At Douai, under the instruction of William Allen, Campion became a Catholic priest and in Rome, to which he travelled following his ordination, he joined the Society of Jesus.* The long and painful struggle with his conscience was over. In March 1580, eight years after his flight to the Continent, he was summoned back to England.3
Up to now the Jesuits had not involved themselves in the English mission. They were, though, ideally suited to the task. If William Allen’s students were the ordinary foot soldiers in Rome’s army of arguers then Ignatius Loyola’s Jesuits were the special forces, physically toughened by strict, self-imposed hardships and vows of poverty, mentally strengthened by long periods of solitude and meditation, and well aware that education was the strongest weapon in the proselytizer’s armoury. ‘Give me a boy at the age of seven, and he will be mine for ever,’ declared Loyola. Within a decade of their formation the Jesuits had established colleges throughout Catholic Europe and were ranging as far afield as Mexico and Japan, the front lines of Christian conflict. Their startling success aroused fear among Protestants and resentment among their fellow Catholics. But to Loyola’s men this was holy war and in warfare the end justified the means.4
Having already lost many of his finest students, including Campion, to the elite new order, it was William Allen, always on the lookout for new ways to help England’s beleaguered Catholics, who suggested the Jesuits widen their range of operations to include the English mission. Why sacrifice the lives of English priests in far-flung corners of the world when there was ample work for them to do in their own homeland? First, though, he had to persuade the unwilling Jesuit General, Everard Mercurian, that England was worth the venture.* 5
Mercurian’s reluctance to send his men to England was deeprooted. He declared the Society already over-committed in other parts of the world. He ‘found divers difficulties…about their manner of living there [in England] in secular men’s houses in secular apparel…as how also their rules and orders for conservation of religious spirit might there be observed’. But most of all, he argued, as conditions in England now stood it would be impossible for his missionaries to maintain the kind of order, discipline and apoliticism in the line of fire on which the effectiveness of their work depended. How could he send his men into a political minefield like England and expect them to minister to Catholics while, at the same time, dodging the accusations of intrigue and treachery that would inevitably be hurled their way? And how could he ask them to do so in isolation, deprived of the support of their fellow Jesuits? Gradually, as the 1570s drew to a close, William Allen wore him down. He was helped in this by a fellow Oxford graduate and a Jesuit of some five years’ standing, Robert Persons.6
Robert Persons was a ‘fierce natured’, ‘impudent’ West Countryman, born at Nether Stowey in Somerset in 1546. In 1564, at the age of eighteen, he went up to Oxford, where he discovered Catholicism, first as a student at St Mary’s Hall, Allen’s old college, and then as a fellow of Balliol. By 1573, his new allegiance to the old faith had brought him to the attention of the authorities and his abrasive manner had offended sufficient of his colleagues and he was summarily expelled, ‘even with the public ringing of bells’. So Robert Persons took passage to the Continent. Once there he enrolled to study medicine at the University of Padua, but a chance meeting with a member of the Jesuits made a profound impression on the twenty-seven-year-old. After two years pursuing his medical studies, Robert Persons packed his bags and walked to Rome. On 25 June 1575 he joined the Society of Jesus, a day after his twenty-ninth birthday.7
Four years later Persons was writing privately to William Allen that among the English Jesuits there were ‘divers to adventure their blood in that mission [to England], among whom I put myself as one’. Faced with such zeal Mercurian finally gave way. A first Jesuit mission to England was ordered; Robert Persons was named as its commander and Edmund Campion was selected to accompany him. ‘The expense is reckoned,’ wrote Campion, ‘the enterprise is begun. It is of God, it cannot be withstood.’8
From Prague, where he was teaching Rhetoric at the university, Campion was ordered back to Rome to join Persons. Here, the pair were briefed for their mission. General Mercurian was at pains to stress the difficulties of living and working in disguise, of assuming and maintaining a false identity and of surviving alone without the support of the Society. He also pointed out the impossibility of retreat should the pressure grow too great. These hardships aside, their orders were clear. They were to work with those who were already favourable to the faith. They were to avoid all contact with the heretics. They were to ‘behave that all may see that the only gain they covet is that of souls’. They were not to entangle themselves ‘in affairs of State’, nor to send back political reports to Rome. They were not to speak against the Queen, except perhaps among those ‘whose fidelity has been long and steadfast and even then not without strong reasons’. And they were to carry with them nothing forbidden by English law: no papal bulls or Agnus Dei. This was a mission for ‘the preservation and augmentation of the Faith of the Catholics in England’ and it was not to be compromised by the amateurism that had tripped up Cuthbert Mayne.9
Campion and Persons departed Rome on 18 April 1580, waved off in triumph by the entire English colony there. With them rode a party of some twelve other English Catholics, including a lay brother of the Society, Ralph Emerson, who would act as their servant in England, and a group of young seminary priests also on their way to join the mission. One witness, Robert Owen, a Welsh Catholic studying in Rome, wrote to his friend Dr Humphrey Ely at Reims, ‘This day depart hence many of our countrymen thitherward, and withal good Father Campion.’ Within days the letter had been intercepted by an English spy and its contents passed on to Sir Francis Walsingham in London. Edmund Campion was ‘on the way to my warfare in England’ and England was expecting him.10
The party travelled on foot, using false names. Heavy rain dogged their passage through Italy. From Turin they climbed steadily upwards, crossing the Alps at Mont Cenis before descending again into the rich pastureland of the Savoy. From here they continued on to Lyons and on 31 May they came at last to the French university city of Reims.11
But here some alarming news awaited them. Campion’s was not the only Catholic expedition to the British Isles that month. At the same time the Jesuit and his fellows had left Rome for England, five Spanish ships containing arms and men had left for Ireland. They sailed at the request of Campion’s Oxford contemporary Nicholas Sanders, now employed as a papal envoy. Their purpose was to assist the Irish rebel James Fitzmaurice unseat the ‘tyrant’ Elizabeth. And the man who had financed them was none other than Pope Gregory XIII.* Robert Persons noted his party’s reaction: ‘we were heartily sorry…because we plainly foresaw that this would be laid against us and other priests, if we should be taken in England, as though we had been privy or partakers thereof, as in very truth we were not, nor ever heard or suspected the same until this day’.12
Their situation grew still worse with the second piece of news that now reached them. English agents had provided the Privy Council with a full description of every member of the group and the Channel ports were being watched for their arrival. It was testimony to their courage that only one of the party, Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of St Asaph, now wavered. Goldwell took to his bed and began writing to the Pope to ask whether he was the best man for the job of supervising Allen’s missionaries. Indeed, he was not. He was seventy-nine years old, he had endured