Campion, Edmund, Saint, 1540-1581; Christian martyrs -- Great Britain -- Biography; Jesuits -- England
In the new move he had the approbation of Leicester, and the
companionship of a much-attached Oxford disciple, Richard Stanihurst,
who is remembered by posterity only for his grotesque translation of
Virgil. Campion may well have left home with the understanding that
he should have a clear educational field in Dublin, but he arrived
a little too late. The outlook had been very bright. Some good men
then in power were eager for the revival of the extinct University of
Dublin, an ancient Papal foundation, but ruined, as all the great
Schools were (most of them permanently, some only temporarily), by the
religious changes. The chief supporters of the plan were enthusiastic,
far-sighted, and most liberally inclined towards Catholics. Fear and
prejudice therefore stepped in, in the person of Elizabeth’s Irish
Bishops. The Lord Chancellor, Dr. Weston, wrote privately to the
Queen, deploring the popularity of the scheme, and begging her to
take the unborn foundation “into her merciful, motherly care.” She
followed that advice. In token thereof, in due season arose Trinity
College, Dublin, as a complete checkmate to the earlier project, quite
safe for evermore from Papist blight. Thus was Campion cheated of a
continuance of his natural vocation, in serving upon the staff of the
new University. Two of his friends who had most concern in it were
James Stanihurst, father of Richard, and Sir Henry Sidney, then Lord
Deputy of Ireland, who had proffered it lands and money. Leicester
would have provided Campion with a letter of introduction to Sir Henry,
his own brother-in-law. The latter’s young son, Philip, was at this
time a student in Oxford, where his governor, Thomas Thornton of Christ
Church, afterwards Vice-Chancellor, had been constantly in Campion’s
society. Sir Henry Sidney always bore himself most kindly towards
Campion. The latter lived, a more than welcome guest, under the roof
of James Stanihurst, then Recorder of Dublin, and Speaker of the local
House of Commons. Stanihurst was the head of an Anglo-Irish family
not openly Catholic since Queen Mary’s reign. Indeed, in his public
capacity, he had often sided against Catholicism, although he was as
friendly as Sidney himself to those who professed it. In the midst of
this temporizing household, Campion, himself a temporizer, came during
the winter to be doubted by certain bigots outside. Very possibly he
was too free-spoken. Campion “came to Ireland believing in practically
all Catholic dogmas, even in the Eucharist, and in the authority of
the Council of Trent.” The impression may have got abroad that his
then unknown variety of Anglicanism differed little from the dangerous
creed of times past, lately discovered to be the proper business of
the police! Whatever the reason, Campion began to be a marked man. Sir
Henry Sidney told Stanihurst with heat, that so long as he was Governor
he would see to it that “no busy knave of them all should trouble him,”
on Campion’s account.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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