Blessed Edmund Campion

e went on alone on foot, as he was always glad to do, as far as Padua. Here he took horse for Rome, which he reached just before Palm Sunday, April 5, 1580, coming "in grave pr

ntrance upon the life ahead of him. "And the like did, for their part, and had done, all the Lent before, those other priests also of the English Seminary," says Parsons, speaking of many seculars afterwards martyred, "that were

successive little English bands; when he passed them in the streets, cheerful St. Philip used to smile tenderly, and give what must have[77] been to them a thrilling greeting: "'Hail, Little Flowers of Martyrdom!'" the opening line of the Breviary Hymn for Holy Innocents' Day. Parsons and Campion, and the secular clerics associated with them, may have originated the custom of going over to San Girolamo for a spe

ly octogenarian Thomas Goldwell, the Lord Bishop of St. Asaph, who had been offered by Queen Mary a transfer to the See of Oxford, and refused it. He was destined to be the last survivor of the deposed and scattered Catholic hierarchy in England, who had all but one refused the unheard-of Oath in 1559, and had all been deprived of their Sees that same year. Bishop Goldwell now, twenty years afterwards, was one of two who were living; and his colleague, Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, was in prison. The other senior missionary was his companion, Dr. Nicholas Morton, Canon Penitentiary of St. Peter's, who had done someth

g for the sake of the infirm. As soon as he was well enough he resumed his daily habit of saying Mass very early, and of walking on, in the later morning hours, till he was a mile ahead of the rest, to make his meditation, read his Office, and say the Litany of the Saints, before he should be[80] overtaken. He and his comrades planned

early part of May, the future confessors and martyrs were to find another and a greater, also "much affectioned"[81] towards them, who received them most hospitably, and even asked the English College for other relays of guests in the future. This was the great Archbishop, St. Charles Borromeo. Bishop Goldwell, who had passed through Milan days before the walkers reached it, had been, in 1563, Vicar-General to St. Charles, and would have bespoken his interest in the little party. The reverend host complimented Ralph Sherwin by asking h

ey were admitted as far as the court by Claudine, his stolen wife, whom they had all heard of, and were not ill-pleased to see. When the famous greybeard[83] came out they managed, after passing their compliments, to worry him with some telling controversial shots. Campion knew not how to be rude: but Sherwin found amusement, ever afterwards, in remembering how that honest fellow "Patrick" stood and looked and talked, cap in hand, "facing out" (such is Sherwin's shockingly boyish language in a private letter), "the old doting heretical fool." The celebrity so described behaved rather vaguely, and, in the course of nature, could not have been sorry to see the last of his besiegers, and of their wits, sharpened with life in the open air. He bowed them out with less abruptness than might have been expected-indeed, with a certain show of civility; and went back to his books. Later, Sherwin and two other youngsters, in a midnight discussion with some English Protest

le Bishop of St. Asaph fell ill of a fever. He was never again to cross the Channel. By the time he had fairly recovered, rumours of his movements had naturally got abroad, and the Pope was unwilling to imperil so important and precious a person. While still a convalescent at Rheims, Goldwell wrote to his Holiness in person, begging him to listen to no objections, but to anoint at once three or four new Bishops to shepherd their own needy Church; and he very touchingly assures the Holy Father, kn

hold them together. Then the first provisional leader, known as the Archpriest, was appointed, and later came Vicars Apostolic. When finally the longed-for mitres were seen again in the land, they had been absent too long. The nominal link snapped; the great native tradition was broken; the titles of the ancient Sees, given up, as if in sleep, by their lineal heirs, were never reclaimed. So far as surface connection goes,-and it goes far indeed with people in general, who neither reason no