God’s Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England

by Childs, Jessie

  Gilbert arranged for some of them to live under the same roof ‘in the chief pursuivant’s house’. A ‘pursuivant’ was a liveried messenger of the Queen, often charged in this period with finding Catholic priests. Their new landlord was ‘of most credit’ with the Bishop of London and although he and the Bishop’s son-in-law were in Gilbert’s pay, it was an astonishingly reckless choice of lodging. They lived there for ‘divers years and had access of priests unto them & sundry Masses daily said in their house until,’ Robert Persons recalled, ‘the Jesuits came in when times grew to be much more exasperated’.19

  Persons was writing from experience, for he was one of the two Jesuit priests sent by the Society to launch its first mission in England. The other was Edmund Campion, Henry Vaux’s one-time tutor and his father’s old friend. The Jesuit mission would indeed exasperate the times for the English Catholics, but it exasperated Elizabeth I and her government no less. The Jesuits were members of a fledgling religious order, bound by a Rule. In addition to the traditional vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, the professed fathers of the Society of Jesus took a fourth vow of special obedience to the Pope. They trained according to a carefully regimented programme of prayer, meditation and self-examination known as the Spiritual Exercises. They saw themselves, as one English member put it, as ‘instruments of Christ’ with a vocation to heal souls ‘in this last era of a declining and gasping world’.20 They strived to live and work every day according to their motto, Ad maiorem Dei gloriam: To the greater glory of God.

  Their founder, Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556), was a Spaniard and former soldier whose knightly training was evident in his adoption of military terminology (the Company of Jesus, the Society General, the Spiritual Exercises) and in the practical spirituality he espoused for the maintenance of an effective working mission. The Jesuits were proselytisers and educators as well as ministers. By 1580, there were 150 schools staffed by the Society across the world. That year there were five thousand recruits and, before coming to England, they had made inroads into India, the Congo, Ethiopia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Japan and China.21 To some degree they were victims of their own success, feared or revered as the vanguard of the Counter-Reformation. They were a testament to the new Tridentine drive for efficiency and it was, in part, their reputation for meticulous planning that made the timing and agenda of their mission to England seem so suspicious.

  The launch dovetailed with the arrival in Ireland of Nicholas Sander, a prominent English Catholic and papal nuncio, who was supporting a Spanish-assisted insurrection against English rule. From the government’s viewpoint, it looked very much as though Campion and Persons were papal-Spanish agents bent on subversion, not conversion. Pius V’s bull of excommunication against Elizabeth was still in force and although the new Pope, Gregory XIII, would send the priests into England with a resolution that the bull should not be implemented ‘under present circumstances’, this was scant comfort for the Queen – the effective message being that she should still be deposed, just not quite yet.22

  The very deed of carrying the papal Explanatio into the country was, in any case, an act of treason. Moreover, the Pope had ridden roughshod over English law by granting the mission a number of subversive faculties, including the celebration of Mass and permission to print books anonymously. Gregory XIII also solemnly blessed the priests’ lay helpers.23 There were further concerns that Campion and Persons would try to exploit the potentially advantageous situation created for court Catholics by the negotiations for a marriage between the Queen and the Duke of Anjou.24 By accident or design, therefore, the first Jesuit mission to England contained political overtones beyond the inherent threat that any such venture already posed to the unity of the commonwealth.

  The Jesuit General in Rome, Everard Mercurian, had grave reservations about sending Campion and Persons into such a hostile environment. He issued a set of instructions that he hoped would dampen the controversy and mitigate the risks to his men. They were to operate prudently and with circumspection, only working with faithful or lapsed Catholics. ‘They must so behave that all may see that the only gain they covet is that of souls.’ They were to steer clear of Protestants and the affairs of state. They should avoid disputation unless ‘necessity force them’.25 Persons was designated superior of the mission and Campion, who had been happily ensconced in Prague, was summoned to Rome. They were joined by a number of laymen and secular priestsfn1 and left Rome on 18 April 1580, only nine days after Campion’s arrival. He, too, had been less than enthusiastic about the venture, but his vow of obedience (‘which by the grace of God I will in no case violate’26) and the prospect of possible martyrdom were strong inducements.

  The missioners did not exactly assume a low profile on their journey towards England. Speeches were made at Bologna and Milan, and instead of passing quietly through Geneva, which was Calvin country, they tried to provoke the reformer Theodore Beza into a disputation. (Beza claimed to be too busy to deal with them, but they stood their ground and only agreed to leave when his wife intervened.) By the time they reached France, the mission was well telegraphed and the Channel ports were on alert. Campion wrote to the General that ‘something positively like a clamour’ heralded their approach. He was eager now to carry the banner to England, but was aware of the risk: ‘It often happens that the first rank of a conquering army is knocked over.’27

  For safety’s sake, the party split up and resolved to enter England separately. Persons was the first to make the night voyage from Calais. Dressed in a buff leather coat trimmed with gold braid and a feather in his hat, he assumed the guise of a mercenary captain and was so convincing, Campion marvelled, ‘that a man needs must have very sharp eyes to catch a glimpse of any holiness and modesty shrouded beneath such a garb’.28 On 16 June 1580, Persons – ‘such a peacock, such a swaggerer’ – sailed into Dover and through customs. One port official even procured a horse for his onward journey and agreed to forward a letter to a certain ‘Edmunds’, a jewel merchant in St Omer, who was to make haste to London, where profitable opportunities awaited.

  It was only when he reached Southwark that Persons ran into problems. It was four in the morning, there was no lookout and no immediate way of finding George Gilbert and his friends. Recent events and proclamations had made the innkeepers twitchy and they refused to let in the strange mercenary knocking on their doors in the small hours. After a frustrating morning, Persons decided to risk a visit to the Marshalsea prison, one of the few places in south London where he was sure to find some Catholics. There he met Thomas Pounde, a layman who had been in the prison for over four years. As chance would have it, Pounde also received a visit that day from Edward Brooksby, Henry Vaux’s brother-in-law and a member of Gilbert’s circle. Brooksby escorted the Jesuit to their shared house in the city. Persons had made contact.

  Meanwhile, Campion, alias ‘Edmunds’ the jewel dealer, was waiting in Calais for a fair wind. He set sail on the evening of 24 June, accompanied by his ‘little man’, the lay brother Ralph Emerson. They reached Dover before daylight the following morning and were subjected to a rigorous interrogation. Lacking the bravura of his colleague, Campion failed to convince as a jeweller. It did not help that he bore a superficial resemblance to Gabriel Allen, the seminary founder’s brother, whose arrival the port officials were expecting. Campion was able to state, without equivocation, that he was not their man and after an agonising few hours was released.

  He hastened to London and this time Gilbert’s men were ready. Several had been posted at the wharves along the bank to watch the incoming boats. The records do not state if Henry Vaux was one of the lookouts, but as Campion’s former student he would have been an obvious choice. In the event, though, it was the honour of Thomas James to pick up Campion and take him to the safe house. ‘Young gentlemen came to me on every hand,’ Campion wrote, ‘they embrace me, reapparel me, furnish me, weapon me, and convey me out of the city.’29

  Before he was secreted out of Londo
n, Campion attended a number of meetings with Catholics who wanted clarity on various issues. On 29 June 1580, he defended the papal primacy at a house in Smithfield. Soon afterwards, at the so-called ‘Synod of Southwark’, he and Persons attempted to reassure a group of influential laymen and priests that they had not come to meddle in Irish affairs or any other matters of state. They had been sent ‘to treat of matters of religion in truth and simplicity’ and they read out General Mercurian’s instructions to that effect. But what was religious and what was political? To the question of whether it was ever permissible for a Catholic to attend a Protestant service, even if only for the outward display of temporal loyalty to the Queen and the avoidance of penalty, the Jesuits responded in the negative. Attendance at the parish church, token or otherwise, was an act of ‘great impiety’.30

  By allowing themselves to be drawn into the debate, Campion and Persons strayed into an area where the line between religion and politics was decidedly blurred. It could be argued that the English government, by not questioning the motives of attendance and by resisting Puritan calls for severer penalties against non-attendance, had tried to temper the issue. In insisting upon absolute recusancy, Campion and Persons showed no such restraint. Indeed, they seemingly went further than Pope Gregory XIII himself, who had hinted that accommodations might be made as circumstances dictated.

  This was not overt sedition. The Jesuits were not inciting armed rebellion or debating the deposing power of the Pope, but nor were they shying away from controversy. In assuming the determining authority over what was conscientious objection and what was political dissent, Campion and Persons had not employed the prudence demanded by their General.31

  A few days later, Campion and Persons moved up to Hoxton, then a village north-east of London. Thomas Pounde, who was on day parole from the Marshalsea, paid a visit. He was concerned, Persons later explained, about the ‘false rumours’ given out by the Council that ‘our coming into England was for rebellion and matter of State’. He feared that the Jesuits would be further impugned when they began their tours of the shires. Above all, he and his fellow prisoners in the Marshalsea were worried that if either priest was captured or killed, he would not be able to refute the government’s allegations, ‘whereby many well-meaning people might be deceived and the Catholic cause not a little slandered’.32

  It was decided, therefore, that Campion and Persons would write short statements defending the mission. They would take the originals with them on their travels and leave back-up copies with Pounde, who would only release them in the event of mishap. In their texts, both priests stressed the spiritual nature of their apostolate and insisted upon the purity of their motives. ‘My charge,’ Campion declared, ‘is of free cost to preach the Gospel, to minister the sacraments, to instruct the simple, to reform sinners, to confute errors.’33

  ‘Religion not politics’ was the refrain. But both priests also laid down the gauntlet of a public disputation before the Queen and issued fairly inflammatory challenges to her Council. ‘If,’ Persons wrote,

  your intentions are bloodthirsty (from which evil may God defend you), there will be no lack of scope for them. For you are persecuting a corporation that will never die and sooner will your hearts and hands, sated with blood, fail you, than will there be lacking men, eminent for virtue and learning, who will be sent by this Society and allow their blood to be shed by you for this cause.34

  Persons sealed his statement. Campion did not and so his is more famous, Pounde being unable to resist what must have seemed like an invitation to read the manuscript and show it to his co-religionists. Soon Campion’s ‘Brag’, as it became known, enjoyed a wide circulation and it was not long before a copy was in the hands of the government. It made for unsettling reading:

  And touching our Society, be it known unto you, that we have made a league – all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practices of England – cheerfully to carry the cross that you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or to be consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted, so it must be restored.35

  These statements can be read in two ways: either, as the authors maintained, as spur-of-the-moment, last-resort apologiae, only to be issued in the event of capture or death; or, as their enemies insisted, as jingoistic manifestos, designed to rally the Catholic community and declare war on the Protestant establishment. Campion claimed that Pounde had acted ‘without my knowledge’, but suggested that the ‘mistake’ could be exploited to put pressure on the government.36 It has been queried whether such careful strategists could really have been caught unawares by the leaking of such sensitive material. Perhaps, as they had shown on their journey towards England and during the preliminaries in London, they were so keen to argue the disputed issues – especially at a time when the Anjou match made Catholic prospects more hopeful – that they conceived a way of airing them while still being able to maintain ‘plausible deniability’.

  It is impossible to know for sure – arguably all Jesuit conduct before and after the release of the ‘Brag’ was reactive to the peculiarities of time and place – but one thing is certain: the moment the ‘Brag’ and its invitation to a disputatious showdown were released, the mission outlined by the Jesuit General in Rome mutated. Whether Campion and Persons ever meant to court publicity, it is what they would get. Their persistent cry of ‘religion not politics’ would be matched by the plangent government charge, ‘politics not religion’. The louder and longer this counterpoint was played, the harder it became to separate one part from the other.

  Campion was in the countryside when his ‘Brag’ was released. He and Persons had left Hoxton early in August 1580, equipped by Gilbert and his men with horses, money, disguises and massing equipment. The Jesuit superior headed for Gloucestershire, then Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Derbyshire. ‘Although all conversation with us is forbidden by proclamation,’ Persons reported, we ‘are yet most earnestly invited everywhere; many take long journeys only to speak to us and put themselves and their fortunes entirely in our hands.’37 But there was always the threat of unwanted guests. Persons vividly described the nervous tension in the houses of his hosts:

  Sometimes, when we are sitting merrily at table, conversing familiarly on matters of faith and devotion (for our talk is generally of such things), there comes a hurried knock at the door like that of a pursuivant. All start up and listen – like deer when they hear the huntsmen. We leave our food and commend ourselves to God in a brief ejaculation, nor is word or sound heard till the servants come to say what the matter is. If it is nothing, we laugh at our fright.38

  Campion began his ministry in Berkshire and continued through Oxfordshire and into Northamptonshire, where, after an absence of more than a decade, he returned to Harrowden Hall. He was welcomed back by Lord Vaux, ‘by whom I am dearly loved and whom I particularly revere’.39 In a letter written to the Society General in November, Campion reported on his ministry:

  I ride about some piece of the country every day. The harvest is wonderful great. On horseback I meditate my sermon; when I come to the house, I polish it. Then I talk with such as come to speak with me, or hear their confessions. In the morning, after Mass, I preach. They hear with exceeding greediness and very often receive the sacrament …

  I cannot long escape the hands of the heretics. The enemies have so many eyes, so many tongues, so many scouts and crafts. I am in apparel to myself very ridiculous. I often change it and my name also. I read letters sometimes myself that in the first front tell news that Campion is taken, which noised in every place where I come, so filleth my ears with the sound thereof that fear itself hath taken away all fear.40

  Due in no small part to the efforts of hosts and helpers like William and Henry Vaux, Campion managed to evade the authorities. ‘I
find many neglecting their own security to have only care of my safety,’ he wrote. Lord Vaux imperilled his liberty and property by giving Campion a place to sleep and preach.41 The congregations at Harrowden may not have numbered as high as the sixty-strong gathering at Lyford Grange in Berkshire the following year, but any extraordinary comings and goings were a risk, especially in a county where there was a preponderance of Puritans, and to a house where the famous Edmund Campion had once taught in the schoolroom.

  ‘Threatening edicts come forth against us daily,’ wrote Campion. In August 1580, in the wake of the conflict in Ireland, many prominent Catholic gentlemen were rounded up and confined. Close associates of Lord Vaux, including his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Tresham, were placed on Burghley’s list of untrustworthy recusants.42 On 13 November, Ralph Sherwin, one of the seminary priests who had accompanied the Jesuits on their journey from Rome, was captured mid-sermon only two days after sharing a fire with Persons against the ‘extreme cold’ of the November night.43 ‘The persecution rages most cruelly,’ Campion wrote in his dispatch from an unknown location that month. ‘The house where I am is sad; no other talk, but of death, flight, prison or spoil of their friends. Nevertheless, they proceed with courage.’44

  With the coming of the Jesuits, the rules of engagement between the government and the Catholic community changed. In the face of such a public challenge, and with recusant numbers increasing, the Queen and Council could no longer maintain the unofficial ‘don’t-ask-don’t-tell’ position of the past twenty years.45 ‘The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun,’ Campion had trumpeted in his ‘Brag’, but he had only reckoned the expense of the mission for himself and his fellow Jesuits. He knew that it might lead to the rack and the rope. It was a price that he, already ‘a dead man to this world’, could pay ‘cheerfully’. But for those English Catholics trying to balance their civil and religious obligations, the accounting procedure was more complicated. They had not vowed to be poor or chaste or obedient only to the Pope. They rather enjoyed the ‘wealth, honour, pleasures and other worldly felicities’ that Campion had renounced.46 They had families to support and houses to run. They had, in short, more to lose than their lives.