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And when, with ever increasing ill luck, Parsons and his school continued their plots, the English Catholics, wearied out with the sufferings which he had multiplied for them, began at last to fall away; as if they felt that the aim of the Pope, the Jesuits, and the Spaniards, was not to have them believe a salutary doctrine, and to make them partakers of life-giving sacraments, but to make them traitors to their Queen and country, and to induce them to take up arms in favour of a foreign pretender.

Elizabeth always professed to be willing to tolerate Catholics, if they would refrain from the developments which I have indicated. We should at this day make allowances for her difficulties. Converts, however purely spiritual the motives of their conversion might be, would usually not be contented with being mere Catholics, or with accepting the system reduced to its simple elements; they would always incline to adopt it such as it was in the teaching of its most advanced doctors, and in those days they would have been led to denounce Elizabeth as a usurper of the Pope's rights in England and Ireland; just as we see the same kind of men in the present day denouncing the kingdom of Italy on similar grounds. If it had been possible for any one to convince Elizabeth that his Catholicism was such as Bossuet's was to be, and only such, the Queen ought, on her own profession, to have tolerated such a person, as she did in fact grant toleration to Sir Richard Shelley in 1582. But when both sides, both Philip and Cecil, were equally convinced that every fresh convert, however peaceful now, was a future soldier of the king of Spain against Elizabeth, toleration was scarcely possible.

CHAPTER X.

CAMPION finished his book about Easter, 1581, and sent it to London for Parsons' approval. When Parsons saw that the title was not that which had been settled at Uxbridge, and that the margin swarmed with references, which for lack of books he was not able to verify, while he knew that the enemy would closely scan every one of them, he wrote to Campion to ask whether he was quite sure of all his authorities? Campion replied that he had quoted nothing at second hand, nothing but what he had gathered in his own reading. Parsons thereupon ordered the book to be printed; but Campion, to make surety more sure, begged that the quotations might once more be examined. This task Parsons committed to one of the young men of the sodality, Thomas Fitzherbert, then newly married, but, after the death of his wife, a priest, a Jesuit, and finally rector of the English College in Rome.218 Fitzherbert was unsuspected and was free to study in all the London libraries, where he carefully verified Campion's allegations.

Parsons, however, still desired that Campion should see to the printing of his own book, and therefore ordered him to return to London, without visiting the houses of the Catholics by the way, but staying only at inns, in order to avoid suspicion. But to print was not so easy as it had been: though the works printed at Mr. Brookes'

bore the name "Doway" on their title-page, yet experts like Norton, to whom the government committed the examination of them, reported "The print is done in England." Brinkley, undaunted, once more offered to provide the press, and Maurice to procure the other requisites. While these things were being got ready, Campion, who had now joined Parsons, was constantly employed in preaching either in London or in the neighbourhood. One place which he and Parsons frequently visited was Uxenden Hall, near Harrow-on-the-Hill, the property of William Bellamy, who, with his wife and family, were converts of the two fathers. Campion at this time lodged sometimes at Mrs. Brideman's in Westminster, sometimes at Mr. Barnes' in Tothill-street, sometimes at Lady Babington's in the White Friars.219 The road from these places to Harrow would generally lead him by Tyburn, a spot now marked by a stone which is erected at a place where "Tyburn-gate" once closed the great western road out of London, a few yards beyond the present Marble Arch. Just outside of this, probably within the garden of the house at the corner of the Edgeware Road, stood the famous gallows, three posts in a triangle, connected at the top by three cross bars, where the weekly batch of murderers, thieves, coiners, vagrants, traitors, or priests, were led out to suffer. It had been put up new for the execution of Dr. Story, whose blood had consecrated it. Campion would always walk between its posts with his hat off, and with a profound bow, in honour both of the Cross which it figured and of the martyrs who had already suffered there for their faith, and, as he told Parsons, because it was one day to be the place of his conflict.

Here Parsons, who wrote his notes from memory, makes one of those mistakes so common in all autobio

graphical sketches where the author does not control his memory by the use of documents. We have seen that Campion did not quit Lancashire till after Whitsunday, that is, as Easter in 1581 fell on March 26, not till after May 15. He could not therefore have been with Parsons in London and the neighbourhood till the middle of May. Yet Parsons refers the following story to this period, and has thereby led Bombinus and his followers into a tale more telling than true. "While we were together in a house in a wood, one night Hartley said to me casually that he had been at Oxford, and had heard that Roland Jinks' servant, who had just before been employed by me at my house in London to bind some books, had gone over, and had given evidence against his master. I at once saw the danger; and the first thing in the morning I sent to London, and found that Wilkes, the secretary of the Queen's guards, had that very night searched my chamber and carried off all he found there, and had apprehended Briant in a neighbouring house." Now Briant was transferred to the Tower on the 25th of March from the Marshalsea, into which prison he had been thrust upon his apprehension. It is clear then that Campion was in Lancashire at the time, and that this event had no connection whatever with the printing of his book, or his flight from Oxfordshire, or by consequence with his capture. Briant was afterwards connected with Campion; but at this point their histories have no relation. He was, says Parsons, "my disciple and my pupil at Oxford, and ever inclined to virtue; afterwards a priest at Rheims, of the greatest zeal. Just before he came into England, he wrote to Father Richard Gibbon to ask whether he might visit his mother. He reconciled my father, and while he was in England he never willingly left my side." When it was found how close a companion of Parsons.

had been taken, and how narrowly Parsons himself had escaped, it is scarcely to be wondered at that the eagerness of the catchpoles to get at their great prize carried them still deeper into cruelty than they had hitherto stepped. In the Marshalsea they tried what hunger and thirst could extract out of Briant. This means failing, they sent him where he could be tortured more scientifically, and the torments he suffered in the Tower were duly entered in the diary of Edward Rishton, his fellow-prisoner: "March 27, Alexander Briant, a priest, was brought from another prison, where he had almost perished with thirst, and loaded with the heaviest shackles. Then needles were thrust under his nails, with the hope of forcing him to disclose the place in which he had seen Father Parsons; but he resolutely refused to reveal it. April 6, the same Briant was cast into the Pit; and, eight days later, was led forth to the rack, on which he was immediately stretched with the greatest cruelty. The next day again, he was twice subjected to the same torture; yet from his own lips, only a little before his martyrdom, I afterwards heard the declaration, that, when his body was extended to the utmost, and his tormentors were ferociously endeavouring to increase the intensity of his suffering, he was actually insensible of pain."220

According to the established practice of Elizabeth's government, when this cruelty was afterwards complained of, Norton, one of the commisioners, was called to account for it.221 The following is an extract of a letter he wrote to Walsingham, who had sent him Parsons' defence of his censure on Charke and Hanmer, published in Rouen in 1582: "I find in the whole book only one place touching myself, fol. ult. pa. 2. 'One (meaning Briant) whom Mr. Norton, the rack-master (if he be not misreported), vaunted in the court to have pulled one good

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