Evelyn Waugh's Edmund Campion and "Lady Southwell's letter"

Catholic attendance at Church of England services was now "the highest iniquity" because it implied assent to "the spiritual supremacy of the State" (109). [...]ended twenty years of eerie silence on the part of the Papacy, and of ingenious Catholic adaptation to the penal code, under which mere physical presence at Morning Service gave immunity from prosecution. [...]Edmund Campion endorses Papal policy towards England, the excommunication of Elizabeth, the Jesuit mission and the prohibition of Catholics attending Anglican services. A relative of the Queen who was present, Robert Carey - famous for remarking that "there have been many false lies reported of the end [...] of that good lady" (60, 11. [...]in regard to Elizabeth's melancholy, her sitting on the floor silent and despairing, obstinately refusing to eat or to go to bed or to take physic, the Southwell-Waugh account is fully corroborated. 8 Hallam's vivid description of the way in which state trials were conducted at this time - judges who acted like prosecutors, violent haranguing of the accused, the rarity of not-guilty verdicts in treason trials - makes pertinent reading. 9 An incredulous Professor of History, Catholic in origin, flatly refused to believe this writer's assertion that Meyer, Black, Conyers Read and Neale declared Campion innocent. [...]he had read the passages, he insisted I must have misunderstood them. 10 Without specifying errors, Father McCoog writes: "Although [Waugh] received assistance from Father Leo Hicks, S. J., there are still a number of irritating historical errors [in Edmund Campion]."