dence in his cause mistaken for self-confidence, boastfulness, and brag; his gentleness misinterpreted into smooth device and subtle affectation; and his unconquerable constancy misread as hypocrisy. And we find the efficacy of his genius and the ascendancy of his character fully conceded, though only to be explained away.

When all these persons, Catholic or Protestant, whom Campion had thus moved to tears, returned home from the pitiful spectacle, and were told of the wonderful tide of that morning, they naturally enough considered that Nature had sympathised with the tragedy, as it had once with the Passion on Calvary, and that the river Thames had in some obscure way felt and uttered its protest against the injustice that day committed by the city which sat as a queen on its waters.

"The scowling skies did storm and puff apace,

They could not bear the wrongs that malice wrought;

The sun drew in his shining purple face;

The moistened clouds shed brinish tears for thought;

The river Thames awhile astonished stood

To count the drops of Campion's sacred blood.

Nature with tears bewailed her heavy loss;
Honesty feared herself should shortly die;
Religion saw her champion on the cross;

Angels and saints desired leave to cry;
E'en Heresy, the eldest child of Hell,

Began to blush, and thought she did not well."

Poundes might well write thus in the excitement of the time. But it can scarcely be wondered at that when subsequent writers like Bombinus refer to these non ignobilium poetarum acute commenta, as authorities for a miracle whereby God honoured the death of Campion, they were taxed by their Protestant critics with superstition and invention of lying miracles. Parsons, early in 1582, when he penned his Epistle of Comfort to the Priests, was as yet hardly calm enough to write coolly, and so may be excused for all his stories of vengeance upon judges, juries, and witnesses, which he collects in the fifteenth chapter, and for his talking about "the wonderful stay and standing of the Thames the same day that Campion and his company were martyred, to the great marvel of the citizens and mariners, and the like stay of the river Trent about the same time. Which accidents, though some will impute to other causes, yet happening at such special times, when so open and unnatural injustice was done, they cannot but be interpreted as tokens of God's indignation."

CHAPTER XVII.

IN considering the consequences of this tragedy I will not follow the lead of Parsons and Bombinus, and relate in sombre colours the misfortunes of those who were the agents and instruments in performing it. Those whom the tower of Siloam crushed were not sinners above their fellows; and if a few of the understrappers in this iniquity fell into misery, the chief agents in it not only lived in prosperity, but triumphantly established the cause for which they had sinned so boldly. If Norton the rack-master and Hopton the lieutenant fell into disgrace and poverty, this was only the Tudor policy, which always threw away or broke its tools after they were used. The reign of terror and of penal laws that began in 1580 was successful in stamping out the Catholic religion from the country, and in erecting on its ruins the Establishment that usurped its place. Jericho was effectually built; and it does not much concern us to inquire whether its architects set up its walls in their firstborn and its gates in their youngest sons, or whether they lived in plenty, and left the residue of their substance to their babes. It is more to the purpose to tell how the daughters of Walsingham and Hopton, who must have had a near view of the policy of their fathers, both became Catholics. Cecilia Hopton was converted by John Stonor,387 who was sent to the Tower for having helped to print Campion's book, and while her father's rule lasted was ever ready to give her secret assistance to the Catholic prisoners.388 Her conversion, indeed, was a principal cause of her father's disgrace and subsequent misery.

It is more to the purpose to turn to the direct and immediate consequences of Campion's death. Henry Walpole, in the fervour of his own conversion, estimated that the martyrdom converted ten thousand persons on the spot. 389 That a very large number experienced a great revulsion of feeling, and consequent mitigation of prejudice, is clear; but the estimate is preposterous. The first consequences were felt by his clerical assailants, to whose clamours his death was generally

EFFECTS OF HIS DEATH.

327

attributed. "This I can say with truth," writes the Oxford Regius Professor of Divinity to Leicester, "that the ghost of the dead Campion has given me more trouble than the Rationes of the living,—not only because he has left his poison behind him, like the fabled Bonasus, which in its flight burns up its pursuers with its droppings, but much more because his friends dig him up from his grave, defend his cause, and write his epitaph in English, French, and Latin. It used to be said, 'Dead men bite not; and yet Campion dead bites with his friends' teeth—a notable miracle, according to all experience, and to the old proverb; for as fresh heads grow on the hydra when the old are cut off, as wave succeeds wave, as a harvest of new men rose from the seed of the dragon's teeth, so one labour of ours only begets another, and still another; and in the place of the single Campion, champions upon champions have swarmed to keep us engaged."390

Burghley, Walsingham, and the fanatics could not see the practical lesson of this fact; but Francis Bacon was a cooler counsellor, and in 1583 he wrote a memoir to dissuade the Queen from imposing on Catholics the oath of supremacy which they would never take, and against hanging them for their religion; for, all their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, they knew and acknowledged to themselves that they did put men to death for religion.391 "Putting to death," he says, "doth by no means lessen them; since we find by experience that, like hydra-heads, upon cutting one off seven grow up, persecution being accounted as the badge of the Church; and therefore they should never have the honour to take any pretence of martyrdom in England, where the fulness of blood and greatness of heart is such that they will even for shameful things go bravely to death, much more when they think themselves to climb heaven; and this vice of obstinacy seems to the people a divine consistency; so that for my part I wish no lessening of their number but by preaching and by education of the younger sort under schoolmasters."

Sir Robert Cotton, without any special reference to Campion, but to the warfare in which he was one of the first to fall, laughs at all the vulgar reasons given for the increase of Popery; such as the royal clemency, or the slack execution of the laws. "If we will with a better insight behold how this great quantity of [Popish] spawn is multiplied, we must especially ascribe the cause thereof to their priests, who by their deaths prepare and assure more to their sect than by their lives they could ever persuade. The number of priests which nowadays (1613) come to make a tragical conclusion is not great; yet as with one seal many patents are sealed, so

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with the loss of few lives numbers of wavering spirits may be gained. Sanguis martyrum semen ecclesiæ.”392

And this fruit of their deaths, which seemed so soon to force itself on the experience of the enlightened Protestant laity, the clergy were too passionate to see the effects of their thirst for blood,-was only that which was anticipated with all confidence by their friends. Thus Parsons writes to Charke, describing Campion's and his companions' deaths, and their forgiving all their enemies, "and also you ministers, who were the only or principal instigators of their death and torments;" and adds, "their blood will, I doubt not, fight against your errors and impiety many hundred years after you are passed from the world altogether. And albeit if they had lived, being endued with such gifts and rare parts, they might have done much service to God's Church and hurt to your cause, yet could they never have done it so strongly as they have, and do, and will do by their deaths—the cry whereof worketh more forcibly both with God and man_than_any books or sermons that ever they could have made. They are well bestowed upon you. You have used them to the

best."

In the State-Paper Office may be seen letters written by Catholics about the time of Campion's death. I will quote some passages, for they exhibit the temper and the feeling with which it was received. 393 Parsons writes to a friend, “I understand of the late advancement and exaltation of my dear brother Mr. Campion and his fellows. Our Lord be blessed for it; it is the joyfullest news in one respect that ever came to my heart..... Now I take him for my patron.

There is nothing happened to him which he looked not for before, and whereof he made not oblation to God before he ever set foot to go towards England. I looked for this end of his disputations also; and surely, when I heard how prosperously God turned them to the glory of His cause, I suspected that He would his life also; for it was like the adversaries would never put up so great a blow without revengement upon his blood." Then he speaks of the "malicious witnesses:" "There be men in the world which drink blood as easily as beasts do water; and because the earth doth not open and presently swallow them down, they think all is well..... The pretended dust of feigned treason is blown away with every little air of consideration. Your conscience and mine shall bear witness of his pure innocency in all such matters and meanings, either by fact, word, or cogitation. This hath he protested, and will protest, I know, upon the perdition of his soul at his death-for I am not yet certified

that he is dead; and we protest the same before God and man and angels; and all that we have dealt withal in England shall testify the same both living and dying, upon their salvation and damnation in the life to come. All which, seeing it serveth not in Westminster Hall, we are content quietly to leave in God's hands. That I am touched in the same matter” (Parsons was included in the indictment), “I cannot but take it most thankfully. Free I am from any thought of such matters as were objected, God and my conscience and my friends do know." Parsons had not yet entered into his career of conspiracy, and he could not consider his designs for the conversion of Scotland and the delivery of the Queen of Scots from prison to be any treason against England. He had been kept in ignorance of the Papal and Spanish designs upon Ireland, and was greatly annoyed when he first heard of Sanders' expedition. He was afterwards forced to become a traitor "beaten for loyalty," Shakespeare makes one of his characters say, "excited me to treason." Persecuted for doing his duty, he naturally wished to destroy the power of his persecutors. One of the last paragraphs in Parsons' letter to Agazzari, Dec. 23, 1581, draws this conclusion from a narrative of the trial and death of Campion and his companions: "From this you may see with what preparation of mind our brethren ought to come to us; with what humility, what patience, what firm resolution, and, above all, what fervent charity to God, their neighbour, and one another, that each may help each in bearing this yoke of the Lord. God has already shown us glorious patterns in our martyred companions, and he will not be wanting to us if we are not wanting to ourselves."

There is another letter, of one Francis Eyerman,394 to his brother, who was imprisoned for distributing copies of Allen's apology for the seminaries. It chiefly turns on the providential signs of the goodness and truth of the cause. Campion's disputations and martyrdom hold the chief place. If the adversaries had not known they were in the wrong, they would not all have refused to justify their doctrine against this one man as they did, "saving that, to their perpetual and damnable shame, they had some secret speeches with him in the Tower; where they received so many shameful foils as they never durst deal with him openly, but sought his most innocent blood and death by those treasons which were coined and made in their own forge of detestable deceit, lying, and falsehood." And although thereby "we lost the chief pearl of Christendom," yet it is well; for "all men are of opinion that the offences and negligences of our predecessors and fore