more his knowledge of self increased, the more unhappy he became about that miserable Anglican diaconate. From the first it had given him the most painful scruples, which only grew more painful as his self-knowledge grew deeper, his learning more extensive and his virtue more mature. He called it "the mark of the beast;" and the thought of being impressed with "this infamous character" and "profane mark of ministry" grew at last too burdensome to be lightened by counsel of learned friends, or by his own study. So he determined to break entirely with the world, to make a pilgrimage to SS. Peter and Paul at Rome, and, by their good help, to become a Jesuit. He heard, as his foreign biographers add, an interior voice commanding him to repair to the see of Peter, where he should be told what to do. He resolved to obey, and immediately felt such inward comfort, that he determined not to wait a day.

A diligent study of Campion's writings does not bring to light much evidence of this effect of his Anglican orders upon his mind; but it throws light on a divergence between his views and those of Dr. Allen, which I am disposed to think had almost as much to do with his leaving Douai as his scruples or his vocation. I need not trace here the development of the weak point in Dr. Allen's character; a point in which he suffered the usual penalty of exiles,-entire ignorance of the movements and feelings of his country, and the crystallisation of his brain in those feelings with which he first left England. In Mary's reign Philip II. was king of England, and loyalty to him was a proper sentiment. Allen preserved this sentiment all his life, and not without reason, for he lived within the Spanish king's dominions, and was a dependent on his bounty; and he allowed it to lead him into his disgraceful defence of the treachery of Sir William

Stanley at Deventer, and to the composition of the more disgraceful pamphlet which he intended to be distributed throughout England as soon as the Armada should have achieved its first success.* But I will not enter upon this point now, as I shall have to discuss Campion's present political views more fully in the next chapter.

But whatever divergence there might have been politically between Allen and Campion, there was no interruption to their friendship. Even the resolution of his most promising subject to leave him did not alienate the affections of the great founder of the English seminary. With a vast harvest to gather in, and only few labourers to send; with every interest of heart and mind concentrated on the conversion of England-it would have been very excusable if he had been grievously offended at Campion's desertion, and all the more at his entrance. into the Society of Jesus, which as yet had taken no part in the English mission. We might perhaps have expected Allen to offer the most strenuous opposition to the step, to show himself for years afterwards a bitter enemy of the Society, and to guard himself against any future loss of his students by forbidding them to learn from its professors, to listen to its preachers, or to perform its spiritual exercises. But he was too large-hearted and far-sighted to be swayed by such petty jealousies; he counted on receiving back his loan with interest, and, though he had to wait a while, his calculations did not fail him in the end. As soon as Campion had determined to depart from Douai to Rome, and had fixed the day for starting, his preparations did not occupy much time. He went on foot as a poor pilgrim. He allowed his friends to accompany him one day's journey, but would receive no other assistance or protection. The rest of his journey he ac

See Note 43.

complished alone, and never afterwards spoke of its incidents. But he was met on the road by an old Oxford acquaintance, a Protestant, who had known him "in great pomp and prosperity," and who on his return from a tour to Rome came across a pilgrim in a mendicant's dress. They passed each other without recognition; but the traveller, struck with some familiar expression, rode back to see who the poor man was. He soon recognised him, dismounted, shook lands, exhibited the greatest sympathy, and asked whether he had fallen among thieves that he was in such a plight. When he heard that it was all voluntary mortification, he pooh-poohed the idea as unworthy of an Englishman, fit only for a crazy fanatic, and absurd in a man of moderate means and a frame not over robust; so he pulled out his purse, and told Campion to help himself. The pilgrim refused, and, says Parsons, "made such a speech of the contempt of this world, and the eminent dignity of serving Christ in poverty, as greatly moved the man, and us also his acquaintance that remained yet in Oxford, when the report came to our ears." Campion arrived in Rome in the autumn of 1572.

CHAPTER III.

CAMPION'S biographers, Parsons, Bombinus, Bartoli, and More, who write rather to edify their readers than to trace the character and opinions of the subject of their memoirs, tell us nothing of what occurred to him at Rome beyond his conformity to the pious usages of pilgrims, his gradually-formed conviction that he was called to be a Jesuit, and his admission into the order at the end of April, 1573. It appears, however, by his own statements, that he had already made up his mind about his vocation when he first arrived; so that all the stories about the interior voice which miraculously directed him in answer to his protracted devotions, and the severe trial which he made of its authenticity, are shown to be at least great exaggerations, if not pure fancies.

"On my first arrival into Rome," he said at his trial, in November, 1581, "which is now about ten years past, it was my hap to have access to [Cardinal Gesualdi, of St. Cecilia], who, having some liking of me, would have been the means to prefer me to any place of service whereunto I should have most faculty; but I, being resolved what course to take, answered that I meant not to serve any man, but to enter into the Society of Jesus, thereof to vow and to be professed."

Then Gesualdi began to question him about the Bull of Pius V. against Elizabeth. Not that any hesitation

was felt at Rome about its propriety, or any doubt of policy; the Cardinal simply been the effect of this step.

the ultimate success of the wished to know what had If it had failed, like the Bull of Paul III. against Henry VIII., that failure was not calculated to produce discouragement. Had not the Israelites, when they marched by God's express command against the men of Benjamin, been twice overthrown before they conquered? Still, there was some wish to make its bearings on the Catholics as easy as possible. "Being demanded farther," Campion continues, "what opinion I had conceived of the Bull, I said, it procured much severity in England, and the heavy hand of her majesty against the Catholics; whereunto the Cardinal replied, that he doubted not it should be mitigated in such sort as the Catholics should acknowledge her highness as their queen without danger of excommunication." This, Campion urged, could not be construed as an offence much less as treason. But it was objected to him, that he had only asked for a mitigation of the Bull in favour of the Catholics, leaving the excommunication of the queen still in force and undetected; and his privity thereto was treason. "My privity thereto," he replied, "enforceth not my consenting, nay, rather it proved my disagreement, in that I said it procured much severity: and therefore, being here published before I could detect it (for who knew not that the Queen of England was excommunicated?), it excused my privity and exempted me from treason."*

Campion urges that his conduct rather implied dissent from than agreement with the Bull. That this disagreement was a fact, not a mere plea, he might have proved from his History of Ireland, had the book been forthcoming. Just as the writers of the sixteenth century show

*See Note 44.