August 1978 Print

English Martyrs

As a part of a government policy to win the allegiance of intellectuals and to advance talented men, Queen Elizabeth I paid a formal visit to Oxford in the summer of 1566. Among the hours and hours of speeches, disputations, and dramatic presentations, one of the people who most impressed the royal entourage was Edmund Campion. Twenty-six years old at the time he was an accomplished scholar, a gifted teacher, a superb orator, and obviously a natural leader among the brightest men at the university. Before the royal party left, Campion was visited privately by none other than Lord William Cecil, the Queen's principal political advisor, and the Earl of Leicester, who was rumoured to be on the verge of marriage to the thirty-three year old queen. Both promised him a brilliant future.

Leicester thereafter invited Campion to the glittering court from time to time when it felt the need of grave entertainment, like a learned oration. Brilliant vistas opened before the young scholar. While he harbored no ambitions to become a courtier (for which he was certainly qualified by talent and personality), the court's patronage could surely help to achieve his true ambition, the lively pursuit of his studies in an intellectual environment. No doubt he relished the honors and preferments that awaited him, the steady advancements and the growing powers to restore the cause of learning in his native land.

But these were troubled times, and Campion was to discover that (in a phrase of Evelyn Waugh's) he must become either a good bit more than a successful scholar, or a good bit less. In the normal course of his studies, which were expected to lead to the Anglican priesthood, Edmund had taken the Oath of Supremacy, declaring Elizabeth to be the supreme head of the Church in England; this had been required at the time of his ordination as deacon.

But he had lingered in philosophical studies as long as possible before turning to the study of the Fathers, as if there were questions he preferred not to face. And in the Fathers he discovered what he must have suspected: that the Church of Elizabeth and Cecil was not the Church of St. Augustine of Canterbury, King St. Edward the Confessor, and St. Thomas à Becket, those English lights of antiquity, nor was it the Church of the ancient Greek and Roman Fathers. Because of his frank search for truth and his candid disposition, he discussed his questions and his findings with everybody. But this was the wrong time to develop Catholic sympathies. A combination of domestic and foreign matters led the government to be less and less indulgent toward disloyalty to the Queen, especially in matters of religion. One must either be loyal or disloyal; 'loyal opposition' was a refinement not yet invented. Nor was only the government becoming severe: the grocers' guild in London, from which Campion received a stipend, invited him to preach in London in demonstration of his orthodoxy. He declined to submit his learning to the scrutiny of the grocers, and he lost that income.

Gregory Martin, his closest colleague at Oxford for many years, had fled to the English Catholic college at Douai when the pressures against Catholics began to mount, and he now sent an invitation for Edmund to join him. St. Cuthbert Mayne was another who flew to exile at this time; his conversion to the Faith is usually credited to Martin and Campion. Although openly in sympathy with the Catholic cause, Campion was probably not yet received into the Church because by having become an Anglican deacon and having sworn the Oath of Supremacy, he had incurred an excommunication which no one readily available would have had faculties to lift.

No personal account of these crucial months in the summer of 1569 survives, if it was ever written, but it seems as if Edmund was looking for some middle way, some course that would allow him to live the academic life that he loved and to practice the Faith that he had found. He no doubt took hope from the continued widespread sympathy with the ancient Faith and scepticism with the new, and from outside the walls he had the support of powerful men. He associated with Bishop Richard Cheney of nearby Gloucester, the first high churchman, who was trying to maintain the delicate balance between Catholic belief and conformity to the Elizabethan settlement.

But Campion discovered soon what high Anglican apologists have yet to concede, that it just will not work. The letter which Campion later wrote to the dignified and kindly old bishop might in truth be the kindest sort of words that could be addressed to high Anglicans and Episcopalians today:

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 conscience you falsely usurp the name of bishop, by your silence you advance a pestilential sect which you love not, stricken with anathema, cut off from the body into which alone the graces of Christ flow, you are deprived of the benefit of all prayers, sacrifices and sacraments. What do you think yourself to be? What do you expect? What is your life? Wherein lies your hope?

"But it needed more than a gentle heart and pious disposition to make a Catholic in that age," observes Waugh. Cheney died still undecided; "he was succeeded, first, by a dunce, next, by an absentee; the little work he had accomplished to preserve decency and toleration was quite undone."

When Campion finally admitted that his Faith required him to give up the Oxford that he loved, he still did not go to Douai. He accepted an invitation from the Stannihurst family to take up residence in their household in Ireland. He would be able to tutor some younger members of the family, pursue his studies, and be in a position to play a role in the founding of a university in Dublin, which was under discussion at the time. These few years in Ireland seem to be the only period in his life when he enjoyed the domestic tranquility of a devout and cultured family life. (Concerning Campion's own family we know almost nothing.)

From sources available in Ireland, Campion composed his History of Ireland,  which later found its way into the famous Holingshed's Chronicles. The style of the History reflects the circumstances of its composition: it begins calmly, deliberately, expansively, but the polished sentences eventually give way to signs of haste, awkward transitions, incomplete revisions. It is still recognized today as a fine piece of work by a master of the English language.

Campion's dedication of the work to the Earl of Leicester shows, besides his gratitude, his nostalgia for the academic life he had given up, and it shows a sample of his elegant language:

There is none that knoweth me familiarly, but he knoweth withal how many ways I have been beholden to your lordship....How often at Oxford, how often at the Court, how at Rycote, how at Windsor, 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.

The serene life of the English gentry in Ireland (Campion and they seem to have had little contact with the native Irish) was beginning to be torn by the same divisions as those in England. Plans for the new university were embroiled in political and religious turmoil, and by 1572 Campion found himself to be practically a fugitive. Also by this time his vocation to the priesthood began to be distinct.

After scarcely two years in Ireland, therefore, he set out, surreptitiously, for Douai, finally acknowledging that God was requiring him to give up all his worldly hopes. He travelled by way of England. The journey was arduous largely because the famous young man was now a notorious heretic. In passing through London he discreetly attended the trial of John Story, a Catholic gentleman who had been kidnapped by Lord Cecil's spies in The Netherlands and brought back from exile for trial, but Campion did not stay for Story's ferocious execution a few days later. This was 1571, the year also of the martyrdom of his friend, St. Cuthbert Mayne.

When Edmund Campion presented himself to Dr. Richard Allen, founder of the seminary at Douai, he might have been placed immediately on the faculty and set to work composing tracts for secret distribution in England, for this was an important activity among Dr. Allen's community. Campion was quite a 'catch' for the still struggling seminary, and the temptation to put him immediately on triumphal display must have crossed Allen's mind. Instead, Campion became a student.

He followed the rigorous but not oppressive routine of study and spiritual development for two years, then he felt himself drawn to the Society of Jesus, mainly because of its systematic program of continuous spiritual growth. Without a whisper of regret, Allen encouraged the step as best for Campion's growth in sanctity.

This is an important point to note about the future Cardinal Allen and the Catholic Counter-Reformation generally. Allen later became deeply involved in controversial political enterprises—like the Spanish Armada for the invasion of England in 1588—, and many historians have treated the Counter-Reformation as mainly a set of such elaborate political schemes. But attitudes such as that shown by Dr. Allen here—that is, his primary concern for Campion's growth in holiness—show the solid spiritual foundation upon which the Counter-Reformation rested. It was not a political and public relations movement for extending ecclesiastical dominance but a true spiritual reform with occasional (and occassionally unsavory) political expressions. It was a selfless dedication to truth and holiness which served the Church well for four centuries, the abandonment of which has led to the present turmoil, and the restoration of which will no doubt be the motive of those who will rescue the Church in our day.

Edmund Campion accordingly travelled to Rome, performed the usual pilgrim's devotions with unusual zeal, was accepted into the Society, and was assigned to the Jesuit noviciate in Prague. Even with his advanced training in philosophy, rhetoric and theology, Campion spent five more years preparing for ordination, years of study, prayer and mortification, and teaching in the Jesuit school there. He said his first Mass in September, 1578.

While he was fully prepared to accept any assignment which his superiors might order, ad majorem Dei gloriam, he seems to have been contentedly resigned to spend his whole life in the little school far from his native land. He could not hope to return to England because the Jesuits took no part in the English mission, tales of which were circulating throughout Europe. Even given the fluid state of affairs, no one could have predicted the heroic adventures, the gallant exploits, and the glorious martyrdom that awaited him on his native soil, all in just three years.

(END PART I)

 

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Dr. Brennan is Professor of English at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.