Some felt Elizabeth had sacrificed Campion as a sop to those Puritans concerned by her proposal to wed the Catholic Duc d’Alençon. Others, that Campion had been silenced by a Government unable to defend its new faith against the theological reasoning of the Catholic Church. Ballad-mongers were soon singing:
If instead of good argument,
We deal by the rack, The Papists may think That learning we lack.
Many were even more direct in their criticisms:
Our preachers have preached in pastime and pleasure,
And now they be hated far passing all measure; Their wives and their wealth have made them so mute, They cannot nor dare not with Campion dispute.
What was clear to all, though, was that with Campion’s death, the Jesuit mission to England had been stopped in its tracks. The question was, could it ever regain its momentum?59
Seven years later, in October 1588, Father John Gerard was setting out to answer this question. Campion had written of a ‘league’ of ‘all the Jesuits in the world’—a league dedicated to restoring England to the Catholic Church, no matter how brutal the cost. For Gerard the time had come to make good that promise.
* Campion is reported to have asked for nothing but Leicester’s friendship.
* Campion chose to walk from Douai to Rome as a poor pilgrim. On the way he was met by an Oxford contemporary who at first failed to recognize him and then assumed he had been robbed. When he learned it was voluntary mortification he dismissed the idea as un-English and fit only for a crazed fanatic, and he offered Campion a share of his purse. Campion refused.
* Ignatius Loyola died in 1556.
* Gregory’s attitude towards Elizabeth is controversial. In 1580 his Secretary of State gave the following answer to an enquiry by a group of English noblemen as to whether or not they would incur sin by assassinating the Queen: ‘Since that guilty woman of England rules over two such noble kingdoms of Christendom and is the cause of so much injury to the Catholic faith, and loss of so many million souls, there is no doubt that whosoever sends her out of the world with the pious intention of doing service, not only does not sin but gains merit’. This judgement came with Gregory’s approval. The logic behind it was clear: Elizabeth was a heretic; her actions imperilled the souls of her subjects; her killing was expedient (to cite ‘thou shalt not kill’ in objection ignores the fact that the Church was already busy burning heretics). But to extrapolate from this that the Vatican officially sanctioned the murder of its opponents is wide of the mark; indeed, Gregory’s approval of the English noblemen’s scheme had a hugger-mugger air to it, admission that Elizabeth’s assassination was against the spirit, if not the letter, of contemporary moral reasoning. Of course, the net result of his dubious opinion was a propaganda coup for the Protestants.
† Goldwell’s correspondence with the Pope took several months, by which time plague had broken out in Reims and he had grown desperate. One of his letters, dated 13 July 1580, began, ‘Beatissimo Padre,—If I could have crossed over into England before my coming was known there, as I hoped to do, I think that my going thither would have been a comfort to the Catholics, and a satisfaction to your Holiness; wherein now I fear the contrary, for there are so many spies in this kingdom, and my long tarrying here had made my going to England so bruited there, that now I doubt it will be difficult for me to enter that kingdom without some danger.’ In the end he dismissed himself without permission and returned to Rome to a chilly reception.
* William Cecil, desperate to avoid provoking Spain further, had done his best to scupper Drake’s adventure. He is even said to have placed one of his own agents among the crew to incite a mutiny. The agent was discovered and hanged from the yardarm.
† The old King of Portugal died in January 1580 without a direct heir and as the son of the dead King’s eldest sister, Philip was quick to press home his claim to the title.
* The story of Pound’s transformation from wealthy courtier to religious prisoner is remarkable (though quite possibly apocryphal). He is said to have performed a complicated pas seul before the Queen, who was so impressed she called on him to repeat the move. Pound did so, but this time he fell. To the ringing laughter of the Queen and her court he retired, with the words ‘Sic transit gloria mundi’, and from then on he devoted himself to religion.
* An informer’s report, dated 26 December 1580, describes Gilbert as ‘bending somewhat in the knees, fair-complexioned, reasonably well-coloured, little hair on his face, and short if he have any, thick somewhat of speech, and about twenty-four years of age’. By this stage Gilbert was a wanted man.
* Walsingham was Elizabeth’s new Principal Secretary of State since Sir William Cecil’s appointment as Lord Treasurer in 1573. Cecil was also created Baron Burghley, in recognition of his service to Elizabeth.
* Henry Norris was a favourite of Elizabeth’s—his father had been executed on a manufactured charge of adultery with Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn (thus sealing Anne’s downfall), and the family had forfeited their lands. At her succession Elizabeth restored those lands and later ennobled Norris. Thomas Paget was a staunch Catholic who endured frequent terms of imprisonment for his faith.
* On 16 March 1583 William Allen observed: ‘Great complaints are made to the Queen’s councillors about the university of Oxford, because of the number who from time to time leave their colleges and are supposed to pass over to us.’
* Both Hartley and Pitts were eventually caught by the authorities. They were banished from England in 1585. Hartley returned soon afterwards and was recaptured. He was executed at Shoreditch in London on 5 October 1588, one of the many Catholics executed in the aftermath of the Armada.
* During restoration works at Lyford in 1959 an Agnus Dei blessed by Pope Gregory XIII and papers dated 1579 were found in a wooden box nailed to a joist under the attic floorboards.
† John Payne was Cuthbert Mayne’s travelling companion to England in 1576. He was eventually captured and executed at Chelmsford, Essex on 4 April 1582.
* No doubt many of the Council believed in Campion, Persons and Allen’s guilt but both Ford and Collington had been in England a number of years before the Jesuits’ arrival, while poor Filby had only bad timing to thank for his presence at Lyford.