he secretly longed to throw his life and his labours directly into the
balance for England’s sake. He knew what was going on there, and his
thoughts seem never once to have turned towards pikes, or any political
remedy; his whole ambition was, as he said in one letter, to “torture
our envious foe with good deeds,” and in another, “to catch them by
the prayers and tears at which they laugh.” His long-dear Cuthbert
Mayne, of whom he had lost sight for awhile, had given up his life for
the Faith at Launceston, November 29, 1577. He had been captured near
Probus; his wealthy host, Francis Tregian, was attainted of præmunire,
and his children completely beggared. This young Westcountryman had
a character all his own. He had been charged with nothing but the
exercise of his priestly functions, and was offered his life, on the
day of his execution, if he would but swear that the Queen was Supreme
Head of the Church of England. “Upon this,” continues the chronicle,
“he took the Bible into his hands, made the sign of the Cross upon
it, kissed it, and said: ‘The Queen neither ever was, nor is, nor
ever shall be, the Head of the Church of England!’” Campion had only
recently heard the news in the August of 1579. One can read between the
lines of a passage like this: “We all thank you much for your account
of Cuthbert’s martyrdom; it gave many of us a divine pleasure. Wretch
that I am, how far has that novice distanced me! May he be favourable
to his old friend and tutor! Now shall I boast of these titles more
than ever before.” Within the next six months Edmund Campion was to see
the beginning of his heart’s desire.
Dr. Allen, the founder of Douay, was in Rome to organize the English
College; and there he brought all his persuasion to bear upon the
General of the Society of Jesus and his consultors, that the English
Jesuits might be allowed to join the English secular priests in the
pressing redemption of their distracted country. There were the gravest
reasons for and against the proposal, but the answer given to Dr.
Allen was that the Society would do its best to supply missioners
thenceforward, and that Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion should be
sent first as forerunners of the rest. 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.”
The imaginations of Campion’s comrades at Prague were touched to the
quick by the prospect opening before their happy brother. One of these
bore witness to the fragrance of his own thoughts by painting a garland
of roses and lilies on the wall of Campion’s little room, just at
the bed’s head. A white-haired Silesian, Father James Gall, wrote in
scroll fashion, by night, over the outer door of that same little room:
“P[ater] Edmundus Campianus, Martyr.” For such a romantic irregularity
the old saint was reprimanded. He replied quite simply: “But I had to
do it!” Poor Campion, who was shy, had seen both these things, before
Campanus, the sympathetic Rector, gave him his marching orders to start
at once for Rome. “The Fathers do verily seem to suspect something
about me; I hope their suspicions may come true!” he said. “God’s will
be done, not mine.” And then, adds that first English biographer who
so well knew him and so much loved him: “Being scarce able to hold
tears for joy and tenderness of heart, he went to his chamber, and
there upon his knees to God satisfied his appetite of weeping and
thanksgiving, and offered himself to His divine disposition without any
exception or restraint: whether it were to rack, cross-quartering, or
any other torment or death whatsoever.”
VII
A LONG MARCH: ROME, GENEVA, RHEIMS: 1580
FROM Prague to Munich, and from Munich to Innsbrück, Campion had the
distinguished and very friendly company of Ferdinand, brother of the
reigning Duke of Bavaria. Afterwards he went on alone on foot, as he
was always glad to do, as far as Padua. Here he took horse for Rome,
which he reached just before Palm Sunday, April 5, 1580, coming “in
grave priest’s garb,” we are told, “with long hair, after the fashion
of Germany.” He was informed by the Father-General that he was to start
for England nine or ten days after Easter. Campion begged “neither
to be Superior of the expedition nor to have anything to do with
the preparations,” and that during the fortnight he might be free
from all except necessary cares, in order to make a more devotional
entrance upon the life ahead of him. “And the like did, for their part,
and had done, all the Lent before, those other priests also of the
English Seminary,” says Parsons, speaking of many seculars afterwards
martyred, “that were appointed by their Superiors to go with us in this
mission.... All these together used such notable and extraordinary
diligence for preparing themselves well in the sight of God ... as was
matter of edification to all Rome.”
Rome was a most religious place at that time, not only in its enduring
associations, but in the temper of the people. One in large measure
responsible for its spirit of penance and prayer, and loving charity
to the poor, was then living at San Girolamo, opposite the old English
hospital, now turned into a College: this was St. Philip Neri, the
most venerated and endearing figure in all the great city. He knew
the successive little English bands; when he passed them in the
streets, cheerful St. Philip used to smile tenderly, and give what must
have been to them a thrilling greeting: “‘Hail, Little Flowers of
Martyrdom!’” the opening line of the Breviary Hymn for Holy Innocents’
Day. Parsons and Campion, and the secular clerics associated with them,
may have originated the custom of going over to San Girolamo for a
special fatherly blessing before setting forth to almost certain death.
There is a tradition (mentioned by Newman) that one of that company did
not care to seek St. Philip’s prayers, and that afterwards he failed
to persevere. This is thought to be the lay student, John Paschall, or
Pascal, who was apparently of an unstable disposition, and is known to
have forsworn the Faith, when his great chance came to profess it.
The Pope, Gregory XIII, showed untiring and fatherly interest in all
the missionaries, and their travelling funds were his personal gift.
He wept over them in bestowing his parting benediction. Campion set
out this time with seven English priests, Ralph Sherwin, a former
Fellow of Exeter College, among them; also with two lay brothers, and
two students. Others joined them from Rheims and Louvain, some of
them advanced in years and well known. The party adopted the novel and
almost daredevil fashion of going on foot; but, mounted and riding
privately in advance of it, were its two eldest members. One was the
holy octogenarian Thomas Goldwell, the Lord Bishop of St. Asaph, who
had been offered by Queen Mary a transfer to the See of Oxford, and
refused it. He was destined to be the last survivor of the deposed and
scattered Catholic hierarchy in England, who had all but one refused
the unheard-of Oath in 1559, and had all been deprived of their Sees
that same year. Bishop Goldwell now, twenty years afterwards, was one
of two who were living; and his colleague, Watson, Bishop of Lincoln,
was in prison. The other senior missionary was his companion, Dr.
Nicholas Morton, Canon Penitentiary of St. Peter’s, who had done
something already towards the making of English history. The first
little Jesuit group of three was commanded by Fr. Robert Parsons, a
born organizer, a man of splendid resources, afterwards celebrated,
and much loved and hated. For convenience, as for safety, they all
put on secular dress. Campion, however, would buy no new clothes, but
arrayed himself in an old buckram suit, with a shabby cloak. When
rallied on his highly inelegant appearance, he remarked with the gay
spirit so like that of another “blissful martyr,” Sir Thomas More, that
a man going forth to be hanged need trouble himself little about the
fashion!
The roads were bad beyond any modern idea of badness, and it poured
rain for the first nine or ten days. Campion, the least robust of
the party, and the most poorly clad, fell ill under such combined
discomforts, and while crossing the Apennines had to be lifted into
the saddle of one of the very few horses which had been brought along
for the sake of the infirm. As soon as he was well enough he resumed
his daily habit of saying Mass very early, and of walking on, in the
later morning hours, till he was a mile ahead of the rest, to make his
meditation, read his Office, and say the Litany of the Saints, before
he should be overtaken. He and his comrades planned their spiritual
life, day by day, with the most careful regularity. Their talk was
always of souls: “the Harvest” was their word for England, or else “the
Warfare.” In the chilly spring twilights Campion would push on ahead
again, “to make his prayers alone, and utter his zealous affections to
his Saviour without being heard or noted.”
[Illustration: “P(ater) Edmundus Campianus, Martyr.” p 73.]
The route lay through Siena, Florence, Bologna. In the latter city
there was a week’s delay, due to an injury to Fr. Parsons’ leg. The
band of twelve was entertained by the Cardinal Archbishop of that See,
who was the historian of the Council of Trent: Gabriel Paleotto. Like
Avellanedo, like many another Italian, Paleotto loved the English.
“Were he a born Englishman, he could not love them more,” wrote
Agazzario to Allen, at that time when the national temperament was
much more expressive and responsive than it is now. At Milan, in the
early part of May, the future confessors and martyrs were to find
another and a greater, also “much affectioned” towards them, who
received them most hospitably, and even asked the English College for
other relays of guests in the future. This was the great Archbishop,
St. Charles Borromeo. Bishop Goldwell, who had passed through Milan
days before the walkers reached it, had been, in 1563, Vicar-General
to St. Charles, and would have bespoken his interest in the little
party. 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.
From Turin the little company made for Mount Cenis, and young,
middle-aged and old lustily climbed it; and then among the torrents
and boulders of that glorious scenery, they came down into Savoy.
At St. Jean Maurienne they found the roads blocked by the Spanish
soldiery, and at Aiguebelle ran across other disturbances, caused by
the wars of religion raging in the Dauphiné. As there was nothing
to do but abandon the direct route, they turned aside and entered
Geneva, the hotbed of Calvinism, and the home of Theodore Beza, the
learned apostate who had succeeded to Calvin’s leadership. There was a
close community of spirit between Geneva and the English Reformation.
However, Switzerland, then as now, had liberal laws, and any traveller,
Catholic or Protestant, was free to pass, unmolested though not
unquestioned, three days in the city. It looks decidedly like an
alloy of mischief on the part of five of the English that they went
to call in a body on Beza! They were admitted as far as the court by
Claudine, his stolen wife, whom they had all heard of, and were not
ill-pleased to see. When the famous greybeard came out they managed,
after passing their compliments, to worry him with some telling
controversial shots. Campion knew not how to be rude: but Sherwin found
amusement, ever afterwards, in remembering how that honest fellow
“Patrick” stood and looked and talked, cap in hand, “facing out” (such
is Sherwin’s shockingly boyish language in a private letter), “the
old doting heretical fool.” The celebrity so described behaved rather
vaguely, and, in the course of nature, could not have been sorry to
see the last of his besiegers, and of their wits, sharpened with life
in the open air. He bowed them out with less abruptness than might
have been expected—indeed, with a certain show of civility; and went
back to his books. Later, Sherwin and two other youngsters, in a
midnight discussion with some English Protestant students, actually
challenged Beza and all Calvindom to a trial of theologies, with
the drastic proviso that the defeated party should be burnt in the
marketplace! Meanwhile Campion, in the _rôle_ of “Patrick,” did his
share of “facing out” other worthies in Geneva, besides finding an old
University friend there, who “used him lovingly,” but reported that an
alarm had been raised, and encouraged the departure of the paladins.
These, halting on a spur of the Jura before nightfall, with Lake Leman
spread beneath them, said _Te Deum_ together, that they were safely
out of the city. There seems to have been a good deal of curiosity
or bravado mingled with their polemical zeal, and Campion’s always
tender conscience would have readily accepted, if it did not suggest,
a suitable penance for the raid. So off they trudged nine steep,
contrite, extra miles (“extreme troublesome,” we are told they were) to
the nearest shrine, that of St. Claude, over the French border.
They entered Rheims the last day of May, 1580, for in Rheims was
the soul, if not the body, of the College now driven, partly for
convenience, partly by force of trouble, out of Douay. That College
was never re-formed: but the scholar-exiles lived close together, up
and down the street still called _Rue des Anglais_. The travellers
were rapturously welcomed by all, especially by the great Englishman
whom the old narrative quaintly calls “Mr. Dr. Allen, the President.”
Here at Rheims the venerable Bishop of St. Asaph fell ill of a fever.
He was never again to cross the Channel. By the time he had fairly
recovered, rumours of his movements had naturally got abroad, and the
Pope was unwilling to imperil so important and precious a person. While
still a convalescent at Rheims, Goldwell wrote to his Holiness in
person, begging him to listen to no objections, but to anoint at once
three or four new Bishops to shepherd their own needy Church; and he
very touchingly assures the Holy Father, knowing that the question of
a fitting maintenance for them would arise, that God had so inclined
the minds of all the English priests whom he knew to put up with their
penniless and hunted daily lives, and the vision of the gallows always
before them, that any of these, once consecrated, would be entirely
contented to go on as poorly as he had gone heretofore, like a Bishop
of the Early Church. The application failed. “Etiquette and routine
prevailed,” says Simpson, in summing up this incident.
In truth, it was not that good-will was lacking. Nobody on the Catholic
side believed that the new sad order of things in England was going
to last, and consequently, waiting and postponing in a matter of this
sort, could not seem the disastrous mistake which it really was. The
upshot, in any case, was that the good Bishop was recalled to Rome, and
there died; and that for thirty weary years the poor flock struggled
on without any qualified prelate to supply their crying spiritual
wants and hold them together. Then the first provisional leader, known
as the Archpriest, was appointed, and later came Vicars Apostolic.
When finally the longed-for mitres were seen again in the land, they
had been absent too long. The nominal link snapped; the great native
tradition was broken; the titles of the ancient Sees, given up, as
if in sleep, by their lineal heirs, were never reclaimed. So far as
surface connection goes,—and it goes far indeed with people in general,
who neither reason nor read, but get all their ideas from what they
see and hear, this was the most tragic loss which could possibly have
befallen the post-Reformation Church. (The English Benedictines kept
the thread of their own dynasty in their hands: but this did not affect
the Catholic body, and the lay interest.) The stranger who could not
destroy the life and blessing of the firstborn has had possession, for
three centuries and a half, by royal grant, of his home and of his very
name.
VIII
INHOSPITABLE HOME: 1580
SIR FRANCIS WALSINGHAM had a wonderfully well-organized spy-system: far
superior, as Simpson remarks, to the attempts of the Spaniards in the
same line. Therefore each of the missionaries was cautioned to travel
under a name other than his own. Campion fell back upon his beloved
alias of “Mr. Patrick,” as he had done for the brief visit to Geneva.
His friends made him drop it, as they neared the Channel; being Irish,
it was doubly dangerous, since here at Rheims the home-goers got their
first tardy news of the so-called Geraldine insurrection in Ireland,
acted upon in July, 1579, and crushed almost as soon by the massacre
at Smerwick in Kerry. It had been nursed by European feeling against
Elizabeth’s policy in Flanders, and her piracies on the high seas; and
the great religious grudge found it a convenient opening. Dr. Nicholas
Sander, who was not a Papal Legate, but stood none the less for the
Pope’s active good-will in the matter, joined the expedition with James
Fitzmaurice, Spanish soldiers, Roman officers, ships and supplies. That
expedition did not, as we know, dislodge Jezebel from her throne, but
it gave sufficient heartbreak to our messengers of the Gospel of Peace,
who were now sure to be mixed up with it in the popular mind. The
situation was certainly an awkward one. It gave unique plausibility to
Walsingham’s claim that (to quote Fr. Pollen) “the preaching of the old
Faith was only a political propaganda.” Father Robert Parsons faced the
future, on behalf of the rest, in the spirit of a brave man. “Seeing
that it lay not in our hands to remedy the matter, our consciences
being clear, we resolved ourselves, with the Apostle, ‘through evil
report and good report’ to go forward only with the spiritual action
we had in hand. And if God had appointed that any of us should suffer
in England under a wrong title, as Himself did upon the case of a
malefactor, we should lose nothing thereby, but rather gain with Him
who knew the truth, and Whom only in this enterprise we desired to
please.”
Danger was a spur and not a bridle to Campion’s devoted will. But he
began to foresee little fruit from labours on his native ground, with
so much fierce misunderstanding against him; and to fear that he had
not done well in so gladly laying down what was, after all, steady
and successful work in Bohemia. With this buzzing scruple he went to
the President for advice. 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. It gave him a pathetic pleasure to be
complimented upon his ready English, of which he had spoken little
in private, and not a word in public, for eight years. His text is
reported to have been Luke xii. 49: “I am come to send fire upon the
earth; and what will I but that it shall be kindled?” and at one point
he cried out in so earnest a manner: “Fire, fire, fire, fire!” that
those outside the Chapel ran for the water-buckets! But a careful
reading of what was then spoken suggests quite a different passage
of Holy Scripture as present in Campion’s mind. His theme was the
ruin wrought by the conflagration of heresy, now attacking a third
generation of Christian souls, and to be put out, he says, by “water of
Catholic doctrine, milk of sweet and holy conversation, blood of potent
martyrdom.” Isaiah 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.” This very passage had been alluded to
in one of Campion’s former exhortations, and may have been a favourite
with him. The whole trend, indeed, and every part of this Rheims sermon
bear out the thoughts not of the Apostle’s page, but of the Prophet’s.
Bishop Goldwell and Dr. Morton, the highest in office of the
missionary party, remained at Rheims. Three Englishmen, a lay Professor
of Law, and two priests, joined in, to fill up the gap, then another
Jesuit, who had been labouring in Poland: this was Fr. Thomas Cottam,
ordered home to restore his health, but destined, as were so many of
his comrades, for martyrdom. The little band of fifteen divided, and
sailed from different ports: Campion, with Parsons and one lay brother,
Ralph Emerson, headed for Calais as their point of departure, going
by way of St. Omers, “not a little encouraged to think that the first
mission of St. Augustine and his fellows into [our] island was by that
city.” Here there was another Jesuit College. The Flemish Fathers
croaked friendly warnings in their ears, for it was common rumour
in St. Omers that the Queen’s Council had full information of the
appearance, dress and movements of the exiles, and had officers posted
to waylay them on arrival. They had come on foot nearly nine hundred
miles, and were not likely to give up the object of their journey. But
they took precautions. It was decided that Parsons should go first,
in military attire, accompanied from the Low Countries by a good youth
who passed as his man George; and that if Parsons got safely to Dover,
he was 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. “Father Robert
sailed from Calais after midnight.... They got him up like a soldier:
such a peacock! such a swaggerer!... such duds, such a glance, such
a strut! A man must have a sharp eye indeed,” he adds, “to catch any
glimpse of the holiness and modesty that lurk there underneath it all.”
He goes on to explain how he is laying out money to buy numerous and
silly clothes “to dress up myself and Ralph,” whereby “to cheat the
madness of this world.” Fr. Parsons, like Campion himself in lesser
_rôles_, must have been a dramatic genius, for arriving at Dover on
the 12th of June, and falling into the hands of the searcher, he so won
him over, by the mere swagger and strut aforementioned, as not only to
be passed without inquiry, but to be helped to a horse to carry him
to Gravesend. Thereupon the Captain was quick to bespeak the interest
of so unexpectedly polite a functionary in his friend “Mr. Edmunds,”
described as a jewel-merchant lying at St. Omers; and he gave the
searcher a letter recommending London as a good market, to be forwarded
post-haste to that gentleman, and to be shown to the searcher again by
“Mr. Edmunds” himself when he came over. And by the reception of that
letter Campion learned that Fr. Parsons was scot-free, and speeded on
his way.
On the Feast of his old College patron, St. John the Baptist, “Mr.
Edmunds,” followed by Brother Ralph, his supposed servant, boarded the
vessel bound for Dover. At daybreak they stepped ashore under the white
cliffs, and there kneeling a moment in the shadow of a rock, Campion
renewed his offering of himself, without reserve or condition, to the
God of Hosts, for the dark “warfare” which lay before him.