Close to the quartering-block stood a spectator, a young gallant of twenty-three, eldest son of a Norfolk house, who had great gifts of mind, and was given to writing verses: his name was Henry Walpole. He was a Catholic, though, it would seem, a worldly one. His generous instincts of humanity, however, had led him to befriend hunted priests; and a love of Campion, in particular, was already kindled in him through this association. As the executioner threw the severed limbs of a blessed soul into the great smoking cauldron, to parboil them before they were stuck on spikes, according to sentence, a few drops were splashed out upon Henry Walpole’s doublet. The incident roused his mind and pierced his heart, and was to him the instant cry of his vocation. Like many another spiritual son of Blessed Edmund Campion (and nearer to him than they, because he entered the Society), he was granted the glory of following him, through faults of his own, through innumerable hardships, and through martyrdom at York, in April, 1595, into the peace of Paradise. Meanwhile the hangman had seized the second victim, saying: “Come, Sherwin! take thou also thy wages.” That manly man looked upon the bare bloody arm of the other, and eager to show some public veneration of his sainted leader, first bent forward and kissed it; then he leaped into the cart. Young Briant presently endured death for the Faith with an even calmer courage. The populace, much wrought up over all three, went home, through the winter mists, in tears. Most of them who had prejudices against the Church lost them for good; and very many straightway entered her communion. The Government sent forth publication after publication in lame defence of its action. Soon France, Austria, Italy, were inundated with accounts of the event; these everywhere produced the deepest impression. At home, a great tidal wave of conversion to the old Church swept in. Campion’s death, last and best of his wonderful missionary labours, bore the most astonishing fruit. The long storm of persecution raged at its full fierceness after 1581, and it burst over the heads not only of a far more numerous, but a far more heroic body. Edmund Campion’s spirit had been built in good time, as it were, into the unsteady wall. Robert Parsons had an intense feeling for his first comrade-in-arms. “I understand of the advancement and exaltation of my dear brother Mr. Campion, and his fellows. Our Lord be blessed for it! it is the joyfullest news in one respect that ever came to my heart.” This same feeling breaks out with powerful irony, addressing the “Geneva-coloured” clerics, who so long harassed the martyr-group of 1581. “Their blood will, I doubt not, fight against your errors and impiety many hundred years after you are passed from the world altogether.... They are well bestowed upon you: you have used them to the best.”