Thomas Campion

“ CAMPION, THOMAS (1567–1620) , English poet and musician, was born in London on the 12th of February 1567, and christened at St Andrew’s, Holborn. He was the son of John Campion of the Middle Temple, who was by profession one of the cursitors of the chancery court, the clerks “of course,” whose duties were to draft the various writs and legal instruments in correct form. His mother was Lucy Searle, daughter of Laurence Searle, one of the queen’s serjeants-at-arms. Upon the death of Campion’s father in 1576, his mother married Augustine Steward and died herself soon after. ”

“ He also wore "a tonsure," we are informed, "cut by apostolic scissors," and Londoner though he was, he is made to speak of his countrymen as "Islanders." Persons also is described as a blustering, blaspheming bully, who gives himself absolution for his own transgressions. All this is omitted, however, from the school edition of "Westward Ho."
Persons and Campion set to work immediately, and soon managed to call a meeting of the priests who were in hiding in various places of the country. ”

“ John Francis Regis from the Society of Jesus.
Such are the canonized Jesuits. The Blessed are more numerous. There are ninety-one of them. First in time are the forty Portuguese martyrs under Ignatius de Azevedo, who were slain by the French Huguenots in a harbor of the Azores in the year 1570. Then follow the English witnesses to the Truth. The first to die was Thomas Woodhouse, who was executed in 1573. Between that date and 1582 four others were put to death; among them the illustrious Edmund Campion. ”

“ He promptly presented himself, and was received as Mercœur’s first recruit, and received not as a postulant, but as a novice. As Anthony Wood tells us, “he was esteemed by the General of that Order to be a person every way complete.” Four years later, Campion most affectionately thanked his own old tutor, John Bavand, for unasked “introductions, help and money,” which had been supplied since he came to Rome. He speaks of himself as “one whom you knew never could repay you, but who was at the point, so to speak, of death. ”

“ 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 chief point to remember is that the Decem Rationes was the last and most deliberate free utterance of Campion's ever-memorable mission. During the few months that mission lasted he succeeded in staying the full tide of victorious Protestantism, which had hitherto been irresistible. The ancient Church had gone down before the new religion, at Elizabeth's accession twenty years before, with an apparently final fall, and since then the Elizabethan Settlement had triumphed in every church, in every school and court. The new generation had been moulded by it ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Campion offered to swear that he was not Gabriel Allen, but offered in vain. The Mayor held a hasty conference, and ordered a mounted guard to carry both prisoners up to Sir [96] Francis Walsingham and the Council. All this time, Campion was praying to God for deliverance, and earnestly begging St. John the Baptist to intercede for himself and his companion. They were waiting near the closed door of a room. “Suddenly,” wrote Campion himself long after, to the Father-General, “suddenly cometh forth an old man: God give him grace for his pains! ”

“ Allen replied that the work in “Boemeland,” excellent at all points as it had been, yet could be done by any equally qualified person, or “at least by two or three” such persons, whereas in his own necessitous England Campion would be given strength and grace to supply for many men.
At Rheims, during his waiting-time, Campion preached one of his famous sermons to the students. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 . ”

“ Even now, and with far greater frequency afterwards, holy and innocent men and [121] women made up a large proportion of the “criminals”; and remembering these dear souls, and conscious that there he was to follow them in confession of the King of Martyrs, Campion would always solemnly take off his hat and pause, in passing, to salute Tyburn Tree.
Meanwhile, in the quiet and seclusion of Dame Cecily Stonor’s park, near Henley, and in the attics which she bravely set apart for the purpose, the Decem Rationes got itself safely printed by Stephen Brinkley and his seven honest men. ”

“ When threatened with danger in one place the press was bodily transported to another.
However, our business at present is not with Persons, but with Campion. His book was finished and sent up to Persons in March, 1581, with a title altered to suit the controversy which had already begun. It was now Decem Rationes: quibus fretus, certamen adversariis obtulit in causa Fidei, Edmundus Campianus &c. "Ten Reasons, for the confidence with which Edmund Campion offered his adversaries to dispute on behalf of the Faith, set before the famous men of our Universities." ”

“ The reconciliation that [153] we endeavoured was only to God: as Peter saith, reconciliamini Domino, be ye reconciled unto the Lord.” Campion was informed: “Yourself came as Procurator from the Pope and Dr. Allen, to break these matters to the English Papists.” So he rejoined that in his homeward voyage from Rome, undertaken by his vow of obedience as a Jesuit, “the which accordingly I enterprised, being commanded thereto,” he had “dined with Dr. Allen at Rheims, with whom also after dinner I walked in his garden . . . and not one jot of our talk glanced to the Crown or State of England. . . . ”

“ Yea, and if thou wilt repent, and come to Confession, I will absolve thee: but large penance thou must have!” At Henley, Campion saw in the crowd Fr. Parsons’ servant, and greeted him as he could, without betraying him: Fr. Parsons was near at hand, but was wisely kept indoors. A young priest, “Mr. Filby the younger,” as he was called, a native of Oxford, is said to have here attempted to speak to Campion; he was at once seized upon as a traitorous “comforter of Jesuits,” and added to the cavalcade. At Colebrook, less than a dozen miles from London, came fresh instructions from the Council. ”

“ Campion met the suggestion as he had met the suggestion of Pounde, with a gentle disclaimer, "alleging divers difficulties," but soon good-humouredly assented on the condition (not a usual one with literary men) that someone else should propose the subject. The company therefore made various suggestions, none of which met with general acceptance, until Campion proposed "Heresy in Despair." "Whereat," adds Persons, "all that were present could not choose but laugh, and wonder to see him fall upon that argument at such a time when heresy seemed most of all to triumph." ”

“ For nearly two years Campion followed the course of scholastic theology, taking his degree of Bachelor in January, 1573. He then received Minor Orders, and was ordained Sub-deacon. All went happily for him at Douay. He was again at his old work, and, as ever, he won the highest opinions from those among whom he moved. In his Oxford days he had always [56] held lofty standards before his pupils: “never to deliquesce into sloth, nor to dance away your time, nor to live for rioting and pleasure . ”

“ 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.” ”

“ As it fell out, he soon spurred back after Parsons to tell him of a letter that moment received. It was from a gentleman named Yate, then a prisoner for his religion, earnestly begging Campion to visit Lyford Grange in Berkshire, the gentleman’s own estate, hard by, where his [128] wife and mother still were, together with Edward Yate, and part of a proscribed community of English Brigittine nuns, driven back into England by troubles in the Low Countries. Fr. Parsons, knowing the house to be a conspicuous one, and already supplied with chaplains, was unwilling to grant the permission. ”

“ He was most mindful of his promise; was not to be biassed by all the offers of Spain or the Empire, but rejected with indignation the overtures of Saint-Ibal and of Bardouville, who would have persuaded him to take up arms. Campion, one of his domestics, whom he had left at Paris to mind his affairs at Court, told me these particulars by the Count's express orders, and I still remember this passage in one of his letters to Campion: "The men you know are very urgent with me to treat with the enemy, and accuse me of weakness because I fear the examples of Charles de Bourbon and Robert d'Artois." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Burghley fixed upon November 25, a Saturday, as the date for Campion’s execution. Sherwin was appointed to die in his company, as representing the Seminary at Rheims. They were taken together one day into the Lieutenant’s Hall to face some endless argument or other. The opponent, “by report of such as stood by, was never so holden up to the wall in his life.” On the way back to their cells, under guard, they crossed one of the Tower courts. “Ah, Father Campion!” said his young comrade, smiling at the welcome London sun, “I shall shortly be above yon fellow.” ”

“ Nevertheless the gentlemen in question were at once seized, imprisoned and fined, on the alleged evidence of Campion's confessions only. This of course caused much scandal among Catholics, and so long as he lay lost in the Tower dungeons, unpleasant rumours about his constancy could not be effectively contradicted. Thus far Elizabeth's ministers had gained an advantage, which Pounde had foretold they were likely to win. ”

“ The band of lay Catholics, some of whom Campion had known from boyhood, like Henry Vaux and Richard Stanihurst, were acting as friends, freely leagued together, as occasion arose, for the helping of priests, and the furthering of religion. ”