Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/91

 THE JESUIT INVASION. 75 From these specimens the condition generally of the Jesuit prisoners may be easily pictured. Campian and Parsons meanwhile were still at large, and more suc- cessful than ever. The account of his friends' endur- ance added fire to Campian's oratory, and trebled the rate of conversion. Lord Oxford, Burghley's ill-con- ditioned son-in-law ; Sir Francis Southwell ; Lord Vaux; Lord Henry Howard, the Duke of Norfolk's brother ; Philip, Earl of Arundel, Norfolk's eldest son, to whom Elizabeth was endeavouring by special kind- ness to compensate for his father's death ; these and many more of high blood were early ' reconciled,' either by him or his companions. 1 'The heretics,' j^gr. wrote Campian to the General, ' brag no more ar of their martyrs, for it is now come to pass that for a few apostates and cobblers of theirs burned, we have lords, knights, the old nobility, patterns of learning^ piety, and prudence, the flower of the youth, noble matrons, and of the inferior sort innumerable, either martyred at once, 2 or by consuming prisonment dying daily.' 3 There must have been something at the bottom vul- gar in Campian. It was at once the glory of the He- formation and the disgrace of Pole and Mary that the Protestant confessors were mainly taken from me- 1 Deposition of Charles Arundel, December, 1580 : MSS. Domestic. 2 The only martyrs of distinction whom the Church could as yet boast of were the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Northumberland, who had been executed for palpable treason. 3 Ed. Campian to Everardo Mer- curiano, November, 1580 : MSS Domestic.