear their sermons, and do the same 
 at Heidelberg and Strasburg."*^ This was written from 
 Prague, March 10, 1575. At that time Maximilian, who 
 was very lukewarm in his Catholicism, was hesitating whether 
 to grant the Bohemians the religious liberties they required. 
 As long as he demurred, his subjects were earnest in the 
 cause; but when they triumphed, in September, they thought 
 they had gained enough, and the new Emperor Rudolph 
 found them easily contented. " The Bohemians," Sidney 
 wrote to Walsingham from Heidelberg, on his way to Prague, 
 March 22, ISTG,'-** "which were earnest in Maximilian's time 
 to have churches of the true religion granted them, do now 
 grow cold, only being content to have the freedom in their 
 houses." When Sidney reached Prague, he wished much 
 to see Campion, whom he had known at Oxford, and whom 
 his father had protected in Ireland. Their meeting, says Par- 
 sons, was difficult, for Sir Philip was afraid of so many spies set 
 and sent about him by the English Council ; but he managed 
 to have divers large and secret conferences with his old friend. 
 After much argument, he professed himself convinced, but 
 said that it was necessary for him to hold on the course which 
 he had hitherto followed ; yet he promised never to hurt or 
 injure any Catholic, which for the most part he performed ; 
 and for Father Campion himseK he assured him that where- 
 insoever he could stand him in stead, he should find him a 
 trusty friend, which he performed not, for afterwards. Cam- 
 pion being condemned to death, and the other in most high 
 favour, when he might have done him favour he denied to do 
 it, for fear not to offend. Politically, Sidney always took the 
 side contrary to what were then supposed to be Catholic in- 
 terests. He hated the Spaniards, whom he considered " born 
 slaves," and took a very strong national line in preventing 
 Elizabeth's marriage with the Duke of Anjou in 1581 ; he 
 was even on the Parliamentary Committee of that year for 
 framing the penal laws against Catholics. One thing, how- 
 ever, is clear, that after his embassy to Prague, in spite of his 
 marriage with Walsingham's daughter, he made no advance 
 in his public career for several years, and held no trust or 
 
 G 
 
82 EDMTJND CAMPION. 
 
 office except the nominal one of royal cupbearer. Accord- 
 ing to a letter of Father Thomas Fitzherbert, of Feb. 1, 1628, 
 Sidney had the courage to confess in England that one of the 
 most memorable things he had witnessed abroad was a ser- 
 mon by Campion, at which he had assisted with the Emperor 
 in Prague. Probably the reports sent home by the spies 
 caused him to be looked upon as wavering in religion. He 
 ever afterwards had a strong party in the Council against him. 
 Campion's own account of his conversations with Sidney will 
 be found farther on, at the end of a letter to Bavand. On 
 Sidney's part, one curious memorial of their meeting may be 
 discovered by a critical eye in the ambassador's official letter 
 to Walsingham from Prague. After describing his reception 
 by the Emperor, he says, " the rest of the days that I lay 
 there, I informed myself as well as I could of such particu- 
 larities as I received in my instructions." He promises a viva 
 voce report upon most of the questions, and only sets down 
 the following brief character of Rudolph, which is evidently 
 from the hand of the author of the History of Ireland. "The 
 Emperor is wholly by his inclination given to the wars, few 
 of words, sullen of disposition, very secret and resolute, no- 
 thing the manners his father had in winning men in his 
 behaviour, but yet constant in keeping them; and such a one 
 as, though he promise not much outwardly, but, as the Latins 
 say, aliquid in recessu." I cannot find much further trace 
 of Campion's influence. Sidney complains that the Emperor 
 and his brother Ernest are "extremely spaniolated," and 
 that the former is most governed by a professed supporter of 
 the Spanish "inquisitor's government ;" and on his way from 
 Prague he persuaded the Elector of the Rhine at Heidel- 
 berg to tolerate the Calvinists, and not to force them to 
 become Lutherans. But his letters to Languet from Venice 
 show that his alienation from Rome was not dogmatical, but 
 political, founded on national hatred of Spaniard and Italian, 
 and fear of the overwhelming power of Philip II. His religious 
 allusions and banter savour of Catholic, not of Protestant, sen- 
 timent ; he refers to Saints, Sacraments, and Purgatory, not 
 like a man who hates them and spurns them, but like one who 
 believes in them, yet without trembhng. The habit of mind 
 most affected by him was " that seemly play of humour," 
 which would not let " our own More" lose his jest even in 
 the hour of death. 
 
 The next year, 1577, Campion wrote a tragedy on the 
 subject of King Saul, which was exhibited at the expense of 
 the town, with great magnificence, during Prague fair, in 
 honour of Elizabeth, the widow of Charles IX. of France, who 
 
FRANCIS COSTER. 83 
 
 had then returned to her family at Prague. The play lasted 
 six hours, and was repeated the next day, by command of the 
 Emperor. 
 
 Several letters written by Campion this year have been 
 preserved ; one, written to the novices at Briinn, I inserted 
 in the last chapter ; another, to Gregory Martin, is published 
 among his opuscula ;"^ and the rough copies of six more, in 
 Campion's own hand, are preserved in the archives at Stony- 
 hurst. I subjoin translations of all of them ; for the man is 
 best known by his familiar correspondence. The two first 
 relate to the manuscripts of his History of Ireland ; his library 
 had been left in England, and Gregory Martin wrote to him 
 Feb. 8, 1575, about the books "which Holland had in custody 
 being transferred by Stock to the library of Cox, his sister's 
 husband, in Gloucester," where they were afterwards burnt. 
 
 EdTnund Campion to Francis Coster, at Cologne. 
 " I was troubled about a parcel of manuscripts which is due to 
 me from France, when F. Anthony Possevin, who passed through this 
 place on his way from Rome into Sweden, told me that it was possi- 
 ble that you, as having the charge of the next province, could lend 
 me your aid in the business. I was glad to hear the name of Coster, 
 whose friendship I had cultivated at Douai ; and I confidently under- 
 took to ask you for any favour, as your former scholar and spiritual 
 child. Gregory ^Martin, who is living with Allen at Rheims, writes to 
 me that he wishes to send me a volume which I had intrusted to him, 
 but he has no one to give it to, and does not know how so lairge a 
 packet can be sent so long a distance. I have ventured to ask you, 
 relying on our old acquaintance, and on the relationship in Christ 
 which we have contracted in the Society, to do what you can for me 
 in this matter, as I am far away, and know nothing about either 
 places or persons. If Martin manages to convey the book to you, 
 do you, my father, manage to have it sent to me at Prague, not by 
 the shortest, but by the safest way. I will say no more, for I am 
 sure that you will do whatever you conveniently can. In anticipa- 
 tion, I profess myself much in your debt ; for the book is a produc- 
 tion of mine, not wholesome because prematurely born ; and if I am 
 to lose it, I would rather it were altogether destroyed than fall into 
 other hands. So I am trying to get it to you soon, and then it may 
 creep to me as slowly as you please. Farewell. 
 Prague, January 1577." 
 
 Edmund Campion to Francis Coster, Provincial of the Rhine. 
 "Although, Reverend Father, I fully expected the assistance 
 which you promised me in your kind letter, — for I knew by what 
 spirit you were led,— yet it was in truth great pleasure to me to re- 
 new the taste of your goodness and charity from their impressions 
 in your writing. I am bound to you, not now for the first time, but 
 
84 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 by old kindnesses, which I will never forget, for they are eternal. 
 This kind office of yours gives me a double pleasure, both because 
 you are going to do sometliing for me, and because you love me so 
 well as to do it willingly. And see what impudence your kindness 
 has inspired me with. I enclose you a letter for Martin ; if you can 
 send to him into li'rance I hope that he will do his part. I beg of 
 you also, as Martin tells me that he knows no way of conveying 
 the papers to me, that if you know any trusty person to employ, you 
 will take the whole business upon your own shoulders, and manage 
 to have them sent from Rheims to Cologne, and from Cologne to 
 Prague. But if this cannot be done, let me know, and I will try 
 some other plan, and give you no further trouble. The place where 
 I sojourn compels me not to be too modest in my requests. Fare- 
 well. 
 
 July 12, 1577." 
 
 The third letter is to Father Parsons ; in the first part he 
 enters heartily into the " conspiracy" to catch Gregory Martin 
 and make him a Jesuit : the share that he took in this nearly 
 successful attempt will be seen from another letter further 
 on ; in the second part he congratulates Parsons and the 
 rest who had entered into the Society, and vaguely refers to 
 some old Oxford events which Parsons had recalled to his 
 mind, and at the same time professes his agreement with 
 Parsons' "philosophical reflections" upon the state of Eng- 
 land. These clearly were, that a good wind, or rather storm 
 of persecution, was the best way to reduce England to the 
 faith, when the instability of mind, mundane attachment, 
 cowardice, and want of logic that had allowed Elizabeth's 
 government to deprive England of its religion, would be the 
 best guarantee for the success of a forcible reaction under such 
 masters as Philip II. or the Duke of Alva. 
 
 Edmund Campion to Robert Pa/rsoiis, at Rome, greeting. 
 
 " I have received your letter, my brother, teeming not only with 
 discretion and weight, but also, what is the chief thing, with love and 
 piety. I readily take your advice, and consent to do my duty, in 
 which I confess I have been for some time rather lax, somewhat 
 more lengthily and liberally than you ; but I had written in that 
 time to Martin, and my letter, I suppose, is still in Flanders, where 
 it must have arrived after his departure. Do let us conspire to de- 
 liver that good soul ; it is good fishing. I love him on many ac- 
 counts j I can say nothing s/j.^sar/xours^oi', I love him ; I congratulate 
 him with all my heart upon making the acquaintance of so many of 
 you ; my part shall not be wanting. At the end of his last letter 
 to me there was something that showed that this miserable and 
 slippery world was not altogether to his taste — ' I am in peril in the 
 world ; let your prayers preserve me.' Let us pray God ; if he is 
 
ROBERT PARSONS. 85 
 
 needed, he will be granted to us. About myself I would only have 
 you know that from the day I arrived here, I have been extremely 
 well, — in a perpetual bloom of health, and that I was never at any 
 age less upset by literary work than now, when I work hardest. 
 We know the reason. But, indeed, I have no time to be sick, if any 
 illness wanted to take me. So you may unhesitatingly contradict 
 those reports. 
 
 About yourself and Lane, whom you must greet heartily from 
 me, I feel proud and happy ; I can more reasonably rejoice in this 
 than in the memory of my proctorship. You are seven : I con- 
 gratulate you ; I wish you were seventy times seven. Considering 
 the goodness of the cause, the number is small ; but considering the 
 iniquity of the times it is not little, especially since you have all 
 come within two years. If my memory is good, I remember all the 
 names, and your somewhat tall person. 
 
 Your reflections on the tears of our orthodox countrymen are 
 quite true ; wavering minds, mischievous attachments, cowardly 
 tempers, illogical intellects. But these things will carry them into 
 port when our Lord gives a good wind. I have used up my paper, 
 so I will end. But 1 will give you a commission, since you have 
 offered yourself to me. When I was at Rome, I owed every thing 
 to the Rev. Father Ursnar. Tell him I have not forgotten him, and 
 greet him most heartily in my name. Farewell. 
 Prague, St. John Baptist's day (June 2.5), 1577." 
 
 In the fourth letter, to Robert Arden'-'^ of Warwickshire, 
 another father of the Society, he speaks of none of those vio- 
 lent measures, to which his gentle spirit was only excited by 
 contact with the fiery temper of Parsons, but only of reducing 
 England by prayers and tears. 
 
 Edmund Campion to Rohert Arden, Priest S.J., greeting. 
 "Father Francis, our common and dear friend, has told me the 
 gratifying intelligence contained in your letter from Lucerne of May 
 3d. He asked me to write to you in reply, and I am doing so ; for 
 it seemed to me an excellent opportunity of greeting a fellow-coun- 
 tryman and — nobler bond ! — a brother in the Society. If you are 
 the Arden I fancy, this is not our first acquaintance ; for we were 
 members of neighbouring colleges in Oxford, I of St. John's, you of 
 Trinity. If you are not the man, you need no more be ashamed of 
 being taken for him than of being yourself. But if you had been not 
 only my familiar friend but mine own brother to boot, even then our 
 relationship could not have been dearer, or firmer, or nearer than the 
 union by which we are now united in Christ. For this at least we 
 are indebted to those by whose heresy and persecution we have been 
 driven forth and east gently on a pleasant and blessed shore. [A sen- 
 tence follows, illegible through most of the words having been de- 
 stroyed by worms.] One thing remains ; we must rejoice at our 
 deliverance from the hands of the Egyptians, and we must strive to 
 save them, and to catch them by the prayers and tears at which they 
 
Ob EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 laugh. We will do them this favour against their wills, and so re- 
 turn them the benefit that theyhave unwillingly done to us. But to 
 return to you, my father, and to finish my letter. You must know 
 that I have had no greater pleasure for many a day than the perusal 
 of your letter, which gives us good hope of restoring and tilling that 
 vineyard. If you go on so, you shall gather a most abundant har- 
 vest. 
 
 We here, by God's mercy, can only do penance and pray, digni- 
 fied by the honour of the college, the numbers of our scholars, the 
 favour of the people, and the gain of souls. That these things may 
 become more abundant, help us by your prayers and sacrifices. Fare- 
 well. 
 
 Prague, the morrow of Our Lady ad Nives (i.e. Aug. 6), 1577." 
 
 The fifth letter, to John Bavand, his old tutor, contaiiis 
 some pleasant recollections of his youth, and his account of 
 his dealings with Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
 Edmund Campion to John Bavand, his master, greeting. 
 "Thanks to our good IMartin, who in his last letter to me enlarged 
 upon your goodness and kindness to liim, I am reminded, not by his 
 precept, but his example, not to shirk my duty, or to loosen any of 
 those old links by which your undying care of both of us has bound 
 us to you. I must own that, if I had thought frequent letter-writ- 
 ing the sum of fidelity and gratitude, I had been too neglectful of 
 what my respect for you, and your fatherly care and provision for 
 me, required. But there are other tokens of love and friendship be- 
 side letters, and my sentiments from my earliest childhood have been 
 so well known to you that they can never be clouded over either by 
 my epistolaiy neglect, or by our separation in place. I should be 
 a mere knave, and unworthy of the liberal education which you gave 
 me, if, while I have any memory at all, I forgot you, instead of bear- 
 ing witness, by all sorts of observance, to the care, the prudence, the 
 sympathy, and the purity which you displayed in teaching and edu- 
 cating me. To these I must add the clear proofs of your favour and 
 affection since bestowed upon me, — and they the more pleasant, be- 
 cause they so plainly manifested an uncommon benevolence. For 
 though in my youth I was but an indifferent subject, yet, since I was 
 intrusted to you and clung to your side, hung upon your looks and 
 lived in your society, I do not much wonder that a good man like 
 you, so diligent in your duties, took such care of me. But that in 
 after years, you undertook to feed me and to polish me, as it was aU 
 from your free choice, so does it more redound to the credit of your 
 virtue and kindness. And what is your last favour t When I was 
 in Kome, did you not altogether spend yourself upon me 1 Did you 
 not give me introductions, help, and money ? And that to one who, 
 as you knew, not only would never repay you, but who was on the 
 point of leaving the world, and, so to speak, of death. One of the 
 greatest works of mercy is to bury the dead, for they help those to- 
 wards whom neither flesh, blood, nor goods, nor hope, nor favour. 
 
JOHN BAVAND. 87 
 
 nor any thought of earthly convenience attracts them. You were 
 munificent to me when I was going to enter the sepulchral rest of re- 
 ligion. Add one further kindness, my dear father ; pray for me, that 
 in this seclusion, far from the noise of all vanity, I may be buried 
 really and meritoriously. For it was the Apostle's declaration, ' You 
 are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.' I remember 
 how, on the eve of your leaving England, you bade me farewell with 
 the words, ' I go to die.' For you had determined to let death 
 overtake you any where rather than in Egypt. We must seek to die 
 once for all, and happily, but we must seek it also daily and faith- 
 fully. But whither have I wandered ? 
 
 Now listen to my news. The Emperor Eudolph, a prudent, 
 brave, and good youth, and a sincere son of the Church, has fixed 
 upon himself the eyes and the hearts of the Germans and Bohe- 
 mians. If he lives, great things are expected of him. The Empress 
 Dowager, Maximilian's widow, and sister of Philip of Spain, is living 
 at Prague. A few months ago Philip Sidney came from England 
 to Prague as ambassador, magnificently provided. He had much 
 conversation with me, — I hope not in vain, for to all appearance he 
 was most eager. I commend him to your sacrifices, for he asked 
 the prayers of all good men, and at the same time put into my hands 
 some alms to be distributed to the poor for him, which I have done. 
 Tell this to Dr. Nicholas Sanders, because if any one of the labourers 
 sent into the vineyard from the Douai seminary has an opportunity 
 of watering this plant, he may watch the occasion for helping a poor 
 wavering soul. If this young man, so wonderfully beloved and ad- 
 mired by his countrymen, chances to be converted, he will astonish 
 his noble father, the Deputy of Ireland, his uncles the Dudleys, and 
 all the young courtiers, and Cecil himself. Let it be kept secret. 
 
 Do you want to know about Bohemia ? gu/jL/Mi^ig nai xoivmla 
 Tuv aipisioiv, a mixen and hotch-pot of heresies. But all the chief 
 people are Catholics. The lower orders promiscuous. A pleasant 
 and diversified harvest. For my part, I labour in it with more plea- 
 sure since an Englishman, WicliflFe, infected the people. 
 
 In conclusion, I must ask you to excuse me if I have been re- 
 miss in writing. Greet in my name Sanders, Cope, Stoneley, and 
 the priests and fellows of your Hospice. Finally, be merry, and mind 
 your health ; love me, and write to me. Farewell. When you have 
 opportunity, reverently kiss the hand of the Bishop of St. Asaph for 
 me." 
 
 The next letter, to one of his Bohemian pupils, is a speci- 
 men of the affectionate terms on which he and his scholars 
 stood. 
 
 Edmund Campion to Sebastian Pastier, at Passau, greeting. 
 
 " Your letter was grateful to me, because I saw by it how grateful 
 you were. For if while you were here we hoped much of you from 
 your rare advance in learning and piety, what must we think of you 
 
as EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 now you are gone for persevering so constantly in the course which 
 you pursued here ! I wish that my services to you had been worth 
 as much as you value them at; any how, whatever they were worth, 
 they were given with a real good-will, which I will take care to pre- 
 serve, so as not to let a young man so good and so devoted to us 
 slip from my memory. I read some paragraphs of your letter to the 
 Confraternity at our meeting yesterday, and exhorted them to re- 
 member you ; I have no doubt the}' will. This is written in the 
 evening twilight, and the failing light forces me to finish. Fare- 
 well. 
 
 Prague, July 14, 1.577." 
 
 The last letter belonging to this year is that written to 
 Gregory Martin, to try and induce him to become a Jesuit ; 
 the adroitness which insinuates and implies without indicat- 
 ing, and which stirs up desires without too plainly showing 
 how they may be gratified, is a model of subtle rhetoric. Mar- 
 tin was at this time in circumstances that facilitated his cap- 
 ture. His position with Allen was uncertain ; the English 
 seminary was on the point of being driven from Douai by 
 popular tumults, which Allen attributed to the intrigues of 
 Elizabeth, and by which he partly justified his perpetual in- 
 trigues against her. The Cardinal of Guise had not yet of- 
 fered him a retreat at Rheims, and Martin had been sent to 
 Rome to see what could be obtained there. For at this time 
 Allen probably thought with Sanders, who wrote to him a 
 few mouths later (November 1577), "We shall have no steady 
 comfort but from God, in the Pope, not in the King of Sjjaiu. 
 Therefore I beseech you to take hold of the Pope, for the 
 Bang is as fearful of war as a child of fire, and all his endea- 
 vour is to avoid all such occasions. The Pope will give two 
 thousand [men] when you shall be content with them. If 
 they do not serve to go to England, at the least they will 
 serve to go into Ireland. The state of Christendom dependeth 
 upon the stout assailing of England. "'^-^ Martin had gone to 
 Rome in 1566, and had written to Campion in Feb. 1577, — 
 " After the first letter which you wrote from Brunn, you re- 
 ceived two of mine together, a long while after date. In an- 
 swer you at once wrote most kindlj^ in every way correspond- 
 ing to my hopes, except in your brevity. You called your 
 letter only a precursor ; this expression of yours authorised 
 me to look for another and a longer letter, as I have done 
 and still do. I am not at Douai, but at Rome." And then 
 he proceeeded (but the letter is lost) to describe the popular 
 risings at Douai against the EngHsh. To these " accusations" 
 Campion replied : 
 
GREGORY MARTIN. 89 
 
 Edmund Campion to Gregory Martin. 
 
 " Such accusations as those wherewith you accuse me trouble me 
 not ; for they coax you out of a letter full of endearing complaints, 
 and let me see, to my joy, how lovingly you look for my reply. It 
 may perhaps be stale to excuse myself on the plea of business, but I 
 do, and ever will, steal time enough for the religious rites of our 
 friendship, which is always in my heart. I lately seut a parcel to 
 you at Douai ; in it there was a long letter to you ; and because you 
 did not receive it, you wrangle with me about the postmen. But 
 don't irritate me, though you are tall, and I short. The next sen- 
 tence in your letter gives me sad news, which nips my jokes in the 
 bud. Are there indeed such troubles in Flanders t Has the peril 
 reached to the English College? How far? Are they to be driven 
 out ? Let them be driven any where but into their own country. 
 What is it to us, to whom England is imprisonment, the rest of the 
 world transportation ! Be of good cheer ; this storm ^vill drive you 
 into smooth water. Make the most of Home. Do you see the dead 
 corpse of that Imperial City t What in this life can be glorious, if 
 such wealth, such beauty, has come to nothing 1 But what men 
 have stood firm in these miserable changes, — what things 1 The 
 relics of the Saints, and the chair of the Fisherman. O prudence ! 
 Why is heaven neglected for worldly glory, when we see with our 
 own eyes that even in this world the kings of this world could not 
 preserve these monuments of their vanity, these trophies of their 
 folly ! What will this smoke seem in the ether of heaven, when it 
 so soon blows away in the atmosphere of earth i How will angels 
 laugh, when even men mock? But yXaMxai s/'j ASjjra?, what is this 
 to you % For your whole letter breathes a noble spirit. Your story, 
 your hopes, and your requests set me in a blaze at all points. Nor 
 is this the first time ; all your letters show with what prudence, with 
 what a Christian spirit you love me, when you so heartily congratu- 
 late me on the state of life which I have embraced, though it places 
 so strong a barrier to our union. This is real friendship. I remem- 
 ber too how earnestly you called me from Ireland to Douai, how 
 you admonished me, and how effective were you words. Before 
 that, I remember how from the Duke of Norfolk's house you dealt 
 with me to keep me from the ecclesiastical dignity, which, as a 
 friend, you feared might betray me into serving these wretched 
 ■ times. In these words, as I consider, you were even prompted by 
 the Holy Ghost,— ' If we two can live together, we can hve for no- 
 thing ; if this is too little, I have money ; but if this also fails, one 
 thing remains, — they that sow in tears shall reap in joy.' What you 
 foretold is fulfilled. I live in affluence, and yet I have nothing ; and 
 I would not exchange the sorrows of my Institute for the realm of 
 England. If our tears are worth all this, what are our consolations 
 worth ? And they are quite numberless, and above all measure. So 
 as you rejoice with me, you may always go on rejoicing, for what I 
 have found is indeed most joyful. As for your praises, I pray you, 
 
90 
 
 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 my dear father, to commend my soul to God in your sacrifices, that 
 it may become less unworthy of your praise. This is the sum — since 
 for so many years we had in common our college, our meals, our 
 studies, our opinions, our fortune, our degrees, our tutors, our 
 friends, and our enemies, let us for the rest of our lives make a more 
 close and binding union, that we may have the fruit of our friend- 
 ship in heaven. There also I will, if I can, sit at your feet. Though 
 I have many greetings for John Bavand, our old tutor, of whom it 
 ■would be too long to write all I might and ought to say, yet, as I 
 am writing to him, I will send him a very brief message. If he re- 
 ceives this letter, he will have three on his conscience (supposing the 
 others have come to hand), and yet not a word from him. There was 
 some reason, which, though I know it not, I fully admit and ap- 
 prove, in entire confidence of his kindness and friendship. Fare- 
 well. 
 
 Prague, &om the College of the Society of Jesus, July 3, 1577."^ 
 
 The next year Campion returned from the Convictors' 
 College to that of the Society, and was ordained deacon and 
 priest by Anthony, Archbishop of Prague, who told him on 
 the occasion that " as from one Englishman, Wicliffe, all the 
 evils of Bohemia had sjjrung, so God had provided another 
 Englishman to heal those wounds." The new priest said hia 
 first Mass on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, 
 September 8. This year he also exhibited a drama, which 
 was celebrated among his contemporaries, on St. Ambrose 
 and the Emperor Theodosius. It was repeated by com- 
 mand of the empress and the French queen. In after times 
 some German admirer of the author prefixed a title to it : 
 " Ambrosiana Tragaedia, authore Beato Edmundo Campiano, 
 Graeco, Latino, Poeta, Oratore, Philosopho, Theologo, Vir- 
 gine et Martyre." Epigrams were written, comp lim enting 
 the author on his mellifluous mouth, and on the nectar and 
 ambrosia which distilled from it. It is a pity that no trace 
 of it can now be found among the Mss. at Prague. This 
 year he was appointed Latin preacher, and in that ofiice made 
 an " admirable sermon" before the Archbishop during the 
 feet- washing on Holy Thursday; August 14, he preached at 
 the funeral of the Nuncio ; he also wrote orations for his 
 scholars to deliver; one of these, "De laudibus B. Marias 
 Virginis," is printed among his opuscula. Among his other 
 productions of this year, Schmidl enumerates a Latin poem 
 in honour of the Archbishop. This year, too, he obtained an 
 evil reputation amongst Protestants as a proselyte-maker. A 
 Protestant youth, Martin Schultes, of Frankfort, who had 
 been sent to the college because of its superiority, had been 
 converted by Campion. In the vacation the lad's parents 
 
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY. 91 
 
 became aware of the fact, and were furious ; but he ran away 
 from them, and returned to the college. 
 
 In October this year, having finished his course of rhe- 
 toric, Campion was made Professor of Philosophy ; here he 
 was bound down by the same minute rules. Philosophy was 
 to be the vestibule of theology ; Aristotle was to be the pro- 
 fessor's great authority, in every point in which the philoso- 
 pher was not contradicted by the schoolmen or the creed. 
 The infidel commentators, like Averrhoes, were not to be 
 used in such a way as to give the pupils a taste for them. 
 St. Thomas was always to be mentioned with honour, and 
 when not followed to be reverently and respectfully treated. 
 Logic, physics, and metaphysics were each to occupy one 
 year ; the chief object was to be a right understanding of 
 Aristotle's text, particularly of the trite passages. As in 
 rhetoric, there were to be monthly and quarterly disputa- 
 tions in public, in which the scholars w^re to be made 
 ashamed of all faults in formal arguing, to be taught to 
 adhere rigidly to rules, and never to speak but in their turn. 
 
 Nothing is more notable in most of Campion's letters than 
 the entire want of any political allusions ; religion and litera- 
 ture were the only spheres which he recognised, except with 
 one passing exception, in a letter to Parsons. Parsons, how- 
 ever, observed no such reticence, but gave to Campion intel- 
 ligence about Elizabeth's enemies, to know which, without 
 discovering it, by the laws of those days, rendered a man a 
 traitor. 
 
 " Pax Ch. 
 
 Having read this letter, almost a month agone, from Mr. 
 Marten, I deferred to send it until this time, to th' end I might 
 accompany it with some news touching our English matters. You 
 shall understand, therefqre, that Sir Thos. Stewkly, who was made 
 here Marquis before his departure, is now dead in Africa with the 
 K. of Portugal ; the particulars of his death I have not received. 
 He took here away with him at midnight out of their beds all the 
 Irishmen in Eome, and one English gentleman named Mr. Minors, 
 nephew to Cardinal Pole, who had good entertainment here of the 
 Pope before, — that is to say, xx crowns in gold a month. This 
 Myuhurst, with one Sedgrave, an Irishman, which once had been of 
 our company. Sir Thomas, being on the sea, upon what cause I 
 know not, would have hanged them, and being prohibited to do it, 
 by the earnest request of certain Italian captains that went with 
 him, he deferred the work until he came to Portugal ; and there 
 arriving, condemned both of them to the galleys for term of life, 
 and so led them slaves with him into Africa : but since his death 
 they are delivered by the new King of Portugal, which is the Car- 
 
92 
 
 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 dinal : and this much Minors hath >vTitten hither himself. And 
 other provision that went with Sir Thomas, all is dispersed ; and so 
 this enterprise is come to nothing. Here, in Rome, the Euglish 
 seminary goeth forth well ; for there be almost 40 persons under the 
 government of iij of our Society. We are here at Rome now 24 
 Englishmen of the Society, whereof five hath entered within this 
 month. One named Mr. Holt, which was once of Oriel College, 
 Master of Arts, and the other four came hither from Paris ; all ex- 
 cellent towardly youths, and all have ended the courses of philoso- 
 phia : ij of them are your countrymen, born in Paternoster Row ; 
 one named Harwood and the other Smith, little Dr. Smith the phy- 
 sician's nephew. One Inglis, of good learning, is presently now here- 
 hence sent towards Japponia. I hope, e'er it be long, we shall 
 [find] a vent another way. Father Darbishire is come hither from 
 Paris, and it may be that I shall go, e'er it be long, in his place 
 thither. Mr. Lane, as I wrote to you before, is gone to Alcala in 
 Spain, and arrived thither, hath wrote your commendations in a 
 letter to me. Aad this is as much [as] I have to write to you at 
 this time. Mr. Marten was called away herehenoe by Mr. Dr. 
 Allen his letters. I think they were half afraid of him, what might 
 become of him ; but Mr. Horltus, entering of late, hath much* 
 amazed them. I pray you, good Mr. Campian, pray for me ; for I 
 have great need of it. All our countrymen here doth commend 
 themselves heartily to you. 
 
 Your servant in Christ, 
 
 Rob. Peksons. 
 From Rome, this xxviii of November 1578." 
 
 As early as 1571, the English government had known of 
 the design of this Stukely (who had been at the head of 
 a rebellion in Ireland in 1569) to land in Ireland with a 
 large Spanish force ; and the enterprise described in Par- 
 son's letter, though diverted for a time to Africa, was ulti- 
 mately meant for Ireland. Castelnau, the French ambassa- 
 dor, was well informed when he wrote from London, July 
 4, 1578 : " Stukely, who had given here so hot an alarm of 
 a descent on Ireland, cannot do any thing this year, because 
 he has gone with the King of Portugal into Africa. But 
 people still think that when the king disbands his army 
 Stukely will be able to have more men and more ships, if 
 only the people favour his designs upon Ireland." Ships had 
 been in commission to oppose him, and the queen intended 
 to increase her navy for the next year. Any communication 
 with such a man, any knowledge of his doings without de- 
 tecting them, was sufficient to constitute treason. Campion 
 was of much too sweet a temper to rebuke Parsons for intrud- 
 ing upon his notice things of which he wished to hold him- 
 self quite clear. Probably, too, he had then no idea of ever 
 
STUKELT. 93 
 
 being sent on tte English mission ; otherwise he must have 
 felt what Donne describes, when listening to compromising 
 conversation — 
 
 " I felt myself 
 Becoming traitor, and methouglit I saw 
 One of our giant statutes ope his jaw 
 To suck me in for hearing him." 
 
 Of the year 1579, we have a letter of Campion to Gre- 
 gory Martin, still on the subject of his books and the troubles 
 of the seminary, and upon the martyrdom of Cuthbert Maine, 
 November 29, 1577, which Campion seems to have heard of 
 for the first time a year after the event. 
 
 Edmund Campion to Gregory Martin. 
 
 " Father Parsons has sent me your letter from Eome ; I see the 
 devil is furious with your seminary, aud will not allow banished 
 men a place of banishment. Well, he may burst with envy ; but 
 these blasts of his will never blow away the Spirit of Christ. Do 
 you daily torture our envious foe with your good deeds. I am 
 indeed angry sometimes when I remember what Allen — himself a 
 little angry, I think — wrote in the beginning of Bristow's book, that 
 so good a cause was dashed by men so evil, so ignorant, so few, and 
 so much at variance with each other. We all thank you much for 
 your account of Cuthbert's [Maine] martyrdom ; it gave many of us 
 a real religious joy. Wretch that I am, how has that novice dis- 
 tanced me ! May he be favourable to his old friend and tutor ! I 
 shall now boast of these titles more than ever. I have answered 
 your two letters, the latter first. I have left something for the end, 
 that you may know how much I have it at heart. I had written 
 to F. Francis Coster, our provincial of the Ehenish province, asking 
 him if you sent him those writings of mine about Irish history 
 which you have, to find some way of sending them to Prague in 
 perfect safety. He promised. So now I ask you to get them to 
 Cologne ; our people will manage the rest. Tell me or them what 
 you can do, — what you would do I already know ; write either to 
 Father Coster, the Provincial of the Rhine, or to your namesake, 
 who is Rector at Cologne ; for he is called F. Martin. You shall be 
 either Father Martin or Father Gregory, as you choose. Is there 
 aught else ? I had well-nigh forgotten. About the burning of the 
 books I congratulate both of us, and thank Holland. I wish he 
 had not spared Erasmus and the Scholiasts, whose prefaces, correc- 
 tions, antidotes, and triflings have deformed the works of the fathers. 
 I am truly glad that the bill has been honoured, and I acknowledge 
 Sheldon's kindness, whose family we have reason to love. I re- 
 member them when I say Mass ; to your sacrifices also I commend 
 the patrons, companions, entertainers, and scholars that we have 
 almost always had in common. You ask what I am doing: I have 
 finished the Organon of Aristotle; now I go to the Physics. I shall 
 
94 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 soon confer the Bachelors' degrees, and after finishing this course 
 the Masters' of Prague. Six days we quarrel with the philosophers, 
 the seventh we are friends. I am foolishly supposed to be an ac- 
 complished Sophist. What does it signify 1 Salute my honoured 
 friend Allen, and Bristow, and the whole seminary. 
 Prague, August 1579."'* 
 
 Two other letters, concerning MelcHior Newhyre, a pupil 
 and convert of his, show with what affectionate care he 
 watched over the fortunes and progress of his scholars. 
 
 Edmund Campion to George Ware, at Olmutz, greeting. 
 
 " Melohior Newhyre, my pupil, an honest and well-instructed 
 youth, and very dear to me, is migrating to you for the sake of his 
 studies. There are many and weighty reasons why I wish his pro- 
 gress and fortune to be well cared for. Wherefore, I beseech you, 
 let me lighten my anxiety by your friendship, and by the certainty 
 that you will spend all your love for me in care, favour, help, and 
 any thing else that the youth may require. Whatever kind office 
 you do him, you may put to my account; and as I am already 
 your debtor to an amount which I cannot repay, I have determined 
 to increase the debt daily. Farewell. 
 Prague, January 22, 1579." 
 
 Edmund Campion to Melchior Newhyre, at Olmutz, greeting. 
 
 "1 recognise in your letter the old polish and the old affection, 
 and I return praise for the one and affection for the other. In giv- 
 ing me such abundant thanks, you kindly and dutifully preserve the 
 memory of my love towards you ; while in speaking so piously 
 about the light of faith, which God's mercy called you out of dark- 
 ness to behold, you faithfully and religiously offer to God the soul 
 which you owe Him. Sol sincerely hope that our divine Redeemer 
 may reward your recollection of His favours by a daily increase of 
 grace. You have me not only as a friend, whom you reckon far 
 above his value, but also as a debtor, because you proceed in such a 
 way as not only to increase but to honour the flock of my Master. 
 For the rest, I earnestly exhort and beseech you to temper your 
 good disposition with all liberal learning, to endure whatever comes 
 upon you in this short span, till you can reap with honour and pro- 
 fit that which you now sow with labour and cost. Farewell. 
 Prague, May 6, 1679." 
 
 This year also he preached a celebrated funeral sermon at 
 the burial of Mary Eequesens, the wife of Antonio Cardona, 
 Viceroy of Sardinia, published amongst his opuscula. 
 
 This was the last year of Campion's quiet life at Prague. 
 In the autumn. Doctor Allen went to Rome to organise the 
 English College, and to obtain the assistance of the Jesuits in 
 
BR. ALLEN. 95 
 
 the Englisli mission ; after mature deliberation, the chief 
 points of which I will give in my next chapter, it was deter- 
 mined that two fathers, Parsons and Campion, should h.e sent. 
 As soon as Allen had secured his object, he wrote to Campion 
 in an exulting strain to announce the fact — 
 
 " My father, brother, son, Edmund Campion, for to you I must 
 use every expression of the tenderest ties gf love, — Since the General 
 of your Order, who to you is Christ Himself, calls you from Prague 
 to Rome, and thence to our own England ; since 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 them, 
 with you, 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 first to desire you, to call you, to cry to you. Make all haste and 
 come, my dearest Campion ; you have done enough at Prague towards 
 remedying the evils that our countrymen inflicted upon Bohemia. 
 It will be dutiful, religious, and Christian in you to devote the rest 
 of your life and some part of your extraordinary gifts to our beloved 
 country, which has the greatest need of your labours in Christ. I 
 do not stay to inquire what your own wish and inclination may be, 
 since it is your happiness to live, not by your own will, but by others' ; 
 and you would not shrink from the greatest perils or the furthest 
 Indies if your superiors bade you go. Our harvest is already great 
 in England : ordinary labourers are not enough; more practised men 
 are wanted, but chiefly you and others of your order. The General 
 has yielded to all our prayers ; the Pope, the true father of our coun- 
 try, has consented; and God, in whose hands are the issues, has at 
 last granted that our own Campion, with his extraordinary gifts of 
 wisdom and grace, should be restored to us. Prepare yourself then 
 for a journey, for a work, for a trial. You will have an excellent 
 colleague, and though they still live who sought the Child's life, yet 
 for some time past a door has been open for you in the Lord. It is not 
 I that am preparing for you and your order the place in England that 
 your soul presaged, but it is you, I hope, who will procure for me and 
 mine the power of returning. We will talk over the rest, my dear 
 Edmund; and I hope you will be here as soon as may be, for I know 
 not how long I can stay in Rome ; and as soon as the winter is past 
 I mean to go to Rheims or Douai, where our common friends Bris- 
 tow and Martin now live. You will be astonished to see our Bel- 
 gian and Roman Colleges, and will easily understand why we have 
 at last such hopes of our country. In the mean time let us pray the 
 Lord of the harvest to make us worthy of His mercy and visitation, 
 and do you, by your prayers and sacrifices, wash away my sins before 
 Jesus Christ. May He send you to us as soon as may be. 
 
 Entirely thine, 
 
 William Allen. 
 Eome, the EngHsh College, 9th Dec. 1579." 
 
 Campion, though surprised at this intelligence, was on the 
 
96 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 whole glad ; if there had been any fears — and he confesses to 
 a lack of constitutional courage — he had conquered them. He 
 wrote to Allen that he was ready to go when the order should 
 arrive ; the honour of the cause made him willing, hut the 
 command of his superiors made him anxious to go. At their 
 bidding he was willing to fight to the death for his country. 
 In March 1580, two letters from the General came to Prague, 
 one to Campanus the rector, the other to Campion, who was 
 to go to Rome as soon as might be. The rector immediately 
 communicated the command to Campion, who heard it in si- 
 lence, blushed, and said, " Indeed the fathers seem to suspect 
 something about me. I hope their suspicions may be true. 
 God's wiU be done, not mine." The suspicions to which 
 Campion referred had already fovmd vent ; the night before, 
 a simple father, James Gall, a Silesian, reputed to have ec- 
 stasies, wrote over Campion's cell, " P. Edmundus Campianus, 
 Martyr." The writer, when discovered, was punished for his 
 infringement of discipHne ; but he declared that he felt obliged 
 to do it. Another father had previously painted a garland 
 of roses and lilies on the wall of Campion's room, just above 
 where his head usually rested. "When he left Prague, Cam- 
 panus the rector changed habits with him, — a common mode 
 in those days of leaving a keepsake with a friend. 
 
 Campion left Prague March 25, 1580 ; he went as far as 
 Munich with Ferdinand, second son of Albert, Duke of Ba- 
 varia, lately dead. On the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas he 
 was induced to give the students a specimen of his eloquence. 
 He preached in their hall on the text, Vos estis sal terrce, and 
 explained the office of a Christian doctor ; intending to de- 
 scribe St. Thomas, his hearers said that he described himself. 
 The duke and his brother were so pleased, that they insisted 
 on conveying the preacher to Innsbruck, from which place 
 he set out on foot for Padua, where he was commanded to 
 take horse ; and so he arrived in Rome on Holy Saturday, 
 April 5, 1580. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 When the English College at Eome was founded, in 1579, a 
 Welshman, Maurice Clennock, was appointed president. 
 His partiality to his countrymen excited factions which led 
 to " mischief and almost murder," and maddened the stu- 
 dents to that pitch that they were ready to forswear Allen 
 and forsake "whom and what else soever," rather than con- 
 tinue iinder the Welsh rector."" The tumults were not entirely 
 calmed by the appointment of two Jesuits for the moral and 
 literary superintendence of the scholars, for this only angered 
 the Welsh faction against the society, which they accused of 
 having stirred up these tumults underhand, in order that the 
 fathers might gain possession of the college ; not that they 
 wished to send the English students to the mission, but rather 
 to keep them at Rome and make them Jesuits. This party 
 thought the fathers had "no skiU nor experience" of the 
 state of England, or of the nature of Englishmen, and that 
 their "trade of syllogising" was quite alien from the intel- 
 lectual habits of this country. Allen wrote from Paris, May 
 12, 1579, that he feared, if these broils continued, " our na- 
 tion would be forsaken both of the Jesuits and ourselves, and 
 all superiors else ;" and wished to God that he might go for 
 a month to Rome, and either make up these extreme aliena- 
 tions of mind, or else end his life. 
 
 Allen accordingly went to Rome, and found that the best 
 way of reconciling the factions was for the Jesuits to take 
 part in the English mission. The cause was debated between 
 him and Mercurianus, the general of the society, his four 
 assistants, Claudius Acquaviva, the Roman Provincial, after- 
 wards Genera], and Father Parsons. The arguments for the 
 mission were founded upon several considerations, — the piety, 
 the necessity, and the importance of the work ; the desire of 
 the English Catholics ; the notable encouragement and help it 
 would be to the seminary priests if they had Jesuits, not only 
 to assist them abroad in their studies, but at home in their con- 
 
 H 
 
98 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 flicts ; the increasing intensity of the war, which now required 
 more men ; the comfort it would be to the English Catholics to 
 see religious men begin to return thither again after so long an 
 exile, and especially such religious as could not pretend to re- 
 cover any of the alienated property of the orders ; the propriety 
 of the Jesuits engaging in the mission, since the object of their 
 foundation was to oppose the heresies of the day. It was 
 urged also that Englishmen were more neighbours than Indi- 
 ans, and had greater claims for spiritual help ; for it was 
 more obligatory to preserve than to gain ; and a token that 
 the Jesuits were called to accept the mission was to be found 
 in the fact that there were more Englishmen in the society 
 than in all the other orders together. Moreover, the Jesuits 
 had been the professors and the directors of the seminary 
 priests, and had exhorted them to undertake their perilous 
 enterprise. It was not seemly for those who were sending 
 men at the risk of their lives to bear the burden of the day 
 and the heat, themselves to stand aloof. And how could the 
 fathers expect to be acceptable to the English nation after 
 the restoration of religion, if they refused to bear their share 
 of the toil and the danger of restoring it ? Lastly, as the 
 Order of St. Benedict at first converted England, the society 
 of Jesus might fairly hope for the glory of reconverting it. 
 
 In reply to these arguments, it was urged that so grave 
 a matter must not be too hastily settled ; that it was a hard 
 thing to send men to so dangerous a place as England, where 
 the adversaries, though Christians in name, were more hos- 
 tile, more eager, more vigilant, and much more cruel than 
 the infidels of the Indies were then, or than the heathen 
 Saxons formerly were when St. Augustine went over ; that 
 the superiors, who would have no difficulty in persuading the 
 English Jesuits to face the risk of martyrdom, had great dif- 
 ficulty in deciding whether the loss of such men did not far 
 outweigh the hope of gain by their labours. Again, the 
 English Government would at once publish a proclamation 
 declaring that the Jesuits had not come over for religious, 
 but only for political purposes, and would thus make the 
 missionaries odious, and their actions doubtful. It would re- 
 quire more wisdom than could be expected in the mass of 
 men to unravel the web and detect the fallacy. The charge 
 would either be believed, or men would remain in suspense 
 till the event was seen. Again, the method of life which 
 priests were obliged to practise in England was totally in- 
 compatible with the constitutions of the society. Whilst the 
 external danger was a recommendation, the spiritual perils 
 must give them pause. They would be obliged to go about 
 
JESUIT MISSION TO ENGLAND. 99 
 
 in disguise, and hide their priesthood and their religious pro- 
 fession under the garb and swagger of soldiers ; they must 
 live apart from one another, and consort with men of doubt- 
 ful character ; they would be sent back to the world to escape 
 from which they had sacrificed themselves. They would be 
 overwhelmed with business, and there would be no facilities, 
 as in India, for renewing their relaxing fervour by frequent 
 retreats. They would have no rest, no silence ; they would 
 be in everlasting hurly-burly. And then they would be ac- 
 cused of treason, and hunted about as traitors. And on occa- 
 sion of disputes with the other priests, there were no bishops in 
 England to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction ; and it seemed 
 difficult to believe that so many priests and religious could 
 live together in one realm without jars and discords. 
 
 It was long before any decision was made. Allen went 
 to the Pope, who removed the last difficulty by sending Dr. 
 Goldwell, who had been Bishop of St. Asaph in Mary's reign, 
 to be the ordinary of all England.^' The other objections were 
 overruled, chiefly through the arguments of Claudius Acqua- 
 viva, who asked to be sent on the mission, and of Oliyerius 
 Manareus, the assistant from Germany, who, as a Belgian, 
 knew the state of England through the English exiles who 
 swarmed in his country. It was determined that the society 
 should take part in the English mission, and a paper of in- 
 structions was drawn up for the guidance of those who should 
 be first sent.^' The missionaries were reminded of the virtue 
 and piety, and of the prudence, required for dwelling safely 
 in a nation of shrewd, experienced, and unscrupulous enemies : 
 to preserve the first, they were to keep the rules of the 
 society as far as circumstances would allow ; for the second, 
 they were to study with whom, when, how, and about what 
 things they were to speak, and to be especially careful never 
 to commit themselves, either amid the temptations of good 
 fellowship, or by hasty and immoderate zeal and heat. Their 
 dress, though secular, was to be grave, and the habit of the 
 society was only to be worn when they were quite safe, and 
 then only for sacred functions. If they could not live toge- 
 ther, they were at least to visit one another frequently. 
 With regard to their intercourse with strangers, they were 
 to associate with men of the higher ranks, and rather with 
 reconciled Catholics than with those who were still in schism. 
 They were to have no personal dealings with heretics, but 
 were to employ laymen to manage all the preliminaries of 
 conversion, to which they were themselves only to put the 
 finishing stroke. They were not to be over-ready to engage 
 in controversy, and then were to abstain from all sarcasm, 
 
100 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 preferring solid answers to sharp repartees, and always put- 
 ting first the verj^ best and strongest arguments. They were 
 to avoid familiar conversation with women and boys, to take 
 especial care never to deserve the reputation of chatter-boxes, 
 or of alms or legacy hunters ; " they must so behave that all 
 may see that the only gain they covet is that of souls." They 
 must not cany about any thing forbidden by the penal laws, 
 or any thing that might compromise them, as letters ; ex- 
 cept for the strongest reasons, they must never let it be pub- 
 licly known that they were Jesuits, or even priests. "They 
 must not mix themselves up with affairs of state, nor write 
 to Rome about political matters, nor speak, nor allow others 
 to speak in their presence, against the queen, — except per- 
 haps in the company of those whose fidelity has been long 
 and steadfast, and even then not without strong reasons." 
 
 It would have been too much to expect that the English 
 Jesuits should have no political opinion at all, or that what 
 they had should be favourable to Queen Elizabeth. But 
 short of proscribing all political action whatever, the instruc- 
 tions given to the first Jesuits certainly shut up such action 
 within the narrowest possible limits; they were to do nothing, 
 and only to speak out their opinions in the most select com- 
 pany. The only political action that was to be allowed them 
 was one for which the government of Elizabeth ought to have 
 been thankful to them. They were " to ask the Pope for an 
 explanation of the declaration of Pius V. against Elizabeth, 
 which the Catholics desired to have thus explained : That it 
 should always bind her and the heretics ; but that it should 
 in no way bind the Catholics, while things remain as they 
 are ; but only then when public execution of the said bull 
 shall be possible." My readers will remember that St. Pius 
 V. excommunicated not only Elizabeth and her abettors, but 
 also all who obeyed her and her laws. So that the unfor- 
 tunate Catholics were placed between two fires, hanged if 
 they did not obey, cursed if they did. Campion, on his first 
 arrival at Rome, had been consulted about tbe practical eftect 
 of this Bull, and had declared that it procured great evils to 
 the Catholics ; Cardinal Gesualdi had told him that it might 
 without doubt be so mitigated as to allow the Catholics to 
 acknowledge the queen without censure ; and now, before 
 going to England he asked for and obtained only this miti- 
 gation, not probably because it was all he thought useful, but 
 because it was all he could hope to get. The proviso, " rebus 
 sic stantibus," " whilst things remain as they are," was, I 
 suppose, inserted by some one who knew what hopes the 
 Roman court just then entertained of the subversion of the 
 
THE MISSION OF 1580. 101 
 
 government of Elizabeth, and the substitution of a Catholic 
 sovereign on the throne of England. 
 
 With regard to the use that was to be made of lay in- 
 structors for the preliminaries of conversion, to begin the 
 building which the fathers were to finish, we have the fol- 
 lowing notice : "Since sundry persons, priests and others, in 
 England have determined to imitate the life of the Apostles, 
 and to devote themselves wholly to the salvation of souls and 
 the conversion of heretics ; and the better to do this, have 
 determined to be content with food and clothing, and the 
 bare necessaries of their state, bestowing all the rest of their 
 goods for the common needs of the Catholics, to collect alms 
 for this common fund, and to promote the conversion of Eng- 
 land in other ways ;" the Pope was asked to approve and 
 bless this association, and to give sundry indulgences to those 
 members who promised to practise the rules as well as they 
 could, whether in prison or out of prison. These, and sundry 
 other indulgences and faculties, were granted by the Pope 
 to Father Parsons and Father Campion, the two Jesuits first 
 sent on the mission, April 14, 1580 ; and by a brief dated 
 two days later they were enabled to communicate all their 
 privileges to the secular priests emploj^cd on the missions of 
 England, Ireland, and Scotland. ^^ 
 
 In spite, however, of the extraordinary privileges which 
 the Jesuits enjoyed, they were but a small part of the force 
 which Dr. Allen had persuaded the Pope to send into Eng- 
 land at this time. The army of missionaries was led by Dr. 
 Groldwell, the Bishop of St. Asaph ; with him were Dr. Mor- 
 ton the Penitentiary of St. Peter's, and four old priests of 
 the English hospital, Dr. Brumberg, William Giblet, Thomas 
 Crane, and William Kemp ; Lawrence Vaux, the old prior 
 of Manchester, was drawn from his cell at Louvain, and 
 several young priests from Rheims joined in the company. 
 The Catholic association had already been organised in Eng- 
 land by William Gilbert, a young man of property, who had 
 been converted by Father Parsons in Rome early in 1579, 
 and had been sent back to England to prepare for the enter- 
 prise which was already on the anvil ; three young priests 
 from the English College, and two laymen, who thought to 
 take a leading part in the association, accompanied the 
 fathers from Rome. Finally, there were the two fathers, 
 with Ralph Emerson, a lay brother ; and thus all ranks in 
 the Church — priests, both secular and regular, and laymen — 
 had their share in this great spiritual enterprise. 
 
 It would have been well for English Catholicism if there 
 had not been another enterprise in hand, of a very different 
 
102 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 cliaracter, but aiming at the same object, — the reduction of 
 the British islands to the obedience of the Pope. Unfortu- 
 nately there is a perfectly overwhelming mass of evidence to 
 show that the proviso " rebus sic stantibus" in the mitigation 
 of the Bull was introduced with an intention too plain to be 
 misconstrued. I have already quoted a letter from Dr. San- 
 ders to Dr. Allen, in which he tells of the Pope being ready 
 to give 2000 men for an expedition into Ireland.'"" WhUe 
 Allen was at Rome, the Roman government organised this 
 force, and the expedition must have sailed soon after the 
 missionaries started from Rome, since it reached Ireland 
 about the same time that Parsons and Campion were enter- 
 ing England. The expedition, and the part that the Roman 
 government took in it, was no secret to the diplomatic 
 body of Europe; Corrado, the Venetian ambassador at Rome, 
 related to his government on his return in 1581^°' how the 
 Pope spent 230,000 scudi iipon it, and an account of an 
 Irish agent of the Vatican, announcing the safe arrival of 
 the " five great shif)s full of soldiers and munitions of war, 
 sent by the Holy See," has been published by Theiner.'"^ 
 Further, a brief of Gregory XIIL, dated May 13, 1580, and 
 doubtless intended to be distributed in Ireland by Dr. San- 
 ders and the leaders of the expedition, gives plenary indul- 
 gence, such as was given to Crusaders, to all who join John 
 Geraldine or his brother James, or help them " with counsel, 
 favour, supplies, arms, or in any other way," as may be seen 
 in O'SuUivan's History, chap. 17. The English government 
 was as well informed as any other, as is evident from the 
 French ambassador's despatches from London, giving an 
 account of the whole expedition, and of its disgraceful failure. 
 It was commanded by an Italian, San Giuseppe, and Dr. 
 Sanders was attached to it ; and afterwards, whenever a priest 
 was captured in England, he was asked what he thought of 
 the conduct of the Pope and Sanders, and generally con- 
 demned to die if he refused to qualify it ; and at the time of 
 Campion's trial the attorney-general cynically observed that 
 the Jesuits had arrived here "as it scemeth of purpose to 
 answer the doings of those rebels there" in Ireland. 
 
 The policy of combining these two expeditions is hard 
 either to be justified or to be understood. But I will venture 
 a few remarks on the subject. First, the distinction between 
 the temporal sovereignty of the Pope over his own states, 
 his temporal supremacy over other princes, and his spiritual 
 power over the whole Church, was not in those days ac- 
 curately drawn ; law had not yet altogether superseded force, 
 and divines like Stapleton still held that it was part of the 
 
INVASION OF IRELAND. 103 
 
 Pope's duty to put down heretical princes by the same vio- 
 lent methods that one prince might employ against another. 
 Next, the distinction that was made between the Papal treat- 
 ment of Ireland and that of England corresponded to the 
 difference of the Papal rights to the two islands respectively. 
 The Pope had been the acknowledged donor of Ireland to 
 the English crown ; his suzerain rights had always been 
 more or less acknowledged, whereas his feudal superiority 
 over England, though admitted by King John, had been 
 always indignantly denied by the people and the other kings. 
 He, therefore, had a right to interfere in Ireland with higher 
 hand than he could use in England. It must be remembered 
 that the Pope had long since committed himself in Ireland 
 by the aid and encouragement he had given to James Geral- 
 dine, the father of the leaders of the Irish insurgents in 
 1580, who had lost his life in the Papal cause. Such forci- 
 ble attempts had been made in England, and had failed, and 
 there was no present prospect of renewing them. England 
 then could only be assailed by spiritual weapons. And it 
 was hoped that the Pope would for the present be considered 
 as only a spiritual person in his relations with England, 
 though he was behaving as a temporal belligerent in Ire- 
 land, — much as the Emperor of China was lately at peace 
 with us at Pekin, and at war in Canton. Perhaps also the Ita- 
 lians thought they could conceal the intricacies of their 
 policy from the blear eyes of the Northern barbarians. 
 
 It is strange to see how often the acute and subtle 
 countrymen of Machiavelli fail through not giving credit 
 to others for equal acuteness, and through believing that 
 others will be caught in a web of sophistry that Italians can 
 disentangle with ease. It is not difficult to understand into 
 what a false position the Jesuits and the other missionaries 
 were thrown by the Irish expedition, and how entirely they 
 were compromised ; imposed upon themselves, it was their 
 mission to impose upon others likewise, and to make believe 
 that the Bull was so modified as to render the relations be- 
 tween Pope and Queen compatible with the continual alle- 
 giance of Catholics. Yet, after all, the famous mitigation 
 amounted in reality to no more than an ill-conceived attempt 
 to pretend to be at peace with the queen in England, while 
 open war was being made upon her in Ireland. And yet 
 there can be no doubt that this double dealing was a strictly 
 logical result of the attempt to guarantee the Pope's spiri- 
 tual power through his temporal power, or that the perse- 
 vering attempt to preserve the temporal rights over Ireland 
 which the Popes held in trust most materially interfered 
 
lOi EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 with the independence of their spiritual power in England, and 
 disappointed the well-founded hopes of reducing our country 
 to the faith. It is scarcely possible to say this in stronger 
 words than it is said by Parsons himself in his Ms. life of 
 Campion. He thus describes the dismay with which he first 
 heard of the expedition from Dr. AUen at Rheims, just be- 
 fore he and Campion crossed over into England : 
 
 " Dr. Allen also told us that he had heard from Spain that Dr. 
 Sanders was just gone into Ireland, by the Nuncio Mgr. Sega's 
 orders, to comfort and assist the Earl of Desmond, Viscount Bal- 
 linglas, and others that had taken arms in defence of their religion, 
 and had asked the Pope's help, counsel, and comfort in thut cause. 
 Though it belonged not to us to mislike this journey of Dr. San- 
 ders, because it was made by order of his superiors, yet were we 
 heartily soiTy, partly because we feared that which really happened, 
 the destruction of so rare and worthy a man, and partly because we 
 plainly foresaw that this would be laid against us and other priests, 
 if we should be taken in England, as though we had been privy or 
 partakers thereof, as in very truth we were not, nor ever heard or 
 suspected the same until this day. But as we could not remedy 
 the matter, and as our consciences were clear, we resolved through 
 evil report or good report to go on with the purely sjjiritual action 
 we had in hand ; and if God destined any of us to suffer under a 
 wrong title, it was only what He had done, and would be no loss to 
 us, but rather gain, in His eyes who knew the truth, and for whose 
 sake alone we had undertaken this enterprise." 
 
 The papers that relate to the mission of 1580 reveal ano- 
 ther difficulty that was occasioned by the intimate union 
 between the temporal and spiritual grandeur of the Church, 
 and by the feudal state with which it was considered neces- 
 sary to surround her prelates. I have already related how 
 Bishop Goldwell was at the head of the mission ; he failed 
 to penetrate into England, and no other Bishop was sent in 
 his place. After nearly thirty years the ordinary jurisdic- 
 tion over England was conferred on an archpriest, and in 
 the lamentable disorders that followed, the Jesuits, and espe- 
 cially Father Parsons, were accused of having by their in- 
 trigues prevented the appointment of Bishops, in order to 
 keep the management of aifairs in their own hands. This 
 accusation is scarcely fair ; we have seen that one of the 
 objections to sending the Jesuits at all was the absence of 
 episcopal authority in England, and that they were not sent 
 till a Bishop was sent with them. It was not their fault 
 that Goldwell was taken ill at Rheims, and that "before he re- 
 covered, the persecution La England had grown to be so rigor- 
 ous that it seemed not good to the Pope to adventure a man 
 
BISHOPS FOR ENGLAND, 105 
 
 of that age and dignity to so turbulent a time, and so called 
 him back to Rome, where he lived in the love of all men and 
 in universal opinion of sanctity till his death in 1684.""'^ It 
 was not the Jesuits' fault that Watson, the Bishop of Lin- 
 coln, was kept so close in Wisbeach Castle, till his death in 
 1584, that he could perform no episcopal duties. The Jesuits 
 had no sooner arrived in England than they began to beg 
 for Bishops. In September 1580, Parsons wrote, "There is 
 immense want of a Bishop to consecrate the holy oils, for 
 want of which we are brought to the greatest straits, and 
 unless his Holiness makes haste to help us in this matter we 
 shall be at our wit's end."^"^ Again, in 1591 he renewed his 
 request, and got Sarmientos, the Bishop of Jaen, to promise 
 him a competent support for two or three Bishops.'"' In 
 1597 he again presented a memorial to the Pope and Cardi- 
 nals, praying for the appointment of two Bishops in par- 
 tihus;^°^ but soon afterwards, finding the objections at Rome 
 insurmountable, he changed his plan, and asked for the 
 appointment of an archpriest. 
 
 The real reason why no substitute was provided for Gold- 
 well was, as Parsons says, because the Pope did not like 
 to adventure the episcopal dignity in such turbulent times. 
 That this was the received theory at Rome is proved by the 
 pamphlet of " Franciscus Romiilus" (supposed to be Bellar- 
 mine) on the Papal duty of dethroning evil princes, published 
 at Rome in 1588. The writer feels it necessary to apologise 
 for the primitive Bishops not dethroning princes ; " for those 
 were times," he says, " when it behoved Bishops rather to be 
 ready for martyrdom than for coercing kings." This an- 
 nouncement drew down a storm of reproaches ; " what then, 
 are these times when Bishops must be men of war and not 
 martyrs ? Is it not the strength of the Reformation that our 
 Bishops are more ready to kill than to be kiUed, that they 
 think heresy can be better exterminated with the bodies of 
 heretics than wiped out of their minds by argument and good 
 example ? Is not the rebellion more against the wealth, the 
 secular power, the pride of the clergy, than against the doc- 
 trines of the Church ?" Bellarmine knew all this, and did 
 not intend to deny it, but his opponents took occasion by his 
 words to argue against an idea that was supposed to be power- 
 ful at the Vatican. 
 
 And that this supposition was not unfounded is clear from 
 the following letter, written from Rheims to the Pope by 
 Goldwell, July 13, 1580, who had been " a month cured of 
 his fever, and yet not well either in mind or body, but wait- 
 ins for the decision of his Holiness." 
 
106 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 "Beatissimo Padre, — If I could have crossed over into England 
 before my coming was known there, as I hoped to do, I think that 
 my going thither would have been a comfort to the Catholics, and a 
 satisfaction to your Holiness ; whereas now I fear the contrary, for 
 there are so many spies in this kingdom, and my long tarrying here 
 has made my going to England so bruited there, that now I doubt 
 it will be difficult for me to enter that kingdom without some dan- 
 ger. Nevertheless, if your Holiness thinks differently, I will make 
 the trial, though it should cost me my life. Still it would be impos- 
 sible for me alone to supply the wants of the Catholics, who are more 
 by many thousands than I thought, and scattered over the whole 
 kingdom. The most that I can hope to do is to supply for the city 
 of London and some miles round. And therefore, in my ignorance, 
 I cannot but marvel how it is that, after God has given your Holi- 
 ness grace, as it were, to plant anew and support the Catholic faith 
 in that kingdom, you make so many difficulties about creating three 
 or four titular Bishops to preserve and propagate it, — a thing that 
 might be done with as little expense as your Holiness pleases; for 
 God has so inclined the minds of the priests to spend their lives in 
 promoting the reduction of that kingdom to the Catholic faith, that, 
 after being made Bishops, they would be contented to live as poorly 
 as they do now, like the Bishops of the primitive Church. God in- 
 spire your Holiness to do that which shall be most to His honour, 
 and prosper you many years. I humbly kiss your feet. — Your Holi- 
 ness's most devoted servant, The Bishop of St. Asaph."""' 
 
 After this it will be impossible to doubt from what quar- 
 ters the difficulties about sending Bishops to England origin- 
 ally proceeded. It may be that the Jesuits, after enjoying 
 for twenty years the consequence that accrued to them 
 through the absence of Bishops, preferred another arrange- 
 ment ; but they had always asked for Bishops, and their re- 
 quest had been refused, because feudal power and ecclesias- 
 tical authority had become so mixed up together in men's 
 minds, that they feared the scandal of a poor Bishop, hiding 
 from his pursuers, disguised like a soldier, mariner, or serv- 
 ing-man, living in garrets, inns, woods, caves, or barns, wan- 
 dering over the land, and at last dying ignominiously on the 
 gallows. It would have been easy enough to find men con- 
 tented to live in apostolic poverty, but it was impossible to 
 get them consecrated under such conditions. Etiquette and 
 routine prevailed, and the Church in England was left with- 
 out Bishops till the factions had grown so furious among the 
 clergy that the measure which might have been a successful 
 preventive was not strong enough to be an adequate cure. 
 
 Father Parsons, Campion's superior in the mission, was 
 his junior in age and in religion ; but he had talents better 
 suited for administration and management. Inferior in elo- 
 
PARSONS AND CAMPION. 107 
 
 quence, and in enthusiastic simplicity of purpose, he had a 
 deeper knowledge of men and things, greater versatility, a 
 finer and subtler policy, and as strong a will. He was also 
 notus Pontifici; and the regulations of the society say, "those 
 who are sent on missions should be exceedingly well-known 
 to the superior." Parsons had always lived in' the metropolis, 
 Campion had been buried in a distant province. It is, per- 
 haps, one of the inconveniences of any centralised system, that 
 it tends to give the advantage to showy talent known at head- 
 quarters over deeper merit obscui-ed by distance. Both Par- 
 sons and Campion were doubtless " well proved, especially in 
 obedience," and " ready to go any where without excusing 
 themselves," though Campion had practised the more complete 
 abnegation of wiU. They were furnished with the instructions 
 from which I have already quoted, which descended to parti- 
 culars about things and persons in a way that must have given 
 a very diplomatic air to those who implicitly followed such 
 orders. The rule prescribed that the missionaries should be 
 at least two, and that for a very fervent and courageous man 
 a cooler and more circumspect companion should be chosen ; 
 in this expedition the prudence was Parsons', the zeal was 
 Campion's. Simple as a child, he knew he was marching to 
 his death ; stiU. he aifected no more courage than he felt, but 
 owned and made a joke of his fears. The flesh was weak, but 
 the wiU was strong, and though the body trembled and the 
 teeth chattered, in the depths of his soul he loved the danger 
 that he contemplated so clearly, and deliberately courted the 
 self-sacrifice. To apply his ovm words about St. \Yenceslaus to 
 himself, " Quid faciat ? Eat ? Matrem, qualem illam cun- 
 que, matrem tamen oppugnabit. Non eat ? amabit tyranni- 
 dem, prodet innocentes, Christum deseret. Vicerunt piorum 
 lacrymse, bonitas causas, periculi magnitude." Every thing, 
 he thought, should be risked rather than the salvation of a 
 single soul. Parsons was a man of more animal courage, but 
 he did not obtain the grace of martyrdom. Finis coronat 
 opus, and martyrdom is generally the seal of merit. 
 
 Campion, as I said, reached Rome April 5, 1580. There 
 " the youth of the English College wished to have him with 
 them for one or two days, and to hear him preach ;" and five 
 of them accompanied him to England. He remained till 
 April 18th ; on that day Eobert Owen, a Welsh exile for the 
 faith, wrote to Dr. Humphrey Ely at Rheims a letter which 
 fell into the hands of Walsingham's agents, and conveyed 
 the first intelligence of the mission to the English govern- 
 ment.i™ " My Lord of St. Asaph and Mr. Dr. Morton are 
 gone hence, some say to Venice, some to Flanders, and so 
 
108 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 ftirtlier, which if it be true you shall know sooner than we 
 here. God send them well to do whithersoever they go, and 
 specially if they be gone to the harvest. The sale that Mr. 
 Dr. Morton made of all his things maketh many think quod 
 non habet animum revertendi. This day depart hence many 
 of our countrymen thitherward, and withal good Father 
 Campion." Another agent furnished Walsingham with a 
 list of the English scholars in Rome ; the English gentlemen 
 at Rome, Rheims, Paris, and Douai ; and of those that de- 
 parted from Rome, April 1 8, with Edmund Campion and John 
 (Robert) Parsons. These were Ralph Sherwin, who had been 
 leader of the movement of the EngKsh scholars against Mau- 
 rice Clennock and the Welshmen, Luke Kirby and Edward 
 Rishton, priests, and Thomas BruBCoe and John Pascal, lay 
 students, the firstfruits of the recently erected English col- 
 lege, the four Marian priests ofthe hospital whom I have named 
 above, Ralph Emerson, a Jesuit lay brother, and another not 
 named. They were accompanied by Sir Richard Shelly, the 
 English Prior of Malta, and almost all the Englishmen then in 
 Rome, and by Father Oliverius Manareus and other Jesuits 
 sent by the General, as far as the Ponte Molle, where there 
 was a solemn and aifectionate farewell, which, as described by 
 the biographers, was not very consistent with the mystery 
 and secrecy sought to be thrown round the mission. 
 
 Goldwell and Morton had ridden on before ; our pilgrims 
 followed on foot. Parsons managed every thing. " It was 
 thought convenient," he writes, " that each priest should 
 change his long apparel, both for better travelling afoot, as 
 also not so easily to be discerned in Germany and some other 
 places of Protestants, where priests are little favoured. And 
 when some new apparel was offered to Campion, he would in 
 no wise take it, but only covered himself with certain old 
 buckram under an old cloak, and passed with that attire 
 throughout his whole journey ;" " for he said, that to him 
 that went to be hanged in England any apparel was suffi- 
 cient." " And to prove the blessed man the more, God sent 
 continual rain for the first eight or ten days after our leaving 
 Rome, so as from morning to night he travelled in the wet 
 with that evil apparel, and oftentimes stuck so fast in the 
 mire in those deep and foul ways that he was scarce able to 
 get out again." There were a few horses among them for 
 the use of the old and sick ; but Campion never rode but once, 
 when he was suffering from ague and diarrhosa. It was or- 
 dered also that every man should take a new name, to escape 
 the chance spies by the way, who would discover each man in 
 particular to the Council. They wanted to call Campion 
 
THE JOURNEY. 109 
 
 Petre; but he, remembering how well he had escaped from 
 Ireland under St. Patrick's patronage, would take no other 
 name but his old one of Patrick. "Albeit," says Parsons, " when 
 we came to St. Omer's, and were to enter into England, we 
 persuaded him to take some other English name, lest the 
 other, being Irish, might bring him in question ; for Ireland 
 at that time was noised to be in trouble by the arrival of Dr. 
 Sanders with some soldiers from the Pope for the assistance 
 of certain Catholic noblemen in arms for their religion, as 
 they said." 
 
 It was Campion's custom on this journey to say Mass 
 very early every morning, and then, after reciting the Itine- 
 rarium with the rest, to push on about a mile ahead of the 
 company, to meditate for a few hours, read his breviary, and 
 recite the litanies of the saints, when he would lag to allow 
 the party to catch him up, and would joke and chatter with 
 them till it was time to push forward again for his evening 
 meditation and prayer. At Bologna they were obliged to 
 stay some days, by an accident to Parsons' leg. They had 
 brought a letter from Agazzari, the Ptector of the English Col- 
 lege, to Cardinal Paleotto, the Archbishop, who received them 
 hospitably.'"' This prelate enforced a monastic discipline in 
 his palace. At dinner, after the usual reading, questions 
 were proposed, and discussion often passed into discourse. 
 Campion and Sherwin were both encouraged to speak. 
 " Campion's discourse," says Parsons, " was very pithy, 
 and fit for the place and time. He began with Cicero's 
 quotation from Pythagoras, who, perceiving by the light 
 of nature man's difficulty to good, and proneness to vice, 
 said, that the way of virtue was hard and laborious, but 
 yet not void of delectation, and much more to be em- 
 braced than the other, which was easy. Which Father 
 Campion applying to a Christian life, showed very aptly 
 both the labours and delights thereof, and that the saying 
 of Pvthagoras was much more verifiable in the same than 
 in the life of any heathen philosopher, for that the labours 
 were greater, the helps more potent, the end more high, and 
 the reward more excellent. Whereby also in fine he came 
 to declare the nature and quality of the journey and enter- 
 prise which his fellows had in hand, and greatly to encour- 
 age them in the same." The rest at Bologna gave Campion 
 time to write to one of his friends at Prague. Here is a trans- 
 lation of his letter : 
 
 "This is an answer to your two letters, one of which I received 
 as I was leaving Munich, the other when I had reached Rome. 
 
110 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 What you tell me for my salvation, I accept as the command of 
 God. Only do not think that your care of me is ended while I live. 
 You must not wonder that when I wrote from Munich I did not say 
 a word about your letter, for it was delivered to me after I had folded 
 mine, and had left it with the Rector of the College. I see you had 
 not read it even when you wrote your second letter to me ; you must 
 therefore speak to Father Ferdinand, and give him my dutiful salu- 
 tation. AVith respect to the Amhrosian (his tragedy) which you ask 
 me about in your other letter, you must know, my Father, that it 
 was not given back to me after your return from Vienna ; but that 
 I saw it in your chamber, where I doubt not but it still lies in some 
 corner, unless it is in somebody's hands, who borrowed it of you 
 when you were engaged, so that you have forgotten about it. If it 
 is acted again, I pray you let it be made more comprehensible. I 
 submit it to the censure of a practised man, such as Father Nicholas ; 
 I remembered him in the Holy House at Loreto, and I read the 
 poem which he hung up, I accept with joy Father Urban's bargain; 
 I expected nothing so little as a letter from him, whom in my jour- 
 ney I had often recommended to God as dead ; now at last I learn 
 there was a mistake in the person, on account of his having the 
 same name as the one who lately died ^t Fulda. So I am excessively 
 glad that such a pious agreement exists between Father Ziphelin and 
 me. I have a similar agreement with Fathers Aquensis, Gabriel, 
 Stephen of Dalmatia, and Troger, jointly and severally. Now they 
 can be of great service to me in the midst of my infinite perils. I 
 am now at Bologna, on my retui-n from Rome, and on the way to 
 my warfare in England. Whatever becomes of me, our posterity 
 survives. You would hardly believe me if I told you what comfort 
 I feel when I think of them. If they were not Englishmen I would 
 say more about them. In this expedition there are two Fathers of 
 the Society, Robert Parsons and myself, seven other priests, and 
 three laymen, one of whom is also of us. I see them all so prodigal 
 of blood and life, that I am ashamed of my backwardness. I hope to 
 be with Allen, at Rheims, in the beginning of June. We all travel 
 at the Pope's cost. Though we should fall at the first onset, yet our 
 army is full of fresh recruits, by whose victory our ghosts will be 
 pacified. But let us come '\i6ti^o\i ■jt^oVeooi' to the journey to Rome. 
 I drove in the carriage of Prince Ferdinand as far as Innsbruch, 
 thence I walked to Padua. There, as I was about to bestow what 
 money I had left, according to your directions, I was suddenly told 
 to make haste to Piome. We mounted our horses, for I had stumbled 
 on another Father by the way. Though I had so much money left 
 at first, yet in a few days I should have had nothing to pay my bills, 
 except my companion had had plenty. I made use of God's provi- 
 dence, and your liberality, as you told me. Indeed I was liberal 
 enough to spend more than the whole. At Padua I was shown 
 about by young Matthias ]\Ielchiorius, who scarcely left my side ; he 
 has the best dispositions towards the Society, and is of excellent re- 
 port. Here I am reminded of my pupils, and of our companions, 
 
ST. CHAKLES BORROMEO. Ill 
 
 whom I often think of. There are so many to whom I wished to 
 write severally, and I was so overwhelmed with their number and 
 with my other business, that I have hitherto written to none of them. 
 I am tired when I reach our colleges ; in the inns I can scarcely 
 breathe. I was at Rome about eight days, cramped for time, more 
 than during all the rest of my journey. I must ask them therefore, 
 and especially my fathers and Ijrothers of Prague, to pardon what 
 I cannot help. The rest I reserve for a fourth letter. I shall be 
 very glad if I find one from you before I pass over into England. 
 You may send to Eheims, Paris, or Douai, for I suppose that I shall 
 visit these places. But, anyhow, if they are sent to Allen, they will 
 be delivered to me. In uncertainty whether we shall ever see one 
 another again, I write my will, and I leave to you and all of them 
 the kiss of charity and the bond of peace. Farewell. Bologna, 
 the last of April, 1580. 
 
 Reverend Father, again and again, and for ever, farewell."!^" 
 
 Before leaving Rome, our pilgrims had doubtless originated 
 the custom of the English missionaries going to St. Philip 
 Neri, ere they set out for the scene of their passion, that the 
 full zeal and love pent up in that burning breast might find 
 a Tent and flow over from him who was kept at home upon 
 those who were to face the foe. " Therefore," says Dr. New- 
 man, " one by one, each in his turn, those youthful soldiers 
 came to the old man, and one by one they persevered and 
 gained the crown and the palm — all but one, who had not 
 gone and would not go for the salutary blessing." I don't 
 know whether John Pascal was in this case ; he, I think, was 
 the only one of this company that fell. He was a layman, a 
 great favourite of the Pope, an agreeable companion, and a 
 pupil of Sherwin ; after his fall it was remembered of him 
 that he had shown great defect of character in his behaviour 
 to the Pope, whose generosity and kindness he received with 
 too great familiarity. Borabinus says this was pride, — "for 
 the same arrogance which covets distinctions above one's 
 sphere, makes light of them when gained." Johnson, per- 
 haps, would have called it servilit}', one of the basest features 
 of which is to suffer one's liberty in the presence of great 
 men to aggrandise him in his own esteem : a favourite may 
 be saucy ; but he is saucy only because he is servile. 
 
 They had left one Saint at Rome, they were to find another 
 at Milan. St. Charles Borromeo received our pilgrims into 
 his house, and kept them there for eight days. He made 
 Sherwin preach before him, and he made Campion discourse 
 every day after dinner. "He had," says Parsons, "sundry 
 learned and most godly speeches with us, tending to the 
 contempt of this world, and perfect zeal of Christ's service. 
 
112 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 whereof we saw so rare an example in himself and his austere 
 and laborious life ; being nothing in effect but skin and bone, 
 through continual pains, fasting, and penance ; so that with- 
 out saying a word, he preached to us sufficiently, and we de- 
 parted from him greatly edified and exceedingly animated." 
 St. Charles always showed a partiality for the English exiles. 
 Owen Lewis, the Bishop of Cassano, had been his vicar-gene- 
 ral, and WilHam GifFard, afterwards Archbishop of Rheims, 
 his chaplain. After our pilgrims' visit he wrote to Agazzari, 
 the president : " I saw and willingly received those English 
 who departed hence the other day, as their goodness deserved, 
 and the cause for which they had undertaken that voyage. 
 If, in future, your Reverence shall send any others to me, be 
 assured that I will take care to receive them with all charity, 
 and that it will be most pleasing to me to have occasion to 
 perform the duties of hospitality, so proper for a Bishop, to- 
 wards the Catholics of that nation. Milan, the last of June, 
 1580.'"" 
 
 From Milan our party went to Turin, and entered the 
 Alps at Mount Cenis, " all in health, and apt for travel," and 
 after sundry long marches, arrived at St. Jean de Maurienne, 
 in Savoy, where they encountered many troops of Spanish 
 soldiers, who were marching from Flanders to Milan, on oc- 
 casion of the truce between Don John of Austria and the 
 States-General of Holland. Our priests were thereby some- 
 what distressed for necessary lodging and provision for man 
 and horse. At Aiguebelle they met with another "rout" of the 
 army, and learned besides that the road by Lyons was blocked 
 up and imperilled by the insurrection of the peasants of Dau- 
 phine ; and so, after deliberation, they resolved to pass by 
 Geneva in spite of the difficulties that might arise from the 
 difference in religion ; for it was a free city, and the laws of 
 the Swiss cantons permitted travellers, whether Catholics or 
 not, to pass that way, and stay for three days, which was a 
 longer delay than they meant to make. Most of the company 
 also desired to see Theodore Beza, of whom they had heard 
 so much in England, where his fame was greater than in any 
 other Calvinist country, much greater than it was then in 
 Geneva itself. Some of them jested merrily at the suggestion 
 that perhaps the magistrates of the city, who were in con- 
 federacy with Elizabeth, might detain them, or send them 
 prisoners to England, by way of the Rhine, at the instance 
 of Beza or the English residents. But they concluded, that 
 if God would have them taken. He would fi.nd means ; and 
 to them it was all one whether they were captured in Geneva 
 or in England. 
 
AT GENEVA. 113 
 
 There remained yet another little consultation, whether 
 they should confess to the magistrates what religion they 
 professed, and whither they were bound, or only tell them as 
 much as they were obliged ; but it was quickly resolved 
 unanimously to declare clearly that they were Catholics, and 
 to begin their confession in the city where the sect of Calvin 
 was first hatched. Nevertheless, before they arrived near 
 that " sink of heresy" every man disguised himself, and Cam- 
 pion "dissembled his personage in form of a poor Irishman, 
 and waited on Mr. Pascal." The mere remembrance of how 
 naturally he played his part was a continual source of merri- 
 ment to Sherwin. Thus disfigured they came to the gates of 
 Geneva ; Campion and Sherwin were two of the first to enter ; 
 the soldiers, who were keeping great watch and ward for fear 
 of the Spanish bands passing through the country, asked 
 whence they were, and whither they went ; after answer was 
 made, the captain told one of his men to conduct them to be 
 examined by the magistrates, who were in session with cer- 
 tain ministers in the open market-place. They were again 
 asked whence they came, and whither they travelled, and why 
 they passed not the ordinary way. They replied : " To avoid 
 the Spaniards, and the ' Dolphinates' who were up in arms." 
 Then they were asked what countrymen they were, — " Some 
 English, some brought up in Ireland," was the reply ; and 
 Campion was introduced as Mr. Patrick. "Are you of our 
 religion ?" " No," said Pascal. " From the first to the last 
 of us we are all Catholics," said Bruscoe boldly. " So are we 
 too," said the magistrates. "Tea, but," said Sherwin, who 
 only now came up, " we are all Roman Catholics." " Of that 
 we marvel," said the magistrates, " for your Queen and all 
 her realm are of our religion." "As for our Queen," answered 
 one, — Parsons does not remember whether it was Campion, — 
 " we cannot tell whether she is of your religion or no, con- 
 sidering the variety of opinions that this age has brought 
 forth ; but sure we are she is not of ours. Though for the 
 realm, you must understand that all are not of her religion, 
 nor of yours ; but many be good Christian Catholics, and do 
 suffer both losses at home and banishment abroad for the 
 same, of which number are we, who have lived divers years 
 in Italy, and are going now towards the English Seminary 
 in Rheims, but are obliged to pass by Geneva to avoid the 
 Spanish soldiers and Dauphinese insurgents." Then the 
 mao-istrates promised them free and courteous entertainment 
 according to the laws of the country ; and seeing them all so 
 resolute, they questioned them no more about religion, but 
 only about the Spaniards, of whom they could give but very 
 
 I 
 
114 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 small advices. So a soldier was ordered to guide them to 
 their inn, a very fair one, bearing the sign of the city, and 
 willed that they should be very well used for their money — 
 as they were. This was about 11 o'clock in the forenoon. 
 As they were being examined, they saw the long-bearded 
 ministers of Geneva looking at them from the windows and 
 lauffhinff. " But if we mio-ht have had our wills," says Sher- 
 win, " we would have made them to have wept Irish. As 
 they were passing through the streets of the city, some one 
 said, " They are all priests ;'" others, " They are all monks ;" 
 and one, seeing Campion dressed lilce a servant, thought 
 either to discover him or to chaff him, by asking in Latin, 
 "Cujas es?" ("Whose man are you?") Campion had bis wits 
 about him, and answered sharply, " Signer, no !" The tellow 
 was taken aback, and asked, "Potesne loqui latine?" no 
 doubt mistaking the Italian for Latin ; and Campion answered 
 with " a shrink with his shoulder, and so staked off the 
 knave." 
 
 After dinner, forthwith, Father Parsons, Pascal, with his 
 man Patrick dressed in an old suit of black buckram, Sherwin, 
 Rishton, and Kirby, sallied forth to visit Beza, and, if possible, 
 to have some speech with him, either about the Catholic re- 
 ligion, or about the controversy between the Protestants and 
 Puritans, as he was reckoned one of the chief writers in it. 
 When they knocked at the door, his wife Candida,"- of whom 
 they had read so much, and who had been the tailor's wife at 
 Paris, came and opened the door, and let them into a little 
 court, where she told them to stay, as Monsieur Beza was 
 busy in his study, and would come forth to them, which it 
 seems he did with the worse will, as he had been informed 
 about them by the magistrates. However, when he came 
 forth in his long black gown and round cap, with ruffs about 
 his neck, and his fair long beard, he saluted them courteously, 
 but did not invite them into his house, or to sit down, but re- 
 mained on foot, and asked them what they would have. They 
 told him, that being scholars, and passing by Geneva, they 
 could do no less than come to see him, for the fame that they 
 had heard in England of his name : he answered, that he un- 
 derstood it was far greater than he deserved ; that he loved 
 all Englishmen heartily, but was sorry to hear his visitors 
 were not of the religion of their country. They answered 
 that their country was large, and held more sorts than one ; 
 that they kept to the religion to which it was first converted 
 from paganism, but if he could show more weighty reasons 
 to the contrary than they had yet heard or read, they would 
 be content to hear him. Father Parsons then asked how his 
 
THEODORE BEZA. 115 
 
 Church was gOTerned, and he replied, " By equality in the 
 ministry : there are nine of us, and every one rules his week." 
 Then it was said that the English had Bishops, and that the 
 Queen was the head without any interruption ; he answered 
 " shamefully" that he did not know it to be so, and after some 
 shuffling declared that he did not approve of it ; however, he 
 said, the difference is one of discipline only, not of doctrine ; 
 but he could not proceed with the dispute, which would take 
 more time than he could spare, for he was busy, having just 
 received some packets of letters from France about the Duke 
 of Cruise and his practices against the professors of the Gos- 
 pel, of which he told tales that they afterwards found quite 
 untrue ; and thus drew aside the talk from religion to otlier 
 subjects, and with this would have broken off. But Campion 
 (who in his serving-man's attire had all the while stood wait- 
 ing with hat in hand " facing out the old doting heretical 
 fool," says Sherwin) was unwilling to let him escape thus, 
 and broke forth : " Sir, though I perceive you are much 
 occupied and would be gone, I pray you let me ask but this 
 question : How do you say that the Queen of England and 
 you be of one religion, seeing that you defend the religion of 
 the Puritans, which she so much abhorreth and persecuteth ?" 
 Beza replied, with a slight shrug, " I know not what ' Puri- 
 tan' means. The difference you speak of is none at all in fact." 
 On this Campion offered to prove that the differences were 
 very important, and many, and essential, even on such points 
 as the Sacraments. Beza, fearing from this exordium a long 
 controversy, made a sign to his wife, who interposed with 
 another packet of letters ; on which he said that he could 
 stay no longer, and courteously took leave of them, promising 
 to send to their inn to visit them an English scholar of his, 
 the son and heir of Sir George Hastings, and next of kin to 
 the Earl of Huntingdon, the Puritan president of the north. 
 The youth, however, never came, but instead there came his 
 governor, Mr. Brown, very fervent in the religion of Geneva, 
 and with him Mr. Powell, a Protestant, but a very civil gen- 
 tleman, a young man of good parts, son of one of the six 
 clerks in Chancery, and M.A. of Corpus Christi College, Ox- 
 ford, where he had been acquainted with Campion, and familiar 
 with Parsons and Sherwin; there came also three or four 
 Englishmen more. Campion was absent when they came, 
 and as he was in such strange attire, it was thought advisable 
 not to let them see him. So Parsons and the rest walked 
 about the town with them, and had much familiar speech, 
 which ended in an invitation to supper ; however, Powell and 
 the rest would not sup with them, but promised to come after- 
 
116 EDMUND CAMPIOX. 
 
 wards. When they came, Parsons took Powell in hand, and 
 Sherwin, Kirby, and Rishton attacked Brown, with whom 
 they hotly disputed in the streets of Geneva almost till mid- 
 night, sending to Beza through him a challenge to a public 
 controversy on any disputed point, with this condition, that 
 he that was justly convicted in the opinion of indifferent 
 judges should be burnt alive in the market-place. Brown 
 promised to convey the message; "but God knoweth," says 
 Sherwin, " that he durst not perform it, nor show himself to 
 us any more." Powell, on hearing what had happened, told 
 Parsons that he knew the place well, and was sure that if 
 Brown told Beza or the magistrates of the challenge it might 
 bring them into trouble ; they were within the municipal 
 jurisdiction, and a reason might easily be found for detaining 
 them beyond the three daj^s allowed them by law, in which 
 case it would be hard to get any remedy. Parsons profited 
 by this sage and friendly advice, and made ]ieace for that 
 night, resolving to leave the town early the next morning. 
 Powell offered to accompany them, but he was asked not to 
 bring the Puritan schoolmaster. 
 
 Early the next morning Powell came again and break- 
 fasted with them, using them lovingly, and brought them 
 out of the town on their way. All this while Campion 
 had played the serving -man, and not wishing to be re- 
 cognised by Powell, he and Bruscoe were sent forward by 
 themselves. On the top of a hill, about a mile out of Geneva, 
 on the road towards Franco, they met one of the great minis- 
 ters of Geneva, who seemed to be conning a sermon without 
 book. Campion straightway buckled with him, and asked, 
 " How his Church was governed ?" The minister, who sup- 
 posed Campion, as an Englishman, to be Protestant, explained 
 that it was governed bj^nine ministers in their turns. "Then 
 who is the chief head of it ?" asked Campion. " Christ," said 
 the other. "But has it no one certain supreme head or 
 governor upon earth under Christ?" "It noedeth none." 
 " Why, then," said Campion, "how can j'ou hold the religion 
 of the Queen of England to be true, when she calls herself 
 head and supreme governor of the Church?" "She doth 
 not call herself so," said the minister. "Yes, but she doth," 
 said Campion; "and he that shall deny her supremacy in 
 causes ecclesiastical in England must suffer death for it, for 
 it is treason by statute." The minister, in a great chafe, — 
 "almost mad" — was going to deny again, when Campion, 
 seeing Powell and the rest approach, left him suddenly ; 
 Parsons and Sherwin came up to the man, who seemed in 
 desperation, and told them that there was a fellow beyond 
 
ARRIVES AT UHEIMS. 117 
 
 who held a strange opinion, and had mocked him about his 
 Church ; upon which the whole company " fell upon him, and 
 shook up the poor shakcrell before the soldiers in the gate." 
 Campion looked back and saw that the dispute was renewed ; 
 so, fearing misrepresentation, he went back to tell what had 
 been controverted, on which Parsons and PoweU, who was 
 acquainted with the minister, said that it was undeniable that 
 the Qaeen was taken for head of the Church, and that the 
 first-fruits of all benefices were paid to her, and that Parlia- 
 ment had transferred all the Pope's jurisdiction in England 
 to her. The preacher then suggested : "It may be she calleth 
 herself supreme head of the Church quia Regina est Chris- 
 tiana.''^ " Ergo,^'' said Campion, " much more is the King of 
 France head of the Church, because he is called Rex Chris- 
 tianissimus." "Nay," said the minister, " I mean Catholica 
 Christiana.'^ " £'?770," quoth Campion, "much more the King 
 of Spain, whose title is Rex Gatholicns." The minister was 
 furious, and declared that Campion was no Englishman but 
 a very Papist. But PoweU, who had recognised Campion, 
 and saluted him with much afiection, quieted the preacher 
 and sent him off, and walked on a mile or more with them, 
 promising to study Catholic books and to visit Rome, and 
 then returned ; but they looked back from the top of a hill 
 upon the miserable city, and said a Te Demn for their escape 
 from it ; and for penance for their curiosity the whole company 
 made a pilgrimage to St. Clodoveus, in France, about eight 
 or nine miles off, over difficult paths, and afterwards went 
 stoutly on their journey till Whit Monday, when eight of 
 them fell sick in one night ; so they had to travel to Rheims 
 by short stages, and all but Kemp reached that city the last 
 day of May, having spent nearly six weeks on the journey. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 When our pilgrims came to Rheims, they were received 
 with, the greatest joy by all those confessors and servants of 
 God that lived there. Campion was specially welcomed by 
 Allen and the rest, for old acquaintance' sake : they had not 
 seen him for eight j'ears or more, so there was no end to their 
 embracing and welcoming the good man; and besides, he and 
 his companions were already looked upon as martj'rs. Even 
 from a distance, at Rome, it had seemed no easy thing to get 
 into England without discovery ; but fresh difficulties had 
 grown up daily, and at Rheims the missionaries were told 
 of a new proclamation, in which Elizabeth declared that she 
 had notice of the Pope, the Kiag of Spain, the Duke of Flo- 
 rence, and other Catholic princes having made a league 
 agaiast her to invade her realm, at the persuasion of some of 
 her subjects who lived beyond sea. This was easily seen to 
 be a plain preface and introduction to the rigour of persecu- 
 tion which awaited all priests who should convey themselves 
 into the country. Here also they heard of the unfortunate 
 expedition into Ireland, to which, as we have seen, may 
 be attributed much of the severity with which they were 
 to be treated. 
 
 Campion, therefore, feeling that the case was somewhat 
 altered, and that there was now less chance of success in the 
 undertaking, wont to Allen, and said, " Well, sir, here now 
 I am ; you have desired my going to England, and I am 
 come a longjourney, as you see, — from Prague to Rome, and 
 from Rome hither. Do you think that my labours in Eng- 
 land will countervail all this travail, as well as my absence 
 from Bohemia, where, though I did not much, yet I was 
 not idle nor unemployed, and that also against heretics ?" 
 The president answered, " My good father, your labours in 
 Boeme-land, though I do not doubt biit they were very profit- 
 able, yet do I imagine that another man of your Society may 
 supply the same, or at least two or three. But towards Eng- 
 
AT RHEIMS. 119 
 
 land I verily hope that Almighty God will give you strength 
 and grace to supply for many men; and seeing that your 
 obligation is greater towards your own country than towards 
 any other, and the necessity of helji more urgent, and the 
 talents that Grod hath given you more fit and proper for that 
 than for any other land, doubt you not but that all is Christ's 
 holy providence for the best ; and so be you of good comfort." 
 " As for me," said Campion, " all is one ; and I hope I am 
 and shall be ever indifferent for all nations and functions 
 whereinsoever my superiors under God shall employ me. I 
 have made a free oblation of myself to His Divine Majesty, 
 both for life and death, and that I hope He will give me grace 
 and force to perform. ; and this is all I desire." 
 
 Campion was glad of an opportunity to preach to the 
 students, for he had not spoken publicly in English for many 
 years. He preached on the text, Ignem, veni mittere in ter- 
 rain, and Parsons remembered one principal point which he 
 handled, — " to compare the new religion of England to a 
 fire, which, being once kindled in any one house of a city, 
 obliges all men, as well friends as enemies of the owner, to 
 run to quench it. And to show the truth of this comparison, 
 he repeated briefly the hurts that this fire had already done 
 in our country : how many goodly churches, monasteries, and 
 other monuments of piety it had devoured in an instant, 
 which our Catholic forefathers had set up in so many hun- 
 dred years ; how many holy orders of religious of both sexes 
 it had dissolved ; how many hearts of weak people it had in- 
 flamed to marry or live in incest, that had before served God 
 either in virginity or chastity ; what devilish division and 
 heat of hatred it had enkindled in the hearts of Englishmen, 
 even amongst those that by nature should be most loving : 
 and having thus showed the fury of the fire, he exhorted his 
 fellow-priests and all the company present to put their help- 
 ing hands and endeavours to the staying or quenching of the 
 same. And if the water of Catholic doctrine would not serve, 
 nor milk of sweet and holy conversation, they should cast 
 blood also of potent martyrdom, which, it might be hoped, 
 would be accepted for the quenching thereof." While he 
 was describing the outbreak of the conflagration, Bombinus 
 tells us that he cried out ''fire, fire, fire," so loud, that the 
 passers-by were going to fetch the water-buckets to put it 
 out. Allen, who heard him, wrote to Rome a few days after- 
 wards, — "Whether he was inspired by his subject, or whether 
 it was a miracle of memory, he spoke English as fluently and 
 as correctly as if he had but yesterday come fresh out of Eng- 
 land." 
 
120 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 Before the missionaries departed for England, the places 
 of Bishop Goldwell and Dr. Morton, who were obliged to stay- 
 behind, were filled up by two priests of Rheims, Dr. Ely and 
 Mr. John Hart. They were also joined by Father Thomas 
 Cottam, an English Jesuit, who had been long labouring in 
 Poland, and who was only ordered to go to his native coun- 
 try for the recovery of his health. They wisely determined 
 not to risk their whole adventure in one boat, but to divide 
 themselves into small parties, and to reach England by dif- 
 ferent roads. Dr. Bromburg and Mr. Bruscoe went bj' Dieppe ; 
 Sherwin led his pupil Pascal round by Piouen, where he found 
 young Edward Throckmorton, by whom he wrote an affection- 
 ate letter to his old master at Rome, begging Father Alphon- 
 sus to accept Throckmorton in his place. It was a fair ex- 
 change. Sherwin died a martyr with Campion in England ; 
 Throckmorton died after a few j^ears in the odour of sanctity 
 at the English college in Rome. Griblet, Crane, and Kemp 
 went by Abbeville and Boulogne ; Dr. Ely, Rishton, Kirby, 
 Hart, and Cottam went by Douai and Dunkirk ; lastly, Cam- 
 pion, Parsons, and Ralph Emerson went, on the 6th of June, 
 to St. Omer, where there was a fair college of the order. 
 They had to travel through " a country filled with soldiers of 
 divers sorts and conditions, but all perilous to one who should 
 fall into their hands ; but their lot was cast, and they de- 
 pended on the Master and Commander of all, who led them 
 through without hurt, stay, or trouble." When they reached 
 the residence at St. Omer, the Flemish fathers thought their 
 safe comingthither to be miraculous, and tried to dissuade them 
 from carrying out their undertaking any further. It would 
 be tempting Providence to dare such an accumulation of new 
 dangers. The Queen and Council, thej' were told, had been 
 informed divers ways of their coming, and were much exas- 
 perated. Several spies, who knew all their names, who had 
 lived with them in Rome, and could describe their persons 
 and habit, had given particular information to the Council, 
 who in turn had given it to the searchers and officers of all 
 the ports ; so that it was impossible to enter without being 
 taken. Naj^, their very pictures had been taken and sent to 
 the officers, to help in identifying them. 
 
 These rumours had been spread by the English Catholic 
 exUes who lived at St. Omer. Among these was one wiser 
 than the rest, Mr. George Chamberlain, a gentleman of a 
 very worshipful house, in banishment for his conscience, who 
 had married a Flemish lady. As a discreet and well-qualified 
 person, he was consulted on the matter, and said that such 
 reports had certainly come from England, and were like 
 
AT ST. OMER. 121 
 
 enough to be true in general, though he did not believe aU. 
 the particulars. He did not think that the Council could 
 have found out so much in so little time ; yet it would be 
 wise to deliberate well before setting out on such a journey. 
 Parsons and Campion replied that the journey itself was long 
 ago deliberated and determined, and offered to God ; so there 
 could be no new deliberation on it, but only about the man- 
 ner, way, place, and time of effecting it. On this they asked 
 Chamberlain's advice, and begged him to declare it in the 
 presence of the fathers of St. Omer, and to hear the reasons 
 on the other side, so that the journey might be prosecuted 
 with the good liking and approbation of all, without waiting 
 for a new crop of difficulties and perils. 
 
 So Chamberlain went with them to the College, where 
 Parsons and Campion expounded their commission and de- 
 sires, and the reasons for their haste : they said that the 
 dangers, granting them to be as great as was reported, would 
 only grow greater daily ; that it did not matter if the Coun- 
 cil knew their names, for they had license to change them 
 and their apparel, which they would take care to make very 
 different from the habits in which the spies had seen them ; 
 that many men were like each other, and the informers could 
 scarcely have so exact a knowledge of their persons as to 
 identify them under all disguises ; that the story about the 
 pictures was impossible, — the spies had not procured them in 
 Rome, had scarcely been able to find limners in England to 
 paint them from description, and had not had time to make 
 so many copies. So the Flemish fathers were asked to com- 
 mend the matter to Grod, and let the missionaries go forward; 
 for this, they were persuaded, was God's wiU, and the meaning 
 of their superiors in Rome. 
 
 Parsons' object, — which was, I suppose, to secure the ac- 
 quiescence of Chamberlain as a representative of the Eng- 
 lish laity, and of the Flemish fathers on the part of the So- 
 ciety, and thus to provide by anticipation an answer to 
 probable charges of rashness and want of consideration for 
 the interests of others, — was attained when Chamberlain and 
 the fathers professed themselves contented with his reasons, 
 and proceeded to advise with him on the manner of their 
 going. The result of their consultation was, that Parsons 
 was to go by himself through Calais to Dover, and if he suc- 
 ceeded was to send for Campion. Parsons was to pass for a 
 soldier returning from the Low Countries, Campion for a 
 merchant of jewels; and Parsons reflects on the appropriate- 
 ness of the disguise, as their mission was really a warfare, 
 and their business the merchandise of the " pearl of great 
 
122 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 price," and the traffic in the talents which their Lord had 
 lent them. Parsons departed the next day, having been 
 furnished by Chamberlain with a captain's uniform of buff 
 trimmed with gold-lace, with hat and feather to match, and 
 another suit for a person who went wdth him as his man 
 George. He went to Calais on St. Barnabas' Day, June 11, 
 and found a ready passage to Dover, where he arrived the 
 next morning. There the searcher examined him, and so 
 far from misdoubting him let him pass with all favour, and 
 procured him a horse to carry him to Gravesend. Parsons 
 took heart at this providential courtesy of the searcher, by 
 whom he had been treated with exceptional politeness, and 
 told him that a friend of his, Mr. Edmunds, a merchant lying 
 at St. Omer, would follow him shortly, to whom he begged 
 that like favour might be shown. The searcher even under- 
 took to forward to Edmunds — under which name my readers 
 of course recognise Campion — a letter, in which Parsons told 
 him that he had thought of certain special and urgent causes 
 why he should make haste to London for utterance of jewels 
 and the like, — a letter which might be shown to the searcher 
 when he came over. 
 
 Parsons reached Gravesend at midnight, and at once got 
 into a tilt-boat proceeding to London. He was horrified at 
 finding himself in the midst of a quantity of gentlemen of 
 the Inns of Court and of the Queen's household, who had 
 been merry-making in Kent, and who kept playing and sing- 
 ing half through the night. Parsons, in dread of being 
 recognised in the daylight, took the opportunity before the 
 gentleiQen were awake of jumping into a wherry, which 
 landed him and his man in Southwark about four o'clock in 
 the morning. But here he was in fresh difficulties ; he had 
 no horse, and so was not acceptable to the hosts of the inns, 
 who were moreover made extraordinarily cautious by the 
 late proclamations and rumours against suspicious people ; 
 besides, they saw that his dress was outlandish, and one and 
 all refused to harbour him, 
 
 After spending most of the morning in his bootless search 
 over Southwark for a lodging, he resolved to applj' to some 
 Catholic. He knew not where any lived, but was sure to 
 find plenty of them at any of the prisons. So he went to 
 the Marshalsea, and inquired for one Thomas Pounde, Esquire, 
 who had lain there and in other prisons many years for his 
 faith. Pounde took Parsons into his room, was delighted at 
 his safe arrival, and told him that he and the other Catholic 
 prisoners had been praying earnestly for many days for him 
 and Campion, and that they must now return thanks. Par- 
 
GEOKGE GILBERT. 123 
 
 sons replied that they must continue their prayers some 
 days longer, for Campion was not yet come over. Parsons 
 then dined with the numerous Catholic prisoners, and after- 
 wards committed himself to the guidance of one of the 
 guests, Mr. Edward Brooksby, who led him to a Catholic 
 house in the City, a kind of club, where he found other 
 gentlemen and priests, and notably Mr. George Gilbert, a 
 young gentleman of large property in Suffolk and other 
 counties, who had succeeded young to his wealth. He had 
 been brought up in London in the current religion ; but his 
 earnest nature inclined him rather to Puritanism, in which 
 he had been confirmed by daily frequenting the sermons of 
 Deering, the famous preacher. But after he came to the 
 enjoyment of his property, he obtained leave to travel ; and 
 in Paris providentially fell into the company of Father Eobert 
 Darbyshire, the Jesuit, who opened his eyes to the Catholic 
 religion. Father Parsons, in Rome, completed his conver- 
 sion, and stood his godfather at his confirmation. From that 
 time, though the new convert still pursued his studies, and 
 learned the accomplishments for which Italy was then famous, 
 — riding, fencing, vaulting, and the like, for he was of stal- 
 wart growth, — yet he secretly added all kinds of religious 
 exercises, such as prayer, fasting, mortification, and liberal 
 almsgiving. 
 
 Gilbert wished to expend his first fervour in a pilgrimage 
 to Jerusalem ; but Parsons persuaded him rather to return to 
 England, and lay out his money on priests and on other 
 means of advancing the Catholic cause. The result was, that 
 he drew together and organised divers principal young men 
 for this purpose, who took lodging together and sojourned in 
 the chief pursuivant's house in Fetter or Chancery Lane. 
 The pursmvant had great credit with the Bishop of London, 
 Aylmer; they had also another powerful protector at Fulham, 
 where was the focus of their peril, in the person of the Bishop's 
 son-in-law. Dr. Adam Squire, who was in their pay. Through 
 the connivance of these men they were able to receive priests, 
 and to have Masses celebrated daily in their house for some 
 years, till the Jesuits came in, when the times grew much 
 more exasperated. 
 
 Gilbert's friends had induced him to make advances to a 
 young heiress, and he was about to be married when he heard 
 of the mission of Parsons and Campion to England ; on this 
 he broke it off, and resolved never to marry, and would needs 
 have made a vow — with Parsons' approbation — as soon as he 
 came to him in England. But Parsons would not at first 
 permit it, though at last he allowed him to vow chastity till 
 
124 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 the Catholic religion should be publicly professed in Eng- 
 land. 
 
 After being introduced to this club, Parsons gave direc- 
 tions about Campion, who was shortly to follow him, and set 
 out, under the guidance of Mr. Henry Orton, to visit certain 
 gentlemen in the counties round London. After three weeks 
 he hoped to return, and to find that his companion had 
 arrived. 
 
 While this was going on in England, Campion was left in 
 doubt and anxiety at St. Omer, from whence, on the 20th of 
 June, he wrote the following letter to Everardus Mercurianus, 
 the general. 
 
 " Father Kobert, with Brother George his companion, had sailed 
 from Calais after midnight, on the day before I began writing this; 
 the wind was very good, so we hope that he reached Dover some time 
 yesterday morning, the sixteenth of June. He was dressed up hke 
 a soklier, — such a peacock, such a swaggerer, that a man needs must 
 have very sliarp eyes to catch a ghmpse of any h(jhness and modesty 
 shrouded bcneatli such a garb, sucli a looli, such a strut. Yet our 
 minds cannot but misgive us when we hear aU men, I will not say 
 whispering, but crying, the news of our coming. It is a venture 
 which only the wisdom of God can bring to good, and to His wis- 
 dom we lovingly resign ourselves. According to orders, I have 
 stayed behind for a time, to tiy, if possible, to fish some news about 
 Father Roberts' success out of the carriers, or out of certain mer- 
 chants who are to come to these parts, before I sail across. If I 
 hear any thing, I will advise upon it; but in any case I will go over 
 and take part in the fight, though I die for it. It often happens 
 that the first rank of a conquering army is knocked over. Indeed, 
 if our Society is to go on with this adventure, the ignorance and 
 wickedness against which this war is declared will have to be 
 overthrown. On the twentieth of June I mean to go to Calais : in 
 the mean time I live in the College at St. Omer, where I am dress- 
 ing up myself and my companion Ralph. You may imagine the 
 expense, especially as none of our old things can be henceforth 
 used. As we want to disguise our persons, and to cheat the mad- 
 ness of this world, we are obliged to buy several little things which 
 seem to us altogether absurd. Our journey, these clothes, and four 
 horses, which wo must buy as soon as we reach England, may pos- 
 sibly square with our money ; but only with the help of the Pro- 
 vidence which multiplied the loaves in the wilderness. This, indeed, 
 is our least difficulty, so let us have done with it. I will not yet 
 close this letter, that I may add whatever news reaches me during 
 these three days. For though our lot will be cast one way or other 
 before you read this, yet I thought I ought, while I am here, to 
 trace every particular of this great business, and the last doings, on 
 which the rest, as yet unwritten, will haug. There is a certain 
 English gentleman, very knowing in matters of state, who comes 
 
AT DOVER. 125 
 
 often to me ; he tells me that the coming of the Bishop of St. Asaph 
 is canvassed in letters and in conversation. Great expectations are 
 raised by it ; for most men think that such a man, at his age, would 
 never undertake such a task, except thci-e was some rising on foot. 
 I told him in the simplest manner the true cause of his coming. 
 Still he did not cease wondering ; for the episcopal name and 
 function is in high honour in England. 
 
 To day the wind is falling, so I will make haste to the sea. I 
 have been thoroughly well treated in St. Omer College, and helped 
 with all things needful. Indeed, in our whole journey we received 
 incredible comfort in all the residences of our fathers. We also 
 enjoyed the hospitality of two most illustrious Cardinals, Paleotto 
 and Borromeo, and of the Archpriest Collensi. We purposely 
 avoided Paris and Douai. I think we are safe, unless we are be- 
 trayed in these sea-side places. I have stayed a day longer tlian I 
 meant, and as I hear nothing good or bad of Father Kobert, I per- 
 suade myself that he has got through safely. I pray God ever to 
 protect your reverence, and your assistants, and the whole Society. 
 Farewell. ""8 
 
 Campion must have received Parsons' communication 
 immediately after closing this letter to his general ; he at 
 once, with full confidence of success, prepared to foUow. He 
 was very glad that the feast of his old patron, St. John the 
 Baptist, was so near at hand — indeed, it fell out that he crossed 
 over on the very day ; for he was ohligcd to wait four daj-s 
 at Calais for a good wind, and at last he put to sea on the 
 evening of the 24th of June, and reached Dover before day- 
 light. He landed on the sands, and retired behind a great 
 rock, to fall on his knees and commend his cause and his 
 whole coming to God, whether it might be for life or for death. 
 Then he and Brother Ralph went to look for the searcher, 
 whom they hoped to find in as good a humour as Parsons 
 had left him ; but times were changed, for stricter orders 
 had come down from the Council to look more diligently to 
 his charge, with a reprimand to him and the mayor for 
 having, as was supposed, allowed certain priests to pass that 
 way into the realm. 
 
 Besides this, some spy had advertised the Council out of 
 France that Mr. Gabriel Allen, brother to the president, was 
 about to visit his friends in Lancashire ; and a description 
 of Allen's person had been furnished, agreeiog in the main 
 with the stature, physiognomy, and person of Campion. Here- 
 upon he and Ralph were seized and carried before the Mayor 
 of Dover : he charged them with being foes of the Queen's 
 religion, and friends of the old faith ; with sailing under 
 false names ; with having been abroad for religion ; and 
 with returning for the purpose of propagating popery. Cam- 
 
126 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 pion, he declared, was Allen ; but this Campion offered to 
 swear was not the case. At last he resolved to send them 
 up, under guard, to the Council, and ordered the horses to 
 be prepared. Campion all the while was standing, praying in 
 his heart to God, and begging the intercession of his patron, 
 St. John the Baptist ; then an old man came forth from the 
 chamber whither the mayor had retired : " You are dis- 
 missed," he said ; " good-bye." 
 
 He and Ralph thereupon made all the haste they could 
 to London, where he was anxiously expected, and where 
 much prayer was being made for his safety ; for the great 
 fear was, what he would do when he first arrived. But it 
 happened that when the boat in which he was a passenger 
 came to the Hythe at London, Thomas Jay, one of the Ca- 
 tholic Club, was watching for him : he had never seen him ; 
 but partly through Parsons' description of his person and 
 apparel, partly through seeing him in company with the 
 little brother Ralph, who had also been described to him, he 
 suspected him to be the man, and so boldly stepped to the 
 boat's side : " Mr. Edmunds, give me your hand ; I stay 
 here for you, to lead you to your friends." And he led him, 
 nothing loth, to the house in Chancery Lane, where Gilbert 
 and the rest clothed and armed him like a gentleman, and 
 furnished him with a horse. This was on the morning of 
 June 26th. 
 
 Parsons, who was still in the country, had left word that 
 Campion should stay in London for his return, and employ 
 his time in the best manner he could for the comfort of Ca- 
 tholics. Hereupon the young men entreated him to preach 
 to them on the 29th of June, the feast of St. Peter and St. 
 Paul. There was great difficulty in fixing upon a place, for 
 their house would not hold all that wished to attend, and no 
 public place was safe ; so at last they chose the great hall of 
 a house near Smithfield, which Lord Paget hired for them of 
 Lord Norreys, where the servants and porters were for the 
 nonce replaced by gentlemen of worship and honour ; and 
 while these trusty watchmen guarded the ways. Campion 
 preached on the Gospel, taking for his text both St. Peter's 
 confession, Tu es Ghristus, Filius Dei vivi ; and our Lord's 
 answer, Et ego dico tihi quia tu es Petrus, et super lianc petram 
 edificaho Ecclesiam meam. From the former he animated 
 them to the true confession of Christ in that faith and reli- 
 gion of His which first He sent to our nation when it was 
 converted from Paganism ; from the latter, he laid before 
 them the indignity, danger, and folly of insulting against 
 this invincible rock of Peter and his successors ; and the effect 
 
IN LONDON. 127 
 
 of his whole sermon was to draw forth many tears in consider- 
 ation of the one, and to plant in all that heard him great 
 courage and fortitude for the execution of the other. 
 
 His sermon so strongly affected those who heard him, that 
 each of them supposed that if this loose Catholic or that sin- 
 cere Protestant could be brought to speak with the preacher, 
 the conversion of the wanderer would be secured ; hence Cam- 
 pion's coming was intrusted as a grand secret to half the 
 world, and after a few days, which he well spent in confer- 
 ences with all comers, the Council began to suspect what 
 was on hand, and set on foot a diligent search for his appre- 
 hension. They at first tried the stratagem of sending false 
 brothers to hear him, and to apprehend him at Mass or 
 preaching; there were spies abroad, sighing for Catholic 
 sermons, and showing great devotion and desire of them, 
 especially if any of the Jesuits might be heard. But Cam- 
 pion was advertised of this scheme by some principal per- 
 sons of the court, and therefore took greater heed with whom 
 he conversed, employing himself only in private conferences 
 and exhortations in secret friends' houses daring eight or 
 ten days, till Parsons returned to deliberate with him what 
 course to follow for prosecuting their afi'airs within the 
 realm. 
 
 But even these quiet proceedings were known to the Queen 
 and Council, who only abstained from violent measures in the 
 hopes of being able to capture at one stroke not only the 
 Jesuits, but a considerable number of the chief Catholics, at 
 some of the conferences. The G-overnment was exceedingly 
 stung to hear of so many priests having entered the realm at 
 once ; for besides the twelve who came from Rome, several 
 had been sent from France and Flanders, not, as Parsons 
 protests, in consequence of any previous agreement, "but by 
 chance, or rather God's providence, divers of them not know- 
 ing the one of the other's journey." 
 
 But though the Council kept silence for the present, the 
 searchers of London grew so eager and frequent, and the spies 
 so many and diligent, that scarce an hour passed without 
 some Catholic being reported as taken up on suspicion, or 
 detected. As a specimen of the dangers which the two 
 Jesuits were continually incurring, take this story. Henry 
 Orton, the young gentleman who had been Parsons' conduc- 
 tor in his short expedition into the country, set out one morn- 
 ing from his lodging in Smithfield to visit Campion and Par- 
 sons. On the way, there stood Sledd, a man who had been in 
 the English College at Rome, but had turned spy and infor- 
 mer, with a constable, ready to apprehend anj^ one he might 
 
128 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 recognise. Sledd had known Orton in Rome; and though 
 he knew the young man was neither priest nor Jesuit, yet he 
 guessed that he conversed with such as were ; so he followed 
 him a while in the street ; and if he had followed him a little 
 farther, he would have found the very house where the two 
 fathers were together, and would have captured them both 
 at once. But Sledd had not patience, and caused Orton to 
 be ajDprehended in the street, whereby the fathers were 
 warned, and so provided for themselves. 
 
 Again, there was then in London a very grave and 
 godly priest, Mr. Robert Johnson, who had visited Rome 
 as a pilgrim shortly before the departure of the fathers 
 for England. He had already laboured painfully in his 
 own country for some }'ears, and before he returned to his 
 work he had retired, on Parsons' recommendation, into a 
 house of Jesuits, where he had gone through the spiritual 
 exercises of St. Ignatius. On his way to England he was 
 joined by Sledd the spy, who was then talking like a most 
 enthusiastic Papist, but behaving so loosely that Johnson 
 was obliged to rej3rehend him ; at which Sledd was so an- 
 gry that he at first meditated niurdering him on the spot, 
 but on after consideration determined to betray him to the 
 English Government instead. He therefore went to the Eng- 
 lish ambassador at Paris, and gave all needful advertisements 
 about Johnson and other priests both to him and to Jerome 
 Vane, a spy attached to the embassy. One day, when Sledd 
 was loitering about London on his treacherous mission, he 
 saw Johnson going thvough Smithfield in company with 
 Catherine, sister of Sir John Petre, and wife of John Talbot 
 of Grafton. He followed him till he saw a constable, whom 
 he charged in the Queen's name to arrest Johnson as a priest 
 and traitor. The constable, at heart a Catholic, made all 
 sorts of excuses ; but on Sledd's threatening to report him to 
 the recorder, he took up his staff, and told Sledd to show him 
 the man who was to be arrested. Sledd did so, and was 
 about to depart, when the constable told him he must follow 
 to give the man in charge, and to bear the possible conse- 
 quences of a false arrest and imprisonment. The true motive, 
 however, was to expose Sledd as an informer to the mocks 
 and jibes of the people, and to make his trade known to the 
 world. So Sledd and the constable dogged Johnson's steps 
 till he came to the Thames, and saw him hire a wherry to 
 convey him over to Southwark, where Parsons and Campion 
 were in council, with several other priests. Sledd told the 
 constable to take another boat and row after Johnson ; but 
 the constable, guessing something of the errand on which 
 
THE SYNOD IN SOtlTHWARK. 129 
 
 tlie priest was bound, told his companion that he could not 
 spend all the day dodging a man in a boat, perhaps to miss 
 him at last ; so he cried out to the bystanders to stop the 
 traitor, and arrested him then and there. And though Johfl- 
 son was taken, and thrust into a prison, from which he only 
 emerged to pass through Westminster Hall to the scaffold, 
 yet the lesson was not lost. Sledd was at once noted, and 
 expelled from Catholic society before he had time to do much 
 more mischief. A report of the capture soon reached the 
 assembled priests, who broke up in disorder. 
 
 Amid such escapes it became clear to the friends of the 
 fathers that London was no place for them ; they were 
 therefore counselled to shorten their stay there, and to de- 
 spatch with speed such things as were to be considered or 
 determined before their departure. They therefore collected 
 in a little house in Southwark the gravest priests then to be 
 foimd in London, among whom were Edward Mettam and 
 Blackwell, afterwards the archpriest, and also " divers prin- 
 cipal laymen, for their better satisfaction ; for that sundry 
 points of importance were to be discussed."'''' Quod mimes 
 tangit, ah omnibus tractari et approhari debet; and it was but 
 natural that in matters of common concern the clergy and 
 laity should take common counsel at a time of danger, when 
 the active cooperation of both classes was necessary in order 
 to secure the interests of either. So far as the faith was con- 
 cerned, there were no questions to discuss among the English 
 Catholics in 1580. But questions of morals, worship, disci- 
 pline, and political conduct, in which all were equally inter- 
 ested, urgently claimed at that moment the consideration 
 and the agreement of all. 
 
 The first question to be discussed was the answer to be 
 made, for the satisfaction both of Protestants and Catholics, 
 to the rumour raised on occasion of the entrance of the Je- 
 suits into the realm ; it was said to be for treason, conspiracy, 
 and matter of state, and not for religion. Sanders, ia his 
 book on the ecclesiastical monarchy, excuses the English 
 Catholics for failing to support the rebellion of the great 
 earls of the north, on the ground that they did not know 
 of the Bull ; and the English statesmen retorted that this 
 want of information was diligently and cunningly supplied 
 by sending the Jesuits and semiaary priests into the realm."^ 
 They said also that while a Bull was in existence, declaring 
 that Elizabeth had no right or title to the crown, all who 
 submitted, or were prepared to submit, to the authority which 
 proclaimed it, were ia their hearts secret traitors, and only 
 waiting the occasion to declare themselves open traitors ; 
 
 K 
 
130 EDMTDND CAMPION. 
 
 wIqcIl occasion it was necessary to remove, by preventing the 
 secret promulgation of the Bull by the agency of the missionary 
 priests. Moreover, it would be argued that the famous miti- 
 gation obtained by Campion and Parsons did not in the least 
 affect the substance of the Bull, whereby the queen still re- 
 mained excommunicate and deposed, but merely allowed the 
 English Catholics to exhibit to her a temporary and condi- 
 tional fealty and obedience {rebus sic stantibus) as long as 
 they could not help themselves : — but the moment they could, 
 or thought they could, or were told by the Pope that the 
 time was come, then their obedience and fealty were to end ; 
 the censures were to resume their full force, and the queen was 
 to be violently assailed. The mitigation would thus be made 
 to appear like a truce obtained upon false pretences by one 
 belligerent party, only in order to gain time to recruit his 
 forces for a new attack. Moreover, it would be called absurd 
 in the Roman missionaries to expect that their master's 
 agents would be allowed all the privileges of a friendly power 
 in England, while he and his agents in Ireland were carry- 
 ing on an open war against the queen of both realms. It 
 was to be feared that by these considerations "all their spiri- 
 tual and ecclesiastical functions m.ight be brought into ob- 
 loquy and hatred with the people, and much cruelty inflicted 
 both on the said clergymen themselves when they should be 
 taken, and on all other Catholics for their sake." 
 
 But to all this the fathers said they had but one answer 
 to give : their public and private denial of any such inten- 
 tions as were imputed to them. They therefore there and 
 then made oaths before God, and the priests and laymen as- 
 sembled, that their coming was only apostolical, to treat mat- 
 ters of religion in truth and simplicity, and to attend to the 
 gaining of souls, without any pretence or knowledge of matters 
 of state. After this oath, they exhibited the instructions they 
 had received; and they declared that they had never heard of 
 Sanders' passage into Ireland till they were at Rheims. This 
 oath, they supposed, would be sufficient to content Catholics 
 and dispassionate Protestants, and to assure them of the false- 
 hood of the reports that were being spread ; for they could 
 never think that all these priests would make so light of their 
 souls as to cast them away by wilful and spontaneous per- 
 jury. 
 
 But as for the Queen's Council and Bishops, whose interest 
 it was to crush the Catholic religion and to defame its minis- 
 ters, the only way against them was, if any of the fathers 
 fell into their hands, that he should not only protest on his 
 oath, but also stand to his denial before God and man, and 
 
GOING TO CHURCH. 131 
 
 ctallenge his adversaries to prove any single point against 
 him, — which no man living would ever be able to do, because 
 there never was such matter either in fact or thought. And 
 as all this would go by unanimous verdict of a jury of twelve 
 substantial Englishmen, they fondly hoped that a condemna- 
 tion would be almost impossible, since they knew that no 
 fact, attempt, or intention, however slight, could ever be 
 proved. 
 
 And here one of the assembly objected, that considering 
 the present hatred against priests, and its probable increase 
 by the conversion of many to the faith, mere conjectures 
 would be enough for a jury to condemn them upon. The 
 fathers replied, that if conjectures and probabilities were to 
 have place, it would be easy to bring conjecture against con- 
 jecture, and to refute less probabilities by greater. For 
 instance, if foreign princes wished to send political emissaries, 
 they would not choose mere scholars, nor send so many in so 
 public a fashion ; nor would ambassadors travel all the way 
 from Rome afoot in servants' apparel. Again, if they were 
 political emissaries, they must be sent to the Catholics 
 alone ; but what Catholic would ever listen to them if, after 
 the oath they had just taken, he were to see them meddling 
 with matters of state ? 
 
 "This," said Campion and Parsons, "is all the satisfac- 
 tion we can give. And if this will not serve, we can only 
 seal it with our blood ; and if it comes to this, it will not 
 signify whether we are believed, or whether, like our Lord 
 and His Apostles, we are reckoned among the wicked, and 
 put to death as the enemies of Cffisar." 
 
 The second point was practically, and for the time, the 
 most important that this Council had to settle, — How far 
 could it ever be lawful to go to Protestant churches, especially 
 if the persecution should increase ? Several pleas were alleged, 
 and it was said that a man miglit go if he justly feared or 
 knew that going was the one way to save his goods or person, 
 or to redeem himself from intolerable vexation ; that he would 
 go only for external obedience to the prince and her laws, 
 without respect to religion, just as he would go to any other 
 profane place if commanded by the same authority, not to 
 pray with or among the Protestants, but to repair thither 
 only for temporal obedience. Or, if this was unlawful or not 
 permissible, might not certain principal men, who were not 
 likely to be hurt or infected, go thither at certain times, with 
 protestation at their entering the churches that they went 
 not for the sake of religion, but only by commandment of the 
 prince, and no otherwise ? Or lastly, if none of these ways 
 
132 
 
 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 were allowed, might not dispensation be had from the Pope 
 to permit it, either generally in England, considering the 
 diihculties and dangers that might beset such as refused, 
 or at least to certain principal men who might have more 
 urgent cause to ask such permission ? 
 
 A negative answer was given to all these questions, and 
 it was determined that nothing could ever justify a Catholic 
 in attending Protestant worship in England. The religions, 
 it was said, were different ; the most learned foreign Catho- 
 lics had been consulted ; the Council of Trent had appointed 
 a committee to deliberate, who had considered all the cir- 
 cumstances, and had come to this conclusion . The Pope was 
 of the same mind, and would never grant a dispensation in so 
 notorious a case, where men were called upon openly to con- 
 fess or deny Grod's true religion by an evident and distinctive 
 sign, and by the public act of attending an alien worship 
 where the truth is impugned, and the Catholic Church de- 
 faced, calumniated, and ridiculed, — an iniquity in which no 
 Catholic could acquiesce without damoing his soul. The 
 Catholic, therefore, however pressed to conform externally, 
 ought to resist, at any peril or cost, and even to thank God 
 for so honourable an occasion of confessing Him, remember- 
 ing that there is no dispensation from the law, " Whoever 
 shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My 
 Father." 
 
 Both Campion and Parsons had tasted the bitter fruits of 
 conformity contrary to conscience. We have seen in a former 
 chapter how Campion yielded to Cheney's sophisms, and 
 how he had been persuaded by the example of Naaman to 
 join in a worship which he hated, and how bitterly he had 
 repented his fault. As for Parsons, he had fled ignomini- 
 ously from Balliol College after it was discovered that he 
 was a concealed Catholic. Still, the question was surrounded 
 with difficulties, as may be seen from the following case, as 
 reported bj' Parsons. 
 
 About the time of this conference Mr. James Bosgrave 
 was arrested ; he was a Jesuit priest, of a good family in 
 England, who had left his country when a boy, and had since 
 worked on the mission in Germany and Poland. After a 
 time he lost his health, and was sent back to try the effect 
 of his native air ; but he was captured on his first landing. 
 With all his learning, he was ignorant of the state of religion 
 in England, and so, when brought before the Bishop of Lon- 
 don, he gave some scandal by his answers. " Whence came 
 you ?" said the Bishop. " From Germany and Poland." 
 "What were you doing there?" "Travelling." " That is 
 
JAMES BOSGRAVE. 133 
 
 well, and befits a gentleman. What is j'oiir religion ?" 
 " Catholic." " That is ours also ; but the question is, will 
 you go to church, or no?" "I know no cause to the con- 
 trary." At this answer the Bishop was wonderfully glad, 
 for he hoped he had found a learned man to oppose the other 
 Catholics in this point, which they made of so much impor- 
 tance. Bosgrave was therefore praised to the sides for his 
 discretion and conformity ; he was made " extreme much" of, 
 and suffered to go at large. But the Bishop took care to 
 publish all over London that one of the learnedest men of all 
 the Jesuits had yielded in this point, and that those who 
 stuck to the opposite practice were mere simpletons in com- 
 parison of him. 
 
 This news gave great scandal. Campion and Parsons 
 had by this time left London, so that none of his order re- 
 mained to treat with Bosgrave ; and as the heretics confi- 
 dently affirmed that he would soon be entirely theirs, the 
 Catholics were afraid of him, and shunned him whenever he 
 sought their company, or desired to enter their houses. He 
 could not guess the reason of this strange conduct, which 
 aflB.icted him greatly ; for he had been so long abroad that 
 he had half forgotten his native tongue, and had no friends 
 in London, and so knew not what to do or M'hither to go. 
 
 But at last he met with a near kinsman, a Catholic, who 
 told him roundly what men thought of him, and what scan- 
 dal he had given by his answers to the Bishop. Bosgrave, 
 in amazement, said that he offered to go to their churches 
 just as in E,ome or Germany he might go to the Jews' syna- 
 gogue, and in Constantinople to the Turks' mosques, to hear 
 their folly and confute it. In Germany and Poland, he said, 
 they never made any scruple about it ; but any learned man 
 might go freely to the meetings of the Calvinists, Lutherans, 
 Unitarians, or Anabaptists, and hear their folly and blas- 
 phemy in order to refute it. And this was all he meant when 
 he promised the Bishop to go to church. 
 
 Then he was shown how different England was from 
 Germany ; for here the question was not whether learned 
 men may for curiosity or controversy repair once or twice to 
 heretical churches, but whether a learned man may bind 
 himself to go thither ordinarily, and thereby acknowledge 
 that religion to be true, and so give an evil example to simple 
 people, who might be unable to refute what they heard. 
 Here, too, the act was commanded by the legislature as a re- 
 ligious profession, and so very different from the isolated act 
 of a private person : if the same law was enacted in the here- 
 tical States of Germany, no doubt it would be as great a sin 
 
134 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 to obey it there as in England. He was told, too, how this 
 point of discipline was now on its trial in the country, and 
 that numbers of Catholics were at that moment suffering im- 
 prisonment and persecution for it ; that all the priests, all the 
 Jesuits, and all the learned and zealous among the laity were 
 of one opinion : Bosgrave, therefore, could not swerve from 
 the rest without great scandal ; and, indeed, the heretics had 
 already taken occasion from his slight complaisance to sow 
 suspicion that he was so going to join them. 
 
 This moved him exceedingly. He was angry at their 
 malice, and declared that, with God's grace, he would soon 
 cure their false fancies, and satisfy the Catholics about his 
 honest meaning. He therefore wrote an epistle to the Catho- 
 lics to excuse what he had done, and another to the Bishop 
 and the other commissioners to retract his promise of going 
 to church, and to deliver himself up to their hands. He was 
 therefore sent to the Marshalsea, and afterwards to the Tower; 
 there condemned with Campion as a traitor, but reprieved 
 and banished, after which he returned to his order in Po- 
 land. 
 
 The third point settled in the Council at Southwark 
 was, whether the old English or the lloman rule of fasting 
 was henceforth to prevail. In England, all Fridays were 
 fasts, as well as several vigils that were not observed in Italy. 
 Differences had already begun to grow in different shires, and 
 the priests and good men could not agree about the course 
 most proper for those days of danger. The old priests were 
 proud of the store of national devotions and works of piety 
 which had distinguished England above every other kingdom 
 of the world, since St. Augustine our apostle, by command of 
 St. Gregory, transplanted into it the flower of all the devo- 
 tions that he had noted to be observed in any nation by 
 which he passed. It was determined, therefore, that for the 
 present nothing should be altered, in manner of fasting, from 
 the old customs ; but in the shires, wherever the different 
 uses of York, Sarum, Hereford, or Canterbury and Loudon 
 used to prevail, wherever the Catholics remembered that Fri- 
 days or vigils were fasted, the same were still to be kept, and 
 the priests were to be most forward in observing them. But 
 where the memory had died out, no one was bound to fast, 
 though the voluntary act was always commendable. This 
 was not commanded, but only counselled, for direction of 
 priests and preservation of unity, till God should open the 
 door for an authoritative determination. 
 
 The fourth point was to determine the various districts 
 that each priest was to frequent. It was agreed that there 
 
MR. COTTAM. 136 
 
 were ttree districts that ought specially to be attended to : 
 Wales, because it was not attended to by the Protestants, or, 
 indeed, by the Catholics ; and because the ignorant inhabit- 
 ants, though they had not yet apostatised from the faith, were 
 so little attached to it that they might be led from it by the 
 first preachers of heresy, if they were not previously strength- 
 ened by the missionaries. (Secondly, Lancashire and the 
 North, which had shown itself so forward in the Catholic 
 cause in 1669. And thirdly, Cambridgeshire, already sapped 
 with Puritanism, which had deeply tainted the University. 
 To these districts the secular priests were sent. The two 
 Jesuits seem to have been appointed to visit the whole coun- 
 try, for we shaU. trace them from London to Lancashire, and 
 throughout the intervening places. 
 
 The last thing to be determined in the Council was the 
 case of Mr. Cottam. He had landed at Dover with Dr. Ely, 
 Rishton, and Hart. But Sledd had caused a very particular 
 description of the two last to be sent to the port, where they 
 were stayed. Hart confessed, and was sent prisoner to Lon- 
 don. But the mayor and searcher did not feel sure of Cot- 
 tam, and so asked Dr. Ely (who under the name of Howard 
 had passed and repassed more than once, and was not sus- 
 pected) whether he would undertake to present him to Lord 
 Cobham, the Warden of the Cinque Ports. Ely promised, 
 and his host of Dover, who knew him as Howard, joined in 
 giving security. But Ely thought it would be a greater 
 offence to offer up to the persecutors an innocent priest than 
 to break his promise to the mayor, and so let C&ttam escape. 
 But Cottam conceived some scruple about it ; and so, as he 
 stiU accounted himself a Jesuit, having been dismissed only for 
 lack of health, with express promise to be again received 
 when he was well, he sought Campion and Parsons, and told 
 them the case. They submitted it to the Councd, which, 
 after consultation, determined that as he made no promise he 
 was not bound to offer himself to so manifest a danger. This 
 decision contented him for a time ; but when he heard that 
 the mayor and Dr. Ely were like to come into trouble for 
 him, he consulted the fathers again, who this time permitted 
 him to do as his conscience persuaded him ; so with a merry 
 countenance, and all alone, he went to the sign of the Star, 
 in New Fish Street, and there oifered himself prisoner to Mr. 
 Andrews, a deputy of Lord Cobham, who carried him to the 
 court, which was then at Oatlands. After three or four days 
 he was committed to the Marshalsea, where he remained till 
 he was arraigned and condemned for treason with Campion. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 And now, before we follow the Jesuits on their mission, it 
 would be well to describe the religious condition of the people 
 to whom they were sent. 
 
 In August 1580, the twenty -second year of Elizabeth's 
 reign was drawing to a close. A generation had been born 
 and grown to manhood since she had altered the religion of 
 the land. In 1558, when she succeeded to the throne, she 
 found three parties in the country ; the Catholics and two 
 others, now known by names which they only acquired some 
 years afterwards, — the Puritans and the Politicians. 
 
 The Catholics were not a united party ; some had accepted 
 the severities of Mary as a moral lesson, and had brought 
 themselves to think that the " frying" of a " stinking here- 
 tic" at the stake was a comforting lesson ; others had be- 
 come disgusted at Mary's continual perquisition iato secret 
 opinions ; and the majority, wearied out, had come to the 
 conclusion, that it would be quite possible to Kve at peace 
 with the heretic, instead of driving him forth from society 
 to prison or to the stake. 
 
 The Puritans, — to call them by a name which. Sir Ptobert 
 Cotton says, was first pinned to their skirts by Father San- 
 ders about 1570, — led by the English refugees who had come 
 back as fanatical adherents of the Continental Calvinists, 
 with all the narrow sectarianism and bloodthirstiness of that 
 sect, were far behind in numbers, but they brought two 
 doctrines with them which gave them great influence : the 
 first, that it is the duty and the right of the prince to choose 
 the religion of his subjects ; and next, that the duty of obedi- 
 ence in the subject cannot be divided between a temporal and 
 spiritual superior. Gujus regio, ejus religio, was the formula 
 of the first ; uni et univoce of the second. Calvin, Knox, 
 and Beza, with the fear of the two Marys, of England and 
 Scotland, before their eyes, had thought it best to except 
 females from this sovereign right. But " regiment of wo- 
 
THE POLITICIANS. 137 
 
 men" ceased to be "monstrous" on the accession of Elizabeth ; 
 though she never forgave the Calvinists for having once 
 played false with the fundamental principle of Protestant 
 politics. 
 
 The Politicians, — to use a name given to the party by the 
 Guises of France in 1568,'"' and applied by Davila"" to those 
 who acknowledged no fundamental difference between one 
 religion and another, so far as the State is concerned, — were 
 described by Stapleton as the children whom Rachel weeps 
 for, because they are not ; not her children at all, but " false 
 and feigned Christians, neither Christians nor Catholics, but 
 Politicians. Polite and civil, elegant and gentleman - like, 
 prudent and wise, turning religion into policy, and making 
 a mock at zeal ; teUing us that in these days we must wink 
 at many things, do any thing for a quiet life, not stir up hor- 
 nets' nests ; that the heresies of the day are too strong to be 
 forcibly put down, too deep-seated to be plucked out of men's 
 minds ; that the points are too unimportant for such a dis- 
 play of energy ; at least not important enough to oblige 
 politicians, who are not charged with the management of 
 religion, to endanger the peace and prospeiity of the countrj'- 
 in the attempt to repress them. The prudent statesman's 
 first business is to pro^'ide for the welfare of his countrymen, 
 to accommodate himself to the pleasure of his prince, to 
 avoid all superfluous bickering about religion, and to leave 
 its care to the clergy or to God, who is strong enough to 
 avenge TTimself, if He feels insulted by the new opinions.""^ 
 
 These Politicians, when Elizabeth came to the throne, 
 had a double problem to solve : first, to secure the crown to 
 the queen ; and secondly, to give peace to the country, pro- 
 foundly agitated by the Spanish policy of Queen Mary. The 
 danger to the queen came from the Pope's definition of her 
 bastardy; to meet this, it was necessary to disable the Pope's 
 authority. The danger to the country was in the discord 
 of the adherents of the various religions ; the obvious re- 
 medy for this nowadays would be toleration for all ; but in 
 1558 such a thought was almost impossible. The unity of 
 relio-ion in a country was reckoned to be a State necessity. 
 Hence, where opinions were much divided, and the national 
 character strong and obstinate, it was not deemed possible to 
 favour any extreme and exclusive sect, but only to enforce 
 moderation upon all ; and this, not by allowing all to differ, 
 but by obliging them all to meet on a common and, as it 
 were, neutral ground. For the first of these State necessities 
 the obvious measure was to confer once more on Elizabeth 
 the ecclesiastical supremacy which Henry VIII. had arro- 
 
138 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 gated, and Mary had abjured. For the second, the Politicians 
 took advantage of the profound weariness of the Catholics, 
 and of the Protestant principle which gives a prince supreme 
 power to choose the religion of his country, to devise a new 
 formula which might satisfy both Catholics and Puritans, by 
 suppressing all that either considered to be blasphemy, and 
 by including only the " fundamentals" on which both were 
 agreed. 
 
 After the queen's accession, the Politicians, who sur- 
 rounded her, began by repressing the zeal of each side, for- 
 bidding all preaching, and all disputes, till they were deli- 
 vered from the fear of foreign intervention by the treaty of 
 Cateau Cambresis in April 1 559.^19 Then the Parliament, in 
 default of the Convocation, passed two measures ; one for 
 conferring on the queen the supremacy, and for imposing an 
 oath on the subject in acknowledgment of it ; and the other 
 for abolishing the Mass, and substituting for it a form of 
 prayer, which might be used in " common" by those who 
 believed and those who disbelieved in Catholic doctrines. 
 The first hope of the Politicians was that the existing Catho- 
 lic hierarchy might be induced to connive at the new system, 
 as they had done in Henry and Edward's time. With this 
 view, — in spite of the frantic appeals which the Continental 
 Reformers kept making to Elizabeth to play the part of Judith 
 and Deborah, and destroy the Papists root and branch, seeing 
 that Continental experience amply proved that the preserva- 
 tion of the externals of Popery always in the long-run led to 
 its reestablishment, — the old forms that met the eye were 
 to be altered as little as possible ; the vestments were to re- 
 main, and the hierarchical constitution, and, if possible, the 
 same pastors. No doctrinal changes were to be made, only 
 those portions of the old liturgy, — the adoration of the blessed 
 Sacrament, and the worship of images and saints, — which 
 were most offensive to the new opinions were to be dropped. 
 The foreign Protestants were furious ; they declared empha- 
 tically to their English followers, that they could not pos- 
 sibly take any ministerial part in a Church thus constituted. 
 The question of vestments was declared a fundamental one.'^" 
 But when it was seen that the queen and government were 
 firm, the same counsellors advised their friends to dissimu- 
 late, and to " use the habits, provided they persisted in speak- 
 ing and teaching against the use of them."^'^' For. the great 
 fear of the Puritans was, lest they should be personally ex- 
 cluded from all share in the new establishment. Their first 
 speculation was, whether the Bishops would conform ; and, 
 between hope and fear, they consoled themselves that they 
 
THE VISITATION OF 1559. 139 
 
 would rather resign, " as being ashamed, after so much 
 tyranny and cruelty exercised under the banner of the 
 Pope, and the obedience so lately sworn to him, to be again 
 brought to a recantation, and convicted of manifest perjury. "'-^ 
 When this external obstacle was once removed, the internal 
 obstacle of their own consciences gave the Puritans little 
 trouble, and they gladly accepted the commission to govern 
 a Church, the constitution of which they thought wrong, in 
 hopes of being able in time to conform it to their notions of 
 right. 
 
 The Bishops all refused to take the oath, and were mostly 
 deprived of their sees before the end of 1559. The Puritan 
 leaders were substituted for them. On May 23, 1559, a royal 
 commission was issued to visitors, partly lay, partly clerical, 
 and all Puritan, to tender the oath to the rest of the clergy. ^^^ 
 They were ordered to proceed with such moderation, as not 
 to exasperate the Catholics, but to bring them gradually, by 
 fair means, to a sense of their duty.''^ The first commission 
 was too zealous ; and in October the queen had to modify it, 
 substituting laymen for several of the clergymen.'--^ But even 
 their moderation had such serious effects that, in December, 
 the queen had to write to the comLmissioners in both pro- 
 vinces to suspend their proceedings, and to determine such 
 matters only as had been already begun. '^'' The effect of these 
 arrangements was, that of the multitudes of clergymen who 
 refused to subscribe, not many were immediately deprived; 
 some had three years given them for consideration,^'^^ and 
 others seem to have been connived at. In the visitation of 
 the province of York in August and September 1559, '-^ out 
 of 90 clergymen summoned, 21 came and took the oath, 36 
 came and refused to swear, 17 were absent without proctors, 
 16 were absent with proctors. Yet of the 36 the lists of 
 Bridgewater and Sanders only contain 5 names ; of the 17, 4; 
 of the 16, 7. If those lists are perfect, it proves that the rest 
 were connived at, and perhaps retained their livings till their 
 death. In the province of Canterbury, we hear of the dean 
 and canons of Winchester Cathedral, the warden and fellows 
 of the College, and the master of St. Cross, all refusing the 
 oath.^-^ Yet only four of them are in Bridgewater's list. The 
 visitors returned for the whole province the totals of 49 recu- 
 sants, and 786 conformists,^"" significantly omitting the ab- 
 sentees. Thus, out of the 8911 parishes,'" and 9400 bene- 
 ficed clergymen,'^^ we find only 806 subscribers, while all the 
 bishops and 85 others expressly refused to subscribe, and the 
 rest were absentees. The assertion, then, of Camden, that 
 only 189 clergymen were deprived in this visitation proves 
 
140 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 nothing. Archbishop Parker had orders " not to push any 
 one to extremities on account of his oath."'^^ But Sanders and 
 Bridgewater give many more names ; and even their lists, 
 as Parsons owns, were imperfect. For, as Bramhall says, the 
 writers at Rome, Rheims, and Douay were strangers to what 
 was passing in England. It was the interest of the govern- 
 ment to hide from the Catholics the real number of recusants, 
 lest they should become over-bold. No wonder, then, that the 
 priests were often tempted to complain with Elias, in Jeze- 
 bel's persecution, " I only am left," when there were really 
 seven thousand who had not bowed to Baal. 
 
 However, what with the expirations of the three years of 
 grace, and fresh commissions sitting from time to time, the 
 clergy, at iirst connived at, were gradually removed, and 
 their places filled up with men who were required to acknow- 
 ledge the queen to be supreme head of the Church of Eng- 
 land upon earth ; while no great difficulty was raised about 
 other points of doctrine, provided they were willing to obey 
 the laws of the realm. '^^ Thus it came to pass that most of 
 the clergy were "popish priests, consecrated to perform Mass; 
 and the far greater part of the remainder most ignorant per- 
 sons," appointed to spell through the prayers, but not al- 
 lowed to preach. '''5 I have said that the priests who refused 
 the oath had far fewer scruples about the common prayer. 
 When it was first introduced under Edward, some priests 
 said the Latin Mass, some the English Communion ; some 
 both, some neither ; some said half of the one, and half of 
 the other. "And this mingle-mangle did every man make 
 at his pleasure, as he thought it would be most grateful to 
 the people. But that which was of more importance and 
 impiety, some did consecrate bread and wine, others did not, 
 but would tell the people beforehand plainly that they would 
 not consecrate, but restore them the bread and wine back 
 again as they received it from them, only adding to it the 
 Church-benediction. And after consecration, some did hold 
 up the Host to be adored after the old fashion, and some did 
 not. And of those that were present, some did kneel down 
 and adore, others did shut their eyes, others turned their 
 faces aside, others ran out of Church blaspheming, and cry- 
 ing 'Idolatry !'"i3i) "[Jnder Elizabeth this state of things lasted 
 with some modification. Before the service on Sunday, the 
 priests would celebrate Mass in their own houses, and the 
 Catholics would communicate there, while the Protestants 
 communicated at church ; or the priest would take to church 
 the Hosts which he had consecrated at home, to give at the 
 altar-rails to his Catholic parishioners, while he gave to the 
 
THE queen's supremacy, 141 
 
 Protestants the wafers that had been used for the service 
 in the Common Prayer-book. Thus the Sacrament of two 
 hostile religious bodies was distributed by the same hands, at 
 the same time, at the same altar-rails, to the discordant and 
 divided flock.i^? During the Northern rebellion in 1669, the 
 priests took occasion to restore the old service, and sang High 
 Mass in Durham Cathedral. Among the State-Papers, there 
 are instances of incumbents saying Mass in their houses much 
 later ; and even in 1592, we find several clergymen in one 
 county giving large sums to a pretended pursuivant not to 
 accuse them of Popery. It was only in 1579, in her twenty- 
 first year, that Elizabeth felt strong enough to enforce a 
 general obedience to the Act of Uniformity.'ss 
 
 The oath of supremacy gave the queen permission to 
 choose the religion of her subjects, and to enforce upon them 
 the external observance of it. This, however objectionable in 
 theory, did not seem likely to produce any immediate practi- 
 cal harm, as the queen was not supposed to be inclined to- 
 wards the Puritans. Hence its enemies announced, that it 
 gave power to the queen to minister at public worship, and 
 to consecrate Bishops ; this exaggeration was convenient, for 
 it gave the Politicians an opportunity to publish injunctions, 
 declaring that the supremacy meant nothing of the sort, but 
 the same power which all the kings of England had claimed, 
 " of sovereignty and rule over all manner of persons born 
 within these her realms, of what estate, either ecclesiastical 
 or temporal, soever they may be." " No power of ministry 
 was challenged ;" the queen was ready to accept as good 
 subjects those who took the oath in its merely historical 
 sense.^^^ StUl the royal supremacy was not merely the right 
 of the executive magistrate to see that every corporation was 
 what it professed to be, and administered its own laws justly, 
 and that right was done by and to every corporation, religious 
 or secular, within its territory. For there was no freedom for 
 corporations in those days. The prmce claimed the right of 
 authorising one, and only one, corjDoration, and suppressing 
 all others. If this right had been restricted to temporal cor- 
 porations, and if freedom of choice had remained for spiritual 
 corporations, the Catholics might have been incLLned to have 
 accepted it as a compromise,'""' however destructive of civil 
 liberty the law might be. Similarly, their objection was not 
 so much to any thing contained in the Common Prayer as to 
 its omissions ; the want of papal authority,'" prayers to the 
 Blessed Virgin and the Saints, prayers for the dead, the seven 
 Sacraments, and external sacrifice ; they even approved of 
 prayers in the vulgar tongue. The one thing for which they 
 
142 
 
 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 rejected communion with the Establishment was its " lack of 
 unity," its schism from the rest of Christendom, and its want 
 of homogeneity in itself, " some being therein Protestants, 
 some Puritans, and some of the Family of Love."^'*- 
 
 Yet this lack of unity — of external unity with the rest of 
 Christendom, and of internal unity with itself — was the one 
 sacrifice which the Politicians were determined to make, in 
 order to secure the political imity of the country, and the 
 unity of the State with the Church. They were not going 
 to commit the mistake of the Electors of the Palatinate, and 
 force all Englishmen to believe alike, and to change their 
 belief as often as the prince changed. But they insisted that 
 no corporation apart from the State should have the power of 
 branding Englishmen as heretics, and subjecting them to the 
 social and political disabilities which that brand induced. 
 Their theory was, to let every body believe as he liked, so as 
 he came to church ; to reckon all Englishmen as Churchmen, 
 unless formally joined to some external body, and at the same 
 time to proscribe all such external bodies, and to make adhe- 
 sion to them treason. 
 
 And as the lack of religious unity was the point which the 
 Politicians were bent on enforcing, so it was that least offen- 
 sive to the pious, and least observable by the xinreflecting 
 clergyman. It was only a suspension of discipline, an autho- 
 ritative stoppage of the persecution which had disgusted the 
 people by its cruelty. In country parishes where the people 
 were all Catholic, and where the forced communion with 
 heretics was therefore a dead letter, there was positively no 
 change but the not unpopular substitution of the English for 
 the Latin service. It appeared to be only a toleration that 
 must at times be practised by all establishments, when their 
 evil members are too numerous and powerful to be severely 
 dealt with.'*3 Its true character only came out step by step, 
 year by year ; and its full consequences were only revealed 
 when custom and habit, enforced by policy, and irritated by 
 many clumsy attempts to change them, had become too strong 
 to be conquered. 
 
 As for the people, the two things that struck them were, 
 the cessation of the unpopular persecution, and the change of 
 service. The latter was no great novelty to them. For thirty 
 years they had been used to variations, some of which had 
 been made on illegitimate authority, some, as Mary's restora- 
 tion, rightfully ; but all had come proximately to the people 
 on the authority of the State, whether it was the State acting 
 schismatically or acting in obedience to Rome. So far as 
 appeared externally, Elizabeth's change might be as autho- 
 
RISE OF RECUSANCY. 143 
 
 rised as Mary's ; and there was little opportunity for becom- 
 ing aware of its internal character. For the communication 
 between Englishmen in those days was slow and difficult, and 
 the Catholic portion of the people was divided geographically 
 from the Protestant part, which was found chiefly about Lon- 
 don and in the southern counties, especially in the sea-ports 
 of the west. It was only among the Protestants that the full 
 significance of the change could be at once understood. At 
 first it appeared a boon to both parties, — the Catholics, who 
 were tired of the Spanish persecution carried on in their name 
 and for their behoof, and the Protestants, to whom it brought 
 liberty, not without hopes of retaliation. This enabled Sir 
 Robert Cotton to say, that " until the eleventh year of Eliza- 
 beth's reign (the end of 1569) a recusant's name- was scarcely 
 known." It was scarcely known, because it was the great 
 object of the State not to know it, not to recognise that there 
 were any dissidents, to dissimulate diiferences ; not because the 
 people were converted to Protestantism, nor altogether " be- 
 cause the zeal begotten in the time of the Marian persecution 
 was yet fresh in memory, and the late persecutors were so 
 amazed with the sudden alteration of religion that they could 
 not but say, Digitus Dei est hie." Far less truth is there in 
 the Utopian picture which Cotton proceeds to paint : " In 
 those days there was emulation between clergy and hiity, and 
 a strife arose whether of them should show themselves most 
 affectionate to the Gospel. Ministers haunted the houses of 
 worthiest men, where now (1623) Jesuits build their taber- 
 nacles, and poor country churches were frequented with the 
 best of the shire ; the word of God was precious, prayer and 
 preaching went hand in hand together, until Archbishop 
 Grindal's disgrace" (1567) : the very mention of which ought 
 to have made Cotton ashamed of giving so false a representa- 
 tion of the matter.'** Grindal's disgrace was in consequence 
 of his patronage of the "liberty of prophesying," that is, of 
 the preaching of Puritan ranters, which was every where 
 driving the Catholics — who had hitherto acquiesced in the 
 State Church — to open hostility. Fearing this result, Eliza- 
 beth ordered the exercise of prophes3ing to be suppressed, the 
 preachers to be reduced to a smaller number, and homilies to 
 be read instead of sermons. It was not Grindal's disgrace, 
 but the impudence of the Puritans whom he patronised, that 
 first made recusancy formidable. 
 
 For the people, partly for the reasons I have given above, 
 partly because they hoped the changes were only temporary, 
 like so many they had seen, and partly through fear, — " not 
 knowing," as Cotton says,'*^ quite inconsistently with his ac- 
 
144 EDJIUND CAMPION. 
 
 count quoted above, " how far severity miglit extend," — had, 
 in the first years of EKzabeth, sunk their diiFerences, and at- 
 tended the church, where, for the most part, their old pastors 
 yet ministered. But soon scandals arose ; tinkers and cob- 
 blers succeeded to the pulpits of the grave theologians who 
 were dispossessed. Some of the priests forgot their vows of 
 celibacy ; and as early as 1562, during a tour in Essex and 
 Suifolk, Elizabeth was offended at the slovenly way of per- 
 forming the service, and at the consequences of clerical mar- 
 riage ; and on her return issued an order against all resort of 
 women to the lodgings of cathedrals and colleges ;^*^ while 
 the Catholic gentlemen were so scandalised, that they sent to 
 consult the Council of Trent whether their attendance at the 
 churches could be permitted. The answer was a decided ne- 
 gative.'''^ I do not know whether any immediate measures 
 were taken to publish this decision ; but in 1567, St. Pius V. 
 sent Dr. Sanders and Dr. Harding into England, with epis- 
 copal powers to grant faculties for the absolution of schisma- 
 tics, but chiefly to declare that " there was no hope of excep- 
 tion or dispensation for any of the laity" to have their children 
 baptised, or themselves to be " present at the communion of 
 service now used in churches in England. "'^"'s From this time 
 large numbers of the Catholic laymen began to refuse to go to 
 church ; and the indirect measures taken against them by 
 the government, together with the direct pressure of St. Pius 
 V. through Dr. Morton, who was sent into England in 15(38, 
 provoked the unfortunate rebellion of the great northern earls 
 in 1569, which rendered hopeless any peaceable restoration of 
 Catholicism while Elizabeth lived. 
 
 The effect of these movements was gradually to divide the 
 English Catholics into two bands, — the temporisers, or schis- 
 matics, who kept the faith, but frequented the churches, and 
 the open Catholics, who braved fine and imprisonment, and 
 refused to go to church. The rebellion of 1569 showed that, 
 on the least provocation, the schismatics were ready to join 
 the others, and to reestablish the old religion by force. The 
 Politicians, who had hitherto inclined rather to the Catholic 
 side against the Puritans, were, even before that event, forced 
 to remember that the Church which they had created hung 
 on the single thread of the queen's life ; that on her death 
 Mary of Scotland would succeed, and would reverse all that 
 had been accomplished in these eleven years. They therefore 
 appealed to all the gentry, clergy, and tradesmen who wished 
 to preserve the existing state of things, to join in a secret so- 
 ciety for the protection of the queen, not unlike the associa- 
 tions of seven years later in France for the protection of the 
 
SECRET SOCIETIES. 145 
 
 king and the French Catholics. By the verj' tenor of Burgh- 
 ley's proposition, it is clear that the appeal was made to the 
 Puritans, and that the Puritan members of the Government 
 no longer put forward the comprehensive character of the 
 Church, but its exclusivencss, as its claim to their support. 
 " No monarchy is so established by laws in good policy to re- 
 main in freedom from the tyranny of Rome, and in constancy 
 and conformity of true doctrine, as England is. Wherein no 
 person, of any state, is by law admitted to profess openly the 
 contrary without punishment provided for the same by good 
 order of laws ; and such like, for the policy to all purposes, is 
 not to be found in Christendom."'^^ Thus appealed to, the 
 Puritans began a secret organisation, under the guidance of 
 the Puritan members of the Privy Council, and were indus- 
 trious in enrolling members. By 1578 the French ambassa- 
 dor had found it out, and wrote to his court that the Puritans 
 were busy associating, and binding themselves by oath to 
 extirpate the Catholic religion. This organisation ripened 
 into the famous Society for the Preservation of the Queen, 
 which makes a figure in the history of 1584. The religious 
 questions at this date resolved themselves into a race for the 
 favour of the queen. 
 
 The Catholics, apparently under the inspiration of the 
 French ambassador, and after the example of the French 
 societies of 1576, began in that verj' year to make a " com- 
 bination,"''^'' in which we find such names as the Earl of 
 Northumberland, the Earl of Oxford, Lord Henry Howard, 
 Charles Arundel, Giffard, and Jerningham. Their object 
 apparently was to promote the queen's marriage with the 
 Duke of Anjou, which the Puritans as resolutely opposed. 
 Except for the tragic end of the drama, the varieties of its 
 progress are a complete comedy. There were the Puritans, 
 furious against the match ; there was the Spanish ambas- 
 sador, striving to persuade the Catholics to oppose it likewise ; 
 there was the French ambassador, jaunty and gay, sur- 
 rounded with his " combination," or chorus of Catholic cour- 
 tiers, whom he exhorted to be patient, for the end would 
 crown the labour, and the queen's new husband would secure 
 their freedom of worship. There were the counsellors : the 
 mysterious Burghley, in whom the world discovered a Solon, 
 while Shakespeare more truly painted him as Polonius ; the 
 profound and Mephistophelian Walsingham ; the versatile, 
 handsome, and unprincipled Leicester; and the rest,— whom 
 the French ambassador persuaded himself that he was per- 
 suading to be sworn slaves of his master, in direct contradic- 
 tion to their own interests. Lastly, there was the audacious 
 
146 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 queen, giving hopes to all, but satisfying none ; faithful to 
 her policy of doing little, but letting events vork themselves 
 out, and making it her main business to preserve her per- 
 sonal popularity. The French ambassador was blinded with 
 the good cheer of England, where there was talk of nothing 
 but gallantry ; and with the queen's progresses in the shires, 
 where she gained all hearts, and where the wealthy gentry 
 worshiped her on their knees. So far was she from prefer- 
 ring the Puritans, that manjr of her prime personal favour- 
 ites were as near being Catholics as the irregularities of their 
 lives would permit. Thus, Hatton, as Allen tells us, was one 
 who had no doubt about the Catholic religion being true.'^^ 
 She made no objection to the religion of Anjou ; indeed, she 
 said that his fidelity to it was a claim on her respect ; and in 
 1678 she agreed with the French ambassador that her hus- 
 band was to be allowed to do as he liked in his own house, as 
 she hoped to be allowed to do as she liked in hers ;"" and she 
 told Leicester, a mortal enemy of the match, that "this was 
 the year to marry off all the poor old maids in England ; they 
 should all be wedded with her." But nothing could make 
 her act ; she delayed, and the opponents of the match took 
 the occasion to whisper that Anjou was dwarfish, bandy, 
 pock-pitted, with bad breath, plenty of ambition, and more 
 bigotry. He would be sure to establish the Catholic religion. 
 Walsingham was sent over, confidentially, to look at the 
 duke, and to report on these matters ; he reassured the queen, 
 who professed herself satisfied. Nevertheless the affair 
 dragged on. In May 1579, the Earl of Huntingdon, a pre- 
 tender to the crown, and the chief of the Puritan party, de- 
 clared that the marriage would be the ruin of England and 
 of the religion, and set on some ministers to preach in this 
 sense. Elizabeth, with characteristic brevity, threatened to 
 have them whipped. She took care to display an increasing 
 coolness for the Common Prayer ; and when she was convers- 
 ing with Castelnau on her lover's charms, she could not tear 
 herself away even when the chapel-bell rang. Burghley 
 shook his head when he reflected how easy it would be to 
 upset the established religion, considering the stake owned 
 by Catholics in the land, the secret favour of the queen to- 
 wards them, and her deafness to all whispers against them.'^^ 
 But nothing progressed, except the hopes of Castlenau. Many 
 of the Catholic allies of the French ambassador were tired 
 out ; they were disgusted with Anjou's conduct, and ceased 
 to trust in the queen's intentions to marry him, and so turned 
 to the Spanish ambassador,^^* who was glad of their assistance 
 in discountenancing the match. '^-^ This laid the foundation 
 
FOREIGN INFLUENCES. 147 
 
 of a split among the Catholics, and a counter-combination 
 was set up, with the countenance of the Spanish ambassador. 
 Those who remained faithful to the French were obliged to 
 persuade themselves that the marriage would come oif, and 
 would at once heal all their afflictions. Therefore, every- 
 thing that helped on the match, however calamitous for the 
 moment to the Catholic religion, was ultimately for its benefit. 
 They must not let it be thought that Anjou was a bigoted 
 Papist, or the Puritans would never acquiesce in the match ; 
 his agents must therefore, for the present, abstain from using 
 their influence in favour of the oppressed Catholics ; only a 
 little patience, a little more sufi'ering under the atrocious 
 penal laws, and all would be over ; Anjou would be king, 
 and would soon lay the axe to the root of the tree. Only let 
 the Catholics dissimulate a little longer, and shut their eyes 
 to the daily tragedies of their brethren, and the new state of 
 things for which these tragedies would smooth the way would 
 be the remedy for them all. The Spanish ambassador had no 
 such political reasons for dissimulation, and could afford to 
 call a spade a spade. Round him, then, gathered the gener- 
 ous Catholic youth, who were prepared for any sacrifice, who 
 were tired of waiting on the caprices of a woman, and who 
 were resolved henceforth to dissimulate nothing. Yet the 
 necessities of the times compelled them to adopt a secret 
 organisation, and they thus gave birth to a curious monster, 
 — a secret society which could not remain secret, the first 
 duty of its members being to absent themselves from services 
 which the law bade them attend. To them it would have 
 been useless to have "the receipt of fern-seed, — to walk in- 
 visible," for their invisibility at church was the first overt 
 act of their " sedition." Theirs was a secret society whose 
 object was to make secret believers into open professors ; a 
 secret society to destroy secrecy. They had given up the 
 race to get the start in the favour of the prince ; the Puritans 
 had won, and now, vce victis. No "courtesy, humanity, or 
 reasonable indifierence," could be had from such ignoble con- 
 querors. Catholics were shut out fi'om " speech, conference, 
 writing, disputing, or any other fair trial of their cause ;" 
 they were watched, spied, examined every where ; attached, 
 transported, imprisoned, racked, or hanged, if they spoke or 
 argued. 
 
 Still a section, hoping against hope, adhered to the French 
 ambassador. In July 1579, Elizabeth imprisoned a preacher 
 for talking against foreign alliances and mixed marriages. 
 This raised their hopes, only to be immediately dashed by 
 one of those occurrences which were always a pretext for 
 
148 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 fresh delays. Fitzmorris, with a company of Bretons, made 
 a descent on Ireland, and occupied Limerick. The Spanish 
 ambassador loudly accused Henry III. of France as an ac- 
 complice of the wild Irishman ; while Castelnau declared it 
 was a plot of Philip II. to stojD the match, aud that he had 
 condescended even to conspire with the Calviuists against it. 
 At the same time (Oct. 1579), he declared that the queen's 
 better treatment of the Catholics had won back many of them 
 from the Spanish interests. He noted the eyer-increasing 
 fury of the Puritans, their petitions to parliament, the way 
 they worked on the fears of the "timid" queen, and their 
 declaration that Anjou would soon have a St. Bartholomew's 
 Day in England, fie enlarged on Stubbs's pamphlet, " The 
 Gulph wherein England will be swallowed by the Marriage ;" 
 the fury of the queen, who wanted him hanged, her disap- 
 pointment when the jury would not find him guilty of felonj', 
 the disgrace of the j udge, the interest that was made to have 
 Stubbs pardoned, aud Elizabeth's final command to have the 
 sentence (loss of his right hand) executed upon him before 
 her window at eiijht o'clock one morninff. Leicester and 
 Walsingham, with the rest of the Puritans, were in disgrace ; 
 Elizabeth was furious ; and Anjou was foolish enough to 
 direct Castelnau to intercede for them. The}' swore fidelity 
 to the French interests ; aud he accordingly reconciled them 
 to the queen. This was in obedience to the duke's instruc- 
 tions, " to accept every one's service, and not to keep anyone 
 in disgrace on his account." " I think," saj^s Castehiau, with 
 a simplicity wonderful in so old a courtier, " that from this 
 time Leicester will seek to maintain himself by the aid of 
 France." However, Leicester, Walsingham, Huntingdon, 
 and Pembroke, soon used their restored power in exactly the 
 opposite direction ; and, February 8, 1580, Castelnau was 
 obliged to confess that the queen's ill-humour and cruelty to 
 the mislikers of the match had alienated from her (or it) a 
 great part of her nobles and people, and obliged her to ask a 
 further delay, and that she had given too much credit to those 
 whom she had just restored to power. 
 
 Thus did these negotiations drag on ; Castelnau 's clever- 
 ness ever overreached by his vanity, which made him believe 
 in victory when he had only fallen into a trap. But Solomon 
 himself could not have succeeded. Elizabeth had once pos- 
 sessed power to change the religion of England ; but to this 
 end she had been obliged to arm the Puritans and disarm the 
 Catholics, and now the Puritans were too powerful to be over- 
 come. Even if the Catholics had succeeded in making Eliza- 
 beth marry Anjou, I doubt whether it would have done much 
 
THE SITUATION IN 1580. 149 
 
 more for tlie Catholics than the marriage of Charles with 
 Henrietta forty years later. But the Puritans were deter- 
 mined not to risk the change if they could help it, and so 
 much the more as they saw the Catholics desirous of it. On 
 July 5, 1580, Castelnau writes, " The Puritans fear that if 
 the queen is married, the Catholics will soon get the upper 
 hand ; and suppose that she has a great fancy for them, be- 
 cause she treats them more mildly than she has done for 
 twenty years. And, indeed, the number of Catholics has 
 much increased, and thej' have raised their heads a little too 
 soon, and built too much on the hopes of the marriage." 
 
 It was just at this time that Campion and Parsons were 
 coming into England. Their arrival was another of those 
 events to which Castelnau attributed his want of success. 
 About the same time also Conde came over to complain to 
 Elizabeth of the treatment of the French Protestants by 
 Henry III. Elizabeth refused to continue the negotiations 
 for the marriage till Henry had made peace with them. 
 Henry of course refused to forego the advantages he had 
 gained. i'* Elizabeth replied by complaining of a visit of the 
 Earl of Westmoreland to Paris, of Dr. Allen's seminary at 
 Rheims, and of the fifty priests just sent over to preach sedi- 
 tion. This, said she, was the reason of her temporising. 
 Henry retorted, that Elizabeth had received Conde, whom 
 he asked her to send away ; and there seemed every element 
 of a diplomatic quarrel, when suddenly there came news to 
 London of the defection of some of the queen's most powerful 
 Irish friends. Castelnau considered the government in great 
 danger. " I believe," he wrote, " that if monarchs will be 
 obstinate in their civil wars, subjects will not be without pre- 
 tests for casting off their allegiance."'^' In the following des- 
 patches, August 13 and 30, he describes the severe measures 
 that the council thought of taking against the Catholics. In 
 September, the queen heard of the landing of the joint Span- 
 ish and Papal expedition in Ireland. The danger was great, 
 and so was the terror. She implored Henry to send at once 
 an army into the Low Countries, otherwise this would only be 
 the forerunner of many expeditions. In November the Irish 
 bubble burst ; and Castelnau told his master that " the 
 Spaniards and Italians behaved like great poltroons, and had 
 their throats cut. Lord Grey, the viceroy, had all the Irish 
 hanged, except a priest, who was to be sent into England, 
 and Dr. Sanders, a great preacher, and too good a theologian 
 to fight. The expedition was magnificently provided, but it 
 would have been better if they had been furnished with less 
 money and more manfulness." 
 
150 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 I quote these passages to show what were the peculiar 
 complications of the time when the mission of the Jesuits 
 began in England. Eut I will not proceed with Campion's 
 history till I have briefly reviewed the position of the Angli- 
 can clergy, and of the common people. 
 
 The members of the Pm'itan hierarchy intruded into the 
 English sees in 1559 and 1560 had accepted a position which 
 they did not approve. They were all Calvinists, except 
 Cheney of Gloucester, who was a Lutberan; the vast majority 
 of the clergy was Catholic, and hardly yet recognised its 
 schismatical position. The queen would allow no further 
 innovations in the externals of religion, but was incurious 
 about doctrine ; hence the new Bishops were able to get in 
 their wedge of Calvinistic intolerance in the Thirty-nine 
 Articles of Religion, the bulwark against retrogression to- 
 vrards Rome, and against such a development of the truths 
 still left in the Prayer-Book as should necessitate the restora- 
 tion of those which had been dropped. These articles were 
 intended to narrow the comprehensive character of the 
 Church by providing that all the new clergy should be Cal- 
 vinist. Next, the Bishops gave an extraordinary latitude to 
 the " liberty of prophesying," which might have developed 
 the establishment into a Genevan conventicle, had not Eliza- 
 beth interposed with her veto. Many of the Politicians, con- 
 vinced that the Catholic party would restore the Papal supre- 
 macy and the exclusiveness of the Church the first day they 
 had the power, had now turned to the Puritans. Not that 
 they had any intention of siibmitting to the Genevan discip- 
 line ; but they were willing to allow it so far as the suppres- 
 sion of the bishoprics and cathedrals, and the confiscation of 
 their goods. Again, the ignorant low-bred Calvinists were 
 easier to exclude from all share in government than the 
 highly-educated Roman ecclesiastic, or the Anglican who 
 had succeeded to the inheritance of the English universities. 
 Hence " they sought to disgrace the clergy," scarcely admit- 
 ting them to matters of state at all, "contrary to the practice 
 of all well-governed commonwealths, and of our own till these 
 late years."''''' 
 
 But Elizabeth disgraced Archbishop Grindal, the leader 
 of the Puritan party, and began to advance the men to whom 
 the gradual development of Anghcanism is due. They had 
 to conciliate the forms "of a Catholic hierarchy, and of a 
 Catholic but mutilated prayer-book, with Puritan articles of 
 faith. They had at once to defend conservatism and revolu- 
 tion, to derive their authority from the old Church, and to 
 claim a right for the State to modify the doctrines of that 
 
THE ANGLICAN HIERARCHY. 151 
 
 Church without thereby destroying its essence. They had to 
 make the comprehensive political via media of 1559 into an 
 eternal and exclusive principle of truth ; as if the truth, 
 which may perhaps be the middle point between all possible 
 errors, can be determined by taking two presumed errors 
 which happened to coexist in 1559, and by assuming for all 
 time that the middle point between them is the truth. This 
 via media was at first a sort of indefinite precinct, shutting 
 off two extreme opinions, but enclosing all between them ; it 
 was afterwards turned into a religious theory, and petrified 
 into a sham principle. It was originally an abasement of 
 the Church before a supposititious pubKc opinion, for the con- 
 venience of statesmen. It would have been a recognition of 
 the supremacy of the mob if the real opinions of the people 
 had been such as they were said to be. But the State made 
 the Church Anglican in pretended deference to the feelings 
 of a people who were chiefly Catholic, and partly Puritan. 
 These sections refused to be amalgamated. The Puritans 
 would not receive the teaching of Bishops who wore su.rplices. 
 The Catholics, whose priests and schoolmasters were driven 
 away or hanged, stood aloof, and woidd listen to no one else. 
 For three or four generations their descendants preserved 
 "the perfume of Rome," as Cotton says, and afterwards were 
 gradually assimilated to the surrounding population, still, 
 however, retaining a traditional hostility to the State 
 Church. 
 
 The English hierarchy, thus cut off from both the Catho- 
 Kc and Puritan sections of the people, but retaining all the 
 aristocratic influence that their feudal possessions gave them, 
 were from the first the clergy of the rich, not the clergy of 
 the poor. They were gentlemen, learned men, lords ; but 
 not apostles or saints. Their wealthy leisure, combined with 
 their professional tastes, enabled them, to preserve, what cir- 
 cumstances have led both Catholics and Puritans to neglect, 
 the artistic and literary beauty of the liturgical language. 
 When Christianity was the business of life, and time was no 
 consideration, prayers might be as difficult as a chorus of 
 ^schylus, or a sonnet of Dante. But when religion became 
 not so much the occupation as the qualification of life, when 
 less time was given to the direct exercises of devotion, the 
 old enigmas were felt to be too hard. The breviary services 
 were too long, the psalms too difficult. A new style of prayer 
 was wanted, arranged in the most logical order, interrupted 
 by rubrics, to tell us where to elicit one kind of act, and 
 where another, and with language most simple and plain- 
 spoken. The Jesuits saw what was wanted, and provided it; 
 
152 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 the Puritans felt that some change was wanted, and offered 
 their ranting preaching and their extempore prayers as the 
 solution of the difficulty. The Anglican hierarchy alone, 
 — not pressed for time, not overburdened with " acts" and 
 "aspirations" — kept up the old intellectual interest in the 
 services, and popularised the psalms and the devotional use 
 of the Old and New Testaments, not perhaps to any great 
 extent, but more widely than has been done by other hier- 
 archies or sects. And it was this literary excluslveness that 
 made them call those popularisers of devotion, the Jesuits, 
 "the Puritans of Popery." 
 
 To turn now from the Anglican clergy to the English 
 people, who were so profoundly alienated from them, whose 
 state I shall only touch upon so far as it affected the mission 
 of Campion. All the Catholic part of the population had been 
 surprised into the change of religion. No choice was given 
 to them : they saw the service changed ; but they saw also 
 that no measures were taken to make them change their 
 faith. They saw, for the most part, their pastors retaining 
 their benefices, sometimes indeed displaced to make room 
 for an ignorant ranter ; but then, in turn, they saw this 
 ranter's mouth stopped, and himself reduced to a mere reader 
 of prayers and homilies. The people bore this patiently, 
 because it brought calm after the troubles and persecutions 
 of Mary's time, and because they hoped it would in its turn 
 soon come to an end. In the mean time they might enjoy 
 the holiday which the collapse of discipline had sent them, 
 ready to reenter the vineyard, and work, as soon as they were 
 called. Throughout the country and small towns, where the 
 strength of the Catholic party was to be found, the people 
 formed two political classes — the gentry or nobility, and the 
 commonalty. Both classes still maintained the feudal feel- 
 ings ; still the chief nobleman in every shire desired to see 
 all the gentry of his county wear his livery, and acknow- 
 ledge themselves his servants ; while the gentry maintained 
 the same feudal relations with the husbandmen and cottagers 
 who Uved on the family estate. The power of England had, 
 up to the time of Henrj' VII., been in the hands of these 
 nobles and gentry, who were not yet conscious that thej'' had 
 lost it. The overwhelming strength of the earl in his own 
 county looked like universal power, tiU. the fate of the Earls of 
 Northumberland and Westmoreland, and of the Duke of Nor- 
 folk, showed how weak the local centres had become in com- 
 parison to the combining force of the royal centralisation in 
 London. But this lesson was not enough. It was stUl every 
 where believed that rank was power ; that the queen was able 
 
TOPICS OF PERSUASION. 153 
 
 by a word to restore every thing as it had been ; and that if 
 she would not speak this word, the nobles and gentry might 
 unite and dethrone her. Failing this, at least so many of the 
 gentry might declare their adherence to the old religion as 
 to extort a toleration, if not from her compassion, at least 
 from her fears, as not knowing what tliis persecuted class 
 might do in case of foreign invasion. In this argument the 
 populace counted for nothing. It was taken for granted that 
 they would follow wherever they were led, and they were 
 treated almost as if they were incapable of intelligent convic- 
 tion in matters of faith. 
 
 The great fact of the day was the power of the governor 
 to change the belief of his subjects. By means of this fact 
 Luther had succeeded in Germany, and Henry VIII. in Eng- 
 land. The Jesuits quickly comprehended the state of affairs, 
 and by similar means ■wrought a vast restoration of religion 
 in Germany and in France. The same system was to be 
 applied to England ; and if Elizabeth could not be made its 
 instrument, her bastardy gave a famous opportunity to the 
 Pope to exert the deposing power, and to give her crown to 
 a more faithful child of the Church. Such was the policy of 
 Pius V. and of Gregory XIII., who sent Campion and Par- 
 sons into England. Such also was Parsons' private opinion, 
 as may be seen from Campion's reply to one of his letters in 
 a former chapter. But they were not sent to England to 
 carry out this policy ; they were not supposed to know any 
 thing about it ; they were only to convert the nobility and 
 gentry to the Church, and await the consequences. 
 
 The people to whom they were sent had no settled convic- 
 tion against the truth of Catholicism ; their inclinations led 
 them towards it, only their fear or their indolence prevented 
 their profession of it. Their external show of Protestantism 
 was rather cowardice and sloth than heresy, rather a help- 
 lessness than a strong passion. It was their will that had to 
 be strengthened, rather than their mind to be enlightened. 
 Hence the absence in those days of any depth of intellectual 
 discussion. The arguments were addressed to the heart of 
 the people, or to their terror. Fugienda imprimis contro- 
 versia, said Father le Fevre to Father Laynez about the 
 reduction of the first Lutherans. First their affections must 
 be cured, then their faith ; the way to their head is through 
 their heart. Persuade them to be moral, and they will soon 
 be Catholics. They are heretics because they despair of being 
 able to live as Catholics ; strengthen them to do their duty, 
 and they will naturally come back to the faith they learnt at 
 their mothers' knees. The English might be warned that 
 
154 
 
 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 acquiescence in tlie State religion was no such security as 
 they fancied. The queen would die some day, and her suc- 
 cessor would restore all ; perhaps the Pope and the French 
 and Spanish kings would come and dethrone her, and extir- 
 pate the heretics. Even in 1623, the people were still " timo- 
 rous through forecasting the restoration of Popery;" and to 
 this day the saying survives among them, — " the Catholic re- 
 ligion was the first, and shall be the last." Thus they were 
 always looking out for a sign of its return. A flood, or a 
 comet, or a monstrous birth, sent a thrill through England, 
 and awakened the expectation of the " golden day" that was 
 to restore the old religion. No picture of those times is 
 complete that does not catalogue these prodigies, which had 
 so extraordinary an eifect on the belief of the people. On the 
 day of the election of St. Pius V., Maflei tells us,"9 a comet, 
 like blood, stood over London, and near its tail a hand issued 
 from a cloud, and brandished a sword. 1580 (the year the 
 Jesuits entered the country) was distinguished by a profusion 
 of such portents. Father Parsons, in his life of Campion, re- 
 cites from Stowe,^''" April 2d, an earthquake in Loudon, which 
 made the great bell of Westminster toll of itself, and threw 
 down portions of the Temple Church, and of Christ Church, 
 Newgate Street, at sermon- time, and slew two persons. In 
 Jime great storms of thunder and hail. One Alice Perin, 
 eighty j^ears of age, brought forth a monster with a head 
 like a helmet, a face like a man, a mouth like a mouse, a 
 human body, eight legs, all ditferent, and a tail half a yard 
 
 long. Agnes, the wife of Mr. (Father Parsons leaves 
 
 the name blank ; it is scarcely worth while to refer to Stowe 
 to restore it), gave birth to a monster that was male and 
 female, with mouth and eyes like a lion. On May 18th, a 
 vision of a hostile fleet was seen at sea oS Bodmin ; a pack 
 of hounds was heard and seen in the air in Wiltshire ; and in 
 Somersetshire three several companies of sixtj' men in black 
 appeared in the air, one after another. At a time when a 
 student of magic occupied the imperial throne, and when Lord 
 Burghlcy was entreating lielly, the quack conjurer, not to 
 deprive his native country of the good gifts God had given 
 him, it is not to be wondered at if such predictions as may 
 now be seen in Moore's Almanack had a vast effect on men's 
 minds. The old priests still occasionally warned their flocks 
 of their evil state. A Lincolnshire boor informed the coun- 
 cil how Parson Britton, minister of Bonnington, preached 
 that there was no salvation for those who went without con- 
 fession and penance. " You must confess," he said, "not to 
 bad fellows like me ; but if you seek for them, there be 
 
POPTTLAK EXPECTATION. 155 
 
 honest men in the country." The boor accordingly sought, 
 and found an honest man, who persuaded him that " there 
 would be amendment this year (1580) of religion," and showed 
 him in a book the cabalistic words, "E shall fall, and I 
 shall stand instead ; and I is not J, and shall not continvie ; 
 and there shall be a musing Midsummer, a murdering Mi- 
 chaelmas, a bloody March. All after merry shall be.""'^ One 
 instance is as good as twenty of the sort of sayings that were 
 current among the people in reference to the immediate re- 
 storation of the old faith. It was needful to persuade them 
 that it would be so ; they were quite willing that it should 
 be. 
 
 Such were the people to whom the Jesuits were sent, to 
 bid them separate themselves from the communion of the 
 heretics, and to forbear going to their churches, whatever the 
 penal consequences might be. They came to separate what 
 the queen wanted to unite, and accordingly she issued her 
 proclamations, warning the people against them as enemies 
 of herself, and of Church and State, who were to be diligently 
 sought for as persons perilous to the public weal. Yet when 
 they came, they were found to be men of peace, churchmen 
 without weapons, teaching the old doctrine, fasting and pray- 
 ing, preaching confession and restitution, and offering to dis- 
 pute about these points with the new ministers, whose lives 
 were known to be far distant from any of these things. How 
 they prospered with this people, I shall have to tell in the 
 future chapters of this life. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 After Hilary Term 1580 was over, Campion and Parsons 
 found London emptied of friends and swarming with spies. 
 Further stay there had become both useless and perilous, 
 and they determined, with the other priests, to go forth on 
 their appointed missions into the shires. Each Jesuit Father 
 was furnished with two horses and a servant, two suits of 
 apparel for travelling, sixty pounds in money, books, vest- 
 ments, and every thing needful for the church or for the road, 
 by George Gilbert, who also promised to supply whatever 
 more might be necessary for him. Gilbert'''- was the founder 
 and the soul of the young men's club, the origin of which I 
 described in my last chapter. Not only did their peculiar 
 position force these j^oung laymen into such an association, 
 but the various difficulties of the missionary priests made the 
 cooperation of some such body absolutely necessary. The 
 penal laws were already very severe, and held out strong 
 inducements to the layman to betray the missionaries. Pru- 
 dence, therefore, forbade them to compromise themselves, or 
 the person whom they visited, before they knew that their 
 visits at his house would be safe to themselves and accept- 
 able to him. It was for this reason that the Jesuits were 
 ordered to be verj^ careful whom they conversed with ; to 
 prefer the gentleman, because of his greater influence when 
 converted, his greater power to protect them, as well as the 
 greater unlikelihood of his betraying their secret. But the 
 Jesuits were on no account to have any personal dealings 
 with the Protestant till his Catholic friends had sounded 
 his disposition, secured his impartiality, and ascertained that 
 the priests might speak with him without fear of being be- 
 trayed."'-' And all this required an extensive organisation 
 among the Catholic gentry. 
 
 Further, as the safety of the priests required that they 
 should know to whom they were going to trust themselves, 
 and should be protected and conducted on their way from 
 house to house, so did the safety of their host require that 
 he should know whom he was receiving. Missionaries could 
 not carry about with them the certificates of their priesthood, 
 
THE ASSOCIATION. 157 
 
 still less the proofs of their honesty. Unknown strangers 
 might be spies or false brothers, or fallen priests, as easily as 
 honest men. It was necessary, then, that missionaries should 
 be conducted by some well-known and trustworthy person, 
 who could answer for their identity and their honesty at 
 the houses where they were introduced. Hence this con- 
 ductor had to be a gentleman well known and respected 
 throughout the country. 
 
 The members of the association bound themselves to per- 
 form the two functions of preparing Protestants and con- 
 ducting the priests, and besides to procure alms for the 
 common fund, out of which the priests were supplied. 
 Their promise entailed upon them great sacrifices ; they 
 determined " to imitate the lives of apostles, and devote 
 themselves whoUy to the salvation of souls and conversion 
 of heretics." They promised "to content themselves with 
 food and clothing and the bare necessaries of their state, 
 and to bestow all the rest for the good of the Catholic 
 cause." And their association was solemnly blessed by 
 Gregory XIII., April 14, 1580.'^* These men soon became 
 known as " subseminaries ; " "conductors, companions, and 
 comforters of priests ;" " lay brothers ;" out of whom the 
 Jesuits were accused of getting " either all or most part of 
 their riches," before turning them into their officers and 
 solicitors; "inferior agents," "lay assistants," to "straggle 
 abroad and bring in game," whose business it was, "not to 
 argue, but to pry in corners, to get men to entertain con- 
 ference of the priest, or inveigle youths to fly over sea to the 
 seminaries. "•'^^ 
 
 The association, as we may imagine, consisted "of young 
 gentlemen of great zeal and forwardness in religion ;" men 
 of birth and property, without wives or oflS.ce, and thus free 
 to devote themselves to the cause. They entered on their 
 dangerous and difficult path with " extraordinary joy and 
 alacrity, every man ofi^ering himself, his person, his ability, 
 his friends, and whatever God had lent him besides." Gil- 
 bert was the first ; others were, Henry Vaux, Campion's old 
 pupil ; and Vaux's brother-in-law, Erooks ; Charles Arun- 
 del ; Charles Basset, great-grandson of 8ir Thomas More ; 
 Edward and Trancis Throgmorton ; William Brooksby ; 
 Richard and William Grifi'en ; Arthur Creswell ; Edward 
 Fitton ; Stephen Brinkly ; Gervase and Henry Pierrepoint ; 
 Nicholas Eoscarock ; Anthony Babington ; Chideock Titch- 
 bourne ; Charles Tilney ; Edward Abingdon ; Thomas Salis- 
 bury ; Jerome Bellamy ; William Tresham ; Thomas Fitz- 
 herbert ; John Stonor ; James Hall ; Richard Stanihurst, 
 
158 EBMTTND CAMPION. 
 
 another of Campion's pupils ; Godfrey Fuljambe, who after- 
 wards did very little credit to the society, and many others 
 whom Parsons will not name for fear of compromising them. 
 Aip.ong them must have been, at one time. Lord Oxford, 
 Lord Henry Howard, Mr. Southwell, Lord Paget, and 
 Thomas Pounde. It will be seen by the above list that the 
 young men not only belonged to the chief Catholic families 
 of the land, but that the society also furnished the principals 
 of many of the real or pretended plots of the last twenty 
 years of Elizabeth and the first few years of James I. So 
 difficult must it ever be to keep a secret organisation long 
 faithful to a purely religious and ecclesiastical purpose. 
 
 Equipped by this society, Parsons and Campion rode 
 forth ; the first accompanied by George Gilbert, the second 
 by Gervase Pierrepoiat. They agreed to meet to take leave 
 of each other at Hogsdon, at the house of a gentleman, — I 
 think, Sir William Catesby, — whose wife, a Throgmorton, 
 was a Catholic. He himself was not yet converted ; and for 
 this reason the true names of his guests were not told to him. 
 
 Just before the Jesuits left Ilogsdon, there came to them 
 in hot haste Thomas Pounde, who was a prisoner in the 
 Marshalsca, but who had found means to blind the gaoler to 
 his temporary absence. He told them that a meeting of the 
 associates, prisoners and others, had been held at the gaol 
 to discuss the means of counteracting the rumours which the 
 council was encouraging. 
 
 It was believed that the Jesuits had come into England 
 for political purposes. The story, said Pounde, would grow 
 during their absence from London, and would gain fresh 
 strength with every fresh report of the conversions which 
 they were about to make in the shires ; the council would 
 be exasperated, and if either of the fathers ever fell into its 
 hands, he would be guilefully put out of the way or openly 
 slaughtered, and then books would be published to deface 
 him, according to the usual fashion of the day ; hereby 
 well-meaning people would be deceived, and the Catholic 
 cause not a little slandered. But much of this, he went on 
 to declare, would be remedied if each of the fathers would 
 write a brief declaration of the true causes of his coming, and 
 would leave it, properly signed and sealed, with some sure 
 friends until the day he might be taken or put to death. 
 And then, if the enemy should falsely defame him, his friends 
 might pubKsh the declaration to justify his memory before 
 God and man. Hence Pounde begged both of them to write 
 their declarations, as if they were writing their last will. 
 
 The proposition seemed to proceed from zeal and mature 
 
HIS CHALLENGE. 159 
 
 discretion, and it was accepted by both the fathers. Parsons's 
 paper is still preserved among the Mss. at Stonyhurst. And 
 Campion, says Parsons, being a man of singular good-nature, 
 and easy to be persuaded to whatever religion or piety in- 
 clined towards, rose from the company, took a pen, and 
 seated himself at the end of the table, where in less than half 
 an hour he wrote the declaration which was soon to be so 
 famous. It was written without preparation, and in the 
 hurry of a journey ; yet it was so " pithy in substance and 
 style" that it was a triumph to one party and poison to the 
 other. It was addressed to the Lords of" the Council, before 
 whom he expected to be examined when he should be appre- 
 hended. It runs thus : 
 
 " Eight Honourable, — Whereas I have, out of Germany and 
 Boeme-land, being sent by my superiors, adventured myself into this 
 noble realm, my dear country, for the glory of God and benefit of 
 souls, I thought it like enough that, in this busy, watchful, and sus- 
 picious world, I should, either sooner or later, be interrupted and 
 stopped of my course. Wherefore, providing for all events, and 
 uncertain what may become of me when God shall haply deliver my 
 body into durance, I supposed it needful to put this writing in a 
 readiness, desiring your good lordships to give it the reading, and 
 to know my cause. This doing, I trust I shall ease you of some 
 labour, for that which otherwise you must have sought by practice 
 of wit, I do now lay into your hands by plain confession. And to 
 the intent this whole matter may be conceived in order, and so the 
 better both understood and remembered, I make thereof these nine 
 points or articles, directly, truly, and resolutely opening my full 
 enterprise and purpose. 
 
 1 . I confess that I am, albeit unworthy, a priest of the Catholic 
 Church, and, through the great mercies of God, vowed now these 
 eight years into the religion of the Society of Jesus ; and thereby 
 have taken upon me a special kind of warfare under the banner of 
 obedience, and eke resigned all my interest and possibility of wealth, 
 honour, pleasures, and other worldly felicities. 
 
 2. At the voice of our General Provost, which is to me a war- 
 rant from Heaven and an oracle of Christ, I took my voyage from 
 Prague to Kome, whore our said General Father is alway resident, 
 and from Rome to England, as I might and would have done joy- 
 ously into any part of Christendom or Heathenesse, had I been 
 thereto assigned. 
 
 3. My charge is, of free cost to preach the Gospel, to minister 
 the sacraments, to instruct the simple, to reform sinners, to confute 
 errors, and, in brief, to cry alarm spiritual against foul vice and 
 proud ignorance, wherewith many my dear countrymen are abused. 
 
 4. I never had mind, and am straitly forbid by our fathers 
 that sent me, to deal in any respects with matters of state or policy 
 
160 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 of this realm, as those things which appertain not to my vocation, 
 and from which I do gladly estrange and sequester my thoughts. 
 
 5. I ask, to the glory of God, with all humility, and under 
 your correction, three sorts of indiffei'ent and quiet audience. The 
 first before your honours ; wherein I shall discourse of religion so 
 far as it toucheth the commonwealth and your nobilities. The 
 second, whereof I make most account, before the doctors and 
 masters and chosen men of both universities ; wherein I undertake 
 to avow the faith of our Catholic Church by proofs invincible, 
 scriptures, councils, fathers, histories, natural and moral reason. 
 The third, before the lawyers spiritual and temporal ; wherein I will 
 justify the said faith by the common wisdom of the laws standing 
 yet in force and practice. 
 
 6. I would be loth to speak any thing that might sound of an 
 insolent brag or challenge,^'''' especially being now as a dead man to 
 this world, and willing to cast my head under every man's foot, and 
 to kiss the ground he treads upon. Yet have I such a courage in 
 advancing the majesty of Jesus my King, and such affiance in His 
 gracious favour, and such assurance in my quarrel, and my evidence 
 so impregnable, because I know perfectly that none of the Pi'otest- 
 ants, nor all the Protestants living, nor any sect of our adversaries 
 (howsoever they face men down in pulpits, and overrule us in their 
 kingdom of grammarians and unlearned ears), can maintain their 
 cause in disputation. I am to sue most humbly and instantly for 
 the combat with all and every of them, or with the principal that 
 may be found of them; protesting that in this trial the better fur- 
 nished they come, the better welcome they shall be to me. 
 
 7. And because it hath pleased God to enrich the queen my 
 sovereign lady with noble gifts of nature, learning, and princely 
 education, I do verily trust, that if her highness would vouchsafe 
 her royal person and good attention to such a conference as in the 
 second part of my fifth article I have mentioned and requested, or 
 to a few sermons which in her or your hearing I am to utter, such 
 a manifest and fair light, by good method and plain dealing, may 
 be cast upon those controversies, that possibly her zeal of truth and 
 love of her people shall incline her noble grace to disfavour some 
 proceedings hurtful to the realm, and procure towards us oppressed 
 more equity. 
 
 8. Moreover, I doubt not but you, her honourable council, 
 being of such wisdom and drift in cases most important, when you 
 shall have heard these questions of religion opened faithfully which 
 many times by our adversaries are huddled up and confounded, will 
 see upon what substantial grounds our Clatholic faith is builded, and 
 how feeble that side is which by sway of the time prevaileth a"-ainst 
 us ; and so at last, for your own souls, and for many thousand souls 
 that depend upon your government, will discountenance error when 
 it is bewrayed, and hearken to those which would spend the best 
 blood in their bodies for your salvation. Many innocent hands are 
 lifted up unto heaven for you daily and hourly, by those English 
 
HIS DIFFICULTIES. 161 
 
 students whose posterity shall uot die, which, beyond the seas, 
 gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are deter- 
 mined 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, 
 whose 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 while we have a man left to 
 ®"Joy your Tj'huru, or to be racked with your torments, or to be 
 consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enter- 
 prise is begun ; it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So the faith 
 was planted, so it must be restored. 
 
 9. If these my oifers be refused, and my endeavours can take 
 no place, and I, having run thousands of miles to do you good, shall 
 be rewarded with rigour, — I have no more to say, but to recom- 
 mend your case and mine to Almighty God, the Searcher of hearts, 
 who send us of His gi-ace, 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." 
 
 Campion wrote his triple challenge with more confidence 
 in his cause, and more trust in the good- will of his opponents, 
 than knowledge of their views. To reconcile the Catholicism 
 which he came to preach with the designs of the i:>oliticians 
 of the council was a task beyond all the powers of reason. 
 
 Elizabeth, had she been disposed to tolerate Catholics at all, 
 would only have tolerated them on condition of their abjuring 
 obedience to the Pope in matters which pertained to the state 
 or affected the queen. But Campion could not even deny the 
 validity of the Bull by which the queen was deprived of her 
 crown, and could only show that he and the Catholics were for 
 the present dispensed from attempting to enforce it, and from 
 the penalties of its non-observance. The question of political 
 reconciliation never advanced bej'ond this knot ; and till this 
 was untied, the very terms of his challenge seemed to absolve 
 his opponents from listening to his arguments upon the two re- 
 maining topics. His challenges to the politicians and to the 
 lawyers were calculated to thwart him in his attempts to get 
 a fair hearing from the divines, and were at first sight incon- 
 sistent with his profession of not meddling in matters of state. 
 When he came to pen his seventh article, he had already re- 
 cognised that the second part of his fifth article contained the 
 pith of his challenge, and that the rest was superfluous. But 
 there was no time to remodel it. He wrote it in haste, and 
 gave a copy to Pounde, keeping the original himself. He 
 desired that it might not be published till there was neces- 
 sity for so doing ; but he forgot to seal it, as had been pro- 
 posed, and as the more wary Parsons took care to do. Pounde, 
 
 M 
 
162 
 
 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 therefore, went back to prison and read it, and was thrown 
 by it into such a dithyrambic state of mind that, though he 
 had no intention of imparting it to his friends, still less of 
 giving them, or allowing them to take, copies of it, he was 
 resolved not to hide its light altogether under a bushel. 
 
 The Marshalsea in Southwark, which wiis one of the chief 
 prisons for recusant Catholics, was at that time infested by 
 two Puritan ministers, — Mr. Tripp and Mr. Crowley, — who, 
 under the protection of the authorities, visited the poorer 
 prisoners in their cells, and urged them to " abide some con- 
 ference" with them, " offering, like vain men, in angles, to 
 the uncharitable vexation of the poor prisoners," that dispu- 
 tation which they obstinately refused to abide in public. 
 Pounde then, bursting with the secret of Campion's challenge, 
 which he carried in his bosom, was inspired by it himself to 
 *make a public challenge to Tripp and Crowley, and to back 
 it up (Sept. 8) with petitions to the Council and to the Bishop 
 of London, in which he discovered the universal wish of the 
 Catholics for public conferences, and challenged a discussion, 
 four to four, or six to six, on each side, adding, that he knew 
 two or three who would challenge all the Protestant divines 
 together, and give them Beza and all his brethren in. " Let 
 this petition," he concluded, "made in the name of all the 
 Catholic fathers of our nation, remain for a perpetual record 
 and testimony, even to our enemies, of our indifferency and 
 their insufficiency. Muse not, my lords, at this challenge, 
 with a counterbufif, as the soldier saith, for it is made in the 
 further behalf (as it may be presumed) of a perpetual cor- 
 poration and succession of most learned fathers, as any with- 
 out comparison in the world ; with the aid of another good 
 race besides, which cannot die, who have all vowed, as cha- 
 rity hath inflamed them, either to win this realm again to 
 the Catholic faith, and that without any bloodshed except 
 their own, at God's permission, or else to die all upon the 
 pikes of your sharpest laws, and win heaven, asthej' hope, for 
 themselves." Much of this, it will be seen, is copied closely 
 from the eighth article of Campion's declaration. 
 
 Parsons had once before found that Campion could not be 
 safely intrusted to the custody of the young associates of the 
 Society, — a set of youths, as Bartoli writes, "santa invero e 
 degna d' ogni spirituale consolatione, ma per 1' eta e jjer lo con- 
 ceputo fervore, piii generosa che cauta,"'''" — for they were 
 in a state of excitement similar to that which animated the 
 first Crusaders. As gallant and enthusiastic as the conque- 
 rors of Jerusalem, they were quite as unable to understand or 
 to obey the rules of political wisdom and prudence. Every 
 
THOMAS POUNDE. 163 
 
 earthly consideration seemed to them a presumptuous inter- 
 ference of earth with Heaven. Thus the same zeal which 
 gave them their energies hurried them forward into the 
 paths where those energies would be more mischievous than 
 useful. Instead of letting Heaven dictate their end, and 
 leaving earthly prudence to preside over their choice of the 
 earthly means to their heavenly end, they obliterated all dis- 
 tinctions, and considered ends and means to lie alike within 
 the supernatural sphere ; and they were convinced that for 
 every fresh danger that threatened them God had a new 
 miracle in store to deliver them. 
 
 Pounde's reckless enthusiasm in challenging the minis- 
 ters, and petitioning the Bishop and Council, had the effect 
 of convincing the queen's ministers that a conspiracy was on 
 foot. Pounde soon felt the consequences. The Bishop of Lon- 
 don removed him (Sept. 18) from his companions in the Mar- 
 shalsea, and sent him, heavily ironed, to solitary confinement 
 in the then half-ruined episcopal castle at Bishop's Stortford. 
 Pounde therefore, on the eve of his departure, either delivered 
 Campion's paper to the keeping of some one even less reten- 
 tive of a secret than himself, or else communicated it through 
 an unwillingness to be checkmated by the Bishop of London, 
 whose conduct he regarded as a mere dodge to stop all men- 
 tion of a public discussion, or from a conviction that Cam- 
 pion's challenge was much more calculated to embarrass the 
 council than his own had proved to be. Actuated by one of 
 these motives, Pounde communicated the paper to his neigh- 
 bour Tichboume,^^'^ Tichbourne to WUliam Horde, and 
 'Horde to several others, and especially to Elizabeth Sanders, 
 a nun, sister to Dr. Sanders, who was at this time with the 
 Italian expedition in Ireland. Upon all these people John 
 Watson, the Bishop of Winchester, laid hands on the 18th 
 of November or thereabouts, committed their bodies to the 
 house of correction at Winchester, confiscated their " lewd 
 and forbidden books," and sent up to the Lords of the Coun- 
 cil a copy of the " seditious supplication, protestation, or 
 challenge," which, he added, seemed " very plausible" to the 
 people in his part of England. '^9 About the same time, ano- 
 ther copy was discovered and sent up to the council by the 
 Sheriff of WUts. And from this time it became well known 
 all over England, and many persons got into trouble for 
 circulating copies of it.^'" 
 
 Pounde was right in the importance he attached to public 
 disputation. It soon became one of the chief weapons of the 
 Jesuits, whose unexampled dexterity in wielding it is thus 
 described by a Protestant traveller, Sir Edwin Sandys :^^^ 
 
164 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 " As for the controversies themselves, the main matter of all 
 other, therein their industry is at this day incomparable ; having so 
 altered the tenm-es of them, refined the states, subtilised the distinc- 
 tions, sharpened their own proofs, devised answers, . . . . that in 
 affiance of this furniture, and of their promptness of speech and wit, 
 which by continual exercise they aspire to perfect, they dare enter 
 into combat even with the best of their oppugners ; and will not doubt 
 but either to entangle him so in the snares of their own quirks, or 
 at leastwise so to avoid and put off his blows with the manifold 
 wards of their multiplied distinctions, that an ordinary auditor shall 
 never conceive them to be vanquished, and a favourable shall report 
 them vanquishers. 
 
 Whei'eupon they now, to be quit with their adversaries, and 
 by the very same act to draw away the multitude, cry mainly in all 
 places for trial by disputations. This Canqjion the Jesuit did many 
 years since with us. This, as I passed through Zurich, did the Car- 
 dinal Andrea of Constance and his Jesuits with their ministers 
 
 Not long before, the same was done at Geneva ; and very lately the 
 Capuchins renewed the challenge. In which parts I observed this 
 discreet valour on both sides, that as the Piomanists offer to dispute 
 in the adversaries' own cities, which the}' know their magistrates will 
 never accord, so the ministers, in supply thereof, offer to go to them 
 to their cities, and that now is as much disliked on the other part; 
 each side being content that the fire should be kindled rather in his 
 enemies' house than in his own." 
 
 The council soon knew of Campion's departure from Lon- 
 don, and sent pursuivants into most of the shires of England 
 with authority to apprehend him and Parsons wherever they 
 could find them. But the Jesuits were diligently warned by 
 the Catholics, and easily avoided their pursuers. 
 
 " They lost their labour" (says Parsons), " and we had three or 
 four months free to follow our business, in which period, by the help 
 and direction of the young gentlemen that went with us, we passed 
 through the most part of the shires of England, preaching and ad- 
 ministering the sacraments in almost every gentleman's and noble- 
 man's house that we passed by, whether he was Catholic or not, 
 provided he had any Catholics in his house to hear us. 
 
 We entered, for the most part, as acquaintance or kinsfolk of 
 some person that lived within the house, and when that failed us, as 
 passengers or friends of some gentleman that accompanied us ; and 
 after ordinary salutation.s, we had our lodgings, by prorurement of 
 the Catholics, within the house, in some part retired from the rest, 
 where, putting ourselves in priests' apparel and furniture, — which we 
 always carried with us, — we had secret conference with the Catholics 
 that were there, or such of them as might conveniently come, whom 
 we ever caused to be ready for that night late to prepare themselves 
 for the sacrament of confession; and the next morning, very early, we 
 had Mass, and the Blessed Sacrament ready for such as would com- 
 
PRISONS FOR RECUSANTS. 165 
 
 muuicate, and after that au exhortation ; and then we made our- 
 selves ready to depart again. And this was the manner of proceed- 
 ing when we stayed least ; but when there was longer and more 
 liberal stay, then these exercises were more frequent." 
 
 The government hud hitherto contented itself with issu- 
 ing proclamations, — a second was published against harbour- 
 ing Jesuits on the 3d of July, — and with searching for the 
 missionaries. But when Pounde's challenge put it upon the 
 false scent of a plot to stir up rebellion by promulgating the 
 Pope's " Bulls and messages," and especially when this false 
 opinion was corroborated by the dispersioij of Camjoion's 
 challenge, very different measures seemed necessary. When 
 we consider the state of England and Ireland at the time, 
 these fears do not seem utterly unreasonable. The measures 
 which they prompted were both energetic and comprehensive. 
 They amounted to a plan for putting all the Catholic gentry 
 of England under surveillance, and for confining all the most 
 energetic of them either to prison or to very narrow limits. 
 First, certain castles in various parts of England were selected 
 for the custody of the recusants, and a keeper and two super- 
 intendents appointed for each. Wisbeach Castle, which had 
 been already selected in 1572, on account of its solitary site, 
 as a place where the chief recusants should be imprisoned and 
 made " to live at their own charges,"''- was now made the 
 prison for such of " the capital doctors and priests" as were 
 found " busier in matters of state than was meet for the quiet 
 of the realm."''^ Sir Nicholas Bacon was appointed keeper; 
 and Michell and Carleton, the latter a sour Puritan, were to 
 be the resident superintendents.^''^ Banbury was apportioned 
 for the recusants of Warwick, Oxford, and Northampton ; 
 Tremingham for those of Norfolk and Suffolk ; Kimbolton 
 for those of Huntingdon, Buckingham, and Bedford ; Port- 
 chester for those of Surrey, Hants, and Sussex ; Devizes 
 for those of Dorset, Wilts, and Somerset ; Melbourne for 
 Stafford, Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, and Nottingham ; Ilalton, 
 in Cheshire, for Lancashire, Cheshire, and North Wales ; 
 Wigmore, in Montgomcrj'shire, for Hereford, Monmouth, 
 Worcester, and South Wales. Those proposed for the north 
 were, Middleham, Knaresborough, Durham, and Barnard 
 Castle. The instructions to the keeper of Wisbeach Castle'''-^ 
 will serve as a specimen of the rest. Besides the usual rules 
 of close confinement, a minister was to be appointed, to have 
 "his charge of diet and other necessaries by the contributions 
 of the recusants ;" and the keeper was to see " that due exer- 
 cise of common prayer be observed every day, and preaching 
 twice in the week at least." At this the prisoners were to be 
 
166 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 present, or, if they refused, they were to he fined at the plea- 
 sure of the Bishop of Ely. Each prisoner, moreover, was to 
 be, " twice in the week at least, conferred with, as well by the 
 minister as by other learned men sent by the bishop, or that 
 voluntarily of themselves should come for so charitable a 
 work." But the prisoners were to have no conference with 
 each other but at meal- time, and then there was to be " no 
 speech of any matters in controversy." Those who conferred 
 with the minister were to have more liberty than those who 
 did not. But none were to be allowed to have any books 
 except a Bible, the works of the Fathers, and books licensed 
 by the minister. 
 
 To this place, to this discipline, the government banished 
 Watson, the Bishop of Lincoln ; Feckenham, the Abbot of 
 Westminster; and other dignitaries, — who vip to this time 
 had been allowed a certain amount of liberty. 
 
 " In their old age" (writes a priest from London to Father Agaz- 
 zari, rector of the English College at Eome''^) " they are sent to 
 Wisbeach Castle, a most unhealthy place, under the orders of a sour 
 Puritan. It is certain they cannot live long there. Over and above 
 the miseries of imprisonment, they arc shamefully treated by their 
 keeper. All hooks but a single Bihle are taken from them, nor are 
 they allowed any papers of their own writings, or notes. Conceited 
 ministers are let in upon them without warning, with whom they 
 must argue without preparation, or endure their insults. The most 
 false and ridiculous libels upon them are published, and even printed, 
 in order to lessen the consideration in which they are held. Last 
 month'''' an immodest woman was shut up without their knowledge 
 in one of their chambers, to give a handle for a false charge of in- 
 continence. No access is allowed, and we are obliged to use tricks 
 to communicate with them. When any one wants to give them an 
 alms, he walks in the neighbouring fields the day before, and cries 
 out as if he was looking for game. At this sign, one of them looks 
 out of window, and learns by signal that there is something for the 
 prisoners. The next night, when every body is asleep, the sports- 
 man cautiously creeps up to the wall, and one of the prisoners lets 
 down a basket from the window whence the sign was given, and 
 draws up what is put into it. The same plan is generally adopted 
 for the other prisons ; but the variety of places requires a variety 
 of methods, and the zeal, charity, and bravery of the Catholics is 
 greatly conspicuous in designing and accomplishing these dangerous 
 services." 
 
 After the coast had been somewhat cleared by confining 
 the "capital doctors and priests" in Wisbeach, and the other 
 recusants, already committed, in the other castles, the coun- 
 cil undertook a general raid against all the Catholics of Eng- 
 land. The chief of them were sent for to London, to answer 
 
PERSECUTION. 167 
 
 before the council. Letters were directed to the Bishops to 
 summon and commit those who were not summoned to Lon- 
 don ; but they were told to be careful not to permit them " to 
 come many together at a time," for fear they should know 
 their strength.'''* Those who were summoned to London had 
 first to give bonds for their appearance, and were tlien com- 
 mitted, some as prisoners to their own houses, some to those 
 of their Protestant friends, and others to the castles prepared 
 for them. 
 
 Father Parsons quotes a long string of names of persons 
 committed. The following were the chief of them. The 
 Earl of Southampton, Lord Herbert, Lord Compton, Lord 
 Paget, Sir Thomas Fitzherbert, Sir John Arundell, Sir Alex- 
 ander Culpeper, Sir John Southworth, Sir Nicholas Poyntz, 
 Sir Thomas Gerard, Sir George Peckham, John Talbot of 
 Grafton, William and Richard Shelly, Ralph Sheldon, 
 Thomas and Francis Throgmorton, John and Edward Gage, 
 Nicholas Thunbleby, William and Robert Tirwhit, Richard 
 Culpeper, John Walker, Mr. Towneley, Mr. Guilford, Robert 
 Price, Peter Titchbourne, Erasmus Wolseley, John Gilford, 
 Brian Fowler, Thomas Cross. ^''■' Both of these events, the pro- 
 clamation and the persecution, were described by Dr. Allen, 
 who wrote as follows to the Cardinal of Como from Rheims, 
 Sept. 12 (N.S.), 1580 :'«» 
 
 " Most illustrious and reverend Lord Cardinal, — Not long 
 ago I sent your eminence the late proclamation of the Queen of Eng- 
 land against the Catholics of her dominions ; not, indeed, professedly 
 against their religion, but against their suspected treason and con- 
 spiracy with the refugees. In it she tells her subjects, that the 
 Pope and the King of Spain had been long and earnestly entreated 
 by her enemies and the refugees to make war against her ; she 
 boasts that she is quite prepared for it, and that she fears no foreign 
 forces ; she commands her subjects to stand fast in their duty and 
 fidelity ; and she says she fears neither rebels within, nor the land 
 or sea forces made ready without. Jloreover, she declares that iu 
 future she means to deal more sharply than her habit or her nature 
 inclines her with those of her subjects who are S'uilty of any conspi- 
 racy with the refugee rebels. Soon after the publication of this edict, 
 by crier, through the whole realm, she orders that in each county 
 all the more powerful and notable Catholics should be apprehended, 
 and committed either to prison or to the custody of heretics. This 
 was immediately, almost suddenly, put in execution; at the same 
 time the strictest search was made for priests, particularly for two 
 lawyers whom we sent over this summer, and for the Jesuits, But 
 the Catholics take such pains, and use such care in concealing them, 
 that up to this time very few have fallen into the enemies' hands. 
 They have only taken two priests of Eheims and one of Rome. 
 
168 
 
 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 The number of gentlemen now in prison is so great that they 
 are obliged to remove the old prisoners for religion — the Bishop of 
 Lincoln and several other ecclesiastics — to other strong j)laces far 
 distant from the city, to raaiie room for the new prisoners. Tlie 
 same thing had already been done at York. But many think that 
 the reason of this was, that the priests kept prisoners iu tliose cities 
 were converting all the chief citizens and many of the nobility, and 
 persuading them by their life and example to persevere. Those 
 gentlemen are treated most severely who are known to have sons 
 in the seminary of Rome or of Eheims. This persecution is heavier, 
 and extends to more persons, than any of those before it. For be- 
 fore this they never committed any of the nobility ; who, however, 
 are not in prison, but only given into the custody of heretics. 
 
 It is supposed that they do all this to prevent any Catholics 
 joining the enemy, if there is to be any ; for they are horribly afraid 
 of v.'hat is to be. And perhaps they have made quite sure of those 
 whom they have shut up, whatever turns up. But as for the rest, 
 who esca]ie the present danger by dissimulation or other shifts, they 
 are rather provoked and irritated to make some attempt, when God 
 gives opportunity, not only to deliver their own souls, but their 
 friends' also, who are so unhandsomely imprisoned. 
 
 And certainly the whole Catholic population, afflicted in soul 
 and body b^' this disgraceful tyranny of one woman, beseeches God 
 with unspeakable yearnings to grant some redemption. For this 
 we exiles cry out to our most holy Father, the highest minister of 
 justice upon earth ; for this the prisoners groan to him ; for this 
 innumerable afflicted souls, his own sheep, stretch forth their 
 hands to him. Not that we doubt that the well-known compas- 
 sion of the most holy Gregory can do more than it does ; or that 
 he, our only father upon earth, can wish us better or greater things 
 than he does ; but that we may at least somewhat relieve our most 
 just sorrow for our people by communicating our calamities to our 
 most holy Lord and loving Father, and to your kindness. Certainly, 
 all thinking men prognosticate that this new cruelty will do hurt to 
 our enemies. Whether they intend to do more than imprison is as 
 yet uncertain ; further measures are expected after the meeting of 
 Parliament, which is supposed to be soon about to take place. Our 
 religion is only exalted above its condemners by this persecution, 
 and by the admirable constancy which it calls forth. And it is 
 made clear to all, that the question now is not about religion, — of 
 which our enemies have not a bit, — but about the stability of the 
 empire, and about worldly prosperity. May the Lord Jesus long 
 preserve your lordship to be our great defence ! 
 
 Your Eminence's most humble servant in the Lord, 
 
 William Allen. 
 
 Rheims, 12 Sept. 1.580. 
 
 P.S. — I have sent you a page of the English Calendar, that 
 you may see how solemnly the festival of Elizabeth's birthday is 
 
TREASONABLE COMPLICATIONS. 169 
 
 kept on the 7tli of September, so aa totally to eclipse that of the 
 Blessed Virgin on the 8th, which is omitted. See the pride of the 
 queen, who is not content with the festival of her coronation, but 
 must have her birthday kept besides." 
 
 Neither Parsons nor Campion, who were on the spot, 
 describe this persecution with so much bitterness as Dr. 
 Allen at Rheims. This we may attribute partly to a gene- 
 rosity which feels more pain at seeing others suffer than at 
 suffering ; partly to a consciousness, which Allen could not 
 but have felt, that the persecution was in some measure to 
 be attributed to himself and the foreign meddlers who were 
 perpetually interfering in the political affairs of England, 
 with the object of restoring reKgion there. In spite of the 
 laboured attempt of Parsons to prove the contrary, it is 
 abundantly clear that Allen was deeply implicated in the 
 plots of the day. The last part of the foregoing letter would 
 have been treasonable in the eyes of all lawyers, especially 
 when we connect his passionate appeal to the Pope with the 
 Papal expedition against Elizabeth which at the very time 
 had descended upon the coast of Ireland, and about which 
 the nuncio at Paris had just sent off this news to Pome : 
 " The Earl of Desmond, and Dr. Nicholas Sanders, and all 
 the Catholic army, are still encamped in their old place — a 
 strong position. They were, at the date of my advice, wait- 
 ing for foreign aid, without which they can do little or 
 nothing. But we heard yesterday by letter and authentic 
 report that five great ships full of soldiers and munitions of 
 war — sent, it said, by the Holy See — reached in safety some 
 port in Ireland a few days ago."^^^ 
 
 The Jesuits were satisfied with the fruits of this first 
 expedition. They found the country people more inclined 
 to be Catholics than the inhabitants of the towns: — "the 
 infection of ministers bore most rule with artisans and mer- 
 chants :" — but the best part of the nobility and gentry, who 
 dwelt on their estates, together with their tenants and de- 
 pendents, remembered the virtuous life and just proceeding 
 of those of the ancient religion, especially when they saw 
 and felt the present contrast. It was a comfortable thing, 
 says Parsons, to see the universal inclination of so infinite a 
 people to the Catholic religion ; but an incredible sorrow to 
 witness the rents and breaches, the wrenches and disjointures, 
 which the preaching of new doctrines for twenty years had 
 made in the consciences and belief of that good people, which 
 had lived so many ages in one faith. The breach between the 
 Protestants and Puritans was already of many years' date. 
 But this year Puritanism had given birth to a new de- 
 
170 
 
 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 velopment, that of the " Family of Love," which had already 
 gained several of the queen's household, and especially of 
 her guard, and against which she published a proclama- 
 tion, dated Richmond, October 3, in this year. The peasant 
 mind had already begun to ferment. In May, Hammond, 
 the plough-wright of liethersett, had suffered the loss of his 
 ears for blaspheming the queen and council, and was after- 
 wards burnt in the castle-ditch at Norwich, for saying that 
 the New Testament was a fable ; that Christ's blood is not 
 necessary for salvation ; that He neither rose again nor 
 ascended into heaven ; that there is no Holy Ghost ; and 
 that there are no sacraments. Parsons maintains that this 
 denial of all Christianity was a logical development of the 
 principle which renounced the authority of tradition to de- 
 termine the canon of Scripture and explain its meaning ; 
 rejected aU merit in order to amplify Grod's mercy ; denied 
 Christ's descent into hell, and the assistance of general 
 councils by the Holy Ghost ; and prepared the way for re- 
 jecting all the sacraments by rejecting five of them. 
 
 But where the fermentation did not drive men into these 
 sloughs, it led them to repair to the Jesuits to be resolved of 
 their doubts and scruples. For, beside the open and obsti- 
 nate heretics, there were many who were only verging to 
 that state, unable by themselves to solve the arguments of 
 the minister, but easily kept right by the priest. Parsons 
 gives several examples. Anne Dimocke, a maid of honour 
 to the queen, a great follower of the court preachers, had 
 learnt from them that there was no hell, "but only a cer- 
 tain remorse of conscience for him that did evil, which was 
 to be understood for hell, and that all the rest were but bug- 
 bears to fright children." To solve this doubt, she applied 
 to Father Parsons, under whose instructions she at once 
 became Catholic, and afterwards left the court and the world, 
 and, with one of Lord Vaux's daughters, followed Parsons to 
 Rouen, where she entered a convent. 
 
 Sir Robert Dimocke was another great hearer of sermons, 
 and had been led into such a maze by them, that he had come 
 to doubt whether there was any God. His friends therefore 
 procured a secret interview between him and Father Parsons ; 
 and the first point which had to be discussed between them 
 was the existence of God. Parsons, during a ride of a few 
 hours, convinced him on this point ; but as Sir Robert was 
 still a Protestant, the father durst not trust himself with 
 him in any town or house. However, Dimocke afterwards 
 sent for Campion, who finished his conversion, and took him 
 into the Church. 
 
THE ENGLISH CATHOLICS. 171 
 
 These examples Parsons gives to show how those farthest 
 gone out of order were reduced ; how those who were going 
 were stayed ; how doubters were resolved ; how the cokl and 
 negligent were warmed ; how those whose good desires were 
 paralysed by fear were put in heart ; and how those who were 
 good were confirmed. 
 
 The venture prospered, — to use the mercantile phraseo- 
 logy they afl'ected in order to conceal their meaning from 
 the uninitiated; — though many slighted their wares, and 
 many defamed them, there were no few buyers and more 
 admirers. Among the Protestants there was vast talk about 
 the Jesuits, who were as much befabled as mythological 
 monsters. There were tales, no more consistent than dreams, 
 current about their origin, their life, their rule, morals, 
 doctrine, designs, and actions. Almost all agreed, however, 
 that they were spies of the Pope, or agents of treason and 
 sedition. 
 
 The general tenor of the conduct of the Catholics who 
 received the Jesuits gladly may be learned from the letter 
 to Father Agazzari already quoted: "When a priest comes 
 to their houses, they iirst 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. Then they ask how long he wiU. remain with 
 them, and pray him to stop as long as he may. If he says he 
 must go on the morrow, as he usually does, — for it is dan- 
 gerous to stay longer, — 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 departs, and is conducted on his 
 journey by one of the young gentlemen." 
 
 The hiding holes had become known, by means of search- 
 ers and false brethren, by the middle of 1581 ; so that even 
 thus early the Catholics were compelled, when there was a 
 night alarm, to betake themselves to woods and thickets, to 
 ditches and holes. " Sometimes when we are sitting mer- 
 rily at table, conversing familiarly on matters of faith and 
 devotion (for our talk is generally of such things), there 
 comes a hurried knock at the door, like that of a pursuivant ; 
 all start up and listen, — like deer when they hear the hunts- 
 men ; we leave our food, and commend ourselves to God in 
 a brief ejaculation ; nor is word or soimd heard till the ser- 
 vants come to say what the matter is. If it is nothing, we 
 laugh at our fright." 
 
 " No one is to be foimd in, these parts who complains of 
 the length of services : if a Mass does not last nearly an hour, 
 
172 
 
 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 many are discontented. If six, eight, or more Masses are 
 said in the same place, and on the same day (as often happens 
 when there is a meeting of priests), the same congregation 
 will assist at all. When they can get priests, they confess 
 every week. Quarrels are scarce known amongst them. Dis- 
 putes are almost always left to the arbitration of the priest. 
 They do not willingly intermarry with heretics, nor will they 
 pray with them, nor do they like to have any dealings with 
 them. 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 Henry's days, the father of 
 this Elizabeth, the whole kingdom, with aU 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 the faith before the judge, and refuse to make the 
 slightest concession even at the threat of death." 
 
 In October, when Michaelmas term began. Campion and 
 Parsons returned towards London to meet and confer once 
 more, and to compare the results of their labours. The two 
 letters in which they give an account of their doings will 
 fitly conclude this chapter. 
 
 " The heat of the iiersecution now rasfina; ajjainst Catholics 
 throughout the whole realm is most fiery, such as has never been 
 heard of siuce the conversion of England. Gentle and simple, men 
 and women, are being every where haled to prison, even children 
 are being put into irons ; they are despoiled of their goods, shut 
 out from the light of day, and publicly held up to the contempt of 
 the people in proclamations, sermons, and conferences, as traitors 
 and rebels. It is supposed that the reasons of this great persecution 
 are, first, the ill-success of the English in Ireland ; next, the demon- 
 stration made last summer against England by the Spanish fleet ; 
 and lastly, the coming of the Jesuits into the island, and the great 
 number of conversions made by them, wdiich has so astonished the 
 heretics that they know not what to do or say. They are most 
 troubled about a certain protestation of their faith and religion, and 
 of the reasons of their coming into England, which the Jesuits wrote 
 and signed with their names, and i)laced in the hands of a friend, for 
 fear that, if they were cast into prison, the heretics might pretend, as 
 is their usual custom, that they had recanted. This pi-otestation was 
 communicated by the man who had charge of it to another, and by 
 him to a third, and it soon came into the hands of an immense 
 number, and even of the queen's councillors. 
 
 We hear that one mouth since more than fifty thousand names of 
 persons who refused to go to the heretical churches were reported. 
 Many more, I fancy, have been discovered since. 
 
 The heretics, when they throw the Catholics into prison, only 
 
parsons' letter. 173 
 
 ask them one thing, — to come to their churches, and to hear sermoa 
 and service. It was even lately proposed to certain noblemen to 
 come, if it were only once a year, to church, making, if they 
 pleased, a previous protestation that they came not to approve of 
 their religion or doctrines, but only to show an outward obedience 
 to the queen ; and yet all most constantly refused. A certain noble 
 lady was offered her choice, either to stay in prison, or simply to 
 walk through the church without stopping there, or exhibiting any 
 signs of respect ; but she declared that she never would. A boy, 
 of, I believe, twelve years, who had been cheated by his friends 
 into walking to church before a bride (as the custom here is), and 
 had been afterwards blamed by his companions, was perfectly in- 
 consolable till he found me a few days after, when he threw him- 
 self down at my feet, and confessed his sin. A thousand similar 
 instances might be given. 
 
 We, although all conversation with us is forbidden by procla- 
 mation, are yet most earnestly invited everywhere ; many take long 
 journeys only to speak to us, and put themselves and their for- 
 tunes entirely in our hands. It is therefore absolutely necessary that 
 more of our Society should be sent, if possible — not fewer than five : 
 one Spaniard, one Italian, and three Englishmen, who must be very 
 learned men, on account of the many entangled cases of conscience, 
 which arise from no one here having ample faculties, and from the 
 difficulty of consulting the Holy See, — which is treason. 
 
 There is immense want of a Bishop to consecrate for us the 
 holy oils for baptism and extreme unction, for want of which we 
 are brought to the greatest straits ; and unless his Holiness makes 
 haste to help us in this matter, we shall be soon at our wits' end. 
 
 The adversaries are very mad that by no cruelty can they 
 move a single Catholic from his resolution, no, not even a little 
 girl. A young lady of sixteen was questioned by the sham Bishop 
 of London about the Pope, and answered him with courage, and 
 even made fun of him in public, and so was ordered to be carried 
 to the public prison for prostitutes.'*" On the way she cried out 
 that she was sent to that place for her religion, and not for im- 
 modesty. 
 
 A certain English gentleman - pirate lately returned with a 
 booty of more than two millions, taken in the West Indies. The 
 Spanish ambassador reclaimed the spoil in the king's name ; but 
 the queen gave the shuffling answer, that the King of Spain had 
 given harbour to the Pope's ships on their passage to Ireland. She 
 asked, moreover, why the Pope, without being harmed, attacked her 
 kingdom in this way. He answered, that he rather wondered that 
 the Pope did not attempt to do more against her, who had treated 
 him so abominably, not only in refusing him all his ecclesiastical 
 rights, which from the most ancient times were allowed to the 
 Holy See by the kings of England, but also by libels, sermons, 
 lewd pictures, and many other ways, by which his authority was 
 defamed and brought into contempt. He said more to the same 
 
174 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 effect, and the queen was silent then ; but afterwards said to a noble- 
 man that the Pope had written to her that he was prepared to 
 approve the whole Protestant service, if she would restore him his 
 title of supreme head of the Church. But in these parts there is 
 often talk of this kind of pretended letters. 
 
 I keep myself safe here in London by frequent change of 
 place ; I never remain more than two days in one spot, because 
 of the strict searclies made for me. I am quite overwhelmed with 
 business, to which I am obliged to devote the whole day, from 
 early moi-ning till midnight, after I have said INIass and office, and 
 preached, sometimes twice in the day. Therefore I hope for rein- 
 forcements, both from our Society and from the Pope's college. 
 
 All Catholics here lift up their hands and thank God and his 
 Holiness for founding such a college at E,ome, beyond all their 
 hopes ; and they beseech his Holiness, by the bowels of the mercy 
 of our Saviour, to defend the college, and to enlarge it for the needs 
 of the present time. 
 
 Two days ago a priest called Clifton was led in chains through 
 the streets, and he walked with so cheerful a countenance that the 
 people wondered. When he saw this, he began to laugh heartily, 
 at which the folks were still more struck, and asked him why he was 
 the only one to laugh at his own sad case, for which every body else 
 pitied him. He answered, it was because he was the gainer in the 
 business. In the beginning of this persecution, thei'e were some 
 people in a certain county who were frightened, and promised to go 
 to the Protestant church ; but their wives stood out against them, 
 and threatened to leave them if they, for human respect, left off their 
 obedience to God and the Church. Many like things have taken 
 place among boys, who for this cause have separated themselves 
 from their parents. "^*^ 
 
 Campion's letter describes the passages of his career since 
 he last wrote from St. Omers. The events to which the first 
 paragraph refers have already been related ; but it will do no 
 harm to repeat them in his own words. The rest refers to 
 his experience during his first journey through England. 
 
 " Having now passed, by God's great mercy, five months in 
 these places, I thought it good to give you intelligence by my letters 
 of the present state of things* here, and what we may of likelihood 
 look for to come ; for I am sure, both for the common care of us 
 all, and special love to me, you long to know what I do, what hope 
 I have, how I proceed. Of other things that fell before, I wrote 
 from St. Omers ; what has sithence happened, now I will briefly 
 recount unto you. It fell out, as I construe it, by God's special 
 providence, that, tarrying for wind four days together, I should at 
 length take sea the fifth day in the evening, which was the feast of 
 St. John Baptist, my particular patron, to whom I had often before 
 commended my cause and journey. So we arrived safely at Dover 
 the morrow following, very early, my little man and I together. 
 
CAMPION S LETTER. 
 
 175 
 
 There we were at the very point to be taken, being by command- 
 ment brought before the mayor of the town, who conjectured many 
 things, — suspected us to be such as indeed we were, adversaries of 
 tlie new lierctical faction, favourers of the old fatliers' faith, that we 
 dissembled our names, had been abroad for religion, and returned 
 again to spread the same. One thing he specially urged, that I was 
 Dr. Allen ; which I denied, proffering my oath, if need were, for the 
 verifying thereof. At length he resolveth, and that it so should be, 
 he often repeated, that, with some to guard me, I should be sent 
 to the council. Neither can I tell who altered his determination, 
 saving God, to whom underhand I then humbly prayed, using St. 
 John's intercession also, by whose happy help I safely came so far. 
 Suddenly cometh forth an old man, — God give him grace for his 
 labour ! — ' Well,' quoth he, ' it is agreed you shall be dismissed ; 
 fare you well.' And so we to go apace. The which thing con- 
 sidered, and the like that daily befall unto me, I am verily persuaded 
 that one day I shall be apprehended, but that when it shall most per- 
 tain to God's glory, and not before. 
 
 Well, I came to London, and my good angel guided me into 
 the same house that had harboured Father Eobert [Parsons] before, 
 whither young gentlemen came to me on every hand. They em- 
 brace me, reapparel me, furnish me, weapon me, and convey me out 
 of the city. I ride about some piece of the country every day. The 
 harvest is wonderful great. On horseback I meditate my sermon ; 
 when I come to the house, I polish it. Then I talk with such as 
 come to speak with me, or hear their confessions. In the morning, 
 after Mass, I preach ; they hear with exceeding greediness, and very 
 often receive the sacrament, for the ministration whereof we are 
 ever well assisted by priests, whom we find in every place, whereby 
 both the people is well served, and we much eased in our charge. 
 The priests of our country themselves being most excellent for virtue 
 and learning, yet have raised so great an opinion of our Society, that 
 I dare scarcely touch the exceeding reverence all Catholics do unto 
 us. How much more is it requisite that such as hereafter are to be 
 sent for supply, whereof we have great need, be such as may answer 
 all men's expectation of them ! Specially let them be well trained 
 for the pulpit. 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 in mine own hands 
 ever. 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 
 of what punishment temporal soever, but by infinite sweetness make 
 all worldly pains, be they never so great, seem nothing. A con- 
 science pure, a courage invincible, zeal incredible, a work so worthy 
 
176 
 
 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 the number innumerable, of high degree, of mean calling, of the in- 
 ferior sort, of every age and sex. 
 
 Here, even amongst the Protestants themselves that are of 
 milder nature, it is turned into a proverb, that he must be a 
 Catholic that payeth faithfully what he oweth, insomuch that if any 
 C!atholic do injury, every body expostulateth with him as for an act 
 unworthy of men of that calling. To be short, heresy heareth ill of 
 all men ; neither is there any condition of people commonly counted 
 more vile and impure than their ministers, and we worthily have 
 indignation that fellows so unlearned, so evil, so derided, so base, 
 should in so desperate a quarrel overrule such a number of noble 
 wits as our realm hath. Threatening edicts come forth against us 
 daily; notwithstanding, by good heed, and the prayers of good men, 
 and, which is the chief of all, God's special gift, we have passed 
 safely through the most part of the island. I find many neglecting 
 their own security to have only care of my safety. 
 
 A certain matter fell out these days unlocked for. I had set 
 down in writing by several articles the causes of my coming in, and 
 made certain demands most reasonable. I professed myself to be 
 a priest of the Society; that I returned to enlarge the Catholic faith, 
 to teach the Gospel, to minister the sacraments, humbly asking 
 audience of the queen and the nobility of the realm, and profferino- 
 disputations to the adversaries. One copy of this writing I deter- 
 mined to keep with me, that if I should fall into the officers' hands, 
 it might go with me ; another copy I laid in a friend's hand, that 
 when myself with the other should be seized, another might there- 
 upon straight be dispersed. But my said friend kept it not close 
 long, but divulged it, and it was read gi-eedily ; whereat the adver- 
 saries were mad, answering out of the pulpit, that themselves certesse 
 would not refuse to dispute, but the queen's pleasure was not that 
 matters should be called in question being already established. In 
 the mean while they tear and sting us with their venomous tongues, 
 calling us seditious, hypocrites, yea heretics too, which is much 
 laughed at. The people hereupon is ours, and that error of spread- 
 ing abroad this writing hath much advanced the cause. If we be 
 commanded, and may have safe conduct, we will into the court. 
 
 But they mean nothing less, for they have filled all the old 
 prisons with Catholics, and now make new; and, in fine, plainly 
 affirm that it were better so make a few traitors away than that so 
 many souls should be lost. Of their martyrs they brag no more 
 now; for it is now come to pass, that for a few apostates and cob- 
 blers of theirs burnt, we have bishops, lords, knights, the old nobility, 
 patterns of learning, piety, and prudence, the flower of the youth, 
 noble matrons, and of the inferior sort innumerable, either martyred 
 at once, or by consuming prisonment dying daily. At the very 
 writing hereof, the persecution rages most cruelly. The house where 
 I am is sad ; no other talk but of death, flight, prison, or spoil of 
 their friends; nevertheless they proceed with courage. "V^ery many, 
 even at this present, being restored to the Church, new soldiers "-ive 
 
campion's letter. 177 
 
 up their names, 'wliile the old ofTer up their blood ; by which holy 
 hosts and oblations God will be pleased, and we shall no question 
 by Him overcome. 
 
 You see now, therefore, reverend father, how much need we 
 have of your prayers and sacrifices, and other heavenly help, to go 
 through with these things. There will never want in England men 
 that will have care of their own salvation, nor such as shall advance 
 other men's ; neither shall this Church here ever fail so long as 
 priests and pastors shall be found for their sheep, rage man or devil 
 never so much. But the rumour of present peril causeth me here 
 to make an end. Arise God, His enemies avoid. Fare you well. — 
 E.C."i84 
 
 N 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Parsons reached London in October 1580, some days before 
 Campion, for whom he tried to find a convenient lodging. 
 But the persecution had become so hot, and Campion espe- 
 cially was so curiously searched for, that it was thought unsafe 
 for him to come into the city. It was therefore signified to 
 him on the way that he should tarry somewhere in the neigh- 
 bourhood ; and he accordingly stayed at Wm. Griffith's 
 house near Uxbridge, fifteen miles from London, where 
 Parsons and other missionaries joined him. 
 
 At their first meeting they related to each other their 
 adventures ; they enumerated the shires, towns, and houses 
 they had Aisited, the successes they had gained, and the 
 perils they had escaped. Parsons told how he had gone into 
 Gloucester, Hereford, and Worcestershire, and so through 
 into Derbyshire ; how he had converted Lord Compton, 
 Thomas Tresham, William Catesby, and his uncle Dimock, 
 the champion of England : if he had been gifted with a 
 prophetic spmt, he might have told how he had planted at 
 Lapworth Park and other places round Stratford-on-Avou 
 the seeds of a political Popery that was destined in some 
 twenty-five years to bring forth the Gunpowder Plot. 
 Among his converts he may, if I may thus correct 
 Tieck's guess, have had to enumerate certain aldermen of 
 Stratford, John Wheeler and John Shakespeare, the father 
 of our ever-living poet. Campion, again, had to tell of 
 his travels in Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Northampton- 
 shire, and the conversions he had made there. It has 
 been supposed that Campion's family came originally from 
 Northamptonshii'e, where the name frequently occurs in the 
 early records. But though he was drawn thither by no family 
 tie, there is enough to explain his sojourn there by the fact 
 that some of the chief converts that he and Parsons had 
 gathered in had their estates in the county. Among these 
 were Sir Thomas Tresham of Rushton, Sir William Catesby 
 of Ashby Leger, and Lord Vaux of Ilarrowden. Parsons 
 found that Campion had reaped a wonderful harvest, and 
 that the other priests had gathered plentifully ; but they 
 
PLANS. 179 
 
 had been chiefly emplo}-ed iu watering what Campion had 
 sown. They then laid their plans for their next expedition, 
 and resolved that Parsons should for the present remain in 
 or near London, for it seemed that he was not as yet so 
 diligently sought for as Campion, who, both for tliis reason 
 and because his presence was most earnestly desired in 
 divers places, was sent into tlie country parts till the tem- 
 pest should be somewhat assuaged. 
 
 The Catholics of several shires had made suit to have 
 him among them, especially those of Lancashire and Norfolk, 
 whom he had been unable to visit on his former circuit. 
 Lancashire was chosen because it was further from London, 
 and generally better affected to the Catholic religion, and 
 because there was more hoj^e to find there commodity of 
 books to help him to answer the heretics, if they should 
 provoke him, as it was supposed they would shortly do, 
 seeing that his challenge was now in their hands, and known 
 over all England,'*' furnishing almost the only common topic 
 at ordinary tables and public meetings. And although no 
 answer had hitherto been published, it seemed imjiossible 
 but shortly there woidd be one : wherefore it was resolved 
 that Campion should depart again out of hand, and, with 
 all the secrecy he could, put himself within the compass of 
 Lancashire. 
 
 Moreover, it was moved to him, that as nothing needing 
 a reply had yet appeared, he should do well, whenever he 
 had leisure from preaching and instructing, to vmte some- 
 thing in Latin to the Universities, considering the love they 
 bore him, and the good opinion they had of his style in 
 times past : to this after some stickling he agreed, provided 
 the subject was given him. On this some proposed — " Con- 
 solation to Catholics in this time of persecution ;" others — 
 " Encouraging the weak to stand, and reprehending such as 
 of worldly fear did shrink from God ;" others — " To reprove , 
 this manner of the Protestants' proceedings contrary to their 
 own doctrine and protestations in time past ;" others finally, 
 that he should write of some points in controversy. 
 
 Campion, after meet pause, said that all these propositions 
 were good ; yet, if it was left to him, he should choose an 
 argument that no one had named — De liceresi desperatd — 
 "to show that heresy did now despair in England." All 
 present laughed at the paradox, and objected that heresy was 
 then most rampant, triumphant, and persecuting. "Even 
 for this cause," he replied, " seemeth this argument most fit 
 at this time, for that this manner of their cruel proceeding 
 by terror is the greatest argument that may be of their des- 
 
180 EDMUND CAjVIPION. 
 
 peration ; for if tliey had any confidence at all in the truth 
 of their cause, they ■would never proceed in this manner." 
 Whether all the company was ready to accept so broad a 
 principle, Fatlier Parsons does not inform us. 
 
 This notion of " heresy in despair," which was to have 
 been the title of his ^^-ork, is the key-note of his famous Ten 
 Reasons. His first theme is the " diffidence " which leads 
 men to pervert Scripture, and the "despair" which made 
 Manichees, Ebionites, Luther and Lutherans alter or maim 
 tlie Bible. This beginning of Campion's book shows, as 
 Parsons says, that it was his intention to handle the special 
 point of the despairing of heresy, if he had not been after- 
 wards di-awn to another argument by Charke's answer to his 
 challenge. For it was his fixed idea that heresy in England 
 was desperate, and that few or no men of judgment thought 
 in their consciences the doctrine which was commonly taught 
 and practised to be true or defensible, its absurdities being 
 so many and manifest : but that some of policy, some for 
 present government, others for ease, others for gain, honour, 
 and preferment, and all commonly for some temporal interest 
 or other, did stretch out a hand to hold it up for a time by 
 force and -^dolence. This idea may be found in several parts 
 of the Ten Reasons, especially in the conclusion. 
 
 After disposing of the point of Campion's writing, the 
 company proceeded to consult about sending some priests to 
 the Universities to help and du-ect such youths as God might 
 move to affect His religion, and to pass over sea to the 
 Seminaries. For this purpose they appointed !Mr. Hartley^'*'' 
 and Mr. Arthur- Pitts.'" 
 
 Next,'** considering that Scotland was nearly connected 
 with England, whence it had derived its corruption and ruin ; 
 and that the king was then but a child of fifteen, whom his 
 mother, most unjustly detained prisoner in England, desired 
 to have instructed in the Catholic faith, if it might be, — the 
 fathers thought themselves bound to send some priest into 
 Scotland to see what good might be done ; and they appointed 
 Ml'. William Watts, a man of good parts, and well known 
 in the North of England. He found matters in better 
 disposition than was expected ; several of the principal nobles 
 were well aftected to the Catholic religion, and the young 
 king was supposed to be much inclined to follow the precepts 
 and the counsel of his mother : moreover, there appeared 
 some probability of a speedy change in the governmeut, as 
 soon afterwards came to pass : for, a French nobleman, M. 
 d'Aubigny, descended fi'om the royal house of the Stuai'ts, 
 and catholicly bent in religion, was growing into high favour 
 
SCOTLAND. 181 
 
 with the king and nobles ; wliile IMorton, one of the con- 
 trary house of Donglas, and a great licretic, whom Ehzabeth 
 had advanced to the government of the kinji and reahn, was 
 waxnig daily more cruel and hateful to every one ; and it 
 seemed impossible that aftiiirs should remain much longer 
 in such a state. As indeed they did not ; for Morton was 
 condemned and beheaded in the spring of 1581, and M. 
 d'Aubigny was created Duke of Lennox, and governor of the 
 king. This seemed to open the door for the Catholic religion 
 to re-enter Scotland, and several learned men were sent into 
 that kingdom. 
 
 All this digression about Scotland is in reality out of 
 place in the life of Father Campion, whatever connexion the 
 intrigues here alluded to may have had \nih his death. M. 
 Teulet's collection of documents referring to the Queen of Scots 
 is full of proof that the Jesuits, and especially Father Holt, 
 were active in her cause, and earnestly intrigued with the 
 disaffected English nobles in her favour. But this does not 
 seem to have begun before Parsons, after his return to London 
 in November, obtained the protection of Mendoza the Sjianish 
 ambassador, and engaged \^•ith him in counterplots against 
 the French advances, and for saving the kingdoms of England 
 and Scotland from heresy. 
 
 Finally, Parsons tells us, he and Campion agreed to 'm'ite 
 an account to the General at Rome how matters had passed 
 with them, in what state they were for the present, and what 
 helps they had need of for the time to come. These were 
 chiefly two — the prayers of all good men, and a new supply 
 of other Jesuits of the English mission to come and share 
 their labours — (a request that was answered by the mission 
 of Fathers Holt and Hey wood). But the persecution and the 
 search beginning now to be so hot and vehement that it was 
 thought dangerous for them to stay any longer together, it 
 was resolved that Campion should presently depart, and 
 write his letters to the General upon the ■v^'ay. So, after 
 prayer and some exhortations, mutual confession, and renewal 
 of then' vows according to the custom of their Society, they 
 parted, and committing each one his fellow to the grace of 
 Almighty God, with the tenderness of heart which in such a 
 case and so dangerous a time may be imagined, when they 
 might hardly hope to see ever the one the other again, they 
 took their journey, the one towards Lancashu'e, and the 
 other to London. 
 
 In October, while this conference was being held in 
 Uxbridge, the Queen's Council published a new proclama- 
 tion, the third since the entrance of the Jesuits into England, 
 
182 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 for their discovery and apprehension. This caused so great 
 danger and molestation from constables, pursuivants, searchers, 
 and other catchpoles, that Campion found marvellous diffi- 
 culty to pass the counties and shires through which he was to 
 go : often he lighted upon the searchers, though not they 
 upon him, for his time was not yet come. Seeing himself 
 thus beset, he was forced to stay more upon the way than he 
 had purposed, and he took occasion of one of these enforced 
 times of leisure to give the General an account of his journey, 
 in the famous letter which I have printed at the end of the 
 last chapter. 
 
 At this point the biographer loses the invaluable aid of 
 the Ms. life of Campion by Father Parsons, and has to rely 
 on Bombiuus and Bartoli, two honest writers who had authen- 
 tic materials to work from, but whose ideal of history was of 
 a superficial and theatrical Idnd, their end being moral edifi- 
 cation rather than the instruction of the reason by the critical 
 appreciation of facts. There is also a kind of skeleton of 
 Parsons' intended continuation of his biography, which served 
 as a guide to Bombiuus ; and there are papers remaining in 
 the Kecord Office and the British Aluseum, which will serve 
 to correct the necessaril}' partial statements of the sufferers in 
 this great conflict. 
 
 Parsons then, ha^'ing sent Campion towards the north, 
 retired to London, where he found the persecution redoubled 
 in vigour. A fourth proclamation came out against the 
 Jesuits in November; for the Council imagined that all the 
 priests had returned to London, and therefore directed the 
 most minute search to be made m all Catholic houses for 
 them. For this cause Parsons, and probably other priests 
 likewise, were forced to seek lodging elsewhere. Parsons 
 found his sometimes in Bridewell, sometimes in the suburbs, 
 and sometimes even in one of the Queen's palaces. And 
 from this time the Catholics found their most secure asylums 
 in the houses of pursuivants, or other civil and ecclesiastical 
 officers whom they had in their pay. It was at this time also 
 that Parsons procured the assistance of Bernadine de Mendoza, 
 the Spanish ambassador, who took him vinder his special pro- 
 tection, and would walk with him as one of his own men, 
 while the Queen's officers were watching his house. By him 
 Parsons suffered himself to be altogether detached from the 
 French interest, which was suspected, on account of Castel- 
 nau's friendly dealing with the Protestants. And Parsons, 
 now completely " espaniolated," discussed -w-ith Mendoza the 
 means of saving England and Scotland from heresy or the 
 dominion of heretics. 
 
siieravin's capture. 183 
 
 In London Parsons incurred tlie greatest danger, and 
 some of his chief friends were captured; among these I must 
 especially mention Ralph Sherwin, who it will be remembered 
 accompanied the Jesuits from Rome. Parsons and he had 
 not met since they had parted at liheims, yet he would do 
 nothing without consulting Father Robert. His great anxiety 
 to practise obedience Avould have driven him into a religious 
 order, if it had not been for a still gi'eater desire to sacrifice 
 himself in the work of the English mission. " He met me," 
 writes Parsons, " the night that Bosgrave followed me home 
 from Hogsdon ; 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 mean time should occupy him- 
 self with preaching ; and it was while preaching in Mr. Ros- 
 carock's house that he was captured. I think he was the 
 first of our confraternity to be taken, though he was not the 
 first priest caught since oiar arrival, for Bosgrave and Hart 
 were already in prison." Sherwin was committed to thelMar- 
 shalsea, where he dealt with some members of the Family of 
 Love, and, like Campion, gave a general challenge to here- 
 tics to dispute with him. The gage was taken up by George 
 Cary, the Queen's cousin, and once the intended husband of 
 Mary Stuart, who ordered certain questions to be put to him ; 
 but Cary afterwards shrunk from argument, and sent Sher- 
 win to the Tower, where I find by the registers that he entered 
 December 4, 1580, together ^^^th Thomas Cottam, Robert 
 Johnson, and Luke Kirby, priests, and Henry Orton, 
 layman. '^^ These captures show that the persecution was 
 increasing in severity. To add to Parsons' perplexity, Adam 
 Scj^uier, the son-in-law of Aylmer bishop of London, whose 
 protection Gilbert had purchased for him, declared himself 
 unable to carry out his agreement because of the quarrels in 
 which it involved him -ndth the bishop, and the danger to 
 which it exposed him from the Council. It was at this 
 time that young Pascal, Sherwin's pupil, and the gentle- 
 man whose servant Campion feigned to be at Geneva, fell 
 away. He was apprehended, and committed to the Mar- 
 shalsea, while Sherwin was still there. His old master kept 
 him firm ; but when he lost Sherwin, he was tripped up by 
 his over-confidence. On his removal to the Tower, Decem- 
 ber 19 or 29, his resolution was almost gone. His intimacy 
 with the Pope had spoiled him; for Gregory XIU. had 
 maintained him for some years at Rome, and had admitted 
 
184 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 him to familiar intercourse. He was more courtier than 
 confessor : and on January 15, 1581, he was brought 
 handcuffed before the magistrates in Guildhall, where Sir 
 Owen Hopton, the lieutenant of the Tower, was sitting ; and 
 when Hopton asked the jailers with some anger how they 
 dared to treat with such indignity a gentleman who was 
 coming by his own freewill to do his duty as a good subject, 
 Pascal was half overcome ; but when Hopton asked him to 
 come and sit by his side — first, by parenthesis, performing 
 the insignificant act of signing a scrap of parchment — 
 Pascal not only signed it, but repeated the oath of supremacy 
 in a loud voice, and then skipped gaily up to the seat offered 
 him by Hopton's side. He looked roimd smiling and well 
 pleased ^vith himself, and saw that all the spectators and the 
 magistrates were smiling too, and were besides shrugging 
 their shoulders in contempt for the silly frightened hare. 
 The shrugs soon found tongue, and he became the butt of 
 many a jest, and, after the rising of the court, of still rougher 
 usage. He fled from London, and buried himself in some 
 corner of Kent. Sherwin mourned over him. He used to 
 say to him, " O John, John, little knowest thou what thou 
 shalt do before thou comest to it." He was ill received by 
 his new friends, and became exceedingly \vi-etched. Parsons 
 wrote to him, but he excused himself from answering the 
 letter ; and so he slips out of our narrative. 
 
 During this jaeriod Parsons busied himself in carrying out 
 a recommendation on which Campion had laid great stress at 
 Uxbridge — the establishment of a press for printing answers 
 to the works which would be sure to swarm against them. 
 He found his chief allies amongst the old Marian priests, of 
 whom he names Chambers, Blackwell, ISIam-ice, Tirwhit, 
 Jury, Norris, and Birkett. By their assistance, and the help 
 of the landlord's son, he procured from one Brooks,^'" the 
 o^vner of a large and very fair house called Greensti-eet (I 
 suppose the mansion so called at East Plam in Essex), which 
 Parsons tells us was about five miles from London, permission 
 for certain gentlemen to lodge there; thither he conveyed 
 the necessary materials, cliiefly by the assistance of his 
 young friend Mi-. Stephen Brinkley. There he had to en- 
 counter the parson and churchwardens, who urged on the 
 new comers their duty of going to church. Soon he was 
 frightened by the idea that he had furnished a clue to the 
 discovery of his press by an incautious pui'chase of paper. 
 Ever and anon he was told that he would certainly be caught, 
 that Campion was already taken, and that some of his con- 
 fraternity were being apprehended daily in London ; and in 
 
THE PRESS. 185 
 
 reality John Hart, Christopher Thompson, James Bosgrave, 
 and Thomas Briscoe, were apprehended and committed to the 
 Tower on Christmas-eve. One day, a servant of Brinkley's 
 was caught and racked ; and although, as it turned out, 
 no confession could be extracted from him, yet, at the 
 news Parsons and Gilbert fled ; but having no place to 
 betake themselves to, they returned next day, having first 
 sent Parsons' man Alfield to see that the road was clear. 
 He did not return ; and so their anxieties were redoubled, the 
 more so as the man's father was a minister, and Parsons more 
 than once had noticed the way in which fidelity and faithless- 
 ness ran in families.'" So they once more fled ; but the next 
 day Alfield returned, and was never afterwards thoroughly 
 trusted by his master. 
 
 The first book that issued from this press was probably 
 some book of devotions or of encouragement to persecuted 
 Catholics. After it was printed, Brinkley took away the press, 
 and came with a gay face to Parsons, thinking to pass a merry 
 night with him. But Parsons had a new cause for anxiety. 
 On his return to London he found a book of William 
 Charke'^^-^a Puritan minister, the first preacher to Lincoln's 
 Inn, whose relation and namesake Ezekiel, afterwards made 
 himself notorious by intrucUng into his father-in-law Hooker's 
 study after his death, and burning his manuscripts — and 
 another pamphlet written by another minister, Meredith 
 Hanmer, in confutation of Campion's Brag and ChalleiigeJ^^ 
 These two books gave Parsons a twofold difficulty ; they con- 
 tained some most pestilent accusations against him and Cam- 
 pion, and he saw no way of refuting them. Brinkley 
 offered to bring the press back if he would write an answer ; 
 but he had no place to put the press in, and no books to refer 
 to. Moreover he went in continual fear of his man Alfield, 
 who wanted to go to Gloucester to see his father.'^* At last 
 Francis Browne offered his house, his books, together with 
 board and service. So Parsons sent away his own man, and 
 set himself to WTite the Censure of Charke and Hanmer in 
 three parts. But here again he incurred great trouble and risk 
 in publishing the book, in consequence of the trap laid for 
 Gilbert, whose bailiff had been ordered by the Council to come 
 up to London to pay him his monies. Parsons would not 
 allow Gilbert to go in person to receive them, but sent Browne 
 and Charles Basset to Mr. Barnes' house in Tuttlefield, or 
 rather to the house of one Higgins, an attorney. While they 
 were there, George Cary came and seized both the money 
 and the men. Nevertheless, the Censure appeared ; and the 
 quickness of its repartee made the government doubly angry. 
 
186 ED3IUND CAMPION. 
 
 Parsons thinks that the proclamation of January 10, 1581, 
 ordering all young men to return from the seminaries, and 
 denouncing all receivers and favourers of priests and Jesuits, 
 was a kind of reply to his Censure. 
 
 It may be worth while to give a few sketches from this 
 book. Parsons considered Charke to be more venomous than 
 Hanmer, who replied '' more quietly, plainly, and good- 
 fellow-like, excepting a foul lie or two," making liberal offer 
 of disputation, though he was never lilvely to be one of the 
 disputers. He had taken occasion to -s-ent a commonplace 
 book of anti-Popish citations, about anything rather than the 
 matters in controversy, and had made a book answering little 
 purpose but to increase the demand for Campion's challenge, 
 though they had labour enough before in waiting out copies 
 for all who wanted them. 
 
 Charke dealt more subtly ; he misrepresented the chal- 
 lenge, drew everything to disloyalty and rebellion, flattered 
 the higher powers, wearied the reader \\ith eternal repetitions 
 of " Poj^e" and " Popery," exceeding in invention of railing 
 speech, undertaking all manner of lies without blushing, and 
 venturing upon any assertion whatever, provided only it was 
 fit to discredit the Jesuits. Parsons thus addresses him on 
 his treatment of Campion : " ^^^hatever he says or does you 
 will have it taken in e^il part : if he speak hnmljly, he dis- 
 sembleth : if he yield commendation, he flattereth : if he show 
 confidence in his cause, he vaunteth : if he offer trial, he meaneth 
 not performance : if he protest his meaning, he must not be 
 credited : if he desu-e auchence, he must not be admitted : 
 whatever he urges for himself or his cause must avail nothing. 
 William Charke will have him condemned for unlearned, 
 proud, wicked, and traitorous to the state." Parsons found 
 it more convenient to turn oflp Charke's insinuations ^^^th a jest 
 than to answer them. Thus, when Campion is said to have 
 come over " in hopes of a golden ilay"' — a phrase which in those 
 days was interpreted to mean the death- or dethronement of 
 Elizabeth, and the restoration of religion — Parsons replies that 
 the word ' golden' will not serve to express any of Campion's 
 hopes, whom all the gold in England cannot gild, and who 
 des])ises gold as much as Charke gapes for it. 
 
 After this. Parsons printed another book, containing his 
 account of John Nichols, who professed to be a Pope's scholar, 
 and had given the English government information of ^^ilat 
 was done in Rome, Rheinis, and the other seminaries, wherein 
 truth was so much mixed ^'^'ith inventions that Parsons had 
 no very diflicult task to discredit him. I shall have to men- 
 tion this man again in the next chapter. 
 
HIS WANDERINGS. 187 
 
 I have folloAved Parsons' lead in his oiithne of his intended 
 life of Campion, though he has led me wide of my way. I 
 must now return to Campion's doings after parting from 
 Parsons at Uxbridge, in order to go to Lancashire. Finding 
 himself more than ever beset, lie was obliged to tarry a long 
 while on the way. In fact I lose sight of him till about 
 Christmas-tide, when Gervase Pierrepoint took him to the 
 house of his brother, Henry Pierrepoint of Holme Pieirepoint 
 and Thoresby, Nottinghamshire, the ancestor of the earls of 
 Kingston : there he remained till the Tuesday after Twelfth- 
 day, when he and his guide left, and spent the following day 
 in Derbyshire, at the house of Henry Sacheverell ; thence he 
 and his guide went to jNIr. Langford's, where they spent the 
 Thursday and Friday ; thence to Lady Foljambe's, of Walton, 
 Derbyshire ; and thence to ]\Ir. Powdrell's,'''^ where they were 
 joined by Geoi-ge Gilbert. From this place they went to 
 Mr. Ayers' or Amias', of the Stipte, on the !Monday week after 
 Twelfth-day, where Pierrepoint resigned his office of conductor 
 into the hands of Isb. Tempest, who led Campion into York- 
 shire. '^^ This way-bill was dra-mi up by Burgldey after Cam- 
 pion's capture, and it was given out that Campion had con- 
 fessed it all. After Tempest took Pierrepoint's place, how- 
 ever, Burghley is at fault, and is obliged to note that " Cam- 
 pion confesseth he went northwards with Tempest, and 
 that they kept company together about nine days, and 
 will confess no place of their being but at inns." However, 
 the Lord Treasurer managed to light upon one gentleman, 
 John Eookby of YeafFord, who confessed that Campion was 
 at his house on Saturday, January 28. Lord Burghley 
 notices as Campion's chief favourers in Yorkshire, Dr. Vava- 
 sour, a physician, whom I find in prison at Hull in August 
 1580;'^' ISIrs. Bulmer ; Sir William Bapthorpe of Osgodby, 
 knight, who had in the pre-\dous August given bond in 200^. 
 to Sandys the archbishop and the other commissioners, that 
 he and his family ^uld dutifully repair to church, and 
 "apprehend all rogueing popish priests, and other like evil 
 popish subjects, and bring their bodies before the commis- 
 sioners ;" Mr.Grimston;''^* Mr. Hawkeworth ; and Mr. Askulph 
 Cleesby, — at whose houses Campion was to be found between 
 the 28th of January and Mid-lent 1 .08L At that time Tempest 
 seems to have resigned his charge of conductor to the hands of 
 Mr. Smyth, who took him to his brother-in-law's house, Mr. 
 William Hamngton of Mount St. John, about the Tuesday 
 in the third week of Lent, where they stayed about twelve 
 days, during which time Campion was occupied in writing 
 
188 ED3IUND CAMPION. 
 
 his book De Hceresi Desperata, ■which afterwards appeared as 
 his Decern Rationes, a form which better enabled him to meet 
 the charge of overweening pride \\hich Cliarlve and Han- 
 mer had made against him, because be had challenged to 
 dispute single-handed with all the learning of a whole realm ; 
 a charge which had become so general, that every pulpit 
 was ringing with his impudence, and with the frauds and 
 sedition of the Jesuits. Hence he was forced to show 
 that his trust was not in his own power, but solely in the 
 strength of his cause, which he exhibited in ten reasons, rely- 
 ing on which, quihus fretus, he offered to dispute with any or 
 all of the ministers of the Established Chiu'ch. Here, at Mount 
 St. John, his conduct made such an impression on William, 
 one of his host's srs sons, that three years afterwards he fled 
 over sea to Kheims, and from thence came back a priest to be 
 hanged in England. Here Campion obtained a fresh conductor, 
 a Yorkshireman, jNIi-. j\Iore, living near Sheffield, who had once 
 been his pupil, and who now, ^^-ith his wife, travelled \^'ith him 
 to jn'otect him, and to introduce him to the houses of the 
 Catholic gentlemen in Lancashire. Very likely he travelled 
 as their servant, as he had in another journey dressed himself 
 as Pascal's man. By them he was led to visit the Worthing- 
 tons, the Talbots, tlie Soutbworths, the Heskeths, ]\Irs. Allen 
 the widow of the Cardinal's brother, the Houghtons, the 
 Westbys, and the Rigmaidens — at whose houses he spent the 
 time between Easter and "Whitsuntide (April 16), besto\ving 
 himself chiefly, according to Burghlev, at ilr. Talbot's and 
 ]Mr. Southworth's, but according to Parsons at AVorthington's 
 and AL-s. AUen's, where he was fully occupied in preach- 
 ing to the crowds that pressed to have conference -n-ith him. 
 Even up to my time (1660), says Father Henry More,'^^ 
 Campion's memory was popular in the North, where they still 
 recollected his sermons on the Hail Mary, on the Ten Lepers, 
 on the King who went a journey, on the Last Judgment, and 
 others, which people were so gi-eedy of faring that veiy many 
 persons of quality spent whole nights in neighbouring barns, 
 so that they might be early at the place next day. They were 
 drawn not so much by his admirable eloquence and accent, as 
 by his fire, and by a certain hidden force which they considered 
 could only flow from the Holy Spirit. He preached daily, 
 except when he sometimes ■^^•ithdrew himself to write his book, 
 and perhaps to avoid the pursuivants, who were always on his 
 track. At Worthington's house he was saved from appre- 
 hension by a maid-servant, who in affected anger pushed him 
 into a pond, and thus effectually disguised him. As the Abbe 
 
THE RACK. 189 
 
 Dubois once disguised the Regent Orleans at a low masquerade 
 by kicking him ; a process which made the Regent angrily 
 exclaim, " Abb6, tu mc deguises trop." 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the excitement caused by the 
 Jesuits' preaching escaped the notice of the government. It 
 induced them to use greater severity to the Catholics in prison, 
 and to search with greater strictness for those not yet appre- 
 hended. The first case of torture that we know of being 
 ajDplied to them was on December 10th, 1580,^"° when Luke 
 Ivirby and Thomas Cottam were put into the scavenger's 
 daughter at the Tower. ^"^ The Council had previously drawn 
 up a paper of questions to be administered to them. Why did 
 the Pope send them ? To whom were they specially directed 
 to repair? What hopes had they of an invasion of Ireland? 
 AVhy had the Bishop of St. Asa'ph, Dr. Morton, and others, 
 come from Rome to Paris ? Who had relieved them ? Had 
 the Queen of Scots given them anything ? Whom had they 
 reconciled ? Whom had they heard of as being reconciled ? 
 What commmiications had they held with Campion ? Where 
 was he ? AA'hose names are in the catalogues of the Pope's 
 principal favom'ers? AVhat commvmication have they had with 
 the Bishop of Ross ? or with Dr. Sanders in Ireland ? and 
 who are the L'ishmen most noted as favourers of the rebel- 
 lion there? According to Cottam's own account,''^"^ Ham- 
 mond and the other commissioners did not confine themselves 
 to these questions, but wanted to know what sins he had con- 
 fessed, and what penance had been enjoined him. After this 
 Sherwin and Johnson were racked, December 15 ; Shervvdn 
 again the next day ; and Hart, who was brought to the Tower 
 December 19 or 29, was with Orton racked December 31. 
 Christopher Thomson, an old priest, January 3, 1581, and 
 Nicholas Roscarock, at whose house Sherwin had been taken 
 saying Mass, was racked January 14. 
 
 The government, both ecclesiastic and civil, were by this 
 time convinced that the penal laws against Catholics, bloody 
 as they already were, were not yet sufficiently so to exter- 
 minate the Catholic religion. It was felt that severity must 
 be increased ; and, as commonly happens, the first impulse 
 towards a more systematic persecution came from the ecclesi- 
 astical side. On the 14th of January 1581, the Bishop of 
 Chester, the state of whose diocese prognosticated to him the 
 success that Campion was to achieve there a few months later, 
 wrote to the Council, ui-ging them to bring in a Bill making 
 traitors and felons without benefit of clergy of "all such 
 vagrant priests as walk about in disguised apparel seducing 
 her Majesty's subjects, &c., by assembling of unlawful con- 
 
I 
 
 190 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 venticles," and of their receivers, felons, " with some clergy." 
 Also to enforce preachers to reside on their benefices ; to make 
 all work Tinlawful before eleven o'clock on the " Sablmth-day;" 
 to forbid the holding of fairs and markets on Sundays ; and to 
 enact some general" law to reduce all subjects to conformity. 
 He adds: "In this cathedral church of Chester, neither the 
 dean nor any prebendary hath been resident or kept any hos- 
 pitality of many years. Neither is any parson or vicar of any 
 arish church within the city a preacher." ^"^ Other bishops 
 egged to have the high commission in their dioceses. Thus 
 the Bishop of Coventry writes to Burghley in April 1581, 
 about the hard state of Shropshire : ^^^ " being one of the best 
 and conformablest parts of my diocese," where, however, " of 
 one hundred almost presented for recusancy, they could get 
 but one only to be bound, the rest refusing most obstinately to 
 come before them." What must it be then, he asks Burghley, 
 in the other shires of the diocese, when it is thus in the best 
 of them 1 
 
 The Catholics presaged that something severe awaited 
 them. After the Proclamation of January 10, for the recal 
 of students and the banishment of priests, the persecution 
 waxed still stronger, and Parsons felt that something must be 
 done.^"'' He therefore sent a priest to John Bodin — who was 
 at this time acting as agent for the Duke of Anjou to treat of 
 his marriage with the Queen — to persuade him to advise 
 her Majesty to treat the Catholics A^-ith more mildness ; but 
 the author of the Commonwealth was too good a politique 
 to mix himself up with such irrelevant matters. A meeting 
 of gentlemen was therefore held one Sunday after Communion 
 in the house of Francis Throgmorton — the same who was exe- 
 cuted in 1584 for a conspiracy to deliver Mary Stuart — to con- 
 sider whether a pacification could not be purchased. Affairs 
 had proceeded to such a pitch, the pursuivants had become so 
 intolerable, that the people began to talk of paying the Queen 
 so much a head to be let alone. But there was no one to 
 propose it to her. The Spanish ambassador would have 
 created a prejudice against them instead of hel]iing them ; the 
 French ambassador was mistrusted ; Bodin refused to meddle. 
 Another section of Catholics thouffht it was time to reconsider 
 the question about attending the churches, and to make out a 
 probable case to allow them to save their goods and their 
 liberties, if not their faith too, by an occasional and merely 
 formal attendance at the Anglican service. Dr. Alban Lang- 
 dale wrote, and Mr. Clitheroe circulated, an anonymous 
 tract^"'' to prove that attendance at the Protestant church was 
 in itself no sin, and therefore might be la\\'fully submitted to 
 
EXTERNAL CONFORMITY. 191 
 
 for the purpose of aroiding a persecution so intolerable at pre- 
 sent, and threatening to gi'ow so much more so. The English 
 Catholics were not unwilling to believe a grave doctoi', wiiose 
 opinion so happily saAcd them from a sea of troubles ; and it 
 would probably have greatly strengthened the statistics of the 
 Church, if they had been left in their blissful ignorance. But 
 Parsons, however ready he might be to engage in plots against 
 the Queen, was as a Catholic uncompromising and rigid. lie 
 could go a long way with the advocates of equivocation in civil 
 cases, but he could not allow an equivocation in act or word, 
 when the faith, or the honour of religion, seemed at stake. 
 Elizabeth and her ministers declared that the attendance at 
 church was a mere political act, and by no means forced the 
 conscience; but he could not accept the chstinction (though 
 his society afterwards adopted a similar one with happy con- 
 sequences in China) between a religious act and a political 
 or social ceremonj^, like burning incense to one's ancestors. 
 Besides, had not a committee of the Council of Trent de- 
 cided the matter ? Cost what it might, the Catholics must be 
 induced to act on the principles of Tertullian and St. Cjqirian, 
 and the Catholic fathers. 
 
 Parsons therefore thought it his duty to write a refuta- 
 tion of Dr. Langdale's tract, the real authorship of which 
 he did not know at the time ; for, after Blackwell and 
 he had been driven from Dr. Young's library, where they 
 first went to consult authorities, by the pursuivants, who 
 searched the place just after they had left it, they betook 
 themselves to the library of Dr. Langdale himself, where 
 by the marks left in the books they discovered the writer. 
 Sheldon, Lord Paget,^"^ and others had already acted on 
 the new and indulgent view. But, says Parsons, after the 
 publication of the book, this evil was put a stop to — cessavit 
 malum. 
 
 In the midst of these discussions among Catholics, the 
 Legislature intervened with its heavy hand. The Bishop 
 of Chester's recommendations were carried out to the full. 
 The existing Parliament had been elected shortly after the 
 suppression of the rebellion of the North ; had held its first 
 session in 1572, its second in 1575 ; and was now for the 
 third time convoked for the express purpose of finding a 
 remedy for the poison of the Jesuits.^"" On Wednesday, 
 January 25, Sir Walter Alildmay rose to move the new 
 bill. His speech was an essay, which he learned by rote, 
 and repeated several times in the Star-Chamber at the trials 
 of recusants, till his hearers must have known it almost as 
 well as himself. It began with an elaborate eulogium of 
 
192 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 Elizabeth as the refuge of persecuted Catholics, for which 
 cause the Pope raged against her, and procured through his 
 confederates all means of annoyance to her ; such as the 
 rebellion of 1569, the maintenance of the fugitive rebels, 
 the Dull, the invasion of Fitzmorris, the rebellion of Desmond, 
 and the late invasion of strangers at Smerwick. The Queen 
 had baffled these attempts in a way that redounded to her 
 honour ; the first, " without effusion of blood ;" the last, by 
 " pulling the Spaniards out by the ears, and cutting them in 
 pieces." She had no fear ; but she had all cause for caution ; 
 for, in spite of the freedom of the pulpit, such had been the 
 secret practices of the Pope and his secret ministers, that the 
 obstinate and stiff-necked Papist was so far from being 
 reformed, that he had gotten stomach to go backward, and 
 show his disobedience in arrogant words (such as Campion's 
 challenge) and contemptuous deeds. For Mildmay had not 
 got beyond the childish political theory, that ideas do not 
 propagate themselves through their owii natural fermentation, 
 but only by the mechanical means of a secret propaganda. 
 Opinions, he thinks, are not convictions, but partly conspira- 
 cies, partly the results of a magical or mesmeric influence. 
 To encourage these Papists, he said, the Pope comforted 
 their hollow hearts with absolutions, dispensations, reconci- 
 liations, and the like, and had lately sent over " a sort of 
 hypocrites, naming themselves Jesuits, a rabble of vagrant 
 friars, whose principal errand was to creep into the houses 
 of men of behaviour and reputation, to corrupt the realm 
 with false doctrine, and under that pretence to stir up 
 sedition." 
 
 These practices had achieved a lamentable success, and 
 the Pope's authority had made such impression, as not only 
 those who from the beginning had refused to obey, but very 
 many of those who for years had been conformable, had, 
 since the Council of Trent, the Bull, and the secret recon- 
 ciliations, and swarming over of priests and Jesuits, utterly 
 refused to be of the Church of England, or to resort to its 
 preaching and prayers. 
 
 Now Elizabeth had been all clemency and mildness in 
 comparison with ^lary and the Continental governments. 
 But this com-se had done no good ; but had bred an arro- 
 gant and contemptuous sphit, exhibited in receiving the 
 Pope's absolutions, in harbouring even in their houses the 
 lewd runagates the Jesuits, and in training their childi'cn 
 under Popish schoolmasters at home, or in seminaries abroad. 
 
 Therefore stricter and severer laws had become necessary 
 to constrain them to yield at least open obedience to the 
 
THE PENAL LAWS. 193 
 
 Queen in religious matters, and not to live as they listed : 
 so that if they would needs submit themselves to the bene- 
 diction of the Pope, they miglit feel how little his cm-scs 
 hurt the Queen, and how little his blessing could save them 
 from the punishment she could lay upon them; also how 
 dangerous it would be for the laity to deal with the Pope, 
 and for the priests to enter the realm to draw away from the 
 Queen that obecUence which, by the laws of God and man, 
 is due to her.^"^ 
 
 Mr. Norton seconded the motion, and proposed referring 
 the matter to a committee, which he named. The House 
 was ready to go further than even the Court desired, and 
 the bill, which, as the Speaker said, was for the glory of 
 God, the safety of the Queen, and the prosperity of the 
 people (for all which ends preaching was the ordinary means), 
 received the royal assent on the 18th of March. 
 
 The act " to retain the Queen's majesty's subjects in due 
 obedience" made it treason to absolve any Englishman, to 
 convert him to Popery, to move him thereto, or to do any 
 overt act tending that way. And it made it treason to be 
 so absolved or converted. Another clause made it misprison 
 of treason to aid or maintain any persons so offending, or to 
 conceal any such offence, without cUvulging it within twenty 
 days to the magistrate. By another, the saying of Mass was 
 forbidden under penalty of 200 marks and one year's imprison- 
 ment; and the hearing Mass under a similar penalty of 100 
 marks and one year. And lastly, a system of fines was devised, 
 which for half a centiu-y became one of the great items in 
 the budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer ; although in 
 fact the receipts of the Exchequer were but a trifle compared 
 with the waste and losses inflicted on the CathoUcs, and with 
 the vast sums which found their way into the hands of cour- 
 tiers and parasites, favourites to whom recusants were given 
 to farm, and pursuivants and informers, who made Cathohcs 
 pay for their forbearance. Any person above sixteen years of 
 age who did not come to church for one month was fined 
 201., and so on for twelve months, when he was apprehended, 
 and bound in 2001. to good behaviour. This enactment made 
 any arrangement such as that proposed at Francis Tlirogmor- 
 ton's house henceforth impossible. There could be no talk 
 of paying the Queen for a hcense to practise their religion, 
 when she got all the money that could be screwed out of 
 them on the ground of theu" not practising hers. 
 
 One clause imposed a monthly fine of 10/. upon every 
 person keeping a schoolmaster who did not regularly attend 
 church. This, coupled with the proclamation of January 10, 
 
 o 
 
194 EDMIIND CA3IPION. 
 
 which recalled all studeBts from foreign seminaries, was in- 
 tended to make Catholic education henceforth an impossibility 
 for Englishmen. 
 
 If this legislation had been tempered with eveiy kind of 
 constitutional consideration, and had been administered only 
 by responsible agents of the government, who would have 
 kept within the letter of the law, still the persecution legalised 
 by it would have been almost intolerable ; but in reality it was 
 capriciously administered, and gi-adually fell into the hands 
 of a class of people who traded on the lives and lands of 
 the Catholics ; bloodsuckers, as William Hai-rington called 
 them.^'" Under the weak favouritism of James I. the evil 
 increased, till in 1605 it had reached such a pitch that one of 
 the Anglican bishops seems to have considered even the gun- 
 powder plot to have been a natural, if not a justifiable, at- 
 tempt to cut short the intolerable evil. The Papists had 
 borne -with it in Elizabeth's latter days, in hopes, after the 
 old woman's death, to find some mitigation ; and in those days 
 the administration of the law had been moderated, the perse- 
 cutors being uncertain what might succeed after the Queen's 
 removal. But after the settlement of James, with no hope of 
 better daj's, and expecting daily the utmost rigour in the 
 execution of the law, tlie Catholics became desperate. A 
 lady was hanged for harbouring a priest, and a citizen for 
 being reconciled to the Church. Under the penal code "they 
 could not subsist ; what was usually sold in shops and openly 
 bought, this the pursuivant would take away from them as 
 being popish and superstitious. One knight did affinn that 
 in one term he gave twenty nobles in reward to the door- 
 keeper of the attorney-general ; another, that his third part 
 wliich remained unto him of his estate did hardly serve for 
 his expense in law to defend him from other oppressions ; 
 besides, their children to be taken from home to be brought 
 up in another religion. So they did eveiy way conclude that 
 their estate was desperate — they were debarred in any course 
 of life to help themselves ; they could not practise law, they 
 could not be citizens, they could have no office ; they could 
 not breed up their sons ; none did desire to match vnih them ; 
 they had neither fit marriages for their daughters, nor nun- 
 neries to put them into The spiritual court did not 
 
 cease to molest them, to excommunicate them, then to im- 
 prison them ; and thereby they were entirely disenabled to 
 sue for their own." 
 
 During the debates on this bill I find the first attempt on 
 the part of the Protestants to define the different characters 
 of the two Jesuits. Parsons was the " lui'kmg wolf," Cam- 
 
DIVISION OF LziBOUR. 195 
 
 pion "the wandering vagrant." There was more truth in 
 this colouring than in the subsequent notion wliicli Camden 
 promulgated, tliat Parsons was a violent and a fierce-natured 
 man, while Campion was of a sweet disposition and good 
 breeding ; the one seditious, turbulent, and confident ; the 
 other modest in all things except his challenge. Campion, 
 it seems to me, was the quick-tempered man, open, free, 
 generous, hot, enthusiastic, yet withal modest, gentle, and 
 fair; Parsons more slow, subtle, cool, calculating, and ca- 
 pable of exhibiting either violence or modesty as the occasion 
 seemed to demand. If Campion had the wisdom. Parsons 
 had the prudence. One knew how to move, the other to 
 guide ; one, if I may use offensive terms without offence, had 
 the gifts which make an agitator, the other those that make 
 a conspirator. The rule of the Jesuits, as I have shown 
 above, '^'^ linked together characters thus dissimilar, in order 
 that united they might act with more force and more com- 
 pleteness. And this would have been the case if their func- 
 tions had been all in common ; but though the men were 
 linked together, they had sei:>arate work to perform. As their 
 instructions directed them to use the lay members of the con- 
 fraternity to prepare the preliminaries of conversion, and then 
 themselves to finish the work, so in this work of finishing there 
 were different gi'ades ; for it is one thing to be a thorough 
 Catholic, and it is something bej'ond to take part in the Pope's 
 intentions and desires, and to devote oneself to their further- 
 ance and fulfilment. The mstructions sufficient to make a 
 man a Catholic are not sufficient to make him an ultramontane. 
 Campion thought that all was done when he had reconciled 
 his convert to the Catholic Church, had taught him the 
 faith, and made him partaker of the sacraments. Parsons 
 looked farther ; he desired and laboured for the conversion of 
 England, and he thought that nothing could effect this but 
 the overthrow of Elizabeth ; therefore his aim was the or- 
 ganisation of a party on which he could rely when the Pope 
 gave the signal for the attack. But there was no reason for 
 him to blab of this design. The seed sown would, he thought, 
 grow all the stronger for not being prematurely forced. It 
 thus happened that there was not always perfect community 
 between the Jesuit missionaries ; a polarity began to declare 
 itself, as it afterwards did in the Society at large, sending off 
 those like Campion to fight under the banner of St. Francis 
 Xavier against heathenism, while it retained those like Par- 
 sons in Europe to direct the consciences of princes, and to 
 influence the councils of states. 
 
 And the second pair of Jesuit missionaries were no less 
 
196 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 contrasted with each other than the first. Fathers Heywood 
 and Holt had been asked for by name in the letters -vsTitten 
 from Uxbridge to the General of the Order. Parsons could 
 not have kno\'\ai Heywood; but Campion had met him at 
 Mmiich on his way to Ivome.-'" Jasper Heywood, himself a 
 poet, according to Fulman, and son of John Heywood the 
 epigrammatist, had entered the Society in 15()2, and had been 
 employed in Germany, far from the centre of ecclesiastical 
 politics, and in a country where the co-existence of hostile con- 
 fessions was, in the midst of violence, laying the foundation 
 of mutual toleration and forbearance. Like Campion in this, 
 in other respects he was unhke him. 
 
 He was now nearly forty-seven years old, elderly for his years 
 and gouty ; AAdth his youthful fire he had lost his strength, 
 and he was trnable to fast, or even to abstain — a grave offence 
 in the eyes of some of the more rigid and precise of the Eng- 
 lish Catholics. But he was, like Campion, a learned man, a 
 doctor in theology, one deeply versed in theoretical contro- 
 versy, and an excellent Hebraist. There was some difficulty 
 in obtaining his services, for he was a gi'eat favoimte with 
 the Duke of Bavaria ; but a letter of Gregory XIII., dated 
 May 27, 1581, overcame the Duke's unwillingness, and he 
 was sent on the mission. ^'^ He was a wonderfully laborious 
 man, and in the judgment of Gabriel Allen, the Cardinal's 
 brother, he was, next to Campion, the most successful of all 
 the missionaries. He himself wrote to Allen — Stupeo hie in 
 captura piscium, quia homo pjeccatOT- sum. He received into 
 the Church Philip Earl of Ai-undel and Henry Earl of North- 
 umberland. His relaxation of the fasting, and introduction 
 of the Roman custom into England, greatly offended the old- 
 fashioned party, and this, together with his gout, and perhaps 
 his disinclination to meddle in matters of state, determined 
 the General to recal him. He had got out of England safely, 
 and was in sight of Dieppe, when his ship was driven back, 
 and he sent prisoner to the Tower, where he was treated much 
 as Camjnon had been before him, the Catholics ovitside being 
 persuaded that he was about to make a recantation.''"' Wil- 
 liam Holt, his companion, Avas a Lancashire man, educated at 
 Oxford till 1575, when he passed over to Douai, and there 
 studied theology and was ordained, after which he went to 
 Rome and became a Jesuit in November 1578. Parsons had 
 known him for two years, and when, in September 1580, the 
 Queen of Scots caused it to be notified to him that she would 
 be glad to have some Jesuit sent to instruct her son, the young 
 king, in the faith, Holt was at once suggested to Parson? 
 mind as the proper person for such an undertaldng; which he 
 
FATHER HOLT. 197 
 
 carried out, mucli to Parsons' satisfaction. How he sped be- 
 longs to another history ; I will only say that the means he 
 used to insure success explain, and go some short way to jus- 
 tify, the measures enacted by the Parliament of 1581 against 
 Papists. The next couple who were sent into Scotland con- 
 sisted, in the same way, of one spii-itual man, Hay, and one 
 manager, Creighton ; the same polarity, the same division of 
 labour, the same partition of the dove and the serpent into two 
 distinct personalities, may be seen in all these pairs. The 
 secret history of the times, the despatches of ambassadors, the 
 letters of politicians, the memoirs of diplomatists, are full of 
 the names of Parsons, Holt, and Creighton ; but nothing is 
 to be found there that adds to our knowledge of Campion, 
 Heywood, or Hay. I can find no e\'idence that Campion 
 had anything to do with the great plan which unfolds itself 
 in the diplomatic cori-espondence of 1581, and which was 
 directed to the restoration of ]\Iary to her Scotch throne, and 
 of Scotland to the Catholic religion, as the preliminaries to 
 the conquest of England by the King of Spain. I cannot say 
 that this plan originated ^yith Parsons ; I do not find that he 
 had any relations with ]\Iendoza before the end of 1580;^'* 
 at which time the Archbishop of Glasgow was already in corre- 
 spondence with the General of the Jesuits, and the General, 
 the Pope, Philip, and Aubigny, had settled the plan which 
 Mendoza seems to have communicated to Parsons in the wnter 
 of 1580. It is clear that Campion was not considered a proper 
 person to act in this part; and though he was in England 
 after the general chapter of the Jesuits in the spring of 1581, 
 Holt and Creighton were sent over, not to supersede him, 
 but to perform work which was not considered suitable for 
 him. What this work was we may gather from Tassis, Philip's 
 ambassador to the French court, who in a letter dated May 
 18, 1582, relates to his master the doings of Creighton and 
 Holt.^'" Holt, he says, had found that the Catholics were 
 quite ready to rise after Mary had once got a firm footing in 
 Scotland. The border comities, especially Westmoreland, were 
 fall of Catholics, and if the Pope would name a person of 
 distinction (meaning Allen) to the see of Durham, he might 
 raise the whole population. When Tassis asked Holt what 
 proof he had of this, and whether the principal persons had 
 made a confederation together and had given pledges, as 
 usual, he answered that he knew it, because many of them 
 had told him so when he was treating with them on their 
 consciences (todo esto se sahia, por lo que niuchos dellos se havian 
 declarado tratando de sus conciencias con ellos). M. Teulet 
 infers from these words that Holt spoke of things revealed to 
 
198 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 him under the seal of confession. Tassis' words, tliough they 
 will bear, yet do not warrant, such a translation. Philip, how- 
 ever, was in no hurry. He ordered Tassis not to let Holt come 
 to Spain, and Awote to Mendoza in England that the best 
 policy for the present was " to gain souls by way of teaching, 
 and thus to fortify the Catholic party for its time and occa- 
 sion, without precipitating matters through impatience." 
 
 Philip therefore was quite of the same mind with Cecil 
 and Walsingham. They all thought that every Catholic as 
 such was ready to start up a soldier when the golden day of 
 his hopes should dawn. But Campion did not allow himself 
 thus to forecast the future ; the present was enough for him. 
 If he could bring back men to their duties, reconcile them to 
 the Church, make them once more partakers of the sacra- 
 ments, all was done. He did not ask for security or outward 
 prosperity, hardly for toleration ; he thought the blood of 
 martyrs the seed of the Chiu-ch, and persecution the confession 
 of inability to put down the truth by argument. Persecution 
 and martyrdom were in his eyes the security for the futiu-e. 
 Not so thought Parsons and his political friends. With equal 
 zeal for the restoration of religion, they thought Campion's 
 field of laboiu- to be necessary indeed, but of an inferior 
 order. It was, they considered, the chief duty of the eccle- 
 siastical ruler so to influence and settle the distribution of 
 temporal power as to assui'e the future liberty and ]3rogress of 
 the Chiu'ch. Campion and his fellows might so influence the 
 mmds and feelings of the English people as to work a com- 
 plete revival of Catholicism among them. But there was no 
 security for its life while Elizabeth remained on the throne, with 
 Cecil and Leicester in her council-chamber, who had once, 
 and might again, change a Cathohc into a Protestant nation. 
 So, beside the ptu-ely religious work of ecclesiastical restora- 
 tion, religious men carried on another work of pure conspiracy 
 and intrigue, for the purpose of strengthening the restored 
 ecclesiastical state with a new and congenial civil government. 
 Naturally enough this temporal action soon became more 
 obvious than the purely spiritual action, whose characteristic 
 it is not to strive or cry, but like leaven, gradually and noise- 
 lessly to change the mass on which it acts. Intrigue, on the 
 other hand, however secret, depends ultimately on open and 
 mechanical means for its success, and thus must in time pro- 
 claim itself on the housetops. Thus it was with the Catholic 
 religion in England. Men could not see its action on the souls 
 of the people. But they could see and measui-e the amount 
 of revolutionary and unpatriotic feeling which it seemed to 
 bring with it. And when, mth even increasing ill luck, 
 
THE DEAD LOCK. 199 
 
 Parsons and his school continued their plots, the English 
 Catholics, wearied out ^vith the sufferings which he had mul- 
 tiplied for them, began at last to fall away ; as if they felt that 
 the aim of the Pope, the Jesuits, and the Spaniards, was not 
 to have them believe a salutary doctrine, and to make them 
 partakers of life-giving sacraments, but to make them traitors 
 to their Queen and country, and to induce them to take up 
 arms in favour of a foreign pretender. 
 
 Elizabeth always professed to be willing to tolerate Ca- 
 thohcs, if they would refrain from the developments which 
 I have indicated. We should at this day make allowances 
 for her difficulties. Converts, however purely spiritual the 
 motives of their conversion might be, woidd usually not be 
 contented with being mere Catholics, or with accepting the 
 system reduced to its simple elements ; they would always 
 incline to adopt it such as it was in the teaching of its most 
 advanced doctors, and in those days they would have been 
 led to denounce Elizabeth as a usurper of the Pope's rights 
 in England and Ireland ; just as we see the same land of men 
 in the present day denouncing the kingdom of Italy on simi- 
 lar grounds. If it had been possible for any one to convince 
 Ehzabeth that his Catholicism was such as Bossuet's was to 
 be, and only such, the Queen ought, on her own profession, 
 to have tolerated such a person, as she did in fact grant 
 toleration to Sir Richard Shelley in 1582. But when both 
 sides, both Phihp and Cecil, were equally convinced that 
 every fresh convert, however peaceful now, was a future 
 soldier of the king of Spain against Ehzabeth, toleration was 
 scarcely possible. 
 
CHAPTEE X. 
 
 Campion finished his book about Easter 1581, and sent it 
 to London for Parsons' approval. When Parsons sawthat 
 the title was not that which had been settled at Uxbridge, 
 and that the margin swarmed vdth references, which for 
 lack of books he was not able to Terify, while he knew that 
 the enemy would closely scan every one of them, he wrote 
 to Campion to ask whether he was quite sure of all his 
 authorities ? Campion replied that he had quoted nothing at 
 second hand, nothing but what he had gathered in his own 
 reading. Parsons thereupon ordered the book to be printed; 
 but Campion, to make sm-ety more sure, begged that the 
 quotations might once more be examined. This task Parsons 
 committed to one of the young men of the sodality, Thomas 
 Fitzherbert, then newly married, but, after the death of his 
 wife, a priest, a Jesuit, and finally rector of the English 
 College in Bome.^" Fitzherbert was unsuspected, and was 
 free to study in all the London libraries, where he carefully 
 verified Campion's allegations. 
 
 Parsons, however, still desired that Campion should see 
 to the printing of his own book, and therefore ordered 
 him to return to London, without visiting the houses of the 
 Catholics by the way, but staying only at inns, in order to 
 avoid suspicion. But to print was not so easy as it had 
 been : though the works printed at Mr. Brookes' bore the 
 name " Doway" on their title-page, yet experts like Norton, 
 to whom the government committed the examination of them, 
 reported " The print is done in England." Brinkley, un- 
 daunted, once moi'e oflFered to provide the press, and Maurice 
 to procure the other requisites. While these things were being 
 got ready, Campion, who had now joined Parsons, was con- 
 stantly employed in preaching either in London or in the 
 neighbom-hood. One place which he and Parsons fi-equently 
 visited was Uxenden Hall, near Harrow-on-the-Hill, the 
 property of William Bellamy, who, mth his wife and family, 
 were converts of the two fathers. Campion at this time 
 lodged sometimes at Mrs. Brideman's in Westminster, some- 
 times at Mr. Barnes' in Tothill-street, sometimes at Lady 
 
TYBURN. 201 
 
 Babington's in the White Friars.^'' The road from these 
 places to Harrow would generally lead him by Tyburn, a spot 
 now marked by a stone which is erected at a place where 
 "Tyburn-gate" once closed the great western road out of 
 London, a few yards beyond the present Marble Arch. Just 
 outside of this, probably within the garden of the house at the 
 corner of the Edgeware Koad, stood the famous gallows, three 
 posts in a triangle, connected at the top by three cross bars, 
 where the weeklj- batch of murderers, thieves, coiners, vag- 
 rants, traitors, or priests, were led out to suffer. It had been 
 put up new for the execution of Dr. Story, whose blood had 
 consecrated it. Campion woidd always walk between its 
 posts vrith his hat off', and -i\ath a profound bow, in honour 
 both of the Cross which it figured and of the martyrs who 
 had already suffered there for their faith, and, as he told Par- 
 sons, because it was one day to be the place of his conflict. 
 
 Here Parsons, who wrote his notes from memory, makes 
 one of those mistakes so common in all autobiographical 
 sketches where the author does not control his memory by 
 the use of documents. We have seen that Campion did not 
 quit Lancasliire till after Whitsunday, that is, as Easter in 
 1581 fell on March 26, not till after May 15. He could not 
 therefore have been with Parsons in London and the neigh- 
 bourhood till the middle of May. Yet Parsons refers the 
 following story to this period, and has thereby led Bombinus 
 and his followers into a tale more telling than true. " While 
 we were together in a house in a wood, one night Hartley 
 said to me casually that he had been at Oxford, and had heard 
 that Roland Jinks' servant, who had just before' been em- 
 ployed by me at my house in London to bind some books, 
 had gone over, and had given evidence against his master. 
 I at once saw the danger ; and the first thing in the morning 
 I sent to London, and found that Wilkes, the secretary of the 
 council, with Norton and some of the Queen's guards, had that 
 very night searched my chamber and carried off all he found 
 there, and had apprehended Briant in a neighbouring house." 
 Now Briant was transferred to the Tower on the 25th of 
 March from the Marshalsea, into which prison he had been 
 thrust upon his apprehension. It is clear then that Campion 
 was in Lancashire at the time, and that tliis event had no 
 connection whatever with the printing of his book, or his 
 flight from Oxfordshire, or by consequence with his capture. 
 Briant was afterwards connected with Campion ; but at this 
 point their histories have no relation. He was, says Parsons, 
 "my disciple and my pupil at Oxford, and ever inclined to 
 virtue ; afterwards a priest at Rheims, of the gi-eatest zeal. 
 
202 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 Just before he came into England, he ■^^^•ote to Father Eichard 
 Gibbon to ask whether he might visit his mother. He recon- 
 ciled my father, and while he was in England he never willingly 
 left my side." When it was found how close a companion of 
 Parsons had been taken, and how narrowly Parsons himself 
 had escaped, it is scarcely to be wondered at that the eagerness 
 of the catchpoles to get at their great prize carried them still 
 deeper into cruelty than they had hitherto stepped. In the 
 Marshalsea they tried what hunger and thirst could extract 
 out of Briant. This means failing, they sent him where he 
 could be tortured moi-e scientifically, and the torments he 
 suffered in the Tower were duly entered in the diary of 
 Edward Rishton, his fellow-pi-isoner : " ^Nlarch 27, Alexander 
 Briant, a priest, was brought from another prison, where he 
 had almost perished with thirst, and loaded \\'ith the heaviest 
 shackles. Then needles were thrust under his nails, wth the 
 hope of forcing him to disclose the place in which he had 
 seen Father Parsons ; but he resolutely refused to reveal it. 
 April (3, the same Briant was cast into the Pit ; and, eight 
 days later, was led forth to the rack, on which he was im- 
 mediately stretched witli the greatest cruelty. The next day 
 again, he was twice su1)jected to the same tortui'e ; yet from 
 his own lips, only a little before his niartp'dom, I afterwards 
 heard the declaration, that, when his body was extended to 
 the utmost, and his tormentors were ferociously endeavouring 
 to mcrease the intensity of his sufferings, he was actually in- 
 sensible of pain."^^° 
 
 According to the established practice of Elizabeth's go- 
 vernment, when this cruelty was afterwards complained of, 
 Norton, one of the commissioners, was called to account for 
 j^_22i ijijjg following is an extract of a letter he wrote to Wal- 
 singham, who had sent him Parsons' defence of his censure 
 on Charke and Hanmer, published in Rouen in 1582 : — 
 " I find in the whole book only one place touching myself, 
 fol. ult. pa. 2. 'One (meaning Briant) whom IVIi-. Norton, 
 the rack-master (if he be not misreported), vaunted in the 
 court to have pulled one good foot longer than ever God made 
 him, and yet in the middes of all he seemed to care nothing, 
 and therefore, out of doubt, said he, he had a devil within 
 him.' Sm'ely I never said in that form, but thus. When 
 speech was of the coui-age of Campion and some other, I said 
 truly that there appeared more courage of a man's heart in 
 Briant than in Campion, and therefore I lamented that the 
 devil had possessed poor unlearned Briant in so naughty a 
 cause; for being threatened by those that had commission 
 (to the intent he might be moved to tell truth without tor- 
 
BEIANT. 203 
 
 ment), that if he would not for his duty to God and the Queen 
 tell truth, he should be made a foot longer than God made 
 him, he was therewith nothing moved. And being for his 
 apparent obstinacy in matters that he well knew racked more 
 than any of the rest, yet he stood still with express refusal 
 that he would not tell truth. When he setteth out a miracle 
 that Briant was preserved from feeling of pain, it is most 
 untrue; for no man of them all, after his torture, made so 
 grievous complaining and showed so open sign of pain as he." 
 Norton, it will be seen, carefully avoids denying what Briant 
 asserted — namely, that he felt no pain whilst he was being 
 racked; he simply asserts that after the torture Briant ex- 
 hibited great signs of pain. Which he himself also confessed 
 in his own letter to Parsons, where he tells not only of his 
 freedom from pain while on the rack, but of the agonies he 
 suffered afterwards. Naturally enough these things were the 
 subject of conversation when Campion joined Parsons in Lon- 
 don : " We talked nearly a whole night," says Parsons, " on 
 what we should do if we fell into their hands, which really 
 happened to him shortly after." 
 
 The great secret whicJi Hammond and Norton wished to 
 rack out of Briant, was where Parsons printed his books. 
 Now, whatever confidence Parsons might have in Briant's 
 resolution, it was clearly the part of prudence to count on 
 the possibility of a moment of weakness or unguardedness, 
 when the secret might be wormed out by some artfully con- 
 trived question. This was one reason for the wish to remove 
 the press from Brookes' house. Another reason w^as, that 
 Brookes, the father, began to be anxious about his property. 
 He had been led to suppose that his tenants were a family 
 of gentlemen ; Brinkley had dressed up his seven workmen 
 in fine clothes, and given them horses, to make the story 
 appear more likely. But the signs of labour did not altoge- 
 ther escape the notice of the landlord, who was unwilling 
 that his house should be used for illegal pui'poses. In this 
 state of things, one of the workmen, who had been sent to 
 London to make some necessary purchases, was captured and 
 tortured ; and though nothing could be got out of him, yet 
 the warning was not lost upon Campion and Parsons, who 
 forthwith transferred the press to a lodge in Dame Cecilia 
 Stonor's park, near Henley; a place both secret, as being 
 surrounded with woods, and easily accessible, for the Thames 
 at that period was a better highway than any road. Here 
 the Decern Rationes was printed without accident, and from 
 hence it was in due time dispersed among the Academicians 
 of Oxford.222 
 
204 EDMtnST> CAJIPIOX. 
 
 A letter from some Eiiglisli priest to Father Agazzari, 
 the rector of the Enghsh College, dated in July this year, 
 gives the following account of the Catholic publications of 
 the period. " There has been this 3'ear quite a battle of 
 books, and the heretics have not been able to publish anything 
 without its being immediately controverted. Charke and 
 Hanmer, Calvinist ministers, first wi'ote against Campion, 
 making a strange hash of the whole order of Jesuits in gene- 
 ral, and of the life of Ignatius Loyola in particular ; but within 
 ten days there appeared in print a short review by an un- 
 known author,^^^ which convicted them of so many lies that 
 both they and their followers were heartily ashamed of them- 
 selves : in this book the ministers were for the second and 
 third time challenged to a disputation ; and when they 
 showed great offence at this, Campion wrote his luminous 
 little Latin book to the Universities, wherein he gave the 
 reasons of that demand. ^^•' 
 
 " The ■ Queen published some outrageous proclamations 
 against all Jesuits, priests, scholars of seminaries, and against 
 the colleges themselves. But Dr. William Allen, who may 
 most justly be called the father of this vineyard, wrote an 
 apology for them with such prudence, moderation, and weight 
 of argument, that the heretics themselves, ready enough to be 
 offended, praised his book highly, while the Catholics gained 
 no little increase by it. About the same time, one Fulke, a 
 minister, had attacked a book written many years before by 
 Allen on Purgatory, — but his brag was speedilj' extinguished 
 by Richard Bristow,^^-'' the prefect of studies in the seminary 
 at Rheims. 
 
 " In these days the Parliament met, and it was said that 
 the Catholics were to be condemned for contumacy if they 
 refused to assist at the Protestant ser\ace.^^'' There was there- 
 fore dispersed in the Parliament itself an English pamphlet 
 printed in England, which gave very many and solid reasons 
 for this refusal, which the adversaries cannot controvert, 
 unless, like atheists, they think that all considerations of con- 
 science in Catholics are to be totally despised. 
 
 " I have already written about the apostasy and relapse 
 of John Nichols, who at first was a Calvinist minister, and 
 then a pretended scholar of your college. This man has 
 divers times preached in the town of London to the impri- 
 soned priests, who were di-agged to the church to hear 
 him^^' in the presence of a great concourse of cour- 
 tiers, who came to grace the comedy. It can scarce be 
 believed what praises are la\'islied on this gull. He is the 
 most learned Jesuit of them all, the Pope's scholar, th*' 
 
JOHN NICHOLS. 205 
 
 Cardinals' preacher, a theologian, philosopher, Grecian, He- 
 braist, Chaldaist, — -a perfect master of all languages and 
 every science. He has printed his renunciation of the faith, 
 in which he tells enormous lies about Rome, the Pope, your 
 college, the Jesuits, the scholars, and all orders of monks and 
 priests. The book was received and distributed by the here- 
 tics with mighty triumph ; but almost within a month there 
 came out another book, 'Nichols detected,' proving clearly 
 that he was neither Jesuit nor priest, theologian nor philo- 
 sopher ; that he had never preached before Pope or Cardinals, 
 except when he abjured the heresy of Calvin before the 
 Inquisitors ; that he knew nothing of any learned language or 
 science, but was merely a relapsed minister, an ignorant 
 grammarian, a vagabond tramp, and an egregious liar ; 
 withal, occasion was taken to explain so many things about 
 Roman matters, about the works of charity there, about the 
 munificence of Popes and Cardinals, and the piety of the 
 monks, that the heretics are no little vexed at themselves 
 for having forced us to publish an explanation, whereby their 
 fraud is discovered, and which makes many begin to mistrust 
 them, and to look with favour upon us. 
 
 " So much for the books, which are as difficult and dan- 
 gerous to publish as to print. The way is, all of them 
 are taken to London before any is published, and then they 
 are distributed by hundreds or fifties to the priests, so that 
 they may be published all together in all parts of the realm. 
 And the next day, when the pursuivants usually begin to 
 search the Catholics' houses, it is too late ; for during the 
 night the young gentlemen have introduced copies into the 
 houses, shops, and mansions of the heretics, and even into the 
 court, and the stalls in the streets, so that the Catholics alone 
 cannot be accused of possessing them." 
 
 Nichols here mentioned was a Welshman, and scholar first 
 of White-hall, now Jesus College, Oxford, and then of Braze- 
 nose College : afterwards he returned to Wales, and became 
 tutor to a gentleman's sons ; he was ordained to a curacy in 
 Somersetshire, 1579; whence he removed to London, thence 
 to Antwerp, so to Rheims, and thence to the English college 
 in Rome, whence he was sent back towards Rheims in 1581, 
 but returned to England, and was apprehended in Islington, 
 and sent to the Tower, where he made a public recantation, 
 was received into Sir Owen Hopton's family, and published at 
 least three books — his Pilgrimage, his Recantation, his Ora- 
 tion and Sermon made at Rome, with his answer to an in- 
 famous libel. He was at first in such credit that the Privy 
 Council, by a letter to Archbishop Grindal, dated May 19, 
 
206 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 1581, ordered that the English bishops shoukl contribute 
 among them 501. a- year for his maintenance ;"* but the bishops 
 soon found cause to gi'ow tired of tlieir hberality ; he came 
 to be in want, gi-ew into great contempt, and was turned out 
 of doors by Hopton. After tliis, in 1582, he went once more 
 to France, some said witli intention to turn Turk, and was 
 apprehended at Rouen, when he made another recantation, 
 and wrote most humble letters to Dr. Allen, confessing his 
 frauds and hes, and beseeching his protection.^-" He was a 
 weak man, terrified by the mention of the rack, and con- 
 senting to any remedy suggested to his fear. He declared 
 that what he wrote, he wrote partly from memory, partly 
 from Hopton's dictation, who made him say whatever he 
 chose. He published many things dangerously compromising 
 the loyalty of the priests ; as that in their common talk at 
 Rome and Rheims they were perpetually wishing harm to the 
 Queen. He declares, however, that he designedly absented 
 himself from London when Camjiion and his companions 
 were tried, lest he should be compelled to perjure himself by 
 swearing to the truth of what he had written. I do not know 
 whether his appeal to Allen delivered him from his durance 
 at Rouen, or whether he perished in prison there. 
 
 I can best carry on this narrative by printing t-\v"0 letters, 
 one of Parsons to the Pope, and another of Dr. Allen to 
 Atjazzari, the rector of the English college in Rome. 
 
 Robeii Parsons to the Pope, June 24, 1581.^'° 
 
 Beatissime Patee, — Although I hope your Holiness knows our 
 affairs by the other letters 1 have sent to you, yet as I have found 
 a convenient messenger, to -whom I must needs give some kind of 
 letter, I wished to add some brief notice of our state. To-day 
 the French ambassadors have left London without having done 
 their business, as is generally supposed, for the marriage is no 
 longer talked about. Wc are daily expecting a fresh storm of per- 
 secution ; for two days ago the Council sent an order to all parts of 
 the realm, to make search for the Catholic recusants, as they call 
 them, according to the form of a statute made in the last session, 
 ■which condemns every one above the age of sixteen years to pay 
 twenty pounds for every month they refuse to come to the Pro- 
 testant church. And although there are very few Catholics who 
 are rich enough to pay, and the rest must therefore expect to be per- 
 petually imprisoned, yet they are full of joy, and not at all anxious 
 about this matter, as they hope that theu' case will be the same as 
 that of the Israelites, and that the aggravation of their oppres- 
 sion wiU be the hopes of a more speedy redemption. Against us 
 
GEORGE GILBERT. 207 
 
 they publisli the most threatening proclamations, books, sermons, 
 ballads, libels, lies, and plays. But the people receive us with 
 the greatest eagerness, comfort us, and protect us. The number 
 of the faithful is wonderfully increased, and of our shrewdest foes 
 we have softened many, some we have converted. The contest is 
 sharp. God give us humihty, patience, and fortitude ! Whatever 
 priest or layman they lay hold of, whom they suspect to know 
 anything about us, tliey torture on the rack to make him betray us; 
 and quite lately they tormented one most atrociously, but could get 
 nothing out of him. Meanwhile we live safely enough in their 
 very sight ; we talk, preach, write, and do everything else to resist 
 them, expecting every kind of torment when we are taken — yet in 
 the mean time, through God's goodness, we sleep soundly. We 
 earnestly desire supplies of new men, and that soon, for fear we 
 should be taken before they can take our place. So much oon- 
 cerning religious affairs. 
 
 It now remains for me to tell your Holiness somewhat about 
 the bearer of this letter, who, to tell the truth, is the chief cause 
 of my writing. He is a young gentleman, named George. Gilbert, 
 who has afforded the rarest spectacle to all England. He was a 
 man of great wealth, a great favourite at court, and devoted all his 
 property to the defence of the Catholic religion. "V^Hien we first 
 entered the island, while others were in fear and doubt, he alone 
 tcolc us in, comforted us, clothed us, fed us, helped us with 
 money, horses, servants ; then took us about the island at his own 
 expense ; he journeyed with us, gave us books and other neces- 
 saries, bought a press for us, sold some of his lands, and gave us a 
 large sum of the money for all jjurposes whereby the Catholic re- 
 ligion might be promoted ; nor was this all ; he bestowed continual 
 alms on all the prisoners for religion, whereby he soon became so 
 hateful to the heretics (especially as he had once been one of them) 
 that they searched for him everywhere, and threatened to put him 
 to a cruel death if they could catch hko. ISTow, although he cared 
 little for this, yet since I saw that he could work no longer, nor 
 stay in England without plain peril of his life, and that we had 
 more trouble and anxiety in protecting him than ourselves, I at 
 last persuaded him to leave all things, and cross over the sea, to 
 keep himself for happier times. Now, therefore, I most humbly 
 entreat yoirr Holiness, or rather all we priests entreat you (because 
 this one man was a most munificent patron to us all), that yoirc 
 Hohness will regard him and console him for that consolation which 
 he has given us, and whereby he has upheld the common cause. 
 Eor if we have done any good, a great part of it is to be attributed 
 to this youth. So, if he finds an equal charity on that side, it will 
 be a great edification for all, and no little encouragement to his 
 companions to imitate his example. May the most merciful Jesus 
 preserve your Holiness long, as all the Catholics here pray day and 
 night, who think themselves so bound by the immense kindness 
 you have shown, that they never cease talking of your Holiness, 
 
208 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 and to pray for your long life in this world, and your salvation and 
 eternal happiness in the next. London, June 24, 1581. 
 Your Holiness' most unworthy son, 
 
 Egbert Parsons, S.J. 
 
 II. 
 
 Letter of Dr. William Allen, Rector of the English College in France, 
 to Father Alphonsus Agazzari, Rector of the English College at 
 Rome.'^^ 
 
 "We have heard from England, by a letter of F. Eobert Parsons, 
 S.J., that the persecution still rages with the same fury, the Catho- 
 lics being haled away to prison and otherwise vexed, and the 
 Fathers of the Society being most diligently looked for; but they are 
 still, by God's singular providence, at liberty. One of them in the 
 same chamber with Father Eobert was not long ago seized and 
 searched ; but the father was absent at the time. But a Mr. 
 Briant, who was a scholar of our college at Eheims, was not only 
 taken, but twice most cruoUy tortured on the rack to make him 
 tell where " that Jesuit" was. But so far from confessing anything 
 of the sort, he laughed at the torturers ; and though nearly killed 
 "with the pnin, he said, " Is this all you can do 1 If the rack is no 
 more than this, you may bring an hundred more for this matter." 
 
 The day after, John !Nichols, the apostate, met F. Tirrel, a 
 scholar of your college, in the street, and as soon as he saw him 
 cried out " Traitor !" and so took him ; but he is not committed to 
 the Tower, but to another prison called the Gatehouse, where he 
 and F. Eishton, another pupil of your college, Hve happily. The 
 Catholics were never more courageous, or more ready to suffer. 
 
 Two days afterwards, a certain Mr. Ireson was taken with ten 
 copies of our apology ; thus the book came to the knowledge of the 
 Lords of the Council. He is once again confined to his old home, 
 the Fleet Prison, from whence he had by favour been deKvered. 
 
 The heretic John Nichols boasts that he made a long oration 
 at Eome before the Cardinals (nothing can be more false), wliich he 
 has just published in his second book, and has at the same time 
 promised to publish the former turned into Latin, with an ap- 
 pendix of his travels, in which he will explain at length the 
 horrible murders and adulteries of the Catholics, and the immoral 
 life of the Jesuits and students. He now preaches publicly in 
 London, but people are already universally tired of him ; and I 
 imagine that he wiU soon be tripped up, especially when the ab- 
 juration of heresies that he made at Eome in the Inquisition comes 
 to England; for I have received the authentic copy of it which 
 you sent, containing his whole recantation, and have sent it to 
 F. Eobert in England. 
 
 Father Eobert wants three or four thousand or more of the 
 Testaments, for many persons desii-e to have them. He says that 
 
Allen's lktter. 209 
 
 he earnestly hopes and expects more fellow-lahonrers of yonr order ; 
 ho says also that everji.hing is going on well there, and that our 
 Apology is vastly approved. 
 
 I enclose a letter for the Holy Father, and another for our Pro- 
 tector, which you must see delivered to them. Therein I thank his 
 Holiness for his many favours of tliis year, namely for the founda- 
 tion of the Enghsh College at Rome, for our college here provided 
 for fifteen years, for his late extraordinary suhsidy of 500 golden, 
 crowns, for assigning so good a Protector to each college, and par- 
 ticularly for not listening to the detractors of the colleges and mis- 
 sions, who, to excuse their ovm idleness and cowardice, assert that 
 aU these attempts on our country are in vain ; and I show that it is 
 sufficiently evident that these missions, and the endeavours of the 
 Fathers and seminaries are of extraordinary utility ; and finally I 
 assert and boldly pronounce, from the opinion, sense, and experience 
 of all good men, that the Fathers and priests have gained more souls 
 this one year in their own country than they could possibly have 
 gained in the whole world else in the very longest lifetime. I 
 write also that the dangers are not so great as to make it expedient 
 to relinquish this duty, seeing that of the fifty priests (at least) 
 who have this year been sent from the two colleges, not more than 
 ten have fallen into the enemies' hands, and up to this time the 
 Fathers are altogether free, and labouring fruitfully. Lastly, we 
 show that our books are thus moderately worded, and nothing 
 brought forward in anger, but rather directed by pity, because of 
 the vast utUity that accrues to every class of persons by reading them. 
 So much for the letter to the Pope. But to our Protector I merely 
 write to beg him to turn his ears from certain idle and envious 
 men, who say that the work of the Fathers and seminaries in our 
 country is useless ; moreover I beseech him for Christ's sake not 
 to forbid my sending five or six young men to that ooUege next 
 autumn, because ours has become so numerous, that we cannot any- 
 how feed them, although his Hohness has given us an extraordinary 
 gift of five hundred golden crowns. So much for my letter to him. 
 ISTote that I am afraid to send any against his express injunction, 
 lest we may seem to have no moderation, and to abuse the Pope's 
 liberality too much. At this very time we are obhged to send for 20 
 youths (for the most part gentlemen) from Douay to our college here 
 at Rheims, who otherwise woidd have to return to England, to the 
 manifest damage of soul and body, since, on account of this procla- 
 mation, they can get no money from England. Moreover, within 
 the last fortnight more than twenty young men have come to me 
 (poor me) from England, and where shall we get bread that these 
 may eat, that each one of them may have only a little, lest they 
 faint in this exile 1 May our Lord God bless and multiply our food ! 
 
 This week I have heard that the Fathers in England are not 
 only well, but so occupied in the vineyard that they could not 
 ■write to me. Father Campion is said to have published a Latin 
 book of advice to the two Universities, but as yet it has not come, 
 
 P 
 
210 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 to our hands. See, Father, whether or no they push the work for- 
 ward. I have some time ago sent them the letter of the F. GeneraL 
 May the Lord Jesus send many such labourers into His vineyard ! 
 At least thirty priests have entered England since Easter, not one 
 of whom was hindered on landing, or has since been taken, blessed 
 be God. This year I hope wUl be every way a happy one for us 
 "VVe sow in tears, but I trust in the Lord that we shall carry our 
 sheaves with joy, through God, and this Pope Gregory, our true 
 father. 
 
 1 have with me at present the most generous companion and 
 benefactor of the priests in England, Mr. George Gilbert, who on 
 their account has suffered the confiscation of almost all his goods 
 and estates, and whom the heretics have personally persecuted 
 more than the rest, knowing that the Fathers of the Society were 
 kept and sustained by him. He has come hither into France by 
 the advice of F. Eobert and others, in order to keep himseK for 
 that time. God Avilling, he will go to Eome in the autumn, and 
 ivill dispose of himself according to the ad'vice of the Father Ge- 
 neral and yourself. He tells me that more Fathers are very much 
 wanted, if it were only to assist Father Eobert, who, he says, has 
 an incredible burden to bear. He wrote those two beautifid httle 
 books himself, one of which we have hitherto supposed to be Cam- 
 pion's work ; he preaches contmually, he resolves cases of con- 
 science for innumerable persons. The CathoUcs in the midst of 
 jjersecutions have less scrupulous consciences than anywhere else 
 that I know of, and have such an opinion of the Father that they 
 will not acquiesce in the judgment of any common priest, unless it 
 is confirmed by Father Eobert. He has seven men continually at 
 work at a press outside of London (where the noise of the machine 
 is less likely to betray it). He is continually appealed to by gentle- 
 men, and by some of the conned, for necessary advice ; so tliis Mr. 
 Gilbert tells me, who has been his inseparable companion for this 
 whole year, and who at his departm-e left Father Eobert seven 
 horses for the necessary journeys and affairs of the Fathers and 
 priests, and a large sum of money to procure needful things, paper, 
 types, ink, and the lili.e ; for great things can only be done at great 
 expense, and for the success of such works we must have men who 
 are not only despisers of money, but rich into the bargain. Father 
 Campion is no less industrious in his own province, and it is sup- 
 posed that there are twenty thousand more Catholics this year than 
 last. ISTor has God in this age anjTvhere given to the preachers of 
 the word more power or success. Blessed be His name for ever. 
 
 Our Apology, as I hear, is read both by adversaries and friends, 
 and the cliief of the French mission has given it to the Queen to 
 read. Christ Jesus, &c. Eheims, June 23, 1581. 
 
 Your reverence's brother for eternity as I hope, both in 
 earth and heaven, 
 
 William Allen. 
 
GEORGE GILBERT. 211 
 
 It may be well to add to this account of Gilbert a few 
 particulars of him that may he gathered from the informa- 
 tion of one Joim Taylor, a friend of his servant, Roger 
 Yardley.'^'^ Gilbert is described as a man " of reasonable tall 
 stature, broad-shouldered, with a big leg, bending somewhat 
 in the knees, fair-complexion ed, reasonable welU coloured, 
 little hau' on his fixce, and short if he have any, thick some- 
 what of speech, and about twenty-four years of age." lie had 
 been a very earnest Protestant up to the age of seventeen ; 
 his haunts in London were ]\Ii-. Townsend's in Barbican, Mr. 
 Roper's in Shire Lane, Cooke's (a saddler in Fleet Street), 
 Sir Thomas (Gilbert) Gerard's (the Master of the Rolls), 
 Mr. Allington's, Mr. Norris' (sometime of the Inns of Court), 
 and the two Roscarocks'. "In the country he resorteth 
 to his tenants' houses in Bucks, for thereabouts his mother, 
 Grace Gilbert, a widow, dwelleth ; also about Nottingham 
 town to Sir Gervase Clifton's. His most familiar friend is 
 one Mr. Pien-epoint, lying in Notts. Also ]\Ir. Peter Basset, 
 who lies much at Mr. Roper's (he was gi-eat-graudson of Sir 
 Thomas ]\Iore, and therefore Roper's cousin), Mr. Robert 
 Gifford of Staffordshire, one Brinldey, and divers others." 
 About Midsununer 1580, Gilbert was taken before the 
 Bishop of London by Non-is the pursuivant, but discharged 
 on Norris declaring him an honest gentleman ;-^^ Norris 
 might well say so, for Gilbert paid him liberally, and hired 
 his house to be a kind of sanctuary for hmited recusants. 
 Townsend of the Barbican was probably either Isaac Towns- 
 end, or his brother Robert To-wTisend of Ludlow, both brothers 
 of Gilbert's mother. Robert had been Gilbert's guardian till 
 he came to the age of 18, when "he delivered him his lands 
 and his free marriage, before which time Townsend kept 
 him as a scholar at his own house, and after at the Univer- 
 sity." Gilbert, however, now scarcely ever visited his uncle, 
 and never stayed more than three days together. 
 
 As soon as his rents came in, they were usually distributed 
 in charity .^'^ His labours for souls were such, that he made 
 as many conversions as any priest : a fiiend of his declared 
 that the names of the wavering whom he had confirmed, the 
 lapsed whom he had restored, the cold whom he had warmed 
 (chiefly youths of his own age and condition), would fill a 
 volume. . . He eluded his pursuers by a continual change 
 of dress; going now as a gentleman, now as a serving- man. 
 His sole anxiety was for Parsons ; for himself he never 
 feared. Most of his goods were confiscated. When he was 
 sent to France, he had to conceal himself in a cave till the 
 ship came in sight. He crossed over at the end of May 
 
212 EDMUND CAJIPIOX. 
 
 1581 (rather, Mdsummer, the date of Parsons' letter, of 
 which he was the bearer), leaving Parsons seven liorses, and 
 a lars^e sum of money. He visited Allen at Rheims, and 
 gave liim 800 crowns. Thence he went to the English col- 
 lege at Rome, and presented himself to Claudius Acquaviva, 
 who would not immediately receive him into the Society, nor 
 jet allow him to put on the ecclesiastical habit in the college, 
 as the Pope and Cardinals wished to employ him on English 
 affaii-s. lie it was that had the pictures of the English mar- 
 tyrs painted in the English college. 
 
 In 1583, as he was about to start for France on a com- 
 mission of the Pope, he was seized with a fever, which killed 
 him on the seventh day. Tn his agony he held in his hands 
 the Cross that Alexander Briant had carved in the Tower, 
 and began to talk to Campioii as if he were present, lamenting 
 that he had not been dragged wdth him on his hurdle to 
 Tybm?n. Just before he died, he was allowed to make his 
 vows as a Jesi^it. He expired at the fourth hom' of the night, 
 October 6, 1583. 
 
 The printers in Lady Stonor's lodge by great industry 
 managed to have Campion's book finished, and a certain num- 
 ber of copies bomid, in time for the commencement at Oxford 
 on the 27th of June, the Tuesday next before the Feast of 
 St. Peter and Paul, when those who were present found the 
 benches of St. Mary's church strewed with copies, upwards of 
 four huncbed of which were distributed, pai'tly in this way, 
 partly in special gifts to different persons, by Hartley. The 
 audience was more employed in reading the new book than in 
 listening to the responsions of the students ; and it was the 
 reading, not the speaking, which so strangely moved them. 
 Some were furious, some amused, some frightened, some per- 
 plexed ; but all agreed that the essay was a model of eloquence, 
 elegance, and good taste. 
 
 Oxford had already caused some anxiety to the govern- 
 ment. Lord Chancellor Bromley, and the Earl of Leicester, 
 Chancellor of the University, wrote to their loving friends the 
 students of Christ Church, June 12, 1581,^^'' that they had 
 been of late undutiful to the dean and sub-dean, slack in 
 resorting to prayers and religious exercises, and so disorderly 
 and insolent as to impair the ser%'ice of God, the increase of 
 learning, and the husbandry of the house. And, after Cam- 
 pion's captm-e, the Pri^'y Council -'* ordered a letter to be 
 written to the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of Houses to inform 
 them that three Masters of Arts had been found in his com- 
 pany, that most of the seminary priests which at that moment 
 
THE TEN REASONS. 213 
 
 disturbed the Church had beeu heretofore scholars of that Uni- 
 versity; and that one Jacob, a musician and companion of 
 Campion, had been tolerated there many years without going 
 to church or receiving the sacrament. The Vice-Chancellor 
 was therefore directed to search diligently through all the col- 
 leges after all persons suspected in religion, to certify their 
 names to the Council, and in the mean time to use the best 
 means they could to reduce them to conformity. 
 
 _ The young Oxonians did not bear easily the Elizabethan 
 drill, and felt that if their liberty must be crushed, they would 
 fain have it crushed by something more venerable than the 
 mushroom authority of the ministers of the Queen. They 
 were as tinder, and Campion's book was just the sort of spark 
 to set them in a blaze. He had wTitten, he says, not pub- 
 lished, a challenge to disputation; this had been taken 
 " atrociously," as if he were the most conceited man in the 
 world. It was answered; but how? Not in the simple way 
 — " We accept your challenge ; the Queen allows it ; come," 
 but with cries of "Jesuit, sedition, arrogance, traitor." He sees 
 then that the only platform he will be allowed is the gallows : 
 hence he gives the lieads of his intended argument; a syllabus, 
 as it were, of the lectures he was not allowed to deliver, to 
 show that it was not his ovm strength, but the inherent 
 strength of his cause, and the native lustre of truth, that gave 
 him courage to stand one agamst all. In a cause like this he 
 may be killed, he cannot be conquered. 
 
 After this preface, he expounds ten reasons, or topics of 
 argument, on any of which he is ready to prove the falsity of 
 Protestantism, and the truth of the Catholic religion. The 
 first topic is the Scriptures. All the old heretics, he says, in 
 sheer despair of making the Bible speak their language, muti- 
 lated it. The Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anglicans have done 
 the same with those parts of it which gave too clear a witness 
 against them. The second topic is the method by which Pro- 
 testants elude the force of the texts which make plainly against 
 them. The third, the nature of the Church, whose authority 
 Protestants confess in words, and then escape by a definition ; 
 for their invisible Church is equally inaudible, and is incapable 
 of bearing testimony to the truth. The following terse piece 
 of catechism is a characteristic part of this topic : " Die mihi, 
 subscribis Ecclesite, quae seculis anteactis viguit"? Omnino. 
 Obeamus ergo terras et tempora. — Cui? Coetui fidelium. — 
 Quorum ? Nomina nesciuntur, sed constat plurimos extitisse. 
 ^Constat 1 quibus constat 1 Deo. — Quis dicit ? Nos qui di-vd- 
 nitus edocti sumus. — Fabuise ! Qui credam? — Si arderes fide, 
 tam scires hoc, quam te vivere." 
 
214 EDMUND CAMPIOX. 
 
 The fourth topic is the general councils. The English 
 Church reveres four Councils, and if so, she must admit their 
 doctrines, the supremacy of the See of Peter, the sacrifice of 
 the altar, the intercession and invocation of saints, the celi- 
 bacy of the clergy : and if the first four Councils are admitted, 
 he engages to prove, on the same reasoning, that the Council 
 of Trent must be admitted too. The fifth topic is "the 
 Fathers." Those who tm'n aside from the ancient way are 
 obliged to renounce the Fathers ; and while the Fathers are 
 read in England, it will be vain to proscribe Harding, or San- 
 ders, or Allen, or Stapleton, or Bristow. He mentions Jewel's 
 famous challenge at Paul's Cross, the alacrity with which it 
 was accepted by the English doctors at Louvain, and the im- 
 mediate prohibition of their replies being imported into Eng- 
 land. He mentions Lawrence Humphrey, who praises Jewel 
 in all else, but owns that he was inconsiderate in making this 
 challenge. He also recites a reply that Tobie INIathew once 
 gave to him at Oxford, and which I have ah'eady related (p. 
 1(5). A Protestant, he says, professing to reverence the 
 Fathers, is like a man holding a wolf by the ears, and there- 
 fore not much to be dreaded as an opponent. The sixth topic 
 he calls "firmamenta patrum," or the consent of the Fathers in 
 their interpretation of Scriptm'e. " Qnas afferunt, afferemus : 
 quas conferunt, conferemus: quod inferunt, inferemus. Placet? 
 — exscrea. Die sodes. ]\Iinime vero, inquis, nisi recte expo- 
 nant. — Quid est hoc ipsum, recte? Ai'bitratu tuo. Nihilne 
 pudet labyrinthi?" 
 
 The seventh topic is the history of the Church, which ex- 
 hibits for so many centuries the progi'ess, the "vicissitudes, and 
 the contests of the Catholic Church, not of the Protestant 
 sect. This is its positive side ; the other is negative. It is 
 owned that the Roman Church was once holy, Catholic, and 
 so on. History ought to show how and when this once pure 
 faith and jiractice were altered. But history, " the messenger 
 of antiquity, the life of memory," makes mention of Catholics, 
 none of the doctrines or doings of Protestants. 
 
 Tlie eightli topic he names "Paradoxes." It is a collection 
 of the most offensive sayings of Zuinglius, Luther, and Cal- 
 vin. The texts are well known. God is the author of sin. 
 The Jiomoousion is rejected. Christ felt the pains of the 
 damned, and despaired. Man has utterly lost the image of 
 God ; sin is the very substance of the soul ; all sins are equal. 
 Grace is not within us, but only in God's favour outside us. 
 Justice is nothing inherent, but a mere relation. The sacra- 
 ments are of no avail. Si nolet uxor, veniat ancilla. All good 
 works are mortal sins in God's sight. The Decalocrue is no- 
 
THE TEN REASONS. 215 
 
 thing to Christians. "I," says Campion, "am nobody in 
 comparison to some who are disputing on these points. But 
 even I dare undertake to dispute with any one against such 
 vmreasonable positions." 
 
 The ninth topic is the utter weakness of the Protestant 
 arguments. Their sldamachia, or fighting with shadows, as 
 wlien they argue against ceUbacy with the text " marriage is 
 honom-able." Tlieir logomachy, taldng words for things, as 
 when they say, "you cannot find 'Mass' or 'Pui'gatory' in 
 the Bible." Their confusion of meanings, as when they say, 
 "wherefore priests, when John says we are all priests?" — 
 they may as well ask, " why kings, when we are all kings ?" 
 Their arguing in circles — What are the notes of a Church? 
 The word of God and pure sacraments.— Have you them? 
 Who doubts ? I deny it. — Consult the word of God. I have 
 already done so, and am still more unfriendly to you than 
 before. — Yet it is plain. Prove it. — Because we do not budge 
 an inch from the Bible. 
 
 In the tenth topic he crowds together a whole litany 
 of commonplaces. He begins with heaven — Who are the 
 Saints? He surveys hell — Who are tbe damned, and why? 
 and he answers with all Dante's positiveness. Then he re- 
 turns to earth. The succession of the Apostolic See ; the suc- 
 cessions of all the Bishoprics scattei'ed over the world. Then 
 he turns to the kings of the Christian world, and after quot- 
 ing Isaiah, Queens shall be thy nursing mothers, he cries out, 
 " Listen, Ehzabeth, mighty queen. The prophet is speaking 
 to thee, is teaching thee thy duty. I tell thee, one heaven 
 cannot receive Calvin and these thy ancestors ; 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." I have no doubt that Campion wrote these words 
 in perfect good faith ; but Parsons may have laughed in his 
 sleeve when he gave them his imprimatur. There was this 
 salvo, however. The Jesuits wished to save Elizabeth's soul 
 at the expense of her fortunes ; her friends wished to secure 
 her fortunes and leave her soul to shift for itself. After this 
 he cites the Christian nations, the Universities, manners, cere- 
 monials of coronations, and the like, vestments, painted win- 
 dows, the gates of towns, the signs of citizens' houses, the 
 lives of our grandfathers, and almost everything that has any 
 
216 EDJIUXD CAilPIOX. 
 
 historical association at all, to prove that Cathohcism is the 
 Christianity of history and fact. 
 
 In conclusion, he tells the University men that his aim in 
 this trifling present, contextum operis in itinere subsecivis, has 
 been to purge himself of the suspicion of arrogance, to show 
 the gi-ounds of his confidence, and to give them a taste of 
 what he should say if his challenge to a conference were ac- 
 cepted. He gives a very intelligible hint that his readers 
 know on which side truth lies, but are kept from confessing 
 it by gold, glory, and pleasure. And he dates his pamphlet 
 Cosmopolis, 1581. 
 
 It would not be difficult to criticise this production ; the 
 scheme of Catholic apology is by no means perfect, nor is its 
 method either philosophical or logical. It is the work rather 
 of a preacher and a rhetorician, than of a theologian. There 
 is a kind of formality in the six first topics, which take the 
 Scriptures as a whole, then the texts as the actual teaching of 
 the Scriptm-es ; the Church as a whole, then the Councils, as 
 it were the texts, the formal propositions enunciated by the 
 Church ; then the Fathers as a body of theologians, and then 
 their firmamenta or consentive teaching. Tlie eighth and 
 ninth also are good topics ; but the weakness with which his- 
 tory is treated in the seventh, and the cliunsy way in which 
 the residues of all the others are collected together in the 
 tenth topic must strike all readers. Nevertheless it was a 
 book that succeeded. One may suspect the partisan prejudices 
 of the Catholics when they cried out to one another in the 
 words of the greatest scholar of the day, Muxetus, " libellum 
 aureum, vere digito Dei scriptuni ;" but it is impossible to mis- 
 interpret the anxious letters wliich the Anglican authorities 
 wrote to one another on the subject, the orders of the Council 
 that the book should be answered, the terms of unmeasured 
 abuse in which it was answered, the monstrous iniquity of the 
 few disputations which its author was allowed to hold upon it, 
 and the anxiety of the Bishops to have even these conferences 
 stopped; the tortures and death that were inflicted on the 
 writer; and lastly, tlie voluminous mass of literature (if I 
 may call it so) to whicli this little volume gave birth. The 
 spark may have been a little one, but it kindled a great fire. 
 And the style of the book was such as to captivate the lover 
 of learning of those days. 
 
 Wliile the book was being pi'inted. Campion and Parsons 
 generally remained in the neighbourhood of Stonor Park. 
 Campion occasionally made excursions to the houses of Mr. 
 Price, or Ap-rice, of Huntingdon ; JNIi'. William Griffith, of 
 Uxbridge; Mr. Edwin East, of Bledlow, Bucks; LadyBabing- 
 
HIS LAST LETTER. 217 
 
 ton, at Twyford, Bucks, wliere he seems to have spent St. 
 John's day, the anniversary of his coming to England ; Mr. 
 Dormer's, at Wynge, Bucks ; and INIrs. Pollard's. During 
 the fortnight that elapsed between the publication of his book 
 and his capture he wrote a letter to Claudius Acquaviva, the 
 General of the Order, which has never been published, but 
 of which Sacchini and Bartoli give a few scraps.^^^* It was 
 dated July 9, 1581. "Lamenting his former letters which 
 had miscarried, in which he related at considerable length 
 the things that had happened to him ; and the miserable 
 condition of the times, which did not allow him to adventure 
 in a letter to speak of some particulars that were most 
 worth knowing, he added : ' Our adversaries were never more 
 monstrously cruel than now. The cause of Christ never in 
 better condition, or in more security. For we are pressed 
 with no other arguments than those whose premisses are the 
 rack, starvation, cursing; this has already broken down the 
 dignity of our enemies, and tvirned the eyes and ears of the 
 whole realm towards the Catholics. Nothing else was lacking 
 to this cause than that to our books written with ink should 
 succeed those others which are daily being published, written 
 in blood.' "^^ 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Campion had now been laboiu-ing a year in England, and his 
 time was almost come. Many a spy was abroad who hoped 
 to catch him, many a false brother was ready to betray him, 
 and the traitor who was to set him in his enemies' hands was 
 already at work. There was a certain George Eliot, who had 
 formerly been steward to Mr. Eoper, of Orpington in Kent, 
 and latterly had been in the service of the Dowager Lady 
 Petre, the widow of Su" William, and mother of Sir John 
 Petre, of Ingatestone, Essex. Eliot was a Catholic; but 
 either through lust of gain, or in order, as Campion's Catholic 
 biographers assert, to free himself by court favour from a 
 charge of mui'der which was to be preferred against him, and 
 which he afterwards confessed to be true, he obtained access 
 to the Earl of Leicester, and communicated to him all he 
 knew, and much that he invented, about Catholics. He 
 wrote several letters to the earl ; two of which, seemingly 
 vmtten fronr prison, were thought to contain information 
 worth laying before the Council. They were accordingly 
 sent to Burghley, and are now bound up in a volume of his 
 papers in the Lansdowne Library of the British Museum (vol. 
 33). The first paper contains a list of priests, followed by a 
 list of the chief Catholics of Yorkshu'e, Derbyshire, Stafford- 
 shire, Lincolnshire, Berks, Oxon, London, Kent, and Essex; 
 then follows detailed information about Sir John Petre and 
 his mother, and about a plot to assassinate the Queen, which 
 he said was communicated to him by Payne, a priest in the 
 house of his old master, Thomas liopor. The plot is described 
 in this letter nearly in the words of Eliot's subsequent depo- 
 sition at Campion's trial, which \yt11 be given in its place. 
 The informer goes on to enumerate the persons who were 
 named by Payne as presumed accomplices in this plot : Mr. 
 Talbot, and his man llobert Eliot ; Robert Eliot, servant to 
 Lady Paulet; Robert Tunster, servant to Sir John Petre; and 
 Philip Lowe, servant to the old Lady Petre. 
 
 Li the other letter George Eliot informs Leicester of the 
 merely political conformity of Sir John Petre, who was a 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 219 
 
 " schismatic Catholic," attending the Protestant church, but 
 refusing the Communion. Of the resolute character of Ro- 
 bert Tunster ; of the threats of vengeance used by Ludovic 
 GreviUe, who had mai-ried Sir John Petre's sister, against 
 Leicester ; of the high favour which the Quceii of Scots bore 
 to Mr. Rolleston ; of the likehhood of getting some informa- 
 tion about Campion and Parsons from Mr. Francis Browne, 
 or ISir. Charles Basset, or from Humphrey Eyton,^^* servant 
 to Mr. Thomas Eoper ; of the books published by Parsons 
 and Campion ; and of two bookbinders in St. Paul's Church- 
 yard, named Gawood and Holden, whom Eliot supposes to 
 have bound the said books. Then he tells how Thompson, 
 one of Roper's priests, took these books to his house, and how 
 Payne, his other priest, had said Mass on Sunday, July 2d, 
 at Mr. William Moore's house at Haddon, Oxfordshire, at 
 which Mass Eliot himself was present. This shows that he 
 was at that time going about the comitry as a fervent Catholic, 
 making his observations in order that he might afterwards 
 reap the reward of a spy. Perhaps he was following Payne ; 
 for the same persons who tell us of Eliot's murders, tell us 
 that he had a personal quarrel with Payne about some gentle- 
 woman of Mr. Roper's household, with whom he had eloped 
 to London, m hopes that the j^riest would marry him to her, 
 and on this being refused, had resolved on revenge. 
 
 The circumstances of the fortnight or three weeks that 
 passed between the dispersion of the Decern Rationes at Ox- 
 ford and Campion's capture are involved in the double ob- 
 scurity of erroneous information. Parsons had an excellent 
 memory; but when, in after years, he related to Bombinus 
 the events of this year of adventures and escapes, he made 
 many transpositions and confusions. Among others, he 
 allowed Bombinus to connect the sudden flight from Stonor 
 Park with the search that Wilkes made in Parsons' chamber 
 upon the information of a binder in the service of Roland 
 Jinks, and the apprehension of Briant in a neighbouring 
 house ; this, as we have before seen, had already happened 
 some three months previously. If any printer or bookbinder 
 gave information in July, it was probably one of those 
 whose names Eliot gave to Leicester, upon the apprehension 
 of whom Parsons would naturally fear for the safety of his 
 press at Stonor Lodge. The fear, however, was vain. For 
 it was not till after Campion's capture that this press came to 
 the knowledge of the Council. However, Parsons judged it 
 prudent that they should part;^'' and so on Tuesday the 
 11th of July, after the usual mutual confession and renewal 
 of vows, he appointed Campion to proceed to Norfolk, first, 
 
220 EDJIUXD CAJIPION. 
 
 however, returning to Lancashire, where he had left the 
 greater part of his books and papers in the care of Mr. 
 Houghton. Parsons, however, ordered liim to make no stay 
 there, and especially to avoid lodging at gentlemen's houses 
 during his joui'ney. After all was settled, they waited 
 till daylight, when they mounted their horses. Campion and 
 Ralph Emerson riding north. Parsons and his man riding 
 towards London. They exchanged hats, — as, on leaving 
 Prague, Campion and Campanus the rector had exchanged 
 habits, — and bad one another what each felt to be the last 
 farewell. 
 
 But it was not so. They had not been long parted before 
 Parsons heard Campion galloping after him, to ask his per- 
 mission to visit the house of ]Mr. Yate, at Lyford. 'Mr. Yate 
 was at the time a prisoner for religion in London, but he had 
 written to Campion to beseecli him to visit his family. Cam- 
 pion had more than once refused; but now, as he had almost 
 to pass the door, he thought that he could find no excuse. 
 And the moated gi-ange at Lyford was an attractive place for 
 a Catholic priest. ]\ii's. Yate had under her protection eight 
 Brigittine nuns, who had migrated into Belgium at the be- 
 ginning of Elizabetli's reign, but had been compelled by the 
 tumults in the Low Countries to return, and were committed 
 by the Queen to the custody of various persons, where they 
 suffered many miseries, till some gentlemen, in pity for them, 
 begged the Queen to transfer their custody to them.'"" ISIr. 
 Yate had for several yeai-s lodged eight of them in his house, 
 and his widowed mother had joined their community. It was 
 natural that these women should desire to see and hear Father 
 Campion ; but it was scarcely necessaiy, as there were two 
 priests, Ish: Ford and Isis. Collington, always in the house to 
 supply then* spu'itual needs. "Nevertheless," saj'S Bombinus, 
 "so fired are women's imaginations," they must needs confess 
 to Campion, receive his absolution and advice, and take the 
 Communion from his hands. Campion himself, besides his 
 natural courtesy, seems to have had a special liking to the 
 kind of spiritual conference which he might expect at Lyford; 
 and liis importunity at last overcame the prudence of Parsons, 
 who at first would by no means consent. The house was no- 
 torious ; there would be gi'eat concourse thither ^^•hen Campion 
 was understood to be there; and this would be perilous for him- 
 self, and fatal to his expedition into Norfolk. " I Iciiow," said 
 he, "youi- easy temper; yoa are too soft to refuse anything 
 that is required of you. If you once get in there, you vnll 
 never get away." Campion said he would stay exactly as 
 long as Parsons ordered him. Parsons asked him what secu- 
 
LYFORD. 221 
 
 rity lie could give for that. Campion offered Ralph Emerson 
 as his bail ; on which Parsons made Ralph Campion's superior 
 on the journey, and told Campion to obey him. Then, in 
 the hearing of both, he told them not to tarry at Ljdbrd more 
 than one day, or one night and morning ; and bade Ralph to 
 take care that this command was executed. They then once 
 more separated. Campion was happy : he had his way about 
 the nuns, and he had received a delightful humiliation in 
 being put under the obedience of a lay-brother. At Lyford 
 he found everything as he could wsh ; — the nuns in such 
 fervour, that he could scarcely get them off their knees : but 
 he told them how short a time he had to stay with them, and 
 they understood there was no time be lost ; the night was 
 spent in confessions and confei'ences ; with the earliest dawn 
 Campion said Mass and preached ; and after dinner, in obedi- 
 ence to Parsons' orders, he and Ralph took horse and rode 
 away. This was on AVednesday, July 12. 
 
 It happened that in the afternoon of the same day a large 
 party of Catholics visited Lyford to see the nuns. Nothing 
 could exceed then' mortification M'hen they found what a trea- 
 sure they had so barely missed. It was useless to tell them 
 that Campion had gone in obedience to the strict injunctions 
 of his superior. They must needs send after him. And as 
 Mr. Collington had ridden on with Campion, Mr. Ford, the 
 other chaplain, notliing loth, took horse and rode after him, 
 and in the evening overtook him at an inn not far from Ox- 
 ford, where he found him ■with a number of students and 
 masters of the University round him, — for it was quite out 
 of Campion's power or even will to keep himself concealed. 
 Here Ford whispered his message to Collington ; and so on, till 
 the whole company knew his errand. They had already tried 
 to make Campion preach, but he had refused to perform any 
 public act of religion at so dangerous a time and place ; and 
 they saw that if they could prevail on him to return to Lyford, 
 they should have him all to themselves. Ford therefore began 
 the assault; attracted by his passionate tones and gestures, the 
 rest of the party came up one by one ; they all chimed in with 
 him, and begged Campion not to resist the prayers of so godly 
 a company. Campion, seeing that everybody was against him, 
 declared that he was simply acting under obedience. Then 
 there came a new assault. Commands are not to be taken 
 at the letter ; Parsons never thought such a company would 
 be gathered, or he would never have forbidden his preaching 
 to them. Campion had devoted a day to a few nuns, and he 
 could never refuse another to so many persons, all thirsting for 
 the waters of life. It was now Thursday; on Friday he might 
 
222 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 ride back to Lyford, remain there on Saturday and Sunday 
 morning, and then he might go. Campion, the gentlest of 
 men, was moved almost to tears ; he would do nothing con- 
 trary to ohechence; but then, after all, he was in Ealjih Emer- 
 son's hands. Such an excuse was too ridiculous ; so he had to 
 explain that Kal])h was made his superior for this ex]3edition, 
 and that he would do whatever Ralph ordered him. This 
 turned the tide ; the assault was now against Ralph. The 
 "little man" was at first quite fierce in his refusals; bvit when 
 they came to reasons, he was soon overwhelmed. He found 
 that he could spare Campion a deal of trouble and even dan- 
 ger if he left him at Lyford, while he fetched his books from 
 Mr. Houghton's. From Lyford Campion could easily ride to 
 a Catholic gentleman's house on the borders of Norfolk after 
 dinner on Sunday, and there stay for Ralph and the books. 
 So said, so done. Campion was ordered back to Lyford ; and 
 Ralph rode on towards Lancashire. 
 
 Eliot, on the other hand, who had been at Haddon in Ox- 
 fordshire on the 4th of July, had been in trouble at London, 
 where he exjjlained to the Earl of Leicestei', first, the know- 
 ledge that he had of Catholics and their hiding-places, and 
 his willingness to devote it all to the Queen's service, and 
 next, the danger in which he stood because of the impending 
 charge of murder. Bombinus ■will have it that Walsingham 
 was the minister to whom he went. But Eliot's extant letters 
 are addressed to Leicester, and the earliest accomit of Cam- 
 pion's capture, that, namely, translated from the French by 
 James Laing, doctor of the Sorbonne, and ^^ublished as an 
 appendix to his life of Bezain 1585, calls the man totius regni 
 fere maximus princeps, almost the greatest lord in the realm, 
 which clearly means Leicester. The motives of his ha-\dng 
 recourse to Leicester may be understood trom the objections 
 which Payne on his trial brought against the insufficiency of 
 Eliot to be witness.^'" He declared him guilty of oppression 
 of the poor, even unto death ; of a rape and other notorious 
 lewdness ; of breach of contract, and cozening of Lady Petre ; 
 of often changing his religion ; of malice against himself ; 
 adding, that he was also attached of murder, and was a 
 notorious dissembler. Bombinus also and Bartoli make out 
 that Eliot first of all betrayed PajTie on the 13th of July, 
 and then pretending bodily fear of the Catholics, obtained a 
 guard, and was sent out of London to look for other priests, 
 before the news of his treason could be bruited abi-oad.^^ 
 But this is unlikely ; for the Council-book contains directions 
 dated July 27, 1581, after the captiu-e of Campion, for a letter 
 to be written to Thomas Roper, Esq., requiring him to send 
 
DISCOVERED. 223 
 
 up Thompson and Payne, his servants, — the two priests whom 
 he entertained as his stewards.^^' Thompson was sent np, and 
 committed to the Marshalsea on the 30th of July ; but Tayne 
 could not then be found ; he was, however, taken before the 
 14th of August, when the Council ordered him to be put to 
 the torture in the Tower. (See below, c. xii.) However tliis 
 may be, it is certain that Eliot was in Oxfordshire during the 
 week that Campion spent at Lyford. Perhaps Eliot, as well as 
 the students and masters of Oxford, had heard of his being in 
 the neighboiu'hood ; and as it appears by his letter to Leicester 
 that Moore's house at Oxford, and Yate's at Lyford, were the 
 only two Cathohc houses that he knew ia Oxfordshire and 
 Berkshire, it was natural that he shoiild search first one and 
 then the other for his victim. I suppose that it was for this 
 reason he heard Mass at Haddon on Sunday July 2, and again 
 on Tuesday July 4 ; and then denounced the priests who 
 officiated, Thompson and Godsalve, to Leicester. It was with 
 this dangerous man m the neighbourhood, furnished with full 
 powers, Yfith letters to all sheriifs and constables, and with an 
 experienced pursuivant to attend him (and to watch him) that 
 Campion went back into the trap from which he had just 
 escaped. 
 
 Of course he was received with exceeding joy, and for two 
 days he, the nuns, and the Catholics of the neighbourhood 
 were in Paradise. On Smiday the 16th of July more than 
 sixty Catholics and Oxford students were assembled to heaV 
 him preach. Just as Campion was preparing to say Mass, 
 Eliot came to the house, vrith his attendant pursuivant. A 
 fortnight before, he had gained admission to a Mass at Mr. 
 Moore's, and now he wanted to do the same here. The cook 
 of the house was an old fellow-servant of his at Mr. Roper's, 
 who knew him to be a Catholic, and knew also that both 
 Eoper and the old Lady Petre had always trusted him. So 
 Eliot called the cook out of the house on to the drawbridge, 
 and then talked with him, as one weary m body, but more 
 thirsty in soul for the consolation of Mass ; and he knew that 
 in such a house there must be a Mass on Sundays. The 
 cook owned there was, but was unable to admit any stranger 
 without Mrs. Yate's leave. This, with much ado, he at last 
 obtained ;^^'' and as he was letting Eliot into the house he 
 whispered to him that he was a lucky man, for he would 
 not only hear Mass, but also hear Father Campion pi'each. 
 Nothing could be more delicious to Ehot. He only wanted 
 a minute to send away the heretic who had come with him to 
 the house, and then he would go in with his friend the cook. 
 So he sent off his pursuivant to a magistrate in the neighbour- 
 
224 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 hood, to order him in the Queen's name to come to Lyford 
 with a posse comitatus of an hundred men for the purpose of 
 apprehending Campion, against whom he had a warrant. 
 Then with all devotion he let himself be conducted to the 
 chapel. There he heard Campion's Mass, and the sermon 
 which he preached upon the Gospel of the day — it was the 
 ninth Sunday after Pentecost : " When Jesus drew near 
 to Jerusalem, He wept over it." The text was apt in its 
 application to England ; England, once the most faithful of 
 nations, now so changed as to be the subject of the most 
 bitter tears of the Chm-ch. " Jerusalem, thou that killest the 
 prophets ;" every part of the passage conspired vAt\\ the cir- 
 cumstances of the day and his own presentiments to raise the 
 eloquence of the preacher to its highest pitch, and his audience 
 declared that thej^ had never heard or imagined such preach- 
 ing. It was the song of the swan. Eliot had -ivith him the 
 warrant for Campion's apprehension ; and as he had been 
 instructed, if possible, to take him fiafjixmte delicto, in his 
 vestments, he more than once thought of exhibiting the war- 
 rant then and there, but, like a prudent man, forbore to do so. 
 After the sermon came dinner ; after which Campion, as he 
 had settled with Emerson, was to ride off towards Norfolk. 
 Eliot, ]iressed to stay, refused, and excited some susj^icion by 
 his abrupt departure ; but not enough to make Mrs. Yate do 
 more than place a watchman on one of the turrets to give 
 notice of the approach of danger. Dinner was not over 
 before the watchman had to announce that the place was be- 
 leaguered with armed men. The company broke up in con- 
 fusion. Campion was the first to speak. There was nothing 
 to be done. He was the man they sought ; if he departed, 
 perchance he might find means to escape, and if not, at least 
 his captm-e might satisfy the pursuivants, and deliver the rest 
 of the house from endless vexation and danger. But they 
 forced him to stay. The walls of the house were pierced in 
 every direction, they told him, with galleries and hiding holds ; 
 he would have a much better chance stowed away in one of 
 these. There was no time to deliberate. Ford and CoUing- 
 ton hurried him away to a chamber excavated in the wall 
 above the gateway, where there was a narrow bed, on which 
 they stowed themselves, Ipng side by side, with their hands 
 crossed over their breasts, or lifted up in prayer ; and there, 
 after mutual confession and absolution, they lay all that after- 
 noon, expecting every minute that the wall would be broken 
 in by the maces of the searchers. 
 
 When they were thus bestowed, the men-at-arms had al- 
 ready surrounded the house, and set a guard at every outlet 
 
THE SEARCH. 225 
 
 A chosen number, led by Eliot — Judas Eliot, as he was 
 thenceforth called by Catholics and Protestants — demanded 
 admission into the house. They entered; he led them into 
 every chamber, sought with them in every comer, turned 
 everything topsy-turvy ; but no priest could he find. The 
 searchers, all Berkshire men and quiet neighbours, who had 
 no taste for this kind of work, were sulky ; the whole after- 
 noon had been spent ; the walls had been sounded, the men 
 were tired. They laughed at Eliot as a gull, and determined 
 to give over theii- search. Before leaving, the magistrate went 
 to Mrs. Yate to ask her pardon for the vexation and trouble 
 he had been obKged to cause her; he had only obeyed the 
 Queen's warrant that had been brought to him by a strutting 
 turkey-cock, who took upon him more than he was entitled to 
 assume. JSIrs. Yate was too glad to be rid of her importunate 
 guests, and probably showed too much satisfaction at their 
 departure. 
 
 When they were once outside the house the men were 
 free to tell Eliot what they thought of him for having spoiled 
 their Sunday's holiday, and their credit both with their neigh- 
 boiu' Yate and with the rest of the county, who would laugh at 
 them for their fool's errand. Eliot was roused ; the fault was 
 not his, but theirs ; he would report to the Council their re- 
 missness in the search, and the marked favour they had shown 
 to the notorious Papists. They had not broken the walls or 
 searched the hiding-holes. Did they fancy to catch Campion 
 under a bed, or that they would find him in company with the 
 rest of the family 1 The magistrate replied that he had no 
 warrant to break down or destroy. " But I have," said Ehot, 
 as he drew out the warrant from his bosom, and proceeded to 
 read it. One of the men, suspecting he was reading not from 
 the paper but from his invention, went behind and looked over 
 his shoulder ; he soon detected Eliot's fraud ; and Eliot ordered 
 him to be apprehended as a comforter of the Jesuits. The 
 man was apprehended, and this decided act frightened the rest, 
 and made them more readily submit to Eliot's order for a 
 renewal of the search. The priests had already crept out of 
 their hiding-place, and the whole house was in a fervour of 
 congratulation and thanksgiving, when the magistrate returued 
 with his men. Mrs. Yate sent for him ; she asked what this 
 inconstancy in counsel could portend, but the destruction of 
 a poor sick woman. It was a manly part, she said, for men 
 to play. She would bear it, for it would be a glory for her, 
 but what a lasting shame for him ! Then she burst into tears. 
 The magistrate begged Mrs. Yate not to blame him for Ehot's 
 unkindness; he must obey the Queen's wan-ant, though a 
 
 Q 
 
22 G EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 madman had been charged to execute it ; he would, however, 
 try to moderate what he could not prevent, and he therefore 
 allowed !Mrs. Yate to choose a chamber where she might sleep 
 in peace, which he promised should not be disturbed by any 
 of his men. It was now evening, and ^Nlrs. Yate had her 
 bed made iip in the part of the house where the priests were 
 hidden. She was conducted there with all honour, while the rest 
 of the house was examined, the walls sounded, and broken in 
 where they seemed hollow. The search was continued till late 
 at night, when she ordered the men to be well entertained. 
 The long excitement, the work, the despair of success, the 
 food, and especially the beer, soon had their effect, and the she- 
 riffs men all comjjosed themselves to sleep. When ]\Irs. Yate 
 was assured that all were asleep, she caused the priests once 
 more to be called from their hiding-place, and with a gushing 
 importunity which seemed quite incredible to Bartoli, she 
 insisted on Father Campion preaching one more sermon to 
 her community. Her servants found it vain to resist. Cam- 
 pion was brought to her bedside, and had to preach then and 
 there. She knew, she said, she should never hear him again. 
 Excited by his eloquence, the audience forgot the prudence 
 that beseemed the garrison of a beleaguered })lace, and as the 
 congregation broke up, first one of the priests fell down, then 
 others tumbled over him. The noise a-\\oke the sentinels that 
 had been placed at ]\Irs. Yate's door. They gave the alarm ; 
 the Jesuits had been in the room ; they were almost seen ; 
 they were but just missed. Mrs. Yate's bedroom was forth- 
 with searched, all the walls sounded, every closet explored : 
 but again all was to no purpose ; the congregation had glided 
 away through the secret passages, and had left no trace of 
 their path. 
 
 And now day had bi'oke, and an afternoon and night spent 
 in fruitless destruction had reduced not only the sheriff's 
 men, but Eliot himself to despair ; once more then the soldiers 
 began to depart, not without reproaches and jeers against the 
 madman who had led them into such a labyrinth. When 
 Ehot first came, ]\lrs. Yate had directed one of her servants 
 to attend upon him, ostensibly to serve him, really to give the 
 household every possible warning of what he was about to do 
 next. Eliot had vented upon this man all the ill-humour of his 
 disappointment, and he was now descending the stairs by his 
 side. Suddenly he clapped his hand on the wall over the 
 stairs, and exclaimed, " We have not broken through here." 
 The man, who knew that it was precisely there that the 
 priests were hidden, turned deadly pale, and stammered out 
 that he should have thought enough walls had been broken 
 
THE CAPTURE. 227 
 
 up already. Eliot marked liis confusion, and immediately 
 asked for a smith's hammer; lie smashed in the wall, and 
 there, in a little close eel), on a narrow bed, were the three 
 priests lying side by side, their faces and hands raised towards 
 heaven ; they had confessed their sins to one another, and had 
 received for their penance to say once fiat voluntas itia, and to 
 invoke St. John Baptist three times. For St. John had once 
 before saved Campion from a similar danger. "Such," adds 
 Bombinus, " is the true account of this capture, written from 
 Parsons' notes and oral instructions, who in turn had received 
 the account from the man whom IMrs. Yate had directed to 
 wait upon Eliot." 
 
 With Campion and the two priests were taken John Cot- 
 ton, William Hildesley of Benham, Berks, Humphrey and 
 James Keynes, Philip Lowe, Edward Yate, and John James, 
 gentlemen ; and William Webley and John Mansfield, yeo- 
 men. None of the sayings or doings of Campion at this time 
 is recorded; only Yepes tells us that he spoke so quietly, 
 and looked so cheerfully, that he disanned the malice of his 
 captors. Humj)hrey Forster of Aldermaston, the sheriff of 
 Berkshire (anno 22 Eliz.), was absent when Eliot summoned 
 the posse comitatus of Abingdon to assist him. If he had been 
 there, the proceedings would not have been so violent as they 
 were. When the news reached him he hun'ied to Lyford ; he 
 had no mind to be jailor to a man whose eloquence he had 
 admired in the schools at Oxford, and the fame of whose sanc- 
 tity had given him a secret inclination towards his religion. 
 When he arrived at Lyford he sent a messenger to London, 
 to know the will of the Council in the matter. In the mean 
 time Campion was treated as an old friend rather than as a 
 prisoner, except that he could not have his liberty. He 
 had the place of honour in the house and at the table ; and, 
 indeed, his own winning ways had conciliated his keepers 
 quite as much as the orders and example of the sheriff. For 
 three days they had to wait at Lyfoi'd for the answer of the 
 Council. On the fourth the sheriff received a letter ordering 
 him to send his prisoners under a strong guard to London. It 
 was a sad parting for the women at Lyford, and a proud day 
 for Eliot, who rode at the head of the company, and was not 
 much daunted by the nickname Eliot Iscariot or Judas Eliot, 
 which the people pretty freely used to him. Let those laugh 
 that win. The company made three halts in its passage to 
 London ; one at Abingdon, where, amongst others, divers 
 scholars of Oxford came to see the famous champion; of 
 which being told by Mr. Lydcote, he said he was very glad, 
 as himself being once of that University ; and asked whether 
 
 & 
 
228 EDJIUND CAJIPIOX. 
 
 they would hear a semion : then, at dinner, Ehot said to him, 
 "Mr. Campion, you look cheerfully upon everybody iDut me; 
 I know you are angry with me for this work." " God forgive 
 thee, Eiiot," said he, "for so judging of me; I forgive thee; 
 and in token thereof, I drink to thee ; yea, and if thou wilt 
 repent and come to confession, I will absolve thee; but large 
 penance thou must have." The next halt was at Henley; 
 here William Filby, a priest, as he was incautiously attempt- 
 ing to speak to Campion, was apprehended, and added to the 
 company of prisoners."^ A few nights before, he had dreamed 
 that his body was ripped open and his bowels taken out ; the 
 terror whereof caiised him to cry out so loudly that the whole 
 house was raised. At Henley also Campion saw Parsons' 
 servant, and saluted him cheerfully, with such signs as he 
 could without betraying him to the guard. Parsons, who 
 was staying about a quarter of a mile from Henley, was not 
 permitted by his friends to go and see Campion, and therefore 
 sent his man to obsei-ve how he bore himself, and was no little 
 comforted by the report. 
 
 The third halt was at Colebrook, some ten miles from 
 London, where they were stayed by letters of the Council, 
 which bade them to remain there the rest of the day (Friday, 
 July 21), so as to make a public entry into London on Satur- 
 day, market-day, when the streets would be thronged with 
 people. Tlie crowds collected to see Campion and his com- 
 panions at Colebrook gave him a foretaste of what he had to 
 expect the next day in London. Only at Colebrook a great 
 number of Catholic and other gentlemen sought to speak with 
 him ; and Campion made a curious exhibition of versatility 
 and histrionic ability in keeping the sentinels off their guard 
 by his amusing talk, while he conversed by signs 'with the 
 gentlemen who pressed around him, or gave his conversation 
 with his keeper such a turn, as to make it serve the double pur- 
 pose of amusing the one and instructing the others. At this 
 place the instructions of the Covmcil caused the treatment of 
 the prisoners to be thoroughly altered. The sheriff of Berk- 
 sliire had used them like gentlemen ; the cue now was to 
 render them ridiculous ; they were to have their elbows tied 
 behind them, their hands in front, and their legs under their 
 horses' bellies. Campion, who had to ride first in this mock 
 triumph, was to be further decorated in the way that perjurers 
 weie marked in those days, with a paper stuck into his hat, 
 with his title written. Campion the seditious Jesuit. They 
 were to be thus paraded through the whole length of the city 
 on Saturday, July 22, especially through the places where, by 
 reason of the markets of that day, the greatest concourse of 
 
THE PROCESSION, 229 
 
 the common people was. These commands were executed to 
 the letter; all London beheld the spectacle, the mob gazing 
 with delight; but the wiser sort lamenting to see the land 
 fallen to such barbarism as to abuse in this manner a gentle- 
 man famous throughout Europe for his scholarship and his 
 mnocency of life, and this before any trial, or any proof 
 against him ; his case being prejudged, and he punished as if 
 already condemned. ^^^ When the calvalcade reached the 
 cross in Cheapside (the lower images of which had been 
 defaced during the night of June 21 by Puritans, about 
 whom a reward of forty crowns failed to procure informa- 
 tion), Campion made a low reverence to the cross, which still 
 remained on the top, and crossed himself as well as he could 
 with his tied hands on the breast. Some of the mob laughed 
 or hissed at him, some wondered ; but they made no attempt 
 to rescue him, as they had rescued the Puritan brewer But- 
 cher, a few weeks before (June 28), when he was being 
 flogged at the cart's-tail through the same streets, for having 
 raised a sedition in Smithfield. At last they reached the 
 Tower ; and before they were delivered over to the custody 
 of Sir Owen Hopton, the governor. Campion turned to the 
 guards who had brought him, thanking them for their cour- 
 tesy, forgiving them for Clmst's sake any wrong he had re- 
 ceived at their hands, and declaring that he felt mvtch more 
 sorrow for their bhndness and the peril of their souls than 
 for aU his own griefs and incommodities, and praying God to 
 enhghten them. And then the gloomy gates of the Tower 
 closed behind him. 
 
CHAPTER Xn. 
 
 Now that we have brought (campion to the Tower, it is time 
 to see what his captors thought of doing with him. The Eng- 
 lish government and nation were thorougldy, and rightly, 
 convinced of two facts. First, that there was a \erj danger- 
 ous combination of foreign Cathohc powers for the invasion 
 of England ; and secondly, that the invaders counted upon 
 finding an ally i]i every English Catholic. The system of 
 espionage, which Walsingham had organised with marvellous 
 skill — a skill which far surpassed the attempts of the Spaniards 
 in the same line — had kept the Council well informed not only 
 of the general outline of the scheme, which included, first the 
 conquest of Ireland, whence, not without the connivance of 
 tlie young King of Scots, who was at this time cuiTcntly and 
 credibly reported to be secretly a Catholic, Scotland might 
 be seciu'ed.^" It included next, after Scotland was safe, a 
 descent from the north upon England ; while a Spanish fleet 
 from the south, the Prince of Parma with the Spanish army 
 from the Low Countries on the east, and a Spanish, Italian, 
 and Irish diversion on the west, might crush the power of 
 Elizabeth, and usher in the golden day that the Catholics 
 Avhispered about. The danger of this combination taking 
 effect had culminated in 1580, when the death of the cardinal 
 king of Portugal opened a more tempting field to Philip's 
 ambition, and made him tiu'n aside the forces which were 
 intended against England, to secure the prize which lay nearer 
 his door, and more immediately answered the ends of his 
 ambition. Cobham, tlie ambassador at Paris, had, as early 
 as April 8, 1580, duly informed the Queen of the disappoint- 
 ment of the Englisli Catholic refugees, who, he says, wrote 
 from Pome, " That God trieth his people many ways . . . 
 and now, last of all, through the death of the old king of 
 Portugal, whereon the Portugals do continue in their re- 
 sistance against the Catholic long. . . . When this plot was 
 first laid the young Idng was yet livijig ; and after him suc- 
 ceeded a most godly man. ... A league was procured with 
 them of Barbarj', and an amity with the Turk" (by means 
 
DESIGNS AGAINST ENGLAND. 231 
 
 of which the Order of INIalta, set free from its engagements 
 in the Mediterranean, was able to destine its whole forces to the 
 "sacred expedition" of Ireland) "to the intent there should 
 be no impediment . . . Notwithstanding, the death of the 
 late cardinal king is now the only let of so godly an enter- 
 prise;"^''* which was to destroy Elizabeth, "the usurper of autho- 
 rity, the puddle of lasciviousness, the very Antichrist, and the 
 wicked council and minions.'"^''^ Dr. Allen treats this combi- 
 nation as a mere invention of the English politicians ; but no 
 man who has read the state papers of the time can doubt 
 that it was then universally believed that the Catholic army 
 maintained by the Pope, the King of Spain, the Grand Duke 
 of Florence, and other princes, was intended for Ireland, 
 Scotland, or England. It was believed in England ; warnings 
 ■were ponred in from Italy, Spain, and France. Mariners 
 returning from the Mediterranean or from Spain gave in- 
 formation of vast preparations, all appointed for England; 
 intercepted letters from Catholics conspired in the same 
 tale. Agents in Spain and Italy ascertained that Ireland was 
 claimed by the Pope as his own, and had been suiTendered 
 to the King of Spain ; one information even went so far as to 
 assert that the Pope had given England to him, upon pain of 
 his curse if he did not enforce his pretensions ; and had pro- 
 mised him aid in taking Ireland as well. A nuncio was sent 
 over to Ireland with the papal troops.-^" The English go- 
 vernment was convinced of its danger and was really fright- 
 ened. And its fears were not chimerical. Statesmen who 
 knew the cuT.umstances of the case were nearly unanimous 
 in attributmg the salvation of Elizabeth's government to the 
 death of the old king of Portugal. 
 
 Just before Cobham sent this intercepted letter to Walsing- 
 ham,^^°* he had told him : " They -wTite du'ectly from sundry 
 parts, how the Catholic army is prepared for the realms of her 
 Majesty, if the affairs of Portugal do not let him" (the Catho- 
 lic king). "And to the intent she may not be succoured, they 
 have at Rome excommunicated her ; Cardinal Alexandrine, 
 nephew to Papa Pius Quintus, hath caused many copies of the 
 excommunication to be printed, to disperse them among the 
 ambassadors and others of Rome. In their discourses out of 
 Italy they vwite, that King Philip was moved to procure this 
 excommunication and to gather these forces upon the suspi- 
 cion of the confederacy he supposeth the Queen is entered 
 into with Monsieur (the Duke of Anjou) for the taking of 
 the protection of the Low Countries. . . . And as the chief 
 potentates are confederated together, so almost now in all the 
 provinces of France there are particular Catholic leagues and 
 
232 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 brotherhoods, which they say is somewhat offered to be framed 
 in Eno-land, and to that intent there be divers hallowed small 
 crosses and medals which are to be worn secretly, whereof I 
 send you two couples for patterns."' 
 
 " The Abbot of Brisenio, a Neapolitan, which was nuncio 
 in Pius Quintus' time in Florence, and is now King Philip's 
 agent at Rome, hath been an earnest solicitor to the Pope for 
 the excommunication against the Queen. . . . 
 
 " I do send herewith a copy of Pope Pius' bulla renewed 
 against her highness, and an indulgence procured by Don 
 Bernadine to infect her highness' subjects."^" And he further 
 reports the saying of some chief Cardinals, that as Gregory . 
 the Great founded the Church in England, so Gregory XHI. 
 should restore it. 
 
 It was probably on this infoi-mation that Biu-ghley in his 
 Execution of Justice declared that the excommunication of 
 the Queen had " at sundry times proceeded in a thundering 
 sort," and was so eager to credit John Nichols' information 
 that, about Mdsummer 1579, "they renewed the bulls of 
 excommunication granted by the Pope Gregory, under the 
 colour and name of Pius Quintus published ; that five hun- 
 dred copies were printed at Rome .... and published (as 
 he heard at Rome) in the EngUsh Seminarj^ at Rheims, and 
 put fast to pillars in the city, and scattered throughout all 
 Italy, Spain, and part of Germany."^*' Nichols' information is 
 usually worth very little, as he confessed that he asserted what- 
 ever Hopton prompted, moved by his fears of the rack ;^^'* 
 but still in his Palinodia he declares " the younger students 
 related to me that the bull of Pius V. was renewed by Gi'e- 
 gory XIIL, and that it was pubhshed at Rheims, and posted 
 on the doors and posts of the city. I ^vrote on their report ; 
 whether it is true or not, I know no more than a child, for I 
 was not at Rheims at the time." So that, as far as this goes, 
 Nichols must be held to corroborate Cobham. Fui'ther, the 
 secular priests in the controversy with Blackwell and Parsons 
 after 1 (iOO affirmed over and over again that the bull had been 
 republished both in 1580 and in 1588 by Sixtus V. (Wat- 
 son's (^uodlibets, 258.) 
 
 Other circumstances which must have forbidden English 
 statesmen to consider the bull as dormant were the expedi- 
 tions into Ireland, from that which had started under the 
 command of Stukeley, to that which came to so miserable an 
 end at St. Mary AAlck in Kerry under the lead of Dr. Nicholas 
 Sanders and General San-Giuseppe, with Colonel Corneho, a 
 Roman and majordomo of the Pope, at the hands of Arthur 
 Lord Grey. Informations in abundance came to the Council 
 
THE HOLY WAK. 233 
 
 which proved this expedition to have been contrived by the 
 Roman court. It had been known from its very beginnings. 
 Cobham wrote to Walsingham, April 15, 1580,^'''"' that the 
 French Idng had sent Villeroy tohimto communicate the con- 
 tents of a letter sent by the French ambassador out of Spain, 
 March 25, 1580, which informed him of a messenger from Ire- 
 land " despatched by the rebels with a request to have aid, 
 which messenger was directed to the Pope's nuncio; whereon 
 the said nuncio did forthwith intreat the Spanish Idng to have 
 some soldiers sent thither on the Pope's charge. Order was 
 thereon given that seven hundi-ed soldiers should be presently 
 embarked in Gahcia to pass with good munition and provision 
 towards Ireland."^'^ Two months later Cobham -rn-ote to the 
 Queen, that " they of Rome had bent their counsels against her 
 estates .... favouring her fugitives and assisting the Irish re- 
 bels." The Itahans, he says, would not assist Philip with money 
 and forces, except they thought the Catholic army would be 
 bestowed more to their liking, and farther from their coasts 
 than Portugal. He told also liow France was temporising, and 
 how Scotland was being won to the Catholic side through 
 D'Aubigny.^^^ Again, September 18, he had more infoi-ma- 
 tion on the same subject to impart ; and the year after, though 
 the first attempt had ended disastrously^, he writes of prepara- 
 tions for a new enterprise, and of intercepted Spanish letters 
 which stated that Cardinal Riario had oifered to Philip 600,000 
 crowns m ready money, to continue and maintain the enter- 
 prise pretended in Ireland and England.^'' The English 
 government were also acquainted with the fact that on May 
 13, 1580, the Pope granted to James Fitzgerald and all who 
 joined him the same plenary indulgence as was granted to 
 those who fought against the Turks for the recovery of the 
 Holy Land; perhaps they did not know how the Archbishop 
 of Glasgow had suggested to the General of the Jesuits that 
 the Irish expedition should be committed to the Knights of 
 Malta, how the Pope had entirely approved of the idea, and 
 ordered it to be called the " Holy War ;" how the Grand 
 Master refused the expedition for that year, but promised that 
 his knights should undertake it the next ; and, if Cradock's 
 evidence at Campion's trial is to be believed, offered the com- 
 mand to Sir Richard Slielley, the prior of England, then 
 seventy-three years of age, who, however, absolutely refused 
 to lead any expedition against his own covintry.^'^' 
 
 The English government, thus aware of the confederacy 
 of Pope and Spanish king, of the continued ^dtality of the 
 excommunication, and of the Irish crusade, was naturally ex- 
 ceedingly jealous of the seminaries and colleges, which were 
 
234 EDJIUXD CAilPIOX. 
 
 all erected in countries which belonged to the Spanish faction. 
 The College at Rome was directly under the Pope and the 
 Jesuits; that at Rlieims was under the protection of the Dulse 
 of Guise ; that at Douay under the protection of Philip him- 
 self. ^^' Burgliley declares that the missionaries " with titles 
 of seminaries for some of the meaner sort, and of Jesuits for 
 the stagers and ranker sort," " labom-ed secretly to persuade 
 the people to allow of the Pope's foresaid bulls," who, once 
 persuaded m their consciences, wei'e forthwith secret traitors, 
 and only wanted opportunity to be so openly. There is no 
 manner of doubt that the heads of the semmaries, Allen at 
 Rheims, and Agazzari at Rome, ■wished it to be so. But it 
 was on this very point that so many dissensions arose in those 
 colleges. The great majority of students wished to be mar- 
 tyrs, not for a political plot, but for religion ; they wished 
 to be Christ's mmisters, not Philip's soldiers. And they re- 
 
 fudiated honestly and heartily all designs of political meddling, 
 have ah'eadj^ related the acts of the conclave of priests which 
 met in London in July 1581,^'='' when Campion and Parsons, 
 in their own names and in those of all the priests who had 
 come with them, solemnly declared that their coming was 
 only apostolical, " to treat matters of religion in truth and 
 simplicity, and to attend to the gaining of souls, without any 
 pretence or knowledge of matters of state." When news of 
 this reached Dr. Allen, he seems to have been much discon- 
 certed at it. For T\"ilham Pany WTOte to Burgliley from 
 Paris, July 30, ISSO,-"^' "Doctor Allen, niistmsting as" should 
 seem, the good speed of the clerg}-, arrived in England, and 
 finding some of the best begin to stagger, contrary to their 
 promises made to the Pope, sendeth his letters daily abroad, 
 excusing himself to be no dealer in matters of state, but 
 wholly occupied in the government of the semmary. The 
 Scotch ambassador received letters from him to that effect ; 
 he told me there could be no better fi-uits looked for from so 
 weak a company, whose ill consents at Rome had shaken their 
 credits, and made every man wear}' of them."-^- The politi- 
 cians who had sent them over for their own purposes were 
 naturally disajipointed when the priests renounced all political 
 action. The Queen and her Council knew well that the mis- 
 sionaries were for the most part honest in their repudiation of 
 interference in matters of state. Camden, whose Annals are 
 said to have been read over by the Queen herself-''^ and al- 
 lowed by her, declared that she did not believe in the treason 
 of the greater part of those condemned with Campion, but that 
 they -svere merely tools of their superiors, to whom they had 
 vowed obedience. 
 
REPRISALS. 235 
 
 It was, however, almost an avowed principle of the Tudors 
 that if the real culprit could not be caught or could not be 
 punished, punishment must be inflicted on the first substitute 
 that could be found. Achan's wife and children must be 
 burnt for Achan's sacrilege. It is a venerable principle, and 
 one that Henry VIII. cari'ied out with inconceivable mean- 
 ness ; he was the sot, who when he began to understand that 
 he was being scorned abroad, would go home and beat his wife. 
 When Emperor, King of France, or Pope, treated him as the 
 ox and the ass that his looks honestly confessed him to be, he 
 would revenge himself on his subjects, hanging a few of his 
 favourites, or repudiating his wife, and beheading her if he 
 dared. Elizabeth refined on her father's example, and turned 
 it into a principle of conduct. After each crime she com- 
 mitted, she willingly allowed the tools by whom she committed 
 it to bear its punishment. So she pretended to disgrace Lord 
 Grey for cutting the throats of all his Spanish prisoners in 
 1580;^^'' so she had Da-s-ison tried for the execution of Mary 
 of Scotland ; so Dr. Parry, after being for some years a spy, 
 was at last hanged for a traitor. It was a principle of her go- 
 vernment to transform tools into traitors, and to reward them 
 for their supp)leness with the gallows. For every ofl'ence she 
 gave or received she made some one suffer. And as she could 
 not catch Sanders, or Allen, or the Pope, she was willing to 
 hang Campion instead of them, though she did not believe 
 that he was in the secret of their designs against her. 
 
 This nefarious way of apmg and abusing one of the most 
 incommunicable prerogatives of God — that of \dcarious pun- 
 ishment — was in the sixteenth century not quite so great a 
 sign of wickedness as it would be now ; like witch or heretic- 
 bumuig, it could plead that great excuse, custom, in its favour 
 — custom so often the salt of the earth, but often also 
 
 " Tlie queen of slaves, 
 The hoodwinked angel of the blind and dead." 
 
 There can be little doubt that as the English government 
 seized Campion and all the priests it could catch to make them 
 answer for the rebellion in Ireland, so the Pope, when he heard 
 of it, found excuses in the ill custom of wagering upon the 
 next cardinal, or in the want of proper jiassjiorts, to make a 
 general razzia on the English in Rome.^'^''* Cobham wrote to 
 Walsingham, Oct. 9, 1581 — "The Pope hath given severe 
 order that all Englishmen which shall come to Rome on bai- 
 gains to return, are to be apprehended, imprisoned, and exe- 
 cuted as felons The execution of this tyrannical order 
 
 was offered to the English College there, but they refusing it, 
 
23 G EDJIUND CAMPION. 
 
 the Inquisition hath taken the matter in hand."^^^ This is 
 partly confirmed by a letter of a Catholic agent in Italy, 
 Anthony Standen, who writes through Father Darbyshire to 
 Mannering, March 23, 1582 — "No Englishman cometh to 
 liome without good testimony that is not cooped up. . . . 
 there is no more coming for wager men" (who seem to be 
 the same as Cobham calls the men who go " on bargains to 
 return"). ..." all oui- countrymen are in a maze there, and 
 each looketh hourly to be caught and imprisoned. "^^' These 
 were chiefly merchants, as we learn by a letter of Lorenzo 
 Guicciardini to Arthur Throgmorton from Florence, July 12, 
 1582 — "Quelli povexi mercanti Inglesi e altri che son prig- 
 oni a Roma non escono di carcere, e Dio sa qual sar^ la lor 
 fine, a poi che si vede che il Papa ha indm-ato il suo cuore, 
 [e] la Inquisizione di Roma e troppo ajjpassionata e interes- 
 sata."^''' How far all this was reprisal, justifiable by the 
 political ethics of the period, and how far it was revenge, or 
 the cruelty of terror, it would not be easy to determine with- 
 out too long an inquiry. 
 
 Neither was the whole Council united in one plan of policy 
 with regard to the punishment of Catholic missionaries. Thei'e 
 were some who, in spite of their ]^Iachia^'ellian use of means, 
 were earnestly religious in their end, and, either from convic- 
 tion or from policy, were determined to establish " the reli- 
 gion," cost what it might. Such a man was Walsingham ; 
 such, too, was Burghley. Leicester was now for his own 
 political ends with this party, but he does not seem quite to 
 have forgotten his former relations with the Cathohcs — of 
 which we read obscm-ely in " Leicester's Commonwealth," 
 and of which the Earl of Westmoreland, when he was out of 
 credit and a fugitive in France, used to make no secret.^'^" 
 " They all might cui-se Leicester," he said ; "for he, being one 
 of the chief est of theii- conspu-acy (in 1569), craved pardon, 
 and disclosed all their pretence," so that the two Earls of Nor- 
 thumberland and Westmoreland were left in the lurch. For 
 which, and for other treasons, Westmoreland hoped one day to 
 meet him in the field, and to "lend him a lance in his breast 
 for his labour." But now, besides coveting the temporalities 
 of the English bishops, Leicester was secretly jealous of 
 Anjou, whom he supported openly, and so was a hot Puritan 
 in his policy. Nevertheless, he had an eye to the future as 
 well as to the past ; he forecasted the possible toleration of 
 Catholics if the marriage took place ; he was careful to watch 
 the changes of his mistress' will ; and he was more or less 
 influenced by Sir Philip Sidney and others, who, hating the 
 Spanish faction, were not at all disposed to force all Catholics 
 
THE COUNCIL. 237 
 
 into it by an indiscriminate persecution. Burghley and Wal- 
 singham made no such distinction ; with Bacon they might 
 nominally divide the priests into the two categories, and call 
 the Marian priests priests of superstition, and the Seminarians 
 priests of sedition; but the distinction was mechanical andgeo- 
 gi-aphical, not substantial and real. Really they held with 
 Philip II. that all English Catholics were, if not open traitors, 
 at least persons who held in solution the principles which ne- 
 cessarily etfervesce into open treason when the acid of priestly 
 exhortation is poured into them. Hence, while carefully 
 avoiding the open and avowed persecution for religion which 
 had made Mary's reign so odious, and had rendered the Pro- 
 testant reaction possible, they were determined to make a dis- 
 tinction without a difference, and under the name of treason 
 to repress Catholicism as effectually as Mary's government 
 had repressed Protestantism under the name of heresy. Eliza- 
 beth herself was, as usual, irresolute and many-minded. She 
 had to profess to the French coiu-t the tolerant principles 
 which France has the honour of having first reduced to form. 
 She had at the same time to gviard against a Pm-itan excite- 
 ment, on account of her intended marriage with a Catholic 
 prince. The first consideration would lead her to lenient 
 dealing with Campion and his companions ; the second would 
 lead her to treat him as barbarously as she had treated 
 Stubbs, or even to sacrifice him to the bloodthirsty bishops 
 and preachers who demanded his death. 
 
 As for the nation itself, though perhaps the majority of 
 Englishmen would still have gladly been Catholics, if they 
 could have been so securely and without changing their poli- 
 tics, yet the circumstances of the time were such as to give 
 the Puritans the place of power. Our fathers witnessed a 
 similar combination when the disaffection of Ireland, and its 
 threatened invasion by Napoleon, enabled the " Clapham 
 sect," which was favoured by the prejudices of the king and the 
 influence of ]Mi\ Percival, to attain a position disproportioned 
 to its merits. There were among the people plenty who would 
 justify any severity against conspirators with the Pope or the 
 Spaniard, and who were not indisposed to connive even at 
 injustice when its object was to terrify so dangerous a party. 
 Public opinion was quite as much divided as the Council- 
 chamber was about the doom that ought to be pronounced on 
 Carnpion. 
 
 But though there was this divergence on the ultimate pun- 
 ishment which should be inflicted on Campion, there could be no 
 doubt that it was the Council's part to discredit him with both 
 Catholics and Protestants ; to make it appear that his big brag 
 
238 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 had nothing but wind for foundation ; that he was a coward, 
 hardly secure in his own rehgion, and therefore untrustworthy 
 as a pillar of others'; a man so inconsiderate and uncharitable 
 that he would not scru]de to purchase his own ease by telling 
 everything he knew about the Catholics who had received 
 him "into their houses, and by maldng them suffer instead of 
 himself. Again, they considered that it would not be good to 
 let his challenge remain unanswered. They therefore charged 
 Aylmer, bishop of London, with the task of replying to his 
 book, while another set of divines were to afford him the 
 opportunity of controversy which he had requested, but sur- 
 rounded mth such difficulties as to make it either nugatory, or 
 unfavourable to the Catholic side. This was therefore the 
 first care of the Council. And from henceforth there are two 
 lives of Campion ; one his real Ufe in the Tower, the other the 
 false published life, which represented him as his adversaries 
 wished him to be thought. 
 
 As for his real life, he was from the first committed a 
 close prisoner, and therefore his friends outside could learn 
 nothing of him except what the authorities chose to publish, 
 or what could be known by corrupting the officers.-'" The 
 rules for the close prisoners still remain on record : all then* 
 windows were blocked up, and light and air conveyed to them 
 by a "slope tunnel," slanting upwards so that nothing might 
 be seen but the sky, glazed or latticed at the top so that no- 
 thing might be thrown in or out ; closed also at the bottom -with 
 a casement made fast and not to ojjen, save, if need were, one 
 diamond pane with its leaden quarrel. And these openings 
 were to be daily examined, to see whether any glass was broken 
 or board removed, and especially whether any of the pieces of 
 lead v\dth which the glass was tied were taken away to write 
 ■\vith. No one was allowed to pass by the Tower wharf* 
 without cause, and watchmen were on the look-out to observe 
 whether any of the passengers made any stay, or cast his eyes 
 up to the prison windows. The like watch was also kept 
 over passengers by Tower-hill. The lieutenant himself was 
 always to be present when a keeper held communication with 
 a close prisoner, and the key of his cell was ah\-ays to be in 
 the lieutenant's own custod}'. Any servant kept by such a 
 prisoner was subject to the same regulations as his master. 
 Everything sent to him was to be searched, his clothes exa- 
 mined, pies opened, bread cut across, and bottles decanted. 
 The strictest rules were made about admitting stranffers, and 
 every keeper and servant in the place was bound by oath to 
 carry no message. This system of secrecy w^as, however, tem- 
 pered with bribery. ]\Iuch of the lieutenant's income was 
 
THE TOWER. 239 
 
 derived from the prisoners in his custody, and those who 
 paid liberally were treated with some consideration ; neither 
 was it possible always to make the watch so strict as to keep 
 the keepers and servants to the letter of tlie regulations, and 
 bribery, or pity, or fixvour, would often modify a state which 
 in its strictness would have been intolerable. 
 
 And the lieutenant had in his hands terrors as well as 
 palliatives. It is peculiar to the Tower, says Edward Rishton 
 in his journal, that each prisoner is confined in a separate 
 cell, where under the eye of his own keeper he is continually 
 immured, excluded from the sight and conversation of his 
 fellow-captives, and cut off from every means of communica- 
 tion with others, either by letters or messengers. It is from 
 this cell that he is led forth to the various scenes of his suffer- 
 ings — to the pmiishments wliich the caprice of his persecutors 
 is permitted to inflict on him, to his examinations, and to the 
 rack where his confessions are extorted. There are seven 
 means of torture in the Tower. The pit is a subterraneous 
 cave, twenty feet deep, entirely without light. Little-ease is 
 a cell where the prisoner cannot stand or lie at length. The 
 rack is a wooden frame, with rollers at each end, to which the 
 prisoner's ankles and wrists are attached by cords, gradually 
 tightened by turning the rollers, till the bones are ready to 
 start from their sockets. The scavenger's daughter is a broad 
 hoop of iron, opening by a hinge ; the hoop being apphed to 
 the prisoner's spine, the two ends are put, one between his 
 legs the other over his head, and forced together till they 
 can be fastened. The iron gauntlets after being put on 
 the hands are contracted by screws, by which the wrists are 
 compressed ; sometimes the prisoner is suspended by them 
 from two distant points of a beam. The sixth and seventh 
 tortures are manacles for the hands, and fetters for the 
 feet.2" 
 
 Sir Owen Hopton, seeing Campion brought with such 
 derision to his custody, thought he could do nothing more 
 acceptable to his masters than to thrust his prisoner into the 
 narrow dungeon of Little-ease.-'^ Here Campion remained 
 till the fourth day (July 25), when he was in great secrecy and 
 under a strong guard put on board a boat, and rowed to the 
 house of the Earl of Leicester ; here he was received by Lei- 
 cester, the Earl of Bedford, and two secretaries of state, with 
 all honour and courtesy. They told him they had sent for him 
 to know the plain truth, why he and Parsons had come into 
 England, and what commission they brought from Rome. He 
 gave them a sincere and truthful account of all passages, and 
 then answered their questions one by one with such readiness, 
 
240 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 that he seemed to have convinced them his only purpose was 
 the propagation of the Cathohc faith and the salvation of 
 souls; so that, seeing, as they said, he had done ill vi'ith 
 good intentions, they pitied him, especially the two earls, who 
 had known and admired him in his youth at London and in 
 Oxford. They told him that they found no fault with him, 
 except that he was a Papist — •" Which," he repUed, " is my 
 greatest glory;" but he spoke with such modesty and genei-o- 
 sity that Dudley sent word to Hopton to give him better ac- 
 commodation, and to treat him more amiably. Nothing more 
 was known at the time concerning this interdew ; but at the 
 trial it came out that the Queen herself was present ; that she 
 asked Campion if he thought her really Queen of England 1 
 to which he replied, as he relates in his trial."^ Whereupon 
 she with great courtesy offered him his life, his liberty, riches 
 and honours ; but under conditions which he could not in con- 
 science accept. 
 
 When this was told to Hoj^ton, it effected a' speedy revo- 
 lution in his conduct. No man was more anxious to please ; 
 he saw that Campion was a man of account, and it came into 
 his fancy that he might cover himself with glory if the famous 
 Jesuit, the best head that the Papists had in England, could 
 be brought to confess as Nichols had done, that he had yielded 
 to Hopton's arguments, and had embraced his religion; knowing 
 also that sunshine was more likely to make a man throw off 
 his cloak than wind, he exhibited extraordinary affection, and 
 made promises which to-day, he said, were only Avords, but 
 to-morrow should be deeds ; the Queen's favour, an ample 
 pension, a place at Court, or if he liked it better, a rich bene- 
 fice — even the Archbishopric of Canterbury ! Hopton, who 
 had neither consciousness nor imagination of a religion which 
 could stand against such temptations, probably believed that 
 he had prevailed, or would soon do so. And he said so pub- 
 licly. The report exactly suited the intentions of the Council, 
 which were, to undo in any way the work that the Jesuits had 
 done — either by making their persons despicable, or by using 
 their influence in favour of what they had hitherto condemned. 
 So Hopton swore, and so the Court believed, or affected to 
 believe, and committed the good news to the four winds to 
 carry. Campion was at this moment the talk of all England ; 
 and when the Queen's ministers declared that he had denied 
 his religion, and was on the point of maldng a public recanta- 
 tion, the news flew, and grew as it flew ; every preacher in 
 London announced from the pulpit that Campion was shortly 
 to make his appearance at Paul's Cross, where he would preach 
 Protestantism, and burn his own book with his own hands. 
 
THE COUXCIL-BOOK. 241 
 
 Walsingliam, who, as we shall see further on, knew well what 
 the trvith was, just at this time (July 22) was sent on a mission 
 to Paris, where he told the Court that Campion the Jesuit 
 after his capture was soon convinced and brought back from his 
 errors, and had made solemn retractation and become Protes- 
 tant, to the great content of the Queen ; and that there was 
 even talk of his having tlie See of Canterbury. After a few 
 days, however, when Hopton openly proposed to his prisoner 
 to_ go over to the Protestant Church, his proposal was received 
 with such disdain that he saw there was no probability of 
 succeeding by the new method, and so, with the consent of 
 the Council, he retui-ned to the old one. 
 
 Campion had been just a week in the Tower when the 
 Lords of the Council came to this detei-mination to use him 
 severely. On Sunday, July 30, they ordered a letter to be 
 written to Hopton, Dr. Hammond, Beale, and Norton, adver- 
 tising them how further to proceed with him. First, they were 
 to demand of him whether he acknowledged himself to be 
 lier Majesty's subject or no. Upon his confessing himself to 
 be so, they were to administer an oath upon a Bible of Hie- 
 rome's translation for avoiding loss of time and further cavil, 
 to answer truly and directly all that was demanded of him. 
 Then, out of his former examinations, such points as he refused 
 to answer, together with some others now added by the Coun- 
 cil, were to be again proposed to him; " and in case he continue 
 wilfully to deny the truth," they were " to deal with him by 
 the rack." They were particularly to examine him on his 
 relations -ndth one Roehfort, an Irishman, i'ord and Colling- 
 ton were similarly to be examined touching their allegiance, 
 the places where they had lain, and whether a Mass had been 
 said at Mr. Yate's when they were last there ; if they halted, 
 they were to be put " in fear of the torture," and then re- 
 manded to the Marshalsea. Webley and Mansfield,^''' the 
 two serving-men taken at Lyford, had offei'ed to conform. 
 They were to be dealt with by some godly and learned jireach- 
 ers, who were to persuade them to make open renunciation of 
 Popery, and to receive the Anglican sacraments, and then to 
 discharge them on bonds for their good behaviour. Tliei-e is a 
 postscript to the letter, directed to Dr. Hammond, ordering him 
 to question Campion and the priests upon the points wliich he 
 had drawn out of Sanders's book de Monarchid Ecclesice, and 
 Bristow's Motives, touching the acknowledgment of allegiance 
 to the Queen."' 
 
 Allen, in his Apology for the Martyrs, notes as one of the 
 refinements of the English Council, that they tortured the 
 priests on Sundays or other great Catholic festivals. Cam- 
 
 B 
 
242 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 pion's first racking was either on Sunday 30tli of July, or the 
 next day, a great one even then to a Jesuit, as it was the anni- 
 versary of St. Ignatius's death, but not as yet a festival, since 
 he was then neither Leatified nor canonised. The next day 
 was the festival of St. Peter ad Vincula. It was on one of 
 these days tliat Campion was led to the rack-chamber, where 
 he knelt down at the door, and crossed himself on the breast, 
 and while he was being stripped and bound to the rack in- 
 voked the names of Jesus and Mary. The function for which 
 the Council in mockery chose a holy day was to him a func- 
 tion of religion, a glorious confession, which was to win his 
 eternal crown. 
 
 The points upon which Campion was interrogated during 
 this first torture pointed to no suspicion then entertained of 
 his being implicated in any treason beyond the general trea- 
 son of his religion. Who sent him to England ? By whose 
 counsel did he come ? At whose houses had he been re- 
 ceived 1 Wlio had comforted and assisted him ? Whom had 
 lie reconciled, and howl At whose houses had he said 
 Mass? Whose confessions had he heard, where did they 
 live, and what had he talked to them about '] Where was his 
 book printed, and to whom had he given it ? And, lastly, that 
 "dangerous and ensnaring question" — what did he think of 
 the Bull of Pius V. against Elizabeth ? 
 
 Tiie articles about Rochfort the Irishman indicate a wish 
 to implicate Campioji in Dr. Sanders's expedition. But the 
 Catholic accounts of his life place this accusation much later, 
 and assert that there was no idea of objectiiig to him any po- 
 litical act of treason till after August or September. Campion, 
 however, some time during his imprisonment, told a friend 
 that he had been examined whether he had not sent over 
 30,000Z. to the rebels in Ireland, and racked, to know where 
 the money was collected, to whom paid, how conveyed into 
 Ireland, and when. It is not quite clear what information 
 the government had of such a sum. Some two years before, 
 the Spanish Ambassador had informed the Queen of some 
 22,000 crowns sent with Stukeley for James Fitzmoms.^'* 
 The papers taken by Lord Grey at Smerwick indicated that 
 the money for the Hispano-Paj^al expedition had been collected 
 from the Spanish and Italian Bishops; and on Feb. 21, 1581, 
 Cobham had written from Paris about 600,000 cromns in 
 ready money offered by Cardinal Eiario fi-om the Pope to the 
 Spanish King, to enable him to continue and maintain the 
 enterprise pretended in L-eland and England."' 
 
 There is no authentic account of what Campion said or 
 did at this racking, nor at the other whicli he had to endure 
 
PUBLIC SCAXD.'lL. 243 
 
 one day in August. From liis private life in the Tower I am 
 therefore obliged to pass over to his public life, such as the 
 Lords of the Council gave it out to be, and such as it was 
 during the month of August believed to be both by Catholics 
 and Protestants. 
 
 It was at once, before the end of Julj', declared by the 
 preacher at Paul's Cross, and by the clergy of nearly all 
 the London churches, that Campion was jdelding, and was 
 almost siu-e to become a Protestant. Sir Owen Hopton 
 had said so. Moreover, by the 2d of August the Council 
 had somehow acquired a flood of light about his doings.^'* 
 They knew where he had lodged in Lancashire, and where 
 he had left his books. ^''' It was clear that they might 
 damage his character by giving out that they had acquired 
 all this information by his own confession. Two days 
 after (August 4) they wTote to Lord Huntingdon to search 
 the houses in Yorkshire where Campion had " upon his 
 examination confessed that he had been." They charged 
 Alderman ilartin to apprehend one Nash, and one Eden, 
 sometime an attorney in Guildhall, "at whose houses Cam- 
 pion had confessed that he was lodged at his being in Lon- 
 don." To Sir Walter ISlildmay, to search the house of Mr. 
 Pi'ice in Huntingdonshire, "where Edmund Campion confessed 
 that he appointed his man Ralph Emerson to bring cer- 
 tain books and papers which he left at the house of one 
 Richard Houghton of Lancashire." To the keepers of Wis- 
 beach prison, where Pound was then lodged, "that whereas 
 Camj)ion had confessed that he delivered a copy of his chal- 
 lenge to one Norris a pries.t, commonly remaining about Lon- 
 Jqjj.280 ^Yiai he delivered another to one Pound, then prisoner 
 in the Marshalsea, who is thought to have dispersed the same 
 abroad ; that one Stephens^*' brought the said Pound to speak 
 with Campion at Throckmorton House in London, and further 
 that Pound directed Campion by a token to one Dimmock to 
 speak with the Earl of Southampton" — the said keepers were 
 to examine Pound on the matter. Then they ^vrote to Sir 
 Henry Neville and another, telling them " to repair unto the 
 Lady Stonor's house, and to search for certain Latin books 
 dispersed already in Oxford at the last commencement, which 
 Campion hath confessed to have been there printed in a wood. 
 And also for such English books as of late have been published 
 for the maintenance of Popery, printed also there, as is thought, 
 by one Parsons a Jesuit and others. And further for the 
 press and other instruments of printing, thought also to be 
 there remaining." 
 
 Two days afterwards (August 6) another letter was sent 
 
244 EDMUXD CAIIPIOX. 
 
 to Sir Walter Mikhiiay, oi'dering liim to apprehend Lord 
 Vaux, Sir Thomas Tresliam, Su' William Catesby, and Mr. 
 Griffith, at whose houses Campion " hath confessed that he hath 
 been." The next day (August 7) letters were written to the 
 Earl of Shrewsbury, to apprehend Mr. Sachevei'ell of Derb}-- 
 shire; to Sir Tiiomas Lucy, to apprehend Sir William Catesby 
 (who had a house in Warwickshire as well as in Northampton- 
 shire) ; to Robert Drur\-, to examine Mr. East of Wickham, 
 and Mr. Penn ; to Lord Norris, to examine Ladj' Babington, 
 Mrs. Pollard, and Mrs. JNIoi-ris, in Oxfordshire, '•'in whose houses 
 Campion hath also confessed that he hath been ;" to Francis 
 Hastings, to examine IMrs. Beaumont of Leicestershire ; to 
 Sir Henry Carke, to examine ili'. Griffin of Southmims, ]\Iid- 
 dlesex; to the Bishop of Lichfield, to examine one Worseley 
 of Staffordshire; to the Recorder of London (Fleetwood), to 
 examine ]Mrs. Brideman, " at whose house in Westminster 
 Campion hath confessed to have been," and to apprehend 
 Barnes of Tothill Street and Biar a priest, whom he also con- 
 fessed to have repaired to the same house ; lastly, there was 
 a letter to Sir Owen Hopton, Di-. Hammond, and Thomas 
 Norton, signifying unto them that their lordships, having 
 perused the examinations of Campion, had thought good to 
 return them for re-\'iew, and for additional examinations upon 
 matters which Robert Beale had orders to signify unto them. 
 Upon these points, then, Campion and certain of his fellows 
 were to be forced, if possible, to make more plain and direct 
 answer. 
 
 The day before (August 6) Lord Bm-ghley had written 
 a private letter to Lord Slirewsburj^, two extracts of which 
 are given by Bishop Kennet in vol. 48 of his Ms. collec- 
 tions.^'^ " There was this week a massing priest named Ever- 
 ard Duckett (Hanse), that, being apprehended, was charged 
 with traitorous words and thereof convinced, maintaining the 
 Pope's action to be la\\'ful in pubhshing against her Majesty 
 an excommunication and a sentence that slie was not lawful 
 queen, nor her subjects bound to obey her, for which fact he 
 was condemned and suffered as a traitor (July 31, 1581). 
 If any of these late apprehended Papists shall do the like, the 
 law is like to correct them. For their actions are not matters 
 of religion, but merely of state, tending directly to the depri- 
 vation of her ]\Iajesty from the crown."283 . . . «I think 
 your lordship hath heard how Campion the Jesuit was taken 
 in Bucks, and three more massing priests with him, at one 
 1 ate's house. He denieth to any question of moment, having 
 been convented before my Lord'^ Chancellor and my Lord of 
 Leicester.'' 
 
HIS CONFESSIONS. 245 
 
 Two things should be noted in this letter of August 6. 
 First, that the only charge against Camjsion at present be- 
 lieved by Lord Burghley was his presumed submission to the 
 Bull of Pius v., which Burghley assures Shrewsbury is not 
 matter of religion, but merely of state. And, secondly, that 
 up to this date, four days after the Council had been despatch- 
 ing letters to magistrates and sheriffs all over the kingdom to 
 appr'ehend parties at whose houses Camjiion had confessed 
 that he had been, Burghley assures the Earl that he would 
 confess nothing of moment. At the same time it is evident 
 by the letter to Hopton, Hammond, and Norton, that not only 
 Campion, but "certain of his fellows," had been examined; 
 and it is quite possible that the confessions may have been 
 extorted from these "fellows," and then imputed to Campion 
 to serve a purpose. On the same day Burghley wrote to Wal- 
 singham in Paris^** about " the discovery of a number of 
 Popish subjects ... a number of choice persons who being at 
 least but fined upon that quondam noble will yield a good sum 
 of money." He does not pretend that Campion discovered 
 these persons, though Walsingham in his reply assumes that 
 he did so.^**'' 
 
 All these letters of the Council were effectual. In comity 
 after county gentlemen were apprehended, as having, by his 
 own confession, given lodging to Campion since the proclama- 
 tion of January 1581. To make this impression more authen- 
 tic, " one of the chief of the Council affirmed to a certain knight 
 then in prison, that Campion had told of him a quantity of 
 matters that had never entered the worthy knight's head. But 
 this was the way they brought their ends about. The knight 
 himself had much difficulty in convincing himself that the 
 report was a calumny. But the lie made a deep impression 
 upon many minds, and was so believed, that one Cathohc said 
 he knew that Father Edmund had when upon the rack con- 
 fessed everything he knew. But a little while after the gen- 
 tleman owned that he had been too credulous ; nevertheless 
 the common people were not so easily undeceived." ^^"^ "Be- 
 sides it was everywhere asserted that Lord Vaux, Treshani, 
 and Catesby had been an-ested on his information. For this 
 cause he incurred no small odium not only among Catholics, 
 but among Protestants."^*' 
 
 On the 14th of August the Council had acquired some 
 fresh information which they deemed sufficiently important to 
 make them summon the Bishops of Salisbury and Kochester, 
 the Deans of St. Paul's and Windsor, and Mr. Mullins, to 
 confer touching some matters which tended towards the ad- 
 vancement of Christian religion and suppression of Popery, 
 
246 EDlVrUND CAMPION. 
 
 which, by means of the Jesuits and seminary priests, had 
 very mnch increased. 
 
 At the same time, they wrote to the Vice-Chancellor of 
 Oxford, directing him to weed out Popery from the col- 
 leges, and informing him tliat tliree Masters of Arts, Rvisseli, 
 ytubbs, and Yates, had been -witli Campion at Lyford, and 
 that one Jacob, a musician, taken witli Cam]jion, had been 
 tolerated at the University many years without going to 
 church ; to the Bishop of London, wdio had removed Pound 
 from the Marshalsea to Stortford, and thence to Wisbeach, 
 ordering him to send his prisoner to the Tower: to Sir Ger- 
 
 ti 
 
 pri 
 
 vase Clifton, ordering him to send up> the brothers Pierrepoint, 
 at whose house Campion " hath confessed to have been at 
 Christmas last by the space of fourteen days." The same day 
 (August 14) the Council sent another letter toHopton, Ham- 
 mond, and Beale, to thank them for their pains in examining 
 Campion, and further ordering them again to examine Cam- 
 pion, Peters (Colleton), and Ford, "who refuse to confess 
 whether they have said any masses or no, whom they liave con- 
 fessed, and where Parsons and tlie other priests be, touching 
 tliese points, and to put them in fear of the tortiu'e, if they 
 shall refuse to answer directly thereto. And touching Keynes, 
 Hildesley, and Cotton, who have confessed hearing Mass at 
 Mr. Yate's, to understand from them wdiat other persons were 
 present in their companjr. Toucliing Paine (the priest accused 
 by Eliot of the conspiracy against the Queen's life), since 
 there are vehement presumptions that he is guilty of the fact 
 wherewith he is charged," he is to be examined by torture. 
 The persons apprehended in Dame C. Stonor's house are to be 
 examined, and Hopton is to receive Pound into his custody, 
 to be jointly examined with Campion upon the matters Cam- 
 pion confessed about him. 
 
 On Friday, Aug. 18, Lord Vaux and Sir Thomas Tresham 
 were sent for, and required to make oatli Avhether Campion had 
 been at their houses according to his confession. They refused 
 to swear; on Monday, August 21, Sir William Catesby in like 
 manner refused the oath. All three were committed close 
 prisoners to the Fleet. At the same time, another letter was 
 sent to the Bishops of London and Rochester and the Dean 
 of St. Paid's, to advertise them to meet Hammond and Beale, 
 who would inform them of things confessed by Campion and 
 his fellows, and to desu-e them to de\'ise some good means to 
 I'edress the inconveniences late grown to the hindrance of the 
 Church and disquieting of the State. And another letter 
 directed Hammond to repair to the Tower, and there examine 
 Pound, who had now arrived from Wisbeach. 
 
pound's letter. 247 
 
 When Pound saw the long list of interrogatories drawn 
 up, as they purported to be, from Campion's confessions, he 
 was wounded to the heart. Could it be that the man wliom 
 he had taken for the great champion of Catholicism had 
 tiu-ned out to be, next to Eliot, the greatest traitor among 
 them — the one who had furnished the Government with the 
 most names and the best proofs upon which convictions under 
 the penal statutes could be secured? So the same zeal 
 which had before led him to disperse abroad Campion's chal- 
 lenge, which was intrusted to him to keep, now led the impul- 
 sive, sanguine Pound to another imprudence, equally grave 
 ill its consequences. He wrote a letter to Campion, urging 
 him to behave like a man, telling him of the reports of his 
 backsHding that were everj-where current, and asking him for 
 authentic information of what he had done. This letter he 
 gave to his keeper, who promised, for a fee of four marks, to 
 have it privily delivered to Campion. The man took the 
 money and kept it, but the letter he gave to Hopton. Hopton 
 opened and read it, and closed it again as if it had never been 
 tampered with, and told the keeper to deliver it to Campion, 
 and to bring Ijack the reply. Campion, ever hasty at such 
 matters, and now urged by tlie treacherous keeper, scribbled 
 off a note to his friend, no authentic copy of which is preserved. 
 The most likely record of it occurs in the reports of the trials 
 of Lord Vaux, Tresham, Catesby, and others, in the Star- 
 Ohamber, Nov. 20, 1581;^^^ and of Campion himself, where 
 there was " a letter produced, said to be intercepted, which 
 Mr. Campion should seem to write to a fellow prisoner of his, 
 namely, Mr. Pound; wherein he did take notice that by 
 frailty he had confessed of some houses where he had been, 
 which now he repented him, and desired Mr. Pomid to beg 
 him pardon of the Catholics therein, saying that in this he 
 rejoiced, that he had discovered no things of secret, nor would 
 he, come rack, come rope." What the real meaning of this 
 letter was can only be guessed at ; Pound's letter, to which it 
 was a reply, was never produced, and the sketch of it that I 
 have given was probably a guess of Parsons'. The natural 
 meaning of Campion's words is that he discovered nothing 
 that had not been known before by other persons' confessions. 
 And I am disposed to believe this, in sjiite of the report of 
 what he said on the scaffold, when he desired all to forgive 
 him whose names he had confessed upon the rack (for upon 
 the commissioners' oaths that no harm should come to them, 
 he uttered some persons with whom he had been) ; and 
 he declared the phrase in his letter, " that he would not dis- 
 close the secrets of some houses where he had been enter- 
 
248 EDMUXD CxVilPION. 
 
 tained," to refer only to masses, confessions, preaching, and 
 other functions of priesthood, and not, as it was misconstrued 
 by the enemy, treason or conspiracy, or any matter else against 
 her Majesty or the State.^*'-* I am, however, forced to be- 
 lieve that this speech was a mere interpretation of Campion's 
 real words, turned by the priest into the best apology he could 
 then think of for excusing the universally-credited report of 
 Campion's weakness and even treachery. The author of the 
 French account of his death (afterwards translated into (dog) 
 Latin by Dr. Laing) — a man who was present at his disputa- 
 tions in the Tower and at his trial, and one who knew him 
 well — declares that to all the questions Campion answered 
 little or nothing, except that he had sent his book to Mr. 
 Richardson, and had given two copies to Mr. Pound; and 
 attributes the knowledge that the Council had obtained con- 
 cerning Campion's lodging-places to the confessions of his 
 companions.^'" Arid that this was so, there is the irrefrag- 
 able evidence of the " true report of the disputation, or rather 
 jirivate conference, had in the Tower of London with Ed. 
 Campion, Jesuit, the last of August 1581, set down by the 
 reverend learned men themselves that dealt therein,"^'' pub- 
 lished by authority, January 1, 1583; where we read, in the 
 second page, how Campion declared ''he was punished for 
 religion, and had been twice on the rack ; and that racking 
 was more grievous than hanging, and that he had rather 
 choose to be hanged than racked." To which Sir Owen 
 Hopton replied " that he had no cause to complain of racking, 
 who had rather seen than felt the rack ; and admonished him 
 to use good speech, that he gave not cause to be used with 
 more severity. For although," said he, "you were put to 
 the rack, yet notwithstanding you were so favourably used 
 therein, as being taken off, you could and did presently go 
 thence to your lodging without help, and use your hands in 
 NTOting, and all other parts of your body, which you could not 
 have done if you had been put to that punishment with any 
 such extremity as you speak of." Then Beale, the clerk of 
 the Council, asked if he had been examined on any point of 
 religion; to whom Camjnon answered "that he was not indeed 
 directly examined of religion, but moved to confess in what 
 places he had been conversant since his repair into the realm." 
 Beale replied, " that this was required of him because many 
 of his fellows, and by likelihood himself also, had reconciled 
 divers of her Highness's subjects to the Romish Church." 
 Whereunto he answered, "that forasmuch as the Christians 
 in old time being commanded to deliver up the books of their 
 religion to such as persecuted them, refused so to do, and mis- 
 
FORGERIES. 249 
 
 liked with them that did so, calling them traditores, he might 
 not betray his Catholic bretlu-en, which were, as he said, the 
 temples of the Holy Ghost." 
 
 Now I hold that if he had betrayed his Catholic brethren, 
 as the Council's letters had insinuated, Hopton and Beale and 
 Hammond and Norton, who were all present at this confer- 
 ence, and who had also been at his racking, would at once 
 have retorted : " But you have betrayed them ; and we have 
 your confessions, signed with your own hand, where you de- 
 clare at whose houses you have been ;" for instance, here is 
 one, used at Lord Vaux's trial, the content of which was 
 " that he had been at the house of Lord Vaux sundry times ; 
 at Sir Thomas Tresham's house ; at Mr. Griffin's, of North- 
 ampton, where also the Lady Tresham then was ; and at 
 the house of Sir W. Catesby, where Sir T. Tresham and his 
 lady then were; also at one time when he was at Lord Vaux's, 
 he said that Lord Compton was there." But when he said he 
 should have been a traitor to betray his Catholic brethren, not 
 a voice was Hfted against diim ; the matter was suffered to 
 drop, lest perchance he might have given a public denial of 
 the authenticity of all his pretended confessions.^'^ 
 
 The Council would never allow Campion to be publicly 
 interrogated about his confessions. When Sir Thomas Tres- 
 ham, required to make oath that Campion had never been 
 at his house, asked first " to see Mr. Campion, or hear him 
 speak, where by his face or speech he might call him to re- 
 membrance," he was told by the Lord Chancellor that his 
 demand lacked discretion ; to which Tresham replied : " If by 
 seeing him I could call him to memoiy that he had been at 
 my house, then would I have deposed. . . . Your lordship 
 says he stayed little with me, came much disguised in apparel, 
 and altering his name. All which made me refuse to swear, 
 lest haply he might have been in my house and in my com- 
 pany, I not knowing him; and yet the same should be refeiTed 
 to a jury, whether I were perjured or no. Wherefore my 
 desire was that by means of seeing him or hearing him that I 
 the better might remember him." To which the Chancellor 
 again replied : " I can see no reason why it should be granted 
 
 you-'"'' 
 
 The suspicion that Campion's confessions were forgeries 
 was so fortified by this constant refusal to confront him with 
 those whom he was said to have accused, that these persons at 
 last came entirely to disbelieve in them. Thus, in the same 
 trial, Tresham gives another reason for refusing to swear: 
 "I should greatly sin uncharitably to belie him, to make him 
 and myself both guilty by my oath, who to my knowledge 
 
250 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 are most innocent." Such are some of the difficulties that 
 stand in the way of our supposing Campion's alleged confes- 
 sions to be real. And in proportion to the difficulty of attri- 
 buting them to him, is the ease of finding other sources whence 
 the Council may have obtained the knowledge of the places 
 where he had been received. For instance, all the facts con- 
 tained in his supposed confession about Lord Vaux, Tresham, 
 and the rest, may easily liave been obtained from Henry Tuke, 
 serving-man, servant to Lord Vaux, who was committed to 
 the Counter in the Poultry, Feb. 23, 1581, and discharged 
 July 8, 1582.^^'' Wlien Campion wTote that he had confessed 
 nothing secret, he probably meant he had confessed nothing 
 which had not been pre\-iously wormed out of others. When 
 a list of the places where he has been is shown to a man upon 
 the rack, and he sees that the compiler of the list had access 
 to authentic information, it would be either stupidity or super- 
 human strength of will to refuse acknowledging the truth of it. 
 And that Campion's confessions were merely his acknowledg- 
 ment of the truth, of matters which he perceived were known 
 by his examiners, may be inferred from a paper, partly in 
 Burgldey's handwriting,^^' containing a list of the places wdiere 
 Cani])iou had been, founded on the joint confession of himself 
 and others. Thus, to all the places where he was taken by 
 Gervase Pierrepoint there is appended a note that either 
 Pierrepoint or some one else had confessed the matter ; but 
 then as soon as Pierrepoint hands over his charge to Tempest, 
 Campion " will confess no place of their being but at inns." 
 Again, if Campion had been tiie first to reveal the places 
 where he had been, he probably would have mentioned all of 
 them, and not singled out special cases for delation. But the 
 list that the examiners made out is full of gaps, which were 
 from time to time filled up by fresh information for the next 
 two or thi-ee years. Thus, in 1584 one Botham declares that 
 he was present at Lady Dormer's in Bucks, wdien Campion 
 said Mass there about midsummer 1581. I do not deny 
 that Campion may liave been deceived by the wily officers. 
 " .Some men," says Selden, " before they come to their trial 
 are cozened to confess upon examination. Upon this trick 
 they are made to believe somebody has confessed before them; 
 and then they think it a piece of honour to be clear and in- 
 genuous, and that destroys them."^^'* That this cozenage was 
 familiar to Burghley, we may see by a letter of his to Pucker- 
 ing, Aug. 30, 1592,-»' relative to tlie treatment of Young, a 
 priest, who had revealed all he knew of the Catholics, and 
 through whom the Council hoped to find out more. "The 
 Queen," says Burghley, "would have those charged by him to 
 
COZENAGE. 251 
 
 be apprehended, and charged with some other things, and not 
 with relieving of Young, of wliom slie would have a general 
 opinion conceived that nothing can be had of himself. So as 
 he may retain his former credit with his complices." Young's 
 treachery was to be studiously disguised, because they wished 
 to save his credit for future use. The same men wished to 
 destroy Campion's credit, and therefore would studiously ex- 
 aggerate or invent stories that seemed to prove his treachery. 
 This fiills in exactly with Shakes]5eare's picture of Polo- 
 nius — by whom, I suppose, he intended to represent Burghley 
 in his dotage — instructing Keynaldo how to spy out the truth 
 about Laertes' behaviour at Paris : 
 
 " Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth : 
 And thus do we of wisdom and of reach 
 "With windlasses and with assays of bias, 
 By indirections find directions out."™" 
 
 To return now to the Council-ljook. Aug. 21,^^' Hopton 
 and Hammond were directed to reexamine Campion on certain 
 13oints.^°° The Earl of Derby and other magistrates of Lan- 
 cashire were thanked for aj)prehending Thomas Southworth, 
 Richard iloughton, and Bartholomew Heskcth, with certain 
 papers, in Houghton House. If the parties persisted in 
 denying Campion to ha^'e been at their houses, " which at 
 sundry times had been confessed by him," they were to be 
 kept in prison. Houghton and his wife were to be reex- 
 amined touching Campion's being there, and Ralph Emerson 
 his man, and his books ; and also touching the books sent 
 down by Rishton, and dispersed in that shire. Lord Norris 
 was charged to confine Lady Babington to her house on 
 bond, " since by Campion it hatli been confessed sundry 
 times, that he hath been both in her house in Oxford, and 
 in the AYhitefriars in London." And ]\Iorris was to be 
 sent up, if he would not confess that Campion had been at 
 his house. 
 
 On the .SOth of August,^"' a letter was written to Sir 
 Henry Neville, to thank him for apprehending the printers 
 at Stonor's Lodge, and requiring him to deface the " mass- 
 ing stuff," and give the proceeds to the poor; to send the 
 jti'ess, books, and ])apers to London ; and to look out dili- 
 gently for Ilartwell a priest. Father Parsons and his servant, 
 and Robert Seely, ser\'ant to John Stonor, "if he shall light 
 upon them, or any others of their disposition." Another letter 
 to Robert Drury told him, as Mr. Penn would not confess 
 Campion's being at his house, to examine JVIi's. Penn, and 
 others of the family ; and to search Mrs. Griffin's house 
 near Uxbridge, where Campion was once or, twice. 
 
252 EDiaTND CAJIPION. 
 
 There is no further mention of Campion in the Council- 
 book, except an order to examine him and others on the 29th 
 of October, " and to put them unto the rack, &c. ;" a com- 
 mand whicli was given to the Attorney and SoUcitor-General, 
 Hop ton, Hammond, Wilkes, and Norton, and was executed 
 with all barbarity. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 In the last chapter I traced the means used by the govern- 
 ment to discredit Campion's moral superiority. In the pre- 
 sent I have to show how they tried to disparage his intellect. 
 In their own hearts their fear, perhaps, caused them to over- 
 rate his powers ; but publicly they ludicrously contemned him 
 as a fool. 
 
 When the Decern Rationes was dispersed abroad, the Estab- 
 lishment was in a flutter. Burghley wrote about it to Aylmer, 
 Bishop of London, who replied :'''^ " I have not Campion's 
 book, and yet have I sent to Oxford and searched in other 
 places for it. And if I had it, yet my ague being now so sore 
 fallen down to my leg, I am not able to travail in study with- 
 out great danger. Nevertheless if I can get the book, I will 
 do what my health will suffer me. But I guess that the 
 things wherewith he reproacheth our ancient learned men 
 are nothing else but such railing accusations as are gathered 
 against them by the Apostata Staphilus."^"^ This note was 
 answered by Burghley the same day; and Aylmer wrote 
 again -^"^ " Since I received your letters, I gave thought of 
 those reproaches which the Jesuit objecteth against our 
 learned men, and know there be divers ncBvi in them, as 
 lightly be in all men's writings; as some things spoke of 
 Luther hyperbolicaUy, and some of Calvin." Then he retorts 
 that the same blots may be found in Catholic divines; then, 
 after a compliment to Burghley, on whom comes the care of 
 all the churches as well as that of the State, he proposes " to 
 have a letter sent from the Lords of the Council to ray Lord 
 of Canterbury or to me, to enjoin the deans, archdeacons, 
 and doctors to make some collections for these matters. For 
 such as have hot great dealings in the Church, as they have 
 not, — yea and some bishops also, — might, having that leisure, 
 help well to this building: wherefore else have they their 
 livings? And for books, it were not amiss to point such a 
 number as should serve for that purpose. Sed sus Minervam." 
 Then he annexes a schedule of the divines whom he would 
 commission to reply to Campion. They are — the Deans of 
 
254 EDMUND CAilPIOX. 
 
 Paul's (Nowell), AVinton, York, Christ Church, Windsor 
 (Day), Sarum, Elj^, Worcester, and Canterbury ; the 
 Arclideacons of Canterbury, London, IMiddlesex, Essex (Dr. 
 Walker), Lincoln, Coventry (Dr. James), Sudbury (Dr. 
 Styll) ; and three more to be " doers in writing," Dr. Fulke, 
 Dr. Groode, and Dr. Some. 
 
 After this portentous list of commissioners to answer 
 Campion, it is amusing, but not surprising, to find two of 
 them, Nowell and Day,-''"' opining that his book "was none 
 of his writing, much less penned by him as he was iu his 
 journey; but that it was elaborate before, by the common 
 and long study of all the best learned Jesuits, to serve at all 
 opportunities." If the mother, says the old saw, had not 
 been in the oven, she had never sought her daughter there. 
 
 Two days after the date of Aylmer's last letter, he writes 
 again'"^ to thank Burghley for Campion's pamphlet, and to 
 promise to read it, and set some others awork. " For his 
 collections in the chaj^ter Parado.va,^^'' I think none of our 
 Chiu'ch mean to defend Luther's hjqierbolas, or all things 
 that have passed the pens of Calvin and Beza." Similar 
 collections might be made from Catholic divines ; Camjiion 
 follows the LXX. and not the Hebrew, so " his credit will be 
 small." Then a text is quoted to suggest to Burghley the 
 proper treatment for his prisoner — "Ambitio ligata est in 
 corde pueri, sed virga discipline fugabit earn." . . . . '' It is 
 the property of a spider to gather the worst and leave the 
 best. If this toil of mine were not, I could gladly occupy 
 myself in searching out of his vanities. Truly, my lord, you 
 shall find them but arrogant vanities of a Porphyrian or a 
 Julian." 
 
 Besides the committee named above, Aylmer wrote to the 
 Kegius Professors of Divinity at the two Universities to reply 
 at once to Campion. AAliitaker did so in a Latin pamphlet ; 
 of which Aylmer MTote to Burghley, Sept. 29, 1581: "The 
 translating of Whitaker's book and the publishing thereof I 
 mean to stay, if it come to my hands."^"' I suppose it was 
 too abusive ; for two years later, on occasion of his pubhsh- 
 ing his book against Durreus, Wliitaker wrote^"^ to Burghley 
 that he had followed his advice in sticking to his theme, ami 
 avoiding personalities. Humphrey, the Oxford divine, was 
 slower; he published the first part of his Jesuitism only in 
 1582, where he thus excused himself for his tardiness:^'" "It 
 was a matter of time and difficulty to get Campion's book ; it 
 was late in August when I received the letter which laid this 
 task on me; 1 was in the country, away from books and 
 friends, and ill. I was long in doubt whether to answer, for 
 
AYLMER. 255 
 
 I like gentler studies, and do not willingly mix up in strife 
 and quarrels ; and I should not have entered on this, if I had 
 not been called by those whom I was obliged to obey, and 
 moi-e than once hastened by those whom I would not dis- 
 please.^" "While I was at work, I, among others, was sum- 
 moned by a letter of Bishop Aylmer to dispute with Campion 
 on the 13th of October; this somewhat retarded my writing; 
 and I was i-eady to start, when another letter countermanded 
 my journej^ It was then, perhaps, smelt out {subolfactum) 
 that a different course was to be taken with the Jesuits, and 
 that they would have to plead not for religion but for life, and 
 be accused not of heresy but of treason." 
 
 While Aylmer was thus tasking the best pens at his com- 
 mand to answer Campion, he thought it good policy to speak 
 slightingly of him in public. For which the Catholics^'^ re- 
 prehended his folly, in that he, " a man of known wisdom and 
 judgment, notwithstanding the known learning of Campion, 
 was not ashamed at a sessions at Newgate to say openly 
 that Mr. Campion was unlearned, and that a note-book or 
 two of his fellows' being taken from him, he had nothing in 
 him . . . and much more to the discredit of Mr. Campion." 
 
 The anxiety of Ministers and Bisliops about the effects of 
 Campion's book was not without some justification. There is 
 a letter from Dr. John Reynolds of C. C. C. — (the man who, 
 being nearly Catholic himself, undertook to convert his bro- 
 ther William of New College, and succeeded, but lost his 
 own faith in the process) — to his pupil George Cranmer, 
 one of the most rising Englishmen of the last quarter of the 
 16th century, which affords curious e\'idence of the enthu- 
 siasm excited by the style of the Decern Rationes. Cranmer 
 had written to Reynolds comparing Scotus with Aquinas, and 
 Cicero with Campion : Reynolds replies ; " In your second 
 parallel, wherein you join Campion with Cicero, I much more 
 dissent from you, nor can I own that I think either your 
 affection therein is sober, or your judgment sound. For when 
 you say you always have him at hand when you write, and 
 praise him as a new son of ^lilsculapius, and (as though it 
 were a little thing to rank him next to Cicero) declare him 
 absolute in words, sentences, metaphors, figures, and indeed 
 in every branch of eloquence, I cannot deny that you seem 
 to me to study more industriously than decently a most viru- 
 lent enemy of religion, and to admire more vehemently than 
 justly a barbered and dandified rhetorician (calamistratum rhe- 
 torculum). But I judge not your judgment. Grant him to 
 be terser than Isocrates, more pointed than Hyperides, more 
 nervous than Demosthenes, more subtle than Lysias, more co- 
 
256 EDMUXD CAMPION. 
 
 pious than Plato — grant that our age has produced one greater 
 than Lactantius, whom antiquity called the Christian Cicero — 
 yet yoiu- affection ])leases me not, my George, in reading with 
 sucli pleasure a writer who covers truth with falsehood, piety 
 with reproaches, religion with slanders, and the votaries of 
 truth, piety, and religion with evil speaking and bitter con- 
 tumely. But you will say, ' Suppose he is impure in his 
 matter ; I will drain out the dirt, and drink the pure water.' 
 But from that dirt there rises a pestilential smell, noxious to 
 health, specially to those weak in body. Are you so sure of 
 your strength as to have no fear of perils'? Your uncle, 
 when he asked me as usual what George was about, and I 
 showed him youi- letter, groaned. Perhaps he feared more 
 than he needed, for love is ever anxious and afraid; but still 
 he groaned. God grant that the event may prove him to have 
 been too fearful, not you too imprudent I But you should re- 
 member Cicero's sage saying, ' They that walk in the sun'''^ 
 .... you know the rest. I think Fabius did quite rightly 
 in forbidding boys to read the immoral poets. ^^ Why so, 
 Fabius ? — ' Because I set good life above even best speech.' 
 He only valued good life ; do you think less of right faith ?" 
 — and so on for a page more of polislied phrases, in which he 
 clearly strives to rival Campion, and to compete with him for 
 Cranmer's admiration. Cranmer is warned not to be too fond 
 of Campion's style, lest in listening to his words he is cap- 
 tured by his arguments, like Augustine the Manicha^an, who, 
 while he only wished to take a lesson from the honied rhe- 
 toric of St. Ambrose, was caught by the truth which under- 
 lay the words. After the admiration of Cranmer, we can 
 hardly wonder at that of Mui'etus, who, according to Sir 
 William Hamilton, wrote Latin as well as Virgil, and who 
 calls Campion's book " a golden one, really written by the 
 finger of God ;" or at Possevin, who wondered that while it 
 was compendious as an index, it was eloquent as an oration, 
 and called it a gem, wliich the Calvinists had in vain endea- 
 voured to bury out of sight. Neither, agam, can we wonder 
 at the frantic attempts of the contx'ary party to discredit 
 Ijotli the writer and his writing. 
 
 The Council seems to have felt that it would not suit its 
 purjjose to treat tlie author of such a book vnth the same 
 lordly superiority with which they had treated the replies of 
 Harding and Stapleton to Jewel. Tlicse books, written in 
 the old scholastic style, had no attractions for the new scho- 
 lars ; they had been stayed at the frontiers, and no one, but 
 here and there a dry student, had read them. The absent 
 are always wrong; and a book that nobody reads is easily dis- 
 
CONFEREXCES. 257 
 
 credited, especially when it is a misdemeanor to express any 
 doubt of the vaUdity of the refutation. It was a period wlieii 
 views and opinions were dictated by those who held a knife, 
 at your throat ; when facts were propounded by proclamation, 
 and all means cut off for testing their trnth, or, much more, 
 for publicly denying it, — a time when men were wronged, and 
 then compelled to justify the wrong done them. But Cam- 
 pion's book was in too many hands, it appealed too loudly to 
 all the lovers of the new learning, to be exploded with inarticu- 
 late arguments ; moreover the courtiers, always on the look- 
 out for sojne new intellectual excitement, and already becom- 
 ing exquisite critics of artistic exercises, vehemently desired to 
 hear the renowned author speak. To this wish the Bishoj) 
 of London opposed himself in vain. Some higher will, proba- 
 bly the Queen's, ruled Bm-ghley and the Council ; and Cam- 
 pion was to be allowed the public disputation he had so often 
 demanded. 
 
 It belongs to the highest authority to command, to the 
 inferior agents to execute. No imperial edict is strong enough 
 to force officials to more than a literal compliance : the 
 Bishop of London obeyed ; he ordered that on the last day of 
 August a public conference should be held in the chapel of 
 the Tower ; he deputerl Nowell dean of Paul's and Day dean 
 of Windsor to be the disputants. The conference was to 
 be public, but every advantage was to be taken to secure 
 the victory to the right side. The two deans were to be the 
 attacking parties ; Campion was to reply to their objections, 
 but to start none of his own. They were to have all the time 
 and all the assistance they required for preparation ; Campion 
 was to be apprised neither that there was to be a conference, 
 nor (of course) of the time of it, nor of the subjects in dis- 
 pute, till an hour or two before he was led, under strong 
 guard, to the chapel. No allowance was to be made for his 
 racked and tortured body and distressed mind ; no comfort- 
 able chair to rest in, not even a table to lean against ; no 
 books to refresh his- memory were to be furnished for him. 
 When the day came. Campion, Sherwin, Bosgrave, Pound, 
 and others of the C/atholic prisoners, were led forth. They 
 found the place as full as it would hold. The two sides of the 
 chapel were fitted up for the tournament. At one side were 
 two seats for the two deans, in front of them a table covered 
 with books ; to their right and left a quantity of lower seats 
 for the assistants of the principal combatants. At the oppo- 
 site side, a stage of some grandeur was erected for the minis- 
 ters and courtiers. Between the two was another table, like- 
 w^se covered with books, with seats for Chark the preacher of 
 
 S 
 
258 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 Gray's Inn, and Whitaker the Regius Professor of Divinity 
 at Cambridge, who were to act as notaries. In the middle of 
 the chapel were a number of little stools, mth a strong guard 
 of soldiers around them, for the Catholic prisoners. Behind 
 the guards the people were allowed to find what room they 
 could. Among them was a Catholic who was bold enough to 
 take notes of this and of the other conferences. Ilis reports of 
 the later ones are still preserved in Ms. in the British Museum. 
 They were given to John Fox the martyrologist by Topcliffe 
 the priest-catcher, who found them in the house of Carter the 
 printer, who was hanged in 1584 for publishing a prayer- 
 book in which Catholics were exhorted to imitate Judith, and 
 exterminate the vsdcked demon Holofernes. I have not been 
 able to see a copy of his report of the first conference, but one 
 existed in the English College at Rome, and was used by 
 Bombinus, who gives copious extracts from it. There was 
 another Catholic present, who wrote the life of Campion, 
 afterwards translated by James Laing at Paris. The chief 
 things he noticed in Campion were his sickly face and his 
 mental weariness : " worn with the rack, his memory de- 
 stroj'ed, and his force of mind almost extinguished." Yet for 
 all this he thanks God that he was present at the discussion ; 
 for there, he says, " I heard Father Edmund reply to the 
 subtleties of the adversaries so easily and reacUly, and bear so 
 patiently all their contumely, abuse, derision, and jokes, that 
 the greatest part of the audience, even the heretics who had 
 persecuted him, admu-ed him exceedingly." Each day's dis- 
 cussion began at eight and continued till eleven, and was 
 renewed in the afternoon from two till five. 
 
 Nowell opened the conference. They had come to seek 
 the truth ; not for themselves, for they had found it, but 
 to help Campion and his fellows, and to do them good, if 
 God permitted. Not that they had much hope of a man so 
 proudly impudent as, like a new Goliath, to challenge all the 
 divines of England — a challenge which he clearly thought 
 ever to avoid, for he could never be found ; but the miles 
 gloriosus had been caught, and now had to make good his 
 boast. And he need not complain of being unprepared, be- 
 cause the matter of disputation would be taken from the begin- 
 ning of his bragging book which he had just written. They 
 asked him first, then, how he dared to charge the Queen's 
 most merciful government with inusitata supplicia,^^^ strange 
 cruelty, and the Bishops with preparing for him tormenta non 
 scholas, tortures instead of conference, when the greater cru- 
 elties of Mary's reign were still remembered by all Enghsh- 
 men. Campion, in his reply, first answered the objection to 
 
UXEQUAX, HATCH. 259 
 
 his modesty, by reciting a passage from his preface : " Ego, si 
 fretus ingenio, hteris, arte, lectione, memoria, peritissimuin 
 quemque adversarivim provocavi, fui vanissimus et superbis- 
 simus, qui neque me, neque illos iiispexerim ; sin causam 
 intuitus, existimavi satis me valentem esse qui docerem liunc 
 solem meridie lucere," my fen-our may be jiardoned. As to 
 his hiding, every one knew it was not for fear of arguments : 
 as to the conditions of the discussion, though they were clearly 
 most unjust, yet he accepted them ; he had challenged them ; 
 they had met him on the field he had indicated ; but they had 
 taken care to deprive him of his arms ; for the arms of the 
 disputant are books and meditation. No time had been given 
 him for thought ; as for books, even his notes had been taken 
 from him. Was it an answer to his challenge to rack him 
 first, then to deprive him of all books, and to set him to dis- 
 pute ? Allien life was in question, with the gallows before 
 and the rack behind, the mind was hardly free for philosophy. 
 He. did not compare the cruelty of the English with that of 
 others ; he only complained of the positive tortures inflicted. 
 He never persecuted ; and it was folly to make distinctions 
 when there was no difference, for the Elizabethan racks were 
 as bad as the Marian executions ; he had experience, and 
 lie had rather be hanged than racked. 
 
 Upon this ensued the conversation which I quoted in the 
 last chapter, to show the impossibility of believing the confes- 
 sions ascribed to Campion. The account quoted by Bombinus 
 adds a few characteristic touches. Campion told Hopton he 
 did not complain of what he had suffered, he only deplored the 
 sufferings of Catholics, who were daily treated in the prisons 
 like thieves and murderers. The audience was sensilaly moved 
 at this, when Beale interposed, and said that the racking and 
 torture was not for religion, but for treason ; whereupon Cam- 
 pion rose, and with indignation cried out, " If any of you can 
 prove me guilty of any crime except my religion, I will wil- 
 lingly agree to suffer the extremest tonnents you can inflict." 
 On this a significant silence ensued, and Campion went on to 
 say what questions had been put to him on the rack, and why 
 he had refused to answer them, as quoted in the last chapter. 
 
 There are only two points in this conference which are of 
 much importance. We have seen that Campion was denied 
 all books. His adversaiies cunningly took advantage of this 
 to lead the disputation to a question of correctness of quo- 
 tation. Campion had written, " what made the flagitious apos- 
 tate Luther call the Epistle of St. James contentious, tumid, 
 dry straw, and unworthy the apostolic spirit ? Desperation." 
 After a few cavils, he was bidden to find the places he had 
 
260 EDJroND CAMPION. 
 
 referred to, and the books were handed to him. He could 
 find nothhig nearer than this: " some affirm that the Epistle 
 of James is unworthy of the apostolic spirit." This he said 
 indicated Luther's mind ; the quotations he had made were 
 taken from the Jena editions ; the editions used in England 
 were those of Wittenburg or Strasburg, which had been cor- 
 rected and purged. If he might be allowed to send to Ger- 
 many for copies, he would show the places referred to : the 
 Emperor and the Duke of Bavaria would take care to send 
 the editions he asked for. On this they unceremoniously 
 called him a liar, an impudent mouther, a falsifier and forger, 
 and laughed at him for talking of emperors and dukes, as if 
 they cared for him and his controversies. Campion's only 
 resource was to appeal to the Cathohcs around him, whether 
 it was not notorious that Luther had written what he had 
 alleged ; and their unanimous assent was all he could oppose 
 to the dishonest triumph of the two deans. Of course Cam- 
 pion's Catholic apologists exposed the dishonesty, but I sup- 
 pose that the assertions were believed even to our own day, 
 or Sir William Hamilton would not have taken pains to re- 
 fute them. He gives its the passages from Luther.'" " The 
 Epistle of James I count tlie writing of no apostle" (standing 
 preface to Luther's version), " truly an epistle of straw, . . . 
 with no evangelical character" (Fragmentary preface to N. T. 
 1524), " wholly inferior to the apostolic majesty," " unwM-thy 
 of an apostolic spirit," and so on. Campion, in his weak state 
 of body, seems almost to have lost his temper when the deans 
 called him gloriosiis miles ; if they are to be believed, he rose 
 up from the form on which he was sitting, cast up and flung 
 about his hands and arms, knocked and beat upon the book 
 at every other word, viith loud voice and sharp countenance 
 affirming that all their printed books were false. And Nowell, 
 as a persecuted innocent, complains of " Pound's odious inter- 
 pellations (as, ' Ave know you to be a good Terence man'), and 
 his most scornful looks through his fingers, staring at him 
 (Nowell) continually, whilst he was reasoning with Master 
 Campion, to put him out of his memory ;" whereupon Nowell 
 broke out with os impudens. 
 
 I suppose that Campion, who never had much reason to 
 think that the object of this debate was to sift the truth, con- 
 ceived some scruple about his impatience in this encounter, 
 and resolved to embrace the next humiliation that offered 
 itself. It was not long in coming. A text M'as in dispute ; 
 they offered him the Greek Testament ; he, finding the print 
 too small, put it away from him : the cleans nodded at one 
 another, Gnecuni est, non legiUir. It is Greek to him. Campion 
 
COXTROVERSIALIST. 261 
 
 only smiled, and accepted the rebuff', thus allowing it to be 
 imagined that he was no Greek scholar. I have myself copied 
 his own letters from the Stonyhurst manviscripts, wherein 
 are sundry apposite Greek quotations, ^vl■itten in a scholarlike 
 hand, which leaves no doubt of his famiharity with Greek. 
 Yet when, in the subsequent parts of the conference, the 
 deans handed to him the texts of St. Basil and St. Gregory 
 of Nazianzum, it seems he only read them in a whisper, 
 audible to INIr. Stollard, who held the books for him, whom 
 he called on to witness that he could read. T\ir. Stollard did 
 not refuse at the time, but after Campion's death he autho- 
 rised the deans to say that "if he did read at all, he read the 
 worst that ever he heard." Perhaps he read as they read at 
 Prague, with the Bohemian pronunciation. Anyhow, Cam- 
 pion rested as quietly under this childish imputation of ignor- 
 ance as Hooker did under a much more serious charge, till 
 the fraud was detected by his friends Sandys and Cranmer.'" 
 The result was not unfavourable. Camjiion's meekness was, 
 perhaps, more eifectual than his logic, and, as the two deans 
 complain, " divers gentlemen and others, neither unlearned 
 nor of themseh'es evil atfected," even considered that he had 
 the best of the argument ; an opinion which they designed 
 to correct by their publication, though they suspected some 
 might still " cavil at it, as their biting of a dead man, whom 
 being alive they could not all match." One of the illustrious 
 converts that Campion made on this occasion was Philip Earl 
 of Arundel. He was at that time a Protestant and a cour- 
 tier, quite immersed in pleasiu'es and extravagance ; yet " by 
 what he saw and heard then, he easily perceived on which side 
 the truth and true religion was, though at that time, nor till 
 a year or two after, he neither did, nor intended to, embrace 
 and follow it ; and after he did intend it, a good while passed 
 before he did execute it."'''^ 
 
 Campion's conduct in this controversy is completely in 
 accordance with the view of his character which I have given 
 above (p. 65). To him the foremost question was ever, not 
 the settlement of controversy, biit the ])eace of his own soul. 
 In spite of the dithyrambic confidence of his Decern liationes, 
 and his trenchant condemnation of all Protestant doctrines, 
 there was in him a conciliatory vein which would have made 
 him agree with Possevin or Bossuet, and he would have been 
 one of the first to hold out tlie olive-branch of an eu'enikon, if 
 he could have found any desire of peace in his opponents. 
 The two deans declare that, at the end of the conference, 
 " Master Campion and they were now come to a very near 
 point of agreement in the question of justification." For 
 
262 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 Campion's line was not to quarrel about words, but to see 
 whether an inaccvirate formula might not cover an honest 
 sense. He really saw the root of the evil ; it was the spirit of 
 party, which divided men into factions who were determined 
 to quarrel, and to erect any question into a matter of dispute. 
 Butler characterises such men as " so pers-erse and opposite as 
 though they worshipped God for spite." They scanned their 
 opponents' words with the benevolence of an advocate cross- 
 examining an adverse witness. Controversy was a passion .^^^ 
 The sermons at Paul's Cross were attended by prince and 
 court, the magistrates of the city, and a vast conflux of com- 
 mon people. ^^' The women and shopkeepers argued of pre- 
 destination and church-government, and determined perplexed 
 cases of conscience ; they were mad for a super-fetation of 
 reforms, and went on whetting the ecclesiastical knife till 
 there was scarce any steel left. At the sermons in the Temple, 
 where-'^^ Canterbru-y was preached in the morning and Geneva 
 in the afternoon (I am now speaking of 1585), there were 
 almost as many writers as hearers. Even grave benchers like 
 Sir Edward Coke were not more exact in taking instructions 
 from their clients than in writing notes from the mouths of 
 their ministers. All this controversial bias took its com- 
 plexion from an ingrained political animosity to the Pope, 
 who must needs be Antichrist, and if not wrong in one point, 
 must be so in another ; no peace -w-ith Rome was a principle 
 of faith and morals. Campion did nothing towards eradi- 
 cating this false idea, which really turned " religion into 
 rebelhon and faith into faction ;" his eirenikon, on the matter 
 of justification, was construed into a confession of defeat, his 
 meekness was mere ignorance covering a pride more than 
 Typhonic. For he had to do 'with a religion, the first dogma 
 of which was that all its opponents were the brood of the devil, 
 and that their very virtues were a snare of the e\i\ one trans- 
 forming himself into an angel of light. So when he and the 
 deans had continued disputing very long, and the August sun 
 shone in on their faces at the south -nandows, and the throng 
 was great, and the heat intolerable, the conference was closed 
 as it began. 
 
 In Nowell and Day's book it is made to appear that the 
 only parties aggrieved bj' the reports which were made of this 
 first day's disputation were the Protestants, whom everybody 
 for some days after supposed to have got the worst of it. 
 Under this imputation they rested quite contentedly for more 
 than two years after Campion's death, A\hen they published 
 their own account, by which they trusted " that all those 
 Catholiques that had any spark of shamefastness left might 
 
SECOND CONFERENCE. 263 
 
 blush for Master Campion's sake, being so manifestly depre- 
 hended in so many lies so braggingly avouched."'^' 
 
 No other conference was held till Monday, Sept. 18. These 
 eighteen days must have presented to Campion a wonderful 
 contrast to the turmoil of the previous month. Whether it 
 was merely the monotony of the prison, or whether his memory 
 w-as impaired through sickness, he had lost his account of 
 time, and the eighteen days had been but a week to him.^^* 
 " About a sennight past," he said, " there came hither some who 
 disputed with me about the first part of my book, they being 
 thereunto prepared, and I brought hither altogether unpro- 
 vided." Then he went on to make the same complaint as 
 Nowell and Day had done, but in a contrary sense ; " there 
 were at that time such as did note, and afterwards reported 
 our conference ; but I understand there be many things pub- 
 lished thereof more than truth, and that I am belied in print." 
 He therefore demanded a notaiy on his own part. In the 
 report published by authority, this complaint is made much 
 more general, so as seemingly to apply to everything that 
 had been reported of his acts in the prison.'^'^ " I have been 
 ill dealt withal already, and things heretofore spoken by me 
 have been mistaken, and published in print otherwise than I 
 ever meant." 
 
 This second conference was held in Hopton's hall, that 
 the people might be more easily excluded than they could be 
 from a public church, and only about thirteen persons were 
 present. Among them were Lord Clanricard, Sir Owen 
 Hopton, Sir William (Ferdinando ?) Gorge, Sir Thomas 
 Henneage, Sir Nicholas Poynds, and others. Dr. Goode and 
 Dr. Fulke, the disputants, were at a table, and had certain 
 books about them ; Charke and Field sat as notaries ; opposite 
 them, on a stool, sat Campion, havuig only his Bible. Fulke 
 began with prayer, that the solemn act might confirm the faith- 
 ful, and convert or confound the blind. Campion prayed by 
 himself, and made the sign of the cross on his forehead and 
 breast. Then, not to avoid the conference, but to make 
 the audience understand the conditions of it, he complained 
 of his want of preparation.'-^ " I wish," he said, " you would 
 consider it to be God's cause, and dispute to have the truth 
 known, rather than to have victory. And if you did so, the 
 better I came provided for the disputation, the better the 
 truth should be sifted and discussed. But I hope the truth is 
 so plain that it will suffice at this present to defend itself" 
 He protested, as in the first conference, that the kind of dis- 
 putation he requested was not this, but one under equal con- 
 ditions before the Universities. 
 
264 EDMUXD CAMPION. 
 
 The dispute was whether the Church was visible or Invi- 
 sible. Campion of course maintained the former. Fulk ob- 
 jected the Church in heaven ; Campion said that he was 
 only speaking of the Church militant. Fulk told him that 
 this was quibbling, eating his own words, and so on. In the 
 Ms. report there are many homely illustrations, telling and 
 rhetorical, used by Campion, and much winning speech; as 
 when he said to Goode, who had Ijeen quoting Jerome, "I 
 would that you and I might shake hands of St. Jerome's 
 religion, that we might meet together with him in heaven." 
 "No," said the other, "I will not be of man's religion, further 
 than he is of Christ's." And when he urged his opponents in- 
 conveniently, and they had told him " that he vaunted himself 
 too much, and had deceived them of their opinion of modesty 
 which they had conceived and heard of him," he answered 
 that " for humility he would be content to kiss their feet, but 
 in the truth of Christ could yield nothing," beseems to declare 
 the rule he had imposed on himself at the first conference, 
 when he refused to exliibit his knowledge of Greek, as a 
 matter completely foreign to the argument in hand. During 
 this conference many ticklish points about persecution were 
 mooted; and when Campion, urged to say how the rule die 
 Ecclesue, "tell it to the CIuutIi,"' can be observed in times of 
 j)ersecution, and answering, "•though persecution be in one 
 place, yet can complaint be made in other places, as the Pro- 
 testants in Queen Mary's days, being persecuted in England, 
 might have then- remedy in Germany where their religion 
 was used," certainly seemed to justify the ajjpeal of Allen and 
 Parsons to Philip and Gregory to avenge their brethren in 
 England. Indeed, the difficulty was inseparable from the 
 idea of church-government as then conceived, and it required 
 the reductio ad impossiltile of the last three centuries to eradi- 
 cate it. 
 
 The afternoon's conference was a rambling one, and the 
 two doctors asserted dogmatically the extremest Puritan 
 tenets, whereat Campion mai-velled. About communion 
 under both kinds he said : " I allow it may be so received, 
 so that a man do it in humility and by license ; for so have I 
 seen myself" (there was such a license in Boliemia), " and I 
 confess that in the primitive Cluu-ch it hath been used to be 
 received sometimes inider one kind, and sometimes under 
 both, and so may be received again, at the appointment and 
 discretion of the Church." Yet it was just upon this point 
 that Posse-^-in's reconciliation of Sweden failed; he had 
 made the concession, but the Court of Rome refused to ratify 
 it.327 When he illustrated St. Peter's dissimulation at An- 
 
THIRD AND FOURTH CONFERENCES. 265 
 
 tiocli by the fact that some Cathohcs held it unlawful to 
 converse with Protestants, and others held the contrary, 
 Goode said, " Take heed of dissuading men from companying 
 together, lest you incur the danger of some statutes;" on 
 which Campion hoped that Goode came not to threaten, but to 
 argue. The chief point in this conference was, whether the 
 Church militant could err in defining faith. Goode asserted 
 that some council had decreed that angels had bodies ; Cam- 
 pion answered that the opinion was no matter of salvation, 
 therefore no matter of faith. Goode held it to be matter of 
 faith, though not of salvation. " That is strange," said Cam- 
 pion ; " show me one such matter of faith ;" and he went on 
 to class this assertion with the other strange paradoxes he had 
 heard : " That baptism taketh not away original sin ; that if 
 a man be once of the Church, he shall never be out of the. 
 Church ; that every temptation is a sin ; that David in the 
 act of committing adultery and murder was not the servant 
 of sin." Per contra, we find Campion calling a Greek tense 
 by a wrong name, re-affirming some of his old Oxonian 
 physics, and offenng to prove that the heavens are hard as 
 crystal. "\Ylien Field the notary published his report of this 
 conference, Jan. 1, 1584, he had the impudence to say in his 
 preface : " If Campion's answers be thought shorter than 
 they were, thou must know that he had mvxch waste speech, 
 which, being impertinent, is now omitted." 
 
 He had another conference with Fulke and Goode on the 
 23d of September, on the real presence and on trar^substan- 
 tiation, and he complained often that he was only allowed to 
 solve objections, and not to prove his point. He was told that 
 at the former conference he had been suffered to use a multi- 
 tude of words, similitudes, comparisons, and definitions ; but 
 that now he was to be cut shorter. He begged, if he was 
 not allowed to dispute in words, to be allowed to controvert 
 in writing; but Fulk refused to prefer any request to the 
 Council for any such man as he. The fourth dispute was 
 held in Sir Owen Hopton's hall on the 27th of September; 
 this time Dr. "Walker and Charke disputed, and Norton acted 
 as notary. These men treated Campion more brutally than 
 any of the former disputants. Walker began the conference 
 with words like these ■P'^ " This man having departed this 
 realm hath joined himself to the man of Rome, our common 
 enemy, Antichrist, and now hath returned again into the realm, 
 where he hath wandered from place to place through the 
 greatest part thereof, and in the north country and York- 
 shire he hath sown such sedition that they now cry out of him 
 and curse him ; and now he hath proceeded further, and hath 
 
266 EDMUND CAMPION'. 
 
 charged us most impudently and falsely with mangling and 
 cutting of the Scriptures;" and with this preface they began 
 their dispute about the canon and the sufficiency of Scrip- 
 ture. Dr. Walker, who at first had protested that he had 
 long left the University, and was no longer dexterous in using 
 his logic and philosophy, did not make a very good figure 
 when, because Campion would not accept his caricature of 
 Catholic doctrine as a good exposition thereof, he declared, in 
 the bitterness of his soul, "I have been these two or three 
 days tiu-ning and seeking of books to prove that all things 
 necessary to salvation are contained in the Scriptures; and 
 now by this subtle shift" ((tampion had agreed to the proposi- 
 tion, with the condition " subject to the interpretation of the 
 Catholic Church") " and distinction, he hath avoided all ; for 
 it is the practice of them to preach one thing, and when they 
 come to defend it, to deny it, and maintain another thing." 
 In the afternoon the matter handled was justification by faith 
 alone. In both these conferences Campion was as successful 
 as a man can be who has to follow the lead of two illogical 
 bunglers, answering their miscellaneous and disjointed objec- 
 tions, but never allowed to build up any harmonious apology 
 for his own system. 
 
 It is of this fourth conference that Pai'sons'^" tells us how 
 Charke outfaced Campion by his high place, gay apparel, 
 great ■words, assistance of friends, countenance of authority, 
 and applause of Protestants standing by.^^" He describes his 
 contemptuous usage of so learned a man in open audience, 
 with barbarous threatening of that further cruelty which was 
 then had in mind, and had been since put in execution. Charke 
 would turn to the people and ask them to rejoice and thank 
 the Lord that He had given him such an argument against 
 the Papists as he was going to propose. Norton the rack- 
 master was at his elbow to repeat and vu'ge his argument for 
 him. When the argument grew dull, and Charke had no 
 more to say, and the peojile were beginning to depart, lie had 
 the doors shut, and forced them to stay, and with one consent 
 to thank the Lord for his victory that day gotten upon Cam- 
 pion. Most of the audience were laughing in their sleeves, 
 some even hissed ;^'" and it was the common opinion that if 
 the Protestant opponents had fancied they had got the best of 
 it, they would immediately put their triumph in print. Dr. 
 Fulke had but looked into Wisbeach Castle the year befoi-e, and 
 framed to himself but the imagination of a victory, because 
 the prisoners refused conference, and, behold, he presently 
 printed a pamphlet in his own praise ; what, then, would 
 Charke and Fulke and Walker and Goode and Nowell and 
 
COXFERENCES CLOSED. 2(37 
 
 Day have done about their conferences with Campion, if they 
 had thought them any way able to abide the view 1 And yet 
 liow unequally Campion was dealt with ! He wns but one, 
 iinbooked, unprovided, wearied with imprisonment, almost 
 dismembered with the rack, threatened and terrified with 
 death to come, appointed only to answer, never to oppose. 
 " All this," continues Parsons, " we know, and the world 
 abroad knows and wonders; but we wonder not, who know 
 you ; for we are sure that you will never deal with us at even 
 hand or upon equal conditions while you live." 
 
 _ But by this time the Council had come round to the 
 opinion of Bishop Aylmer, that these conferences did no good 
 to the Protestant cause.'^^ "Touching the conference with 
 Campion in the Tower," writes the Bishop to Burghley, Sept. 
 29, "I wrote unto Mr. Lieutenant of my mishking that so 
 many were admitted to it, whose authority is not to be directed 
 there by me, but by her ^Majesty and your lordships. And 
 for the ill opinion that I had of it, I sent to stay it. Here- 
 upon the Council deliberated ; and Norton, who had been 
 notary at the last conference, was told to send in his report, 
 which he did Sept. 30, with his observations on the amend- 
 ment of the oi-der used with that Jesuit.'^' "I think the 
 course hitherto taken, either by lack of aid (Campion being 
 without books and preparation) or moderations^'' (on the third 
 day Hopton was ready to allow any learned man present to 
 moderate, but none would undertake it) or convenient respect 
 of admitting men to be hearers, hath been both fruitless and 
 hurtful, and subject to great harm by reports." And he says 
 that on the fourth day he took down each question and answer, 
 and then read it over to the disputant, thus avoiding all cavil. 
 It does not appear, however, that this is printed in the '' true 
 report," where Norton's name is not mentioned in connection 
 with the fourth conference. The result of the Council's de- 
 liberation was that the conferences were discontinued, and the 
 divines who had Ijeen summoned to dispute in October were 
 bidden to remain where they were. 
 
 And now the popular voice began to make itself heard. 
 All through August Campion was only known as the betrayer 
 of his friends, the man whose faith was hardly secure, who 
 might perhaps one day appear at Paul's Cross to make his re- 
 cantation. All these ideas were overthrown root and branch 
 by his public appearances at the four conferences ; and when 
 they were suppressed, the voice of the people was heard in 
 ballads,^'^ which were none the less effectual for their lack of 
 melody and grammar. 
 
268 EUMUXD CAJIPION. 
 
 I. 
 
 Campion is a champion, 
 Him once to overcome, 
 The rest be well drest 
 The sooner to mumm. 
 
 He looks for his life, 
 They say, to dispute. 
 And doubts not our doctrine 
 He brags to confute. 
 
 If instead of good argument. 
 We deal by the rack, 
 The Papists may think 
 That learning we lack. 
 
 Come forth, my fine darling. 
 And make him a dolt ; 
 You have him full fast, 
 And that in strong holt. 
 
 II. 
 
 A Jesuit, a Jebusite ? wherefore, I you pray ? 
 Because he doth teach you the only right way ? 
 He professeth the same by learning to prove. 
 And shall we from learning to rack him remove ? 
 
 His reasons were ready, his grounds were most sure. 
 The enemy cannot his force long endure ; 
 Campion, in camping on spiritual field, 
 In God's cause his life is ready to yield. 
 
 Our preachers have preached in pastime and pleasure. 
 And now they be hated far passing all measure ; 
 Their wives and their wealth have made them so mute. 
 They cannot nor dare not with Campion dispute. 
 
 III. 
 
 Let reason rule, and racking cease. 
 
 Or else for ever hold your peace ; 
 
 You cannot withstand God's power and His grace. 
 
 No, not with the Tower and the racking-place. 
 
 Such libels were clearly intolerable ; like jSIambriiio's helmet 
 in Don Quixote, the replies given to Campion were to be held 
 as sufficient, whether they would endure proof or not. Those 
 who thought otherwise did so at their peril. There was one 
 Oawood/^'^ who "talked very liberally, extolling Campion's 
 learning, and attributing the victory to him." Hun Ayl- 
 mer clapped up in the Clink. There was another, Oliver 
 Pluckett,^^^ one of the wardmote of St. Andrew's, Holborn, 
 who affirmed that " Campion was both discrete and learned, 
 and did say very well, and would have convinced them if he 
 
DANGER OF EXTOLIJXU HDr. 269 
 
 might have been heard with indifFerency." Whereupon the 
 foreman of the wardmote inquest requested Ohver to resign ; 
 which he was contented to do with all his heart. But the 
 case was reported to Fleetwood the recorder, and the person 
 was committed to ward. I shall have afterwards to record 
 a still more vindictive punishment inflicted on Vallenger, wlio 
 printed some poetry on Campion's life and death. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Ax.L attempts to disparage Campion's religious and moral 
 character, or his talents and learning, ha^dng thus failed, only 
 one course was left — to disparage his patriotism, and to hold 
 him up as a traitor to the scorn of his countrymen. 
 
 It was generally supposed that the first man who afforded 
 grounds for the notion that all seminary priests were really 
 traitors was John Nichols, who in his recantation sermon, 
 preached Feb. 5, 1581, before the priests in the Tower, gave 
 information concerning the republication of the bull of Pius 
 v., and concerning the treasonable speeches wliich were the 
 usual utterances of teachers and scholars in the seminaries.'^* 
 " One of your readers in divinity positive, before two hundred 
 scholars at least, said that it was la\\'ful for any man of worship 
 in England to give authority to the vilest wretch to seek the 
 Queen's death." "Father Pais, reader in scholastic theology 
 in the Roman College, said : ' The good will of the Pope is 
 manifest, and his purse ready; but King Philip is either 
 turned aside by feai', or prevented by want of means, and 
 dares not lead his army into England.' "'^^ And the scholars 
 used to miscal then* sovereign lady, and say they would burn 
 her bones, and those of her Council that favoured not their 
 attempts, whether alive or dead. And he gave a long list of 
 those against whom the threats were uttered — among them 
 were Lords Burghley, the Earl of Huntingdon, Knowles and 
 AValsingham ; and a long litanj- of bishops, deans, and doctors 
 of divinity. Moreover he said that they wished their country 
 to be destroyed with fire, sword, and famine, so as to bring 
 back the Catholic religion. 
 
 It was nearly half a jenv after this that George Eliot gave 
 his information about a plot of fifty priests to murder the 
 Queen, Leicester, Bm-ghley, and Walsingham. And it was 
 probably on this or some similar information that Walsing- 
 ham was on the 14th of July'""' set to work by the Queen in 
 the examination of certain persons chai'ged to have conspired 
 against her majesty's person, and who turned out to be runa- 
 gate priests brought up in Rome and Douai. These and 
 
TREASOX. 271 
 
 similar informations tended to connect all the seminary priests 
 with the Irish rebellion, which the Pope stirred up not only 
 with men and money, but specially through Dr. Sanders, who 
 did better in the professor's chair than in the charge of an 
 army. Tlie English ministers had obtained a copy of his 
 letter to the Irish, the tone of which much resembles the sup- 
 pressed placard of Cardinal Allen, which was to have been 
 distributed in England if the Armada had effected a landing 
 in 1588.*^' Sanders tells the "Cathohc lords and worshipful 
 gentlemen of Ireland" that Elizabeth is a reproach to the 
 crown, and they poltroons for abetting her. Her successor 
 must be a CathoUc, for the Pope will take order that the 
 crown shall rest in none but Catholics ; and he will punish 
 them for having supported her. " What will ye answer to 
 the Pope's Heutenant, when he, bringing us the Pope's and 
 other Catholic princes' aid, as shortly he ^rill, shall charge 
 you with the crime and pain of heretics for maintaining an 
 heretical pretensed Queen, against the public sentence of 
 Christ's Vicar ? Can she, with her feigned supremacy, which 
 the devil instituted in Paradise when he made Eve Adam's 
 mistress in God's matters, absolve and acquit you from the 
 Pope's excommunication and curse?" and so on. There was 
 no doubt of the danger in which England then stood. There 
 was no doubt either that the law recently enacted gave the 
 government full power to treat any Jesuits or seminary 
 priests whom they could catch in England as ipso facto 
 traitors. There was no need of any laborious endeavour to 
 connect this or that individual with the great Hispano-papal 
 scheme. But, on the other hand, public opinion did not alto- 
 gether run with the statute. It was easier to say than to 
 make men beheve that the Catholic religion was not really a 
 religion, but merely a pohtical institution ; that the Mass was 
 not a sacrifice to God, but a treasonable practice against the 
 Queen ; that confession was not a means of cleansing the 
 conscience from sin, but only of enrolling oneself in a secret 
 association, pledged to support the Pope when his invasion of 
 England came off. It was this scrupulous public opinion 
 that gave the Council pause, and made them argue the case 
 for and against putting their prisoners to death. ''■'^ Fuller 
 gives in parallel columns the chief reasons alleged in these 
 debates. One side, that the breath of all such priests was 
 contagious ; the other, that some of them might be amended. 
 One, that it was foolish to make severe laws and not execute 
 them; the other, that the law need not be rej^ealed, but only 
 the execution thereof mitigated. One, that such pity would 
 be interpreted to be either fear of vengeance, or an acknow- 
 
272 EDMUND CA:\tPIOX. 
 
 ledgment that tlie law was wicked; the other, that no one 
 should be frighted by scarecrows from what is honourable, 
 that it was better to be abused for lenity than for cruelty. 
 One, that Jesuitism could be best extirpated by the gallows ; 
 the other, that to make martyrs would be to propagate their 
 opinions. Ojie, that dead men cannot bite, but that men in 
 prison ai'e a standing provocative to a rescue ; the other, that 
 the greater penalty will move greater revenge, and sharpen 
 zeal. One asserted that no priest or Jesuit was ever con- 
 verted by imprisonment ; the other, that some had been so, 
 and more had been half converted, and had renounced the 
 treasonable part of their profession. Finally, the one declared 
 that if they were put to death, it would be not for religion but 
 for rebellion ; the other, that if their death was the child of 
 their rebellion, it was the grandchild of their religion ; for 
 their obedience to their superiors put them on the propagation 
 of their religion, and thus made them offenders to the State. 
 
 Elizabeth herself was inclined to the side of mercy ; but 
 among her Council were several of that peculiar sour leaven 
 of Puritanism which was always found to be biassed towards 
 cruelty and blood, and to make the sincerest men the severest 
 and bitterest. These men naturally had their senses most 
 shariiened to the danjiers that -were gatherino- round Pro- 
 testantism, and were willing to protect it by the most decisive 
 measures. They were in terror lest the French match should 
 bring about toleration of Poperj', and toleration lead to su- 
 premacy. And, religiously, they were opposed to all tolera- 
 tion, to any compromise with Belial. Their aim was the 
 extirpation of Popeiy. A carefully secured toleration of Ca- 
 tholics was to them almost as abominable as a restoration of 
 their supremacy. Yet, on the contrary, they could not afford 
 to renounce the French match, for that would be to throw 
 France into the arms of Spain.^" Indeed Cobham wrote that 
 the Queen-mother was persuading Anjou to give up all idea 
 of Elizabeth, and to marry one of Philip's daughters. In this 
 dilemma tlie priests in prison were a great commodity to 
 thenL^*^' If the marriage was to take place, the Queen might 
 be persuaded to sacrifice these men, in order to show that" in 
 marrying slie had no intention to bring about a change of 
 religion, or a toleration of Popery. On the other hand, if the 
 cruelty could be carried far enough to shock the tolerant 
 policy of the French covirt, or the feelings of the French 
 people, there was a secret hope that it might delay, if not 
 altogether prevent the marriage.''''^ Again, the Queen had 
 somewhat offended the Londoners by the vindictive and cruel 
 punishment of Stubbs, and it might be represented to her 
 
'RITHOUT PROTECTORS. ■ 273 
 
 that it was wise to redress the balance witli tlie blood of a few 
 Papists; but of course no one would tell her that as she had 
 already offended the Puritans, so she mio-ht by her farther 
 cruelty offend the more judicious part of her subjects, as well 
 as her French allies. Then, again, Campion and his com- 
 panions, by a combination of circumstances, were deprived of 
 all protection ; the Spanish ambassador could not aid them, 
 without exciting more suspicion of their complicity with the 
 Hispano-Papal designs ; the French ambassador could not, 
 for fear of proving that the French match tended towards 
 toleration of Popery — and would not, because he suspected 
 the Jesuits of a design to traverse the French alliance in 
 favour of Spain. Sir Philip Sidney, who had promised his 
 help to Campion, if he was ever in danger, was himself in 
 disgrace for his letter to the Queen against the match ; and 
 though admitted to see her in October, was yet so "wholly 
 out of comfort" that he could not venture to intercede for any 
 other person ; and the continual fears of a Spanish invasion 
 stopped the mouths of those moderate men who in other cir- 
 cumstances would have counselled moderation. ^■'^ 
 
 Hence it was that Walsingham and the others who wished 
 to put Campion to death bad not a very difficult part to 
 play. They had merely to persuade the Queen and people 
 that he and his fellows had really conspired against her, had 
 been guilty of particular treasons, besides the general one 
 of their reconciling her Majesty's subjects to the Pope, and 
 then they might be hanged with general approbation. Wal- 
 singham doubtless thought it unlucky that just at this time, 
 indeed the very day that Campion was paraded through Lon- 
 don (July 22), he was sent to France on a special mission 
 connected with the match. The first letter that he wrote 
 from Paris to Burghley testified his anxiety :'*" " I pray God 
 her Majesty may take profit of Campion's discovery, by se- 
 verely punishing the offenders, for nothing hath done more 
 hann than the ovennuch lenity that hath been used in that 
 behalf." Perhaps these men had already satisfied their con- 
 sciences that Campion and the rest might justly be hanged on 
 the late statute, and that policy required them to be put to 
 death. Hence that it would be no mm-der if they used false 
 pretences to cajole the reluctant Queen into allowing them to 
 be hanged. 
 
 Three such pretences suggested themselves. One was due 
 to Dr. Hammond. Let the prisoners be asked what they 
 thought of divers treasonable passages collected out of the 
 works of Sanders, Allen, and Bristow, three Catholic theo- 
 logians, whom it would be equally difficult for them to defend 
 
 T 
 
274 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 or to condemn. And let them be asked what they thought of 
 the vahdity of Pius's Bull, and of the Queen's title to the 
 crown, and (afterwards) wliat they would do in the event of 
 the Pope invading England. The passages that Hammond 
 collected were published in 1582, with the replies of Campion 
 and the rest, in a tract entitled " A particular Declaration or 
 Testimony of the undutiful and traitorous affection borne 
 against her Majesty by Edmund Campion, Jesuit, and other 
 condemned priests, -witnessed by their own confessions," which 
 has been often reprinted.^'"* These passages refer in terms 
 of praise to the mission of Dr. Morton and to the rebels of 
 15f)9, to the Bull of Pius V., to the excommunication of the 
 Queen, and to the martyrs Felton and Story. We first 
 hear of them in the letter of Council, of July 30, which con- 
 signed Campion to his first racking. " Whereas we are given 
 to understand that j'ou ]\Ii-. Dr. Hammond have, out of San- 
 ders' and Bristow's books, drawn certain points touching the 
 acknowledgment of their allegiance towards her ]\Iajesty; we 
 think it good that you propound the same to Campion and 
 the priests, requiring their direct answer to the same." 
 
 The reply, testified by Hopton, Beale, Hammond, and 
 Norton, and dated August 1, is published in the tract just 
 named. " Edmund Campion, being demanded whether he 
 would acknowledge the publishing of these things before re- 
 cited by Sanders, Bristow, and Allen, to be wicked in the 
 whole or in any part ; and whether he doth at this present 
 acknowledge her Majesty to be a true and lawful Queen, or 
 a pretensed Queen, and deprived, and in possession of her 
 crown only de facto. He answereth to the first, ' That he 
 meddleth neither to nor fro, and ^v^\\ not further answer, but 
 requireth that they may answer.' To the second he saith, 
 ' That this question dependeth upon the fact of Pius Quintus, 
 whereof he is not to judge, and therefore refuseth further to 
 answer.' " These answers show how resolutely he refused to 
 enter the field of politics. He could not satisfy his conscience 
 either of the Pojae's right to depose the Queen, or of his own 
 right to judge the Pop3. He determined therefore, as far as 
 he might, to confine himself to the merely religious aspect of 
 the controversy, to meddle neither to nor fro ^^ith questions of 
 state or ecclesiastical policy, and to refuse to make himself 
 umpire between two high contending parties so far above him 
 as Pope and Queen. ^■"' So even 
 
 " Upon the rack, 
 Where men enforced do speak any thing," 
 
 he would commit himself to neither side. His was not a dog- 
 
A PLOT FORGED. 275 
 
 matic, but a practical mind. He was in hinaself the demon- 
 stration that the political theories of Catholics need have no 
 influence on their practice ; but to condemn those theories as 
 wicked in themselves was a thing that he felt he had no 
 right to do, and no racking could force his conscience. But 
 he lived in an age which was not satisfied that questions 
 should remain in abeyance ; it was a dogmatic, pedantic age, 
 that forced a man to make up his mind prematurely, and if 
 he coiild not do so, to profess that he had done it. He was 
 held captive by contradicting authorities, and between the two 
 he had no other alternatives than silence and death on one 
 side, and professing what he did not believe on the other ; and 
 he chose to die rather than violate his conscience. 
 
 But when the Council had this " confession" of Cam- 
 pion's, they had not advanced mattei's : there was no treason 
 in a man refusing to qualify other traitors. He was therefore 
 to be examined about his dealings mth one Eochfort, an 
 Irishman. When the Spaniards and Italians were massacred 
 by Lord Grey, at Smeriwick in Kerry, ^^^ the letters taken in 
 their baggage discovered that the Bishops of Spain and Italy 
 had contributed tlie money for the expedition. Laing's Life 
 of Campion tells us that he was examined at the rack about 
 the conveyance of this money into Ireland ; probably the 
 Irishman Rochfort was the carrier of the 30,000^. (the sum 
 named by Laing), and the Council determined to rack out of 
 Campion some confession that he knew the man ; perhaps, if 
 they were lucky, that he was the very man, mutato nomine. 
 For they knew, and it was one of the gravamina against him, 
 that he had often changed his name and dress, going about in 
 hat and feather like a ruffian. But though all the ingenuity 
 of the rackmasters was employed to involve him in this real 
 rebellion ; and though, according to Laing, an indictment 
 was drawn up on the strength of their suspicions, yet it was 
 allowed to fall through, because not a shadow of proof could 
 be vouched for it. And we shall see, when we come to the 
 trial, with what shadowy proof Campion's judges were con- 
 tented. 
 
 Having failed to implicate Campion in any real con- 
 spiracy, it remained still possible to suborn false witnesses to 
 prove him to have engaged in an imaginary one. Campion 
 was the man in whose behalf this policy was invented. 
 " These subtle machinations and figments of conspiracies," 
 says Dr. Allen,'^^ " were not invented by the ingenious coun- 
 sellors, till they had Campion in their power, whose blood 
 they thirsted for and were determined to shed, if they could 
 possibly find any other occasion than religion, and extort a 
 
276 EDJIUND CAMPION. 
 
 confession of it by torture, or any other way." Camden, in 
 effect,' says the same thing, when he admits that the Qneen 
 did not beheve in the guilt of the men she hanged. But the 
 charge does not rest on the suspicious authority of Allen, or 
 on a questionable inference from Camden. It is quite clear 
 from documents in the State Paper Office, that AA^alsingham 
 busied himself at Paris in searching for plots which might 
 involve the Catholics, and when he could not find any that 
 would suit his purpose, in inventing them, and suborning false 
 witnesses to swear to them. Lord Burghley seems to have 
 been his accomplice in this proceeding. ^'^ Walsingham writes 
 to him from Paris on the 20th of August: " I am, by secret 
 intelligence, given most assuredly to miderstand that about a 
 two months past there was a plot (i. e. plan) sent out of Spain 
 to the Pope, showing him upon the alienation of religion what 
 way is to be taken for the conquest of Scotland," which the 
 Pope approved and earnestly recommended. Out of this, 
 Walsingham probably hoped to get some matter to accuse 
 Campion of; but after a conversation with the giver of the 
 intelligence he found that it would not suit his purpose, where- 
 upon he threw discredit upon this first information, and sug- 
 gested another which would serve his tiu-n better, and for 
 which he offered his man twenty crowns, if he would depose 
 to it in a court of justice. This may be gathered from a 
 letter of this anonymous informer, who by his style of ending 
 seems to be a Catholic, probably one of those epileptic-minded 
 brethren like John Nichols, with whom the Enghsh semi- 
 naries abroad were much infested. This letter Walsingham 
 had the effrontery to send to Burghley and the Council, 
 among whose papers it is still preserved, to prove their com- 
 plicity in the conspiracy .'^^ " Touching the plot — be out 
 
 of doubt — I would it were but false and sophistical 
 
 The last part of your letter you answered not in effect as you 
 did in words. Believe me it is not twenty crowns that shall 
 make me a bondman, or make me say a false tale. But to 
 what end these words? But only that you may (and as I 
 think do) know them tliat for less \n\l sell their country and 
 all that is in it." And he ends his letter by hinting to Wal- 
 singham the danger that all his spies ran ; AValsingham, he 
 says, is surrounded by such lynx eyes that every body that 
 goes near him is marked. Such eyes marked^^'' " Egremund 
 Radlyffe going wp to Hampton Court to you, and afterwards 
 made him lose his head for it." AVhether or not this was the 
 plot on which Campion was condemned, it is clear that at 
 this period, when his fate was lianging in the balance, Wal- 
 singham was not only throwing all his inflvience into the scale 
 
SIR FRANCIS KNOWLES. 277 
 
 of death, but was also forging " false tales" of Catholic con- 
 spiracies, and trjdng to suborn false witnesses to prove them. 
 
 I do not think that all the Council were guilty of this. 
 The following letter from Sir Francis Knowles to Leicester 
 and Burghlejr, the two Chancellors of the Universities, proves 
 that though he was an advocate of sevei'ity, he would have 
 acted openly and honestly, without losing himself in the Mac- 
 chiavellian labyrinth of Walsingham.'^"' He is comparing the 
 Anabaptists and Family of Love with the Catholics. " This 
 difference is between the Papists and these sectaries, touching 
 their practices here in England. These sectaries are more 
 hypocritical, and vnll sooner deny their doctrine and asser- 
 tions to avoid punishment than the Papists will; but the 
 Papists' secret practices, by these Jesuits, in going from house 
 to house to withdraw men from the obedience of the Queen 
 to that of the false Catholic Church of Rome, hath and will 
 endanger her person and state more than all the sects of the 
 world, if no execution shall follow upon the traitorous prac- 
 tisers that are for the same apprehended ; or, at the least, if 
 execution shall not follow upon such of them as will not 
 openly and plainly recant." 
 
 1 do not think that the final determination to put Cam- 
 pion to death was made till the end of October, when the 
 coming of the Duke of Anjou (he arrived Nov. 1) seemed to 
 require the blood of a few Catholics to reassure the Puritans ; 
 but before putting him on his trial they determined, if pos- 
 sible, to rack out of him and his fellows some evidence on 
 which they might be hanged, -n-ithout too great a show of 
 iniquity. Accordingly, on Sunday the 29th of October, ^^® 
 the Council ordered a letter to be -wTitten " to the Attorney- 
 and Solicitor-General, Hopton, Hammond, Wilks, and Nor- 
 ton, for the examining of Campion, Ford, and other prisoners 
 in the Tower, upon certain matters, and to put them unto 
 the rack, &c." This order took effect on Tuesday, Oct. 31,'^' 
 when Campion was for the third time placed upon the rack, 
 and treated more cruelly than ever : with him, Payne the 
 priest, accused by Eliot of conspiring against the hfe of the 
 Queen, was also tortured ; for the Council wished to make it 
 appear that they were both in the same boat.'^* This time he. 
 was so cruelly rent and torn upon the tortm-e, that he told a 
 friend who found means to speak with him, that he thought 
 they meant to make him away in that manner. Lord Huns- 
 don said that one might sooner pluck his heart out of his 
 bosom, than rack a word out of his mouth that he made con- 
 science of uttering. (More, iii. 38.) When his keeper asked 
 him the next day how he felt his hands and feet, lie answered, 
 
278 EDMUND CA5IPI0N. 
 
 " Not ill, because not at all." Even when he was brought to 
 the bar, Nov. 22, he could not lift his hand.^^' " It was his 
 own fault," writes Dr. Humphrey, "because he would not 
 use the ointment which the Lieutenant of the Tower, more 
 charitable than others, is wont to supply. These Papist pri- 
 soners in the Tower and elsewhere have all that is neces- 
 sary, perhaps more than they ought to have, for their enjoy- 
 ment, more than the Pope's prisoners at Eome would ever 
 get." After Campion's death these cruelties excited a Eu- 
 ropean indignation, and Burghley defended them in a tract 
 which he calls " A Declaration of the favourable Dealings of 
 the Government with the Traitors."^'''' Those who revere 
 his memory, says Hallani, must blush for this pitiful apo- 
 logy. The passages which HaUam quotes were transcribed by 
 Burghley from Norton's letters in defence of his conduct, for 
 which, in conformity with the Elizabethan practice, he was 
 disgraced, to make it appear that the subordinates, not the 
 principals, were answerable for all that was cruel and illegal 
 in these proceedings. 
 
 The reaction in the public mind against torture after this 
 period was decisive. Beale, the clerk of the Council, who 
 had himself been one of Campion's rackmasters, wrote, about 
 1585, a vehement book against the ecclesiastical system, in 
 which he condemned, wdthout any exception, all racking of 
 offenders, as cruel, barbarous, contrary to law and to English 
 liberties. Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury, thought 
 this condemnation monstrous. The torture-chamber was one 
 of the institutions on which Anglicanism seemed to rely most 
 securely. 
 
CHAPTEK XV. 
 
 The documents connected with Campion's trial would be, by 
 themselves, sufficient evidence of the vacillation of the Council 
 about the grounds on which they should make him guilty.^''' 
 The first indictment on which they proposed to try him simply 
 recites that " on the — day of June, in the 23d year of the 
 
 Queen, at in Oxfordshire, he did traitorously pretend 
 
 to have power to absolve the subjects of the said Queen from 
 their natural obedience to her majesty, and with the intention 
 to withdraw the said subjects of the said Queen from the 
 religion now by her supreme authority established within this ' 
 reahn of England to the Koman religion, and to move the 
 same subjects of the said Queen to promise obedience to the 
 pretensed authority of the Roman See to be used within the 
 dominions of the said Queen. 
 
 " Also, that the same Edmund Campion did, with the in- 
 tention of withdrawing a certain , being a subject of the 
 
 said Queen, and born within this realm of England, fi-om his 
 natural obedience, then and there -ndckedly, falsely, and trai- 
 torously persuade the same from the religion now esta- 
 
 bhshed ; and did then and there wickedly, falsely, and traitor- 
 ously move the same to promise obedience to the pretensed 
 
 authority, &c., against the form of a statute in this case made 
 and provided, and to the evil example of all other subjects in 
 such wise offending." 
 
 But if they hanged Campion on such an indictment, they 
 could never clear themselves from the charge of putting him 
 to death for religion and not for treason. They therefore 
 foro-ed a plot, and in accordance with their forgery they drew 
 up a new indictment.-"'^ 
 
 " The jmy present in behalf of the Queen, that William 
 Allen, D.I)., Nicholas Morton, D.D., Robert Parsons, clerk, 
 and Edmund Campion, clerk" — (these were all whom they first 
 thought of accusing ; but on second thoughts they determined 
 that the plot was quite capacious enough to include all the 
 priests whom they then happened to have in durance ; so they 
 added, in the margin)— " James Bosgrave, William Filby, 
 
280 EDJroND OAjVIPIOX. 
 
 Thomas Ford, Thomas Cottam, Lawrence Richardson, John 
 Collyton, Half Sherwin, Luke Kirhy, Robert Johnson, Edward 
 
 Rushton, Alexander Briant, Henry Orton a civihan, and 
 
 Short, that l)eing traitors against the Queen, not haAing the 
 fear of God in their hearts, nor weighing their due allegiance, 
 but led astray by the devil, intending altogether to withdraw, 
 blot out, and extinguish the hearty love and true and due 
 obedience which true and faithful subjects should bear and 
 are bound to bear towards the Queen, did, on the last day of 
 March, A° 22° (1580), at Rome in Italy, in parts beyond the 
 sea, and on the last day of April in the same year at Rheims 
 in Champagne, and on divers other days and occasions before 
 and after, both at Rome and Rheims, and in divers other 
 places in parts beyond the seas, falsely, maliciously, and trai- 
 torously conspire, imagine, contrive, and compass, not only to 
 deprive, cast down, and dismherit the said Queen from her 
 royal state, title, power, and rule of her realm of England, but 
 also to bring and put the same Queen to death and final 
 destruction, and to excite, raise, and make sechtion in the said 
 realm, and also to beget and cause miserable slaughter among 
 the subjects of the said Queen tlu'oughout the realm, and to 
 procure and set up insurrection and rebellion against the said 
 Queen, their suju'eme and natm'al lady, and to change and 
 alter according to their will and pleasure the government of 
 the said realm, and the pure religion there rightly and re- 
 ligiously established, and totally to subvert and destroy the 
 state of the whole commonwealth of the realm, and to invite, 
 procure, and induce divers strangers and aliens, not being 
 subjects of the said Queen, to invade the realm, and to raise, 
 carry on, and make war against the said Queen ; and in 
 order to bring to pass the said wicked and traitorous designs, 
 the said Allen, Morton, Parsons, and Campion did, on the 
 last day of March at Rome, and on the last day of April at 
 Rheims, and on other days, falsely and traitorously conspire, 
 treat, and debate by what ways and means they could com- 
 pass the death of the said Queen and raise a sedition in the 
 realm ; and with the said intent and purpose the said Allen, 
 Morton, Parsons, and Campion did afterwards, on the 20th of 
 May 1581 at Rome aforesaid, and on divers other days before 
 and after, both by persuasions and letters, move, exhort, and 
 comfort divers strangers and aliens to invade the realm and 
 raise war against the Queen. And further, that the same 
 Allen, Morton, Parsons, and Campion cUd, on the 20th day of 
 May at Rome, and on the last of the same month at Rheims, 
 traitorously agree that the said Parsons and Campion should 
 go into England, there to move and persuade such subjects 
 
INDICTMENTS. 281 
 
 of the Queen as they could come at to aid and assist such 
 strangers and ahens as they sliould traitorously bring into the 
 realm to make war and rebellion against the Queen, and to 
 change and alter the religion established. And that the said 
 Parsons and Campion did after, to wit on the first day of 
 June 1580, by the treason, procurance, comfort, and command 
 of Allen and Morton at Rheims, set out to come into England 
 to perform then- aforesaid treasonable intents against their due 
 allegiance, and against the peace of the said Queen, her crown 
 and dignity, and in manifest contempt of the laws of this 
 realm, and agamst the form of divers statutes in this case 
 made and provided." 
 
 According to tliis indictment, Allen, Morton, Parsons, and 
 Campion, and the thirteen others afterwards added, were 
 together in Rome, March 31, 1580 ; were together in Rheims, 
 April 30, 1580 ; were back again in Rome, May 20, 1580 ; and 
 again at Rheims, May 31 ; and Parsons and Campion started 
 from Rheims on the 1st of June. Of course it was impossible 
 to prove a tale so clumsily constructed ; but the law officers 
 of the Crown were directed to obtain a conviction by any 
 means that might be necessary — packing the jury, suborning 
 false witnesses, overruhng evidence adduced for the defend- 
 ants, confountUng all the cases into one, and general bullying 
 and unfairness in the conduct of the cause. 
 
 On Tuesday, Nov. 14, Campion, Sherwin, Kirby, Bosgrave, 
 Cottam, Johnson, Orton, and Rushton \\'ere taken to Westmin- 
 ster Hall, and an-aigned before the grand jury. After the 
 indictment Campion said : " I protest, before God and His holy 
 angels, before heaven and earth, before the world and this bar 
 whereat I stand, which is but a small resemblance of the ter- 
 rible judgment of the next life, that I am not guilty of any part 
 of the treason contained in the indictment, or of any other 
 treason whatever." Then, while tlie jmy was being impanelled 
 for the next Monday, he hfted up his voice and added : " Is 
 it possible to find twelve men so wicked and void of all con- 
 science in this city or land that will find us guilty together of 
 this one crime, divers of us never meeting or knowing one 
 the other before our bringing to this ])ar'?" Shei-win added: 
 " The plain reason of our stanchng here is religion, and not 
 treason." On this Sir Christopher Wray, the chief-justice 
 of the King's Bench, said : " The time is not yet come wherein 
 you shall be tried, and therefore you must now spare speech, 
 and reserve it till then, at which time you shall have full 
 liberty of defence, and me to sit indifferent between her Ma- 
 jesty and yourself; wherefore now plead to the indictment 
 whether you be guilty or not." They were then commanded, 
 
282 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 as the custom is, to hold up their hands ; but both Campion's 
 arms being pitifully benumbed by his often cruel racking 
 before, and he having them wrapped in a furred cuif, he was 
 not able to lift his hand so high as the rest did, and was 
 required of him ; but one of his companions, kissing his hand 
 so abused for the confession of Christ, took off his cuff, and 
 so he lifted up his arm as high as he could, and pleaded 
 " not guilty," as all the rest chd. They were then carried 
 back to the prisons from whence they came. 
 
 The next day in hke manner were arraigned Collington, 
 Eichardson, Hart, Ford, Filby, Briant, and Bhert, and simi- 
 larly remanded to their respective prisons. 
 
 On the 20th of November following Campion was agam 
 put into a boat under a strong guard, and taken from the 
 Tower to Westminster Hall to be tried, where, " notwithstand- 
 ing what commandment soever or order taken to the contrary, 
 there was such a pressure of people, and that of the more 
 honourable, wise, learned, and best sort, as was never seen or 
 heard of in that court in ours or oiu- fathers' memories before 
 us. So Avonderful an expectation there was of some to see the 
 end of this marvellous tragedy, containing so many strange 
 and divers acts of examining, racking, dispu^ting, suborna- 
 tions of false witnesses, and the hke ; of others to behold 
 whether the old honoiu- of law and justice, wherem our na- 
 tion hath of all the world had the praise, could or durst now 
 stand its ground, notwithstanding any violent impression of 
 power and authority to the contrary. Whether there were 
 any Markhams^"'^ left in the land that would yield up coif, 
 office, and life, rather than give sentence against such as they 
 knew in conscience to be innocent and untouched by the evi- 
 dence. But this one day gave that assembly and all the 
 world full proof of the sad fall of equity, law, conscience, 
 and justice, together with the Catholic faith, in our poor 
 countiy." The man who wrote thus was doubtless a ]3artisan ; 
 but Ilallam,^'''' who was no partisan, confirms him. " The pro- 
 secution was as unfairly conducted, and supported by as slender 
 evidence, as any, perhaps, that can be found in our books." 
 
 The first indication of the kind of judgment they were to 
 expect was to be found in the constitution of the jm-y. On 
 the previous Wednesday, the panel that was called included 
 three esqunes, who, " doubting that justice should have no 
 free course that day in these men's cases, whose blood was 
 so earnestly thirsted after, appeared not when the day came." 
 The rest of the panel consisted of a set of men whom the pri- 
 soners did not challenge, only because they knew them not. 
 One William Lee was foreman. He was a man of wealth ; 
 
THE TRIAL. 283 
 
 but, as may. be seen by his letters to the Government/^* an 
 informer and a fanatic, and he doubtless well understood his 
 duty. The names of the others I have not found. 
 
 The presiding judge was Chief-Justice Wray ; a man who 
 in criminal proceedings exhibited calmness and forbearance, 
 and abstained from all show of intemperance and impartiality; 
 an appearance of virtue. Lord Campbell suggests, dexterously 
 assumed by him for ^the purpose of obtaining convictions 
 against the parties arraigned. But he was considered in 
 his day to be a Cathohc at heart, unwdUingly performing a 
 hateful task, which is said to have embittered all his remain- 
 ing days, and even to have brought him prematurely with 
 sorrow to the grave in 1592. The other judges of the court 
 were John Southcote, who is not likely to have been on 
 the bench at this trial, as he was one of the persons whose 
 names Hopton dictated to John Nichols to set down in the 
 list of those whom he knew to be Papists, ^^^ Thomas Gawdy, 
 and William Ayloff. The last — probably the two last— were 
 present with the chief-justice at the trial. The prosecution 
 was conducted by Edmund Anderson, the Queen's serjeant, 
 who was made chief baron of the Common Pleas in May 
 1582, and held the post till his death in 1605. He was 
 assisted by John Popham, the attorney -general, afterwards 
 (in 1592) chief-justice of the Queen's Bench, and by Thomas 
 Egerton, master of the Rolls in 1594, and lord keeper in 
 1596, when he w^as raised to the peerage as Lord Ellesmere 
 and Viscount Brackley. 
 
 When the prisoners were at the bar and the jury in their 
 box, the clerk of the crown read the indictment and declared 
 the charge to the jurors, which was, that if they found the 
 parties here indicted guilty of the treasons, or to have fled 
 for any of them (this of course referred to Allen, Morton, 
 and Parsons), they should then inquire what lands, tenements, 
 goods, and chattels they had at the time of the treasons com- 
 mitted, or at any time since ; and if they found them not 
 guilty, then to say so, and no more. 
 
 Campion was the first to speak. 
 
 My lord, forasmuch as our surmised offences are several, 
 so that the one is not to be tainted with the crime of the 
 other, the offence of one not being the offence of all, — I 
 could have wished likewise that, for the avoidance of confu- 
 sion, we might also have been sevei-ally indicted, and that our 
 accusations canying so great importance, and so nearly unto 
 us as our lives, each one might have had one day for his trial. 
 For albeit I acknowledge the jurors to be wise men and much 
 
284 EDMUND CAJIPION. 
 
 experienced in such cases, yet all evidence being given or 
 rather handled at once, must needs breed a confusion in the 
 jury, and perhaps such a misprision of matters, as they may 
 take evidence against one to be against all, and consequently 
 the crime of the one for the crime of the other, and finally 
 the guilty to be saved and the guiltless to be condemned; 
 wherefore I would it had pleased your lordship that the 
 indictments had been several, and that we might have several 
 days of trial. 
 
 Hudson. It seemeth well. Campion, that you have had your 
 counsel.'^' 
 
 Campion. No counsel but a pure conscience. _ 
 
 Lord Chief-Justice. Although, if many be indicted at once, 
 the indictment in respect of them all containing all their 
 names be joint, yet in itself being framed against several 
 persons, it cannot be but several at the trial, whereof evi- 
 dence shall be particularly given against every one, and to 
 the matters objected every one shall have his particular an- 
 swer, so that the jury shall have all things orderly ; notwith- 
 standing 1 could have wished also that every one should have 
 had his special day assigned him, had the time so permitted ; 
 but since it cannot be otherwise, we must take it as it is. 
 
 \\''hereupon the Queen's Counsel, INIr. Anderson, Mi*. 
 Popham (Attorney-General), and Mr. Egerton (Solicitor-Ge- 
 nei-al), prepared to give in evidence, and first ]\Ir. Anderson 
 spake in effect as foUoweth : 
 
 Anderson. With how good and gi-acious a prince the Al- 
 mighty has blessed this island, continuing the space of twenty- 
 three years ; the peace, the tranquillity, the riches, and abun- 
 dant supplies, but especially the light and success of the Gos- 
 pel, wherewith since her Majesty's first reign this realm hath 
 flourished above all other, most evidently doth manifest; the 
 which, notwithstanding they ovight to have stirred us up 
 into a most dutiful affection and zealous love unto her 
 crown, for whose sake and by wdiose means, next under God, 
 we enjoy these prosperities ; yet hath there not, from time to 
 time, been wanting amongst us mischievous and e^il-disposed 
 enemies of her felicity, which, either by insolent and open 
 tlenouncing of war, or Ijy secret and privy practices of sinister 
 devices, have ambitiously and most disloyally attempted to 
 spoil her of her right, and us of these blessings. Yet such 
 hath been God's incomparable puissance against them, so 
 tender his care over her, so favourable his mercy towards us, 
 that neither they thereby have been bettered, nor her estate 
 impaired, nor oiu- quiet diminished ; for who knoweth not of 
 the rebellions and uproars in the North, who remembereth not 
 
THE ACCUSATION. 28.5 
 
 the tragical pageant of Storie, who still seeth not the traitorous 
 practices of Feltonl Prevailed they against her? was not 
 their strength vanquished'? were not dieir policies frustrated'? 
 and did not God detect them and jn-otect her, to her safety 
 and their perdition'? Tlie matter is fresh in rememhrance. 
 Their quarters are yet scarce consumed ; they were discovered, 
 they were convicted, they suffered ; we saw it. If you ask 
 from whence these treasons and seditious conspiracies had 
 their first offspring, I ask from whence they could have it 
 but from the well itself— the Pope 1 For if we inspect the 
 northern seditions, he it was that was not only the encourage- 
 ment, but also, being put to flight, was their refuge. If we 
 mean Storie, he it was that was the sworn liege and lord of so 
 perjured a subject ; if we look to Felton, he" it was that ex- 
 communicated the Queen and all the commonalty that did her 
 obedience. Finally, if we recount all the treasons and rebel- 
 lions that have been conspired since the first hour of her 
 coronation, he it was, and principally he, that suborned them. 
 What then, are we to think these latest and present con- 
 spii-acies to have been done either unwitting or unwilling 
 the Pope? Shall we deny either Campion or his compa- 
 nions, -nathout the Pope's assent or consent, to have con- 
 spired these matters beyond the seas themselves ? Why ? had 
 they no entertainment at his hands ? Did he bestow nothing 
 upon them for their maintenance? Was there no cause why 
 he should either do for them, or they for him — they Papists, 
 he Pope ; they flying their country, he receiving them ; they 
 Jesuits, he their founder; he supreme head, they sworn 
 members ; he their chief provost, they his dearest subjects ; 
 how can it be but he was privy — privy ! nay, the author and 
 onsetter ? We see that other treasons have been squared to his 
 platforms, and yielded he no direction in this ? came all the 
 rest from him, and came not this near him? It is impos- 
 sible. An enemy to the Crown, a professed scourge to the 
 Gospel, envying the tranquillity of the one, impatient of the 
 success of the other, what would he not do to subvert them 
 both ? He hath been always like to himself — never liker in 
 aught than in this. He knew well enough no foreign hostility 
 was convenient. The Spaniard would be discovered; the 
 Frenchman would be suspected; the Roman not believed. 
 How then ? Forsooth, men bred and born in our own nation, 
 perfect in our own tongue and languages, instructed in our 
 own Universities, — they, and only they, must endeavour our 
 overthrow. In what order? They must come secretly into 
 the realm ; they must change their habit and names ; they 
 must dissemble their vocation ; they must wander unknown — 
 
286 EDJIUXD CAMPION. 
 
 To what ends *? to dissuade the people from their allegiance^ to 
 their prince, to reconcile them to the Pope, to plant the Romish 
 relio-ion, to supplant both jirince and province. By what 
 means 1 By saying of ]\Iass, by administering the Sacrament, 
 by hearing confessions. When all these things were purposed, 
 endeavoured, and practised by them, whether were they guilty 
 of these treasons or no ? If not, then add this further : they 
 were privy and parties to the rebellion in the North, they 
 were instruments to the practices of Storie, they were minis- 
 ters to execute the Bull sent from Pius Quintus against her 
 Majesty. How appeareth that ? How ? — liow should it appear 
 better than by your own speeches and examinations '? They 
 highly commended the rebellion in the Xorth ; they greatly 
 rejoiced in the constancy of Storie ; divers of their counsel and 
 conferences was required for the Bull. Yea, and which is 
 more, and yet sticketh in our stomachs, they afforded so large 
 commendations to Sanders, liking and extolling liis late pro- 
 ceedings in Ireland, that it cannot he otherwise intended but 
 that thereof they also have been partakers. To concl ade : what 
 loyalty may we hope for from the Po]3e ; what fidelity from 
 then- hands that ha\-e bowed themselves unto him ; what trust 
 may the country i-epose in them that have fled and renounced 
 their counti'v '? How can their return be mthout danger, 
 whose departure was so perilous ? Note all circumstances, note 
 all probabilities, not one amongst all but notes them for trai- 
 torous ; and so being, it is reason they should have the law and 
 the due punishment ordained for traitors, the which, in her 
 Majesty's behalf, we pray that they may have, and that the 
 jury, upon our allegation, may pass for the trial. 
 
 This speech, very vehemently pronovinced and gestured, 
 with a grim and austere countenance, dismayed them all, 
 and made them very impatient and troublesomely affected ; 
 for it seemed by their temperature that it sounded very grie- 
 vously to their trial ; and therefore, utterly denying all that 
 was alleged, they protested themselves true and faithful sub- 
 jects ; only Campion bare it out best, and yet, somewhat 
 amazed, demanded of ]\Ir. Anderson whether he came as an 
 orator to accuse them, or as a pleader to give in evidence. 
 
 Lord Chief-Justice. You must have patience with him, 
 and the rest like-\vise ; for, they being of the Queen's Council, 
 they speak of no other intent than of duty to her Majesty; and 
 I cannot but marvel that men of your jirofession should upon 
 any such occasion be so much distempered; for as concerning 
 the matters which my brother Anderson hath alleged, they be 
 but inducements to the point itself, and thereto everyone shall 
 have his several answer. 
 
THE DEFENCE. 287 
 
 Whereupon Campion, for himself and his companions, an- 
 swered unto ]Sir. Anderson's speech as followeth : 
 
 Campion. The wisdom and providence of the laws of Eng- 
 land, as I take it, is such as proceedeth not to the trial of any 
 man for life and death by shifts of probabilities and conjectural 
 surmises, without proof of the crime by sufficient evidence and 
 substantial witness ; for otherwise it had been very unequally 
 provided that upon the descant and flourishes of aftected 
 speeches a man's life should be brought into danger and 
 extremity, or that, upon the persuasion of any orator or ve- 
 hement pleader without witness viva voce testifying the same, 
 a man's offence should be judged or reputed mortal. If so, 
 I see not to what end Mr. Serjeant's oration tended, or if I 
 see an end, I see it but frustrate ; for be the crime but in 
 trifles, the law hath his passage ; be the theft but of a half- 
 penny, witnesses are produced ; so that probabilities, aggra- 
 vations, invectives, are not the balance wherein justice must 
 be weighed, but witnesses, oaths, and apparent guiltiness. 
 Whereto, then, ajjpertaineth these objections of treason ? He 
 barely afhrmeth ; we flatly deny them. But let us examine 
 them ; how will they urge us ? We fled our country ; what 
 of that ? The Pope gave us entertainment ; how then ? We 
 are Catholics ; what is that to the purpose f We persuaded 
 the people ; what followeth ? We are therefore traitors. We 
 deny the sequel ; this is no more necessary than if a sheep 
 had been stolen, and to accuse me you should frame this 
 reason : my parents are thieves, my companions suspected 
 persons, myself an evil liver, and one that loveth mutton; 
 therefore I stole the sheep. Who seeth not but these be 
 odious circumstances to bring a man in hatred vwth the jury, 
 and no necessary matter to conclude him guilty '? Yea, but 
 we seduced the Queen's subjects from their allegiance to her 
 majesty ! What can be more unlikely ? We are dead men 
 to the world, we only travelled for souls ; we touched neither 
 state nor policy, we had no such commission. Where was, 
 then, our seducing? Nay, but we reconciled them to the 
 Pope. Nay, then, what reconciliation can there be to him, 
 since reconciliation is only due to God ? This word soundeth 
 not to a lawyer's usage, and therefore is wi-ested against us 
 unaptly. The reconciliation that we endeavoured was only 
 to God, and, as Peter saith, reconrAliamiiii Domino. What 
 resteth, then, against us? That we were privy to the re- 
 bellion in the North, instruments to Storie, ministers to Felton, 
 partakers with Sanders. How so? forsooth, it must be pre- 
 sumed. Why, because we commended some, some we re- 
 joiced at, concerning some we gave counsel and conference. 
 
288 EDMUND CAJIPIOX. 
 
 How appearetli that? By oiu" OAvn speeches, nothing less. 
 God is our witness we )iever meant it, we cteamecl it not. 
 These matters ought to be proved and not urged, decLared by 
 evidence and not surmiserl by fancy. Notwithstanding it 
 ought to be so, yet must all circumstances note us for traitors. 
 Indeed, all yet that is laid against us be but bare circum- 
 stances, and no sufficient arguments to prove us traitors, in- 
 somuch that ■we think ourselves somewhat hardly dealt with, 
 that for want of proof we must answer to circumstances. Well, 
 circumstances or other, as I remember, this was all ; and if 
 this were all, all this were nothing. Wherefore, in God's 
 behalf, we pray that better proof may be used, and that our 
 lives be not brought in prejudice by conjectures. 
 
 This answer, says Anthony ]\£unday, was smoothly de- 
 livered, with coy looks and protestation of action, showing 
 prompt and ingenious capacity ; for he had won a marvellous 
 goodly report to be such a man as his like was not to be 
 found either for life, learning, or any quality that might 
 beautify a man ; and so in very quaint and familiar eloquent 
 glosses he stood upon quirks and fine device of speech. I do 
 not know that we could expect an enemy of that period to 
 give higher praise than this. Wlien the case was thus opened, 
 the e'vddence for the prosecution was given in. 
 
 Queen's Counsel. It is the use of all seminary men, at the 
 first entrance into their seminaries, to make two personal oaths, 
 — the one unto a book called Bristow's motives for the ful- 
 filKng of all matters therein contained ; the other unto the 
 Pope, to be true to him and to his successors,^"' — of the which 
 oaths there is neither but is traitorous ; for how can a man 
 be faithful to our State, and swear performance to those mo- 
 tives ; a true liege to his sovereign, and swear fealty to the 
 Pope, forasmuch as the one is quite contrary to our laws and 
 government, the other the most mortal enemy her majesty 
 hath I 
 
 Campion. 'Wliat oaths seminary men do take at their first 
 entrance, or whether Bristow's motives be repugnant to our 
 laws or no, is not anything material to our indictment, for 
 that we are neither seminary men nor sworn at oui' entrance 
 to any such motives. But were it so that any seminary men 
 stood here for trial, this matter could prove no great evidence 
 against them, for that none are sworn to such articles as Bris- 
 tow's but young striplings that be under tuition ; whereas unto 
 men of riper years and better grounded in points of religion 
 (as most of England are before they pass the seas) that oath 
 is never administered ; and then many a study else flourisheth 
 in Eome, wherein both seminary men and others are far better 
 
EVIDENCE. 289 
 
 emploj^ed than they otherwise could be in reading English 
 pamphlets. 
 
 Kirbie. I think of my conscience there be not four books 
 of those Bristow's Motives in all the seminaries. 
 
 Thereupon they all cried, that whereas they were indicted 
 of treason, they feared lest under vizard of that they should 
 be condemned of religion ; and to prove that Campion framed 
 a reason in manner follo^ving : 
 
 Campion. There was offer made unto us, that if we would 
 come to the church to hear sermons and the word preached, 
 we shoidd be set at large and at liberty; so Pascall and Nicolls, 
 otlicrwise as culpable in all offences as we, upon coming to the 
 church and acceptance of that offer, were received to grace and 
 had their pardon granted ; whereas, if they had been so happy 
 as to have persevered to the end, they had been partakers of 
 our calamities. ' A'^Hierefore, if liberty were offered to us on 
 condition to come to chui'ch and hear sermons, — and that 
 could we uot do by professing our religion, — then, to change 
 our religion and to become Protestants, that, forsooth, was 
 that that should pui'chase us liberty. So that our religion was 
 cause of our imprisonment, and, ex conseqicenti, of our con- 
 demnation. 
 
 Attorney-General Pojiham. All these matters at the time 
 of Nicolls' enlargement were altogether unknown, and not 
 once suspected ; neither can we now conjecture that he was 
 guilty of any such drift or pui-pose, in that he stood not, as 
 you do, stubbornly in that religion which might be any cloak 
 or colour of such treasons. 
 
 Queen s Counsel. All you jointly and severally have re- 
 ceived money of the Pope to spend in your journeys. Some 
 two hundred crowns, some more, some less, according to your 
 degrees and conditions. Was such liberality of the Pope's 
 without cause? No, it had an end; and what end should 
 that be but by your privy inveighings and persuasions to set 
 on foot his devices and treacheries ? 
 
 Campion. We received of him according to the rate he 
 thought best to bestow it. We saw neither cause why to re- 
 fuse it, nor means how to come hither penniless ; it was his 
 liberality, it supplied our need. What would you have us 
 do ? We took it, was that treason '? But it was to an end : 
 I grant, had it been to no end, it had been in vain ; and what 
 end should that be 1 Marry, to preach the Gospel ; no treach- 
 ery, no such end was intended. 
 
 There was a witness produced, named H. Caddy or 
 H. Oaddocke, who deposed, generally, against them all, that 
 being beyond the seas he heard of the holy vow made be- 
 
 U 
 
290 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 tween the Pope and the English priests for the restoring and 
 establishing of religion in England ; for the which pui'pose 
 two hundred priests should come into the realm, the which 
 matter was declared to Sir Ralph Shelley, an English knight, 
 and captain to the Pope, and that he should conduct an army 
 into England, for the subduing of tlie realm unto the Pope, 
 and the destroying the heretics. Whereto Sir Ralph made 
 answer, that he would rather drink poison with Themistocles 
 than see the overthrow of his countiy : and added further, 
 that he thought the Catholics in England would first stand 
 in arms against the Pope before they would join in such an 
 enterprise.'^^ 
 
 Queens Counsel. The matter is flat : the holy vow was 
 made, two hundred priests had their charge appointed, the 
 captain- general was mentioned, our destruction purposed. 
 If, then, we confer all likelihoods together, what is more 
 apparent than that of those two hundi'ed priests you made 
 up a number, — and therefore be parties and prii-y to the 
 treason ? 
 
 Campion. Two hundred priests made an holy vow to 
 labour for restoring of religion. It seemeth, by all hkeli- 
 liood, that we made up the number, and therefore privy and 
 parties to the treason : here is a conclusion without any jot 
 of affinity to the premisses ; first, an holy vow, then an estab- 
 lishing of religion. What colour is there here left for treason? 
 All the treason rehearsed was reputed to Sir Ralph Shelley ; 
 not one syllable thereof was referred to the priests. But 
 granting, and which the witnesses have not deposed, and 
 namely, that we are some of the two hundred priests ; you 
 see Sir Ralph Shelley, a Catholic, the Pope's captain, a lay- 
 man, would rather drink poison than agree to such treason ; 
 it is like that priests, devotaries and dead men to the world, 
 would in any wse consent unto it. This deposition is more 
 for us than against us. 
 
 Then was order taken that every man's evidence should 
 be particularly read against himself, and everyone to have his 
 several answer ; and first against Campion. 
 
 Queens Counsel. About ten years since, you, Campion, 
 were received into conference with the Cardinal of St. Ceciha 
 concerning the Bull wherein Pivis Quintus did excommuni- 
 cate the Queen, the nobility, and commonalty of this realm ; 
 discharging such of them as were Papists from their obedi- 
 ence to her majesty, the which conference cannot otherwise 
 be referred than to the putting in execution of the Bull ; so 
 that the Bull containing manifest treason, whereto you were 
 privy, doth flat prove you a traitor. 
 
PRESUMPTUOUS. 291 
 
 Campion. You, men of the jury, I pray you listen. This 
 concerneth me only, and thereto this I answer. True it is 
 that at my first arrival into Rome (which is now about ten 
 years past) it was my hap to have access to the said Cardinal, 
 who, having some liking of me, would have been the means 
 to prefer me to any place of service whereunto I should have 
 most fancy ; but t, being resolved what course to take, an- 
 swered, that I meant not to serve any man, but to enter into 
 the Society of Jesus, thereof to vow and to be professed. 
 Then being demanded further, what opinion I had conceived 
 of the Bull, I said it procured much severity in England, and 
 the heavy hand of her Majesty against the Catholics. Where- 
 unto the Cardinal rephed, that he doubted not it should be 
 mitigated in such sort as the Catholics should acknowledge 
 her highness as their queen without danger of excommuni- 
 cation. And this was all the speech I had with the Cardinal, 
 which can in no^vise be construed as an offence, much less as 
 the least point of treason. 
 
 Queen s Coutisel. We can impute no more by your words 
 than a mitigation of the Bull against the Catholics only ; so 
 that the principal, which was the excommunication of her 
 Majesty, was still left in force, not detected by you, and there- 
 fore your privity thereto concludeth you a traitor. 
 
 Campion. My privity thereto enforceth not my consenting; 
 nay, rather, it proved my disagreement, in that I said it pro- 
 cured much severity; and therefore, being here published 
 before I could detect it (for who knew not that the Queen of 
 England was excommunicated!), it excused my privity and 
 exempted me from treason. 
 
 Queen's Counsel. You had conference with the Bishop of 
 Ross, a professed papist and a mortal enemy to the state and 
 crown of England; and to what end should any such com- 
 munication be had, but for the practising of such treasons as 
 had been conspired! 
 
 Campion. What the Bishop of Ross is, either for religion 
 or affection, I think little pertinent to me, much less to this 
 purpose ; but as for the conference passed between him and 
 me, I utterly deny that ever there was any, and therefore let 
 that be proved. 
 
 The clerk of the crown read a letter sent from Dr. Allen 
 unto Dr. Sanders in Ireland,'™ wherein Allen showeth why the 
 insurrection in the north prevailed not, was in two respects; 
 either that God reserved England for a greater plague, or for 
 that the CathoUcs in other places had not intelligence of the 
 purpose; for otherwise that could not so badly have suc- 
 ceeded. In this letter, moreover, was contained, that 
 
292 EDMITND CAJIPIOX. 
 
 feared the war as a child doth the rod, and that at all 
 
 times will be i-eady with 2000 to aid him. 
 
 Queen s Counsel. AVhat an army and host of men the Pope, 
 by the aid of the King of Spain and the Dul^e of Florence, had 
 levied for the overthrow of this realm, the destruction of her 
 Majesty, and the placing of the Scottish Queen as governess 
 in England, could not any ways have escaped your know- 
 ledge ; for being sent from Prague, where your abode was, 
 to Rome, and then being by the Pope charged presently to- 
 wards England, what other di-ift could this such a sudden 
 ambassage pretend than the practising and execution of such 
 a conspiracy ? Wliereof you are also the more to be suspected 
 forasmuch as in your coming from Pome towards England 
 jou entered into a certain pri\'y conference with Dr. Allen at 
 Rheims, to whose letters above mentioned, touching the estate, 
 it cannot be but by means of that conference you were privy, 
 for the furtherance of which platforms and de\dces yourself 
 came as procurator from the Pope and Dr. Allen to break 
 these matters to the English papists, to withdraw the people 
 from their due allegiance, and to prepare men ready to receive 
 those foreign powers. 
 
 Canvpion. When I was first received into the Order of 
 Jesuits, I vowed three things incident to my calling — chas- 
 tity, poverty, and obedience : chastity, in abstaining from all 
 fleshly appetites and concupiscences ; poverty, in despising all 
 worldly wealth, living upon the devotion of others ; obedience, 
 in dutifully executing the commandments of my superiors. 
 In respect of which vow enjoining obedience, I came, being 
 sent for, from Prague to Eome, having not so much as the 
 smallest inkHng of those supposed annies, nor the least in- 
 clination to put any such thing in practice ; but there rested 
 for eight days attending the pleasure of my provost, who at 
 last, according to my vow (which, by the grace of God, I vdW 
 in no case violate), appointed me to undertake this journey 
 into England, the which accordingly I enterprised, being com- 
 manded thereto, not as a traitor to conspire the subversion of 
 my country, but as a priest to minister the sacraments and to 
 hear confessions ; the which ambassage I protest before God 
 I would as gladly have executed, and was as ready and will- 
 ing to discharge, had I been sent to the Indians or uttermost 
 regions in the world, as I was being sent into my native 
 country. In the which voyage I cannot deny but that I 
 dined with Dr. Allen at Rheims, with whom also after dinner 
 I wallied in his garden, spending a time in speeches refeiTcd 
 to our old familiarity and acquaintance; during the whole 
 course thereof (I take God to witness) not one jot of our talk 
 
THE TRIAL. 293 
 
 glanced to the crown or state of England ; neither had T the 
 least notice of any letters sent to Sanders, nor the smallest 
 glimmering of these objected platforms. Then, as for being 
 procurator fi-om the Pope and Dr. Allen, I must needs say 
 tliere could no one thing have been inferred more contrary ; 
 for as concerning the one, he flatly with charge and com- 
 mandment excused me from matters of state and regiment ; 
 the other I owed no such duty and obedience unto as to 
 execute matters repugnant to my charge. But admitting (as 
 I protest he did not) that Dr. Allen had communicated such 
 affairs vinto me, yet for that he was not my superior, it would 
 have been full apostasy in me to obey him. Dr. Allen, for 
 his learning and good religion, I reverence ; but neither was 
 I his subject or inferior, nor he the man at whose command- 
 nient I rested. 
 
 Queen's Counsel. AVere it not that your dealing afterwards 
 had fuUy bewrayed you, your present speech had been more 
 credible ; but all afterclaps make those excuses but shadows, 
 and your deeds and actions prove your words but forged ; for 
 what meaning had that changing of your name 1 whereto be- 
 longed your ilisguising in apparel 1 Can these alterations be 
 wrought without suspicion '1 Your name being Campion, why 
 were you called Hastings ? You a priest and dead to the world, 
 what pleasure had you to royst it? A velvet hat and a feather, 
 a buff leather jerkin, velvet Venetians, — are they weeds for 
 dead men? Can that beseem a professed man of religion 
 which hardly becometh a layman of gi'avity ? No, there was 
 a further matter intended; your lurking and lying hid in 
 secret places concludeth with the rest a mischievous meaning. 
 Plad you come hither for love of your country, you would 
 never have wrought a hugger-mugger ; had your intent been 
 to have done well, you would never have hated the light ; and 
 therefore this budging deciphereth yom* treason. 
 
 Campion. At what time the primitive Church was perse- 
 cuted, and that Paul laboured in the propagation and increase 
 of the Gospel, it is not unknown to what straits and pinches 
 he and his fellows were diversely diiven ; wherein, though in 
 purpose he were already resolved rather to yield himself to 
 martyrdom than to shrink an inch from the truth which he 
 preached, yet if any hope or means appeared to escape, and 
 that living he might benefit the Church more than dying, we 
 read of sundry shifts whereto he betook him to increase God's 
 number and to shun persecution ; but especially the changing 
 of his name was very oft and familiar, whereby, as opportunity 
 and occasion was ministered, he termed himself now Paul, now 
 Saul; neither was he of opinion always to be known, but 
 
294 EDJIUND CAJVIPION. 
 
 sometimes thought it expedient to be hidden, lest being dis- 
 covered, pei-secution should ensue, and thereby the Gospel 
 greatly forestalled. Svich was his meaning, so was his pur- 
 pose, when, being in durance for points of religion, he secretly 
 stole out of prison in a basket. If these shifts were then 
 approved in Paul, why are they now reproved in met — he 
 an Apostle, I a Jesuit. Were they commended in him, are 
 they condemned in me 1 The same cause was common to us 
 both ; and shall the effect be peculiar to the one ? I wished 
 earnestly the planting of the Gospel ; I knew a contrary reli- 
 
 fion professed; I saw if 1 were known I should be appre- 
 ended; I changed my name; I kept secretly; I imitated 
 Paul. Was I therein a traitor 1 But the wearing of a buff 
 jerkin, a velvet hat, and such like, is much forced against me, 
 as though the wearing of any apparel were treason, or that I 
 in so doing were ever the more a traitor. I am not indicted 
 upon the Statute of Apparel, neither is it any part of this 
 present argument ; indeed, I acknowledge an offence to God- 
 wards for so doing, and thereof it did grievously repent me, 
 and therefore do now penance as you see me. (He was newly 
 shaA'en, in a rug-gown, and a great black nightcap covering 
 half his face.) 
 
 The clerk of the crown read a letter sent from Campion 
 unto one Pound, a Catholic, part of the contents whereof was 
 this : " It grieveth me much to have offended the Catholic cause 
 so highly as to confess the names of some gentlemen and friends 
 in whose houses I had been entertained ; yet in this I gi-eatly 
 cherish and comfort myself that I never discovered any secrets 
 there declared, and that I will not, come rack, come rope." 
 
 Queen's Cowisel. A^'^hat can sound more suspiciously or 
 nearer unto treason than this letter ? It grieveth him to have 
 bewrayed his favourers the Catholics ; and therein he thinketh 
 to have wrought prejudice to religion. What, then, may we 
 think of that he concealeth ? It must needs be some grievous 
 matter, and very pernicious, that neither the rack nor the rope 
 can wring from him. For his conscience being not called 
 in question, nor sifted in any point of religion, no doubt if 
 thei'e had not been fui'ther devices intended, and affairs of the 
 state and the commonwealth attempted, we should as well 
 have discovered the matter as the person ; wherefore it were 
 well these hidden secrets were revealed, and then would ap- 
 pear the very face of these treasons. 
 
 Campion. As I am by profession and calling a priest, so I 
 have singly vowed all conditions and covenants to such a 
 charge and vocation belonging, whereby I sustain one office 
 and duty of priesthood that consisteth in shriving and hearing 
 
THE TRIAL. 295 
 
 confessions, in respect whereof, at my first consecration (as all 
 other priests so accepted must do) I solemnly took and vowed 
 to God never to disclose any secrets confessed ; the force and 
 effect of which vow is such as whereby every priest is bound 
 and endangered, under pain of peq^etual curse and damnation, 
 never to disclose any offence opened nor infirmity whatsoever 
 committed to his hearing. By virtue of this profession, and 
 due execution of my priesthood, I was occasioned to be privy 
 unto divers men's secrets, and those not such as concerned state 
 or commonwealth, whereunto my authority was not extended, 
 but such as surcharged the grieved soul and conscience, 
 whereof I had power to pray for absolution. These were the 
 hidden matters, these were the secrets, in concealing of which 
 I so greatly rejoiced, to the revealing whereof I cannot nor 
 will not be brought, come rack, come rope. 
 
 Thereupon the clerk of the crown read certain papers 
 containing in them oaths to be administered to the people for 
 the renouncing their obedience to her Majesty, and the swear- 
 ing of allegiance to the Pope, acknowledging him for their 
 supreme head and governor ; the which papers were found in 
 divers houses where Campion had lurked, and for religion 
 been entertained. 
 
 Queens Counsel. What can be more apparent than this 1 
 These oaths, if we went no further, are of themselves suf- 
 ficient to convince you of treason ; for what may be imagined 
 more traitorous than to ahen the hearts of the subjects from 
 her Majesty, renouncing their obedience to her, and swearing 
 their subjection to the Pope? And therefore these papers 
 thus found in houses where you were do clearly prove that 
 for ministering such oaths you are a traitor. 
 
 Campion. Neither is there, neither can there be anything 
 imagmed more directly contrary or repugnant to my calling 
 than upon any occasion to minister an oath ; neither had I 
 any power or authority so to do ; neither would I commit an 
 offence so thwart to my profession for all the substance and 
 treasure in the world. But, admit I were authorised, what 
 necessity importeth that reason, that neither being set down 
 by my handwriting nor otherwise derived by any proof from 
 myself, but only found in places where I resorted, therefore 
 I should be he by whom they were ministered ? This is but 
 a naked presumption (who seeth it not ?), and nothing vehe- 
 ment nor of force against me. 
 
 Anderson. It could not otherwise be intended but that you 
 ministered these oaths ; and that being found behind you, it 
 was you that left them. For if a poor man and a rich man 
 come both to one house, and that after their departure a bag 
 
296 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 of gold be found hidden, forasmuch as the poor man had no 
 such plenty, and therefore could leave no such bag behind 
 him, by common presumption it is to be intended that the 
 rich man only, and no other, did hide the bag. So you, 
 a professed Papist, coming to a house, and then such reliques 
 found after your de])arture, how can it othei^wise 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. 
 
 Campion. Your conclusion had been necessary if you had 
 also showed that none came into the house of my profession 
 but I ; but there you urge youi- conclusion before you frame 
 your minor, whereby your reason is imperfect ; ergo it proveth 
 not. 
 
 Anderso7i. If here, as you do in schools, you bring in your 
 minor and conclusion,^'' you will prove yourself but a fool: 
 but minor or conclusion, I \Adll bring it to purpose anon. 
 
 Queeii's Counsel. You refuse to swear to the supremacy, 
 a notorious token of an evil wilier to the cro\Mi, insomuch 
 as, being demanded by the commissioners whether tlie Bull 
 wherein Pius Quintus had excommunicated her Majesty were 
 in your opinion of force, and the excommunication of effect 
 or no, you would answer nothing but that these were bloody 
 questions, and that they which sought these sought your life : 
 also resembling the commissioners unto the Pharisees, who to 
 entrap Christ propounded a dilemma, whether tribute were to 
 be paid to Cffisar or no; so that in your examination you 
 would come to no issue, but sought yoiu- evasions and made 
 answers aloof, which vehemently argueth a guiltiness of con- 
 science, in that the truth would never have sought corners. 
 
 The two commissioners, IMr. Norton and IMi-. Hamon, were 
 present, and verified the matter as the Queen's Counsel had 
 lu'ged. 
 
 Campion. 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 of her Majesty whether I thought the Pope might 
 lawfully excommunicate her or no, I answered, I confess my- 
 self an insufficient umpire between her ]\Iajesty and the Pope 
 for so high a controversy, whereof neither the certainty is as 
 yet known, nor the best divines in Clu'istendom stand fully re- 
 solved. Albeit I thought that if the Pope should do it, yet it 
 might be insufficient ; for it is agreed, clavis errare potest ; but 
 the divines of the Cathohc Church do distinguish of the Pope's 
 authority, attributing unto him ordinatam et inordinatean potes- 
 
THE TRLVL. 297 
 
 tatem : ordinatam, whereby he proceedeth in matters merely 
 spiritual and pertinent to the Church, and by that he cannot 
 excommunicate any prince or potentate ; inordinatam, when 
 he passeth by order of law, as by appeals and such like, and so, 
 some think, he may excommunicate and depose princes. The 
 self-same articles were required of me by the commissioners, 
 but much more m-ged to the point of supremacy, and to fur- 
 ther supposals than I could think of. I said, indeed, they were 
 bloody questions, and very pharisaical, undermining of my Ufe; 
 whereunto I answered as Christ did to the dilemma, " Give 
 unto Caesar that which is due to Cffisar, and to God that to 
 God belongeth." I acknowledged her highness as my gover- 
 ness and sovereign ; I acknowledged her majesty hoth. facto et 
 jure to be queen ; I confessed an obedience due to the crown 
 as to my temporal head and primate. This I said then, so I 
 say now. If, then, I failed in aught, I am now ready to sup- 
 ply it. What would you more 1 I will willingly pay to her 
 majesty what is hers, yet I must pay to God what is his. 
 Then, as for excommunicating her majesty, it was exacted 
 of me — admitting that excommunication 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 this was a dangerous question, and they that demanded 
 this demanded my blood. Admitting — why admitting? ex- 
 admissis et concessis quid non sequitm — if I would admit his 
 authority, and then he should excommunicate her, I would 
 then do as God should give me gi-ace ; but I never admitted 
 any such matter, neither ought I to be wrested with any such 
 suppositions. What then, say they, because I would not answer 
 flatly to that which I could not, forsooth I sought corners; 
 mine answers were aloof. Well, since once more it must 
 needs be answered, I say generally that these matters be 
 merely spiritual points of doctrine and disputable in schools, 
 no part of mine indictment, not to be given in evidence, and 
 unfit to be discussed at the King's Bench. To conclude : 
 they are no matters of fact ; they be not in the trial of the 
 country ; the jury ought not to take any notice of them ; 
 for although I doubt not but they are very discreet men and 
 trained up in great use and experience of controversies and 
 debates pertinent to their callings, yet are they laymen, they 
 are temporal, and unfit judges to decide so deep a question. 
 
 Elliot, a witness, deposed against Campion that he made 
 a sermon in Berkshire, his text being of Christ weeping over 
 Jerusalem, wherein Campion showed many vices and enormi- 
 ties here abounding in England, and namely heresies, where- 
 with he was sorry that his countrymen were so blinded ; but 
 
298 EDMUND CAJIPION. 
 
 hoped shortly there would hap a day of change comfortable 
 to the Catholics, now shaken and dispersed, and terrible to 
 the heretics here flourishing in the land. Elliot added that 
 in his sermon Campion had persuaded his audience to obe- 
 dience to the Pope ; but on being urged by Campion he con- 
 fessed that he did not remember the rope being named once 
 in the sermon.'^^ 
 
 Queen's Counsel. Lo, what would you wish more manifest ? 
 The gi-eat day is threatened, comfortable to them, and terrible 
 to us; and what day should that be but that wherein the 
 Pope, the King of Spain, and the Duke of Florence have 
 appointed to invade this realm ? 
 
 Campion. O Judas, Judas ! No other day was in my 
 mind, I protest, than that wherein it should please God to 
 make a restitution of faith and religion. For as in all other 
 Christian commonwealths, so in England, many vices and 
 iniquities do abound, neither is there any realm so godly, 
 no people so devout, nowhere so religious, but that in the 
 same very places many enormities do flourish, and evil men 
 bear sway and regiment. Whereupon, as in every pulpit 
 every Protestant doth, I jn-onounced a gi-eat day, not where- 
 in any temporal potentate should minister, but wherein the 
 terrible Judge should re\'eal all men's consciences, and try 
 every man of each kind of religion. This is the day of 
 change, this is the great day which I threatened ; comfort- 
 able to the well-believing, and terrible to all heretics. Any 
 other day than this, God he knows I meant not. 
 
 Munday, a witness, deposed that he heard the English- 
 men, as the doctors and others, talk and conspire of these 
 treasons against England, and that Campion and others after- 
 wards had conference wdth Dr. Allen. 
 
 Campion. Here is nothing deposed against me directly; 
 and as for my conference with Dr. Allen, it hath appeared 
 when and what it was. 
 
 Evidence was next given against Sherwin, who before the 
 commissioners had refused to swear to the supremacy, neither 
 would answer plainly what he thought of the Pope's Bull, but 
 confessed that his coming into England was to persuade the 
 peojjle to the Catholic religion. 
 
 Queens Counsel. You well knew that it was not lawful for 
 you to persuade the Queen's subjects to any other religion 
 than by her highness's injunctions is already professed ; and 
 therefore, if there had not been a fm'ther matter in your 
 meaning, you would have kept your conscience to yourself, 
 and yourself where you were. 
 
 Sherwin. We read that the Apostles and Fathers in the 
 
THE TRIAL. 299 
 
 primitive Church have taught and preached in the domin- 
 ions and empires of ethnic and heathen rulers, and yet not 
 deemed worthy of death. The sufferance, and perhaps the 
 Hke toleration, I well hope for in such a commonwealth as 
 where open Christianity and godliness is pretended ; and albeit 
 in such a diversity of religion it was to be feared lest I might 
 not discharge my conscience without fear of danger, yet ought 
 I not therefore to surcease in my functions, although that 
 conscience is very wavering and unsteady, which with fear of 
 danger draweth from dut}-. 
 
 One of the Justices. But your case differeth from theirs in 
 the primitive Church, for that those Apostles and preachers 
 never conspii-ed the death of those emperors and rulers in 
 whose dominions they so taught and preached. 
 
 The clerk of the crown read a letter, which showed that, 
 by the fireside in the English seminary beyond the seas, 
 bherwin should say that if he were in England he could com- 
 pass many things, and that there was one Arundell in Corn- 
 wall, who at an instant could le\'y a gi'eat power ; and that 
 if an army were to be sent into England, the best landing 
 would be at St. Michael's Mount. 
 
 Sherwin. I never spake any such matter, God is my record; 
 neither was it ever the least part of my meaning. 
 
 Bosgrave's opinion was read, wherein he had denied the 
 supremacy, and staggered without any perfect answer to the 
 Bull ; but said that he came into England to persuade and 
 teach, acknowledging her Majesty his queen and temporal 
 head. In the which examination he confessed that beyond 
 the seas he heard it reported how the Pope, the King of 
 Spain, and the Duke of Florence, would send a great army 
 into England to deprive the Queen's majesty both of life and 
 dignity, for the restitution of the Catholic religion. 
 
 Queen! s Counsel. The keeping close and not detecting of 
 treason maketh the hearer of it to become a traitor ; and 
 therefore, inasmuch as you concealed what you heard, and 
 made not information of it to her Majesty, the council, nor the 
 commonwealth of this realm, you became thereby privy and 
 party unto it, and therefore m these respects you are a traitor. 
 
 Bosgrave. What! am I a traitor because I heard it spoken 1 
 
 But Campion, perceiving Bosgrave merely daunted vnth. 
 the matter, spake to excuse him in manner as foUoweth : 
 
 Campion. My lord, it is not unknown to your honour how 
 brittle and slippery ground fame and reports are wont to be 
 built on ; the which, as for the most part they are more false 
 than credible, so ought they always to make men wary and 
 fearful to deal with them, insomuch as the broacher of ru- 
 
300 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 mours and news is he that getteth commonly least credit or 
 thanks for his labom'. The cause is the property and nature 
 of fame, which is never but uncertain, and sometimes but 
 forged ; for who findeth it not by daily exjjerience, how that 
 in every city, every village, yea and in most barbers' shops, 
 in all England, many speeches, both of estates and common- 
 wealths be tossed, which were never meant nor determined of 
 in the court. If it be so in England, shall we not look for the 
 like in Italy, Flanders, France, and Spain? Yes, truly; for 
 though the countries do differ, yet the nature of the men re- 
 maineth the same, namely, always desirous and greedy of news. 
 Many things there be diversely reported and diversely can- 
 vassed by the common sort, which were never intended by 
 the bearers of rule and principality. Were it not, then, a 
 great point of credulity for a man divided from England with 
 a many seas and lands, upon a matter only blazed among the 
 vulgar people, either by journey or letter to certify the Queen s 
 council or commonalty of things never purposed, much less 
 put in practice I I rather think Mr. Bosgrave's discretion to 
 have been gi-eater in passing such dangerous occasions with 
 themselves, than otherwise it had been in using means to 
 bewTay them. But, supposing he had done as you would 
 have had him, and what he heard there he had signified here, 
 what had come of it'? JNIarry, then, greater danger for slan- 
 dering the realm, and how little thanks for his false infor- • 
 niation ! So that, if he would deal either wisely or safely, how 
 could he deal better than to do as he did ? 
 
 Attorney-General. There is no cloth so coarse but Campion 
 can cast a colour upon it. But what, was it not Bosgrave's 
 own confession that he amved into England to teach and 
 persuade the people, and what persuasions should they be but 
 to prepare a readiness for these wars ? 
 
 Campion. These be but faint and bare implications, which 
 move but urge not, affirm but prove not ; whereas you ought 
 not to amplify and gather upon words when a matter con- 
 cerneth and toucheth a man's life. 
 
 Cottam, in his examination, would neither agree to the 
 supremacy, nor answer directly concerning the "Pope's au- 
 thority. 
 
 Queen's Counsel. You came into England at or near the 
 time that the rest came ; so that it must needs be intended a 
 match made between you, for the furtherance of those affairs 
 which were then a-brewing ; and how answer you thereunto ? 
 
 Cottam. It was neither my purpose nor my message to 
 come into England ; neither would I have come had not God 
 otherwise driven me ; for my journey was appointed to the 
 
THE TRIAL. 301 
 
 Indians, and thither had I gone had my health been thereto 
 answerable ; but in the meanwhiles it pleased God to visit me 
 with sickness, and being counselled by the physiciai^s for my 
 health's sake to come into England, — for othcrways, as they 
 said, either remaining there or going elsewhere, 1 should not 
 recover it, — I came upon that occasion, and upon no other, 
 into this realm. 
 
 Campion. Indeed, the physicians in Rome do hold for a 
 certamty that, if an Englishman shall fall sick amongst them, 
 there is no better nor scant any other way for his health than 
 to repair into England, there to take his natui-al aii-, which 
 agreeth best with his complexion. 
 
 Cottam. And that only was the cause of my coming, and 
 not any determinate intent either to persuade or dissuade, be- 
 ing otherwise by my provost charged to the Indians. Neither, 
 after my arrival here, did I hide myself, nor dealt otherwise 
 than might beseem any man that meddled no more than I 
 did. I lay for the most part in Southwark ; I walked daily 
 in Paul's ; I refrained no place, which betokened my inno- 
 cency. 
 
 Queen^s Counsel. Did you neither persuade nor dissuade ? 
 Was there not a book found in your budget, the contents 
 whereof tended to no other purpose? the which book was made 
 by one D'Espignata, entitled Tractatus Conscientite, containing 
 certain answers to the supremacy, and how sophistically to 
 frustrate any kinds of demands ; with a fmrther method how 
 you ought to demean yourself in every sort of company, 
 whether it were of Protestants or Pmitans, and what speeches 
 you should use to Convert them both ; as unto the Protestants 
 highly commending them and showing that they are far nearer 
 the right way than the Puritans, and whom you should utterly 
 dispraise unto the Puritans ; likewise in commending the Pro- 
 testants and persuading them to the obedience of the Pope. 
 To what end, then, should you carry this book about you, if 
 you were not purposed to do as it prescribeth f 
 
 Cottam. I protest before God I knew nothing of that book, 
 neither how nor when it came to me. 
 
 Then Campion, seeing him driven to so naiTow an exigent 
 as to deny that which was manifest, answered for him to this 
 eifect following : 
 
 Campion. Many casualties and events may happen where- 
 by a man may be endangei'ed ere he be ware by the carrying 
 of a thing he knoweth not, as either the malice of others that 
 privily convey it amongst other his provisions, or his own 
 negligence or oversight which marked not attentively what he 
 took with him; whereof both are to be judged errors, yet not 
 
302 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 deemed an offence ; and therefore this cannot be maintained 
 to be done by Mr. Cottam on purpose which we see flatly to 
 be out of his knowledge. But suppose that purposely he 
 brought the book ■\Aath him, yet what can that make against 
 him for treason ? It treateth of conscience ; it toucheth good 
 demeanour ; it showeth how to make the unbelieving faithful : 
 matters wholly spiritual, points of edification, preparing to 
 Godwards ; where is, then, the treason ? But were these rea- 
 sons impertinent, yet it is a custom with all students beyond 
 the seas, when any man learned or well thought of draweth a 
 treatise touching either conscience or good behaviour, to copy 
 it out and to carry it aboiit with them, not thereby aiming at 
 any faction or conspii-acy, but for their own proper knowledge 
 and private instruction. 
 
 Johnson would neither gi-ant to the supremacy, neither 
 yield any resolute opinion of the Pope's authority in his Bull 
 and excommunication. 
 
 Elliot, a witness, deposed against Johnson, that at Christ's 
 Nativity come two years, being at my Lady Peter's house, he 
 fell into acquaintance with one Pain, a priest, that exercised 
 the office of a steward in the house, who by reason that he 
 was appointed to be his bedfellow gi-ew into a further famili- 
 arity with him, insomuch that at length he ventured to dis- 
 suade him from his allegiance to her ]\'Iajesty and to become 
 subject to the Pope ; affirming that her highness could not 
 live for ever, and that shortly after her days the Catholic re- 
 ligion should be restored ; for the furtherance whereof the 
 Cathohcs beyond seas had already devised a practice, which 
 is this : that fifty of them (whereof either should know other) 
 should come to the court furnished with privy coats, poggets, 
 daggs, and two-handed swords, attending until her Majesty 
 should take the air or go on some petty progress, and then 
 some of them should set upon her IMajesty, some upon the 
 lord-treasurer, some upon the Earl of Leicester, some upon 
 Sir Francis Walsingham, and others upon others the favourers 
 of this heretical religion, there to Idll her ^lajesty and to tie 
 her by the hair of the head unto a horse, to be lugged and 
 haled up and down to the joy of all Catholics and distress of 
 all heretics; of the which, so Pain offered this deponent, if he 
 would he should be one, adding further, that if he had place 
 and opportunity convenient, he should stab her Majesty with 
 a dagger himself, for he thought it no more unlawful to kill 
 her than to kill a horned beast. After which communication. 
 Pain, finding this deponent not so conformable unto him as 
 he hoped, and receiving a bitter and flat refusal of his un- 
 gracious proffer, conveyed himself away, and was no more to 
 
THE TRIAI.. 303 
 
 be heard of. Whereupon this Johnson, now arrived, came 
 to the deponent, and inquired what was become of Pain, to 
 whom he answered that he knew not. Then said Johnson, 
 "he is gone beyond the seas, fearing lest you would discover 
 his secrets ; and therefore I forewarn and conjure you not to 
 disclose anything that Pain hath told you ; for if you do you 
 stand in state of damnation." 
 
 Johnson. I never in my life had any such talk with him, 
 nor uttered any such speeches tending to any such matter. 
 
 Bristow's examination was read, wherein he had acknow- 
 ledged her Majesty his la-w'ful queen and governess, and that 
 notwithstanding aught that the Pope had done or could do, 
 she was his supreme head. 
 
 Queen's Counsel. What was, then, the cause of your coming 
 into this realm ? for it seemeth by your sudden arrival and 
 journeying with the rest that you were also a party and fur- 
 therer of their purpose. 
 
 Biistow, I have to my mother a poor widow, who besides 
 had one other son, with the company of whom during his life 
 she was well appayed ; but it pleased God aftenvards to dis- 
 pose him at His mercy, and to deprive my mother of his fur- 
 ther succour. She, taking the matter very heavily, used what 
 means she could possibly for my return. She sent letters after 
 letters, and those so importunate, that, will I nill I, I must 
 needs come home ; the which was the only cause of my ar- 
 rival, and not any other, God is my witness. 
 
 Anthony Munday deposed against Bristow, that he 
 should say he was cunning in fireworks, and that shortly 
 he would make a confection of wildfire, wherewith he would 
 bum her Majesty when she were on the Thames in her 
 barge ; and the deponent swore further, that he heard it 
 spoken beyond the seas that whosoever had not the watch- 
 word, which was " Jesus Maria," should be slain. 
 
 Bristow. I call God to witness I never suffered such 
 thoughts, nor never had any such cunning in fireworks ; and 
 therefore he sweareth the greatest untruth that may be. 
 
 Kirhie, in his examination for the supremacy and the 
 Pope's authority, was of no other opinion than was Campion. 
 
 Sledd, a witness, deposed against Kirbie, that being sick 
 beyond the seas, this Kirbie came unto his bedside and coun- 
 selled him to beware how he dealt with any matters in Eng- 
 land ; for there would come a great day wherein the Pope, the 
 King of Spain, and the Duke of Florence should make as great 
 an alteration as ever was. He deposed that Kirbie was at a 
 sermon of Dr. Allen's, who then persuaded the priests and 
 seminary men to take their journey into England, to remove 
 
304 ED:jnjN'D campiox. 
 
 the Englishmen fi-om their obedience to her highness, and 
 to persuade them to aid the Pope and his confederates. He 
 deposed, moreover, that beyond the seas he spake with one 
 Tedder, a famihar friend of Kirbie's, of whom he, deponent, 
 demanded whether he were of kin to her Majesty, for that his 
 name was Tedder; whereunto he answered that if he knew 
 himself to be kin to that Whore of Babylon, that Jezebel of 
 England, he would think the worse of himself as long as he 
 lived ; but one day he would make a journey into England, 
 and, if it were possible, despatch her out of the way. 
 
 Kirbie. As I hope to be saved at the last doom, there is 
 not one word of this deposition that concerneth me either 
 true or credible ; neither at any time made I the least mention 
 of that alleged day ; neither was I present at any sermon so 
 preached ; but I always bore as true and faithful heart to her 
 Majesty as any subject whatsoever did in England, insomuch 
 that I never heard her Majesty evil spoken of but I defended 
 her cause, and always spake the best of her highness. It is not 
 unknown that I saved English mariners from hanging only 
 for the duty I bore to her INIajesty, with the love and goodmll 
 which I bore to my country. But you that have thus deposed, 
 when was then this sermon that you talk of so preached ? at 
 what time of the day 1 
 
 The witness answered that the same day there were three 
 philosophical disputations, after the which the sermon was 
 preached. 
 
 Orton would neither agree to the supremacy, or openly 
 affirm what authority the Pope had, nor whether he thought 
 the excommunication of Pope Pius V. to be of force or no. 
 
 Anthony Alunday deposed against Orton, that he being at 
 Lyons in France, said unto this deponent, that her Majesty 
 was not lawful queen of England, and that he owed her no 
 kind of obedience. The deponent said further that this Orton 
 made suit unto Dr. Allen that he might be one of the Pope's 
 pensioners, whereunto Dr. Allen would not agree unless Orton 
 woxild become a priest or seminary man, which he refused. 
 
 Orton. I utterly deny that I ever had any speech with the 
 witness, either at Lyons or elsewhere ; but he manifestly for- 
 sweareth himself, as one that having neither honesty nor re- 
 ligion, careth for neither. 
 
 The same all the parties did affirm, and that he was an 
 atheist ; for that beyond the seas he goetli on pilgrimage, and 
 receiveth the sacrament, making himself a Catholic, and here 
 he taketh a new face, and playeth the Protestant ; and there- 
 fore is an unfit and unworthy witness to give in evidence or 
 to depose against life. 
 
THE REPLY. 305 
 
 Munday, the witness, answered, that in France and other 
 places he seemed to favour their religion, because he might 
 thereby undex-mine them and sift out their purposes. The 
 prisoners took exceptions to another of the witnesses, which 
 of them I know not, for that he was a murderer (and had 
 slain two men), already well known by his own confession and 
 acknowledgment; for the which reason he was no sufficient 
 nor allowable witness. 
 
 These matters thus sifted, and that the jury should pass, 
 one of the justices said to the jurors, All the matter resteth 
 in that, either to believe the prisoners that speak for their 
 lives, or the witnesses that come freely to depose as they are 
 demanded: the witnesses affirm sufficient proof against them; 
 they deny whatsoever is alleged. 
 
 Lord Chief -Justice. You that be here indicted, you see 
 what is alleged against you. In discharge whereof, if you 
 have any more to say, speak, and we will hear you till to- 
 moiTow morning. We would be loth you should have any 
 occasion to complain on the court; and therefore, if aught 
 rest behind that is untold, that is available for you, speak, and 
 you shall be heard with indifference. 
 
 They all thanked his lordship, and said they could not 
 otherwise affirm but that they had found of the court both in- 
 difference and justice. Whereupon Campion made this speech 
 to the jurors : 
 
 Campion. What charge this day you sustain, and what 
 accompt you are to render at the dreadful Day of Judgment, 
 whereof I could wish this also were a mirror, I trust there is 
 not one of you but knoweth. I doubt not but in like manner 
 you forecast how dear the innocent is to God, and at what 
 price He holdeth man's blood. Here we are accused and im- 
 pleaded to the death ; here you do receive our lives into your 
 custody ; here must be your choice, either to restore them or 
 condemn them. We have no whither to appeal but to your 
 consciences; we have no friends to make there but your heeds 
 and discretions. Take heed, I beseech you, let no colours nor 
 inducements deceive you ; let your gi'ound be substantial, for 
 your building is weighty. All this you may do sufficiently, 
 we doubt not, if you will mark intentively what things have 
 been treated, in three distinct and several points. The speech 
 and discourse of this whole day consisteth, first, in presump- 
 tions and probabilities ; secondly, in matters of religion ; lastly, 
 in oaths and testimonies of witnesses. The weak and forceless 
 proof that proceedeth from conjectures is neither worthy to 
 carry the verdict of so many, nor sufficient evidence for trial 
 of man's life. The constitutions of the realm exact a necessity, 
 
 X 
 
306 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 and will that no man should totter upon the hazard of likeli- 
 hoods ; and albeit the strongest reasons of our accusers have 
 been but in bare and naked probabilities, yet are they no 
 matters for you to rely upon, who ought only to regard what 
 is apparent. Set circumstances aside, set presumptions apart, 
 set that reason for your rule which is warranted for certainty. 
 But probabilities were not the only matters which imperti- 
 nently have been discussed; there were also points of doctrine 
 and religion, as excommunications, books, and pamphlets, 
 wherein a great part of the day hath been as unfitly con- 
 sumed. Insomuch as this very day you have heard not only 
 us, but also the Pope, the King of Spain, the Duke of Flo- 
 rence, Allen, Sanders, Bristow, Espigneta, and many more 
 arraigned. What force excommunications be of, what au- 
 thority is due to the Bishop of Rome, how men's consciences 
 must be instructed, are no matters of fact, nor triable by 
 jurors, but points yet disputed and not resolved in schools ; 
 how then can they be determined by you, though wise, laymen 
 otherwise experienced, yet herein ignorant? Yet were it so, 
 that for yoiu- knowledge and skill in divinity ye might seem 
 approved censurers of so high a controversy, yet are they no 
 part of all oui- indictments, and therefore not to be respected 
 by the jury. You perchance would ask of me. If these prove 
 naught against us, what then should you inquire of; for those 
 set aside, the rest is almost nothing ? Pardon me, I pray you, 
 our innocency is such, that if all were cut off that have been 
 objected either weakly or untruly against us, there would in- 
 deed rest nothing that might prove us guilty; but I answer 
 unto you, that what remaineth be oaths, and those not to rest as 
 proofs unto you, but to be duly examined and fully considered, 
 whether they be true and their deposers of credit. In common 
 matters we often see witnesses impealed, and if at any time 
 their credit be little, it ought then to be less when they swear 
 against life. Call, I pray you, to yoiu* remembrance how 
 faintly some have deposed, how coldly others, how untruly 
 the rest ; especially two who have testified most. Wliat truth 
 inay you expect from their mouths ? the one hath confessed 
 himself a murderer, the other well known a detestable atheist 
 — a profane heathen — a destroyer of two men already. On 
 your consciences, would you believe them — they that have 
 betrayed both God and man, nay, that have left nothing to 
 swear by, neither religion nor honesty? Though you would 
 beheve them, can you? I know your wisdom is gi-eater, 
 yom- consciences uprighter ; esteem of them as they be. Ex- 
 amme the other two, you shall find neither of them precisely 
 to affirm that we or any of us have practised aught that might 
 
THE VERDICT. 307 
 
 be prejudicial to this estate, oi* dangerous to this common- 
 wealth. God give you grace to weigh our causes aright, and 
 have respect to your own consciences ; and so I will keep the 
 jury no longer. I commit the rest to God, and our convic- 
 tions to your good discretions. 
 
 After this the jury considered of their verdict ; and then 
 there happened a thing which Parsons, whose eyes, like those 
 of all the other Catholics of the time, were ever on the watch 
 for supernatural events, relates as a miracle. Judge Ayloff 
 was " sitting to keep the place when the other judges retired, 
 while the jury consulted about the condemnation of Father 
 Campion and his company, and pulling off his glove, 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 retvirned ; he showed it to 
 the gentlemen that sat before him, who can be witnesses of 
 it till this day, and have some of tliem upon their faiths and 
 credits avouched it to be true." 
 
 The pleadings had taken about three hours, and the jury 
 consulted for nearly an hour before they agi-eed on their ver- 
 dict. In this interval some one brought Campion a glass of 
 beer to refresh him after his labours. The greater part of 
 the lawyers and gentlemen present thought an acquittal was 
 certain, at least for Campion ; " but judges and jury," says 
 Laing, " had all been bought ; and the desire to gratify Csesar 
 prevailed ;" Mr. Popham, the attorney-genei'al, having plainly 
 signified to them what the Queen's will was. Edward Plowden, 
 the famous lawyer, himself a Catholic, had come with the rest 
 to see the trial ; but one of the judges, not liking that he 
 should report it, or even witness it, sent word to him to leave 
 the court. As he was himself in question for religion, he 
 thought it prudent to obey. One of the jurymen, according 
 to Laing, afterwards excused himself by saying that if he had 
 not found the prisoners guilty, he had been no friend of 
 Caisar's. The consultation, then, was a mere blind to put 
 a decent veil on a foregone conclusion ; but it did not avail 
 to deceive the public, who in their ballads accused the jury 
 of undue haste : 
 
 " They pack'd a jury that cried guilty straight." 
 " You bloody jury, Lee and all th' eleven, 
 Take heed your verdict, which was given in haste, 
 Do not exclude you from the joys of heaven." 
 
 And Lee himself, in 1595, being once more " a prisoner re- 
 strained from bodily travel," wrote to Lord Keeper Pucker- 
 
308 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 ing, " I have been persecuted by them" (the Papists) " for my 
 verdict, given in haste, as Vallenger rhymed, against Campion 
 and his traitorous companions." Wlien they returned they 
 pronounced all to be guilty. " The most unjust verdict," says 
 the old writer whom Challoner follows, " that ever I think was 
 given was given up in this land; whereat already (1582) not 
 only England but all the Christian world doth wonder, and 
 which our posterity shall lament and be ashamed of." AVlien 
 the verdict was given, Anderson said, " Forasmuch as these 
 prisoners here indicted and arraigned undertook to be tried 
 by God and their country, and by the verdict of a whole 
 jury, directly and by most sufficient and manifest evidence, 
 are found guilty of the said treasons and conspiracies, we 
 pray your lordships to accept of the verdict, and in her ma- 
 jesty's behalf to give judgment against them as traitors." 
 
 Lord Chief-Justice. Campion and the rest, what can you 
 say why you should not die ? 
 
 Campion. It was not our death that ever we feared. But 
 we knew that we were not lords of our owti lives, and there- 
 fore for want of answer would not be guilty of oui" own deaths. 
 Tlie only thing that we have now to say is, that if our religion 
 do make us traitors, we are worthy to be condemned ; but 
 otherwise are and have been as tnie subjects as ever the 
 Queen had. In condemning us you condemn all your own 
 ancestors — all the ancient priests, bishops, and kings — all that 
 was once the glory of England, the island of saints, and the 
 most devoted child of the See of Peter. For what have we 
 taught, however you may qualify it with the odious name of 
 treason, that they did not imiformly teach 1 To be con- 
 demned 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 judg- 
 ment is not so liable to corruption as that of those who are 
 now going to sentence us to death. 
 
 Never, says Fitzherbert, was Campion's face more noble ; 
 his conduct during the day had been full of calmness and 
 dignity, and his arguments of point and conclusiveness ; but 
 in this last speech he surpassed himself. His eloquence 
 made his fellow-prisoners forget the fate that hung over them ; 
 and Cottam, on his return to the Tower, told Briscoe that now 
 he was quite willing to die, after hearing Campion speak so 
 gloriously. 
 
 Lord Chief-Justice. You must go to the place from whence 
 you came, there to remain until ye shall be drawn through 
 the open city of London upon hurdles to the place of execu- 
 tion, and there be hanged and let down alive, and your privy 
 
THE SENTENCE. 309 
 
 parts cut off, 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 plea- 
 sure. And God have mercy on your souls. 
 
 All the prisoners, says the reporter of the trial, after this 
 judgment, stormed in countenance, crying, they were as true 
 and faithful subjects as ever the Queen had any. Only Cam- 
 pion suppressed his affection, and cried aloud, " Te Deum lau- 
 damus, Te Dominum confitemur." Shervvin took up the song, 
 " Hsec est dies quam fecit Dominus, exultemus et Isetemur in 
 ilia ;" and the rest expressed their contentment and joy, some 
 in one phrase of Scripture, some in another ; whereby the 
 multitudes in the hall were visibly astonished and affected. 
 Campion was taken to the barge, and rowed back to the 
 Tower; and the rest were sent back to their own prisons, 
 where, being laid up in irons for the rest of their time, they 
 expected God's mercy and the Queen's pleasure. 
 
 The next day, the remaining priests — CoUington, Richard- 
 son, Hart, Ford, Filby, Briant, and Shert — were similarly 
 condemned. But on this occasion, after the verdict was given, 
 one Mr. Lancaster wtnessed that he was in company with 
 CoUington in Gray's-inn the very day that he was charged 
 with plotting at Rheims, where indeed he had never been 
 in his life, as he had been sent from Douai. He was after- 
 wards banished, and lived to be the first dean of the EngUsh 
 chapter erected by the Bishop of Chalcedon. 
 
 Among the spectators there was a priest named Nicholson, 
 who, seeing the success of Lancaster's testimony about Col- 
 lington, and being able to give similar witness about Ford, 
 offered his evidence ; but he was apprehended by the judge's 
 order, and sent to prison, where he was well-nigh starved to 
 death. 
 
 Father Parsons' commentary on this assize is as follows :'" 
 " The chief charge was, that they had conspired with the 
 Pope, the King of Spain, and the Duke of Florence to invade 
 England; their chief accusers were three young men who 
 had been sometime at Rome — Munday, Sledd, and Caddy — 
 whose age and condition were such as would have been an 
 effectual bar against any such thing being communicated to 
 them if it had been true. But the answers of the prisoners, 
 their deeds, and the event itself, proved that no such action 
 was thought of: and the three men acted exactly as false 
 witnesses do, confining themselves to generalities, or to things 
 which had no reference to the accusation ; for instance, that 
 the Pope had favoured them, that some of them had had 
 conversations with certain cardinals, and the like. All this 
 
310 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 showed that it was either for fear or for money that they 
 appeared as witnesses. It seemed, however, a predetermined 
 matter that all were to be condemned; and so no defence 
 could avail, but after some hours of altercation sentence of 
 death was passed upon all of them." 
 
 Cradock or Caddy hardly seems to be the Lawrence Caddy 
 vfhose palinodia is pubUshed with those of Nichols, Baines, and 
 Osburn in Bridgewater ; for that Caddy, like Nichols, expressly 
 disclaims haA-ing appeared as vwtness against the martyrs, or 
 indeed of having harmed them at all. The information he 
 had is confused and only founded on fact. He talks of the 
 " holy vow" between the Pope and the EngHsh priests. This 
 clearly refers to the Irish invasion, of which the general of the 
 Jesuits had told the Bishop of Glasgow, and which the Pope 
 had approved of, ordering it to be called la sacr4e expedition. 
 That the Pope intended the great mission of priests into Eng- 
 land to subserve the purposes of this invasion there can be 
 little doubt ; but there is not the least CNadence that this pur- 
 pose was known to any of the priests except Parsons and Holt; 
 indeed, as such knowledge would only be an incumbrance to 
 them, they would naturally be kept in ignorance of it, espe- 
 cially since the opinion in Kome was that all Catholics would 
 natural]}' take the Pope's part when it came to war. Caddy, 
 then, may have been right in sajang that two hundred priests 
 were to be sent into England. His examination before Sir 
 Richard Shelly is very probable, as the Prior and Bishop 
 Goldwell seem to have been employed in investigating the 
 characters of the Englishmen who an-ived in Rome in 1579 
 and 1580.^'* His information about the command of the 
 army having been offered to Sir R. Shelly is probably correct. 
 Negotiations were pending with the Knights of Malta for the 
 transference of their order into Ireland ; and though they did 
 not agree to the whole proposal, yet they promised in 1581 to 
 send some of their best men to that country. That Sir R. 
 Shelly would have been the chief, I have no doubt. He had 
 been Turcopolier, the highest military' officer in the order ; and 
 even yet, in spite of his advanced age, he was held in such 
 estimation by the King of Spain as to be named his ambas- 
 sador to the Shah of "Persia in 1581.^'^ Moreover, that he 
 would have refused such a command is clear from his cha- 
 racter — "after the old manner, friend to all the world and 
 neutral," as Anthony Standen, a partisan, writes ;^'^ or as 
 Shelly paints himself in his own letters to Bui-ghley and Wal- 
 singham,^" where he boasts of his fidelity to the Queen during 
 an exile of twenty-three years, and of his having constantly 
 refused to receive any pension from the King of Spain, which 
 
THE WITNESSES. 311 
 
 it was always in his power to have; not, however, without 
 entering into his poUcy, which he never would do ; for " the 
 late tragedies in England" (he means the executions of Cam- 
 pion and the rest) " and the war in Ireland were caused by a 
 generation that he never liked." 
 
 The two witnesses whom Campion impeached — the one 
 as an atheist, the other as a murderer — were Munday and 
 EUot. The charge of atheism against the former rested on 
 his confession that he had feigned himself a Cathohc abroad 
 in order to discover the secrets of the Catholics. This seemed 
 to imply an indifference to all religion, and at least a practical 
 atheism. Pound described him as " cogging Munday," " who 
 first was a sta^e-player, no doubt a calling of some credit" 
 (Pound himself had been in great credit for his acting at 
 Court and at Kenilworth), " after an apprenticeship, which 
 time he well served with decei\'ing of his master ; then wan- 
 dering towards Italy, by his own report became a cozener in 
 his journey. Coming to Rome, in his short abode there was 
 charitably relieved, but never admitted m the seminary, as he 
 pleaseth to lie in the title of his book ; and being weary of 
 well-doing, returned home to his first vomit again. I omit 
 to declare how this scholar out of Italy did play extempore ; 
 those gentlemen who were present can best give witness of 
 his dexterity, who, being weary of his folly, hissed him from 
 the stage. Then, being thereby discom-aged, he set forth a 
 baUad against plays ; but yet, O constant youth ! he now be- 
 gins again to ruffle upon the stage. I omit, among other 
 places, his behaviour in Barbican ynth his good mistress and 
 mother, from whence our superintendent" (Pound always 
 called the Anglican bishops superintendents) " might fetch him 
 to his court, were it not for love (I would save slander) to 
 his gospel." 
 
 Munday was the chief reporter of the executions of the 
 priests condemned at this assize, and it is his story of the 
 death of Campion which Holingshed printed in his chro- 
 nicles, and which Hallam condemns for " a savageness and 
 bigotry which I am very sure no scribe of the Inquisition 
 could have sm-passed."''''* Munday attended the executions 
 of these priests, and disturbed them as much in him lay in 
 their deaths. He afterwards attached himself to the arch 
 priest-catcher Topchffe, by whom he was employed to guard 
 and to take bonds of recusants. Topchffe spoke of him to 
 Puckering as " a man who wants no wit ;" and indeed he was 
 one of the best dramatists of the day, perhaps the best inventor 
 of plots. When Shakespeare's Falstaff had covered the name 
 of Sir John Oldcastle with a certain amount of ridicule, it was 
 
312 EDMUND CASIPION. 
 
 Munday who, with two other playwrights, undertook to re- 
 habilitate the Protestant martyr's good name ; and he impu- 
 dently ascribed his play to Shakespeare himself, who, however, 
 made him immediately cancel his lying title. He was not more 
 honest in his account of Campion's capture and martyrdom, 
 which was " disproved by George or Judas Eliot, who showed 
 these things were done for lucre's sake, and not for the 
 truth." He had previously been controlled in much the same 
 way by " one of his own batch" in his pamphlet about the 
 death of Everard Hanse. 
 
 The following description of Munday's way of dealing 
 with recusants is from a report of one of Walsiugham's men, 
 who signs himself PHS. : " He hath been in divers places 
 where I have passed ; whose dealing hath been very rigorous, 
 and yet done very small good, but rather much hurt ; for in 
 one place, under pretence to seek for Agnus Deis and hal- 
 lowed grains, he carried from a widow 40^., the which he 
 took out of a chest. A few of these matches mil either raise 
 a rebellion, or cause your officers to be murdered."^'^ 
 
 Of George Eliot and the charge of murder against him I 
 have already spoken. That charge had, however, now been 
 entu'ely wiped out by his good service. He had captured 
 Campion, and had been the means of taking nine other 
 priests ; he had been made a yeoman of her Majesty's guard, 
 and had come flaunting into com't with his red coat. He 
 had shown too well how intimate he was with the secrets of 
 priests, and his testimony, though evidently forged, was too 
 valuable to lose. Campion took nothing by his impeaching 
 this man's witness. 
 
 Sledd, according to Allen, was the man who pubhshed the 
 news at Rome about a Spanish fleet being prepared to invade 
 England ; and he told one Jerome Vane in Paris that he had 
 published it on the persuasion of some men of great name in 
 England. At Rome and Rheims he was a daily communicant, 
 while he was making his observations ^^-itli the intention of 
 betraying his companions. Even when he started for Eng- 
 land to put his design into execution, he duly made his con- 
 fession first. He communicated his observations in France 
 to the English ambassador at Paris, who sent over his in- 
 formations to the Council. It is possible, but hardly probable, 
 that he was Walsiugham's anonymous plot-finder, since his 
 treachery had already been discovered nearly a year before, 
 when he informed against Orton. 
 
 It would be rash to admit as true all that Campion in his 
 pleadings forbore to deny. It is plain, by the line of defence 
 he adopted for Cottam and Bosgrave, that his cue was not to 
 
HIS LINE OF DEFENCE. 313 
 
 deny allegations, but to show their irrelevancy. Thus he did 
 not deny that trumped-up story about the manuscript oaths 
 found in the houses where he had been ; he only showed there 
 was no proof that he had left them there, or had adminis- 
 tered them.'"*'' So in his explanation of his letter to Pound. 
 If he had explained it then, according to his declaration in the 
 Tower chapel on the 31st of August,— that he had not betrayed 
 any Catholic, that he had discovered no secret, that is, had 
 told of no one who was not already found out, — he would 
 only have given cause for a stricter search ; he therefore 
 allowed it to be understood that he had confessed all their 
 names, that nothmg remained untold except the confessions 
 which they had made, and those, come rack come rope, he 
 would never reveal. It clearly would have been a gratuitous 
 cruelty on his part to say, " You pretend that you have got out 
 of me the names of all who gave me hospitality. You are 
 mistaken ; I only told what I saw you knew ; the names that 
 were still secret I would not tell, nor will I." Such a decla- 
 ration would have opened a vista for informers and pur- 
 suivants, and woidd have subjected the whole Catholic society 
 to endless annoyance. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 When Campion was carried back to the Tower after his 
 condemnation, he was put into irons, and otherwise hardly 
 used. But he showed such patience, and spoke so gently to 
 those who had to deal with him, that his keeper Delahays, 
 having afterwards Mr. Norton the rack-master in his custody, 
 and comparing the two prisoners' behaviour, declared that, 
 where he had a saint in his keeping before, now he had a 
 devil. 
 
 It was not even yet too late for the Protestants to tempt 
 their victim with proffers of life and Hberty if he would go 
 over to them, or at least take some steps towards them ; and 
 Hopton the lieutenant sent Campion's sister to her brother, 
 three days before his death, with a message, that if he would 
 but yield to change his religion he should have a benefice of 
 an hundred pounds a year. 
 
 He received also a visitor of another kind. "Judas" 
 Eliot, when he saw that he was condemned, came to him and 
 said, " If I had thought that you woidd have had to sutler 
 aught but imprisonment through my accusing of you, I would 
 never have done it, however I might have lost by it." " If 
 that is the case," replied Campion, " I beseech you, in God's 
 name, to do penance, and confess your crime, to God's glory 
 and your own salvation." Then Eliot said he was in great 
 danger, and feared much lest the Catholics should slay him 
 for his treason. " You are much deceived," said Campion, 
 " if you think that the Catholics push their detestation and 
 wrath so far as revenge ; yet to make you quite safe, I will, if 
 you please, recommend you to a Catholic duke in Germany, 
 where you may live in perfect security." This interview had 
 such an effect on Delahays, Campion's keeper, who was pre- 
 sent, that he afterwards became a Catholic. 
 
 Outside the prison walls there were various conjectures 
 how the affair would end. Most men thought that the Duke 
 of Anjou would intercede, and that the prisoners' lives would 
 be spared ; others, with more knowledge of the man, said that 
 the Duke was occupied in quite other affairs, and had not a 
 
SHALL HE BE HANGED ? 315 
 
 thought to bestow on Campion. Others, again, spread the 
 report that Campion had killed himself in despair. 
 
 In the council-chamber itself there was still indecision. 
 Some of the councillors considered that a man of Campion's 
 genius, knowledge, scholarship, Eui-opean reputation, gentle- 
 ness of manner, and integrity of life could not be executed 
 without rousing the indignation of Em'ope, without wantonly 
 sacrificing one of the ornaments of the English name, or with- 
 out disgracing the fair fame of English justice, since the trial 
 had been public, and had con\'inced everybody except the jury 
 that he was innocent of treason. As for the pretence of the 
 Queen wishing him to be put to death, it was notoriously 
 untrue ; she wished to save him, especially for the sake of the 
 Duke of Anjou, her accepted suitor, who was then in court, 
 and whom she did not wish to disgust by this exhibition of 
 fmy against the teachers of his own religion. Instead, then, 
 it was said, of Campion's death being satisfactory to her Ma- 
 jesty, it would probably bring down her anger on those who 
 had contrived it. On the other hand, the advocates of the 
 execution urged the ridicule of first spending so much care on 
 securing a sentence, and then being afraid to carry it out ; it 
 would be a tacit confession of his innocence and their own 
 guilt ; they would have to meet the disgrace of having kept 
 an innocent man so long in prison, and of having subjected 
 him to illegal tortures. As for the indignation of Europe, 
 that had been already incurred by his condemnation ; they 
 were now only to look at home, and consider how they could 
 expect to find the judges again so pliable, if they failed to sup- 
 port them in this instance. As for the Queen and Anjou, they 
 were too much occupied in their amusements to make great 
 case who was hanged. In fine, firmness even in a question- 
 able course was better than hesitation and instability. Lord 
 Burghley took this side, and clenched the matter hy saying 
 that Campion and Sanders were in the same boat ; and as 
 they could not catch Sanders, they must hang Campion 
 instead. The Attorney-General had said nearly the same 
 thing at the trial. 
 
 When the Council had settled that he should be executed, 
 there still remained the question of the time. Some were for 
 putting it ofi^ till Anjou had gone away, for fear of the ofll^'ence 
 the French king might take at the manifest insult to his 
 brother ; others thought that Anjou's presence was exactly 
 the reason for carrying out the sentence, as a public profession 
 that the marriage would bring in no change of the religious 
 policy of the government. Besides, they said, any delay in 
 the execution will give time for the most influential of the 
 
316 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 English nobles and gentry and for the foreign courts to inter- 
 cede for the prisoners' lives, and the Queen would never resist 
 their united prayers. Moreover it was an excellent occasion 
 for striking terror into the seditious Catholics, who fancied 
 themselves secure under the protection either of Spain or of 
 France. Such were the reasons alleged: the secret reason 
 was, that all the puritanical part of the Council, together with 
 Hatton, who himself aspired to Anjou's place, wished to put 
 an insult upon the French duke, and by some means or other 
 to stop the marriage for which they pretended to be so 
 anxious. Burghley, therefore, again carried the Council with 
 him when he fixed on the following Saturday, the 25th of 
 November, for the execution. In order to make the lesson 
 more complete, he selected two other victims from the con- 
 demned priests ; Sherwin to represent the seminary at Rheims, 
 and Bryant to represent the Roman college ; and in order 
 to throw still greater disgrace on Campion's cause, he had 
 ah-eady tried (on Wednesday, Nov. 15th) Lord Vaux, Tres- 
 ham, Catesby, Powdi'ell, Griffitii, and others, before the Star- 
 Chamber, for giving him hospitality, on his own confession, 
 and had inflicted upon them fines varying from one thousand 
 pounds to five hundred marks. 
 
 The uncertainty of the Council was once more exhibited 
 in deferring the execution till the next Wednesday. When 
 this decision was announced to the prisoners, they congratu- 
 lated each other that they were to die on the vigil of the Feast 
 of Andrew the Apostle ; and they comforted one another with 
 the Apostle's salutation to his cross — bona cmx ! When 
 this came to the ears of the Council, they once more changed 
 the day, and fixed Friday, the 1st of December, for the exe- 
 cution. Campion had long esteemed himself dead to the 
 world, and it would seem difiicult to die to it more perfectly 
 than he had hitherto done ; but from the Saturday when he 
 was at first appointed to die, he seems to have found means 
 to increase his mortifications; for then must have begun 
 "his five days' fast from temporal and bodily sustenance ;" and 
 then, again, on the Wednesday he must have begun " his ab- 
 stinence from sleep and bodily rest, which was by credible 
 report of some continued two nights, bestowed in meditation 
 and prayer." 
 
 In the mean time the Catholics had been busy with 
 Anjou, imploring him to use his influence with the Queen to 
 stay the execution of the sentence. He willingly promised 
 every thing, and is supposed to have made some attempts at 
 performance. When the day was at last fixed, the CathoHcs 
 again besieged his doors. He was just about to begin a game 
 
THE FIKST OF DECEMBER 1 581, 317 
 
 at tennis. His confessor, an abbe, came out to speak with 
 the petitioners ; they exposed their case ; the martyr would 
 only suffer in body, but the duke's fame and honour would be 
 lost, if he permitted this foul tragedy to proceed. The abb6 
 went to the duke and delivered his message. The duke stood 
 hesitating, like a man just awakened from deep sleep, strok- 
 ing his face with his left hand. After a while he raised his 
 right hand with the racket in it, and said to his companion, 
 "Play!" That was all the answer the petitioners could get 
 from him.'*' 
 
 In the splash and mud of a rainy December morning 
 Campion was brought forth from his cell, clad in the same 
 gown of Irish frieze which he had worn at his trial, and was 
 taken to the Coleharbour tower, where he found Sherwin 
 and Briant waiting for him. Here they had some respite 
 for spiritual conversation ; for Hopton, mshing to throw as 
 much ridicule and disgrace upon Campion as was possible, 
 caused search to be made for the buff jerkin which had been 
 objected to Campion at his trial as a military and highly un- 
 becoming disguise, and which was stowed away somewhere in 
 the Tower. Mucli time was spent in the fruitless search, and 
 the morning was fast slipping away, when Hopton determined 
 that he should go as he was ; so the three were brought out 
 to be tied on their hurdles. Outside the Tower a vast crowd 
 was already collected. Campion, nothing daunted, looked 
 cheerfully aromid and saluted them : " God save you all, gen- 
 tlemen ! 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 manus tuas, Domine, commendo 
 spiritum meum. There were two hurdles in waiting, each tied 
 to the tails of two horses. On one Sherwin and Briant 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, calling upon them by 
 the way for their subversion. Charke,'*^ as a conqueror, 
 followed Campion " with big looks, stern countenance, proud 
 words, and merciless behaviour ; fierce and violent upon God's 
 saints in death and torments, and pompous in gait and speech 
 unto the people for gathering or retaining some credit to his 
 cause." But even Charke's vigour was not proof against 
 the mud and the rain and the pace of the horses. There 
 were intervals during which sundry Catholics spoke to Cam- 
 pion of matters of conscience, and received comfort. One 
 gentleman, like Veronica in another via doloivsa, " either for 
 pity or affection, most courteously wiped his face, all spattered 
 with mire and dirt, as he was drawn most miserably through 
 
318 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 thick and thin ; " for which charity," says the priest who saw 
 it done, " or haply some sudden-moved affection, God reward 
 him and bless him !" 
 
 The procession took the tisual route by Cheapside and 
 Holborn. A crowd of men followed it, and the women stood 
 at their doors to see it pass by.''' "Helen Allen, wife of 
 William Allen, linendraper and citizen of London (she and 
 Ealph Sherwin being brothers' children), the same day that 
 Sherwin was executed, and passing on the hurdle by Helen's 
 house, hard by St. Martin's (le Grand), Helen being at that 
 time great with child and sore dismayed with the sight of 
 her kinsman, after the throng of people were gone by, she 
 went over the way to one of her neighbours' houses called 
 Richard Amyas, who presently said luito her, ' I am sorry 
 for the heaviness you take for your cousin Sherwin ;' and she 
 answered, ' Indeed I am sorro'v^'ful ; but it is for that he hath 
 led so evil a life as to deserve this death.' And Amyas said, 
 ' Hold you content ; for they that have procured their deaths 
 will come to a worse end. And she that is the cause of it, 
 one mischief or other will happen unto her ; and then the 
 world will amend, and until then it will not.' " 
 
 A little farther, and the hurdles were dragged under the 
 arch of Newgate, which crossed the street where the prison 
 now stands. In a niche over the gate stood an image of the 
 Blessed Virgin, that was yet untouched with the axes and 
 hammers of the iconoclasts. Campion, as he passed beneath, 
 with a great effort raised himself upon his hurdle and saluted 
 the Queen of Heaven, whom he so soon hoped to see. Chris- 
 topher Issam, a priest, who saw the martjTS on their way, 
 always declared that they had a smile on their faces, and as 
 they drew near Tyburn actually laughed. There was a cry 
 raised among the people, " But they laugh ; they don't care 
 for death."M4 
 
 There was throng on Tower-hill, there was throng through 
 all the streets ; but the throng at the place of execution at 
 Tyburn exceeded all that anyone could remember. They 
 had been gathering all the morning in spite of the rain and 
 wind ; and now, when the hurdles were driven up, the clouds 
 divided, and the sun shone ovit brightly. There were present 
 many good Catholic gentlemen desirous to be eye-witnesses 
 of that which might happen in the speech, demeanour, and 
 passage of those three rare patterns of piety, virtue, and in- 
 nocency, and amongst them a Catholic priest, who pressed in 
 to observe and mark that bloody spectacle, with mind upon 
 occasion to refer sincerely and truly (to his power) this tra- 
 gedy, with such accidents as should happen in the manner. 
 
TYBURN. 319 
 
 course, and end thereof. He got up very near the gallows, 
 hard by Sir Francis Knowles, Lord Howard, Sir Henry Lee, 
 and the other gentlemen who were officially present, and just 
 " behind the two gentlemen who, before the beginning of the 
 tragedy, were disputing whether the motion of the sun from 
 east to west was violent or natiu-al" — a discussion which, per- 
 haps, was not without reference to Campion, who, at the close 
 of his second day's conference in the Tower, offered to prove, 
 against all the philosophy of Cambridge, that the heavens 
 were hard, made of crystal, and (doubtless) whirling the sun, 
 moon, and stars round with them, either by their own natural 
 course or by some external impulse impressed upon them. 
 After slowly working through the press and multitude of peo- 
 ple not to be nmnbered, Campion was first put into the cart 
 under the gallows, and was ordered to put his head into the 
 halter, which he did vdih all obedience ; and then, after some 
 small pause, while he waited for the mighty murmur of so 
 many people to be somewhat stilled, with grave countenance 
 and sweet voice stoutly spake out, " Spectaculum facti sumus 
 Deo, angelis, et haminibus. These are the words of St. Paul, 
 Englished thus : ' We are made a spectacle or a sight unto 
 God, unto His angels, and unto men ;' verified this day in me, 
 who am here a spectacle mito my Lord God, a spectacle unto 
 His angels, and unto you men." Here he was interrupted by 
 Sir Francis Knowles and the sheriffs, earnestly urging him to 
 confess his treason against the Queen, and to acknowledge 
 himself guilty. He answered : " As to the treasons which 
 have been laid to my charge, and for which I am come here 
 to suffer, I desire you all to bear witness with me that I am 
 thereof altogether innocent." 
 
 On this one of the Council replied that he might not seem 
 to deny the things objected to him, having been proved by 
 sufficient evidence: "Well, my lord," said he, " I am a Ca- 
 tholic man and a priest ; in that faith have I hved, 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 com- 
 mitted any, God is my judge. But you have now what you 
 desire. I beseech you to have patience, and suffer me to 
 speak a word or two for discharge of my conscience." But 
 not being suffered to go forward, he was forced to speak only 
 to that point which they always urged, " protesting that he 
 was guiltless, and innocent of all treason and conspiracy ; 
 craving credit to be given to this answer, as to his last 
 answer made upon his death and soul. The juiy might be 
 easily deceived; . . . but he forgave all, as he desired to be 
 forgiven ; and he desired all them to forgive him whose 
 
320 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 names he had confessed ivpon the rack." For, the writer 
 soes on to explain, upon the commissiojiers' oatlis that no 
 harm should come unto them, he had uttered the names of 
 some persons with whom he had been. " Farther, he declared 
 the meaning of the letter that he sent, in time of his impri- 
 sonment, to Mr. Pound, himself also then a prisoner in the 
 Tower, wherein he had written that ' he would not disclose 
 the secrets of some houses where he had been entertained ;' 
 affirming, upon his soul, that the secrets he meant in that 
 letter were not, as it was misconstrued by the enemy, treason 
 or conspiracy, or any matter else against her Majesty or the 
 state, but saying of Mass, hearing confessions, preaching, and 
 such Hke duties and functions of priesthood. This he pro- 
 tested to be true, as he would answer before God." 
 
 Then he desired Sir F. Knowles and some others of the 
 nobility to hear him touching one Eichardson, condemned 
 about a book of his, and earnestly besought them to have 
 consideration of that man, saying he was not that Richardson 
 who brought his book; and this he affirmed with vehement 
 protestation upon his death. 
 
 Then one Hearne, a schoolmaster, stood forth, and with a 
 loud voice read to the people the new advertisement published 
 only to colour so manifest an injustice, and declaring in the 
 Queen's name that the men were executed not for religion, 
 but for treason. The people, however, were not much moved, 
 but seemed rather to conceive some suspicion at this new and 
 vinusual course. Campion all the while was devoutly praying. 
 Notwithstanding this advertisement in defence of their policy, 
 the Lords of the Council, both because they distrusted their 
 wisdom in taking such a novel step as this publication was 
 held to be, and because they desired some better colour and 
 faster vizard for their proceedings, pressed him to declare his 
 opinion of the Bull of Pius Quintus and the excommunica- 
 tion of the Queen. Campion would give no answer. It was, 
 says Laing, a question of deep import, and Cam]5ion could 
 not answer it without offending one or the other judge. They 
 expected him to declare that the people ought not to obey 
 Elizabeth, which was the proper conclusion, but treasonable 
 to the Queen. But to affirm that they ought to obey would 
 have involved the peril of disobedience to the Pope. Here 
 once more the great qviestion of the day surged up before 
 Campion's mind, and he was unable to solve it. He refused 
 to cut the knot by any trenchant reply, by any decision of 
 his own ; and he died for the right of a conscience to hold 
 itself in suspense. Hallam, who is otherwise perfectly just to 
 Campion, does not recognise the consistency of his haviiig 
 
HIS LAST WORDS. 321 
 
 acknowledged Elizabeth as his queen both at his trial and on 
 the scaffold : " It is more hononrable to his memoiy that we 
 should reject these pretended declarations than imagine him 
 to have made them at the expense of his consistency and in- 
 tegrity ; for the Pope's right to deprive kings of their ci-owns 
 [for heresy] was in that age the common creed of the Jesuits ; 
 and the Continent was full of writings of Sanders, Bristow, 
 Parsons, and Allen against Elizabeth's unlawful usurpation 
 of the throne." Hallam forgot to observe that Campion 
 absolutely refused to give any answer about the Pope's right 
 to issue the Bull. All that he did was to use the liberty 
 given to him by the " mitigation," which had suspended the 
 Bull so far as the Catholics were concerned, and had made it 
 for the time as though it had never been issued, to own Eliza- 
 beth as the lawful queen. This was only a political tenet, 
 which, as we have seen, is perfectly and thoroughly consistent 
 vfith all we know of Campion's opinions. They next asked 
 whether he renounced the Pope. He answered, he was a 
 Catholic ; whereupon one hiferred, saying, " In your Catho- 
 licism all treason is contained." At length, when he was 
 preparing himself to drink the last draught of Christ's cup, 
 he was interrupted in his prayer by a minister, willing him to 
 say, "Christ, have mercy upon me," or such-like j)rayer, with 
 him; unto whom, looking back with mild countenance, he 
 humbly said, " 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," — to signify that he died for 
 the confession of the Catholic and apostolic faith. 
 
 Then he again turned to his prayers ; and some called out 
 to him to pray in English — for it had grown to be quite a su- 
 perstition in those days that prayer in a foreign language was 
 a mockery of God ; but he pleasantly answered " that he would 
 pray God in a language that they both well understood." Once 
 more he was interrupted, and bidden to ask the Queen for- 
 giveness, and to pray for her. He meekly answered, "Where- 
 in have I offended her! In this I am innocent. This is my 
 last speech ; in this give me credit — I have and do pray for 
 her." Then the Lord Charles Howard asked of him for 
 which queen he prayed, whether for Elizabeth the queen. 
 To whom he answered, " Yea, for Ehzabeth, your queen and 
 my queen, unto whom I wish a long quiet reign with all pro- 
 sperity." 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 
 Saviour, protesting that he died a perfect Catholic. 
 
 Y 
 
322 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 Anthony Munday relates this last answer somewhat dif- 
 ferently : " ' She is my lawful princess and queen.' Then 
 somewhat he drew in his words to himself, whereby was 
 gathered that somewhat he would have gladly spoken, but 
 the great temerity and unstable opinion of his conscience 
 wherein he was all the time, even to the death, would not 
 suffer him to utter it." When he had hung a few moments 
 the hangman was about to cut him down, but was bidden by 
 some in authority to hold till he was dead. Then his body 
 was cut down and stripped, and the butchery proceeded with. 
 There was standing beside the block where Campion was being 
 cut into quarters a young man named Henry Walpole :^*^ he 
 was still a Protestant, and had gone merely to see. As the 
 hangman was throwing the quarters into the caldron of boil- 
 ing water a drop of the bloody mixture splashed out upon 
 Walpole's clothes, who aftenvards declared to Father Ignatius 
 Basselier, S.J., that he at once felt he must be a Catholic. 
 On his conversion he joined the Society, was ordained priest, 
 and sent into England, where he was apprehended, and like 
 Campion condemned and executed as a traitor. 
 
 While Campion was being chopped to pieces, the Catholic 
 gentlemen who stood around were contriving in some guise to 
 steal a few relics of him j^^^ but the greatest precautions were 
 taken to prevent it. A young man who dropped his hand- 
 kerchief into the blood on the ground was taken and com- 
 mitted. In the tumult that ensued another was quick enough 
 to cut ofF a finger and carry it away. The loss was presently 
 discovered, but the thief could not be found. Another, finding 
 that nothing could be stolen, offered twenty pounds for a single 
 joint of a finger; but the hangman reluctantly refused: he 
 was afraid. Large sums were offered for the clothes; but 
 when Parsons wrote nothing had been gotten, and it was sup- 
 posed that everything was to be burnt to prevent the Catho- 
 lics obtaining any relics. 
 
 Wlien he had done with Campion, the hangman, with his 
 hands and bai'e arms all bloody, seized hold on the next vic- 
 tim, saying to him, " Come, Sherwin, take thou also thy 
 wages." But the martyr, nothing dismayed, reverently kissed 
 the blood on his hands, and climbed up into the cart, where he 
 stood some moments in prayer, with his eyes shut and hands 
 lifted up to heaven. Then he asked if the people looked for 
 any speech from him. Many of the people and some of the 
 more honourable sort crying out " Yes," he began, with a 
 manly courage and loud voice, first to render thanks to each 
 of the three Persons of the Eternal Trinity for the mercies 
 and blessings bestowed upon him; and then was about to 
 
sherwin's death. 323 
 
 give an account of his faith, when Sir Francis Knowles bade 
 him confess his treason. " I am innocent of any such crime," 
 was his reply. Being farther pressed, he said, " I have no 
 occasion to tell a lie : it is a case where my soul is at stake ; 
 and although in this short time of mortal life I am to im- 
 dergo the infamy and punishment of a traitor, I make no doubt 
 of my future happiness through Jesus Christ, in whose death, 
 passion, and blood I only trust." 
 
 Upon this, the ministers present said he was a Protestant ; 
 but Sherwin took no notice of them, but went on with his 
 prayer, acknowledging the imperfection, misery, and sinful 
 wickedness of his own nature, and still protesting his inno- 
 cence of all traitorous practices. When Sir Francis Knowles 
 again interrupted him, he said, " Tush, tush ! you and I shall 
 answer this before another Judge, where my innocence shall be 
 kno'mi, and you will see that I am guiltless of this." Where- 
 upon Sir Francis said, " We know you are no contriver or doer 
 oi this treason, for you are no man of arms ; but you are a 
 traitor by consequence." But 1^'h: Sherwin boldly answered, 
 " If to be a Catholic only, if to be a perfect Catholic, be to be 
 a traitor, then am I a traitor." Then, being debarred further 
 speech, he only added, " I forgive all who, either by general 
 presumption or particular error, have procured my death." 
 Then, as he would have prayed, he was asked his opinion of 
 the Bull, but would give no answer. Then, being willed to 
 pray for the Queen, he said he did so. " For which queen V 
 said Lord Charles Howard again. To whom Sherwin, some- 
 what smiling, " Yea, for Ehzabeth, Queen, I now at this in- 
 stant pray my Lord God to make»her His servant in this life, 
 and after this life co-heir with Jesus Christ." To this some 
 objected that he meant to make her a Papist; to whom he 
 replied, " God forbid otherwise !" and so recollecting himself 
 in prayer he put his head into the halter, repeating the ejacu- 
 lation,'^ " Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, be to me a Jesus!" the multitude 
 crying out to him, " Good Mr. Sherwin, the Lord God 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 
 some time dead. 
 
 After his butchery it was Briant's turn. He spoke little, 
 making only a brief profession of faith and protestation of inno- 
 cency from all offence, not only in deed but in thought, against 
 the Queen. But with his innocent and angelic face — he was 
 a very fair young man, not more than twenty-eight years of 
 age — he greatly affected all who saw him, especially when he 
 said that he rejoiced exceedingly that God had chosen him 
 and made him worthy to suffer death for the Catholic faith in 
 
324 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 company with Father Campion, whom he revered with all his 
 heart. And, indeed, it was only his intimacy with the Fathers, 
 and his refusal, amidst the most exquisite tortures, to reveal 
 anything about them, that was the real cause of his death. 
 
 Not everyone in the vast crowd looked upon these events 
 in the same light as the wTiters I have followed. Most of 
 those present were Protestants ; and they, in their endeavour 
 to reconcile the behaviour of the victims with the justice of 
 their sentence, must have thought in the same puzzled and in- 
 consistent guise as Munday ^^^■ites. "This man," he says of 
 Campion, " always directing the course of his life to a vain- 
 glorious imagination, and covetous to make himself famous, 
 now made a perfect discovery of himself; for being somewhat 
 learned, he bore away all matters with a majestical counte- 
 nance, the visor of vanity aptly fitting the face of hypocrisy. 
 He set a courageous countenance on every slight reason, 
 whereby he perverted many, deceived more, and was thought 
 such a champion as the Pope never had the like. But now 
 invincible fear had caught hold of this brave boaster. The out- 
 ward protestations of the man urged some there present to tears, 
 not entering into the conceit of his hypocrisy. He was always 
 addicted to a marvellous suppose of himself ; of ripe judgment, 
 prompt audacity, and cunning conveyance in his school-points, 
 through which he fell into a jiroud and vainglorious judgment; 
 practising to be eloquent in phrase, and so fine in his quirks 
 and fantastical conjectures that the ignorant he won by his 
 smooth devices, and some other, affecting his pleasant imagi- 
 nations, he charmed with subtlety and choked with sophistry. 
 The learned, however, pitying his folly, yet loved the man for 
 Christian charity. 
 
 " This glorious Thraso having by his libels made himself 
 famous, and iinder show of gi-eat learning — though really very 
 simple — subdued many to affect him very much, when he 
 was taken he knew it stood him upon not to lose the credit 
 openly which he had won secretly ; wherefore, in his former 
 ridiculous manner, both in prison, at his arraignment, yea, and 
 at his death, he continued the same in all points, which the 
 foulness of his treasons blemislied every way. Many, seeing 
 the gifts of God so well bestowed on the man, and by him 
 applied to so great abuse, through natural kindness bemoaned 
 his case." 
 
 In this sketch, by a heartless scribbler, a false witness and 
 apostate, we can read the true character of the victim ; we see 
 there his simple truth miscalled simplicity ; his modesty, and 
 his refusal to pronounce judgment in a case which his con- 
 science could not decide, misnamed invincible fear ; his confi- 
 
THE THAMES. 325 
 
 dence in his cause mistaken for self-confidence, boastfulness, 
 and brag; his gentleness misinterpreted into smooth device 
 and subtle affectation ; and his unconquerable constancy mis- 
 . read as hypocrisy. And we find the efticacy of his genius and 
 the ascendancy of his character fully conceded, though only 
 to be explained away. 
 
 Wlien all these persons, Cathohc or Protestant, whom 
 Campion had thus moved to tears, retiurned home from the 
 pitifd. spectacle, and were told of the wonderful tide of that 
 morning, they _ naturally enough considered that Nature had 
 sympathised with the tragedy, as it had once -wath the Passion 
 on Calvary, and that the river Thames had in some obscure 
 way felt and uttered its protest against the injustice that day 
 committed by the city which sat as a queen on its waters. 
 
 " The scowling skies did storm and puff apace, 
 
 They coiild not bear the wrongs that malice wrought ; 
 The Sim drew in his shining purple face ; 
 
 The moistened clouds shed brinish tears for thought ; 
 The river Thames awhile astonished stood 
 To count the drops of Campion's sacred blood. 
 
 Nature with tears bewailed her heavy loss ; 
 
 Honesty feared herself should shortly die ; 
 Religion saw her champion on the cross ; 
 
 Angels and saints desired leave to cry ; 
 E'en Heresy, the eldest child of Hell, 
 Began to blush, and thought she did not well." 
 
 Poundes might well write thus in the excitement of the time. 
 But it can scarcely be wondered at that when subsequent 
 vmters like Bombinus refer to these non ignohilium poetarum 
 acute commenta, as authorities for a miracle whereby God hon- 
 oured the death of Campion, they were taxed by their Pro- 
 testant critics with superstition and invention of lying miracles. 
 Parsons, early in 1582, when he penned his Epistle of Comfort 
 to the Priests, was as yet hardly calm enough to write coolly, 
 and so may be excused for all his stories of vengeance upon 
 judges, juries, and witnesses, which he collects in the fifteenth 
 chapter, and for his talking about "the wonderful stay and 
 standing of the Thames the same day that Campion and his 
 company were martyred, to the great marvel of the citizens 
 and mariners, and the hke stay of the river Trent about the 
 same time. Which accidents, though some will impute to 
 other causes, yet happening at such special times, when so 
 open and unnatural injustice was done, they cannot but be 
 interpreted as tokens of God's indignation." 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 In considering the consequences of this tragedy I will not 
 follow the lead of Parsons and Bombinus, and relate in sombre 
 colours the misfortunes of those who were the agents and 
 instruments in performing it. Those whom the tower of 
 Siloam crushed were not sinners above their fellows ; and if 
 a few of the understrappers in this iniquity fell into misery, 
 the chief agents in it not only lived in prosperity, but tri- 
 umphantly established the cause for which they had sinned so 
 boldly. If Norton the rack-master and Hopton the lieu- 
 tenant fell into disgrace and poverty, this was only the Tudor 
 policy, which always threw away or broke its tools after they 
 were used. The reign of terror and of penal laws that began 
 in 1580 was successful in stamping out the Catholic religion 
 from the country, and in erecting on its ruins the Establish- 
 ment that usurj^ed its place. Jericho was effectually built ; 
 and it does not much concern us to inqviire whether its archi- 
 tects set up its walls in their firstborn and its gates in their 
 youngest sons, or whether they lived in plenty, and left the 
 residue of their substance to their babes. It is more to the 
 purpose to tell how the daughters of Walsingham and Hopton, 
 who must have had a near view of the policy of their fathers, 
 both became Catholics. Cecilia Hopton was converted by 
 John Stonor,'*' who was sent to the Tower for having helped 
 to print Campion's book, and while her father's rule lasted 
 was ever ready to give her secret assistance to the Catholic 
 prisoners.^"'* Her conversion, indeed, was a principal cause 
 of her father's disgrace and subsequent misery. 
 
 It is more to the purpose to turn to the direct and imme- 
 diate consequences of Campion's death. Henry Walpole, in 
 the fervour of his own conversion, estimated that the martyr- 
 dom converted ten thousand persons on the spot.'*^ That a 
 very large number experienced a great revulsion of feeling, 
 and consequent mitigation of prejudice, is clear ; but the esti- 
 mate is preposterous. The first consequences were felt by his 
 clerical assailants, to whose clamours his death was generally 
 
EFFECTS OF HIS DEATH. 327 
 
 attributed. " This I can say \vith truth," writes the Oxford 
 Eegius Professor of Divinity to Leicester, "that the ghost of 
 the dead Campion has given me more trouble than the Rationes 
 of the living, — not only because he has left his poison behind 
 him, like the fabled Bonasus, which in its flight burns up its 
 pursuers with its droppings, but much more because his friends 
 dig him up from his grave, defend his cause, and write his 
 epitaph in English, French, and Latin. It used to be said, 
 ' Dead men bite not ;' and yet Campion dead bites with his 
 friends' teeth — a notable miracle, according to all experience, 
 and to the old proverb ; for as fresh heads grow on the hydra 
 when the old are cut off, as wave succeeds wave, as a harvest 
 of new men rose from the seed of the dragon's teeth, so one 
 labour of ours only begets another, and still another ; and in 
 the place of the single Campion, champions upon champions 
 have swarmed to keep us engaged."^^" 
 
 Burghley, Walsingham, and the fanatics could not see the 
 practical lesson of this fact; but Francis Bacon was a cooler 
 counsellor, and in 1583 he wrote a memoir to dissuade the 
 Queen from imposing on Catholics the oath of supremacy 
 which they would never take, and against hanging them for 
 their reUgion ; for, all their protestations to the contrary not- 
 withstanding, they knew and acknowledged to themselves that 
 they did put men to death for religion.^^' " Putting to death," 
 he says, " doth by no means lessen them ; since we find by 
 experience that, like hydra-heads, upon cutting one off seven 
 grow up, persecution being accounted as the badge of the 
 Church ; and therefore they should never have the honour to 
 take any pretence of martyrdom in England, where the ful- 
 ness of blood and greatness of heart is such that they will even 
 for shameful things go bravely to death, much more when 
 they think themselves to climb heaven ; and this vice of ob- 
 stinacy seems to the people a divine consistency ; so that for 
 my part I wish no lessening of their number but by preaching 
 and by education of the younger sort under schoolmasters." 
 
 Sir Robert Cotton, without any special reference to Cam- 
 pion, but to the warfare in which he was one of the first to 
 fall, laughs at all the vulgar reasons given for the increase of 
 Popery ; such as the royal clemency, or the slack execution 
 of the laws. " If we will ^^■ith a better insight behold how 
 this great quantity of [Popish] spawTi is multiplied, we must 
 especially ascribe the cause thereof to their priests, who by 
 their deaths prepare and assure more to their sect than by 
 their lives they could ever persuade. The number of priests 
 which nowadays (1613) come to make a tragical conclusion is 
 not great ; yet as with one seal many patents are sealed, so 
 
328 EDMUND GAJIPIOy. 
 
 with the loss of few lives numbers of wavering spirits may be 
 gained. Sanguis martyrum semen ecclesice."^'^^ 
 
 And this fruit of their deaths, which seemed so soon to 
 force itself on the exjjerience of the enlightened Protestant 
 laity, — the clergy were too passionate to see the effects of 
 their thirst for blood, — was only that which was anticipated 
 with all confidence by their friends. Thus Parsons writes to 
 Charke, describing Campion's and his companions' deaths, and 
 their forgiving all their enemies, " and also you ministers, who 
 were the only or principal instigators of their death and tor- 
 ments ;" and adds, " their blood will, I doubt not, fight against 
 your errors and impiety many hundred years after you are 
 passed from the world altogether. And albeit if they had 
 lived, being endued with such gifts and rare parts, they might 
 have done much service to God's Church and hurt to your 
 cause, yet could they never have done it so strongly as they 
 have, and do, and will do by their deaths — the cry whereof 
 woi'keth more forcibly both wdth God and man than any 
 books or sermons that ever they could have made. They 
 are well bestowed upon vou. You have used them to the 
 best." 
 
 In the State-Pajjer Office may bo seen letters written by 
 Catholics about the time of Campion's death. I will quote 
 some passages, for they exhibit the temjier and the feeling 
 with which it was received. ^^' Parsons Avrites to a friend, " I 
 understand of the late advancement and exaltation of my 
 dear brother Mi*. Campion and his fellows. Oui- Lord be 
 blessed for it ; it is the joyfullest news in one respect that 
 
 ever came to my heart Now I take him for my patron. 
 
 .... There is nothing happened to him which he looked not 
 for before, and whereof he made not oblation to God before 
 he ever set foot to go towards England. I looked for this 
 end of his disputations also ; and sm-ely, when I heard how 
 prosperously God turned them to the glory of His cause, I sus- 
 pected that He would his life also; for it was like the adver- 
 saries would never put up so great a blow without revenge- 
 ment upon his blood." Then he speaks of the "malicious 
 witnesses :" " There be men in the world which ch'ink blood 
 as easily as beasts do water; and because the earth doth 
 not open and presently swallow them down, they think all is 
 
 well The pretended dust of feigned treason is blown 
 
 away with every little an- of consideration. Yom- conscience 
 and mine shall bear witness of his pure innocency in all such 
 matters and meanings, either by fact, word, or cogitation. 
 This_ hath he protested, and will protest, I know, upon the 
 perdition of his soul at his death— for I am not yet certified 
 
GLORIA POSTHUMA. 329 
 
 that he is dead ; and we protest the same before God and 
 man and angels ; and all that we have dealt withal in Eng- 
 land shall testify the same botli living and dying, upon their 
 salvation and damnation in the life to come. All which, 
 seeing it serveth not in AVestminster Hall, we are content 
 quietly to leave in God's hands. That I am touched in the 
 same matter" (Parsons was included in the indictment), " I can- 
 not but take it most thankfully. Free I am from any thought 
 of such matters as were objected, God and my conscience and 
 my friends do know." Parsons had not yet entered into his 
 career of conspiracy, and he could not consider his designs for 
 the conversion of Scotland and the delivery of the Queen of 
 Scots from prison to be any treason against England. He 
 had been kept in ignorance of the Papal and Spanish designs 
 upon Ireland, and was greatly annoyed when he first heard of 
 Sanders' expedition. He was afterwards forced to become a 
 traitor — " beaten for loyalty," Shakespeare makes one of his 
 characters say, " excited me to treason." Persecuted for doing 
 his duty, he naturally wished to destroy the power of his per- 
 secutors. One of the last paragraphs in Parsons' letter to 
 Agazzari, Dec. 23, 1581, draws this conclusion from a nar- 
 rative of the trial and death of Campion and his companions ; 
 " From this you may see with what preparation of mind our 
 brethren ought to come to us ; with what humility, what 
 patience, what firm resolution, and, abo\'e all, what fervent 
 charity to God, their neighbour, and one another, that each 
 may help each in bearing this yoke of the Lord. God has 
 already shown us glorious patterns in our martjTred compa- 
 nions, and he will not be wanting to us if we are not wanting 
 to ourselves." 
 
 There is another letter, of one Francis Eyerman,^''' to his 
 brother, who was imprisoned for distributing copies of Allen's 
 apology for the seminaries. It chiefly turns on the provi- 
 dential signs of the goodness and truth of the cause. Cam- 
 pion's disputations and martyrdom hold the chief place. If 
 the adversaries had not known they were in the wrong, they 
 would not all have refused to justify their doctrine against 
 this one man as they did, " saving that, to their perpetual and 
 damnable shame, they had some secret speeches with him in 
 the Tower; where they received so many shameful foils as 
 they never durst deal with him openly, but sought his most 
 innocent blood and death by those treasons which were coined 
 and made in their own forge of detestable deceit, lying, and 
 falsehood." And although thereby " we lost the chief pearl of 
 Christendom," yet it is well ; for " all men are of opinion that 
 the offences and negligences of our predecessors and fore- 
 
330 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 fathers were so gi'eat, and our own sins so many, as they 
 must needs be redeemed by the blood of martyrs." 
 
 Father Parsons has told us of the frustrated desire of the 
 Catholics to obtain relics of Campion. After he had wTitten 
 he was more fortunate than before. One of the martyr's arms 
 was stolen from the gate where it was nailed up ; and Parsons 
 managed to get for a large sum the halter with which his dear 
 friend was hanged. He ever carried it about him, and died 
 with it round his neck in 1610. It was then kept at the 
 English College at Rome, and is now at Stonyhurst. In 
 Richard Conway's Apologi/^^^ mention is made of Mr. An- 
 derton, a Lancashire gentleman, cured of the stone by relics 
 of Father Campion, and being afterwards of another disease 
 laid out for dead, ut ei jam pollices ligarentur, by the help of 
 the martyr's flesh laid on his body, raised to life. His girdle 
 plays a great part in Edmunds' Book of Miracles, as referred 
 to in Bishop Harsenet's Declaration of egregious Popish Im- 
 postures, p. 84. His picture was hvmg over altars, '^^ his 
 name was assumed by religious persons in their novitiate,'^' 
 and his aid was implored by persons in affliction even in Bo- 
 hemia.^''* Gregory XIII. and his court acknowledged him 
 as a martyr, and allowed his passion to be painted on the walls 
 of the English College, and his relics (with those of the others) 
 to be employed in the consecration of altars. Those who wrote 
 his life, like Bombinus, or collected his works, like Robert 
 Turner, closed their labours vAXh. an invocation or hymn in his 
 honour. The cell which he inhabited at Prague was venerated 
 as a sanctuary.^5^ An altar was erected in it, with his picture 
 above. Those who entered it kissed the pavement that his 
 feet had trodden. His confessors there, F. Anthony Francis 
 and F. Paul Campanus, the rector of the college, bore public 
 testimony to his sanctity, his purity of conscience, and the 
 unstained virginity of his life ; and one who had known him 
 in the college wrote upoji the copy of his tragedy on St. Am- 
 brose which he left behind him, " auctore beato Edmundo Cam- 
 piano, Grjeco, Latino, Poeta, Oratore, Philosopho, Theologo, 
 Virgine, et Mnrtyre." When the news of his execution reached 
 Rome, Agazzari, the rector of the English College,""" "caused 
 the organs to be sounded and all the students to come to the 
 chapel, and then and there he himself, pulling on his back 
 a white surphce, and the stole about his neck, sang a collect 
 of martyrs, so after his manner canonising Campion the rebel 
 as a saint. It is usual among the English Papists to keep the 
 rehcs of Campion, Sherwin, and the rest." On the 8th of 
 June 1585, an old priest, Gregory Gunne, was sent up to 
 the Council, accused of traitorous speeches. Campion, he 
 
ACCOUNTS OF HIS MARTYRDOM. 331 
 
 said, was the only man in England ; and the day would come, 
 and he hoped to see it, when a religious house would be built 
 for an offering on the place where he suiFered. On Good 
 Friday 1624, there was a procession of Catholics from Hol- 
 born to Tyburn,""" the nearest approach yet made to the ac- 
 complishment of Gunne's prediction. 
 
 I have been told of a reliquary, said to have belonged to 
 Mary Queen of Scots,''"^ and in the possession of H. Darell, 
 Esq., of Cale Hill, which contains, among several others, relics 
 of "B. Campianus, M." 
 
 As the Catholics had made great exertions to publish 
 Campion's controversy, it is not to be supposed that they 
 were silent on his death, which was more eloquent than any 
 words he could speak. England and the Continent were in- 
 undated with accounts of the martyrs. By January 4, 1582, 
 a French account was published ; and on the 14th of that 
 month Cobham wrote to Walsingham that the book was 
 "cried in the streets with outcries, naming them to be"*"^ 
 cruelties used by the Queen's majesty in England. Whereon," 
 he says, "I used M. Brulart's means to move his majesty to 
 give order that such untruths might be stayed and forbidden, 
 which seemed to prejudice her majesty's good fame. The 
 King hath now given order unto his procurer-fiscal that there 
 shall be prohibition of the further sale of the said books, and 
 those punished which have used such unworthy outcries, the 
 which I cause to be followed unto the execution." But the 
 sale was not stopped, only it proceeded without outcries ; in- 
 stead, a book against the cruelties of the Spaniards was cried 
 in the streets. Cobham was disappointed in his designs of 
 punishing the criers ; he complained, " The Jesuits do very 
 much enlarge their practices to advance the Pope's credit and 
 theirs, by teaching with their ceremonious sacrifices ; through 
 their spials, intelligences ; as also in seeking slily to win opinion 
 by the distributing of their sacred trifles ; whose practices will 
 grow most dangerous to all princes' estates if it be not con- 
 sidered on, and they abolished." This incoherent nonsense 
 reveals the terror in which statesmen stood of this active 
 society; its influence seemed to them merely magical, and 
 they regarded anything that passed through its hands, a 
 medal or a pair of beads, as a political engine of unknown 
 power. 
 
 On the 23d of March 1582,'"'^ Anthony Standen wrote 
 from Florence to Mannering at Paris, " The discourse of the 
 deaths of those good men at home is famihar in these parts 
 to the best sort, and our cases more pitied than heretofore. 
 
332 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 as by certain letters exhortatory'"'* from his Holiness to all 
 princes for the succour and support of the seminary in Rheims 
 is manifest, those being directed to all archbishops and bishops, 
 to make gatherings and collections for that purpose. Two 
 days past I was at Mass in this cathedral when the boxes went 
 about, but besides myself I saw not two more that extended 
 their charity ; and in this city is little hope, but in Rome is 
 great liberality, as I hear. The pamphlet in French you speak 
 of Tucker brought me, and we hope shortly to have ample 
 discourse." 
 
 Germany was slower to move. Estius published a Latin 
 life at Lou vain in 1582,— it was a translation from the French, 
 — and at the end he put some lines more savage than poetical : 
 
 " Esto Catholicos immanis Anglia csedit, 
 Quam Scytha, quam Maurus, quam Persa aut Turca cruentus, 
 Aut ipse humanos depascens cannibal artus 
 (O pietas, O prisoa fides), tamen omnia spernit, 
 Oonflagrans animus demisso ccelitus igne, 
 Spernit opes, spernit Phalarim, spernitque Neronem, 
 Nee mortem vel acerbam horret ; sic itur ad astra.""° 
 
 The first life in German that I can find was published at 
 Dilingen in 1588. 
 
 All these ])rovocations obliged the English government to 
 defend themselves as they best might. Their first publication 
 was the " Particular Declaration of the traitorous Affection of 
 Campion and other condemned Priests, witnessed by their own 
 Confessions," written in reproof of the slanderous pamphlets 
 and seditious libels spread abroad, as well in this realm as in 
 foreign parts in sundry strange languages, in excuse and justi- 
 fication of the said traitors. In this paper the pretended plot 
 of Rheims and Rome is prudently forgotten ; and the only 
 justification of Campion's death is, that he refused to meddle, 
 to or fro, with the question whether Sanders, Bristow, and 
 Allen's opinions were wicked or not, and declared himself in- 
 competent to judge concerning " the fact of Pius Quintus" 
 and his Bull. This paper was followed by Burghley's " De- 
 claration of the Commissioners' favom-able Dealings" with the 
 priests at the rack (1583), which disgusted Hallam so exceed- 
 ingly; and shortly after, by his "Execution of Justice in 
 England," which called forth Allen's remarkable reply. But 
 sach replies were not to be read in England : Alfield the prie«t 
 was hanged for distributing them ; and Vallenger, who printed 
 an account of Campion's death, with poems by various hands 
 oa his life, was sentenced by the Star-chamber to lose his ears 
 in the pillory, to be fined lOOZ., and be imprisoned during the 
 Queen's pleasure. One of _ the articles of accusation against 
 John Hamerton, Esq., of Yorkshire, is that he "is vehemently 
 
CONTROVERSIES. 333 
 
 suspected of certain most traitorous speeches, — that he should 
 say that Campion was wrongfully condemned, and did not 
 deserve death."""^ 
 
 All these books, to anyone who takes the trouble to dis- 
 count the vehement rhetoric and the unproved assertions, 
 reveal the consciousness of the writers tliat tliey had wrought 
 a terrible injustice. Yet, on the principle implied in the pro- 
 verb "tell a lie and stick to it," they morosely adhered to 
 their policy, and hanged, batch by batch, all the priests who 
 had been condemned on the same indictment with Campion, 
 except two ; one of whom — John Hart — is shown by his let- 
 ters in the State-Paper Office to have purchased his safety by 
 unworthy concessions and disclosures to the government ;^°' 
 while the other, James Bosgrave, boldly declared his alle- 
 giance in spite of the Bull, a line of conduct in which he was 
 defended by the party afterwards called that of the " secular 
 priests." In fact, this very year John Bishop wrote a pam- 
 phlet to show that the Canon of the Lateran Council, on 
 which the whole fabric of the Papal power to depose princes 
 was raised, was merely a decree of Pope Innocent III., never 
 admitted in England, and not ratified by the Fathers of that 
 Council. 
 
 A history of the controversies which took their rise from 
 Campion's Decern Ratione.s would be outside the scope of this 
 volume; the bibliographical catalogue in the Appendix will 
 show of what kind they were. It is enough here to say that 
 his death added a point to his rhetoric, and consecrated his 
 book in such a way, that abler theologians were glad to take 
 it as their text-book, to adopt its divisions, and to give their 
 works the shape of commentaries and apologies upon its as- 
 sertions and arguments. 
 
 If the Catholic controversy in England in the years suc- 
 ceeding Campion's death had been confined to these heads, 
 its result would probably have been very different fi'om what 
 it was. But not all the priests employed on the mission were 
 so simple and transparent in character as Campion. There 
 are others whom to understand requires a study of quite 
 another order. Tlie most significant figure on this side is 
 Father Parsons, about whom the truth has still to be told, 
 and whose memory demands some patient historian, who shall 
 neither canonise him for his fervour, his zeal, his devotion, 
 and his spiritual insight, nor yet with the Remonstrant Priests 
 and Canon Tierney brand him as a liar and a hypocrite. He 
 is really one of those great men who only wanted the element 
 of success to rank him among the greatest; and his failure 
 necessarily laid him open to the triumpliant criticism of those 
 
334 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 who were but dwarfs by his side. It is easy to see now why 
 Parsons failed; why he deserved to fail; how, perhaps, he must 
 have failed. But if we try to realise his position, to start from 
 his point of departure, and to view his age as he must have 
 seen it, it is difficult to condemn him, or to place one's finger 
 on any one step of his career, and to say, Here he began to err; 
 here his wisdom was darkened and turned to folly. 
 
 The mission of 1580 into England was ultimately a spiritual 
 failure, because it was not purely a spiritual mission. The in- 
 tention of its chiefs was not single. They doubtless had the 
 intention to save souls ; but they took a perspective view of 
 all these souls, and looked on them also as the moving forces 
 of bodies that might be useful soldiers in the coming struggle. 
 
 For the Catholic world at this period was not to be satis- 
 fied with a merely spiritual triumph. The intention of Pius V. 
 in pronouncing the deposition of Elizabeth was doubtless to 
 maintain the Catholic faith in England. But when the Bull 
 was once published, it beseemed the dignity of the Papal 
 chair to see that it was executed ; it was no longer a means, 
 but an end. The Holy See had committed itself to certain 
 temporal claims, and those claims it must enforce, or submit 
 to the opinion of being vanquished. It was no longer enough 
 simply to maintain the faith in England ; though it was an 
 excellent thing to give Englishmen the means of salvation, 
 this was now not the whole, nay not, for the moment, the most 
 important thing. England must be brought to submit to the 
 Bull, or great part of the Pope's dignity and preeminence, on 
 which the future of religion depended, would be lost. The 
 power of deposing apostate, heretical, and schismatic princes 
 was part of the temporal prerogative that had providentially 
 grown up round the See of Peter, and was necessary to en- 
 able his successor to maintain his spiritual independence. For 
 how could he rule the Church in a land where a government 
 alien from his faith claimed his rights, and forbad the exer- 
 cise of his power ! Among Jews and Turks such a state of 
 things must be tolerated, if the Christians are not strong 
 enough to enforce their rights. But in a Christian nation, 
 over which the Pope's legitimate authority extends, it is for 
 him to see that he lets no means of enforcing it lie dormant 
 when needed. The difficulty far exceeded any that has since 
 arisen, and was much more threatening to the Papal inde- 
 pendence than the loss of territory ; and the non possumus of 
 Pius v., in reply to the expostulations of Maximilian, was quite 
 as reasonable, quite as sacred, as any refusal that has been 
 uttered since. 
 
 Here, then, was the knot of the difficulty. The mere 
 
POLITICAL PRIESTS. 335 
 
 spiritual restoration of the realm was not enough. This would 
 he but a sneaking kind of victory. It was necessary to the 
 dignity, the safety, and independence of the Church that 
 heresy should be publicly humbled, and its authors smitten 
 with a visibly effective cui-se. And this end, which was a 
 political one, seemed to require political means. The ecclesi- 
 astical government, if it meant anything, meant planning and 
 scheming to attain its end. There is no planning, no govern- 
 ment, in merely sending in wave after wave of missionary 
 priests to preach and suffer martyrdom. Means must be taken 
 to insure their safety, means to insure the stability of their 
 gains, means to economise their labour, and make it as effec- 
 tual as possible. And what were these means to be 1 Had 
 not the Church pointed them out in tlie Bull of Pius V. ? 
 Was it not clear that the deposition of EHzabeth would secure 
 all these results 1 Did not her ministers proclaim and 
 justify their severity by the confession, that their cause 
 depended solely on the thread of her life atid her tenure 
 of the throne 1 Was there not a successor ready to sit in her 
 seat who woidd reverse all her acts ? How was this result to 
 be secured but by political means ? The missionaries who 
 thought to do all by preaching, prayer, and sacraments were 
 holy men, but not men of wisdom and of reach. They marched 
 straight into the lion's jaws, hoping that God would vanquish 
 him by a miracle, instead of compassing him about with their 
 toils, and circumventing him with their nets. Parsons could 
 quite understand these men's minds. He, too, believed in 
 holiness, believed in the efficacy of prayer and sacraments, 
 watched continually for God's hand, and expected a miracle 
 to aid or confirm his acts. But this was not the whole of 
 Parsons ; he believed not only in the supernatural, but also — 
 a thing not very common among his contemporaries — in the 
 natural. In his scheme the mechanics of government occu- 
 pied as important a place as the magic of influence ; and he 
 kept the two things cHstinct. At tlie same sitting he covild 
 write to one friend a chapter of his resolvitions, and to another 
 a despatch worthy of a Venetian ambassador. He could spend 
 half the day in apostolic duties, — performed with heroic covir- 
 age, tempered with the sweetest charity, and weighted with 
 the wisest direction, — and the other half in writing a report 
 to the King of Spain about the internal assistance an in- 
 vasion of England would find at the hands of the Catholics. 
 In the one character he could make himself another Campion, 
 whose name was ever on his lips, and whose memory was in 
 his heart ; in the other character he never once mentions 
 Campion, except so far as his trial and death had alienated 
 
336 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 men's minds from the Queen, and contributed its share to the 
 prospects of success. 
 
 And such as lie was, did he form his favourite scholars. 
 Of these perhaps William Holt was the most characteristic : 
 a more wily conspirator than Parsons himself, but less able 
 to imagine great and beneficent schemes, he exhibits this kind 
 of character in greater nakedness, or at least with less splen- 
 dour of circumstance and ornament. In him are curiously 
 combined the charitable pastor who willingly risks his life to 
 save souls, and the fierce partisan who as willingly imperils 
 himself to destroy his enemies ; the impetuous enthusiast who 
 would pour out his own and others' blood in torrents for the 
 glory of the Holy See, and the cautious watchman who never 
 felt more safe than when in the thickest of his enemies ; the 
 wary provider against all emergencies, and the puerile castle- 
 builder who reckoned without his host, and misled all who 
 trusted to his calculations. 
 
 I suppose that it is mainly due to this element among the 
 missionary priests that the martyrdoms of so many, and the 
 sufferings of such endless numbers both of priests and laymen, 
 bore so little permanent fruit. It was not only that the trea- 
 son of a Ballard or a Eobert Catesby was, in its insulated 
 effect, almost as pernicious as the martyrdom of a Campion 
 was beneficent, but also that through them, in the old Pro- 
 testant language, religion was turned into rebellion, and faith 
 into faction. ■*"' By which means not only was the adversary 
 confirmed, and even on political grounds justified, in his de- 
 termination to persecute even to extermination, but also the 
 Faith itself began to lose its attractions for the faithful. The 
 history of the Middle Ages, from the Emperor Frederick H. 
 to King Henry VIII., exhibits a struggle in the minds of 
 Christians between the claims of the crown and those of 
 the See of Peter. Both Emperor and Pope were to them 
 vicars of Christ; the limits of their respective functions 
 were ever matter of controversy. There are indications that 
 the English feeling went with Frederick against Gregory and 
 Innocent, as it constantly did with Henry against Clement. 
 When the Cathohc found not only that the Protestant go- 
 vernment, but also that the Pope and the King of Spain, and 
 the wiser and more politic sort of his priests, considered that 
 he, as Catholic, was a probable rebel, he must have grown by 
 degrees convinced that his religion was in a manner rebellion, 
 and so have become with time either a confirmed conspirator 
 or a wavering Catholic, and in either way have both weakened 
 if not lost his own faith, and become a scandal to those who 
 might have occasion to judge of Catholicism by his conduct. 
 
Allen's report. 337 
 
 To show that I am not overstating tlie case, I will trans- 
 late the chief passages from a report on the state of England 
 in 1583, addressed to the Pope by Dr. Allen, and printed by 
 Theinei-, Annals, vol. iii. p. 480. It is entitled, "A short 
 Note of the standing condition of affairs in England, to show 
 the easiness and ojijwrtnneness of the sacred expedition.''^ 
 
 " If we divide England into three parts, two at least are 
 well-affected in heart to the Catholic religion, though many 
 for fear of the Qneen do not make a public confession of 
 their faith. There are two kinds of Catholics in England : one 
 that professes its faith publicly and openly, in spite of pri- 
 son, confiscation, and death; the other, believing in heart, 
 but unable to resist, and unwilling to lose life and fortune 
 for Christ, and therefore yielding an external obedience to 
 the heretical laws, and waiting for redemption of body and 
 soul from this slavery not less anxiously than the professed 
 Catholics. The Queen stands in greater fear of this second 
 kind than of the first ; for she can guard against the one, but 
 not against the other. The counties that are Ijcst affected are 
 also the most warlike ; they are those on the Scotch borders, 
 and those of Wales. The midland and southern counties, 
 which are most heretical, are also most luxurious and unused 
 to arms. The cities are more infected than country places, 
 though there are several strong and well-situated towns that 
 are completely Catholic. But the strength of England is not 
 in its towns, which are only inhabited b}' merchants and arti- 
 sans. The nobles, who all live in their country-houses and 
 castles, surrounded by their retainers, — and especially the 
 yeomen, who are exceedingly rich, honourable, powerful, and 
 tenacious of traditions, — are the real strength of England. 
 The majority of the gentlemen are well affected in religion ; 
 the old nobility are so also; but the new nobles, who are 
 hated in the countr)-, are all hostile. The first peer of Eng- 
 land, the Earl of Arundel, with all his brothers, is Catholic, 
 and they have numbers of vassals; so is the Earl of Northum- 
 berland and his brothers; the Earl of Worcester and his eldest 
 son, who is powerful in Wales; the Earls of Cumberland, 
 Oxford, and Southampton, who is yet a minor, Ijut under Ca- 
 tholic masters ; Viscount Montacute ; and the Lords Dacres, 
 Morley, Vaux, Wharton, Windsor, Lumle}', Stourton, and 
 many others. To these add the exiled Earl of Westmore- 
 land. With all these elements of strength we cannot doubt 
 of the success of the expedition. For that all these will follow 
 our party when they see themselves supported by a sufiScient 
 foreign foi-ce can easily be shown. 
 
338 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 1. Some of the principal persons have, by their letters or 
 messengers, promised me every assistance. 
 
 2. Sixteen years ago, on the bare intelligence of the in- 
 tention of I'ius V. to excommunicate the Queen, many rose ; 
 but there was no foreign force to help them, and many Ca- 
 tholics held back because the Bull was not published, and so 
 they failed ; but the abortive attempt shows their good will. 
 
 3. The Catholics are now much more numerous than 
 they then were, and better instructed by our men and priests' 
 daily exhortations, teacliing, ^^'riting, and administration of 
 Sacraments ; so much so that, of all the orthodox in the whole 
 realm, there is not one who any longer thinks himself bound 
 in conscience to obey the Qiieen, though fear leads them to 
 think that they may obey her, which fear will be removed 
 when they see the foreign force ; and we have lately pub- 
 lished a book specially to prove that it is not only lawful, but 
 even our bounden duty to take up arms at the Pope's bidding, 
 and to fio-ht for the Catliolic fxith against the Queen and other 
 heretics. And as this book is greedily read by all Catholics, 
 it is impossible but that, when occasion serves, they should 
 enrol themselves in the Catholic army. 
 
 4. Because we still have, in spite of the numbers banished, 
 nearly three hundred priests in various noblemen's and gen- 
 tlemen's houses ; and we are almost daily sending fresh ones, 
 who, when it is necessary, will direct the Catholics' consciences 
 and actions in this matter. 
 
 5. For the last few years the Catholics have lived in such 
 slavery, never for a day secure of their lives or jjroperties, 
 that they must infinitely desire their emancipation, and will 
 seize the first opportunity to help chastise their adversaries, 
 whose intolerable yoke they hate more than if they were 
 Turks ; and so they would let in Catholic auxiliaries of any 
 nation, for they have learned to detest their domestic heretic 
 more than any foreign prince. 
 
 6. And if tliere be any tliat would not willingly admit 
 Spanish or other foreign forces for fear of being made sub- 
 jects of a foreign prince, they will be easily satisfied if the 
 affair is carried on in the Pope's name ; for they would know 
 that the war was solely for the restoration of i-eligion, the 
 punishment of heretics, and the establishment of the legiti- 
 mate succession ; and in case of the failure of any Catholic 
 heir, they would rather submit to his paternal rule, even in 
 temporals, than to any mortal prince. The Pope could do 
 this with greater ease and less envy than any other prince ; 
 and if his renewal of the Bull would cause the Kings of France 
 
STATE OF ENGLAND. 339 
 
 and Spain to cease all intercourse with the English govern- 
 ment, the thing would be done. 
 
 7. If the Pope's legate, as general of the army, were to 
 proclaim war in his name, and solely for the ends of religion 
 and legitimacy, the Catholics ^^•ould doubtless all join his 
 army. We have here with us in Rome a pamphlet in Eng- 
 lish, which we wrote some time ago, on the method of pro- 
 ceeding and moving the Catholics when the thing has to be 
 done. This, if his Holiness wishes, we will have translated 
 into Italian or Latin, that he may see how our people can be 
 treated so as to consent willingly and render every assist- 
 ance. 
 
 8. And besides those who will be our friends on religious 
 grounds, we may count on many others (either milder heretics 
 or men without any faith — of which kind England is full) 
 
 ■who will follow the fortunes of the Queen of Scots. The 
 chief of these are the Earls of Shrewsbu.ry, Derby, and Rut- 
 land, Cecil, and many other nobles whom the Queen of Scots 
 may engage. She is most anxious for oar project, as she wrote 
 to me not ten months since. 
 
 9. Our enemies will be the Puritans, and certain ci-eatures 
 of the Queen, as the Earls of Leicester and Huntingdon, and 
 not many besides. They have the advantage of having in 
 their hands the treasury, the army, and the navy; but they 
 cannot comit upon the officers, and they are themselves no 
 generals. 
 
 10. In the whole realm there are not more than two for- 
 tified towns which could stand a siege of three days. Among 
 the nobles there is not a single general ; the people are all un- 
 used to war, except a few wdio have served in Flanders, most 
 of whom are either dead or now serving in the ranks of the 
 Prince of Parma — an indication of how the forces of heretics 
 will lose by desertion when the time comes. Provisions are 
 everywhere plentiful, and the soldiers can take what they like; 
 there are harbours on every side for landing troops out of 
 Spain, France, or Flanders ; and soldiers can be landed any- 
 where on the coast by the English sailors who will conduct 
 them. An army of 10,000 or 16,000 will be quite enough; 
 but the greater the foreign force the less will be the risk ; and 
 the English as a nation are unwarlike, inexperienced, and 
 totally unable to resist the attack of veteran soldiers. 
 
 Our country has been invaded about sixteen times by 
 foreign troops, not in very great numbers, and the natives 
 have only twice repulsed them ; all the other times the in- 
 vaders have succeeded, and this shows that in our just cause 
 we may hope all things. 
 
340 EDJIITND CA3IPI0X. 
 
 The expenses, -whatever they are, will be borne by the 
 goods of the heretics and the fiilse clergy. 
 
 The thing must be done soon. If it is put off, as it has 
 hitherto been, we fear that the Catholic nobles will grow w^eary 
 and weak, the Catholic exiles will die, the Queen of Scots 
 \vill be killed, and the King of Spain or the Pope Avill die, or 
 even Elizabeth herself; for if she were to die, and an heretical 
 successor, like the King of Scots, were once established, our 
 cause would be desperate. This point is all-important. 
 
 The opportunity is now excellent. The Guises in France 
 will help the Queen of Scots ; the King will do nothing to 
 prevent it. There is now no danger from the Turk. The 
 temporal state of the Church is suddenly restored to peace 
 and security; all the Italian princes are at peace; all the 
 kingdoms subject to the Spanish cro^^^l are paciiied; and even 
 Belgium is almost entirely reduced to faith and obedience, 
 with the exception of a few seaports, which will be soon ren- 
 dered, and will afford great fl^cilities for the transport of troops 
 for the conquest of England. I need not add tlie gloiy the 
 Pope would obtain by removing the enormities that this 
 Jezebel is constantly inflicting on him and his; and so I 
 humbly submit to his judgment these my suggestions." 
 
 Now I am fiir from saying that this document is an un- 
 justifiable one. Allen had as much right to invoke foreign 
 aid in 1581 as the French exiles of 1793, or the Confederates 
 of the Southern States in 1863. The government of Eliza- 
 beth was such that any Catholic wdio could destroy it had 
 every right to make the attempt. I would only criticise the 
 silliness of Allen's combinations, the puerile nature of the 
 arguments on which he founds his expectations, and the hope- 
 less impossibility of the task wdiich he set himself. It was to 
 bring about a moral unity of a professed allegiance to Queen 
 Elizabeth, with a suspended purpose of acting in accordance 
 with the Bull and joining the " sacred expedition."'"" I say 
 a moral unity ; for an immoral one was easy enough, if a man 
 determined to be a conspirator and to disregard all conscience 
 in the matter. But this particular conspiracy was to be one 
 in behalf of religion and conscience, and would contradict 
 and stultify itself if it used means contrary to religion and 
 conscience. Its problem was to profess to be true, and yet to 
 be false, to Elizabeth ; and at the same time not only to pro- 
 fess, but to be true to the Pope in his action against her. 
 And this, I say, was a problem incapable of any moral or 
 rational solution. 
 
 It might be said with truth that Allen's paper is the pro- 
 
THE SACRED EXPEDITIOX. 341 
 
 duction of an exile's di-eams, fed with information derived 
 exclusively from young enthusiasts who came to his seminary, 
 in the heat of their first conversion, without any real know- 
 ledge of their country, taking the suggestions of their fervid 
 fancy for inspiration, and translating their wishes into facts. 
 Nothing can exceed the puerility of some of the projiositions 
 of the document. It is in reality a product of a kind of Eng- 
 lish Fenianism. Yet, on the other hand, it is also true that 
 the writer of the paper was the foremost man among the 
 English Catholics, the one most trusted by Rome, and the 
 one who was singled out from all the energetic ecclesiastics of 
 that period to be honoured with the cardinalate. 
 
 Allen at last prevailed. In 1588 the " sacred expedition," 
 which had been eight years preparing, was despatched, and 
 was destroyed ; and how exactly each one of Dr. Allen's anti- 
 cipations was falsified by the event is shown by a letter of one 
 of Allen's own priests to Alendoza ; a translation of which is 
 printed in the Harleian Miscellany, i. 142. There we read 
 how each of the noblemen and gentlemen whom Allen guessed 
 would be foremost in welcomino; the invader was eaoer to 
 defy and do battle with him ; how the very priests upon whose 
 action Allen counted most securely turned patriots in that 
 emergency of their country ; and, in a word, how both Ca- 
 tholics and Protestants had been deceived in what they all 
 expected Catholics to do : then it was seen, that if CathoUcs 
 would die for their religion, they would die for their country 
 also, even though the invading force came with the sanction 
 and blessing of the Pope, and though its great object was the 
 restoration of their reHgion. 
 
 Those who think themselves infallibly certain that they 
 are infallibly in the right can never profit from the lessons of 
 history. In spite of failure, Allen and Parsons persevered in 
 their course. Their failures were all due to their sins ; Josue, 
 they said, failed twice before he took Jericho, but at last he 
 took it. Providence was really on their side, though it seemed 
 to favour the adversary. It did indeed favour him ; and the 
 secular priests, who had heard so much of the guard of Provi- 
 dence over the power of the Papacy, could not help also attri- 
 buting to Providence its failure to assert its chief temporal 
 prerogative in this supreme crisis of its history.""' In 1580, 
 when England was weak, Scotland divided, Ireland in flames, 
 the large "Catholic armies that were on the point of invading 
 the country from Spain and from Flanders were suddenly di- 
 verted from their object in order to annex Portugal to Spain. 
 In 1 588, when the danger was jet greater, the very stars in 
 their courses fought against the invader — 
 
342 EDJIUXD CAilPIOX. 
 
 " and his shipping 
 (Poor ignorant baubles) on our terrible seas, 
 Like egg-shells moved upon their surges, cracked 
 As easily 'gainst our rocks." 
 
 When Father Parsons conkl note the earthquake (which shook 
 Flanders as much as England), and the staying of the Thames 
 and Trent, as symptoms'of heaven's wrath against Campion's 
 persecutors, it was quite just in them to proclaim that the 
 death of the King of Portugal in 1580, and the fierce winds 
 of the summer of 1588, were symptoms of the same wrath 
 against the policy and party of Parsons. In the hazardous 
 game of deciphering the hierogljphics of heaven's judgments 
 one party has as good a right to dogmatise as the other. 
 
 But to pass by the question of Providential guidance, and 
 come to the simpler one of the possible and impossible, I say 
 that the position of the Papacy towards England, as represented 
 by Allen and Parsons, was simply untenable. Not because 
 the Pope wished to be at war with the English government 
 in Ireland, and (for the time) at peace with it in England ; 
 for this was the position of England with regard to most 
 powers : it was at peace with fSpain, but its navy robbed 
 Spanish ships, and its soldiers helped Flemish insurgents ; 
 similarly, Spain was at peace with England, nevertheless ex- 
 peditions against Ireland sailed from Spanish ports. So, the 
 general peace with France was not broken by the assistance 
 given to the Huguenots at La Eochelle. This half-and- 
 half state of warfare was a merely external contradiction ; 
 there was an internal organic contradiction that was much 
 more fatal. Allen wished to make every Catholic a conspira- 
 tor. Now the first requisite for conspiracy is secrecy, and the 
 Catholic religion was such that it could not be practised in 
 secrecy in England. There was a negative test that immedi- 
 ately discovered it — the test of recusancy, or refusal to go to 
 the Protestant church. Parsons and Allen were too good 
 Catholics to permit their converts to assist at the Protestant 
 services ; indeed, it was chiefljr by their efforts that the Catho- 
 lics were induced to give up the pi'actice, which had begun 
 innocently enough in the first year of Elizabeth. But it is 
 impossible to read the above report of Allen without seeing 
 that he, as well as the Queen and her ministers, fully recog- 
 nised how much more efficient rebels might be found among 
 the crypto-Catliolics who yielded an external obedience to the 
 laws than among the open Catholics who defied them. This 
 was the first contradiction ; and the second was much worse. 
 To be a conspirator generally implies a readiness to swear that 
 you are not one. That is but a lame plot when the plotters 
 
EQUIVOCATIOX. 343 
 
 are not ready to deny it at the bar. But Allen and Parsons 
 put all the English Catholics into this position, that they were 
 obliged to risk life, liberty, and lands, rather than take the 
 oath of allegiance, which denied the Pope's right to depose 
 princes; and at the same time they were obHged by their 
 position to deny, with any amount of imprecation, their com- 
 plicity in any plot, or in any general design or intention 
 under any circumstances to enforce this Papal claim. Hence 
 grew up a suspicion, which has always remained in England, 
 of the inherent falsehood of Catholic morality ; a suspicion 
 which every now and then suddenly developes into brutal ac- 
 cusations, such as that which ]\Ir. Kingsley vented against 
 Dr. Xe-s^-man. The Catholics of those days were an enigma 
 to their contemporaries. They exhibited on the one hand a 
 reverence for an oath, such that they would rather die than 
 offend their consciences by taking one ; and on the other, their 
 flat denials of purposes that were distinctly proved against 
 them showed it was only some oaths which they thus re- 
 verenced. " That they make conscience of an oath," said 
 Francis Bacon to the Queen, in 1584, " the troubles, losses, 
 and disgraces that they suffer for refusing the same do suffici- 
 ently testify." And the trial of Vaux, Trosham, and Catesby 
 in the Star-chamber, Nov. 22d, 1581, was a case in point. 
 Yet Father iSouthwell, on his trial, elaborately justified'"- his 
 directions to a witness to give false evidence. Father Wal- 
 pole's vehemence in denj-ing Squ.ire's accusations have gained 
 him so little credit that jSIi\ Spedding remarks upon them, 
 " There may be obligations higher than that of veracity ; but 
 he who accepts them must be content to have his words dis- 
 trusted ;" and Father Garnet at his arraignment defended the 
 practice of equivocation, which was objected against him by 
 his accusers. There was an internal and intestine contradic- 
 tion in the body of doctrine delivered to the English by the 
 missionaries of Dr. Allen, Avhich deprived it of its inherent 
 strength : the eternal truths of Catholicism were made the 
 vehicle for a quantity of specnlatlve and practical opinions 
 about the temporal authority of the Holy See which could 
 not be held by Englishmen loyal to the government. There 
 was a contradiction in duties, and true patriotism united to a 
 false religion overcame the true religion wedded to opinions 
 that were both unpatriotic in regard to the liberties of Eng- 
 lishmen, and treasonable to the English government. This 
 was the first cause of the destruction of English Catholicism. 
 The political school of Catholics which was answerable for it 
 was entirely weeded out by persecution, and the remnant that 
 was left became as conspicuous for its loyalty as its predecessors 
 
344 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 had been for their want of it. Equally nnlueky in loyalty and 
 disloyalty, the English Catholics pinned their fortunes to the 
 skirts of'a falling dynasty, and with the .Stuarts they seemed 
 likely to become extinct. AYhen they began to revive in 178(J, 
 the two parties into Avhich they were divided found them- 
 selves equally loval. Challoner ostentatiously excluded from Ins 
 ]\fartyroLo(jii all the missionaries against whom any treason 
 was proved with any probability ; and Sir John Throckmorton 
 went further, and said that all the priests -who did not satis- 
 factorily answer the seven questions about Allen, Sanders, 
 and the Bull, and were thereupon hanged, were martyrs for 
 the deposing power of the Pope, not for religioji. And now, 
 if the first fervour of some converts sometimes developes into 
 aspirations like those of Allen and Parsons, and leads them to 
 desire to witness " high mass in St. Paul's under the protection 
 of French bayonets,'' the feeling is one that is of no signifi- 
 cance beyond enabling us to study in living specimens a sen- 
 timent which was a dangerous and real force in the sixteenth 
 century. The secular as well as the religious world has be- 
 come more enlightened since that time, and the government, 
 instead of kindling this dry tow into a flame by lighting the 
 fires of persecution, leaves it in its own obscuritj', to jjcrish of 
 inanition and neglect. 
 
 As for Sir John Throckmorton's opinion, that Campion 
 and his fellows were martyrs not for faith, but for the de- 
 posing power, it is manifestly untrue. If Campion would not 
 deny that jjower, he as resolutely refused to affirm it. To 
 call a man a martyr for a doctrine he refuses to confess is to 
 give a new meaning to words. It is clear, then, that he died, 
 }iot for a doctrine, but for the liberty of the conscience to 
 hold itself in suspense, and to resist all force that would oblige 
 it to decide before it had its own grounds for decision. Men 
 were m-ged to declare the deposing jiower to be a wicked im- 
 jiosition ; they died rather than do so. But they did not die 
 for the affirmation of this doctrine. Thej' wished to keep 
 clear of the question altogether ; they refused to make them- 
 selves umpires between Pope and (^ueen. They felt that it 
 ■\N'as of primary necessity to ])reach the faith : yet, bound up 
 with the contro^•ersies of the day there A\'as a question of which 
 they could not or would not say whether it was or was not part 
 and parcel of the faith. Elizabeth declared that the Catholic 
 religion should not be ])ropagatod in her dominions till this 
 question was decided, and decided in her favour. The Po])c, 
 on the other hand, could not give up his pretensions. He 
 felt himself obliged to assert his right to what Pro\idence had 
 given him. AH the bishops, and all the theologians and 
 
TEMPORAL POWER. 345 
 
 canonists were on liis side. And the divine government of 
 the Cliurch was never more triumphantly exhibited than 
 Avhcn, in spite of popes, bisliops, theologians, religious enthu- 
 siasm, popular discontent, foreign intrigues, powerful kings, 
 and invincible armadas, the providential failure of these claims 
 vindicated the purity of the faith from a heterogeneous ac- 
 cretion. Pending that solution, there was a dead-lock, a 
 time wherein nothing could be done ; but in the mean while 
 men were being born, were sinning, and dying ; they needed 
 instruction, exhortation, and the sacraments. To wait till the 
 controversy was decided would be the perdition of infinite 
 souls. It was to avoid this that the missionary priests swarmed 
 over into England, suffered, and died. And though a few 
 among them were treasonable busybodies, yet the great mass 
 of them were men of simple characters, pure lives, burning 
 charity, and heroic constancy, who acted and suffered simply 
 for the glory of God. 
 
 To an enthusiast I shall perhaps seem to be stripping off 
 one of their titles to glory from our martyrs of the sixteenth 
 centui-y, when I exhibit them thus uncertain in their grasji of 
 what almost all the Church belie^'ed in their day, thus alien 
 from the tone and spirit of the popular Catholicism. But the 
 subsequent history of Christianity has abundantly justified 
 them, and has proved that, in I'efusing their deepest assent to 
 the medieval views of the temporal prerogatives of the Holy 
 See, they were pioneers in the true path of the development 
 of doctrine. There is a fallacious corollary which not a few 
 persons have drawn from the theory of development, namely, 
 that the most advancing; theologian is he who reflects and 
 harmonises most perfectly the universal mind of Christianity 
 in its opinions and aspirations. Such a reasoner overlooks the 
 fact that there are two kinds of movement and apparent growth 
 always going on in the Church : one is the fermentation of 
 a moribund school — for a religious school never cries more 
 loudly than in its agony, never flings more strongly than in 
 its death - throes ; the other is the secret undergrowth, the 
 silent advance of thought, discomfiting and ousting the old 
 opinions, which, in their unsteadiness, cry so loudly for pro- 
 tection, and employ the relics of their force at the dictation of 
 their teiTor; for the artificial faith in a dying doctrine be- 
 comes fanatical, because passion is substituted for reason. The 
 inexperienced eye might take the gorgeous hues of autumn 
 for the sign of the healtliiest ^agour in the woods. But we 
 know that" this show is but the symbol of decay, the sign that 
 the leaves are withering and loosening from their hold, being 
 pushed off by the vigorous young buds preparing for their 
 
346 EDMUND CAMPION. 
 
 spring beneath. I do not, therefore, detract from Campion's 
 wisdom, foresight, or holiness, when I show that he could not 
 mould his mind in all points to the dominant opinion in the 
 Church or in his Order. For in his day the dominant opinion 
 was in its autumn, not in its spring. It was not the develop- 
 ing, but the dying doctrine that was then tlie loudly-expressed 
 conviction of divines, whose agitation in favoiu"ofthe temporal 
 prerogatives of the Holy See then in danger is judged by the 
 small effect it produced on the consciences of the Catholic 
 laity, and by its complete historical failure. Campion was 
 too tender in conscience to separate himself from the hiero- 
 phants of this agitation ; but he was also too wise to profess 
 more adhesion than was implied in his refusal to condemn it 
 as wicked. Thus he steered his way with a safe conscience 
 between the rock and the whirlpool, though he had to throw 
 overboard everything except his conscience, and to strip him- 
 self even of his life, in the cross seas of the dangerous strait. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Publications connected tvith the Challenge. 
 
 1. Campion's Letter to the Lords of the Council (supra, p. 159) was not 
 printed, but circulated extensively in Ms. This called forth two replies. 
 
 2. William Charke. An Answer to a seditious Pamphlet lately cast abroad 
 by a Jeouit, with a discovery of that blasphemous sect. By W. Charke. Lon- 
 don, C. Barker, 1580. 8vo. Another edition iu 1581. 
 
 3. Meredith Haimier. The great Bragge and Challenge of M. Champion 
 a Jesuite, cofuted and ausweared. London, T. Marsch, 1581. 4to. 
 
 Father Parsons confuted both these books at once in his book : 
 
 4. A brief Censure upon two books written in answer to M. Edmund 
 Campion's offer of disputation. Doway, by John Lyon, 1581. ICmo. 
 
 It was really printed at Mr. Brooke's house near London, by Brinkley 
 with his secret press. 
 
 Charke and Hanmer made separate replies to this Censure : 
 
 5. A Reply to a Censure written against the two Answers to a Jesuit's 
 seditious pamphlet, by Wm. Charke. London, 1581. 8vo. 
 
 6. The Jesuites' Banner : displaying their original and success ; their vow 
 and oath ; their h)'pocrisy and superstitions ; with a confutation of a late 
 pamphlet secretly imprinted, and entituled A brief Censure, &o. (ut supra, 
 No. 4). CompOed by Meredith Hanmer, M.A., &c. K, in 4 s. T. Dawson and 
 Rd. Vernon, 1581. 
 
 Shortly after Campion's death Parsons went over to France, and abode 
 for some time disguised as a merchant at Rouen, where, among other works, 
 he printed : 
 
 7. A Defence of the Censure given upon two books of William Charke 
 and Meredith Hanmer, ministers, which they wrote against M. Edmund 
 Campion, Priest of the Society of Jesus, and against his offer of disputa- 
 tion (by Rob. Parsons, S. J. Rouen). 1582. 8vo. 
 
 The Censure is reprinted paragraph by paragraph, and each paragi-aph 
 defended in detail. Pp. 173. 
 
 A year elapsed before any notice was taken of this able rejoinder ; then 
 Charke published, ad interim, a portion of his reply : 
 
 8. Wm. Charke : An Answer for the time unto that foul and wicked 
 Defence of the Censure that was given upon M, C'harke's book and Mere- 
 dith Hanmer's. London, 1583. 4to, pp. 107. 
 
 After three years more study, Charke gave to the world his completed 
 treatise : 
 
 9. William Charke : A Treatise against the Defence of Censure given upon 
 
348 APPENDIX. 
 
 the books of Wm. Charke and Mer. Hanmer by an unknown Popish traitor, 
 in maintenauoe of the seditious cliallenge of Edm. Campion, lately con- 
 demued and executed for high treason. In which the reader shall wonder 
 to see the impudent falsehood of the Popish defender in abusing the names 
 and writings of tlie doctors old and new to blind the ignorant. Hereunto 
 are adjoined two treatises written by Dr. Fulke : the one against Allen's 
 book of the Authority of the Pri'^sthood to remit sins, &o. ; the other against 
 the railing declamation of P. Frarine.* AUo^^■ed &c. Three tracts with three 
 title-pages. Pp. 350+531+54. 
 
 II. 
 
 Fublicatwns conmcfed with the " Decern Rattones." 
 
 1. Eationes Decern, quibus fretus certamen Anglicanas Ecclesi^ ministris 
 obtulit in causa fldei Edmundus Campianus. Privately printed at a lodge 
 in Stonor Park, near Henley, 1581. 
 
 The Bishop of London (Aylmer) ordered the two Eegius Professors of 
 Divinity at Oxford and Cambridge to answer this book. The Cambridge 
 diviue was the first to appear : 
 
 2. Whitaker ; Eesponsio ad Eationes Edmundi Campiani, quibus fretus, 
 &c. 8vo. Lond. 1581. (Herbert. 1072.) 
 
 The Oxford theologian put out half his reply the next year : 
 
 3. Jesuitismi pars prima : sive de Praxi Eomaiue Curiie contra respub- 
 licas et principes, et denova legatione Jesuitarum iu Angliam, irpoQepaTreia ot 
 prfemonitio ad Anglos ; cui adjuncta est concio ejusdem argumenti, cujus 
 titulus est Pharisaismus vetus et novus, sive de fermento Pharisa^orum et 
 Jesuitarum : authore Laurentio Ilumfredo. Londiui, Hen. Middletonus, 1582. 
 8vo. (Dedicated to the Chancellor of the University, Eob. Dudley, E. of 
 Leicester.) 
 
 The same year Father Drury published his crushing reply to Wlitaker : 
 
 4. Confutatio Eesponsionis Gulielmi Whitakeri iu Academia Cantabri- 
 gensi Professoris Begii ad Eationes Decern, quibus fretus Edm. Campianus, 
 Anglus, Societatis Jesu theologus, certamen Anglicana3 Ecclesiaj ministris 
 obtulit iu causa fidei. Authore Joanne Durajo Scoto, Soc. Jesu presbytero. 
 Parisiis, apud Thomam Brumennium, 1582. 8vo, pp. 466 double. Eeprinted 
 Ingoldstadii ex typog. Dav. Sartorii, 1585. 8vo, pp. 856. 
 
 Whitaker was again quicker than his Oxford brother in replying : 
 
 5. Eesponsionis ad Decem Eationes, quibus, &c. Defensio contra Conf u- 
 tationcm Joannis Durtei, Scoti, presbyteri, Jesuita;. Authore Gull. VVhitakero 
 &c. Impensis Tho. Chardi, 1583. 4to, pp. 887. 
 
 Last comes Humphrey : 
 
 6. Jesuitismi pars secimda. Puritano-Papismi; seu doctrinaj Jesuiticaj 
 aliquot rationibus ab Edm. Campiano comprehens;c, et a Joanne Duri-eo 
 defenso3, confutatio, et ex iisdcm fuudameutis retormatin religionis assertio. 
 Autore Lau. Hnmfredio. Lond., Henr. Middletonus, 1584. 8vo. 
 
 And here this particuLar controversy seems to have ended for the time, 
 so far as England is concerned. Nearly a quarter of a century after, how- 
 ever, it revived for a moment : 
 
 * Harangue of Peter Frarin of Autiverp, against the seditioua motions excited by 
 the Protestants on pretence of reforming religion. Translated from Latin into Eng- 
 lish hy John Fowler. Antw. 15CIJ. 16mo. 
 
APPENDIX. M'i) 
 
 7. Stocke (R.), Answer to Campion the Jesuit. Txeply to the defence of 
 him by John Durajus the Scot. 4to. Lond. 1G06. (Gordonstoun Cat. No. 
 2050.) 
 
 III. 
 Publications connected ivilh the Discussions. 
 
 However, out of this controversy the discussions of Campion in the Tower 
 took their rise; and reports of these were immediately dispersed by the 
 Catholics, "partly in print, but in written pamplileta much more." I do 
 not think that anything is known of the printed reports. A Ms. report of 
 the first day's conference was in the library of the English College at Rome, 
 and extracts of it are given by Bombinus ; also among the Harleian Mss. in 
 the British Museum (No. 422) are reports of the other three days' confer- 
 ences (one in duplicate), in the handwriting of Vallenger, found by Top- 
 clifEe the priest-catcher in the house of William Carter the printer (who 
 was hanged in 1584), and given to Fox the martyrologist, among whose 
 papers they are now to be found. Alban Butler, in a Ms. account of the 
 writers of the English College of Douay, now at Brussels (Royal Library, 
 Ms. No. 15,594), enumerates among Ralph Sherwin's writings one of these 
 reports : Collatio inter hasreticos et Campianum in Turri Londinensi habita. 
 Disputationes in castro Wisbecensi inter Fulkum ministrum et Catholicos. 
 
 It was not till Januai-y 1, 1583-4, that the Protestant disputants pub- 
 lished their report of these conferences — a single volume in parts, with 
 separate titles : 
 
 1. A true Report of the Disputation, or rather private Conference, had in 
 the Tower of London with Ed. Campion, Jesuit, the last of August 1581. 
 Set down by the reverend learned men themselves that dealt therein (Nowell 
 and Day). London, Barker. January 1, 1583. 4to. 
 
 2. The three last days' Conferences had in the Tower with Edmund Cam- 
 pion Jesuit, the 18 : 23 : and 27 of September 1581. Collected and faithfully 
 set down by M.John Feilde, student in divinity. Now perused by the learned 
 men themselves, and thought meet to be published. January 1, 1583. 
 
 This second part seems to have been struck off by itself. In the Faculty 
 of Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, vol. ii. 1776, p. 172, is the following entry : 
 
 Feilde (John). True Report of the whole substance of the Conference 
 had in the Tower of London between Wm. Charke, Wm. Fulke, Roger Goade, 
 Dr. Walker, and Edward (sic) Campion the Jesuite, on the 18, 23, and 27 of 
 Sept. 1581. 4to. Lond. 1583. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Biographies, dec. 
 Campion's capture and execution furnished occasion for a flood of pub- 
 lications. 
 
 1. Mr. Campion, the seditious Jesuit, is welcome to London. Licensed to 
 be printed by Richard Jones, 1581. (Herbert, 1053). ^ 
 
 The following appears to have been a similar squib : 
 
 2. Randall Hurlstone : News from Rome concerning the blasphemous 
 sacrifice of Papistical Masse ; with divers other treatises, very godly and 
 
350 APPENDIX. 
 
 profitable. Cantorbury, imprinted by John Mychell for E. Chuvton (t. e. 
 Campion) the Jesuit. N. d. 16mo. (Lowiides.) 
 
 3. A breefe Discourse of the taking Edmund Campion and divers other 
 Papists in Barlishire ; gathered by A. M. (Anthony Munday). Lond. 1581. 
 8vo. 
 
 This pamphlet called forth a contradiction from George Eliot : 
 
 4. A very true Eeport of the apprehension and taking of that arch-papist 
 Edmund Campion, the Pope his right hand, with three other lewd Jesuit- 
 priests, and diverse other lay people, most seditious persons of like sort. 
 Containing also a controulment of a most untrue former book set out by 
 A(nthony) M(unday) concerning the same, as is to be proved and justified 
 by Geo. Ellyot, one of the ordinary yeomen of her Majesty's chamber, author 
 of this book, and chiefest cause of the finding of the said lewd and seditious 
 people. 8vo, 15 leaves, 1581. (Herbert. 1121; Oklys, No. 143). 
 
 The advertisement read by Hearne the schoolmaster at the execution 
 must have been the following : 
 
 5. An Advertisement and Defence for Truth against her backbiters, and 
 specially against the whispering favourers and colourers of Campion's and 
 the rest of his confederates' treasons. C. Barker, 1581. 4to, one sheet of four 
 leaves, the last page blank. 
 
 6. A Discovery of Edmund Campion and his Confederates, their most 
 horrible and traiterous practices against her Majesty's most royal person 
 and the realm. Whereunto is added the execution of Edmund Campion, 
 Ralph Shervvin, and Alexander Briant, executed at Tyhum Dec. 1. Pub- 
 lished by A(nthony) M(unday), sometime the Pope's scholar. London, 1582, 
 pp. 55. Reprinted in Holinshed's Chronicles, ad an. 1851. 
 
 This called forth a little book, edited I think by Pound, for printing 
 which Tallenger was condemned in the Star-chamber to lose his ears in the 
 pillory : 
 
 7. A true Report of the Death and Martyrdom of M. Campion, Jesuite and 
 priest, and M. Sherwin and M. Bryan priests, at Tiborne, the 1st of December 
 
 1581. Observed and written by a Catholic priest which was present thereat. 
 Whereunto is annexed certain verses made by sundry persons. 16mo, 26 
 leaves. The poets I take to be Henry Walpole, Pounde, and Valleno-er him- 
 self. 
 
 The next history appeared in Paris : 
 
 8. L'Histoire de la Mort que le R. P. Edmonde Campion prestre de la 
 Compagnie du nom de Jesus et autres ont souffert en Angleterre pour la 
 foy Catholique et Romaine, le premier jour de Decembre 1581. Traduit 
 d'Anglois et Franc;ois. A Paris, chez Guilluame Chaudiere, rue S. Jaques 
 
 1582. Sm. 8vo, pp. 30. 
 
 Munday answered these two pamphlets together : 
 
 9. A brief Answer made unto two seditious pamphlets ; the one printed 
 in French, and the other in English ; containing a defence of Edmund 
 Campion and his complices, their most horrible and unnatural treasons 
 against her Majesty and the realm. By A(nt). M(unday). Honos alit artes. 
 Imprinted at London for Edward White, dwelling at the little north door 
 of Pauls, at the sign of the Gun. Sm. 8vo, 1582. It contains some verses 
 on Campion's death, written, I suppose, by " rhyming Elderton," as the 
 Catholics called him. 
 
 Shortly afterwards the Council caused a paper to be drawn up, entitled : 
 
APPENDIX. 351 
 
 10. A particular Declaration or Testimony of the undutiful and traitor- 
 ous aflfection borne against her Majesty by E. Campion, Jesuit, and other 
 condemned Priests, witnessed by their own Confessions ; in reproof of those 
 slanderous books and libels delivered out to the contrary by such as are 
 maliciously affected towards her Majesty and the State. Publislicd by au- 
 thority. 4to, 14 leaves. It contains the extracts out of Sanders, Allen, and 
 Bristovv that were submitted to Campion and his fellows, and their answers. 
 The paper is printed in Morgan's Pha;nix Britannicus, 481 ; State Trials, 
 vol. i. p. 1073, &c. 
 
 Then came the executions of the rest of those who were condemned with 
 Campiou, which called forth : 
 
 11. A brief History of the glorious Martyrdom of twelve reverend Priests 
 executed within these twelve months, for confession and defence of the Ca- 
 tholic Faith, but under the false Pretence of Treason ; with a Note of sun- 
 dry things that befel them in their life and imprisonment, and a preface 
 concerning their innocency. 8vo, aiio. 1582. (Herbert. 1661.) 
 
 The following was the argument of a book printed by Father Parsons 
 early in this year : 
 
 12. An Epistle of comfort to the reverend Priests, and to the honourable, 
 worshipful, and other of the lay sort, restrained in durance for the Catholic 
 Faith. Which probably furnished the matter of 
 
 1.3. Epistre de la Persecution en Angleterre centre I'eglise Chrestienne 
 Catholique et Apostolique, et fideles membres d'icelle, ou sont declares les 
 tres grandes afflictions, niisiires, et calamites, les tourmens tres cruelz et 
 martyres admirables que les fideles C'hrestiens Anglois souffrent pour leur 
 foy et religion. 8vo, Paris. ].j82. (Thorpe.) 
 
 14. De Persecutione Anglicana libellus, quo explicantur afflictiones, ca- 
 lamitates, cruciatus et acerbissima martyria quK Angli Catholici nunc ob 
 fidem patiuDtur. Plates. 8vo, Eomfe, 1582. (Thorpe.) 
 
 15. Historia della Morte del E. P. Edm. Campiano della Comp. di Gesu 
 ed altri due che ban patito in Inghilterra per la fede Catholica Eomana il 
 primo di Dicembre, mdlxxxi. tradotto d'Inglese in Franchese, e di Franchese 
 in Italiano. Milano, Giacomo Piccaria. 1582. 8vo. 14 leaves. 
 
 16. Martirio del Eeverendo P. Edm. Campiano della Comp. di Gesu, 
 patito in Inghilterra per la fede Cattolica di Eoma, 1 Dec. 1581. 4to, Torino, 
 1582 ; and another edition, Venezia, 1582. (Thorpe, Hibbert.) 
 
 17. Martyrium Edmundi Campiani qui cum duobus aliis presbyteris .... 
 in An^lia propter constantem Eomanaj et Catholicic fidei confessionem 
 mortis supplicio affectus est, e Gallico in Latinum versum per Gul. Estium. 
 Lovanii, Masius. 8vo, 1582. (Thorpe.) 
 
 The iirst edition of the book now called Bridgewater'a Concertatio was 
 compiled in 1582 by Father John Gibbons and John Fenn, assisted by 
 Father Parsons (see More's Hist. Prov. Ang. p. 20), under the following title: 
 
 18. Concertatio Ecclesiie Catholicie in Anglia adversus Calvino-Papistas 
 et Puritanos, a panels annis singulari studio quorundam hominum doctrina 
 et sanctitate illustrium renovata, Treves, Hatot, 1583, pp. 369. It con- 
 tained two letters of Campion (to the General, and to the Council) ; his 
 Decern Eationes; Parsons' Epistola de Persecutione Anglica ; the Lives and 
 Martyrdoms of Campion, Sherwin, Briant, and twelve others, with some of 
 their letters ; and Allen's Apologia Martyrum, which must be considered a 
 distinct work. 
 
352 APPENDIX. 
 
 19. Apologia MartjTum, qua ipsorum innocentia vaviia rationibus de- 
 monstratur ; eosque solius religionis Catholics caus-ti, quam susoeperant 
 propagandam et propugnanclam, criidelissime enecatos fuisse. 1583. 
 
 These various attaclis on the administration of justice in England in- 
 duced Bui-ghley to draw up from Norton's notes : 
 
 20. A Declaration of the favourable dealing of her Majesty's Commis- 
 sioners appointed for the examination of certain Traitors, and of tortures 
 imjustly reported to he done upon them for matters of Religion. Cum pri- 
 vilegio, &c. 4to. 4 leaves. 158.3. (Reprinted in Somers Tracts, i. 209.) 
 
 But still, as each new priest was martyred, a fresh edition of the growing 
 Martyxology was put out, not only in English and French, but in Italian 
 and Latin also ; for instance : 
 
 21. Historia del glorioso Martirio di sedici sacerdoti martirizati in In- 
 ghilterra per la confessione e difesa della fede Cattolica I'anno 1581, 2 e 3. 
 (With six plates). Macerata, 1583 (Thorpe, Bib. Brit. 1844). 
 
 Burghley therefore composed and published a much longer tract : 
 
 22. The Execution of Justice in England, not for Religion, but for 
 Treason. 17 Dec. 1583. 
 
 This called forth from Allen : 
 
 23. A true and modest Defence of the English Catholics that suffer for 
 their faith both at home and abroad, against n slanderous libel entitled 
 Execution of Justice in England. 12mo. (1584.) 
 
 To this, according to Strype (Ann. II. ii. 305), J. Stubbs, the same 
 who had his right hand cut off for writing against tlie Queen's marriage 
 with Anjou, wrote an answer, entitled Vindication of the English Justice. 
 (1587). 
 
 Burghley had his tract translated, and pulili.shed in London and Germanj': 
 
 24. De Justitia Britannica, quna conservandaj pads publicaj causa in 
 Papioolas exercehatur tempore Elizahethie. Londini, 1584. 12mo ; and In- 
 golstadii, 1584. 12mo. 
 
 Allen also translated his reply, with the title : 
 
 25. Justitiaj Britaunica3, de sacerdotibus morte plectendis, confutatio. 
 1583. (Brussels Ms. No. 15,594.) 
 
 And this reply of Allen's was attacked hy Bilson : 
 
 26. Of the true difference between Christian Subjection and unchristian 
 Rebellion ; wherein the Prince's lawful power to command and bear the 
 sword are (sic) defended against the Pope's censure and Jesuits' sophisms in 
 their apology and defence of English Catholics ; also a demonsti-atiou that 
 the things reformed in the Church of England by the laws of this realm 
 are truly Catholic ; against the late Rhemish Testament. Oxford, 1585. 
 4to. lb. London, 1586. large 8vo. 
 
 It is noted by Paquot, that this book was used by the Puritans to justify 
 their execution of Charles I. It is clear that the controversy was becoming 
 generalised, and no longer had any special reference to Campion's history. 
 So I will return to what was written about him in particular. 
 
 26. Robert Turner. Vita et Marlyrium Edm. Campiani sui quondam 
 pra;ceptoris ; prefixed to an edition of the Decern Rationcs, Ingoldstadii, 
 Sartorius. 1584. 12mo. 
 
 27. Historia de Morte Rev. P_ Edm. Campiani Sac. de Soo. Jesu, et 
 aliorum qui in Anglia propter fidem Catholicam Apostolicam atque Roma- 
 nam orudelissimam passi .sunt mortem. Traducta ex sermoue Gallico in 
 
APPENDIX. 353 
 
 Latinum, interprete Jacobo LaingiEO Scoto, Dootore Sorbonico (appended 
 to the same author's treatise De Vita et Moribus Theodori Bezx). Paris, 
 1585. pp. 30. 
 
 This was probably a translation of No. 8 ; which in that case would be 
 a report by an eye-witness : this would give three independent sources among 
 the histories already enumerated— No. 7, No. 8, and Allen's compilation 
 from the letters he received out of England, in No. 18. 
 
 28. Edmundi Campiani, eines Jesuites Leben und Leiden, weleher zu 
 London in seinem Vaterland, anno 1581, den 17 Julii, gefanglich angenom- 
 men, naohmals den 1 Dec. gemartert worden. Dilingen, 1588. 12mo. 
 
 29. Concertatio, &c. (see above, No. 18.) Republished with large addi- 
 tions by Dr. Bridgewater. Treves, Book, 1588. 4to. 413 leaves, besides 
 many unnumbered. Another edition is dated 1594. 
 
 Prom a letter of Father Parsons, dated May 2, 1589, it appears that F. 
 Louis of Granada was then writing a Life of Campion. I do not know 
 whether it -was ever published. 
 
 From this time forth a long account of Campion occurs in all works that 
 profess to give a narrative either of English Catholic affairs, or of the illus- 
 trious members of the Society of Jesus. For instance : 
 
 30. Pollini. Historia Ecclesiastica della rivoluzione d'Inghilterra. Eoma, 
 1594. 4to ; where the account of Campion occupies 40 pages. 
 
 31. Yepes. Historia particular de la persecucion de Inglaterra, y de 
 los Martirios mas insignes que en ella ha avido desde el aiio del Senor 
 1570 .... Recogida por el Padre Fray Diego de Yepes .... Opispo de 
 TaraQOna. Madrid, 1599. At p. 310 is the Life and Martyrdom of Edmund 
 Campion, translated from the Latin of Cardinal Allen. This shows that 
 the Life in Bridgewater was Allen's. 
 
 It would he fruitless labour to enumerate all the annals and histories 
 in which the above works were reprinted in whole or in part, copied or 
 recast ; for they contain nothing new, and simply repeat that which was 
 already told. I will, therefore, now only add the original works. 
 
 32. Bombinus. Vita et Martyrium Edmundi Campiani, Martyris Angli e 
 Soc. Jes., auctore E. P. Paulo Bombino, ejusdem Soo. Antw. Meursius, 1618. 
 12mo. pp. 260. This work was more than once reprinted ; but Bombinus 
 repudiated all the editions. In the ' Admonitio ad Lectorem' of the Mantuan 
 edition of 1620 he says : " They all have proceeded from the first Antwerp 
 edition, which in its progress through the press, and in my absence, received 
 from too benevolent an editor a cast and features which I cannot acknow- 
 ledge as mine. And indeed it is not a very exemplary thing, that other 
 men's books, like children, should by certain arbitrary critics, and without 
 the consent of their parents, be mutilated, or branded with strange marks, 
 without being granted an opportunity of defence." 
 
 Bombinus's bombast was naturally tedious to the good sense that reigned 
 among the learned Jesuits at Antwerp in 1618, who liked to tell tales in 
 plain words, and to preser^'e the flavour of the age, instead of translating 
 everything into Ciceronic slang. However, he had a right to his own views, 
 though his criticism will not bear scrutiny ; for of all Campion's alleged 
 works he accepts none but the Decern Rationes and two or three epistles. 
 " Anyone with a taste of style," he says, " must see that the others are only 
 exercises of his scholars, corrected by him." Homer may sleep, and Campion 
 may sometimes soleciee. 
 
 AA 
 
354 APPENDIX. 
 
 33. The same. Editio posterior, ab auctore multis aucta partibus et 
 emendata. Mantua, 1G20. 8vo. pp. 320. Keprinted Neapoli, 1627. 8vo. 
 It was considered a book " castle et emendata; dictionis, et exquisita3 ele- 
 gantije." 
 
 In the library of the Gesu at Rome there is a copy of the Mantuan edi- 
 tion, full of notes, corrections, and additions, in the author's handwriting, 
 apparently intended for another edition, which never saw the light. Some 
 of these were suggested by Parsons or his writings, some by others who had 
 known Campion. Thus an addition at p. 45 is noted : " Ex oommentariis 
 P. Personii tunc apud me." The history of Campion's stay at Prague is 
 much enlarged " ex animadversionibus Monachiensibus." Another remark 
 on the trial at p. 273, "ex excerptis ex apologia Thoma; Fitzerberti ;" and 
 again at p. 289, " ex diversorum auctariis, sunt apud me." He must have 
 been many years engaged in in-iting his book : at p. Ii7 he says, " ut 
 narrabat mihi, cum hfec scriberem, Personius ;" now Parsons died in 1610, 
 eight or ten years before the book was published. It was, as may be seen 
 from Bombinus's dedication to the Duke of Mantua, the main occupation 
 of his life, the fruit of years of patience. It is quite truthful and honest, 
 though uncritical ; and its great fault is that which its author thought its 
 great virtue — its elegance. 
 
 34. Henry More, S.J. Historia Provinoias Auglicanaj Societatis Jesu, 
 collectore Henrico Moro, ejusdem Soc. sacerdote. Andomari (St. Omers), 
 1660, fol. His history of Campion, though taken in the main from Bom- 
 binus, has additions and corrections from independent sources, especially 
 concerning the trial. He prints several of Parsons' letters. 
 
 8.5. P. Daniello Bartoli, S..J. Istoriadella Compagnia di Gesu : L'lnghil- 
 terra. Eome, 1667. Large 4to. Bartoli had the advantage of consulting all 
 the Mss. in the Gesil, and his margins are full of references to letters which 
 he must have read there. He made special use of Parsons' Mss. there, and 
 at the English College at Eome, and carried his criticism so far as to omit 
 much that Bombinus tells, because it was not to be found in Parsons' me- 
 moirs. The earlier writer finishes his account of Campion's capture thus 
 (p. 182) : " I know that many circumstances of this capture are otherwise 
 related, even in printed books. But I find that history is like a summer 
 torrent — the water at first is foul with dirt ; but let it stand for a, time, 
 and it clears itself. So the first accounts of things are disfigured by 
 passion ; but what was at first unknOTNTi gradually creeps out, and every- 
 thing is seen in its proper light. I certainly have sufficient witnesses of 
 the rest that I tell ; and in the story of this capture I follow not light 
 rumours or muddy report, but Parsons' own authority, who had the whole 
 story from the man whom Mrs. Yate ordered to accompany Elliot, and 
 wrote it all in his notes, which he gave me as my authority when I 
 was writing this book at Rome." To which Bartoli (who omits all men- 
 tion of Campion's nocturnal sermon in Mrs. Yate's chamber) says : " Quanto 
 a certi strani accidcnti, che pur altri ne conta, a me par che sentano dell' 
 incredibile : nfe ve n'b fiato in tante lettere del Personio, n6 in niuna delle 
 fresce memorie d'allora, 6 di poscia : onde non mi paiono degni di nh pur 
 mentovarsi." The fact is, that Bombinus followed Parsons' notes now at 
 Stonyhurst, while Bartoli had only the collection of Parsons' letters at Rome 
 and the printed lives of Campion to refer to. 
 
 36, Balbinus. Miscellanea historica regni Bohemia;. Praga; 1679-88. 
 
APPENDIX. 355 
 
 fol. 13 vols. Gives also a few useful i)artioulars, which liavc boon adopted 
 in the preceding pages. 
 
 37. Schmidl. Historia Societatis Jesu, Provinc. Eohcmionsis. Pars prima. 
 Prague, 1747. Contains a chronicle of Campion's life at Prague, and some 
 of his letters not to be found elsewhere. Those were taken from the archives 
 of the College at Prague. 
 
 These, I think, are all the original printed sources for Campion's life. 
 The accounts given of him b)' Alegambe, De Mortilius lUust. p. 79 ; Mathias 
 Tanner, Soc. Jes. Militans ; Spondanus, Annals ; Eichard Verstegan, Thea- 
 trum Crudelitatum H,T2reticorum nostri temporis, 4to, Antv. 1587 ; Fiorimon 
 de Raymond, L'Histoire de la naissance, progres, et decadence de I'heresie de 
 oe siecle, 1611, 8vo ; Cornelius Hazart, S.J., Kerkelycke Historie van de 
 Gheheele Werelt, Antw. 1609 (at vol. iii. p. 247, begins the History of 
 England, illustrated with fine portraits of More, Fisher, Pole, Forest, Queen 
 Mary, Margaret Middleton, Parsons, Campion, H. Garnet, Charles I., Morse, 
 Charles II.) ; Sacchini, Hist. S.J. pt. iv. lib. viii. p. 203, &c., pt. v. lib. i. 
 p. 31, &c., are all at second-hand. 
 
 Tlie following is a list of Cnmpion's own ivorks. 
 
 1. The History of Ireland, written in 1509. A Ms. copy of it, dated 1571, 
 was given by Henry Duke of Norfolk in 1078 to the library of the Heralds' 
 College, London (No. 37). It was first published by Richard Stanihurst in 
 Holinshed's Chronicles, 1587 ; then by Sir James Ware, Kt. in his History 
 of Ireland, Dublin, 103.3, fol. 
 
 2. Narratio Divortii Henrici VIII., Regis Anglias, ab TJxore et ab Eccle- 
 sia ; written probably about the same time, first printed at p. 733 of Harpes- 
 field's Ecclesiastical History of England, edited by Richard Gibbon. Douai, 
 1622. 
 
 3. Letter to the Council, and Challenge, &c. 
 
 4. Decern Rationes, &c. 
 
 A. Editions : 
 
 1. Princeps, Stonor Park, 1581. 
 
 2. Roma3, apud Franciscum Zanettum, 1582. 12mo. pp. 80. 
 
 3. (With Whitaker's Answer), Antwerpia:, 1582. 8vo. 
 
 4. (With an account of his life and martyrdom by his pupil Robert 
 
 Turner), Ingoldstadii, Sartorius, 1584. 12mo. 
 
 5. Rom^, Bonfadini e Diani. 1584. 8vo. pp. 88. 
 
 6. Herbipoli, 1589. 12mo. 
 
 7. (As 3.) Lichc-e Solomorum, Kezelius, 1001. 8vo. 
 
 8. Paris, Rezi5, 1001. 24mo. 
 
 9. Cracoviaj, And. Petricovius, 1005. 24mo. 
 
 10. Cadonii, 1616. 
 
 11. PragEe, Percle, 1092. 12mo. 
 
 12. Changed into Quinquaginta Rationes et Motiva .... authore 
 
 Edmundo Campiano. Col. Agripp. Metternich, 1710. I2mo. 
 
 B. Also in the following collections : 
 
 1. Concertatio Ecclesire Catholi. (See last section, Nos. 18 and 29.) 
 
 2. Tres gravissimi perpetuas C^ath. Fidei constantia? testes, Ter- 
 
356 APPENDIX. 
 
 tullianus .... Vincentius Liriniensis .... Edm. Campianus 
 .... qviibus BGoessit brevis auctoris Vita et Epistolie. Colon. 
 Mylius, 1591. 8vo. 
 
 3. The same work, Rorschachii. SclinellandCrasebomiug, 1C08. 8vo. 
 
 i. The same, without Tertullian. Colon. Birkmann, 1600. 12mo. 
 
 5. Doctrina; Jesuitioje praacipua capita. RupelliE, 1585. 8vo. 
 
 (Tom. ii. p. 1.) 
 
 6. PrEescriptionum adv. Hereticos tractat. viii. edit, a Johan. 
 
 Calvino. Mogunti.-e, 1002, p. 638. 
 Also in the various editions of Campion's Opuscula, for which see 
 below. 
 C. Translations : 
 
 French. Paris, Gabriel Chappuis, 1601. 12mo. 
 Paris, Guillemot, 1612. Bvo. 
 Trevoux et Paris, Boudot, 1701. 12mo. 
 Paris, Delasseux, 1737. 8vo, and 1743. 
 And in the Abbe Migne's Demonstrations Mang cliques, 
 German. Ingoldstadt, 1583. 4to. 
 
 Coin, 1600. 12mo. 
 Flemish. Antwerpen, 1592. 8vo. 
 
 Loven, s.d. 
 Dutch. Munster, 1646 and 1669. 
 English. London, 1606 and 1687. 
 Polish. Wilna, 1584. Tr. by P. Skarga. 
 Eokn, 1584. 
 5. Edmundi Campiani Orationes, Epistola?, &c. Ingoldstadii, apud Wil- 
 lerum, 1002. In 8vo. Edited by Robert Turner. 
 
 Opuscula omnia, nunc primum e Ms. edita. Paris, ex off. Nivel- 
 
 liana, sump. Sebast. Cramoisy, 1018. In 16mo, pp. 476 ; with Life (100 pp.). 
 Tr. from the Italian by E. Turner. 
 
 ■ Opuscula. Pisa, 1G18. 
 
 Reprint of the Paris edition, Mussiponti, ap. Sebast. Cramoisy, Seren. 
 
 Duois et Universitatis typog. juratus, 1622. 16mo, pp. 476. 
 
 Mediolani, 1625. 16mo. 
 
 ■ Decern Rationes . . . et alia opuscula ejus selecta, auctiori editione. 
 
 Antwerp, Moretus, 1631. ]2mo, pp. 460. The most ample and correct edition, 
 by P. Silvester Petra-Sancta. It contains : Decem Rationes (1581); Nar- 
 ratio Divortii (1569 ?) ; Oratio de B. V. M. ; Oratio de S. Wenceslao ; Oratio 
 de Juvene Academico ; Oratio in funere Mariai Cardonas ; Oratio de laudibus 
 SoripturEe S. ; Oratio habita Oxonii coram Regina Eliz. ; Epistolte Henrico 
 Vaux, Oxon. July 28, 1570 ; Richardo Stanihurst, Oxfoi-d, Dec. 1, 1570 ; 
 Jacobo Stanihurst, Purvey, March 20, 1571 ; Richardo Stanihurst, same 
 date ; Richardo Cheney, Ep. Gloucest., Nov. 1, 1571 ; Novitiis S.J., Bruna;, 
 Feb. 20, 1577; Gregorio Martino, July 10, 1577; eidem, July 17, 1579; 
 cuidam Patri S.J., April 30, 1580 ; P. Everardo Mercuriano S.J. propos. 
 gen., Nov. 1581 ; Traotatus de Imitatione Rhetorica, 1574. 
 
 Besides these works he wrote a Chronologia Universalis, mentioned by 
 Gregory Martin in the verses on his life, Bridgewater, f. 66 v° ; a play (1577) 
 on the Sacrifice of Abraham, in which the pathos of Abraham's part was 
 much admired (Varus, Hist, of the College of Prague, p. 190) ; and another 
 the same year on King Saul (see above, p. 82) ; the famous Tragoedia Am- 
 
APPENDIX. 357 
 
 brosiana, 1578 (see above, p. 90), which can no longer be found in the 
 archives of his college at Prague ; the discourse De Juvene Aoademioo, which 
 he composed at Dublin, and was probably different from that printed in his 
 Opuscula. 
 
 Among the Stonyhurst Mss. may be found his oration on Sir Thomas 
 White (see above, p. 7) ; several letters, the first copies of them in his own 
 handwriting, all of which may be found in their proper places in the fore- 
 going pages ; and a folio vol. of " Loci Communes Theologiei," said to be 
 in his handwriting. There are also some fragments of dramatic poems ; for 
 lie seems to have written several plays for his scholars at Prague. They 
 are : 1, a conference between Doctor Ironicus and Discipulus, something in 
 the manner of Swift's advice to servants ; and 2, another Dialogue between 
 Stratooles discipulus et Eubulus prajceptor. I have attempted to translate, 
 as literally as I can, part of the opening monologue of Stratocles. 
 
 " Oft have I seen and heard, and oftener read. 
 The various torments and the monstrous pains 
 Which hangmen upon felons use to spend ; 
 But, Lord, in sooth, there never was such cark. 
 No rack, no thumbscrew, nor no gallows-tree. 
 No torture of Mezence or Phalaris, 
 Could ever equal the racked student's toils. 
 They, sure,' of mortals are the wretchedest ; 
 So sad a people walks not the wide earth. 
 In few years cobblers may learn tailoring ; 
 Butchers keep sheep ; and painters how to cook; 
 Potters make kettles ; colliers catch fish ; 
 Glaziers turn oilmen, oilmen usurers ; 
 Fullers to beadles, furriers to thieves ; 
 In brief space these become most learned craftsmen. 
 Life is too brief for us to learn our craft ; 
 When cruel death comes knocking at our door, 
 Then first we catch a glimpse of wisdom afar. 
 And wistfully we yearn for longer life. 
 Life's feast is done, but none has fed his fiU. 
 We rail at Nature, our hard stepmother ; 
 Why gave she not, instead of sixty years, 
 A good six hundred to be ill bestowed ? 
 Full fifteen years and more, I think, have gone 
 Since first my father packed me off to school. 
 All the while learning, I know less than nothing I 
 A pretty joke — seven years in a single class ! 
 Four forms I've worn out, simply sitting on 'em. 
 Our master Whippy was u whipping man : 
 Often I could not sit, so waled was I, 
 All my poor little carcass chopped about. 
 Each waU could tell its tale of wails and cries — 
 The blessed first-fruits of the scholar's life. 
 When grammar's done we're turned to poetry. 
 There ne'er was damneder rubbish : mounts and founts, 
 Divine Apollo, and the Muses nine : 
 
358 APPENDIX. 
 
 From these flow down the honey'd rills of verse 
 
 In thrice three hundred rhythms. ye gods ! 
 
 Five hundred wagons would not hold the baggage 
 
 Of lies, which (hey call plots, and similes, 
 
 And fooleries infinite. Here, too, I stuck 
 
 For years in tasks too hard for Hercules. 
 
 Calliope, whom they call maid, although 
 
 Hers was the well-eared womb whence Khesus rose — 
 
 Calliope, ten thousand times invoked. 
 
 Was deaf to me, and I'll be deaf to her ; 
 
 I would not budge an inch to save her life. 
 
 Four years I spent at rhetoric, and my gains 
 
 Are easy counted, for their sum is naught. 
 
 There I beheld exordiums good store. 
 
 And perorations past all numbering. 
 
 But to be brief ; I then went on to logic, 
 
 Confounding solecisms with syllogisms. 
 
 What then ? Am I the first to use this figure ? 
 
 No ; Paris first produced this mode of speech. 
 
 Now I've been ten years in philosophy — 
 
 Add up my figures, if you doubt my summing : 
 
 By Jove ! I almost fancy that I lie, 
 
 Or here or there. This study vexed me sore, 
 
 And drew the frequent tear from my red eyne. 
 
 Oft did I watch out half the night, and oft 
 
 I've gone to bed by daylight. O'er and o'er 
 
 I read and read again the self-same page ; 
 
 'Twas drawing water from a dried-up well. 
 
 Infernal Dis, forget not Aristotle I 
 
 Forgive him not his writings dark and hard ; 
 
 He never meant they should be understood ! 
 
 I'd heat his brains to a jelly ; for my brains 
 
 Are worse than jelly, puzzling over his. 
 
 There's nothing sillier than these philosophers. 
 
 Fellows who brag they all things understand 
 
 In heaven and earth and in the depth beneath ; 
 
 They cannot tell how oft my father whipped me 
 
 For playing truant, nor what nurse they sucked—" 
 
 And so on. Of course the pra'ceptor rebukes him, and proves that 
 " Discere fit carum, quamvis primo sit amarum." 
 
 There is nothing much in the piece ; but it illustrates the charming rela- 
 tions which existed between Campion and his pupils, and gives us a glimpse 
 of one of the reasons why he was so much beloved. The PP. de Backer, 
 in their Bibliotb^que des Ecrivains de la Compagnie de Jesus, from whom I 
 have copied the list of Campion's works, print a short " Carmen, quo litanias 
 de Beata Maria breviler et pie complexus est." It consists of a dozen penta- 
 meter lines without any hexameters, and certainly merits no praise but that 
 of brevity and piety, 
 
APPENDIX. 359 
 
 VI. 
 
 Manuscript Sources. 
 
 I come now to the Ms. sources for Campioa's life which I have used in 
 the foregoing pages. First come the Stonyhurst Mas., containing the frag- 
 ment of a life, ending about November 15S0, by Father Parsons, written in 
 1594, very full and satisfactory as far as it goes ; next a series of notes by 
 the same hand, arranged as heads or analyses of the chapters of a whole 
 life — these are the Conimeidariu that were lent to Bombinus, and which he 
 follows implicitly, even when Parsons' memory failed him, and is therefore 
 taxed with carelessness by Bartoli ; next an abundance of documents in the 
 British Museum, the State-Paper Office, and the Privy-Council Books, to all 
 which I have referred when I have quoted them. I have also consulted the 
 correspondence of the French ambassador in London, now in the imperial 
 library at Paris ; but I failed to find the letter wherein, according to Par- 
 sons, he informed his court that no such scene as Campion's martyrdom had 
 happened since the apostolic age. I have found a few papers in the Archives 
 and Burgundian library at Brussels (e.ff. Ms. No. 155'J4) ; but the Spanish 
 ambassador's letters from London for the year 1581 are not there in the 
 proper series. They may be at Simancas, or they may be at Vienna. Mendoza 
 certainly wrote about Campion ; but in all that I have seen of his writings 
 at the period of Campion's imprisonment, trial, and death, there is not a word 
 about him — no protest, no expression of indignation, nothing, in fact, which 
 we should have anticipated from his known relations with Parsons. But 
 what I have seen is only a small part of what he must have written. 
 
 In the archives of the Grocers' Company of London are some notices of 
 Campion (see above, p. 20) ; and the documents printed by Balbinus and 
 Schmidl still exist in Ms. at Prague, in the album of the Noviciate, and in 
 a, " Historia fundationis collegii Pragensis, auc. Georgio Varo, Anglo." 
 
NOTES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. (pp. 1-22). 
 
 a. Autograph of Campion at Prague, apud Balbinum, Miscellanea His- 
 torica, Decad. 1, lib. 4. 
 
 b. Ms. in the State Archives, Bruges, Melanges, torn. iv. no. 52. 
 
 c. Gregory Martin, apud Bridgwater, fol. 67. 
 
 d. Stonyhurst Ms. Collect. S.J., vol. i. p. 149. 
 6. Campion apud Balbinum, ut sup. 
 
 f. They were given back to the College in 1G02 by White's niece, Mrs. 
 Leach. 
 
 g. S.P.O. Dom. July 1571, nos. 11, 12, 13. 
 
 h. Leicester's Commonwealth, p. 36, ed. 1641. He said she was pitifully 
 murdered, when he meant slain. 
 
 i. Stonyhurst Collec. S.J, torn. ii. p. 586. 
 
 j. In his last letter to the college White wrote, " I have me recommended 
 unto you even from the bottom of my heart, desiring the Holy Ghost may 
 be among you until the end of the world, and desiring Almighty God that 
 every one of you may love one another as brethren ; and I shall desire you 
 all to apply to your learning. . . . And if any strife or variance do arise 
 among you, for God's sake to pacify it as much as ye may." 
 
 k. Campion, Narratio Divert. Hen. VIII. 
 
 1. Heylin, Eeformation, ii. p. 174 ; Strype, Parker, p. 125 ; Burghley's 
 Execution of Justice, and Watson's Important Considerations, ICOl. 
 
 m. S.P.O. Dom. Dec. 1566, nos. 54, 55, 56. 
 
 n. S.P.O. Dom. Feb. 20, 1570, enclosure iv. 
 
 o. Castelnau, letter of Nov. 1580 ; Ms. Paris, Bib. Imp. Fonds Harlay, no. 
 228, vol. i. p. 368. 
 
 p. In Boethii de Cousol. lib. i. met. 2. 
 
 q. Leicester's Commonwealth, p. 10. 
 
 r. Bombinus, cap. ii. 
 
 s. Decem Eationes, ratio 5. 
 
 t. S.P.O. Dom. Oct. 15 and 20, 1568. 
 
 u. Henry More, Hist. S.J. Prov. Anglic, lib. iii. § 5-10. 
 
 V. Lawrence Vaux, S.P.O. Dom. Nov. 2, 1566. 
 
 w. More, ut sup. lib. iii. § 5, et lib. viii. § 3 ; Cardinal Allen, S.P.O. Dom. 
 1592, Dec. 12. * 
 
 X. Cont. Aux. 12. 
 
 y. Cheney, in his Certificate of Recusants, Oct. 24, 1577 (S.P.O. Dom.), 
 excuses those "supposed to favour Popery" as .absenting themselves from 
 
3G2 NOTES. 
 
 church on the ground of sickness or fear of process for debt, while he in- 
 dicted the Puritans as wilful recusants. The Council peremptorily ordered 
 him to proceed against the Popish recusants ; whereupon, Nov. 20, he sent 
 up a short list, got up, he said, by diligent inquiry. 
 
 u. Heath's Account of the Grocers' Company, p. 72. 
 
 aa. Life of Philip Howard, ed. by the late Duke of Norfolk, p. '.). 
 
 bb. Campion to G. Martin. See p. 80. 
 
 CHAPTER II. (pp. 23-52). 
 
 1. Campion to Hen. Vaux, Opusc. Antw. 1631, p. 341. 
 
 2. Harmonia, sive catena dialectica in Porphyrianas Constitutiones. 
 Lond. 1570. Fol. 
 
 3. Camp. Opusc. 347. 
 
 4. A.D. 1320, Camp. Hist, of Ireland ; Ancient Ii-ish Histories, 1809, vol. i. 
 p. 125. 
 
 5. Paquot, on K. Stanihurst, asserts that James the father renounced his 
 religion, and died Dec. 27, 1 J73, ajt. 51. 
 
 6. Brady, Bishop of Meath, denounces '' all the lawyers as thwarters and 
 hinderers of the Reformation." S.P.O. Ireland, Feb. C, 1570. 
 
 7. Camp. Opusc. p. 2(52. It was spoken in a stuiiuary, i c. Douai, p. 2'..I7. 
 
 8. lb. p. 140. 
 
 9. S.P.O. Ireland, Eliz. vol. xx. no. 'I'd. 
 
 10. See above, p. 12. 
 
 11. Hist, of Ireland, c. iii. 
 
 12. lb. cap. V. 
 
 13. In like manner Shane O'Neil wrote to Q. Eliz. Feb. 8, 1561 (S.P.O. 
 Ireland) that " his father never refucid no child that any woman named 
 to be his." 
 
 14. Yet Rokeby wrote to the Lord Deputy in January 1570 : " Such as 
 do come to us we cause to cut their glybbez, which we do think the first 
 token of obedience;" and in June 1573 Perrot caused "all the Irishry to 
 forego their glybbes." 
 
 15. Hist. Ireland, c. vi. 
 
 16. lb. 
 
 17. lb. c. X. p. 43. 
 
 18. lb. c. XV. p. 73. 
 
 19. lb. book 2, c. ix. p. 167. 
 
 20. Stanihur.st's Preface to Campion's Hist., in Holinshed's Chronicles. 
 
 21. Hist. Ireland, book 2, c. x. p. 105. 
 
 22. lb. p. 107. 
 
 23. La Mothe Fenelon, depOches 158 and 150, Jan. 6 and Feb. 12. 1571. 
 
 24. S.P.O. Ireland, Feb. 12, 1571. 
 
 25. Camp. Opusc. p. 351. 
 
 26. lb. p. 357. 
 
 27. Hist. Ireland, book 1, e. xiii. p. 56. 
 
 28. Camp. Opusc. p. 303. 
 
 29. Camp, apud Hen. More ; Hist. S.J. lib. ii. § 4. 
 
 30. See note 20. 
 
 31. For Story's Life see Bamlhr, March 1857, p. 183. 
 
NOTES. 3G3 
 
 32. Holinshed, 1587, vol. ii. p. 1180. 
 
 33. Paquot's Dictionary of Belgian Authors, on Allen, corrected by a Ms. 
 of Alban Butler, Brussels, no. 15, 594. 
 
 34. Allen, Apology for Seminaries, Mons. 1581, c. 3. 
 
 35. Ap. 20, 1571 ; Strype. Parker, Appendix. 
 
 36. May 1'J, Convocation Journal. 
 
 37. Collier, History of Clmrch of England, book vi. p. 531. 
 
 38. Wood, Athenie Oxon. ed. Bliss, vol. ii. p. 7'J2. Goodman's Ms. has 
 been published by Mr. Brewer, London, 1839. 
 
 39. Decern Rationes, Ratio viii. Fuller (Church Hist. vol. iv.) also contra- 
 dicts Goodman's stoiy, on the authority of Mrs. Goldsborough, widow to 
 Bishop Goldsborough of Gloucester, who at a public entertainment avowed 
 that to her knowledge Cheney died a true and sincere Protestant. Strype 
 gives him a good character for hospitality and good husbandry of his tem- 
 poralities : he believed that no Council truly general could err ; on this he 
 built his faith in- the Real Presence. He also considered the Fathers as the 
 authorised interpreters of Scripture. . Camden calls him Luthero addictis- 
 simus. 
 
 40. Here is Campion's Letter : 
 
 Mmund Campion's Episile to Hicliard Cheneij, Blslwp of Gloucester, 
 icritteiifrom Douai In 1572. 
 
 " It is not now as of old the dash of youth, or facility of pen, nor even a 
 dutiful regard of your favours, that makes me write to you. I used to 
 write from the mere abundance of my heart ; — a greater necessity has forced 
 me to write this letter. We have already been too long subservient to men's 
 years, to the times, to our hepes of glory ; at length let us say something 
 for the service of our soul. I beg you by your own natural goodness, by my 
 tears, even by the pierced side of Christ, to listen to me. There is no end 
 nor measure to my thinking of you ; and I never think of you without 
 being horribly ashamed, praying silently, and repeating the text of the 
 Psalm, Ab alienis, JDomine, payee servo tiio. What have I done ? It is writ- 
 ten, Videbas furem et currebas cum eo ; and again, Laudatur peccator in 
 desideriis suis, et impius benedicitur. So often was I with you at Glou- 
 cester, so often in your private chamber, so many hours have I spent in 
 your study and library, with no one near us, when I could have done this 
 business, and I did it not ; and what is worse, I have added flames to the 
 fever by assenting and assisting. And although you were superior to me 
 in your counterfeited dignity, in wealth, age, and learning ; and though I 
 was not bound to look after the physicking or dieting of your soul, yet 
 since you were of so easy and sweet a temper as in spite of your gray hairs 
 to admit me, young as I was, to familiar intercourse with you, to say what- 
 ever I chose, in all security and secrecy, whUe you imparted to me your 
 sorrows, and all the calumnies of the other heretics against you ; and since 
 like a father you exhorted me to walk straight and upright in the royal 
 road, to follow the steps of the Church, the councils and fathers, and to 
 believe that where there was a consensus of these there could be no spot of 
 falsehood, I am very angry with myself that I neglected to use such a beau- 
 tiful opportunity of recommending the faith through false modesty or culp- 
 able negligence, that I did not address with boldness one who was so near 
 to the kingdom of God, but that while I enjoyed your favour and renown I 
 
364 NOTES. 
 
 promoted rather the Bhadowy notion of my own honour than your eternal 
 good. 
 
 " But as I have no longer the occasion that I had of persuading you face 
 to face, it remains that I should send my words to you to witness my regard, 
 my care, my anxiety for you, known to Him to whom I make my daily 
 prayer for your salvation. Listen, I beseech you, listen to a few words. 
 You are sixty years old, more or less, of uncertain health, of weakened 
 body, the hatred of heretics, the pity of Catholics, the talk of the people, 
 the sorrow of your friends, the joke of your enemies. Against your con- 
 science you falsely usurp the name of a bishop, by your silence you advance 
 a pestilential sect which you love not, stricken with anathema, cut ofE from 
 the body into which alone the graces of Christ flow, you are deprived of the 
 benefit of all prayers, sacrifices, and sacraments. Who do you think your- 
 self to be? "What do you expect? "What is your life? "Wherein lies your 
 hope? In the heretics hating you so implacably, and abusing you so 
 roundly ? Because of all heresiarchs you are the least crazy 1 Because you 
 confess the living presence of Christ on the altar, and the freedom of man's 
 will? Because you persecute no Catholics in your diocese? Because you 
 are hospitable to your townspeople, and to good men? Because you plunder 
 not your palace and lands as your brethren do? Surely. these things will 
 avail much, if you return to the bosom of the Church, if,you suffer even 
 the smallest persecution in common with those of the household of faith, or 
 join your prayers with theirs. But now whilst you are a stranger and an 
 enemy, whilst like a base deserter you fight under an alien flag, it is in vain 
 to attempt to cover your crimes with the cloak of virtues. You shall gain 
 nothing, except perhaps to be tortured somewhat less horribly in the ever- 
 lasting fire than Judas or Luther or Zwinglius, or than those antagonists of 
 yours, Cooper, Humphrey, and Samson. "What signifies the kind of death ? 
 Death is the same, whether you are thrown from a tall rock into the sea, or 
 pushed from a low bank into the river; whether a man is killed by irou or 
 rope, by rack or bullet, by knife or axe ; whether pounded by stones or by 
 clubs, whether roasted with fire or boiled in scalding water. "What is the 
 use of fighting for many articles of the faith, and to perish for doubting of 
 a few ? To escape shipwreck and to fall by the dagger ? To flee from the 
 plague and die of famine ? To avoid the flames and be suffocated with the 
 smoke ? He believes no one article of the faith who refuses to believe any 
 single one. For as soon as he knowingly oversteps the bounds of the 
 Church, which is the pillar and ground of the truth, to which Christ Jesus, 
 the highest, first, and most simple truth, the source, light, leader, line, and 
 rule of the faithful, reveals all these articles,— whatever else of Catholic 
 doctrine he retains, yet if he obstinately depraves one dogma, that which he 
 holds he holds not by orthodox faith, without which it is impossible to 
 please God, but by his own reason, his own conviction. In vain do you 
 defend the religion of Catholics, if you hug only that which you like, and 
 cut off all that seems not right in your eyes. There is but one plain known 
 road, not enclosed by your palings or mine, not by private judgment, but 
 by the severe laws of humility and obedience ; when you wander from this 
 you are lost. You must be altogether within the house of God, within the 
 walls of salvation, to be sound and safe from all injury ; if you wander and 
 walk abroad ever so little, if you carelessly thrust hand or foot out of the 
 ship, if you stir up ever so smaU a mutiny in the crew, vou shall be thrust 
 
NOTES. 365 
 
 forth, — the door is shut, the ocean roars, you are undone. He who gather- 
 eth not ivith Me, saith the Saviour, scattereth. Jerome explains. He who is 
 not Christ's is Antichrist's. You are not stupid enough to follow the heresy 
 of the Saoramentarians ; you are not mad enough to be in all things a slave 
 of Luther's faction, now condemned in the general councils of Constance 
 and Trent, which you yourself think authoritative. And yet you stick in 
 the mire of your imagination, and wish to seem to hit the bird in the eye, 
 and to sit as a friendly arbitrator in the petty disputes of your brethren. 
 Do you remember the sober and solemn answer which you gave me, when 
 three years ago we met in the house of Thomas Button at Shireburu, where 
 we were to dine? We were talking of St. Cyprian. I objected to you, in 
 order to discover your real opinions, that synod of Carthage which erred 
 about the baptism of infants. Tou answered truly, that the Holy Spirit 
 was not promised to one province, but to the Church ; that the universal 
 Church is represented in a full council ; and that no doctrine can be pointed 
 out, about which such a council ever erred. Acknowledge your own 
 weapons which you used against the adversaries of the mystery of the 
 Eucharist. Tou cry up the Christian world, the assemblies of bishops, the 
 guardians of the deposit, that is, the ancient faith ; these you commend to 
 the people as the interpreters of Scripture ; most rightly do you ridicule and 
 refute the impudent figment of certain thieves and robbers. Now what do 
 you say 1 Here you have the most celebrated fathers and patriarchs and 
 apostolic men, collected at Trent, who have all united to contend for the 
 ancient faith of the fathers. Legates, prelates, cardinals, bishops, deputies, 
 doctors, of diverse nations, of mature age, rare wisdom, princely dignity, 
 wonderful learning. There were collected Italians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, 
 Portuguese, Greeks, Poles, Hungarians, Flemings, Illyrians, many Ger- 
 mans, some Irish, Croats, Moravians,— even England was not unrepre- 
 sented. All these, whilst you live as you are living, anathematise you, hiss 
 you out, excommunicate you, abjure you. What reason can you urge? 
 Especially now you have declared war against your colleagues, why do 
 you not make full submission, without any exceptions, to the discipline of 
 these fathers 1 See you aught in the Lord's Supper that they saw not, dis- 
 cussed not, resolved not ? Dare you equal yourself by even the hundredth 
 part with the lowest theologians of this council? I have confidence in 
 your discretion and modesty ; you dare not. You are surpassed, then, by 
 your judges in number, value, weight, and in the serious and clear testi- 
 mony of the whole world. Once more consult your own heart, my poor 
 old friend ; give me back your old beauty, and those excellent gifts which 
 have been hitherto smothered in the mud of dishonesty. Give yourself to 
 your mother, who begot you to Christ, nourished you, consecrated you ; 
 acknowledge how cruel and undutiful you have been; let confession be 
 the salve of your sin. You have one foot in the grave ; you must die, per- 
 haps directly, certainly in very short time, and stand before that tribunal, 
 where you will hear, Gice an account of thy stewariUhqj ; and unless while 
 you are on the way you make it up quickly and exactly with the adversary 
 of sin, it shall be required to the last farthing, and you shall be driven 
 miserably from the land of the living by Him whom you will never be able 
 to pay. Then those hands which have conferred spurious orders on so 
 many wretched youths shall for very pain scratch and tear your sulphurous 
 body; that impure mouth, defiled with falsehood and schism, shall be 
 
366 NOTES. 
 
 filled with fire and worms and the breath of tempests. That high pomp of 
 your flesh, your episcopal throne, your yearly revenues, spacious palace, 
 honourable greetings, band of servants, elegant furniture, — that affluence 
 for which the poor ignorant people esteem you so happy, shall be exchanged 
 for fearful wailings, gnashing of teeth, stink, filth, dirt, and chains. There 
 shall the spirits of Calvin and Zwinglius, wliom you now oppose, afflict you 
 for ever, with Arius, Sabellius, Nestorius, Wiclif, Luther, — with the devil 
 and hia angels you shall suffer the pains of darkness, and belch out blas- 
 phemies. Spare yourself, be merciful to your soul, spare my grief. Your 
 ship is wrecked, your merchandise lost ; nevertheless, seize the plank of 
 penance, and come even naked to the port of the Church. Fear not but 
 that Christ will preserve you with His hand, run to meet you, kiss you, and 
 put on you the white garment; saiuts and angels will sing for joy. Take 
 no thought for your life; He will take thought for you who gives the 
 beasts their food, and feeds the young ra"\'ens that call upon Him. If you 
 but made trial of our banishment, if you but cleared your conscience, and 
 came to behold and consider the living examples of piety which are shown 
 here by bishops, priests, friars, masters of colleges, rulers of provinces, lay 
 people of every age, rank, and sex, I believe that you would give up six 
 hundred Englands for the opportunity of redeeming the residue of your 
 time by tears and sorrow. But if for divers reasons you are hindered from 
 going freely whither you would, at least free your mind from its grievous 
 chains ; and wliether you remain, or whether you flee, set your body any 
 task rather than let its groasnes^ oppress you, aud banish 3'ou to the depths 
 of hell. God knows those that are His, and is near to all that call upon 
 Him in truth. Pardon me, my venerated old friend, for these just reproaches 
 and for the heat of my love. Suffer me to hate that deadly disease, let me 
 ward off the imminent danger of so noble a man and so dear a friend, with 
 any dose, however bitter. And now, if Christ gives grace, and if you do 
 not refuse, my hopes of you are equal to my love ; and I love you as pass- 
 ing excellent in nature, in learning, in gentleness, in goodness, and as 
 doubly dear to me for your many kindnesses and courtesies. If you recover 
 your health, you make me happy for ever ; if you despise me, this letter is 
 my witness ; God judge between you and me, your blood be on yourself. 
 Farewell. — From him that most desires your salvation, 
 
 " Edmund Campion." 
 Balbinus (Miscell. Decad. i. lib. 4, p. 19G) says that Cheney kept this 
 letter among his archives, and prized it as his chief treasure. 
 
 41. Ann,"ils of Douai, by Alban Butler, Brussels Ms. I'lolIK 
 
 42. Opusc. 328. The same story is told in the Hist, of Ireland. 
 
 43. Allen, (1) Epistola de Civitato Deventriensi rcddita suo legitime regi 
 per illustrem virum Gul. Stanleium. Cracovia?, 1588. 12mo. It had previ- 
 ously been published in English. (2) An Admonition to the Nobility and 
 People of England and Ireland concerning the present Wars made for the 
 execution of bis Holiness' sentence, by the high and mighty King Catholic of 
 Spain. See Tierney's Dod, vol. iii. p. 29, note. 
 
 CHAPTER III. (pp. 5i-72). 
 
 44. See below, p. 201. 
 
 45. Camp. Hist. Ireland, p. 192. 
 
NOTES. 367 
 
 46. lb. p. 175. 
 
 47. lb. pp. 93 and 95. 
 
 48. lb. p. 80. 
 
 49. Hadrian wrote to Henry : "We leave you entirely to your own in- 
 clination, and grant you full liberty to make a descent upon that island, 
 in order to enlarge the borders of the Church, to check the progress of 
 Immorality, to improve the natives in virtue, and promote their spiritual 
 happiness. And here we commit you to the conduct of your own wisdom, 
 charging the people of the country to submit to your jurisdiction, and re- 
 ceive you as their sovereign lord. Provided always that the rights of the 
 Church are inviolably preserved, and the Peter-pence duly paid. For in- 
 deed it is certain that all the islands which are enlightened by Christ, and 
 have submitted to the doctrines of Christianity, are unquestionably St. 
 Peter's right, and belong to the jurisdiction of the holy Koman Church" 
 (Matthew Paris, Hist. Ang. p. 95 ; Baronius, Annal. ad an. 1159). In like 
 manner Boniface YIII. claimed Scotland from Edward I. in 1300, on the 
 ground that that realm "did and doth still belong in full right to the 
 Church of Rome" (see the Barons' reply in 1301, apud Kymer. Foedera, i. 2, 
 893). 
 
 50. Johannes Salib. Metalogicus, lib. iv. cap. 42. 
 
 51. It was the conception of Gregory VII. to make the Popes the feudal 
 superiors of all the monarchs of Christendom : this he sought to effect by 
 persuading the different kings to do suit and service to him for their crowns. 
 The letter in which William the Conqueror, who, more than any prince of 
 the time, was indebted to the Pope for his dominion, refuses this request 
 may be seen in Lanfranc (0pp. ed. Migne, p. 804) ; and St. Gregory's reply 
 is preserved in his register (lib. vii. ep. 23, an. 1080). However, John made 
 the surrender ; and in consequence Innocent IV. %vas able to write about 
 Henry III. of England, "Nonne rex Anglorum noster est vassallus, et ut 
 plus dicam mancipium ; qui possumus cum nutu nostro incarcerare et igno- 
 miniaj mancipare ?" (Mattb. Paris, p. 872.) Edward II. also acknow- 
 ledged himself to be the " Pope's man" (Eaynal, ad an. 131 G, no. 24). But 
 Eiohard II. declared that the king had never held England in fee from the 
 Pope. 
 
 Innocent III., however, in his Decretale NovU, and Boniface VIII. in 
 the BuU UTiam sanctam, founded the claim not on the feudal system, but 
 on divine right. A specimen of the usual way of asserting this right may 
 be seen in a brief of Pius II. to the Emperor Frederick, May 10, 14C3 : 
 " Cum Christus Dominus noster sit Eex regum et Dominus dominantium, 
 necesse existit omnes Christianos reges de ipsius regno esse, quod est univer- 
 salis Ecclesia, cui nos, licet immeriti, ut ejusdem vicarius, pricsidemus." 
 
 As Gregory Vll.'s claim seems to have sprung from his clear view of the 
 necessity of a political head for Christendom, ho the latest claims for the 
 Papal dictature over princes were founded on its necessity for the independ- 
 ence and free action of the Pope as spiritual Head of the Church. This 
 was Bellarmine's theory. The divines of the sixteenth century tried to adapt 
 the old system to the changed state of society as a means of protecting 
 religion from absolute monarchs, whether Catholic, like Henry III. of 
 France or Protestant, like Elizabeth. Hence they attributed the sovereignty 
 to the people, subject only to the divine law, which the Pope administers 
 and expounds. This dictatorship was thus reduced to a supposed delegation 
 
368 NOTES. 
 
 of ultimate sovereign authority into his hands from the masses of Christian 
 people, from whom the monarchs derived their titles. 
 
 None of these three systems ever met with complete success. The second 
 was especially unfortunate. The result of Boniface VIII. trying to realise 
 the theory of Innocent III. was that, as Dante says, Christ was once more 
 insulted and buffeted in His Vicar, who was taken prisoner, and died of a 
 broken heart ; while the Papacy went into the French captivity, and began 
 to be subject to nationalising influences, which led to a corresponding but 
 antagonistic nationalising of the various churches. Gallicanism, the germa 
 of Anglicanism, and the tendency to schism date from that event. 
 
 The last theory, which supposed the Papal right to be founded on 
 popular delegation, was first exhibited in all its simplicity by Pius VI., 
 whose journey to Vienna was a clear appeal to the people against the 
 Emperor, and influences the utterances of all those prelates who assure us 
 that the temporal power of the Pope stands on the suffrages of two hun- 
 dred millions of Catholics, 
 
 52. Campion, History of Ireland, p. 110. 
 
 53. Campion, Opusc. p. 187-8. 
 
 54. Hall's Chronicle, 727, 728. Sir Thomas More's opinion referred to 
 in the preceding paragraph is found in his conversation with Rich, — State 
 Trials, vol. i. p. 387. 
 
 55. The Bull was dated Rome, at St. Mark's, anno 1535, the first year of 
 Paul III. 
 
 56. Barclay, De Pot. Papre, c. 40. " Vidi ego ante quinquaginta annos 
 in Scotia, cum staret adhuc regnum fide et religione integrum, Papaj Ro- 
 man! nomen (ita enim Scotice loquuntur, the Papc of Bonn;) tanta in vene- 
 ratione apud multitudinem fuisse, ut quicquid ab eo dictum factumve esse 
 narrabatur, oracali instar, et facti divini loco, ab omnibus haberetur." A 
 great and pregnant fact, showing by its collapse how worthless is devotion to 
 the person of the Pope without devotion to the idea which he represents. 
 
 57. See Tierney's Dod, vol. ii. p. 130, note. 
 
 58. These documents are printed in Tierney's Dod, vol. ii. Appendix. 
 
 59. Stapleton, Opera omnia, Paris, 1620. Vol. i. pp. 709, 710, 711. 
 
 60. This is true on the whole, in spite of the fact that a book of Sta- 
 pleton's pupil, Bellarmine, was for a short time placed in the limbo of the 
 Index for giving up the direct, and supporting only the indirect power over 
 princes; his proposition being, " Papam habere potestatem temporalem ni- 
 directe, et aliquo mode, id est, ratione suse apiritualis monarchia3 ; habere, 
 iuquam, summam potestatem etiam temporalem disponendi de temporalibus 
 rebus omnium Christianorum ;" thus restoring to the Pope obliquely and 
 indirectly all that he had taken away by denying the direct power ; and 
 this in spite of the maxim of law and morals, " quod directe fieri non per- 
 mittitur, id nee indirecte fieri potest." 
 
 61. Watson, Quodlibets, p. 200, asserts that the advisers of the Bull 
 were Harding, Stapleton, Morton, and Webbe — " simple men out of their 
 positive divinity, who did mightily overshoot themselves divers ways." 
 He says also that Bishop Watson was "exceedingly grieved when he heard 
 of" the Bull. 
 
 62. Sanders, De Visib. Monarchia. Fol. Louvain, 1571, p. 730. 
 
 63. Watson, Quodlibets, p. 262. " It is well known that the chief reasons 
 that moved Pius V. to yield unto them (Harding, Morton, &o.) were most 
 
NOTES. 3G9 
 
 falsely and surreptitiously suggested to his Holiness, and carried with them 
 very many absurdities ; as, forsooth, the Duke of Norfolk was a most sound 
 Catholic (which was false) ; all the realm would follow him (wliich was ab- 
 surd) ; the Pope's pleasure and censure once known to the Catholics, tliere 
 ■would be no resistance (which was ridiculous) ; besides this, a marriage 
 would follow, that would reform all and work wonders." 
 
 64. The following letter of Pius V. to Maximilian will show the part 
 which that prince took against the Bull. Elizabeth, who at once saw the 
 connection of the excommunication with the late insurrection, and feared 
 another and perhaps more effective strugi,'le to deprive her of her throne, 
 first sought to obtain a revocation of the sentence, and next, failing in this, 
 resolved to out off all communication between England and Rome. With 
 this view the first penal laws were framed. 
 
 " To our dearest son in Christ, Maximilian, King of Hungary and Bohemia, 
 Emperor elect of the Romans. 
 
 Pius PP. V. 
 " Our dearest son in Christ health and apostolical benediction. In what 
 your majesty does, you act, no doubt, with good intention and prudent 
 forethought. We ought not to judge otherwise of any Catholic prince, much 
 less of your majesty. Nevertheless, what your majesty requests of us in 
 your letter dated September 28, which only reached us yesterday, namely, 
 that we should revoke the sentence and excommunication against Eliza- 
 beth the pretended Queen of England, promulgated by us last year; it is a 
 matter of such a, kind, that though we should and do give your majesty 
 hearty thanks for your care of us and of the state of Christianitj', yet so 
 long as the aforesaid pretended cjueen remains separated from the body of 
 the Church, and from the communion of this Holy See, from which she 
 cut herself off, we do not think that we can anyhow revoke the sentence 
 and excommunication passed against her, which we published against her 
 at the demand of many good men and Catholics. Wliy she makes such a 
 stir about this sentence we cannot quite understand ; for if she thinks so 
 much of our sentence and excommunication, why does she not return to 
 the bosom of holy Mother Church, from which she went out? But if she 
 thinks it of no consequence, why does she make such a stir about it? 
 As for her threats and her hatred against us, we are so far from being 
 frightened at them, or from wishing to escape them, that if we could sa- 
 tisfy them by shedding our blood, we should do so with more joy and satis- 
 faction than we feel in our Pontificate, which we, although unworthy, have 
 received from Almighty God. But the condition of the times, urged with 
 such affection and prudence by your majesty, though it ought to have its 
 weight with all considerate men, yet witli us it ought ni5t to have such in- 
 fluence as to make us do anything offensive to God, or derogatory to the 
 majesty of this Holy See. As to not printing the published sentence against 
 the said pretended queen, your majesty understands that what is already 
 done, cannot be recalled or undone ; as for its not being printed afterwards, 
 that is altogether out of our hands. In other matters, whatever we can do 
 to please your majesty in the Lord we will never, as far as in us lies, omit 
 to give you proofs of our paternal affection. Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, 
 under the Fisherman's ring, 5 January 1571, in the fifth year of our Ponti- 
 ficate."* 
 
 » Theiner, Hi. 59C. 
 
 BB 
 
370 NOTES. 
 
 Camden says that the Pope secretly anathematised the Queen in 15C9, 
 but did not publish the Bull till the year after. It appears most likely that 
 the Bull of Pius V., dated Feb. 25, 15G9, before the rising in the North, was 
 not promulgated, but privately made known to Dr. Morton, who was sent 
 to inform the English of it. After the repression of the partial rebellion 
 thus excited, the Pope's English advisers seem to have attributed its failure 
 to the general ignorance of the existence of such a Bull ; whereupon sundry 
 copies were distributed, one of which was pasted on the gates of the Bishop 
 of London by Felton in 1570. Besides information of the Bull, Morton pro- 
 bably conveyed to the insurgent earls the letter of encouragement addressed 
 to them by the Pope, and printed in Sir John Throckmorton's -F«r</«?r Consi- 
 derations, p. 101, The Bull does not seem to have been printed till after the 
 date of Maximilian's letter. Sanders, De Schismate, vol. iii. p. 361, says that 
 the Council of Trent deliberated about excommunicating Elizabeth and de- 
 claring her a heretic, and was only prevented from doing so by the prayers 
 of the Emperor Ferdinand, who expected her to marry his son. 
 
 65. The Bull is printed in Camden's Elizabeth, an. 1570 (vol. i. p. 183) ; 
 Tierney's Dod, vol. iii. Appendix, p. ii. ; Sanders, De Schismate, lib. iii. &c. 
 
 66. Sanders, De Schismate Ang. lib. iii. p. 372. But Sanders says the 
 adversaries were really in a great fright, as was proved by their earnest 
 but vain endeavours to get the Bull cancelled. 
 
 67. William Barclay, De Pote.state Papre in Principes Christianos, c. xxvii. 
 p. 104, Hanovi;e, 1C12. It must bo noticed that Barclay is here only quoted 
 as a witness that the people did say thus, and did give these reasons for 
 refusing to obey the Bulls. 
 
 68. lb. c. XXX. pp. 115, lie. 
 
 69. That this Bull, and the fear lest the introduction of any future Bulls, 
 might lead to mischief, was the occasion of the penal laws, is shown by the 
 very title of the first of them, stat. 13 Eliz. c. 2, " An Act against the bring- 
 ing in and putting in execution of Bulls, Writings, or Instruments, and other 
 superstitious things from the See of Rome." 
 
 70. Barclay, ut sup. u. xxxi. p. 119 : " De postremis duobus Pontificibua 
 (Paul III. and Pius V.) ausim liquido affirmare (est enim orbi notissimum) 
 in caus^ eos fuisse perdenda3 religionis in Anglia, quod istani tam invi- 
 diosam et late patentem potestatem in regni illius principem et populum 
 sibi assumere et exercere conati sint. Quanto igitur rectius et sapientius 
 Clemens VIII., qui spirituali et paterna charitate et virtute nomini suo 
 idoneil nutantem rcgni Francioi in religione statum erigere ac stabilire 
 maluit, quam fastuosa et minace temporalis imperii authoritate conten- 
 dere?" By the year 1041 or 1042 Urban VIII. had become of the same mind 
 as Barclay (S.P.O. Italy, 1641.1CC5). Cardinal Borgia, on behalf of the 
 Spanish king, asked the Pope to excommunicate the kings of France and 
 Sweden, and declare himself for the Catholics ; but he replied, " What need 
 that we should declare ourselves for the Catholics ? Are wc not head of 
 the Catholic religion ? ... If your intention be that we should enter into 
 a war and league with you against France and Sweden, this kind of decla- 
 ration we will never make." . . . Then he gives his grounds for refusing to 
 excommunicate the king of France for his Swedish alliance. " This union 
 was on\j ad reilimefidam comimini^memTexationem, in which case it is ln%vfiil 
 to implore the aid of any whatsoever; and without wrong to Catholic reli- 
 gion, wherewith you (Spaniards) ivould serve yourselves as with a cloke to 
 
NOTES. 371 
 
 palliate your unjust pretensions. . . . You say that the king of Sweden is 
 ipso jure excommunicated, as being an heretic ; and therefore, to make 
 him more infamous, at least among the Catholics, we ought to declare and 
 solemnly anathematise him for an excommunicate. We know that the Pro- 
 testants, although they arc out of the Catholic Cimrch, for so much as con- 
 cerns the faith and common vows and suffrages, yet are they not in the 
 point of jurisdiction, and therefore we may declare them excommunicate, 
 as Pius V. declared Queen Elizabeth of England, and before him Clement 
 VII. the king of England Henry VIII., and all at the instances of the house 
 of Austria and the Spaniards [hut see Pius V.'s reply to Maximilian in note 
 64]. But with what success? The whole world can tell. We yet bewail it 
 ■with tears of blood. Wisdom does not teach us to imitate Pius V. or Cle- 
 ment VII., but Paul v., who in the beginning, being many times urged by 
 the Spaniards to excommunicate James king of England, never would con- 
 sent unto it, neither will we now against the king of Sweden, for fear of 
 diverting him by so foul an act from his heroical intentions and his cour- 
 teous and friendly carriage towards all Catholics in all places he has sub- 
 dued." 
 
 71. See the letter of St. Pius, quoted in note 21. A startling comment 
 on this letter is supplied by the character of Pius V. given to the Venetian 
 Senate by Paulo Tiepolo in loG9. See Alberi, Eelazioui Venete, vol. a. 
 p. 178, &c. 
 
 72. St. Aug. lib. iii. c. 2, oont. ej). Parmeniani, and can. Mi/i 2>i>test, 
 23, 9, i. 
 
 73. This is a proposition of WiclifE, the 2;ith of those condemned by 
 Martin V. and the Council of Constance in 1418 ; it was, however, equally 
 an opinion of the Hussites. 
 
 74. Campion, Decem Rationes, ratio iv. 
 
 75. Cochla3US (Historia Hussitarum, lib. i.), after recounting the mi- 
 gration of the German students from Prague to Leip.sic on account of the 
 violence of the heretics, writes : " Haac est prima ruina floris et decoris 
 Bohemici, et primus fructus mali arboris, doctrinaa Vicleficoa, per quam ruit 
 alto a culmine Praga. Ex hac enim Teutonicorum emigratione ita defeeit 
 paulatim ac cecidit laudabilis et Celebris universitas ilia Pragensis, supre- 
 mum atque altissimum totius regni decus, ut ne spes quidem supersit recu- 
 perandi splendoris illius pristini" (p. 15). 
 
 76. Schmidl, Hist. S.J. Prov. Bohem. lib. iv. no, G7. 
 
 77. Campion, Opusc. p. 2G1. 
 
 78. Carafa, Commentarius de Germania sacra restaurata, p. 289. 
 
 79. lb. p. 318. 
 
 80. All these particulars are from Schmidl's History of the Bohemian 
 Province of the Society of Jesus, or from Balbinua, Miscellanea, Decad. 1 , 
 lib. iv. &c. 
 
 81. Schmidl, ad an. 157.3, quotes Campion, "In Lihro Examinum Pro- 
 bationis Brunensis, ad cap. iii. manu propria. 
 
 " Vocor Edmundus Campianus, Anglus Londinensis, annum natus 34, 
 ex legitimo matrimonio, et parentibus ab antique Christianis, et in Catho- 
 lioa fide, ut speratur, defunctis. Pater vocatur Edmundus, conditione civis 
 et bibllopola, mediocri fortuna. Fratres duos habeo, sororem unam. Frater 
 major natu uxorem habet, vivit in militia, ut audio ; minor vero etudet. 
 Habeo deliberatum propositum vivcndi et moriendi in hac Socictato Jesu ; 
 
372 NOTES. 
 
 idque nunc statuo, si antea non statuissem, nuUo impellente, 8ed proprio 
 motu." 
 
 Ad cap. V. : 
 
 " Primum in patria humanioribus Uteris : deinde Oxonii philosop'hiaB 
 septennium, theologia; sexennium circiter operam dedi ; Aristoteli, tbeo- 
 login; positivo3, et Patribus : deinde prope biennium scbolasticte theologi.'c 
 Daaci. Oxonii in Magistrum Artium promotus, in Baccalauream tbeologia: 
 Duaci. Memoria utcumque felici, intellectu etiara satis perspicaci, animoque 
 in studia propenso, ad qua; suppetunt utcunque vires, ut et ad reliqua so- 
 oietatis munera. 
 
 " Haic ille, die 2G Augusti." 
 
 82. Printed by Schmidl, ad an. 157.5. 
 
 83. Campion, Opuecula, p. 380. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. (pp. 7.3-96). 
 
 84. Sobmidl, Historia S.J. Prov. Bohem. para prima, Prague, 1747, lib. iv. 
 n. 5, ad an. 1573. Maxima Tyrocinii Pragensi.s, postea et Brunensis, ac 
 justa quidem, ex Edmundo Carapiano gloria, &c. Schmidl is my chief 
 authority for Campion's life at Prague. The description of the .Jesuit educa- 
 tion is compiled from the rules and constitutions of the Society. 
 
 85. Calendar of Court of Requests, Chapter House, temp. Eliz. No. 315. 
 Order in Exchequer. Lands in Cornwall, late of Francis Tregian, attainted, 
 conveyed to Sir George Carey. 
 
 86. Sir Edwin Sandys, Europre Speculum, p. 81. To this graphic account 
 I may add Bacon's testimony to the worth of the education given by the 
 Jesuits: "The noblest part of the ancient discipline has been restored in 
 the Jesuit colleges. When I consider their industry and skill both in culti- 
 vating learning and in forming character, I cannot help saying, ' Talis cum 
 sis, utinam noster esses.' .... Partly by their own predilection, partly in 
 consequence of the emulation of their foes, they devote their energies to 
 literature ; . . . . and as for education, the shortest advice I can give is, 
 Copy their schools ; nothing better has yet been brought into use." The 
 testimony of Selden, one of the greatest scholars and statesmen of his day, 
 is equally flattering to the results of their education : " The Jesuits, and the 
 lawyers of France, and the Low-Country men, have engrossed all learning. 
 The rest of the world make nothing but homilies." Bacon selects for his 
 chief praise the dramatic exercises of the pupils : "There is a thing which 
 done for a livelihood is infamous, done to discipline the mind is capital ; 
 I mean the drama. It strengthens the memory ; it tempers the tone of voice 
 and the clearness of pronunciation ; it gives grace to the countenance and 
 to the action of the limbs ; it gives no small confidence ; and it accustoms 
 boys to the eyes of men." 
 
 87. Opuscula, p. 420. 
 
 88. lb. p. 221. 
 
 89. Correspondence of Sir P. Sidney and Hubert Languct, by S. A. Pears, 
 M.A. Lond. 1845. p. 92. 
 
 90. Cotton Mss. Galba, B. xi. f. 388. 
 
 91. Opuscula, p. 389. 
 
 92. Robert Arden of Warwickshire is not in Dr. Oliver's catalogue of 
 
NOTES. 373 
 
 English Jesuits. He waa probably of the family of Eobert Arden of Park 
 Hall, executed in 1584 for his son-in-law Somervillc's madness. 
 
 93. S.P.O. Dom. 1577, Nov. C. Dr. Sanders to Dr. Allen from Madrid. 
 
 94. Opuscula, p. 389. The date is July 10. 
 
 95. lb. p. a<Jl. The date is July 17. The father referred to at p. W,, 
 line 11), was John Vitzumbius. Bombiuus, Ms. add. to p. L"J'.). 
 
 CHAPTER V. (pp. y7-117). 
 
 96. Dr. Allen to Dr. Owen Lewis, Tierney's Dod, vol. ii. Appendix, ccclxv. 
 
 97. Theiner, Annals, iii. pp. 219, 700, 701. 
 
 98. Eoyal Archives, Brussels. Inventaire des Archives du Province des 
 Jesuites, No. 1085. 
 
 99. S.P.O. Dom. 1580. Apr. U. 
 
 100. See above, p. 88. 
 
 loi. Alberi, Eelazioni Venete, vol. x. p. 282. 
 
 102. Annales Ecclesiastici, vol. iii. p. 217. The end of the next para- 
 graph, p. 103, is not quite just to the Pope. He only did to Elizabeth what 
 she did to Philip. She professed to be at peace with him, and yet helped 
 his rebels in the Low Countries. The hostility of Philip and Elizabeth was 
 for years a half-hearted one. According to Bacon's explanation, Elizabeth 
 only interfered in the Netherlands with two objects : that the people should 
 have their rights, and the Spanish crown its rights. Similarly, Philip for a 
 long time seemed desirous of securing the crown to Elizabeth, and only 
 opposing her so far as she persecuted the Catholics. But the tension be- 
 tween them had almost advanced to a rupture in 1580. 
 
 103. Parsons, Ms. Life of Campion. 
 
 104. Letter, apud Theiner, Ann. iii. p. 217. 
 
 105. Brief Apology, 101. 
 
 106. Tierney's Dod, vol. Hi. p. 47. 
 
 107. Theiner, Annals, vol. iii. p. 700. Allen was of the same mind with 
 Goldwell, and would have been content to live in England on the most beg- 
 garly allowance. See Tierney's Dod, iii. p. 3, note. 
 
 108. S.P.O. Dom. Apr. 18, 1580. 
 
 109. Gabrielle, Cardinal Paleotto, a close friend of St. Carlo Borromeo, 
 Bishop of Bologna 1566 (Archbishop 1582). See notice of him in Cardella, 
 Memorie di Cardinali, torn. v. p. 102 ; or his Life by Bruni in Martene and 
 Dm-and, tom. vi. p. 1387. Cardella gives two traits of him that are worth 
 noting : " Soon after he was cardinal, he exhibited his Christian liberty by 
 opposing in consistoiy a tax that was proposed to be laid on the inhabitants 
 of the papal states to assist the Catholic party in the French civil wars. In 
 this he was against the Pope and against the whole body of cardinals, who 
 advised his Holiness to confiscate his pension. But the Pope by the next 
 morning had come round to Paleotto's opinion, and his pension was saved." 
 Again : " He had a chief share in the reconciliation of Henry IV. of France ; 
 for it was he who induced Clement Vlll. to come to terms with that sove- 
 reign." He was the author of the Ue bono Senectutis described in Tanucoi's 
 Life of St. Philip Neri, Faber's translation, vol. ii. p. 82. 
 
 no. Campion, Opuscula, p. 400. 
 
 111. The original is among the Mss. of Stonyhurst College. 
 
 112. Beza (in the edition of his poems, Geneva, 1569) denies that the 
 
374 NOTES. 
 
 Candida of hia odes was meant for Claudine the tailor's wife of the Kue 
 de la Calaudre at Paris, who accompanied him to Geneva when he fled 
 thither from the Parliament of Paris, and whom he afterwards married. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. (pp. 118-135). 
 
 113. More, Hist. Prov. Ang. S.J. lib. iii. p. f>3. 
 
 114. This ia a principle of general law appealed to by Ockham (Dial, 
 pars i. lib. vi. e. 9i, fol. 104), when arguing for the rights of the laity to 
 intervene in controversies of faith, because such questions, as Pope Nicolas I. 
 rules, are common, and appertain to all Christiana. " Ubinam legistis," he 
 writes to the emperor (dis. 96, 0. Unam), " imperatores antecessores vestros 
 synodalibue conventibus interfuisse, nisi forsitan in quibusdam ubi de fide 
 tractatum est, qua? universalis est, qua3 omnium communis, qu;B non solum 
 ad clerioos, verum etiani ad laicos, et ad omnes omnino pertinet Christianos." 
 
 115. Sanders, De Monarchia, quoted by Burghley, Execution of Justice 
 in Eng. p. 18, reprint of 1675. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. (pp. 136-155). 
 
 116. Thaunus, lib. xlix. c. 11. 
 
 117. Lib. V. ad ann. 1573. 
 
 118. Stapleton, Sermo contra Politicos, 
 
 119. Grindal to Hubert, May 23, 1559 ; Zurich Letters, 2d series, p. 19. 
 
 120. Peter Martyr to Thomas Sampson, July 15, 1559 ; Zurich Letters, 
 2d series, p. 25. 
 
 121. Martyr to Sampson, Feb. 1, 1660 ; ib. p. 39. 
 
 122. Grindal to Hubert, May 23, 1559 ; ib. p. 19. 
 
 123. Rymer, xv. pp. 518, 519. 
 
 124. Strype, Parker, p. 125 ; Heylin, Reformation, ii. p. 174. 
 
 125. Rymer, ib. pp. 546, 547. 
 
 126. S.P.O. Dom. Dec. 15.50, no. I'.K 
 
 127. Of this number were Stapleton and Godsalve, prebendaries of Chi- 
 chester. 
 
 128. S.P.O. Dom. Eliz. vol. x. The calculations in the text are based 
 on the detailed proceedings, in which all the names are given. At the end 
 of the volume there is an abstract of the numbers of rectors, vicars, and 
 curates who refused to attend the visitation when summoned. The numbers 
 are 158 for York diocese, 85 for Chester, 3G for Durham, and 35 for Car- 
 lisle ; total, 314. There is no abstract of the numbers who attended and 
 refused the oath. Probably the \isitation was never completed, but broken 
 off by the Queen's letters. The book, however, proves that in York pro- 
 vince certainly 370 clergymen — probably 600 — either refused to swear, or 
 would have refused if they had been prciseil. This gives a total much 
 higher than the 172 which Protestant historians give as the number of re- 
 cusant clergymen for the whole of England, or the 250, tlie number stated 
 by Allen and Bridgewater after Sanders. 
 
 129. S.P.O. Dom. June 30, 1559. 
 
 130. Lansdowne Ms. cix. p. 17. 
 
 131. S.P.O. Dom. Eliz. vol. cvi. no. 7. 
 
NOTES. 375 
 
 132. Camden, Eliz. i. 32. 
 
 133. Strype, Parker, p. 125. 
 
 134. Percival Weburn, Report on the state of the Church of England ; 
 Zurich Letters, 2d series, p. 358. 
 
 135. Geo. Withers, ib. p. 1G3. 
 
 136. Parsons, Three Conversions of England, pt. ii. 0. xii. p. 20G, ed. 
 1G88. fol. 
 
 137. Sanders, de Schismate, lib. iii. p. 342, ed. Colon. IGIO. 
 
 138. A detailed examination of the lists of rectors and vicars of the 
 several parishes of England, such as are usually found for each parish in 
 good county histories, would be the best way of determining the " move- 
 ment" of incumbents during the iirst years of Elizabeth. Unless my partial 
 examinations were made in exceptional cases, the lists would show a change 
 many times greater than the average for the years 1500-05. It was in 
 consequence of the vacancies thus made that the Bishops had to fill the livings 
 ■with " carpenters, blacksmiths, and uneducated men of every mechanic art." 
 
 139. Apology for the oath, in Cecil's wi-iting, S.P.O. Dom. 1500, vol. xv. 
 no. 27. 
 
 140. See Feckenham, Articles confessed by him at Wisbeach, 1580 ; 
 Lansdowne Ms. no. 30, art. 77. 
 
 141. Lansdowne, no. 27, art. 20, 
 
 142. Lansdowne, no. 30, art. 77. 
 
 143. See note 72. 
 
 144. Cottonl Posthuma, p. 1-10. 
 
 145. lb. p. 133. 
 
 146. Nares, Burghley, ii. 2-10, 241 ; Strype, Ann. i. 405 ; and Parker, 
 i. 212. 
 
 147. More, Hist. Prov. Ang. S.J. lib. iii. nos. C et nqq. 
 
 148. Letter of Lawrence Vaux, S.P.O. Dom. Nov. 2, 15CG. See Collier, 
 Eccl. Hist. vi. p. 458, ed. 1840. He and Bishop Kenuet (Lansdowne Mas. 
 no. 951, p. 118) say that the faculties were granted Aug. 14, 1507. The 
 latter refers to Sutcliffe's answer to Parsons. Sutcliffe, in his Challenge to 
 Parsons, p. 181, talks of faculties granted to Harding ahvut 15G7. They 
 were in reality given in 1566, before the date of Lawrence Vaux's letter. 
 
 149. S.P.O. Dom. June 7, 1569. 
 
 150. Dom. Eliz. vol. oli. no. 39. 
 
 151. Eesponsio ad Edict. Begin. Aug. p. 21. 
 
 152. Castelnau, depeche Sept. 8, 1578. 
 
 153. Ib. May 29, 1579. 
 
 154. See the Earl of Oxford's report of Charles Arundcll's speech, S.P.O. 
 Dom. Eliz. vol. cli. no. 39. 
 
 155. Castelnau, July 2G, 1579. 
 
 156. Pinard, dtpeche a Castehiau, Paris Eibl. Imp. Ancien Fonds, 
 No. 8810, July 10, 1580. 
 
 157. Castelnau, Aug. 8, 1580. 
 
 158. Geo. Cranmer, letter to Hooker, Feb. 1598 ; Keble's Hooker, vol. ii. 
 p. 60G. 
 
 159. MafEei, p. 47. 
 
 160. Stowe, Chronic, ed. 1580. The passages are suppreesed in the 
 
 edition of 1592. 
 
 161. S.P.O. Dom. Deo. 12, 1580. 
 
376 NOTES. 
 
 OHAPTEIl VIII. (pp. 156-177). 
 
 162. Mathias Tanner, Apostol. S.J. p. 180. 
 
 163. Instruction?, &c. See note 98. 
 
 164. Faculties, &o. See note 99. 
 
 165. Watson, Quodllbets, pp. SH, 113 ; John Gee, Foot out of tlio Snare, 
 p. CC. At p. LIS I have said that Parsons and Campion used Sir W. Catesby's 
 house at Hogsdon ; it was more probably Gardiner's, I'arsons' first con- 
 vert ; " Hogsdouii Celebris inquiliuus," as More calls him (Hist. Prov Ang. 
 p. 73). 
 
 166. Of course this document, when published, became known as Cam- 
 pion's " Brag and Challenge." See Bibliographical Appendix, i. 3. 
 
 167. Hist. S.J. Inghilterra, p. 107. 
 
 168. They were both Hampshire men. 
 
 169. S.P.O. Dom. Eliz. vol. cxliv. no. 31 ; and vol. cxlii. no. 20. 
 
 170. See S.P.O. Ireland, Feb. 17, 1581. 
 
 171. Europos Speculum, p. 'J4 : " Of their offers of disputation." 
 
 172. Letter of Council to Cox, Bishop of Ely, March 1571;. Kennet'a 
 Coll. vol. xlviii. Lansdowne Mss. no. 982, fol. C. 
 
 173. Execution of Justice, p. 11 (ed. 1G75). 
 
 174. Harleian Mss. no. 300, fol. (15. 
 
 175. lb. fol. 5. There is a certain cast about these instructions for the 
 treatment of Catholic priests that makes them seem a jjarody on Gregory 
 XIII. 's instructions for the treatment of Jews. Vf. Ckerubiui, BuUarium, 
 vol. ii. pp. 452, 470, &o. These constitutions are really later than the Eng- 
 lish instructions : but they probably only legalised the usual treatment of 
 Jews subjected to the process of conversion. 
 
 176. Sanders, de Schismate, lib. iii. 
 
 177. The letter is dated July 1581. 
 
 178. Harleian Mss., no. 3110, fol. 05. 
 
 179. This list is compiled from Parsons, and from an official list of pri- 
 soners. Harleian Mss., no. 300, art. i. Parsons names several persons who 
 were committed at a later date, and were not even converted in July 1580. 
 
 180. Theiner, Annals, iii. p. 215. Dele "(N.S.)" from the date ; the new 
 style was introduced in 1 582. 
 
 181. Theiner, Ann. iii. p. 217. "'News from Ireland" early in Aug. 1580. 
 The document goes on to describe the terror of the English Jezebel and her 
 court of heretics, and the measures of precaution she was adopting. 
 
 182. Bridewell. 
 
 183. Theiuer, vol. iii. p. 210. Robert Parsons from London, 17th Sep- 
 tember 1580. This is a mouth or two too early. Bartoli (juotes it as 
 writteu Nov. 17. 
 
 1 84. (Note at end of letter, p. 1 77.) S.P.O. Dom. I do not know where 
 this letter is placed ; Mr. Lemon has not given it in his Calendar 1547-1580. 
 It is either a contemporary translation of Campion's well-known epistle, or, 
 if he wrote in duplicate, in English as well as Latin (Constitutiones, pars viii. 
 cap. i. § 0), it may be his own English. It was probably written on the 
 same day as Parsons' letter, during the fifth mouth of his residence in Eng- 
 land, reckoning from June 25. This would quite agree with Nov. 17, 1580. 
 
NOTES. 377 
 
 CHAPTER IX, (pp. 17S-199). 
 
 185. And in France too, as Cobham wrote to Walsiugham Nov. 27, 1580. 
 S.P.O. France. 
 
 186. Hartley, educated at Eheims, ordained at Paris, sent to England 
 lutiO, apprehended at Lady tjtonor's Aug. 13, 13S1, impri.soned in the Tower 
 till September 10, 1.J82, then in another prison till January 1585, when ho 
 was siiipped off into banishment. After a short stay in Itheims, he returned 
 to England, was again talsen, and executed Oct. 5, 1588. 
 
 187. Arthur Pitts was also talien, handled very hardly in the Tower, and 
 banished. 
 
 188. This digression about Scotland seems rather to be Parsons' re- 
 miniscence of his letter to Acquaviva from Kouen iu 1582 (More, p. 113), 
 than of anything that could have talcen place at the Conference at Ux- 
 bridge. 
 
 189. All these names are found in the lieutenant's lists as third-class pri- 
 soners, paying 6s. Sd, for weekly diet, and 2s. (id. for fuel and candles. 
 There were two other classes who paid respectively 13s. id. and HI. a weeli 
 for diet. Out of these sums the lieutenant of the Tower made his proiits. 
 
 190. This may have been the Broolis mentioned above, p. 157. Sir 
 Thomas Lucy, in his return for 15'J2 of Warwickshire reousantSj mentions 
 as an inhabitant of Kingsbury one "William Urookes, thought to be a se- 
 ditious seminary priest, sometime servant to Campion in the Tower. His 
 friends give out that he is dead ; but it is thought he lurketb in England." 
 
 191. Alter -Parsons left England, Allield became an apostate, and be- 
 trayed his own brother, Thomas Alfleld, who was martyred at Tyburn, 
 July 5, 15^5. 
 
 192. See Appendix i. no. 2. 
 
 193. lb. i. no. 3. 
 
 194. lb. i. no. i. 
 
 195. Nicholas Powtrell, or Powdrell, serjeant-at-law of West Hallam, 
 near Derby. In K)82 Mr. Powtrel's house was again famous as a resort of 
 priests. In the British Museum, ''•',^''" is a curious sheet — "Great news 
 from Derbyshire .... discovery of above thirty priests residing in and 
 about Hallam." 
 
 196. Burghley papers. Lansdowne Mss. 30, no. 78. 
 
 197. York commission, S.P.O. Dom. Eliz. vol. cxli. 
 
 198. Probably Mr. Ralph Grimston of Nidd, hanged June 15, 15'JS, at 
 York, for aiding, assisting, and conducting Snow, a priest. 
 
 199. More, Hist. Prov. Ang. p. 7iJ. 
 aoo. Rushton's diary. 
 
 201. S.P.O. Dec. 1, 1581. (It should be 1580.) 
 
 202. Allen's answer to English Justice, p. 12. 
 
 203. S.P.O. Jan. 14, 1581. 
 
 204. Lansdowne Mss. 33, no. 14. 
 
 205. Parsons, Stonyhurst Mss. 
 
 206. Bartoli, Inghilt. p. 134. Mr. Sheldon's copy of this tract, which, like 
 Campion's Challenge, was circulated only in Ms., is in the S.P.O. Dom. Eliz. 
 vol. 144 no, 69. It is a scholastic argument on the case whether for civil 
 reasons a Catholic may be present at the Protestant church. The case is 
 
378 NOTES. 
 
 now partially Bolved in the affirmative. No Catholic fears to be present at 
 marriage or funeral, to listen to the cathedral chant, or to see the functions 
 of the Ritualists. In 1580 the English Catholics suffered death rather than 
 do so. 
 
 207. Paget hesitated long before he did so. When he was told, Jan. 10, 
 1.581, that he must be at Powles the next Sunday at sermon-time, he begged 
 Walsingham for time to consider : " Tune may prevail more than haste, and 
 force in these cases doth seldom work good effect." He had previously, 
 Nov. 17, 1.580, after having been restrained from his liljerty for fourteen 
 weeks, offered to have service at his house, and to be present at it. (S.P.O. 
 Dom.) 
 
 208. D'Ewes' journal, p. 285. 
 
 209. Norton, ban-ister, poet, puritan ; part-author with Lord Buckhurst of 
 the tragedy of Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, and writer of those psalms 
 of the " old version" which are signed T.N. After serving as raokm.aster to 
 Campion, he was caught conveying a Puritan Ms. to be printed at Antwerp 
 or Amsterdam ; and finally, if we may believe Parsons, died mad, as his wife 
 had done before him by drowning herself. See Fleetwood's account of her 
 in Strype, Ann. ill. 92. 
 
 210. The Court of King James I., by Dr. Godfrey Goodman, Bishop of 
 Gloucester, 1839, vol. i. p. 100. 
 
 211. See p. 107. See also Constitut. S.J. pars iv. c. 10, § 41, and Re- 
 gular Prajpositi 2, et Rectoris 1. See also pars vii. c. 2. 
 
 212. Notitia Oxonieusis, 1C75. 
 '213. Theiner, Ann. iii. p. 300. 
 
 214. Tanner, Soc. Jes. Apostolorum Imitatrix, 297. 
 
 215. LabanofE, vii. 152-lCl. 
 
 216. Teulet, V. 249. 
 
 217. May 20, 1582. 
 
 CHAPTER X. (pp. 200-217). 
 
 218. Fitzherbert's book on Policy and Religion is instructive, as showing 
 the political notions of the more religious Catholics of the day. According 
 to him there is no science of politics ; the weal and woe of states are pre- 
 miums and penalties distributed by God to reward not political combinations 
 but moral and religious virtues. The x^'Htinues were atheistical, because 
 they tried to reduce politics to a science, with certain seiiuences of political 
 cause and effect : thus taking the fortunes of states out of God's hands, and 
 makiug them depend on secondary causes. If God was pleased with a 
 nation, all would go well with it ; if He was displeased, all would go ill. Now 
 nothing displeases Him so much as false religion. Hence the suppression of 
 heresy and idolatry becomes a duty of patriotism, and a dictate of national 
 prudence for self-preservation. Fanatical Protestants looked upon the 
 execution of a priest for saj'ing Mass as a kind of security against the un- 
 known plagues which Gt)d might send upon the people for having a Mass 
 said among them. Fanatical Catholics looked upon the burning of a heretic 
 with a similar satisfaction ; there was a flavour of human sacrifice about 
 it. It was like the burning of Achan's family to expiate and avert the con- 
 sequences of a sin which might be a national calamity. 
 
 219. Council-book, Aug. 1681, pp. 483, 499. 
 
NOTES. 379 
 
 220. Eushton's diary. 
 
 221. S.P.O. March 27, 158J. 
 Z22. Sanders, de Seliismate, iii. 
 
 223. Parsons' Censure. 
 
 224. Apology and true Declaration of the Institution and Endeavours of 
 the two English Colleges, the one in Rome, the other now resilient in Uheims, 
 against certain sinister informations given up against tlio same. Mona in 
 Hainault, 1581. Ito. Allen addressed a copy of the book to Cobham, who 
 sent it to Walsingham, June 15, 1581. 
 
 225. A Defence and Declaration of the Catholic Church's Doctrine con- 
 cerning Purgatory and Prayers for the Souls departed, by William Allen, 
 Master of Arts and Student in Divinity. Antwerp, 15C5. It was in reply to 
 Jewel. The title of Bristow's book is " Apology to William Fulk, heretical 
 Minister, in defence of Allen's book of Purgatory. Louvam, 1580." Brus- 
 sels Mss. no. 15,594. 
 
 226. This was Parsons' tract against Langdale. 
 
 227. This kind of thing happened, according to Eushton's diary, every 
 Sunday from Feb. 5 to Whitsunday. The prisoners used to iuterrapt the 
 preachers, and hoot them when they had finished. Bishop Kennet tells ua 
 that one John Keltridge preached May 7 and May 21. Lansdowne Mss., 
 982, fol. 10. 
 
 228. Stry])e, Life of Grindal, ii. c. 12. 
 
 229. Bridgewater, fol. 231-233. Also Luke Kirby'a letter, ib. fol. 92 
 verso. 
 
 230. Theiner, iii. 867. 
 
 231. S.P.O. June 30, 1581. 
 
 232. S.P.O. Dec. 26, 1580. 
 
 233. S.P.O. March 4, 1581 ; report of Justices of Cheshire to Council. 
 
 234. See above, p. 123. 
 
 235. S.P.O. June 12, 1581. 
 
 236. Council-book, 14 Aug. 1581, Greenwich, p. 488. 
 
 237. Bartoli, p. 145. 
 
 238. Sacchini, Hist. S.J. pars v, lib. i. no. 219. 
 
 CHAPTEE XL (pp. 218-229). 
 
 239. All these persons were apprehended after Eliot's success in taking 
 Campion had given a colour to his information, which was at first received 
 with little credit. 
 
 240. Bartoli, 148. 
 
 241. Bombinus. In 1584 there were still some nuns there. See Betham's 
 Information, S.P.O. Feb. 15S4. The chief colony of these nuns was now at 
 Eouen. See a petition in their favour, S.P.O. 
 
 242. Challoner, Missionary Priests, i. 92. 
 
 243. Bartoli, 147. 
 
 244. Council-book, Eliz. v. p. 404. 
 
 245. He was no traitor, though he was naturally suspected of being so ; 
 and even his attempt at suicide, when he saw the tragical event of his folly, 
 hardly rescued him from vengeance. 
 
 246. So says Bombinus. Challoner, foUowmg the Douai diary, and an 
 
380 NOTES. 
 
 account of Filby by an eye-witnes^s, printed in 1382, says he was taken at 
 Lyford, and dreamed at Henley. 
 247. Holinshed, vol. iv. p. 1321. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. (pp. 230-252). 
 
 248. S.P.O. France, May 5, 1581. Wade to Walsingham from Paris : 
 " The Scotch ambassador hath not stuck to tell the Lord Hamilton, in the 
 hearing of others, that the king is secretly Catholic." 
 
 249. Labanoif, vii. 157. 
 
 250. In Aug. loSO H.B,, the ' servant in law' to the Earl of Westmoreland, 
 reports the earl's sayings and doings to Burghley : how he went to Eheims, 
 and asked Dr. Webbe and Mr. Bayly to supper, where he told them that the 
 Catholic army was prepared for England and Ireland, for which cause he 
 and all the other pensioners of the king were summoned to Spain. The 
 king was waiting for nothing but the Italian contingent ; " hut he wished 
 that Portugal had been on fire, so that the king had not meddled therewith; 
 for had not that fallen so unluckily out, he should have seen England in 
 short time, and Dr. Sanders should have lacked no help in Ireland." (S.P.O. 
 France.) 
 
 250 bis. S.P.O. Spain, March 1580, and an undated summary of Spanish 
 news at the end of the year. 
 25otert. S.P.O. France. 
 
 251. See above, p. 167. 
 
 252. See above, p. 102. 
 
 253. Declaration of the Eecantation, &c., sig. K viii. apud Foulis, p. 33C. 
 253 bis. Bridgewater, f. 233 verso. 
 
 254. S.P.O. France. 
 
 255. S.P.O. France, June 1580. 
 
 256. S.P.O. France, Feb. 1 and Feb. 21, 1581. 
 
 257. O'SuUivan, cap. 17, fol. 100. A copy of this Indulgence is bound 
 up with the Burghley papers in the British Museum. See Ellis's Original 
 Letters, 2d Series, iii. 94. 
 
 258. LabanofE, Mary Stuart, vi. 152-15"J. 
 
 259. Execution of Justice, p. 7. 
 
 260. Above, pp. 129-131. 
 
 261. S.P.O. France. 
 
 262. See above, p. 97. 
 
 263. Annals, an. 1581. 
 
 264. Grey, however, had in 1581 (Murdin, p. 3-17) to excuse himself for 
 his want of severity. " The little service in Munster I cannot altogether 
 excuse ; and yet there is more dune than I perceive is conceived. For my 
 part, without it be of some importance, I take no delight to advertise of 
 every common person's head taken ofe ; otherwise I could have certified of 
 an hundred or two of their lives ended since my coming from those parts." 
 Elizabeth threatened to disgrace her viceroy for hi.s cruelties | but her council 
 asked more heads of him. 
 
 265. S.P.O. France, Oct. 9, 1581. 
 
 266. S.P.O. Italian States, March 23, 1582. 
 
 267. S.P.O. Italian States, July 12, 1582. 
 
NOTES. 381 
 
 268. These " wager men" on " bargains to return" were those who made 
 bets on the next pope, or on the cardinals to be created. A merchant would 
 receive a varying sum, under bargain to return to the depositor 100 scudi if 
 a certain man were made cardinal or pope at the next creation or election. 
 When Allen wa.s made cardinal by Sixtus V., Aug. 1.587, it created quite a 
 con.stcrnation in the Roman market, bet.s having been so high against him. 
 " Qui sponsiones illas nundinati sunt," says Erythr;i3us (Pinacoth, i. 92), 
 
 quorum pene infinitus erat nnmerus, maxim;e pecuniae jacturam fecerunt." 
 After this, says Cardella, these scomesse were forbidden by the Pope. 
 
 269. S.P.O. France. H.B. to Burghley, Aug. 18, 1580. 
 
 270. S.P.O. Dom. 1582; undated, no. 303. 
 
 271. According to Tanner (Soc. Jes. Militans, p. 12), the prisoner was 
 tied to the rack either by the thumbs and great toes, or by twenty small 
 strings, each tied to a finger or toe. Campion, however, was only tied by 
 the wrists, so as to leave him able to write. 
 
 272. Bartoli, iii. 2, who refers to several letters of Dr. Allen. 
 
 273. See below, p. 297. 
 
 274. Webley was probably the man who was hanged with Alfield for dis- 
 tributing Allen's books in 1585. On that occasion his life was offered to 
 him if he would conform. 
 
 275. Council-book, 1581. July 30. 
 
 276. S.P.O. Spain, 1580. Nov. The Spanish ambassador's reply to the 
 queen's ol)ser\-ations of July 10. 
 
 277. S.P.O. France, Feb. 21, 1581. 
 
 278. Council-book, 1581. Aug. 2, p. 476. 
 
 279. lb. p. 474. 
 
 280. Norris is probably the man subsequently called Pvichardson by Laing 
 and Allen. 
 
 281. Pounde's great friend, Father Thomas Stevens, who is probably in- 
 tended here, was in India at the time, fie was sent to Goa in 1579, More, 
 Hist. ii. 15. 
 
 282. Lan.sdowne Mss. 982, f. 14. 
 
 283. lb. f. 19 verso. 
 
 284. Harleian Mss. fi2G5, f. 292. 
 
 285. See below, p. 273, note 347. 
 
 286. Indeed some of the councillors themselves were kept in the dark 
 about the fraud ; and Lord Huntingdon, the i)resident of the north, wrote 
 to Burghley, Aug. 18 (Lansdowne Mss., 33, no. 8): "What I may be al)le to 
 perform touching those things that Campion hath confessed, your lordship 
 shall have .so soon as may be. I dare assure you that some things which I 
 see he hath confesaed be true ; and if my hap had been good, I had taken 
 him here in this country ; but it may be I .shall meet with his fellow Par- 
 sons." Then he suggests another place where Campion may have been. 
 " I would be glad to understand whether he were at Sir W. Colthorpe'a 
 house whilst he lived, or since his death. Of the conditions of that man 
 your lordship is not ignorant, and I think the place is not mended since 
 his death." 
 
 287. Council-book, Aug. 1581, p. 488. 
 
 288. Harleian Mss. 859. 
 
 289. Challoner, who follows the authority named in Appendix iv. no. 7. 
 
 290. See note 280. 
 
382 NOTES. 
 
 291. See Appendix iii. no. 1. 
 
 292. It was only after his death that his relentless enemy Charke ven- 
 tured to call him "a glorious fool, who, partly to boast of his sufferings, 
 partly to excuse his impatience and pusillanimitj', which for fear rather than 
 for feeling of the rack had discovered many of his friends and complices 
 mth his own handwriting, immediately after his racking, was not ashamed 
 on the day of the first conference to complain of his grievous torments, until 
 by testimony of Master Lieutenant of the Tower, and others that were pre- 
 sent, his impudency was so restrained at the time, that he thought it best 
 not to brag any more of his intolerable racking." Burghley, in his " Declara- 
 tion of the favourable dealing" of the commissioners with the priests, says, 
 " If he (a priest) said that his answer in delivering truth would hurt a 
 Catholic, and so be an offence against charity, which they said to be a sin, 
 and yet the queen could not command them to sin, and therefore, howsoever 
 the queen commanded, they would not tell the truth which they were known 
 to know, they were then put to the torture, or else not." 
 
 293. Harleian Mss. 859. 
 
 294. S.P.O. Dom. undated, 1583 ; Lists of prisoners for religion. 
 
 295. Lansdowne Mss. 30, art. 78. 
 
 296. Selden Table-talk, art. " Trial." 
 
 297. Strype, Ann. iv. p. 147. 
 
 298. Hamlet, ii. 1, G3. Windlass, as a de'vice for discovering men's secrets, 
 is probably a metaphor borrowed from, the rack. 
 
 299. Council-book, 1581, p. 494:. 
 
 300. Hj. p. 499. 
 
 301. lb. p. 501. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. (pp. 253-209). 
 
 302. Lansdowne Mss. 83, art. 17, dated Fulham, July 25, 1681. 
 
 303. Staphilus, a scholar of Luther and Melancthon at Wittenberg, then 
 Professor of Theology at Konigsberg till 1553, when he became a Catholic 
 and was made Councillor of the Empire and of the Duke of Bavaria, and 
 Inspector of the University of Ingolstadt, where he died 15fi4. The works 
 to which Aylmer alludes are " Epitome Martini Lutheri Theologiaj trimcm- 
 bris" and " Defensio pro trimembri Mart. Lutheri Theologia contra asdifica- 
 tores turris Babylonica^ Phil. Melancthonem, And. Musculum, &c." 
 
 304. Lansdowne Mss. 33, art. 18, Fulham, July 25, 1581. 
 
 305. True Report, &c. sig. G. 1 verso. 
 
 306. Lansdowne Mss. 33, art. 19, July 27. 
 
 307. Ratio viii. 
 
 308. Lansdowne Mss. 33, art. 24. 
 
 309. S.P.O. Dom. ; Id. August. 1583. 
 
 310. LaA\Tence Humphrey, Jesuitismi pars prima, sub iuit. Hee Appen- 
 dix II. no. 3. 
 
 311. lb. p. 94. 
 
 312. From the "True Report." See Appendix, iv. 7. 
 
 313. De Oratore, ii. 14. 
 
 314. Quintil. i. 14. Reynolds' letter is printed by Kelile, Works of R. 
 Hooker, vol. i. p. lOG. 
 
 315. (p. 207, line 23). Nowell and Day hjj,d previously ^v^itten and oir- 
 
NOTES. 383 
 
 culated in Ms. a reply to Campion's Challenge. There is a copy in the Har- 
 leiau Mss. no. 1732. 
 
 316. Decern Eationes, preface. 
 
 317. Hamilton, Discussions (first ed. 1852), p. 505. 
 31S. Kcble's Hooker, i. H2. 
 
 319. The Life and Death of the Earl of Arundel ; edited liy the Dul<c of 
 Norfolk, 1857, p. 19. 
 
 320. Strype, Aylmer, p. 201. 
 
 321. Walton, apud Keble, Hooker, i. .37. 
 
 322. Fuller, Worthies, p. 204, and Church Hist. ix. p. 21fi. 
 
 323. True Report, preface to the reader. 
 
 324. Catholic report of second day's Conference, Harleian Mss. 422, folio 
 148. 
 
 325. True Report, sig. G iiii. 4. 
 
 326. Harleian Mss. 422. 
 
 327. It was the policy of Gregory XIII. to withdraw the licenses to this 
 efEect that had been granted by his predecessors. See Theiner, Ann. iii. 
 pp. 20, 1.30, 137, 319, 532. 
 
 328. Harleian Mss. 422, fol. 130. 
 
 329. Defence of the Censure, p. 5. 
 
 331. Parsons' statement is borne out by the report, Harleian Mss. 422. 
 
 332. Lansdowne Mss. 33, art. 24. 
 
 333. lb. art. 61. 
 
 334. True Report, sig. o 1. 
 
 335. S.P.O. Dom, 1581, no. 220. 
 
 336. Strype, Aylmer, c. iii. 
 
 337. Lansdowne Mss. 33, art. 03, Dec. 28, 1581. 
 
 CHAPTER XrV. (pp. 270-278). 
 
 338. A Declaration of the Recantation of John Nichols, sig. k iiij. 
 
 339. Id. sig. M iiij. 
 
 340. S.P.O. Dom. July 14, 1581. 
 
 341. Ellis, Original Letters, fourth series, iii. 94. 
 
 342. Fuller, Church History, iv. 459. 
 
 343. S.P.O. France, August 9, 1851. 
 
 344. Camden, Ann. 1581. Eegina, ut formidinem quas multorum animos 
 occuparat, religionem immutaturam iri et Pontificios tolerandos, importunis 
 precibus evicta permisit ut Campianus, &c. 
 
 345. See above, p. 148. 
 
 346. Sidney to Burghley, Oct. 10, 1581, ap. Murdin. It was .it this time 
 thaf Kidney was engaged in his intrigue with Lady Rich. This by itself 
 might have indisposed him to risk much for Campion. In March 1582 he 
 did interpose in favour of Sir Tbomas Kitson, a Suffolk Catholic. Sec Gage, 
 History of Hengrave, Suffolk (1822), p. 182. 
 
 347. S.P.O. France, Aug. 11, 1581. 
 
 348. E.g. in Morgan's Britannicus, 481; State Trials, i. 1074 ; Tierney's 
 Dod, vol. iii. Appendix, no. iii. 
 
 349. Merchant of Venice, iii. 2. ^ , t„ i * 4. i, •*• ,, 
 
 350. Baldwin to Shrewsbury, Deo. 22, 1580 ; Lodge. lUustrat. of British 
 
 History, p. 185. 
 
384 NOTES. 
 
 351. Apologia Mavtyi'um ; Bridgewater, p. 223. 
 
 352. S.P.O. France, Aug. 20, 1.581. 
 
 353. S.P.O. France, Sept. 19, 1581. 
 
 354. Egremond Katclj'ffe, brother of the Earl of Su,=sex, one of the rebels 
 of 1509, beheaded at Namiir in 1.579. on suspicion of liaving been bribed by 
 Walsingham to assassinate Don John of Austria. He had previously, also 
 on Walsingham's instigation, attempted to assassinate Dr. Allen. (Paquot, 
 in Vita Card. Allen.) 
 
 355. Ellis, Original Letters, third seiies, iv. 3C. 
 
 356. Council-hook, October 29, 1581. 
 
 357. Eushton's diary. 
 
 358. Ghalloner, i. 68. 
 
 359. Jesuitismi, pars prima, preface to Earl of Leicester. 
 
 360. Hallam, Constitutional History, i. 150. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. (pp. 279-313). 
 
 361. Lansdowne Mss. .33, art. CA. 
 
 362. lb. art. 65. That this is not a mere rough draft, but a copy kept aa 
 a record, is shown by the note to Collyton's name, "i/iiitcd." This must have 
 been added after the trial. 
 
 363. Markham (ob. 1479) was the judge who tried the London merchant 
 accused of treason for saying that he would make his son heir to the crowii 
 — which was the sign on liis shop. Edward IV. wanted the merchant's money, 
 and the judge was superseded for directing an acquittal in 1469. Hi.s ex- 
 ample was appealed to by Sir Nicholas Throgmorton on his trial in 1554. 
 
 364. Hallam's Const. Hist. i. 146. 
 
 365. Harleian Mss. no. 6998, p. 182. 
 
 366. Bridgewater, p. 232. 
 
 367. No counsel was permitted to the accused in cases of treason. 
 
 368. Bacon, iii. p. 4 (State of Europe in 1580), says, " None are now ad- 
 mitted to the seminaries but those who take the oath against her majesty." 
 Probably the oath to serve upon the mission, thereby to withdraw subjects 
 from obedience to the queen and her laws, was thus mterpreted. See Fla- 
 nagan, Hist, of the Church in England, ii. 336. 
 
 369. The Catholic accounts of the trial in Laing and Bridgewater say that 
 Cradock deposed that while he was in prison in Eome he was visited by an 
 Englishman, who told him he was lucky to be out of his o\™ country, 
 ■where shortly there would be great uproars, with much bloodshed and 
 slaughter. 
 
 370. Eather from Sanders to Allen. See above, p. 102.. 
 
 371. It was a tradition that iu the disputation in the Tower Campion 
 had forced his opponents to confess that they could not match him in logic. 
 See Imago primi siBculi Soc. Jcs., p. 341, where many other examples of the 
 Protestant protest against the determination of religious questions by logic 
 are given. 
 
 372. Allen, apud Bridgewater, p. 219. 
 
 373. Letter to Agazzari. Dee. 21, 1581 ; More, iii. 35. 
 
 374. S.P.O. Dom. Jan. 158^ ; Information of Eobert Barrett. 
 
 375. S.P.O. Spain, January 22, 1582, Mendoza to Yaxley. 
 
NOTES. 385 
 
 376. S.P.O. Italian States, March 23, 1.582. 
 
 377- Harleian Mss. 6992 and G993. 
 
 378. Hallam, Const. Hist. i. 456. 
 
 379- Topoliffe to Puckering, Sept. 20, 1592 ; Harleian Mss. 6998, p. 31 ; 
 and PHS. to Walsiagham, S.P.O. Dom. 1590, undated papers, 138A. 
 
 380. The best comment on this head of evidence is an admission of Cam- 
 den's, ad ann. 1585. " Et certe ad explorandos animos subdolas artes f uerunt 
 adhibita). Liter;B emeutitai sub profugorum nomiuibus submissaa, et in 
 pontificiorum ajdibus reliotiE," &c. 
 
 CHAPTER XVr. (pp. 314-325). 
 
 3»i. Bombinus, Ms. additions to p. 311. See Appendix, iv. no. 33. 
 
 382. Parsons, Defence of the Censure, p. 2. 
 
 383. S.P.O. Dom. May 1584. It was George Eliot, whose Impulses to- 
 wards repentance were always brief, and who sank to the trade of spy and 
 informer, who raked up this story in 1584. 
 
 384. Bombinus, Ms. additions to p. 289. " Ex diversorum auct. sunt 
 apud me." 
 
 385. Register of the Jesuit novitiate at Malines, p. 557. Ms. Bib. Burg. 
 Brussels, no. 2167. Tte same story is referred to in other Mss. of the same 
 collection, e.g. no. 3166, part ii. and no. 4554. 
 
 386. Parsons to Agazzari, Dec. 23, 1581, 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. (pp. 326-346), 
 
 387. S.P.O. Dom. 1584, April, no. 241. " It was one Stonor, or Stonard, 
 that converted the lieutenant's daughter. He was prisoner in the Tower, 
 and she was far in love with him. She conveys letters and messages be- 
 tween the prisoners in the Tower and the Marshalsea." Stonor afterwards 
 served in the Prince of Parma's army (S.P.O. Dom. 1587, no. 614). Ralph, 
 a son of Sir 0. Hopton, was apparently a Catholic at Antwerp (S.P.O. Dom. 
 Jan. to March, 1581, no. 45). Cecilia was implicated in Francis Throg- 
 morton's treason in 1684 ; and a paper of May 27, 1585, concludes with the 
 following memorandum for Tower matters : " That her Majesty be pleased 
 to remove the lieutenant, and give him some recompense, for his poverty, 
 and that he bought the office. Sir Drew Drury a fit man for his place." 
 
 388. S.P.O. Dom. Dec. 15, 1583, and Feb. 20, 1584. 
 
 389. Register of Malines. See note 385. In the Ecclesias AnglicanjE 
 Trophtea there are three plates referring to Campion : his racking, his draw- 
 ing to Tyburn, and his and his companions' martyrdom. To this third plate 
 there is a note : " Horum constanti morte aliquot hominum millia ad Ko- 
 manam eoclesiam converea sunt." 
 
 390. Humphrey, Jesuitismi, praif. 
 
 391. Somers Tracts, i. 164. This able paper is attributed by Hallam 
 (Const. Hist. i. 151) to Burghley, as a set-off to his brutal apology for 
 Campion's tortures. Mr. Spedding (i. 48) restores it to its right owner, 
 Bacon, 
 
 392. Cotton, Posthuma, 132. 
 
 393. S.P.O. Dom. Nov. 1581. 
 
 CO 
 
386 NOTES. 
 
 394. S.P.O. Dom. Feb. 6, 1582. 
 
 395. Conway's Apology, p. 281. Apud Gee, Foot out of the Snare, 1624, 
 p. 48. 
 
 396. Gee, p. 49. 
 
 397. Brussels Ms. 3349. Bombinus in his Ms. additions says that hia 
 name became a synonym for eloquence, and was given to any one of the 
 scholars of the seminary who was an especially good preacher. Thus Wil- 
 liam Hart, martyred at York in 1583, was called a second Campion. 
 
 398. Literai annuas Collegii Grajcensis, an. ICOG. 
 
 399. Mathias Tanner, Soc. Jes. MHitans. Prague, 1C75, p. 13. 
 
 400. Bell, Anatomy of Popery, p. 97. 
 
 401. Gunne, S.P.O. Dom. June 8, 1585. The Procession, Gee, p. 86. 
 
 402. If this reliquary was ever Mary Stuart's, relics must have been 
 added afterwards, for it contains those of Walpole, mart. 1595, and H. Gar- 
 net, mart. 1606. 
 
 403. S.P.O. France, Jan. 4, 1582, and Dom. July 24, 1586. "The name 
 of cruelty is sometimes cried in the Paris streets against her Majesty, which 
 I know doth much incense the people." Fosley to Walsingham. 
 
 404. S.P.O. Italian States, March 23, 1582. 
 
 405. Gregory XIII. Jan. 21, 1582 ; BuUar, Rom. iv. pt. iv. Const. 134, p. 8. 
 
 406. Erythrajus (Pinao. i. 92) is as strong as Estius. " Quo scelere nul- 
 lum oetas nostra tetrius vidit." 
 
 407. S.P.O. Dom. undated, 1581, no. 240 ; and Harleian Mss. G2G5, p. 373; 
 see also S.P.O. Dom. Jan. 7, 1584. 
 
 408. I will not pass judgment on the genuineness of the letters and con- 
 fessions signed by Hart in the S.P.O. The following passages out of hia 
 preface to his conference with Reynolds show why his life was spared. "As 
 for that which he (R.) affirmeth in one place, that I have told him that my 
 opinion is, the Pope may not depose princes ; indeed I told him so much: 
 and in truth I think that although the spiritual power be more excellent and 
 worthy than the temporal, yet they are both of God, neither doth the one 
 depend of the other. Whereupon I gather as a certain conclusion, that the 
 opinion of them who hold the Pope to be a temi^oral lord over kings and 
 princes is unreasonable and unprobable altogether." (The Summe of the 
 Conference between John Eainoldes and John Hart, touching the Head and 
 the Faith of the Church. London, 1584, p. 11.) 
 
 409. A document in the S.P.O. of Jan. 19, 1696, says as follows : " I can 
 assure you now that Parsons, Creswell, and the rest of the Jesuits will not 
 hereafter deal much in matters of state ; for that in their last congregation 
 this last year they have made a decree or a statute sub pa'na pcccati moHalis 
 that none hereafter of that order should directly or indirectly negotiate in 
 matters of state. I know that Parsons hath had some check for that he 
 hath done ; at present he is not used for any civil affairs." The ^vriter refers, 
 of course, to canons 10, 12, and 13 of the 5th General Congregation of the 
 Order. See Institution Soc. Jes. Pragre, 1705, vol. i. p. 150, and vol. ii. 
 pp. 133 and 142. 
 
 410. Theiner declares that the Pope and Court of Rome never meddled 
 with this " sacred expedition." Gregory XIII., however, aeems to have 
 responded to Allen's letter by granting, at the instance of Agazzari, the 
 Rector of the English College, a plenary indulgence to " every person who 
 shall employ himself in England, or against that kingdom, for the restora- 
 
NOTES. 387 
 
 tion of the Catholic faith .... praying for our holy father .... and in- 
 crease of the faith, and change of the kingdoms of England, Ireland, and 
 Scotland, &c. Rome, Sep. 8, 1584" (Lansdowne Mss. 9C, p. 101). As to more 
 material support, though all authorities, including Bernadine de Mendoza 
 (S.P.O. Spain, 1580, Nov.), agree that the Pope paid for the invasion of 
 Ireland in 1580 ; yet Horatio Palavicino tells Walsingham (S.P.O. Dom. 
 Feb. 10, 1581) that there was no such dealing in 1581. Even (Card.) Allen, 
 Apology for Seminaries, p. 100, does not venture to deny it. " If the Pope 
 have any part (in the invasion of Ireland), we never knew it. His govern- 
 ment is too discreet to commit its secrets to poor priests." See also Gene- 
 brard, Chronograph, lib. iv. and in Append. 
 
 411. Watson, Important Considerations, p. 82. 
 
 412. More, Hist. Prov. Aug. v. 29. 
 
 I have spelt the nnmes Campion and Parsons, instead of Campian and 
 Persons. Campian is only a spelling derived from the Latinized name ; and 
 there is no more reason for following it in his case than in Dr. Allen's, who 
 was always called Alanus, but not Alan. As Allen is English for Alanus, 
 so Campion is English for Campianus. Parsons or Persons is more difficult 
 to determine ; probably the pronunciation was the Italian e, as in hair, 
 pear, hare. Hence the modem spelling of the name Pearson, where, how- 
 ever, the old pronunciation is lost. 
 
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