ST EDMUND CAMPION; FEAST DAY 1st DECEMBER
ST EDMUND CAMPION
FEAST DAY 1st DECEMBER
Edmund Campion was the son of “very honest and Catholic” parents. He was born on the feast of St Paul, 25 January 1540, in Paternoster Row, London, “in the thirtieth year of the reign of Henry VIII”, a year described by his biographer, Richard Simpson, as, “marked by the suppression of the great religious houses in England, the inauguration of a persecution of which, forty years later, Campion was to be a victim - and the solemn Papal approval of the Society of Jesus, of which he was to be an ornament.”(1)
A brilliant scholar, Campion was chosen at age 13 to make the complimentary speech to Queen Mary on her coronation procession in 1553.
After the Catholic reign of Mary Tudor, the accession of Elizabeth I to the throne saw the coercion of the State thrown behind acquiescence by the people to the protestant worship, which, tied to loyalty to the Crown, was pitted against the portrayal of the Catholic faith as treachery. The Act of Supremacy, proclaimed in 1559, reasserted the legislation of Henry VIII affirming the Anglican Church and the abjuration of the Church of Rome, attaching the anti-papal oath of 1536 which “all the clergy, all taking degrees at all universities, all judges, justices, mayors and other royal officials were required to take, acknowledging the Queen to be “Supreme Governor in all matters ecclesiastical and spiritual”. The penalty for refusing the oath was loss of goods and imprisonment for a first offence, a second offence being counted as treason and so punishable with death. (2)
The second Act of 1559, the Act of Uniformity, imposed the Protestant concept of worship, with the abolition of Catholic sacraments and the Sacrifice of the Mass. “Any clergyman refusing to perform divine service according to the [Protestant] Prayer Book was now, for a first offence, to lose a year’s income and to be imprisoned for six months. A third offence was to be punished with imprisonment for life. Any layperson who criticized the new service was to be fined a hundred marks. Everyone in the country was now bound, under pain of a fine of twelve pence, to attend the Protestant service every Sunday in his own parish church.” Those refusing to attend Protestant service were termed “recusants” and suffered varying penalties, starting with loss of office and monetary fines, advancing to imprisonment and execution. (3)
Campion attended St John’s College, Oxford, a College which was, “at that time, a breeding-ground for Catholics. The founder, Sir Thomas White, was a devout Catholic…who, in Elizabeth’s first Parliament, had protested, in a reference to the young Cecil and Bedford, [William Cecil, Lord Burghley and the Earl of Bedford - Elizabeth’s advisers and promoters], that ‘it was unjust that a religion begun in such a miraculous way, and established by such grave men, should be abolished by a set of beardless boys.’”(4)
Campion’s intellectual superiority was apparent when, as a representative of his College, he was picked to debate before the Queen, who was much impressed with his oratory skills. Amusingly, the debate had been carefully cultivated by William Cecil and the Queen’s advisers in the Privy Council so as to avoid discussion of any topic that could touch upon religion, a topic of much passion at the time, and discomfort to the Privy Council, but a subject difficult to avoid in a philosophical debate about any topics that mattered. Campion’s friends had extorted from him, for his safety, “a promise to avoid all controverted points in his orations. Nor was the council less anxious to keep such disputes from the queen’s ears.”
The records show Cecil’s tortured attempts to avoid theology, his notes beginning with the inquiry, “Why is opthalmia catching, but not dropsy or gout?” (5)
Campion’s opinion of the power-base of the time may be illustrated by his description of Cardinal Wolsey, the once-powerful prelate who had fallen, to be charged with treason by Henry VIII upon his failure to procure a divorce but, unusually, pre-empting the charge by dying of natural causes:
“A man of excellent genius, not unlearned: born at Ipswich, of humble origin, of most lofty ambition; passionate, confident, impure, insincere. He built two colleges: one at Ipswich, which Henry VIII destroyed; the other at Oxford, so magnificent there is no college in Europe equal to it. This he endowed with an annual income of about 3,000 (pounds). At the present day, Henry is called its founder, simply because he did not upset it and confiscate its revenues after the Cardinal came to the end of his days. Witness the verses carved in great letters over the entrance when Elizabeth made her visit; the last line of the inscription was Imperfecta tui subiens monumenta parentis [Entering the unfinished monument of your father]. I never saw anything more saddening: the memory of the noble patron [Wolsey] obliterated and the honour conferred on one [Henry] who had violated every principle of honour, trampled under-foot all laws, human and divine and destroyed the religion and commonwealth of England.” (6)
Campion was (confusingly), ordained an Anglican deacon and left England for Ireland. There, however, he initially lived openly as a Catholic as the persecution was not at that time rigorous, (7). The Papal Bull excommunicating Elizabeth, however, gave impetus to a renewal of the persecution by the State of English Catholics. When Parliament sat in 1571, a series of Acts made it treason to be Catholic, to reconcile any person to the Catholic faith, to possess Catholic devotional items or to harbor a priest. All priests were liable to execution. The penalty for treason was death.
By that time Campion was on the run; it was too dangerous for him to stay in one place for too long. He was given shelter at Turvey, in the Pale, which saved him from arrest and torture at the hands of the protestant party in Dublin. He authored “A Historie of Ireland” during the three months in which he spent hiding (
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.He travelled to Rome to join the Jesuits and was accepted into the Society of Jesus in 1573. He was ordained a deacon and priest and said his first Mass in September 1578. He then taught rhetoric and philosophy at the Jesuit College in Prague.
The Jesuit mission to England commenced in 1580, Campion entering England, disguised as a merchant. Intending to meet up with him were three other Jesuits; Thomas Cottam was a former schoolmaster and brother of William Shakespeare’s school teacher; Robert Debdale, a cousin of Shakespeare’s mother, Mary Shakespeare; and Robert Persons, Campion's Jesuit superior, who was a close friend of Edward Arden, (a second cousin of Mary Shakespeare). Campion stayed at Park Hall, Edward Arden's residence, near modern-day Birmingham (9). Edward Arden was later executed and decapitated for keeping a priest, Hugh Hall, at his house.
“Campion went to Northamshire, Oxfordshire and East Anglia; Persons to the West Midlands, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. Their portable altars and surplices hidden in packs, they told travellers whom they met on the road that they were merchants. Persons headed into Warwickshire. Cottam too had planned to come this way, and Debdale wrote a letter commending him [Cottam] to his parents at Shottery. But the letter was intercepted and Cottam captured.” (10)
Campion remained at liberty for a year. A massive manhunt through the winter of 1580-1 tried to track him down. In the south he used a secret printing press to print his tract Decem Rationes, (“Ten Reasons”), against the validity of the Anglican Church. He printed a challenge to the Privy Council, called “Campion’s Brag” which was effectively, a declaration of the stance of the recusant Catholic English against the persecution by the State.
He then “moved up to Lancashire and stayed with the Hoghton family at Lea Hall and Hoghton Tower where he was for Easter and Pentecost 1581. But in June Robert Debdale was captured, followed by Campion and Cottam. Taken under armed guard to London, Campion arrived beneath a banner reading, 'Campion the Seditious Jesuit'”. (11)
On arrival in London, in the evening, Campion was taken “secretly by boat to a meeting with three Privy Councillors, the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas Bromley at his house, the Vice Chamberlain of the Royal Household, Sir Christopher Hatton and Robert Dudley the Earl of Leicester. On behalf of the Queen, they asked Campion his position on her authority and the Papal excommunication. He was offered his freedom, wealth and honours including the possibility of the Archbishopric of Canterbury, if he recanted his religion, an offer which he refused. (12)
“His lengthy interrogation was reinforced by starvation, thumbscrews, needles under fingernails, compression in the metal frame known as the Scavenger’s Daughter and eight days in the pit, a dank and dark well-shaft. On 30 July warrants were issued to use the rack.” (13)
Richard Simpson stated that he was imprisoned in the Tower for more than 4 months and tortured on the rack 2, possibly 3 times, (15th and 22nd August), to extract information about the whereabouts of his fellow priests and the identities of those who had provided shelter, assisted or attended illegal Masses. Answering a letter sent by a fellow prisoner in the Tower, Campion assured him that he would betray no secret, ‘Come Rack, Come Rope”. Nevertheless, false reports of his confession were circulated by William Cecil, “in a desire to destroy the reputation of this popular hero.” The [Privy] Council, however, repeatedly refused to allow him to be publicly interrogated about the purported confession. Different accounts, furthermore, refute the attempted slander, one Protestant account stating:
‘Whereunto he answered that forasmuch as the Christians did in old time, being commanded to deliver up books of their religion to such as persecuted them, refused to do so, and mislike with them that did so, calling them traditores [traitors], he might not betray his Catholic brethren, which were (as he said) the temples of the Holy Ghost.’”(14)
On 31st August, and 18, 21, 27 September, he participated in theological discussions with Protestant theologians in the Tower, and emerged the victor. (15)
He was arraigned and indicted on 4 November 1581 at Westminster with treason -having conspired ‘to raise a sedition in the realm and dethrone the Queen.’ The trial was held on 20th November 1581.
“The pleadings had taken about 3 hours and the jury of 9 consulted for nearly an hour. In this interval, a descendant of Sir Thomas More brought Campion a glass of beer to refresh him after his labours. Bartoli records:
‘I would not want to admit here what was, in a small deed, no small sign of Christian kindness shown by a nobleman of the house of Roper. Since Father Edmund had the joints of both his arms manhandled on the rack, and so lacked the strength to be able to bring his hands to his mouth, this nobleman came forward and, wanting the honour of giving him to drink with his own hands, held the cup to the other’s lips with such a beautiful act of reverence and love that even the Protestants blessed him for it.” (16)
Simpson related the following incident:
“As the jury considered their verdict, there happened a thing which Catholics of the time, whose eyes were ever on the watch for divine signs, relate as a miracle. When Judge William Ayloff, ‘who, sitting to keep the place when the other judges retired, while the jury consulted about the condemnation of Father Campion and his company, and pulling off his glove, found all his hand and his seal of arms bloody, without any token of wrong, pricking, or hurt; and being dismayed therewith, wiping, it went not away, but still returned; he showed it to the gentlemen that sat before him, who can be witnesses of it till this day, and have some of them upon their faiths and credits avouched it to be true.” (17)
Father Henry Walpole SJ wrote his recollections of the trial. He was a Protestant at the time of the trial:
“I was present during his arraignment in Court and indictment and stood near him when sentence was passed…On the second day, he, with seven companions, stood at the bar from eight in the morning till seven in the evening during which time the Queen’s solicitor and Attorney kept heaping up all their odious presumptions against them….It was really a wonder that men such as they…should have made such able answers to arguments on legal matters, and that, too, with an unassuming grace of manner which reflected much credit on their cause and themselves. Here indeed Our Lord’s promises were wonderfully fulfilled: ‘I will give you a mouth and wisdom; which all your adversaries shall not be able to resist and gainsay.’ [Lk 21:15]
Accordingly, in proof of all this, I may point to the conduct of Lord Chief Justice Wray. He addressed Campion with greater courtesy, calling him Master Campion, and afterwards taking someone to task for not speaking in his turn or to the point, said: ‘Look you, imitate the good example of Mr Campion.’ In fact he was, like Pilate, desirous of liberating him, but for fear of Caesar, upon the verdict of the jury, condemned him to death.’
…Never before or since did I listen to anyone with so much pleasure, and I am well assured from the testimony of others that his words and his bearing gave strength to the faithful who heard and saw him and converted many who were not blinded with passion and prejudice.’ (18)
At the close of the trial, the Lord Chief Justice inquired: “Campion and the rest, what can you say, why you should not die?
Campion replied: It was not our own death that ever we feared…
The only thing that we have now to say is, that if our religion do make us traitors, we are worthy to be condemned, but otherwise are and have been as true subjects as ever the Queen had. In condemning us you condemn all your own ancestors-all the ancient priests, bishops and kings-all that was once the glory of England, the island of saints and the most devoted child of the See of Peter. For what have we taught, however you may qualify it with the odious name of treason, that they did not uniformly teach? To be condemned with these old lights-not of England only, but of the world-by their degenerate descendants, is both gladness and glory to us. God lives; posterity will live: their judgment is not so liable to corruption as that of those who are now going to sentence us to death.” (19)
Simpson observed that “[h]is eloquence made his fellow prisoners confront with boldness the fate that hung over them. Cottam, on his return to the Tower, told Briscoe that now he was quite willing to die, after hearing Campion speak so gloriously.” (20)
The sentence was pronounced straight away:
“Lord Chief Justice: You must go to the place from whence you came: [prison], there to remain until ye shall be drawn through the open city of London upon hurdles to the place of execution, and there be hanged and let down alive, and your privy parts cut off, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight; then your heads to be cut off, and your bodies to be divided into four parts, to be disposed of at her Majesty’s pleasure. And God have mercy on your souls.”
All the prisoners, says the reporter of the trial, after this judgment, stormed in countenance, crying, they were true and faithful subjects as ever the queen had any. Only Campion suppressed his affection, and cried aloud, in the words of the ancient hymn: ‘Te Deum laudamus, Te Dominum confitemur’ (‘We praise Thee as God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord’). Sherwin took up the song. ‘Haec est dies quam fecit Dominus, exultemus et laetemur in illa’ (‘This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and exult in it’: Ps 118:24). The rest expressed their contentment and joy, some in one phrase of Scripture, some in another. The multitude in the hall was visibly astonished and affected.” (21)
It was the feast of Edmund’s patron, St Edmund, King of East Anglia, tortured to death on 20 November in the year 870 AD.
Four accounts say that, at this point, before being led out, Campion stopped to address the crowd, who listened in silence:
“You have heard us condemned as if we were guilty of lese majeste (crime against the sovereign), but how deserving is the case, consider for yourselves. If I had offended Her majesty in so many ways, never would she and the royal council have so bountifully offered me, not only life, but also liberty and an abundant living, if only I were to comply with them in matters of no great moment. In fact, the Lieutenant of the Tower, standing here next to me [Sir Owen Hopton], promised the same, and more, if I would attend Protestant church only once. Now, indeed, he would not have dared to promise such immense favours, nor would the rulers of England have permitted it, if they had established me as guilty of any such thing. Therefore gentlemen, it is not treason, but zeal for true religion, that has brought us to our condemnation to death.” (22)
On 28th November, Campion’s sister visited him in the Tower to say that a life-long benefice had been offered to him if he would recant his religion. (23)
After spending his last days in prayer, he was dragged with his fellow priests, Fathers Ralph Sherwin and Alexander Briant, to Tyburn, where the three were hanged, drawn and quartered on 1st December 1581. Campion was 41 years old.
Campion was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886 and canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Richard Simpson’s biography of St Edmund Campion, originally published in 1867, and republished in 2010, ironically, is prefaced by George Cardinal Pell, who, at that time, was Archbishop of Sydney and who, at a later date, underwent his own persecution for his defence of politically unpopular and/or inconvenient doctrine.
In his preface, his Eminence related an extract from Evelyn Waugh’s biography of St Edmund, where he compared “the respective careers of Tobie Matthew and Edmund Campion. Tobie Matthew was a young fellow of Christ Church, Oxford and, like Campion, highly esteemed by Queen Elizabeth. With Elizabeth’s patronage:
‘…a splendid career lay before him. He became Canon of Christ Church four years later; in 1572, at the unusually early age of twenty-six, he was made president of St John’s…four years later he was Dean of Christ Church, later Vice-Chancellor; from there he turned to the greater world, became successively Dean and Bishop of Durham, and finally, Archbishop of York. He was a talkative little man, always eager to please, always ready with a neat, parsonic witticism; the best of good fellows, everywhere, except in his own family. When, on the Council of the North, he was most busy hunting down recusants, he was full of little jokes to beguile his colleagues. He was a great preacher…he married admirably, a widow of stout Protestant principles and unique place in the new clerical caste, which had sprung naturally from the system of married clergy; Frances Barlow, widow of Matthew Parker, Junior; she was notable in her generation as having a bishop for her father, an archbishop for her father-in-law, an archbishop for her husband, and four bishops for her brothers. Tobie Matthew died full of honours in 1628. There, but for the Grace of God, went Edmund Campion.”
Cardinal Pell observed: “It is my prayer that this biography of St Edmund Campion may help Catholics to appreciate the grit and heroism of our Saints, and inspire and challenge other Christians to understand more fully the reasons for the turmoil that led to their separation from the Catholic Church. It is also an invitation to reconsider the claims of the See of Peter, the divinely sustained Rock of stability in our marvellous world. After all, unity was, and still is today, the prayer of St Edmund Campion.”
Each year, on his feast day, the ropes used in his execution are placed on the altar of St Peter’s Church for Mass to celebrate his feast day.
A recording of Te Deum by the Choeur de l'Abbaye de Notre Dame d'Orval, is on this link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ9nBRKjwMg
(1) Richard Simpson, “Edmund Campion”, Gracewing, 2010, at p. 13.
(2) Gerard Culkin, “The Reformation”, Pater Nostra Publications, 1952, at p. 72,
(3) Ibid.
(4) Richard Simpson, ibid., at p. 16.
(5) ibid., at p. 23.
(6) ibid., at p. 27. Simpson observed that the same thoughts on Wolsey are expressed by Shakespeare in his play Henry VIII, (Act IV, scene 2). Shakespeare referred, favourably, to Campion himself in Twelfth Night, (Act IV, scene ii), “the old hermit of Prague” as well as Father Persons, (“master person”). Ibid., at p. 11.
(7) ibid., at p. 46.
( ibid., at p. 62.
(9) Michael Wood, “In Search of Shakespeare”, BBC, 2003, at pp. 73-74.
(10) ibid., at p. 74.
(11) ibid., at p. 78.
(12) Simpson, ibid., at p. 682.
(13) Wood, ibid., at pp. 78-79.
(14) Simpson, ibid., at p. 371.
(15) ibid., at p. 683.
(16) ibid., at p. 476.
(17) ibid.
(18) ibid., at pp. 477-478.
(19) ibid., at p. 479.
(20) ibid.
(21) ibid., at pp. 479-480.
(22) ibid., at p. 480.
(23) ibid., at p. 683.
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