By What Authority? by Robert Hugh Benson (large ebook reader txt) 📖

than ever moved by what he saw and heard there. The priest, as even his opponents confessed, had by now "won a marvellously good report, to be such a man as his like was not to be found, either for life, learning, or any other quality which might beautify a man." And now here he stood at the bar, paler than ever, so numbed with racking that he could not lift his hand to plead--that supple musician's hand of his, once so skilful on the lute--so that Mr. Sherwin had to lift it for him out of the furred cuff in which he had wrapped it, kissing it tenderly as he did so, in reverence for its sufferings; and he saw, too, the sleek face of Eliot, in his red yeoman's coat, as he stood chatting at the back, like another Barabbas whom the people preferred to the servant of the Crucified. And, above all, he heard Campion's stirring defence, spoken in that same resonant sweet voice, though it broke now and then through weakness, in spite of the unconquerable purpose and cheerfulness that showed in his great brown eyes, and round his delicate humorous mouth. It was indeed an astonishing combination of sincerity and eloquence, and even humour, that was brought to bear on the jury, and all in vain, during those days.

"If you want to dispute as though you were in the schools," cried one of the court, when he found himself out of his depth, "you are only proving yourself a fool."

"I pray God," said Campion, while his eyes twinkled, "I pray God make us both sages." And, in spite of the tragedy of the day, a little hum of laughter ran round the audience.

"If a sheep were stolen," he argued again, in answer to the presupposition that since some Catholics were traitors, therefore these were--"and a whole family called in question for the same, were it good manner of proceeding for the accusers to say 'Your great grandfathers and fathers and sisters and kinsfolk all loved mutton; ergo, you have stolen the sheep'?"

Again, in answer to the charge that he and his companions had conspired abroad, he said,

"As for the accusation that we plotted treason at Rheims, reflect, my lords, how just this charge is! For see! First we never met there at all; then, many of us have never been at Rheims at all; finally, we were never in our lives all together, except at this hour and in prison."

Anthony heard, too, Campion expose the attempt that was made to shift the charge from religion to treason.

"There was offer made to us," he cried indignantly, "that if we would come to the church to hear sermons and the word preached, we should be set at large and at liberty; so Pascall and Nicholls"--(two apostates) "otherwise as culpable in all offences as we, upon coming to church were received to grace and had their pardon granted; whereas, if they had been so happy as to have persevered to the end, they had been partakers of our calamities. So that our religion was cause of our imprisonment, and ex consequenti, of our condemnation."

The Queen's Counsel tried to make out that certain secrets that Campion, in an intercepted letter, had sworn not to reveal, must be treasonable or he would not so greatly fear their publication. To this the priest made a stately defence of his office, and declaration of his staunchness. He showed how by his calling as a priest he was bound to secrecy in matters heard in confession, and that these secret matters were of this nature.

"These were the hidden matters," he said, "these were the secrets, to the revealing whereof I cannot nor will not be brought, come rack, come rope!"

And again, when Sergeant Anderson interpreted a phrase of Campion's referring to the great day to which he looked forward, as meaning the day of a foreign papal invasion, the prisoner cried in a loud voice:

"O Judas, Judas! No other day was in my mind, I protest, than that wherein it should please God to make a restitution of faith and religion. Whereupon, as in every pulpit every Protestant doth, I pronounced a great day, not wherein any temporal potentate should minister, but wherein the terrible Judge should reveal all men's consciences, and try every man of each kind of religion. This is the day of change, this is the great day which I threatened; comfortable to the well-behaving, and terrible to all heretics. Any other day but this, God knows I meant not."

Then, after the other prisoners had pleaded, Campion delivered a final defence to the jury, with a solemnity that seemed to belong to a judge rather than a criminal. The babble of tongues that had continued most of the day was hushed to a profound silence in court as he stood and spoke, for the sincerity and simplicity of the priest were evident to all, and combined with his eloquence and his strange attractive personality, dominated all but those whose minds were already made up before entering the court.

"What charge this day you sustain," began the priest, in a steady low voice, with his searching eyes bent on the faces before him, "and what account you are to render at the dreadful Day of Judgment, whereof I could wish this also were a mirror, I trust there is not one of you but knoweth. I doubt not but in like manner you forecast how dear the innocent is to God, and at what price He holdeth man's blood. Here we are accused and impleaded to the death,"--he began to raise his voice a little--"here you do receive our lives into your custody; here must be your device, either to restore them or condemn them. We have no whither to appeal but to your consciences; we have no friends to make there but your heeds and discretions." Then he touched briefly on the evidence, showing how faulty and circumstantial it was, and urged them to remember that a man's life by the very constitution of the realm must not be sacrificed to mere probabilities or presumptions; then he showed the untrustworthiness of his accusers, how one had confessed himself a murderer, and how another was an atheist. Then he ended with a word or two of appeal.

"God give you grace," he cried, "to weigh our causes aright, and have respect to your own consciences; and so I will keep the jury no longer. I commit the rest to God, and our convictions to your good discretions."

When the jury had retired, and all the judges but one had left the bench until the jury should return, Anthony sat back in his place, his heart beating and his eyes looking restlessly now on the prisoners, now on the door where the jury had gone out, and now on Judge Ayloff, whom he knew a little, and who sat only a few feet away from him on one side. He could hear the lawyers sitting below the judge talking among themselves; and presently one of them leaned over to him.

"Good-day, Mr. Norris," he said, "you have come to see an acquittal, I doubt not. No man can be in two minds after what we have heard; at least concerning Mr. Campion. We all think so, here, at any rate."

The lawyer was going on to say a word or two more as to the priest's eloquence, when there was a sharp exclamation from the judge. Anthony looked up and saw Judge Ayloff staring at his hand, turning it over while he held his glove in the other; and Anthony saw to his surprise that the fingers were all blood-stained. One or two gentlemen near him turned and looked, too, as the judge, still staring and growing a little pale, wiped the blood quickly away with the glove; but the fingers grew crimson again immediately.

"'S'Body!" said Ayloff, half to himself; "'tis strange, there is no wound." A moment later, looking up, he saw many of his neighbours glancing curiously at his hand and his pale face, and hastily thrust on his glove again; and immediately after the jury returned, and the judges filed in to take their places. Anthony's attention was drawn off again, and the buzz of talk in the court was followed again by a deep silence.

The verdict of Guilty was uttered, as had been pre-arranged, and the Queen's Counsel demanded sentence.

"Campion and the rest," said Chief Justice Wray, "What can you say why you should not die?"

Then Campion, still steady and resolute, made his last useless appeal.

"It was not our death that ever we feared. But we knew that we were not lords of our own lives, and therefore for want of answer would not be guilty of our own deaths. The only thing that we have now to say is, that if our religion do make us traitors, we are worthy to be condemned; but otherwise are and have been true subjects as ever the Queen had. In condemning us, you condemn all your own ancestors," and as he said this, his voice began to rise, and he glanced steadily and mournfully round at the staring faces about him, "all the ancient priests, bishops, and kings--all that was once the glory of England, the island of saints, and the most devoted child of the See of Peter." Then, as he went on, he flung out his wrenched hands, and his voice rang with indignant defiance. "For what have we taught," he cried, "however you may qualify it with the odious name of treason, that they did not uniformly teach? To be condemned with these old lights--not of England only, but of the world--by their degenerate descendants, is both gladness and glory to us." Then, with a superb gesture, he sent his voice pealing through the hall: "God lives, posterity will live; their judgment is not so liable to corruption as that of those who are now about to sentence us to death."

There was a burst of murmurous applause as he ended, which stilled immediately, as the Chief Justice began to deliver sentence. But when the horrible details of his execution had been enumerated, and the formula had ended, it was the prisoner's turn to applaud:--

"Te Deum laudamus!" cried Campion; "Te Dominum confitemur."

"Haec est dies," shouted Sherwin, "quam fecit Dominus; exultemus et laetemur in illa": and so with the thanksgiving and joy of the condemned criminals, the mock-trial ended.

When Anthony rode down silently and alone in the rain that December morning a few days later, to see the end, he found a vast silent crowd assembled on Tower Hill and round the gateway, where the four horses were waiting, each pair harnessed to a hurdle laid flat on the ground. He would not go in, for he could scarcely trust himself to speak, so great was his horror of the crime that was to be committed; so he backed his horse against the wall, and waited over an hour in silence, scarcely hearing the murmurs of impatience that rolled round the great crowd from time to time, absorbed in his own thoughts. Here was the climax of these days of misery and self-questioning that had passed since the trial in Westminster Hall. It was no use, he argued to himself, to pretend otherwise. These three men of God were to die for their religion--and a religion too which was gradually detaching itself to his view from the mists and clouds that hid it, as the one great reality and truth of God's Revelation to man. He had come, he knew, to see not an execution but a martyrdom.

There was a