entered the country under penalty of death if captured. Indeed,in angry reaction to the papal Bull of Excommunication against Elizabeth, and in consternation over Campion's mission to England, Parliament passed rigorous new statutes that prescribed death for the hearing of confession, and steep fines for attendance at a Mass (regular attendance at Mass would cause a per head taxation of over 5,000 pounds to the offending subject). The object of the penal statutes was to eliminate any clergy and to confiscate, as far as possible, the wealth of English subjects who insisted on remaining faithful to Rome. In response, Catholic subjects were obliged to attend Mass in secret; the only exaction which could not be avoided was the penalty for refusal to attend Protestant services - the annual tax per head of 240 pounds was more than most families could bear, but was rigorously collected for many years.

Campion's mission in England was to reclaim and to strengthen those Catholics who were wavering under the pressure of governmental tyranny and the absence of the clergy. However, Campion's notoriety, as well as his zeal to reconvert Protestants, his preaching, and indeed his whole bearing, made a profound impression. Shortly after arriving in London, he wrote and published in haste a tract, "Campion's Brag". The text was written as a testament of his true mission in England, to counteract the slander that was expected from the crown in the event he was captured and executed summarily. In it, Campion details his reasons for his mission to England, his benign intentions towards his countrymen and his queen. Characteristically, he also set out boldly his belief that he could disprove, in open debate, the claims of the Protestant reformers to be the successors of the Apostles. This tract went through the country like wildfire, and caused much excitement among the Catholic population, as well as consternation on the part of the throne and supporters of the reformation. Being hunted in earnest by professional priest hunters, Campion fled to the north, where, in addition to saying the Mass in catholic house- and preaching to the people, he wrote his famous tract,the "Ten Reasons." In it, he gave his reasoning why the Reformers failed in their indictments of the Church. This tract,also being widely distributed and read, proved again a strong irritant to the reformers and the throne. He returned to London,only to set out again on a circuit of offering the sacraments and preaching, this time in Norfolk. A priest hunter, one George Eliot, was hot on his track, and after attending Campion's Mass, realized what a catch he had, and returned with the local sheriff and constables. After an all day search of the house, a shaft of light over the stairwell betrayed the priests' hiding place. Their capture took place on July 17, 1581.

Amid scenes of violent excitement, Campion was paraded through the streets of London as a prize, riding backwards with a paper stuck in his hat to denote the "seditious Jesuit." After a short imprisonment, he was taken to the Earl of Leicester's house, where the queen sought to turn him from being a papist with offers of liberty and advancement in her government. Campion remained steadfast, and he was then returned to prison and questioned for an extended period on the rack. It was falsely reported that he had betrayed those Catholic families who had harbored him during his circuits through the country. Several arrests of prominent and known Catholics were made on the strength of the lie.

In his "brag," he had asked for a public debate on his Faith vs. that of the reformers. His enemies had months to prepare for the contest they were determined to win. When it finally happened in the Tower itself, before various churchmen of the new rite, Campion had not only been severely tortured on the rack, but also had been denied any opportunity to prepare. Thus weakened, he stood through the four long conferences, without chair, table, or notes. While the "debates" frequently degenerated into embarrassing harangues against him by the hand-picked representatives of the new English church, it is agreed that Campion was, in the end, undefeated. During the entire charade, Campion carefully avoided (as he had been charged to do before setting out from Rome) any attack on the throne or its authority. The council, unable to entangle Campion in the debates, and exasperated by this purely spiritual "traitor," called for false witness by Eliot. A show trial on charges of sedition and fomenting rebellion took place in November in Westminster Hall. Campion, in pleading not guilty, was unable to hold up his racked arm. A fellow prisoner, first kissing it, raised it for him. He made a magnificent defense. But the sentence was death, by hanging, drawing, and quartering: a sentence received by the defendants with a joyful <Te Deum>.

Campion and the other condemned priests were dragged to Tyburn on December 1, 1581. On the scaffold, he attempted to give a public defense against the slander he anticipated after his death. He was interrupted and taunted to express his mind on the Bull of Excommunication. He answered only by a prayer for "your Queen and my Queen." The sentence was then carried out with the utmost severity. One youth, Henry Walpole, standing near the scaffold during Campion's execution, got his white doublet stained with Campion's blood; the incident led him, in time, to share Campion's fate as a Jesuit and a martyr.

The legacy of Edmund Campion, as well as that of the other English martyrs that followed More to the scaffold for their faith, was a remnant of the Church within England that could not be stamped out, and that endured through several harsh centuries of penal laws, continuously presenting to call to others, like Newman, who had the courage to endure the opprobrium that accompanied an Englishman's conversion to Rome until well into our own century. Campion is today considered a man of rare genius, and one of the great Elizabethans, but exemplary, above all, for his purity of spirit and personal holiness. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886, and canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 with the other English martyrs.