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09 - Blessed Edmund Campion by Louise Imogen Guiney · Blessed Edmund Campion

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  Speaker 1: Chapter nine of Blessed Edmund Campion. This is a LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: recording or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Elaine Conway, England. Blessed Edmund Campion by Louise
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  Speaker 1: Immergen Gwinney, Chapter nine, Skirmishing the English Counties, fifteen eighty.
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  Speaker 1: The devoted George Gilbert, his fellowship of young men, and
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  Speaker 1: those whom they gathered together met on the Feast of
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  Speaker 1: Saint Peter and Paul June twenty ninth to hear for
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  Speaker 1: the first time Father Campian preach. It was no easy
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  Speaker 1: task to find a safe and suitable auditorium, but Lord Paget,
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  Speaker 1: one of their own number, was daring enough to hire
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  Speaker 1: from Lord Norris, the hall of a great house in
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  Speaker 1: the neighborhood of Smithfield Or. The servants and porters were
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  Speaker 1: turned out for the oca and gentlemen took their places.
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  Speaker 1: Within a few days, however, rumors about Campion's sermon and
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  Speaker 1: about Campion were flying over the city. There were a
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  Speaker 1: number of spies about, instructed by the council, pretending to
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  Speaker 1: be lapsed Catholics or unsettled Protestants and trying hard to
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  Speaker 1: beg such new and channing birds as the Jesuits. But
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  Speaker 1: Campion had a friend at court who warned him, and
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  Speaker 1: therefore held only private conferences in friendly houses with those
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  Speaker 1: whom he knew. The missionaries were sent to strengthen the
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  Speaker 1: wills of their wavering Catholics, and not primarily to make converts.
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  Speaker 1: Personal dealings with would be converts were never attempted, except
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  Speaker 1: as supplementary to the action of the lay helpers, who
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  Speaker 1: took all the soundings and gave any needful catechising. When Parsons,
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  Speaker 1: who had been away in the country, got back to town,
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  Speaker 1: mister Henry Orton and Father Robert Johnson had been tracked
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  Speaker 1: and imprisoned through Sledge the Apostate informer, and it became
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  Speaker 1: plain to the rest of the little band gathered about
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  Speaker 1: Parsons and Campion that four reasons immediate and remote, both
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  Speaker 1: fathers must be spirited away. Each went mounted with a companion,
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  Speaker 1: Gervais Pierre Point being Campion's guide, and at Hoxton in July,
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  Speaker 1: the priests parted for their separate fields of action. Just
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  Speaker 1: before that, however, there arrived as a deputy to them.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Thomas Pound of Balmont, the best known, perhaps of
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  Speaker 1: all the English prisoners for the faith. He was committed
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  Speaker 1: to jail sixteen times, and past thirty years in endurance,
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  Speaker 1: Pound had managed to bribe the jailer of the Marshal
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  Speaker 1: Sea to let him out for this short journey. Most
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  Speaker 1: anxious for the good repute of the Fathers, he rode
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  Speaker 1: post haste to tell them that enemies in London were
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  Speaker 1: spreading the report that they had come over the politic purposes,
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  Speaker 1: and that if in the midst of their apostolic work
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  Speaker 1: in the Shires they should be taken and executed, the
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  Speaker 1: government would be sure to issue pamphlets, as was its habit,
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  Speaker 1: defaming their motives and slandering the Catholic body. Therefore, he
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  Speaker 1: begged both Jesuits to write a vindication of their presence
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  Speaker 1: and purpose in England, which signed and sealed, might be
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  Speaker 1: given to the public if things came to the worst.
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  Speaker 1: The certain accusation and its answer had been debated before
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  Speaker 1: in counsel by many clergy, who had contented themselves with
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  Speaker 1: a green to swear when called upon, that they had
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  Speaker 1: no business whatever in hand but that of religion. But
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  Speaker 1: Campion now drew up his own document, then and there
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  Speaker 1: at a table, while the others were talking in it,
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  Speaker 1: he declares that my charge is of free cost to
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  Speaker 1: preach the Gospel, to cry alarmed spiritual, that matters of
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  Speaker 1: state are things which appertain not to make my vocation.
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  Speaker 1: And I straightly forbid things from which I did gladly
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  Speaker 1: estrange and sequester my thoughts. And, never thinking of himself,
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  Speaker 1: fired with confidence in his cause, he goes on to
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  Speaker 1: beg leave for a public presentment of the faith. He says,
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  Speaker 1: in the course of this splendid little philippic, I should
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  Speaker 1: be loath to speak anything that might sound of an
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  Speaker 1: insolent brag or challenge. In this noble realm, my dear country.
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  Speaker 1: It shows completely the partisan temper of the time. That is,
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  Speaker 1: his statement got exactly that name, and no other fastened
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  Speaker 1: upon it. It was called everywhere Campion's brag and challenge,
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  Speaker 1: and its modest author was contempt and ridiculed for the
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  Speaker 1: implication that his own powers were so very superior that
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  Speaker 1: he must have cause get the better of others in
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  Speaker 1: any argument. Pound took his copy, which Campion forgot to seal,
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  Speaker 1: but to London read it in raptures. Let it be seen, admired,
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  Speaker 1: talked about, and transcribed. This was his curious way of
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  Speaker 1: keeping a secret. The result was that what was meant
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  Speaker 1: to meet a particular crisis and serve for a lost
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  Speaker 1: Will and Testament became as common property beforehand as any
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  Speaker 1: ballad sould in the streets. Lively measures were at once
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  Speaker 1: taken by the Bishop of Winchester, and the state hypocritically
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  Speaker 1: urging conspiracy pounced upon a host of Catholic lords and gentlemen.
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  Speaker 1: Yet Campion's little composition, which bread all this viury, only
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  Speaker 1: asked for three sorts of indifferent and quiet audience. One
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  Speaker 1: hearing before the Lords in council on the relation of
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  Speaker 1: the Church to the English Government. The next before the
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  Speaker 1: head of houses of both universities on the proofs of
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  Speaker 1: the truth of the Catholic religion. The last before the
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  Speaker 1: Court spiritual and temporal, wherein I will justify the said
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  Speaker 1: faith by the common widths of the laws standing. Then
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  Speaker 1: he pleads, indeferent and almost affectionate words for a special
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  Speaker 1: audience of Her Noble Grace the Queen. In his candor
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  Speaker 1: and fearless simplicity, he believed that opponents had only here
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  Speaker 1: to be convinced, thus crediting them with that earnestness in
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  Speaker 1: religious matters which he possessed himself, and which only a
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  Speaker 1: very few of the best Protestants of that day shared
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  Speaker 1: with him. Campion closes his appeal with a wonderfully beautiful
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  Speaker 1: reference to the vad Seminarian priests, and in a lofty
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  Speaker 1: music of good English, worthy to stand by any passage
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  Speaker 1: of like length in the great prose classics. Hearken to
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  Speaker 1: those which spend the best blood in their bodies for
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  Speaker 1: your salvation. Many innocent hands are lifted up and to
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  Speaker 1: heavened for you daily and hourly by those English students
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  Speaker 1: whose posterity shall not die, which beyond the seas, gathering
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  Speaker 1: virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never
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  Speaker 1: to give you over, but either to win you to
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  Speaker 1: heaven or to die upon your pikes and touching our society.
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  Speaker 1: Be it known unto you that we have made a
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  Speaker 1: league or the Jesuits in the world. His succession and
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  Speaker 1: multitude must overreach all the practices of England. Cheerfully to
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  Speaker 1: carry the cross that you shall lay upon us, and
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  Speaker 1: never to despair your recovery. While we have a man
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  Speaker 1: left to enjoy your tyburn, or to be wrecked with
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  Speaker 1: your torments, or to be consumed with your prisons. The
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  Speaker 1: expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun. It is of God.
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  Speaker 1: It cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted, so
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  Speaker 1: it must be restored. If these my offers be refused,
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  Speaker 1: and my endeavors can take no place, and I, having
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  Speaker 1: run thousands of miles to do you good, shall be
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  Speaker 1: rewarded with rigor. I have no more to say but
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  Speaker 1: to recommend your case and mine to Almighty God, the
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  Speaker 1: search of health, who send us off his grace and
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  Speaker 1: set us at a cord before the day of payment,
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  Speaker 1: to the intent we may at last be friends in heaven,
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  Speaker 1: where all injuries shall be forgotten. Parsons work lay in Gloucester, Hereford, Worcestershire,
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  Speaker 1: Warwickshire and Derbyshire. Campions in the more southerly Midlands, the
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  Speaker 1: wandering leevite with his attendant gentlemen, would approach at evening
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  Speaker 1: and with caution the friendly roof either Catholic or though
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  Speaker 1: a Protestant containing Catholics, and be received at the door
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  Speaker 1: as strangers, then conducting it to an inner room where
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  Speaker 1: all who seek the priest's ministrations Neil and ask for
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  Speaker 1: his blessing. That night, all is got ready and confessions
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  Speaker 1: are heard, instructions given, reconciliations affected. At dawn there is
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  Speaker 1: mass preaching and holy communion, and the travelers depart for
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  Speaker 1: the next household station Edifying accounts are given of the
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  Speaker 1: devotion of good married confessors who were scattered all over
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  Speaker 1: the land. The Jesuits men met with many seculars, whom
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  Speaker 1: we find in every place whereby both the people is
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  Speaker 1: well served, and we much eased in our church. These
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  Speaker 1: were the old Marian priests active in obscurity. The harvest
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  Speaker 1: is wonderful, great, so many show a conscience pure, a courage, invincible,
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  Speaker 1: zeal incredible, a work so worthy. The number innumerable, of
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  Speaker 1: high degree of mean, calling of every age and sex.
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  Speaker 1: The solaces that are ever intermingled with the miseries are
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  Speaker 1: so great that they do not only can't avail the
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  Speaker 1: fear of what punishment temporals soever, but by infinite sweetness
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  Speaker 1: may call worldly pains. Be they never so great seem
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  Speaker 1: nothing for the sake of this good people, which had
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  Speaker 1: lived before so many ages in one only faith, day
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  Speaker 1: by day, running in and out of all the busy
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  Speaker 1: heroic toil is the very thread of danger and alarm.
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  Speaker 1: We are sitting merrily at the table, conversing familiarly on
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  Speaker 1: matters of faith and devotion, for our talk is generally
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  Speaker 1: of such things. When comes a hurry to knock at
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  Speaker 1: the door, we all start and listen like deer when
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  Speaker 1: they hear the huntsmen. If it is nothing, we laugh
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  Speaker 1: at our fright. Then there was calumny, a far more
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  Speaker 1: difficult thing to accept. In the same gay spirit, they
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  Speaker 1: tear and sting us with their venomous tongues, calling us
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  Speaker 1: seditious hypocrites. Yay, heretics too, which is much laughed at
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  Speaker 1: the people. Hereupon is ours, and again the house where
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  Speaker 1: I am is sad. No other talk but of the death, flight, prison,
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  Speaker 1: or spoil of their friends. Nevertheless, they proceed with courage,
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  Speaker 1: very many even at this present being store to the church.
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  Speaker 1: New soldiers give in their names, while the old offer
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  Speaker 1: up their blood, by which holy hosts and oblations God
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  Speaker 1: will be pleased, and we shall no question by Him overcome.
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  Speaker 1: These are extracts from Campion's letters and give a clear
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  Speaker 1: idea of his life during his visitations of fifteen eighty
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  Speaker 1: to fifteen eighty one. There were then many more manor
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  Speaker 1: houses kept up as such than there are now. Most
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  Speaker 1: of those which Campion visited had their hiding place or
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  Speaker 1: priests halls, to which he could always fly when safety
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  Speaker 1: demanded it. He settled a host of weak Catholics in
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  Speaker 1: their religion, and also received a great many conspicuous converts.
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  Speaker 1: It will be noted that the Little Jesuit mission was
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  Speaker 1: directed to the gentry. This was not through accident, or
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  Speaker 1: partiality or snobbery. The gentry had most personal weight, who
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  Speaker 1: were better able to protect a hunted man, and they
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  Speaker 1: were naturally supposed to have strict notions of honor. This
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  Speaker 1: last was a point on which everything depended. Moreover, the
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  Speaker 1: old spirit of feudalism was not so dead, but that
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  Speaker 1: through them all workmen on their estates or connected by
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  Speaker 1: interest with them in the towns, could be reached and influenced.
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  Speaker 1: In a hurried campaign. Every consideration of prudence and forethought
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  Speaker 1: would choose them. So to speak, as the outworks of
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  Speaker 1: the citadel. The country districts north and south were all
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  Speaker 1: still favorable to Catholicism. London, the University of Cambridge, and
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  Speaker 1: some larger towns and seaports, especially in the West, were
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  Speaker 1: half Puritan or Calvinistic, half irreligious, and indifferent. The ancient faith,
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  Speaker 1: as was well said by Sir Cuthbert Sharp, for the
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  Speaker 1: most part, still lay like Lee's at the bottom of
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  Speaker 1: men's hearts, and if the vessel were ever so little
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  Speaker 1: stirred came to the top A thoughtful living right sums
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  Speaker 1: it up as his conclusion that England would have resumed
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  Speaker 1: the faith with a sigh of relief had it not
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  Speaker 1: been for the resentment spread by the Catholic plotters. Considering
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  Speaker 1: the frightful circumstances of the body to which these men belonged,
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  Speaker 1: it is putting too great strain, perhaps upon human nature
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  Speaker 1: to expect smooth behavior from every individual in it. The
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  Speaker 1: genuine plotters were few. Against them stands the passionate loyalty
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  Speaker 1: of a persecuted minority, both all along and in the
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  Speaker 1: one great crisis, when the deliverer loomed up in the
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  Speaker 1: shape of the philips Almada, blessed and indulgenced like a
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  Speaker 1: crusade of old. Where were they supposed to be so
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  Speaker 1: sick of queen and country, and in an impoverished pocket
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  Speaker 1: strengthening the national defenses cutless on thigh manning the English fleet,
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  Speaker 1: end of Chapter ninet