Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/68

52 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 63. abated. The pupils whom Campian and his friends had trained at Oxford had caught and retained his spirit. They grew from boys to men. They took their degrees and became fellows, and Holt of Oriel, Arden of Trinity, Garnet, Bryant, Sherwin, Emerson, 1 and many more, wandered together by Cherwell and Isis, brooding over their masters' teaching, and resolving one by one to break the ties of home and kindred and devote their lives to the cause of the Catholic faith. Those who had been born Catholics continued cool, collected, and mo- derate. The Anglican converts developed the Catholic theory among themselves to its most extravagant con- clusions. ' Those who are seminary priests,' wrote one to Walsingham, in 1585, ' learnt not their papistry abroad, but carried it with them from their colleges at Oxford.' 2 The sum of life to them was the triumph of the Church, and they themselves longed to become the Church's soldiers. Thus Oxford became a perpetual recruiting ground from which year after year flights of students passed over to Rheims or to another college which the Pope had erected at Rome, filled with a pas- sionate hatred of the Church of their country, whose orders were a mark of the beast, and which itself was the Antichrist of prophecy. To profess the Catholic creed and to become themselves priests was not enough for them, and the subtle politicians into whose hands they fell understood how to utilize their enthusiasm. 1 Ralph Emerson, namesake of Ralph Waldo Emerson the great American, and probably of the same blood with him. 2 Domestic MSS. April, 1585.