The Jesuits, 1534-1921. Thomas J. Campbell
able to present himself in person to the General, he asked by letter to be received into the Order. It was on December 1, 1578, while he was imprisoned in the Tower that an answer came from Father Mercurian granting his request. That encouraged him to labor more strenuously than ever, and for thirty years he kept on defying the Government. Lingard gives one notable instance of his audacity, though the great historian does not seem to be aware that Pounde was a Jesuit. In the proceedings connected with the Gunpowder Plot, someone was sentenced for harboring a Jesuit. Pounde appeared in court to protest against the ruling of the judge, with the result that he himself was arrested. He was condemned to have one of his ears cut off, to go to prison for life, and to pay a fine of a thousand pounds, if he did not tell who advised him to act as he did. He did not lose his ear; while he was in the Tower the queen, Anne of Denmark, interceded in his behalf. Her loving husband, however, King James I, told her: "never to open her mouth again in favor of a Catholic." Finally he got off by standing a whole day in the pillory, an experience which he probably enjoyed, for in spite of dungeons and chains and loss of property and his own terrible austerity – he often scourged himself to blood – he never lost his spirit of fun. He ended his wonderful career on March 5, 1615, at the age of 76, at Belmont, breathing his last in the room in which he was born.
When Campion was caught on his way to Lancashire and brought to London, where he was stretched on the rack and interrogated again and again while being tortured, the story was circulated that he had, at last, not only recanted, but had revealed secrets of the confessional. Pounde was in a fury about it, and wrote Campion an indignant letter, but he found out that it was one of the usual tricks of the English Government. The same villainy had been practised by Elizabeth's father on More and Fisher, but like them, Campion was too true a man to yield to suffering. On August 31, by order of the queen, bruised as he was and almost dismembered by the long and repeated rackings, he was led with Sherwin to a public disputation in the royal presence. Against them were Nowell and Day, two of the doughtiest champions of heresy that could be found in the kingdom. The dispute lasted for four hours in the morning and four in the afternoon – the intention being to keep it up for days. It was during this debate that the listeners saw with horror, as Campion stretched out his arms to emphasize his words by a gesture, that the nails had been torn off the fingers of both hands. The public discussions ended after the second session, for Nowell and Day had been completely beaten. What happened in the examinations held after that, behind closed doors, the authorities never let the world know, but it leaked out that Campion had made many converts among those who came to hear him. One of them was Arundel, who subsequently died for his faith on the scaffold.
On November 14 the Jesuits, Campion and Thomas Cottam, with Ralph Sherwin, Bosgrave, Rhiston, Luke Kirby, Robert Johnson and Orton, secular priests, were called for trial. They all pleaded innocent of felony and rebellion. "How could we be conspirators?" Campion asked, "we eight men never met before; and some of us have never seen each other." On November 16, six others were cited. It was on this occasion that Campion answered the question: "Do you believe Elizabeth to be the lawful queen?" "I told it to herself," he said, "in the castle of the Duke of Leicester." Thither he had been called for a private interview, and Elizabeth recognized him as the Oxford man and the little lad of Christ Church, who, not then dreaming of the terrible future in store for him, had paid the homage of respectful and perhaps affectionate loyalty to her majesty. At that meeting were Leicester, the Earl of Bedford, two secretaries of state and the queen. As the prosecution was so weak and the defense made by Campion was so unassailable, everyone expected an acquittal, but to their amazement, a verdict of guilty was brought in. "The trial," says Hallam, "was as unfairly conducted and supported by as slender evidence as can be found in our books." (Constitutional History of England, I, 146.)
When the presiding judge asked the accused if they had anything to say, Campion replied: "The only thing that we have now to say is that if our religion makes us traitors we are worthy to be condemned, but otherwise we are and have been as true subjects as ever the queen had. In condemning us, you condemn all your own ancestors, all that was once the glory of England, the Island of Saints, and the most devoted child of the See of St. Peter. For what have we taught, however you may qualify it with the odious name of treason, that they did not uniformly teach? To be condemned along with those who were the glory not of England alone but of the whole world by their degenerate descendants is both glory and gladness to us. God lives; posterity will live, and their judgment is not so liable to corruption as that of those who are now going to condemn us to death." When the sentence was uttered, Campion lifting up his voice intoned the "Te Deum laudamus" in which the others joined, following with the anthem "Hæc est dies quam fecit Dominus, exultemus et lætemur in ea" (This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and exult in it.) There were conversions in the courtroom that day.
The scene at the scaffold on December 1, was characterized by the brutality of savages. The victims were placed on hurdles and dragged through the streets to Tyburn. Campion was the first to mount the fatal cart, and when the rope was put about his neck and he was addressing the crowd that thronged around, Knowles interrupted him with, "Stop your preaching and confess yourself a traitor." To which Campion replied, "If it be a crime to be a Catholic, I am a traitor." He continued to speak, but the cart was drawn from under him and he was left dangling in the air. Before he breathed his last he was cut down, his heart was torn out and the hangman holding it aloft in his bloody hand, cried out, "Behold the heart of a traitor!" and flung it into the fire. Alexander Briant and Ralph Sherwin then met the same fate. Previous to this gruesome tragedy, 4,000 people had been won back to the Faith.
Thomas Cottam and William Lacey were the next English martyrs of the Society. The latter calls for special mention. He was a Yorkshire gentleman, who for some time thought that he could, with a safe conscience, frequent Protestant places of worship, but as soon as he was made aware that it was forbidden, he desisted; and fines and vexations of all kinds failed to change his resolution. Becoming a widower, he determined in spite of his years to consecrate himself to God, and having met Dr. Allen at Rheims, he went to Rome, where, after his theological studies he was ordained a priest, and returning to England labored strenuously to revive the faith of his fellow-countrymen. He succeeded even in entering a jail in York where a number of priests were confined, and afforded them whatever help he could. As he was leaving, he was arrested and was executed a month later, August 22, 1582. Father Possoz, S. J., the author of "Edmond Campion," says "there is no mention of Lacy, either in Tanner or Alegambe, but I found, in the catalogue of Rayssius, 'Gulielmus Lacæus, sacerdos romanus qui in carcere constitutus, in Societatem Jesu fuit receptus.'" The same is true of Thomas Methame who did not die on the scaffold, but after seventeen years of captivity in various prisons, gave up the ghost at Wisbech in 1592 at the age of sixty. He was remarkable for his profound knowledge both of history and theology. There also appears on the list an O'Mahoney (John Cornelius), who was a ward of the Countess of Arundel. He was thrown into the Marshalsea, where Father Henry Garnet admitted him to make his vows. He won his crown at Dorchester on July 4, 1594. His name is not found in the "Fasti Breviores" or the "Menology," but it is given by Possoz.
The poet Robert Southwell was martyred on February 21, 1595. Writing about him, Thurston calls attention to an interesting coincidence in his life. His grandfather, Sir Richard Southwell, a prominent courtier in the reign of Henry VIII, had brought the poet Henry Howard to the block, and yet Divine providence made their respective grandsons, Robert Southwell and Philip, Earl of Arundel, devoted friends and fellow-prisoners for the Faith. The poetry, however, had shifted to the Southwell side, for, unlike his friend, Arundel did not cultivate the muse. Southwell had been a pupil of the great Lessius at Louvain, and had made the "grand act" in philosophy at the age of seventeen. At Paris he applied for admission to the Society, but was refused, and his grief on that occasion elicited the first poetical effusion of his of which we have any knowledge. Two years later, however, he was accepted; he was ordained in 1584, and became prefect of studies in the English College at Rome. In 1586 he was sent to England, and passed under the name of Cotton. Two years later he was made chaplain of the Countess of Arundel, and thus came into relationship with her imprisoned husband, Philip, the ancestor of the present ducal house of Norfolk. Southwell's prose elegy, "Triumphs Over Death," was written to console the earl. In going his rounds he usually passed as a country gentleman, and that accounts for the "hawk" metaphors which so often occur in his verse. He was finally arrested at Harrow in 1592, and after three years' imprisonment in a dungeon