in my native place; then I went to Oxford, where I studied philosophy for seven years (1557-1564), and theology for about six-Aristotle, Positive Theology, and the Fathers."*

66

After he had taken his degree he had hosts of pupils, who followed not only his teaching but his example, and imitated not only his phrases but his gait. He filled Oxford with Campionists;" he became, like Hotspur, the glass wherein the youth did dress themselves, whose speech, gait, and diet was the copy and book that fashioned others. Among these Campionists was Robert Turner, afterwards rector of the University of Ingoldstadt, who speaks of his master as the one qui stilum meum, prius disjectum et libere effluentem extra oram artis et rationis, redegit in quadrum, aut aptius ad normam hanc rectam exegit; he had pinched up, and pulled out, and squared into shape his pupil's slovenly style. Another was Richard Stanihurst, poet, historian, and divine; and another, Henry, son of Lord Vaux of Harrowden. None of them approach their master in his brief and brilliant phrases, and forcible and lifelike epithets; but they gathered round him and formed a classical public, a brotherhood of scholars, to excite, to appreciate, and to applaud.

St. John's College was at that time a nursery for Catholics. The founder, Sir Thomas White, a Catholic, who as Lord Mayor of London in 1553 had done good service against Sir Thomas Wyatt's rebellion, and who in Elizabeth's first Parliament had protested 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," -was still alive to superintend its foundation. When Elizabeth abolished the Mass, Dr. Alexander Belsire, whom Sir Thomas had appointed first president of his college in 1555, was deprived by the Royal Commissioners, for Popery, in 1559 or 1560; and then White took away all the crucifixes, vestments, and holy vessels that he had given, and hid them in his house, to be restored in happier times.† Belsire's successor, Dr. William Ely, who was elected by the scholars and confirmed by White, was as much a Catholic as his predecessor; but he managed to hold his post till 1563 without acknowledging the queen's supremacy. In that year the oath was tendered to him, and he was ejected. William Stock, Principal of Gloucester Hall, succeeded Ely, but was also ejected in a year for Popery. In 1564 Sir Thomas White made John Robinson president; he remained so for eight years, til July 1572, when, White being dead, and the Puritan Horne, Bishop of Winchester, having succeeded in

*

upsetting White's arrangement which deprived the Bishops of that see of the visitation of the college and vested it in trustees, of whom one of the first was to have been William Roper, the descendant of Sir Thomas More, the character of the college underwent a complete change. Tobie Mathew was made president (1572), the suspected Papists (nine out of twenty) were ejected from the fellowships, and their places were filled by Puritans. Such is always the end of attempts to graft Catholic institutions upon the Establishment; a generous impulse is called forth, foundations more or less liberal are made, matters go on well while the personal presence of the founder overlooks them; but when he dies, his spirit departs, and his foundation reverts to the true representatives of Anglicanism, the High Churchman or the Puritan. The unsoundness of the constitution which requires the constant supervision of a man of genius, is shown by its collapse under his successors. There is no home for any thing Catholic in the Establishment. It would be ridiculous to look for the spirit of Sir Thomas White, or of Edmund Campion, in the present society of St. John's College, Oxford.

In the times I am speaking of, that society, if we may believe Yepes, Bishop of Tarracona, never would have the Lord's Supper celebrated in their chapel, nor would go elsewhere in search of it. If they had not the same objection to the Common Prayer, they avoided all topics of religious dispute, devoted themselves to philosophy and scholarship, and made Campion promise not to compromise himself in his public disputations. They were all waiting for something to turn up; waiting like the drunken man for the door to come round to them, instead of shaking off their lethargy and walking out through the open door. They were waiting for Burghley to die, or for Elizabeth to die or to marry a Catholic husband, or for the King of Spain to come and depose her; waiting for fortune to change for them, instead of trying to change their own fortune; and forgetting that fate unresisted overcomes us, but is conquered by resistance. They might have been reproached, like the Athenians of old: "Will you for ever go sneaking about, and asking, 'What news?' What can be more disgraceful news than that an heretical woman is putting down the Catholics, and usurping their inheritance? Is Elizabeth dead? No, i' faith, but she is very sick; and what matters it to you? If she were dead, you would soon set up another Elizabeth, through your sloth and poltroonery. For this one has not made herself what she is; it is you that have built her up." It was this English

See Note G.

dilatoriness, this provisional acquiescence in wrong, this stretching of the conscience in order that men might keep what they had, which lost England to the Church, as it has since lost many a man who was quite convinced that he ought to be a Catholic, but waited till his conviction faded away. The Catholics waited for the times to mend; and they waited till their children were brought up to curse the religion of their fathers, till they had been robbed piecemeal of their wealth and power, and found themselves a waning sect in the land they had once occupied from sea to sea.

Campion's first public oratorical display at Oxford was in 1560, at the re-burial of poor Amy Robsart, Robert Dudley's murdered wife, who had been hastily stowed away at Cumnor, till the people muttering about her husband having caused Foster, his servant, to throw her down-stairs and break her neck, in order that he might enjoy the Queen's favours more freely, as afterwards he did during his whole life,-induced him to display his love and grief by a magnificent funeral in St. Mary's Church, Oxford, when Dudley's chaplain, Dr. Babington,* made her funeral oration. But either more than one oration was made over her grave, or the event was commemorated in the different colleges; for Parsons says that "Edmund Campion was chosen, though then very young, to make an English oration in her funerals, which he performed with exceeding commendation of all who were present." I have already mentioned his successes in February 1564. In the same year Sir Thomas White died, and, in conformity with his will, his body was brought from London to Oxford, "with great celebrity and a marvellous concourse of people, on account of the fame of his virtues and charities;" and because he was a known Catholic, and had done much to defend and advance his religion, therefore (says Parsons) Campion was chosen to make the funeral oration in Latin; and in it he so well "improved" the alms-deeds of Sir Thomas, "that he wonderfully moved his audience to esteem such pious deeds," and "appalled much for many days the new-fangled preachers of that time," who used to disparage the merit of good works, and had not yet arrived even at the moderate Anglican view, that a few of them do no harm.t

A copy of this oration is preserved at Stonyhurst; it is in very idiomatic and elegant Latin, and my translated extracts give no idea of its excellence. The author begins with a rhetorical picture of the grief of the thirty towns which White's munificence had enriched, and then turns to the simplicity which governed this liberality. "What magnifi+ See Note I.

*See Note H.

cent generosity it was for a wholly unlettered man to found this great home of literature, for a man without learning to patronise the learned, for a wealthy citizen to adopt so many strangers when he had no children of his own, and to give all he had to aliens!" He enlarges on White's childlessness, and declares that it was providential, not natural: "Wherefore? he was freed from this care that he might be wholly unencumbered for another; and this other care he so entirely embraced, that for the last ten years he has devoted all his thoughts, all his means, all his labour upon us; when away from Oxford his soul was here, waking or sleeping he only thought of us. As soon as his last fatal paralysis attacked him, he immediately sent off for one of us. Our president was away, and I was sent instead. As soon as he saw me, the old man embraced me, and with tears spoke words that I could not hear with dry eyes, and cannot repeat without weeping. The sum was, that we should take every care that the college was not harmed, that we should be in charity among ourselves, and educate the youth intrusted to us liberally and piously. We were to tell him if there was any thing as yet unfinished, for he was prepared to supply what was needful; and there was yet time to make fresh regulations, or to repeal, remove, or change the old. He had provided for us in his will, and hoped that his wife and William Cordell, his executors, would take care of us. He begged that we would not pray for his recovery, but for faith and patience in his last moments; and nothing annoyed him so much as wishes for a renewal of health."* Then there is an apostrophe to Sir Thomas, and a summary of his charities-the foundation of Merchant-Tailors' School in London, the restoration of Gloucester Hall, and the foundation of St. John's College, Oxford. "He has beaten all of us students with our holy ways, our sacred teaching, our pious talk, and our sacrilegious life. In this man's tongue, manners, and gait, there was nothing polished, dressed up, painted, affected, or false; all was bare, open, pure, sincere, chaste, undefiled." He and Sir Thomas Pope were the only private persons who had founded colleges; but he did it at a time when there were few incentives to such an act; "when literature was despised, was in prison, in poverty, and in despair, half dead with sorrow, nearly washed out in tears."

The next great occasion of Campion's oratorical triumphs was in 1566, during the queen's visit to the university. The shows with which Oxford entertained her are of a piece with those which she afterwards witnessed at Kenilworth, and

• See Note J、

Wherever

which Sir Walter Scott has made familiar to us. she went, inscriptions were put up in her honour; one that was set up over the gate of Christ Church made a painful impression on Campion. That college was one of Wolsey's two magnificent foundations. "That at Ipswich" (says Campion) "was destroyed by Henry. The other at Oxford is without comparison grander than any college in Europe, and endowed with an income of about 3000l. At the present day Henry is called its founder, simply because he did not upset it and confiscate its revenues after the cardinal's death. 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 (Enter the unfinished monument of your father'). I never saw any thing more miserable; the memory of the noble patron obliterated, and the honour given to one who had violated every principle of honour, trampled under foot all laws, human and divine, and destroyed the religion and commonwealth of England. Campion did not make allowance for the tendency which he exemplified in his own mind. In organised bodies honourable actions are attributed to the recognised head of the body, as the individual prowess of soldiers and skill of officers swell the general's credit, while the general's victories are set down to the king. The courtly Anglican naturally refers the foundation of Christ Church to Henry, the independent churchman to Wolsey; but its real founders were the men who had set up the small monasteries out of the revenues of which Wolsey, with the king's permission, endowed his colleges. But the real founders were not a representative body; they were a mere catalogue of names, without meaning or coherence, and their honour was going a-begging till some one appropriated it. Churchmen claimed it for the churchman, politicians for the king, according to the usual rule in such cases. Kópa kóрaкI. According to our individual bias, we select somewhat arbitrarily our representative men; and I see nothing to wonder at in Campion, a churchman, selecting Cardinal Wolsey, or in the Oxford courtiers flattering the father of their sovereign mistress.

Besides these speaking scrolls, "the whole university forced itself every way to make the best show they could in all kinds of learned and liberal exercises, as orations, disputations, preaches, comedies, tragedies, and the like." There were farces and rough horse-pranks, which Elizabeth relished amazingly; there were sour theological disputes "moderated" by John Jewel of Sarum; and a discussion of phy

*See Note K.