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

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  Speaker 1: Chapter ten of Blessed Edmund Campion. This is a LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: recording or librivots recordings are in the public domain. For
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  Speaker 1: more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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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 ten, Many Labours and a Book, fifteen
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  Speaker 1: eighty Campion passed four months of pleasant weather in hard
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  Speaker 1: and happy work, moving about Northamptonshire, Berkshire, ox Fridtshire. Some
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  Speaker 1: lovely little spiritual adventure starred his path and the paths
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  Speaker 1: of others. Wherever he went he must have seen more
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  Speaker 1: than once from some hilly road afar off, even if
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  Speaker 1: he never entered it, the towry city branche between towers,
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  Speaker 1: which was so dear to him to the last. In
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  Speaker 1: October of this year fifteen eighty, he was bidden towards
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  Speaker 1: London as far as Exbridge. Farther he could hardly come
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  Speaker 1: without the gravest peril, as the Privy Council were just
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  Speaker 1: issuing their third warrant for the capture of Jesuits. There
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  Speaker 1: he was joined by Father Parsons and several other missionaries.
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  Speaker 1: A conference was held. It was represented that Norfolk and
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  Speaker 1: Lancashire were eager to claim Father Campions' ministrations, and it
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  Speaker 1: was decided that he was to go to Lancashire, preferable
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  Speaker 1: as being not only farther from London and also more
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  Speaker 1: affected to the Catholic religion, but as having better private libraries.
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  Speaker 1: For they were now urging Campion to write again, this
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  Speaker 1: time something on the burning questions of the day, aimed
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  Speaker 1: particularly at the universities, where his challenge was still the
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  Speaker 1: staple of daily talk, and therefore to be written in Latin.
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  Speaker 1: We are not so sure nowadays that controversy does much good,
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  Speaker 1: but one reason for that may be that we have
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  Speaker 1: few Campions to carry it on. It is well to
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  Speaker 1: remember that people then read nothing else except poetry. Campion's
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  Speaker 1: work was his famous decem Rationes propositae in causer fidei, or,
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  Speaker 1: as the title is given in its only modern translation
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  Speaker 1: eighteen twenty seven, ten Reasons for renouncing the Protestant and
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  Speaker 1: embracing the Catholic Religion. At first, the author was for
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  Speaker 1: calling his thesis heresy and despair de heresy desperata. His
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  Speaker 1: counselors agreed amid laughter, that it would be odd, indeed
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  Speaker 1: denil such a title as that to the mast, when
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  Speaker 1: heresy was so wonderful and flourishing. But according to Campion's
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  Speaker 1: own philosophy, there was no life in an argument whose
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  Speaker 1: only premises, as he once said, are curses, starvation, and
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  Speaker 1: the rack. Here we come back at once to his
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  Speaker 1: route principle, which modern research so fully justifies in regard
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  Speaker 1: to the England of his own day. A gentleman saint
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  Speaker 1: who uttered many an ironic but never a contemptuous word,
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  Speaker 1: Campion could not be persuaded that the received religion was
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  Speaker 1: a genuine thing. He believed that temporal interest alone led
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  Speaker 1: people to conform to the new alterations and restrictions, that
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  Speaker 1: the lay statesmen who were pushing things through were concerned
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  Speaker 1: not with doctrine, but only with negations of doctrine, and
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  Speaker 1: that on the other side, nothing was so promising, nothing
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  Speaker 1: so gloriously fruitful as persecutions and martyrdoms. First unt last.
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  Speaker 1: He had a strong dash of optimism in this spirit,
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  Speaker 1: and his last treatise, writing it as best he could,
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  Speaker 1: depending on his memory and on such books as country
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  Speaker 1: squires might have in their houses and putting it together
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  Speaker 1: in among the almost incessant journeys, duties, fatigues and alarms
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  Speaker 1: for the next few weeks. The two Jesuit friends parted
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  Speaker 1: at Uxbridge with a tenderness of heart, which in such
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  Speaker 1: a case, and so dangerous the time, may be imagined.
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  Speaker 1: Jervais Pierrepont conveyed Campion into Nottinghamshire to spend Christmas at Thorsby,
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  Speaker 1: his home, thence into Derbyshire, where one of the young
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  Speaker 1: tempests succeeded as guide, and the gentleman who directed the
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  Speaker 1: Yorkshire part of the journey, reached in safety the house
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  Speaker 1: of his own brother in law, mister William Harrington of
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  Speaker 1: Mount Saint John, near Thirsk, where the father was received
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  Speaker 1: with open arms. Here he settled down for less than
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  Speaker 1: a fortnight at his desk among his notebooks, at peace.
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  Speaker 1: But to have him in the house at all was
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  Speaker 1: to risk the contagion of the things of God. The
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  Speaker 1: eldest of the large family, a wild boy, his father's namesake,
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  Speaker 1: was quick to feel the spell of this most attractive guest.
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  Speaker 1: Not only his eloquence and fire, says Father Henry Moore
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  Speaker 1: of Campion, but a certain hidden infused pair made his
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  Speaker 1: words strike home. Some of these simple words of every
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  Speaker 1: day struck home to the young William Harrington, so that
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  Speaker 1: fourteen years afterwards he found the palm branch of martyrdom
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  Speaker 1: growing green and fair for him on the public execution ground.
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  Speaker 1: At this very time of Campion's visit, the Lent of
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  Speaker 1: fifteen eighty one, there was another lad of fourteen or fifteen,
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  Speaker 1: John Pibbush, running about the streets of Thirsk, his native village,
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  Speaker 1: who may have gone to confession to the strange priest
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  Speaker 1: at the manor and wondered at him and knowing that
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  Speaker 1: he too was sealed as a future holocaust. In the
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  Speaker 1: same immortal calls from Mount Saint John, where he must
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  Speaker 1: have tasted much natural happiness, Campion traveled into Lancashire under
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  Speaker 1: the protection of a former pupil and his wife. There
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  Speaker 1: he was affectionately welcomed and cared for in each of
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  Speaker 1: eight great houses, where himself and his spiritual conferences were
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  Speaker 1: still a glowing tradition. Sixty or seventy years afterwards, he
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  Speaker 1: had to live think right in a crowd. The local
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  Speaker 1: gentry drove from great distances and slept in barns, only
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  Speaker 1: to hear and see him once at Blaine's coff Hall,
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  Speaker 1: the seat of the Worthingtons. The presuvants would have discovered
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  Speaker 1: them where he was walking in the open air, had
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  Speaker 1: it not been for the cleverness and splendid presence of
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  Speaker 1: mind of a faithful maid servant standing hard by. She
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  Speaker 1: ran up against him in a pretended fit of temper,
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  Speaker 1: and shoved him into a shallow pond. The persuvance, sent
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  Speaker 1: out by the terrible Huntington, President of the North to
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  Speaker 1: apprehend a distinguished cleric and scholar, naturally navigave that murder
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  Speaker 1: covered Yocal a second glance. While the Campion would have
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  Speaker 1: learned by now the fate of most of the enthusiastic band,
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  Speaker 1: who had traveled in his company from Rome all Reams
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  Speaker 1: to England during the preceding summer. Five priests, including the lovable,
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  Speaker 1: gay hearted Sherwin, were languishing in cells and on the rack.
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  Speaker 1: Father Parsons, though Hunted, was free. Following a suggestion of Campions,
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  Speaker 1: he set up a private printing press in order that
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  Speaker 1: the Ten Reasons and other Catholic works of defensive controversy
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  Speaker 1: might be issued as they were needed. Publishing. Like every
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  Speaker 1: other major industry, open to the Catholics was outlawed. Devotional
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  Speaker 1: and doctrinal books had to be brought brought out in
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  Speaker 1: this hole and corner fashion, if at all. Another of
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  Speaker 1: those lay associates of the mission, whose devotion and usefulness
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  Speaker 1: had been proved at every point, came forward to bear
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  Speaker 1: the brunt of the newer enterprise. The young Stephen Brinkley,
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  Speaker 1: bachelor of civil law, called by Parsons a gentleman of
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  Speaker 1: high attainments both in literature and in virtue, volunteered to
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  Speaker 1: become manager and head compositor, and, amid many dramatic and
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  Speaker 1: exciting interruptions, carriage his task through machinery, types, paper, and
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  Speaker 1: the rest were bought with money supplied by the ever
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  Speaker 1: helpful George Gilbert. Brinkley himself, to avert suspicion, had to
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  Speaker 1: buy horses for his workmen, and to tire them like
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  Speaker 1: persons equality whenever they went abroad. He quite knew what
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  Speaker 1: he was risking. After him still another night of letters
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  Speaker 1: in a far less perilous field, offered himself in the
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  Speaker 1: person of Thomas Fitzherbert swinertan then newly married long afterwards,
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  Speaker 1: a priest and rector of the English College in Rome.
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  Speaker 1: His not undelightful duty was to verify the mass of
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  Speaker 1: references and authorities quoted in the margins of Campion's manuscript.
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  Speaker 1: This he did in a scholarly way, satisfactory to the
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  Speaker 1: scholarly author, who believed in research and liked nothing at
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  Speaker 1: second hand. Lastly, Parsons, as Campion superior, recalled him to
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  Speaker 1: London in April or May to see the little volume
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  Speaker 1: through the press, and cautioned him to put up only
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  Speaker 1: at inns on the way, where happily he might pass
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  Speaker 1: as the gentleman in the parlor. Thirty miles or so
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  Speaker 1: north of the great city, Campion had one of his
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  Speaker 1: ever recurring narrow escapes. A spy hungu for reward, had
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  Speaker 1: dogged his steps on his way from York at a
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  Speaker 1: certain town not named. A little boy he knew. Campion
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  Speaker 1: by sight overheard this man describing the father to imagine
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  Speaker 1: straight and calling him jesuit, a word the child had
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  Speaker 1: never hurt. He ran straight to the tavern where the
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  Speaker 1: jesuit had put up, and succeeded in finding him into
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  Speaker 1: warning him, so the bird was safely on the wing.
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  Speaker 1: Before the fowlers were in sight. Campion came to Westminster
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  Speaker 1: and Whitefriars, and set to work diligently as ever. With
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  Speaker 1: Father Robert, he had frequent occasion to visit the Bellamees
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  Speaker 1: of Uxendone Hall near Harrow, a family under his roof.
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  Speaker 1: His old friend Richard Bristow, had died in the preceding autumn. There.
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  Speaker 1: Later adversities and annihilation were only too typical of Catholic
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  Speaker 1: domestic history. Under Elizabeth, going to Harrow meant going up
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  Speaker 1: the Edgeway Road, and in the mouth of that road
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  Speaker 1: between wastelands, facing the spot across the street where the
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  Speaker 1: marble Arch now stands, was the famous Tigeburn gallows. This
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  Speaker 1: particular one had been put up new for doctor Stroy's
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  Speaker 1: execution ten years before. Three posts set in a triangle
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  Speaker 1: with connecting crossbars at the top. Once every week without intermission,
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  Speaker 1: Batches of criminals perished there even now, and with far
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  Speaker 1: greater frequency afterwards. Holy and innocent men and women made
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  Speaker 1: up a large proportion of the criminals, and remembering these
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  Speaker 1: dear souls, had conscious that there was to follow them.
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  Speaker 1: In confession with the King of Martyrs, Campion would always
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  Speaker 1: solemnly take off his hat and pause in passing to
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  Speaker 1: salute tyburn Tree. Meanwhile, in the quiet and seclusion of
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  Speaker 1: Dames cecilyed Stoner's Park, near Henley, and in the attics
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  Speaker 1: which he bravely set apart for the purpose. The decem
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  Speaker 1: rationis got itself safely printed by Stephen Brinkley and his
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  Speaker 1: seven honest men, Campion with fine Bravado dated it from Cosmopolis,
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  Speaker 1: and the distribution of it was as adacious as the dating.
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  Speaker 1: The first copies, bound about four hundred in number, were
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  Speaker 1: huradily stabbed instead of stitched in time to go up
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  Speaker 1: for Oxford Commemoration June twenty seventh of that year. The
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  Speaker 1: Church of Saint Mary the Virgin was then used for
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  Speaker 1: all the acts, the accommodation of which a century later
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  Speaker 1: the Sheldonian Theater was built. When the company entered Saint Mary's,
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  Speaker 1: the benches were found littered with a seditious books. The
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  Speaker 1: dedication was to the studious collegians flourishing at Oxford and Cambridge,
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  Speaker 1: and the use in question were just in the humor
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  Speaker 1: to read them, and read them they did then and there,
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  Speaker 1: instead of attending to the important annual function going on.
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  Speaker 1: This rudeness bread protest and protest bred a lively scene.
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  Speaker 1: To understand it, we must recall that the undergraduate element was, then,
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  Speaker 1: by comparison, the conservative element, heads of houses, fellows and tutors,
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  Speaker 1: learned and popular men had been removed wholesale by the
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  Speaker 1: ELIZABETHANSI settent of religion in favor of new men, concisely
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  Speaker 1: described as extremists from Geneva, intellectually inferior to those who
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  Speaker 1: had been displaced, and representing a different spirit and different traditions.
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  Speaker 1: The student body looked on them with scorn. Again, to
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  Speaker 1: quote another chief authority on this subject, The young Oxonians
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  Speaker 1: did not bear easily the Elizabethan drill, and felt that
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  Speaker 1: if their liberty must be crushed, they would fain have
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  Speaker 1: it crushed by something more venerable than the mushroom authority
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  Speaker 1: of the ministers of the Queen. They were as tinder,
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  Speaker 1: and Campion's book was just sought of spark to set
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  Speaker 1: them in a blaze. Excited government told off relays of
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  Speaker 1: clergymen to court marshal and shoot it. Aylmer, Bishop of London,
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  Speaker 1: wished to commission nine dems, seven archdeacons, and two regious
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  Speaker 1: professors of divinity punished the tiny offender, but the actual
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  Speaker 1: ammunition brought into the field was not quite so imposing
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  Speaker 1: as all this. The answers were duly published, dealing in
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  Speaker 1: the most unmeasured personal abuse of Campion. No attempt was
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  Speaker 1: made in any instance to river either his religious fervor
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  Speaker 1: or his literary grace. His last labor with his purn
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  Speaker 1: made in short, a very great and an extremely prolonged style.
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  Speaker 1: Its fate was a romantic one from start to finish.
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  Speaker 1: For it was so quickly and thoroughly confiscated that not
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  Speaker 1: more than a couple of copies are now known to exist.
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  Speaker 1: Spite the outcry or because of it. Addition, after edition
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  Speaker 1: was called for. There have been nearly thirty reprints in
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  Speaker 1: the original Latin, and many translations into modern languages, inclusive
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  Speaker 1: of three beautiful translations into the Good English common in
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  Speaker 1: sixteen oh six, sixteen thirty two, and sixteen eighty seven,
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  Speaker 1: one of which should be reissued. The Ten Reasons, written
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  Speaker 1: under such immense difficulties, had all of campion zeal Land
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  Speaker 1: pit and was a model of eloquence, elegance and good taste.
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  Speaker 1: Mark Anthony Murret, the greatest Latinist of the time, called
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  Speaker 1: it Libellum Aureum, a golden little book writ by the
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  Speaker 1: very finger of God. Campion had gone, in his ardent, sensitive, rtical,
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  Speaker 1: compendious way over the whole ground of the credentials of
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  Speaker 1: that church which had had the allegiance of England for
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  Speaker 1: more than a thousand years. Scripture, the fathers, the councils,
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  Speaker 1: the evidence of human history, all drawn upon in the
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  Speaker 1: best spirit of the new learning. The characteristic note of
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  Speaker 1: personal appeal to the Queen is not lacking here. At
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  Speaker 1: the end, Campion's theme is the Church, and he quotes
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  Speaker 1: from the Prophet, is there King shall be thy nursing
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  Speaker 1: fathers and Queen's thy nursing mothers. And he names as
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  Speaker 1: among the great monarchs he joyed it was to further
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  Speaker 1: the Church in their day, Saint Edward the Confessor, Saint
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  Speaker 1: Louis of France, Saint Henry of Saxony, Saint Wen's Last
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  Speaker 1: Wik of Bohemia, Saint Stephen of Hungry, and the rest.
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  Speaker 1: Then he cries out to Elizabeth, most Mighty Queen, to listen,
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  Speaker 1: for this prophet is speaking unto THEE, is teaching thee
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  Speaker 1: thy duty. I tell THEE one heaven cannot gather in Calvin,
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  Speaker 1: and these thine ancestors join thyself. Therefore to them, I'll
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  Speaker 1: shalt thou stand unworthy of that name of Thine, their genius,
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  Speaker 1: thy learning, thy fame before all men, thy fortunes. To
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  Speaker 1: this end do I conspire and will conspire against thee
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  Speaker 1: whatever betideth me, who am so often menaced with the gallows,
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  Speaker 1: as a conspirator hostile to thy life. All hail thou,
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  Speaker 1: good cross. The day shall come, o Elizabeth, the day
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  Speaker 1: that shall make it altogether clear which of the two
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  Speaker 1: did love thee best company of Jesus or the brood
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  Speaker 1: of Luther. Hardly was the last of the original imprints
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  Speaker 1: bound and distributed, when the pursuvants, in search of what
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  Speaker 1: was roughly but significantly enough called massing stuff, pounced upon
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  Speaker 1: Stone Apart and caught red handed there and carried off
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  Speaker 1: the two gentlemen, John Stoner and Stephen Brinkley, and four
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  Speaker 1: of the printers, one of whom a poor frightened fellow
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  Speaker 1: conformed and was let off at once. William Hartley, ordained
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  Speaker 1: the year before, who had in persons, drew the Ten
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  Speaker 1: Reasons over the benches of the University Church and made
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  Speaker 1: special gifts of copies in various colleges, was arrested a
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  Speaker 1: little later. His fate was not exceptional, like that of
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  Speaker 1: his comrades just mentioned, who were eventually released on bail.
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  Speaker 1: He suffered at Tyburn, and his mother, heroic as the
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  Speaker 1: mother of the Maccabees, stood by his young body in
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  Speaker 1: its butchering, and thanked God aloud for her privilege and
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  Speaker 1: so giving back to him such a son. Campion spent
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  Speaker 1: Saint John's Day, marking the first anniverse who of his
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  Speaker 1: return to England, at Lady Babington's at Twice in Buckinghamshire,
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  Speaker 1: a house not many miles from Stoner on the other's
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  Speaker 1: bank of the Thames. He stayed a little while at
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  Speaker 1: Bledlow also, and at Wind with the Dormers. His whole
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  Speaker 1: heart bent every moment of the time upon his father's business.
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  Speaker 1: But his three days were almost done. The outcry redoubled
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  Speaker 1: now that he had again succeeded in catching public attention.
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  Speaker 1: Fresh and monstrously cruel measures were therefore taken against all
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  Speaker 1: papists naught his lacking, wrote to Aquaviva, the tender soul,
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  Speaker 1: who too well knew himself to be the cause of
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  Speaker 1: many sorrows, but that to our books written with ink
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  Speaker 1: should succeed others daily published and written in blood. While
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  Speaker 1: the Parsons prudently ordered him back to the North, that
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  Speaker 1: who heard each other's confessions and renewal of vows at
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  Speaker 1: Stoner and said goodbye, exchanging hats as a parting gift
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  Speaker 1: after the friendly fashion of their time, Campum was to
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  Speaker 1: ride straightway into Lancashire to get his manuscript and notes
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  Speaker 1: left behind, his former companion Ralph Emerson going with him,
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  Speaker 1: and he was then to betake himself to the fresh
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  Speaker 1: mission field in Norfolk as it fell out. He soon
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  Speaker 1: spurred back after Parsons to tell him of a letter
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  Speaker 1: that moment received. It was from a gentleman named Yate,
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  Speaker 1: then a prisoner for his religion, earnestly begging Campion to
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  Speaker 1: visit to life had grained in Berkshire, the gentleman's own
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  Speaker 1: estate hard By, where his wife and mother still were
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  Speaker 1: together with Edward Yate and part of a proscribed community
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  Speaker 1: of English rigotine nuns driven back into England by troubles
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  Speaker 1: in the Low Countries. Father Parsons, knowing the house to
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  Speaker 1: be a conspicuous one and already supplied with Chaplains was
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  Speaker 1: unwilling to grant the commission, but eventually gave in, warning
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  Speaker 1: the two others not to tarry beyond one night or
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  Speaker 1: one day, and as a precaution, putting Campion under the
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  Speaker 1: lay brother's care and obedience. Parsons parted from him, not
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  Speaker 1: without a rueful and affectionate word. You are too easy
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  Speaker 1: going by far, he said his friend and fellow soldier,
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  Speaker 1: purposely giving its least heroic name to that intentionally podical
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  Speaker 1: zeal for souls. I know you, father Edmund. If they
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  Speaker 1: once get you there, you will never break away. End
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  Speaker 1: of Chapter ten