Ballads and brags: free speech and recusant culture in Elizabethan England

his pen must cease, his sugared tongue be still;

but you forgot how loud his death it cries,

how far beyond the sound of tongue and quill. (110-12)

Alive, Campion was only able to speak "to them that present were," but now, in defiance of print censorship, "fame reports his learning far and near / and now his death confirms his doctrine true" (117-18); "All Europe wonders at so rare a man; / England is filled with rumor of his ende ..." (121-22). A second newly articulate medium is London itself, as "the streets, the stones, the steps you hailed them by / proclaim the cause for which these martyrs die" (125-26). As the poet interprets the speech of the dumb streets of the city, the language of Campion infuses itself into the streets and buildings of England's capital:

The Tower saith, the truth he did defend;

the barre beares witness of his guiltles minde;

Tiborne doth tell he made a pacient ende;

on every gate his martirdome we find.

in vaine you wroght yet would obscure his name,

for heaven and earth will still record the same. (128-32)

Even "heaven and earth" are now graced with the speech denied Campion: "his virtues now are written in the skies, / and often read with holy inward eyes" (115-20). The final medium which speaks in the poem is Campion's martyred body. The sight of Campion's `partid quarters' teach observers

to play the constant Christian's parts;

his head doth speak, & heavenly precepts give,

how we that look, should frame ourselves to live. (160-62)

Now the example of Campion's life has become a more eloquent testimony to the Catholic faith than any words even Campion himself could have uttered. The argument that should, the opening of the poem suggested, have been heard openly in the Tower debates and in Campion's preaching, is now expressed by the example of Campion's life:

His youth enstructs us how to spend our daies;

his flying bids us how to banish sinne;

his straight profession shews the narrow waies

which they must walk that looke to enter in;

his home returne by danger and distresse,

emboldens us our conscience to professe. (163-68)

Ultimately, imagery of "speaking" in "Why do I use my paper, inke, and penne?" coalesces to suggest that censorship of Campion, and indeed of Catholicism generally, is self-defeating. In a world where Catholics are not allowed to speak publicly, publish in safety or debate openly, the message of Catholicism has been displaced into other mediums: rumors and news, the sacred sites of martyrdom, the hagiographic life stories of martyred priests, and most powerfully in the visual signs of the martyred body. By rereading Campion's execution from a Catholic point of view, the poem confirms that the execution of Catholic traitors "opened spaces for Catholic agency and speech at the very centre of the persecutory state which was supposedly crushing Catholic treachery into silence and oblivion."(48)

The companion poem Munday writes as an accompaniment to "Why do I use my paper, inke and penne?" directly refutes the original poem, but the attempt to reimpose the official interpretation of Campion's execution inadvertently reveals the difficulties the government faced in defending both its treatment of the missionary priests and its policy of censorship. To begin with, in order to refute the claims of the first poem Munday must blatantly rewrite well-documented facts. Gone are any references to the use of the rack before the Tower debates: the prisoner is called to dispute only "After long delay," a phrase which suggests Campion was told beforehand of the debates, and Campion is said to have been given "Bookes as many as he could demaund" (43-44). In Munday's account, the Anglican disputants "quickly did confute" Campion's "chiefest cause":