Louise Imogen Guiney

“ Parsons should go first, in military attire, accompanied from the Low Countries by a good youth who passed as his man George; and that if Parsons got safely to Dover, he was to send for Campion and the faithful little soul Ralph Emerson. An English gentleman “living over seas for his conscience,” brought Fr. Parsons his fine disguise: nothing less than a Captain’s uniform of buff leather, with gold lace, big boots, sword, hat, plume, and all. Campion, when he had gone, sat down to write to the General of the Society about him, with his inevitably pictorial touch. ”

“ Sleep not while the Enemy watches; play not while he devours his prey; sink not into idleness and folly while his fangs are wet with your brothers’ blood. It is not wealth nor liberty nor station, but the eternal inheritance of each of us, [57] the very life-blood of our souls, our spirits, and our lives, that suffers. See, then, my dearest young scholars and friends, that we lose none of this precious time, but carry hence a plentiful and rich crop, enough to supply the public want, and to gain for ourselves the reward of dutiful sons. ”

“ The Queen of Scots had newly arrived in England. London, by the time Campion reached it, was in a ferment. “Nothing was to be found there but fears, suspicions, arrestings, condemnations, tortures, executions. . . . The Queen and Council were so troubled that they could not tell whom [36] to trust, and so fell to rigorous proceedings against all, but especially against Catholics, whom they most feared; so that Campion could not tell where to rest in England, all men being in fear and jealousy one of another.” ”

“ Even one hurried free breath of fresh air must have meant much to Campion. To be “clapped up a close prisoner,” as he had been from the first, meant that his windows were blocked, and their minimum of air strained through a narrow slanted funnel, latticed at its skyward end, and with but one tiny pane occasionally opened at the bottom. But these things, humanly intolerable, counted for little on [170] the threshold of light and liberty everlasting. “Delay of our death doth somewhat dull me,” wrote Sherwin, touchingly, to a friend. ”

“ Allen was naturally overjoyed. While Mercœur, the Father-General, wrote officially to Campion’s Superior at Prague, Allen wrote a moving letter to Campion himself: “My father, brother, son,” he calls him, “make all haste and come, my dearest Campion . . . from Prague to Rome, and thence to our own England.” . . . “God, in whose hands are the issues, has at last granted that our own Campion, with his extraordinary gifts of wisdom and grace, shall be restored to us. Prepare yourself, then, for a journey, for a work, for a trial.” ”

“ His standing watch in Westminster Hall had done more for him than many arguments and exhortations: it kindled a spark in him which made him, in Lord Falkland’s phrase, “ready for the utmost hazard of war.” There was a cause to which he could run [39] home; there was a vocation to which he could climb: these opened out before him as he stood in the surging indoor crowd. “He was animated by that blessed man’s example,” says Parsons, “to any danger and peril for the same faith for which the Doctor died.” Edmund Campion lost no time. ”

“ Many innocent hands are lifted up unto Heaven for you, daily and hourly, by those English students whose posterity shall not die, which, beyond the seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you to Heaven or to die upon your pikes. And touching our Society, be it known unto you that we have made a [106] league (all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practices of England!) ”

“ In September, 1566, Queen Elizabeth made the first and happier of her two visits to Oxford. In the Queen’s train was Dudley; also a quieter, plainer, less noticed man, but one out of all comparison with him for astute power: this was Sir William Cecil, the Prime Minister, afterwards known far and wide as Lord Burghley. There were farces and tragedies for the Queen at Oxford, there were musical performances, theological disputations, and other academic sports. In front of the vast assemblage stood forth Master Campion [8] of St. John’s, alone in his ruff, hood and gown. ”

“ Caring for nothing but the things of the soul, he had yet caught the ear and the eye of the nation. The tidings of his end meant much to many of the great Elizabethans: not least personal was it, perhaps, to the lad Shakespeare, whose father had been settled as a stout Recusant by the Warwickshire ministrations of Parsons.
An aged priest, Gregory Gunne, came up before the Council in 1585, his thoughts and tongue too busy in Campion’s praise. The day would come, he said, when a religious house would stand as a votive offering on the spot where “the only man in England” had perished. ”

“ In the spring of 1573, Campion found himself driven to a course he had not contemplated on coming to Douay. As he slowly saw his way, he followed it, to horizon beyond horizon. He had many steps to take, because in his thirst for perfection [58] he had far to travel. He told Dr. Allen he wished to leave his present life, go on pilgrimage, in the spirit of penance, to the Tomb of the Apostles at Rome, and there seek admission into the Society of Jesus. The mediæval Orders would have less attraction for Campion: he was an intensely “modern” man. ”

“ The mob roared with delight; “but the wiser sort,” says Holinshed, “lamented to see the land fallen to such barbarism as to abuse in this manner a gentleman famous throughout Europe for his scholarship and his innocency of life, and this before any trial, or any proof against him, his case being prejudged, and he punished as if already condemned.” Stephen Brinkley somehow obtained, as a souvenir of a fellow-prisoner, that thick dark felt hat, which had been so ignominiously labelled in the cause of Christ. ”

“ There was no conscious motive in his heart deeper than a thirst for such freedom as had become difficult in a Puritanizing University, when he cut himself loose, slipped out of it for good, and took ship for Ireland.
In the new move he had the approbation of Leicester, and the companionship of a much-attached Oxford disciple, Richard Stanihurst, who is remembered by posterity only for his grotesque translation of Virgil. Campion may well have left home with the understanding that he should have a clear educational field in Dublin, but he arrived a little too late. ”

“ To which Campion replied that St. Paul, in order “that living he might benefit the Church more than dying,” betook himself “to sundry shifts . . . but that especially the changing of his name was very oft and familiar” . . . and that “he sometimes thought it expedient to be hidden, lest, being discovered, persecution should ensue thereby, and the gospel be greatly forestalled. . . . If these shifts were then approved in Paul, why are they now reproved in me?—he an Apostle, I a Jesuit . . . the same cause common to us both. ”

“ Personal holiness is, so to speak, a mining country: its progress and its wealth are underground, unguessed-at by the careless passer-by. A saint is a mystery because he walks so closely in the shadow of God, who is the Great Mystery.
When Campion reached Rome, and had paid his devotions to the holy places, he went to call upon Cardinal Gesualdi, who, as he stated afterwards, “having some liking of me, would have been the means to prefer me . ”

“ These three, Fathers Campion, Sherwin, and Briant, were led forth on a bitter morning, and bound to their hurdles, in the rain, outside the Tower gates. Campion’s life for the past week had been nothing but fasting, watching and prayer, and he was never in more gallant spirits. “God save you all, gentlemen!” so he saluted the crowd, on first coming out: “God bless you all, and make you all good Catholics!” The two [173] younger men were strapped down on one hurdle side by side, Campion alone on the other. ”

“ The reverend host complimented Ralph Sherwin by asking him to deliver a sermon before him, and as for Campion, he was required to discourse daily after dinner. St. Charles himself, all the while, whether vocal or silent, was acting upon the pilgrims as a Sursum corda. “Without saying a word, he preached to us sufficiently,” says the ever-appreciative Parsons, “and so we departed from him greatly edified and exceedingly animated.” How charming is the forgotten use of the last word, meaning “souled,” or, as we still say, “heartened,” “inspirited!” Such indeed is the true function of the saints. ”

“ John, where he must have tasted much natural happiness, Campion travelled into Lancashire, under the protection of a former pupil and his wife. There he was affectionately welcomed and cared for in each of eight great houses, where himself and his spiritual conferences were still a glowing tradition, sixty or seventy years afterwards. He had to live, [117] think, write, in a crowd. The local gentry drove from great distances and slept in barns, only to hear and see him once. ”

“ As a consequence, the Grocers’ Company, whose exhibition he still held, heard rumours, grew uneasy, and began to suspect him, ending in 1568 by inviting Campion up to London to save his credit by preaching at Paul’s Cross, and publicly “favouring,” as they expressed it, “the religion now authorized.” He begged for time, and that being granted, for more time. He attended a court of the Company in order to plead engagements, and to say that he was not his own man, while deep in academic duties and at the service of undergraduates: “divers worshipful men’s children,” he calls them. ”

“ There was an audience of sixty, including the Oxonians. Unfortunately it included also George Eliot, a man of the most evil personal repute, an apostate and a Government spy, armed with plenary powers. He was then under a charge of murder, and was anxious to whitewash himself in the eyes of the Council by some conspicuous public service. He had once been a servant of the Ropers at Canterbury; and Mrs. Yate’s honest cook, who had known Eliot there in his decent days, let him in without question, whispering what a treat was in store for him in the preaching of none other than Father Campion! ”

“ But a careful reading of what was then spoken suggests quite a different passage of Holy Scripture as present in Campion’s mind. His theme was the ruin wrought by the conflagration of heresy, now attacking a third generation of Christian souls, and to be put out, he says, by “water of Catholic doctrine, milk of sweet and holy conversation, blood of potent martyrdom.” Isaiah lxiv. 11, runs: “Our holy and our beautiful house where our fathers praised Thee, is burned up with fire; and all our pleasant things are laid waste.” ”

“ But eventually he gave in, warning the two others not to tarry beyond one night or one day, and as a precaution, putting Campion under the lay brother’s care and obedience. Parsons parted from him not without a rueful and affectionate word. “You are too easy-going by far,” he said to his friend and fellow-soldier, purposely giving its least heroic name to that intentionally prodigal zeal for souls. “I know you, Father Edmund; if they once get you there, you will never break away!” ”

“ The Chancellor sent for him in private, and expressed the Queen’s good-will, whereby Campion might bid, through him, for whatever preferment he chose. But Campion, always truly modest and full of ironic humour as well, would ask of his patron nothing, he said, but his continued regard. The young bookman had a real liking for the vicious worldling, liked by several sensitively good men, then and since. Sir William Cecil also took instinctive interest in Campion and his eager dialectics. Altogether, there was no more popular man in Oxford or elsewhere. ”

“ London, the University of Cambridge, and some larger towns and seaports, especially in the West, were half Puritan or Calvinistic, half irreligious and indifferent. The ancient Faith, as was well said by Sir Cuthbert Sharpe, for the most part “still lay like lees at the bottom of men’s hearts; and if the vessel were ever so little stirred, came to the top.” A thoughtful living writer sums it up as his conclusion that England would have resumed the Faith with a sigh of relief, had it not been for the resentments bred by the Catholic “plotters.” ”

“ English humankind were to forsake their happy wild life, as it were, in the Church Universal, and all become, as if by magic, one large tame pet lying in a ribboned collar on the royal hearth. This is a vision which has appealed to many another head of a commonwealth as desirable, though unaccountably difficult! ”

“ The Society of Jesus had been founded only six years before Campion was born. It had as yet no English “Province,” that is, no members living under the English flag with a domestic government of their own. But Edmund Campion was already well known to the Provincials on the Continent, who had a warm contest over him, every one of them wishing to add such a promising soldier to his own wing of the army of the Lord. ”

“ We are not so sure, now-a-days, that controversy does much good, but one reason for that may be that we have few Campions to carry it on. It is well to remember that people then read nothing else, except poetry! Campion’s work was his famous Decem Rationes Propositæ in Causa Fidei, or, as the title is given in its only modern translation (1827) , Ten Reasons for Renouncing the Protestant, and Embracing the Catholic Religion. ”