ABSTRACT
The Catholic community responds with a struggle for narrative control', faithfully recording, in manuscript and print, eyewitness accounts of the victim's public performance', so construing the event as a triumphant martyrdom. Hammond had been one of the three interrogators of Campion on the rack, Alexander Nowell, Dean of St Paul's, had been Campion's leading opponent in his first Disputation in the Tower. One of Hammond's first acts was, ironically, to eliminate the Protestant account of Catholic libels' about Campion's death. The affection Campion inspired in his life ensured that, after his death, close friends and admirers lovingly preserved his memory. In London, meanwhile, Richard Verstegan printed the octavo A true reporte of the death and martyrdome of M. Campion secretly. In Theatrum Crudelitatum Haereticorum, the state's theatre of cruelty begins with pulling down crucifixes, burning books, statues and churches, and ends with killing Queens.
