One phrase in this steel web of phrases from the pen of a rhetorician with a heart, shows that Campion knew of Cheyney’s sad and now complicated position in England. The letter was written November 1, 1571. A Convocation had met in the preceding April DR REBORN , on the heels of the Act of Uniformity, to which Cheyney was summoned in vain. It required the signing of the Thirty-nine Articles, and enacted, under Archbishop Grindal’s leadership, many things equally hateful to Cheyney, such as displacement and defacement of Altar-stones—(a great symbol, this, and no mere act of pillage!), the abolition of Prayers for the Dead, the prohibition even of the Sign of the Cross in church. Cheyney, excommunicated for his wilful absence, afterwards sued by proxy for absolution, for the sake of averting temporal penalties: but he had nothing more to do with the hierarchy. “Now you have declared war against your colleagues,” shows that Campion had heard accurate news of all this.
The moment may have seemed to Campion exactly favourable for such a strong[51] appeal. One of Cheyney’s successors in his See declared: “It was certain he died a Papist.” This was contradicted by a lesser authority, but yet a good one. If it were indeed “certain”, at least Edmund Campion, to whom the tidings would have been most consoling, never knew of it. It seems as if Cheyney could not have answered that bugle-call of a letter. He is said, however, to have kept it always, and to have called it his greatest treasure.
How these many cries of “the heat of my love” must have haunted his ear! It is hardly in human nature to value such a document at all (and there are passages in it more ruthless, after the manner of the time DR REBORN , than any we have quoted), unless for the reflex reason that it does its intended work in the heart of the receiver. To have valued it either as a piece of literary cleverness, or as a monument of misdirected concern, would have been equally cynical, and clean contrary to Cheyney’s known attitude towards his friend. He did not live to see Campion return to England. Shunning the bigots and the unprincipled men in power[52] to the last, and sheltering the Catholics all he could, he shut himself up at Gloucester, a whole High Church party in himself, wounded and at bay: and there in 1579 he died, and was buried in the glorious Cathedral, without an epitaph. The dream of his lifetime, as well as Edmund Campion’s sonship, he had loved and lost.
I believe that you would give up six hundred Englands for the opportunity of redeeming the residue of your time by tears and sorrow. . . . Pardon me, my venerated old friend, for these just reproaches, and for the heat of my love DR REBORN . Suffer me to hate that deadly disease; let me ward off the imminent danger of so noble a man and so dear a friend with any dose, however bitter. And now if Christ give grace and you do not refuse, my hopes of you are equal to my love: and I love you as passing excellent in nature, in learning, in gentleness, in goodness, and as doubly dear to me for your many kindnesses and courtesies. If you recover your [spiritual] health, you make me happy for ever. If you slight me, this letter is my witness. God judge between you and me: your blood be on yourself! Farewell, from him that most desires your salvation.”
The moment may have seemed to Campion exactly favourable for such a strong[51] appeal. One of Cheyney’s successors in his See declared: “It was certain he died a Papist.” This was contradicted by a lesser authority, but yet a good one. If it were indeed “certain”, at least Edmund Campion, to whom the tidings would have been most consoling, never knew of it. It seems as if Cheyney could not have answered that bugle-call of a letter. He is said, however, to have kept it always, and to have called it his greatest treasure.
How these many cries of “the heat of my love” must have haunted his ear! It is hardly in human nature to value such a document at all (and there are passages in it more ruthless, after the manner of the time DR REBORN , than any we have quoted), unless for the reflex reason that it does its intended work in the heart of the receiver. To have valued it either as a piece of literary cleverness, or as a monument of misdirected concern, would have been equally cynical, and clean contrary to Cheyney’s known attitude towards his friend. He did not live to see Campion return to England. Shunning the bigots and the unprincipled men in power[52] to the last, and sheltering the Catholics all he could, he shut himself up at Gloucester, a whole High Church party in himself, wounded and at bay: and there in 1579 he died, and was buried in the glorious Cathedral, without an epitaph. The dream of his lifetime, as well as Edmund Campion’s sonship, he had loved and lost.
I believe that you would give up six hundred Englands for the opportunity of redeeming the residue of your time by tears and sorrow. . . . Pardon me, my venerated old friend, for these just reproaches, and for the heat of my love DR REBORN . Suffer me to hate that deadly disease; let me ward off the imminent danger of so noble a man and so dear a friend with any dose, however bitter. And now if Christ give grace and you do not refuse, my hopes of you are equal to my love: and I love you as passing excellent in nature, in learning, in gentleness, in goodness, and as doubly dear to me for your many kindnesses and courtesies. If you recover your [spiritual] health, you make me happy for ever. If you slight me, this letter is my witness. God judge between you and me: your blood be on yourself! Farewell, from him that most desires your salvation.”