IV CHEYNEY AGAIN: DOUAY: 1571

INTERRUPTED sea-voyages were his fate. This time, half-way across the Channel, his ship was hailed by a Government frigate, The Hare, which demanded to be shown the ship’s sailing papers, and the passports of her passengers. Campion had none. Moreover, as his religion was suspected, the dutiful Protestant frigate, homeward bound, promptly swallowed him, bag and baggage. His generous friends in Ireland had forced upon him money for his needs, and the captain who now kidnapped him found it convenient to keep the money, but kind-heartedly let his prisoner lose himself in the streets of Dover. Other friends quickly made the losses good. On Campion’s second attempt to reach Calais all went well. He did not lack his secular epitaph,[41] so to speak, at Court. It was not then a legal crime, though it soon became so, for a Catholic Englishman to leave the country fast being made into a hell for him. The mighty Cecil treated this expatriation as quite voluntary. “And it is a very great pity,” he chose to say, looking into Richard Stanihurst’s gratified eyes, “for Master Campion was one of the diamonds of England.”

The date of Campion’s reconciliation to the Church is unknown. It seems unlikely to have taken place in Ireland. He may have been absolved from his schism in London, or else as soon as he had reached Douay. There was a busy trade in wool still flourishing at that time between Flanders and England, and in the thrifty, kindly towns of the exporting country refugees formed a considerable part of the population. Douay, properly speaking, Douai, was called “Doway” by its foster-children. The creation of its English Seminary was a master-stroke of Dr. William Allen, Canon of York, afterwards Cardinal, once of Oriel College, Oxford, and Principal of St.[42] Mary Hall. Indeed, “Oxford may be said to have founded Douay.” Allen was aided by many men of mark, notably by his old tutor, Morgan Phillipps, and by the latter’s bequeathed funds; also by the Flemish Abbots and layfolk. Campion seems to have been the eighteenth arrival in the newly established house of young, prayerful, enthusiastic men. He found there as Professor of Hebrew, his beloved Gregory Martin, and a learned colleague, Richard Bristow, late Fellow of Exeter College, the first of the Seminarian priests to be ordained: two props and pillars of the foundation. There also was Thomas Stapleton, late Fellow of New College, the most able Catholic controversialist of the age. Five of the twenty English students enrolled in 1571, joined the Society of Jesus. The College, destined to speedy and splendid development, was affiliated to the Douay University, established some eight years before it by Spanish munificence and a Papal Bull. Here, then, Edmund Campion came into his soul’s haven, “out of the swing of the sea.”

[43]

It was Dr. Allen’s missionary policy that all his sons, before memory of them had grown dim at home, should write to their more undecided friends in England, doing what they could to win them to the service of Christ in the Church Catholic. Campion sent a very long document to this end to his venerated and now ageing friend, Bishop Cheyney: a wonderful letter, in that live Elizabethan English, which was bold as surgery itself, yet charged with feeling. Associating his beliefs with Cheyney’s as the writer does, he helps us to understand his own doctrinal position while in Oxford and in Dublin. He failed in both places, writes Fr. Morris, for the same reason: “the position was a false one, for it was an effort to serve two masters, and to live like a Catholic and teach the Catholic religion outside the pale of the Catholic Church.” “There is no end or measure,” he now tells Cheyney from Douay, “to my thinking of you; and I never think of you without being horribly ashamed. . . . So often was I with you at Gloucester, so often in your private chamber, with no one near us, when I could[44] have done this business, and I did it not!” By “this business” he means confessing Catholic truth, and urging Cheyney to return to it. “And what is worse, I have added flames to the fever by assenting and assisting. And although you were superior to me, in your counterfeited dignity, in wealth, age and learning, and though I was not bound to look after the physicking or dieting of your soul, yet, since you were of so easy and sweet a temper as in spite of your grey hairs to admit me, young as I was, to familiar intercourse with you, to say whatever I chose, in all security and secrecy, while you imparted to me your sorrows and all the calumnies of the other heretics against you; and since like a father you exhorted me to walk straight and upright in the royal road, to follow the steps of the Church, the Councils, and the Fathers, and to believe that where there was a consensus of these there could be no spot of falsehood; I am very angry with myself that I neglected to use such a beautiful opportunity of recommending the Faith: that through false modesty or culpable negligence, I did[45] not address with boldness one who was so near to the Kingdom of God. But as I have no longer the occasion that I had of persuading you face to face, it remains that I should send my words to you to witness my regard, my care, my anxiety for you, known to Him to whom I make my daily prayer for your salvation. Listen, I beseech you, listen to a few words. You are sixty years old, more or less” (Cheyney was really sixty-eight), “of uncertain health, of weakened body; the hatred of heretics, the pity of Catholics, the talk of the people, the sorrow of your friends, the joke of your enemies. Who do you think yourself to be? What do you expect? What is your life? Wherein lies your hope? In the heretics hating you so implacably and abusing you so roundly? Because of all heresiarchs you are the least crazy? Because you confess the Living Presence of Christ on the Altar, and the freedom of man’s will? Because you persecute no Catholics in your diocese? Because you are hospitable to your townspeople, and to good men? Because you plunder not your palace and lands, as your brethren[46] do? Surely these things will avail much, if you return to the bosom of the Church, if you suffer even the smallest persecution in common with those of the Household of Faith, or join your prayers with theirs. But now, whilst you are a stranger and an enemy, whilst, like a base deserter, you fight under an alien flag, it is in vain to attempt to cover your crimes with the cloak of virtues. . . . What is the use of fighting for many articles of the Faith, and to perish for doubting of a few? . . . He believes no one article of the Faith who refuses to believe any single one. In vain do you defend the religion of Catholics, if you hug only that which you like, and cut off all that seems not right in your eyes. There is but one plain, known road: not enclosed by your palings or mine, not by private judgment, but by the severe laws of humility and obedience: when you wander from these you are lost. You must be altogether within the house of God, within the walls of salvation, to be sound and safe from all injury; if you wander and walk abroad ever so little, if you carelessly thrust hand or foot[47] out of the ship, if you stir up ever so small a mutiny in the crew, you shall be thrust forth: the door is shut, the ocean roars: you are undone! . . . Do you remember the sober and solemn answer which you gave me when three years ago we met in the house of Thomas Dutton at Shireburn, where we were to dine? We were talking of St. Cyprian. I objected to you (in order to discover your real opinions) that Synod of Carthage which erred about the baptism of infants. You answered truly that the Holy Spirit was not promised to one Province, but to the Church; that the Universal Church is represented in a full Council; and that no doctrine can be pointed out about which such a Council ever erred. Acknowledge your own weapons, which you used against the adversaries of the Mystery of the Eucharist! . . . Here you have the most . . . apostolic men collected at Trent . . . to contend for the ancient faith of the Fathers! All these, whilst you live as you are living, anathematize you, hiss you out, excommunicate you, abjure you.” Campion goes on to urge upon Cheyney an outward adherence[48] to the Council which had discussed and resolved his own private beliefs. “Especially now you have declared war against your colleagues, why do you not make full submission, without any exceptions, to the discipline of these Fathers? . . . Once more, consult your own heart, my poor old friend! give me back your old beauty, and those excellent gifts which have been hitherto smothered in the mud of dishonesty. Give yourself to your Mother who begot you to Christ, nourished you, consecrated you; acknowledge how cruel and undutiful you have been: let confession be the salve of your sin. . . . Be merciful to your soul; spare my grief. Your ship is wrecked, your merchandise lost: nevertheless, seize the plank of penance, and come even naked into the port of the Church. Fear not but that Christ will preserve you with His hand, run to meet you, kiss you, and put on you the white garment: Saints and Angels will sing for joy! Take no thought for your life: He will take thought for you who gives the beasts their food, and feeds the young ravens that call upon Him. If you but made[49] trial of our banishment, if you but cleared your conscience, and came to behold and consider the living examples of piety which are shown here by Bishops, priests, friars, Masters of Colleges, rulers of Provinces, lay people of every age, rank and sex, I believe that you would give up six hundred Englands for the opportunity of redeeming the residue of your time by tears and sorrow. . . . Pardon me, my venerated old friend, for these just reproaches, and for the heat of my love. Suffer me to hate that deadly disease; let me ward off the imminent danger of so noble a man and so dear a friend with any dose, however bitter. And now if Christ give grace and you do not refuse, my hopes of you are equal to my love: and I love you as passing excellent in nature, in learning, in gentleness, in goodness, and as doubly dear to me for your many kindnesses and courtesies. If you recover your [spiritual] health, you make me happy for ever. If you slight me, this letter is my witness. God judge between you and me: your blood be on yourself! Farewell, from him that most desires your salvation.”

[50]

One phrase in this steel web of phrases from the pen of a rhetorician with a heart, shows that Campion knew of Cheyney’s sad and now complicated position in England. The letter was written November 1, 1571. A Convocation had met in the preceding April, on the heels of the Act of Uniformity, to which Cheyney was summoned in vain. It required the signing of the Thirty-nine Articles, and enacted, under Archbishop Grindal’s leadership, many things equally hateful to Cheyney, such as displacement and defacement of Altar-stones—(a great symbol, this, and no mere act of pillage!), the abolition of Prayers for the Dead, the prohibition even of the Sign of the Cross in church. Cheyney, excommunicated for his wilful absence, afterwards sued by proxy for absolution, for the sake of averting temporal penalties: but he had nothing more to do with the hierarchy. “Now you have declared war against your colleagues,” shows that Campion had heard accurate news of all this.

The moment may have seemed to Campion exactly favourable for such a strong[51] appeal. One of Cheyney’s successors in his See declared: “It was certain he died a Papist.” This was contradicted by a lesser authority, but yet a good one. If it were indeed “certain”, at least Edmund Campion, to whom the tidings would have been most consoling, never knew of it. It seems as if Cheyney could not have answered that bugle-call of a letter. He is said, however, to have kept it always, and to have called it his greatest treasure.

How these many cries of “the heat of my love” must have haunted his ear! It is hardly in human nature to value such a document at all (and there are passages in it more ruthless, after the manner of the time, than any we have quoted), unless for the reflex reason that it does its intended work in the heart of the receiver. To have valued it either as a piece of literary cleverness, or as a monument of misdirected concern, would have been equally cynical, and clean contrary to Cheyney’s known attitude towards his friend. He did not live to see Campion return to England. Shunning the bigots and the unprincipled men in power[52] to the last, and sheltering the Catholics all he could, he shut himself up at Gloucester, a whole High Church party in himself, wounded and at bay: and there in 1579 he died, and was buried in the glorious Cathedral, without an epitaph. The dream of his lifetime, as well as Edmund Campion’s sonship, he had loved and lost.