To be described as “one of the diamonds of England” would be high praise indeed, even if it came from a close friend.
But when the person who plans your murder pays you such a compliment then it cannot be dismissed as flattery. In this instance England’s diamond was St Edmund Campion and the tribute came from Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth I’s Secretary of State.
Campion was, by any objective criteria, one of the most outstanding Englishmen of his generation. The son of a London printer, he had prodigious powers of rhetoric and logic and was picked to deliver a speech to Queen Mary I at the age of just 13.
At the age of 26, he debated before Elizabeth when she visited Oxford University, where he was a fellow of St John’s College. The Queen was so impressed that Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester and one of her favourites, wrote to him afterwards: “I have been commanded by her to ask diligently what you would have her do for you … Whatever you desire or ask, the queen and I will take care of it.”
Campion at that time was at the crossroads of his life. Had he chosen a different way he would, by the world’s standards, have become enormously wealthy and successful, most likely as an Anglican bishop.
He was ordained a deacon in the Church of England but then abandoned his post consumed by guilt at bearing “the mark of the English beast”, for in his heart he was a Catholic, having concluded – like John Henry Newman some three centuries later – that the ancient Fathers of the Church professed the Roman Catholic faith and no other. He returned to England nearly a decade later as a Jesuit missionary.
His subsequent betrayal, capture, torture, trial and martyrdom have inspired a number of biographies, the most popular of which is by Evelyn Waugh. The most thorough account, however, was written in the 19th century by Richard Simpson, a Catholic convert whose work has now been revised and updated.
These revisions draw on recently discovered evidence to correct errors in earlier works, most notably the claim that Campion was brought face to face with Elizabeth after his capture.
A letter of Lord Burghley shows that Dudley and Sir Christopher Hatton summoned Campion to York House on behalf of Elizabeth to ask if he really thought she was Queen of England. He answered: “Yes.”
This, and other evidence, decisively nails the lie that Campion was a traitor. It shows not only how he was put to death for his faith alone but also how his martyrdom caused an earthquake in Elizabethan society and regenerated the English Church just as it was being strangled to death, principally by ending the confusion over whether Catholics could in good conscience attend the new Protestant services, as they were compelled to by law.
Campion did not desire martyrdom. Briefly at Douai, had already walked away from the English Mission once and was the Professor of Rhetoric at the Clementinium, the new Jesuit university in Prague, when he was sent back to his native country by the Jesuit Father General.
But by that time, however, he had become convinced that he had a vocation to martyrdom, having seen a vision of the Virgin Mary holding out a purple cloth to signify he was to shed his blood for the faith. He was also an early embodiment of the Catholic Reformation – highly-educated, holy, disciplined and zealous.
He went to Rome from Prague to receive the terms of his pastoral mission to the English Catholics deprived of the sacraments and suffering under the penal laws.
There, he persuaded Pope Gregory XIII to mitigate the over-reaching Bull of Pius V that had excommunicated Elizabeth and relieved her subjects of their allegiance to her.
Campion arrived in London in June 1580 and the following month, while in Hoxton, he composed his brag, a fabulously indiscrete challenge to dispute religion with Protestant divines.
It was meant to counter attempts by the Government to portray him as a traitor in the event of his capture but it was leaked, causing such hysteria that he left the capital for Lancashire while the furore died down.
In the North Campion wrote his Ten Reasons against the falsehood of Protestantism and printed it at Stonor Park, near Henley, on his return to the South.
Soon afterwards was he taken at Lyford Grange, Berkshire, betrayed by George Eliot, a Catholic who was being prosecuted for murder and who saw a chance to save himself.
Campion endured four months of torture in the Tower of London. Fingernails were torn out and he was racked so severely that he was unable to raise a hand to take the oath at his trial in Westminster Hall. His torments were punctuated by theological debates with Puritans.
These were discontinued at the behest of the Bishop of London who saw him winning over the audience to the Catholic faith. Witnesses who converted included St Philip Howard.
Then came the show trial and it was a chance for England’s diamond to sparkle. Campion and 19 others, including Blessed Robert Johnson and Blessed John Shert, were charged with treason under an Act of 1351 that did not pertain to religion.
The purpose was to send out the message that the priests were not condemned for their faith. Campion demolished the prosecution’s case as absurd (this is shown by the official record) but it was never going to save his life. Finally, he gave his beautifully eloquent closing oration, which gives us a glimpse of his incisive, trenchant rhetorical genius.
Campion went to his death a man of conscience. On the scaffold he prayed for Elizabeth, who he again acknowledged to be his queen. His loyalty so moved Sir Charles Howard, a Protestant noble, that he ensured the saint was allowed to hang until dead before he was dismembered.
It was reported that on the day of his execution, December 1, 1581, the Thames stopped flowing, standing still as a supernatural sign of God’s indignation. It will never be known whether this is true. But the one thing that was able to stand as a result of St Edmund’s “witness”, however, was the Catholic Church in England.