ABSTRACT
John Foxe, the leading Protestant martyrologist, 'interceded for Edmund Campion'. Samuel Foxe confirmed that his father wrote several letters to the Privy Council on his behalf. In one of the three drafts of this letter, Foxe uses the argument most suitable to Campion, that 'When men of false doctrine are killed, their error is not killed; nay it is all the more strengthened, the more constantly they die'. Foxe cannot have been the only one to write to the Council or to urge moderation on the Queen. For a moment Campion transformed the state's secular theatre into a moment of intense religious communion with the early church of the martyrs. The choice of prayer allowed the congregation to end with four soothing proclamations of faith, their murmuring Latin labials eliding into the thin December air: 'sanctorum communionem, remissionem peccatorum, resurrectionem carnis, vitam aeternam'.
