Life
1540-1581; son of London bookseller, ed. Christ’s Hospital; fellow
of St. John’s College, Oxford, 1557; speaker at Queen Elizabeth’s
state visit, 1566; patronised by Leicester; Anglican deacon, c.1568; proctor,
1568-69; sought BD; withdrew to Dublin on failing to obtain it in 1569,
expecting promotion in projected Romanist college there [DNB sic]; completed
commissioned ‘Historie of Ireland’ written for Ralph Holinshed
during ten weeks of hiding in the home of Sir Christopher Barnewall, 1569,
having first lodged with James Stanihurst, the Recorder of Dublin and
father of his ex-pupil Richard Stanihurst at Oxford; revised in 1571,
the history was published by Sir James Ware in 1633; suspected of Papism,
removed to London, 1571; BD at Douai, moved to Rome, 1572; joined Jesuits,
1573; entered novitiate in Prague and Brunn; ord. priest, 1578; reached
Dover with Robert Parsons, having been chosen ‘to coerce temporising
Catholics’; his Decem Rationis distributed in Oxford, 1581;
arrested at Lyford, Berkshire, 1581; sent to Tower and subjected to torture,
1581; sentenced to death, and executed Dec. 1, 1581; Matthew Carey vigorously
contests Campion’s Irish history in Hibernia Vindiciae (1819),
as do other Irish nationalist historians, notably Daniel O’Connell
in his Memoir on Ireland Memoir of Ireland, Native and Saxon
(?1844; rep. Duffy 1860). DNB FDA
[ top ]
Works
Two Bokes of the Histories of Ireland (1571); The first and
second volumes of chronicles ... now newlie augmented and continued ...
1586, by John Hooker, alias Vowell Gent. and others, 3 vols. [at the expenses
of John Harrington] [2nd edn.] (London 1587/88) Marsh’s Library,
STC 13569].
[ top ]
Criticism
Gerard Kilroy, ‘Eternal Glory: Edmund Campion’ [feature article],
Times Literary Supplement (8 March 2001), p.13.
Russell Alspach, Irish Poetry from the English Invasion to 1798 (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP 1959).
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; 1984).
Joseph Th. Leerssen, Mere Irish and Fior-Ghael (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1986).
P.J. Kavanagh, Voices in Ireland (1994).
Gerard Kilroy, ‘Eternal Glory: Edmund Campion’, Times Literary Supplement (8 March 2001), p.13.
[ top ]
Notes
Raphael Holinshed (?-?1580), author of Chronicles, based
on work of Reginald Wolfe, the London printer (d.1573); issued Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577) in two fol. vols., incidentally providing Shakespeare’s
with the source of the plot of Macbeth; togeher with Richard Stanyhurst’s
‘Description of Ireland’, it contains a section on Ireland written
by Edmund Campion, sent to Dublin in 1568-70, where he stayed with James
Stanyhurst [Stanihurst], recorder of Dublin, and father of Richard Stanyhurst;
Campion was forced to flee from Stanyhurst’s house on suspicion of
being a priest, and wrote the entire section at the house of Sir Christopher
Barnewall, living in an upstairs room for ten weeks.
Edmund Campion, in his History of Ireland, is reported as describing Mac Tháil as giving welcome advice to ‘a whole synode of Bishoppes assembled in Dublin ...’ (p.62; see George A. Little, Dublin Before the Vikings, 1957).
Father of the bard: Edmund Campion may have met John Shakespeare, father of the dramatist, while travelling through the English midlands towards Lancashire, while William may have ridden north to Ho[u]ghton Tower to meet Campion as a sub-seminarian; see letter from Peter Milward (Times Literary Supplement, Jan. 1998), making reference to his own work Shakespeare’s religious Background (1973), and also to Richard Wilson’s article on the subjectof Shakespeare’s Catholic education among the Jesuits (TLS, 19 Dec. 1997, p.19).
Errata: [?]Harrison for Harington in Marsh’s Catalogue.
[ top ]
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)