Edmund Campion: A Life

Evelyn Waugh's Edmund Campion is about the making of a martyr in 16th century England. It will appeal most obviously to Catholics. But it is equally a picture of the politics of the time leading from Henry VIII to James I--with implications beyond, with occasional snapshots of unbelievable coarseness of manners: Queen Elizabeth accepting the hospitality of unsuspecting families and ordering their arrest when they try to honor her as she leaves; her ordering a performance from a courtier, who falls, with her roaring in laughter and kicking him, dubbing him Sir Ox.There is the torture and beastly punishments, etc. But there is in the great changes things we might recognize from our own time. Vast resources were changing hands at the will of the "government," ending the tenure and foundation of religious enterprises. It was, you might say, past time for it. But it is hard to argue that the public benefitted. In fact in the short run the public lost by the change. The support the public needed and was used to from the foundations vanished. The charities and schooling were cut off at their source. Oxford itself became unfunded.Still, one might think it was time to end the medieval pattern and to assert change that would tend to secular control of the people's business. But the reality was, from Henry to Elisabeth, the plunder went to the ministers' cronies and supporters, creating big establishments to ennoble and enrich them--thus not only paying for their support, but binding them to it. On the other hand, the engine of reform, the public factions agitating for supremacy and the elimination of Catholics and their foundations, were easily steered. There were competing Protestant views. It was only a question of appropriate reinforcement depending ministerial choice: punish those deemed too extreme; the others would feel supported by the government actions of disestablishment. Such turns of events are not unknown in politics at other times.About Elizabeth: "All her life she had been surrounded by plots; plots to implicate her in Wyatt's rebellion, plots against her life . . . many of them real enough . . . plots that had no existence except in the brains of Walsingham and the Cecils [p. 19 EC]." Waugh says this only in reference to her dying. From his narrative a reader can see that she led an uncertain life, with every reason to be afraid: of judicial death at the hands of her half sisters or their supporters, for one thing. (She reluctantly condemned two of her half sisters to death at the instigation of her chief minister.) Henry VIII had officially declared her illegitimate and blocked her from the succession--later reversing this. Waugh's picture of Elizabeth needs a further level of generalization to register the totality in which her danger grew up with her and stayed with her to the end. She was brilliant, gifted person: but the sense of danger must have been central in her life. I think that she could see that there was no safety for her to try to live an ordinary life: she couldn't even marry without crown permission (very, very unlikely).Elizabeth could see the likeliest safety was for her to be queen. She would have the power of government behind her. I think that she saw marrying as queen would be a threat to her control, and a merry dance she led them on this. But it made her, too, susceptible to manipulation by her principal minister, William Cecil, Lord Burghley. Neither of them were actuated by fervent religious motive. Elizabeth had to sense the danger potential of the religious disorders; Cecil loved power. He may have called it something else, but the reality for him was his ability to be in control and to build a new power structure based on his sense of what could work. The definitive shift in power between Crown and Parliament would grow out of such interplays of actual power.In the end I can recommend this book to anyone interested in any these things, or their romance, whether Catholic or not--with the warning that it is the story of Edmund Campion, martyr and saint. Edmund Campion

Foxe's famous book of martyrs gave the impression that England's troubled past ended with the martyrs of "Bloody" Queen Mary. But martyrdom continued at the hands of the Protestant soveriegns that followed including the hundreds of priests tortured to death under "Good Queen Bess" (Elizabeth I). One of those priests was the beloved Edmund Campion who gave up a lucrative career as a scholar to follow a calling that would lead to the ultimate sacrifice for love of his homeland.Mr. Waugh brings his literary skills to bear in the biographical genre to tell us this moving story of this great hero of the faith. Campion had all the promise as a young man in England and Ireland to make a renowned scholar. Mentioning a fellow English scholar of that time, Mr. Waugh makes the profound observation, "Tobie Matthew died full of honours in 1628. There, but for the Grace of God, went Edmund Campion." Campion's life would not end with mere honors of man but the the great honor God gives to those who give their lives for others. Campion's ignominious and gruesome death won him a far greater honor than he might have accomplished as a renowned scholar. He is venerated today as a canonized saint with good reason. His life was one of service and love for his fellow man to the point of facing death in order to encourage those under the brutal persecution of Elizabeth's reign.When the sovereigns of England attempted to squash the Catholic faith, a school for under-cover priests was founded on the continent. Campion attended and took on the austere life of a Society of Jesus eventually teaching at seminaries far from his home. But always his heart ached for his own country. But, as Waugh observes, "Campion could help the English Mission best by realising his own sanctity." And so he did, eventually landing under cover on his home island to pray for and preach the Catholics denied freedom of worship there. But his capture, long torture and brutal martyrdom were not a defeat. As Waugh says of Campion and the martyr priests like him, "We are the heirs of their conquest, and enjoy, at our ease, the plenty which they died to win."The final chapter conveys the story of one man present at Campion's death. This man, literally splattered with the blood of the martyr, left England to follow the same path of study to priesthood to return and a common end. The blood of the martyrs are indeed the seeds of the Church. Saint Edmund Campion, pray for us.

Up until reading Evelyn Waugh’s biography on Jesuit Priest, Edmund Campion – who was hanged, drawn, and quartered, for attending to the souls of men – I was of the opinion that English Tudor Queen, Elizabeth 1st, was the best of Englishwoman and well deserved her reputation as not only a woman of conscience but a great leader. Indeed, in a BBC poll in 2002, Elizabeth 1st came seventh in a list of the 100 ‘Greatest Britons’.That opinion has now shifted. The sky has changed. The window of history which I peer through looks very different this morning. This is why.“Elizabeth’s coronation had, of course, taken place before the issue of the Prayer Book or the Acts enforcing its use. Whatever might be feared for the future, England was at that moment still a Catholic country and a Catholic Bishop, later deposed, had been persuaded to crown her. At the ceremony she took the following oaths:-Bishop: Will you grant and keep, and by your oath confirm… the Laws, Customs and Franchises granted to the clergy by the glorious King St. Edward, your predecessor?Queen: I grant and promise to observe them.Bishop: Will you keep peace and godly agreement entirely according to your power, both to God, to the Holy Church, and to the people?Queen: I will keep it.Bishop: We beseech you… to preserve unto us and to the Churches committed to our charge all Canonical privileges and due Law and Justice; to protect and defend us, as every good King in his Kingdom ought to be Protector and Defender of the Bishops and Churches under their government.Queen: With a willing and devout heart, I promise…that I will preserve and maintain to you and the Churches committed to your charge all Canonical privileges,etc.”There were 312 English Catholic Martyrs during the reign of Elizabeth 1st. The stripping of the altars continued. After many hundreds of years of Catholic religious tradition, a culture and a way of life was abandoned, ney, considered unlawful.People were fined for attending Mass. For not attending the new Protestant service, fines were introduced. A repeated ‘offender’, someone who either attended a Mass in their own home or did not attend a Protestant Church service, would risk being sent to prison. Some prisons were worse than others. Some deaths were worse than others.In 1581, Edmund Campion was martyrd. He died for his country its religious tradition.Much later, in 1603, Queen Elizabeth 1st sat on the floor, “propped up with cushions, sleepless and silent, her eyes constantly open. Lord Admiral Howard was one of her visitors. He knelt beside her and, with tears, implored her to take a little nourishment.They brought a bowl of broth and the Admiral coaxed her to take a spoonful or two from his own hands. But when he urged her to go to bed she refused angrily, breaking into a confused and violent tale of her nightmares.”“If you were in the habit of seeing such things in your bed, as I do in mine, you would not persuade me to go there.”