ABSTRACT
Edmund Campion was like 'the most famous martyrs of England, Thomas a Becket and Thomas More', a Londoner. The very time and place of Campion's birth propelled him towards his role as a leading orator and preacher. Persons and Bombino both relate the year of Campion's birth to the suppression of the monasteries. Campion was to receive most of his education in the restored ruins of two religious houses. If Campion benefited from a vibrant school culture and some remarkable aldermen, his early life was defined by conflicted loyalties and violent religious change. He was educated in a city, which the Queen made a 'spectacle to all the realme' and tainted with the barbaric theatre of public executions. Both the date and place of his birth determined that Campion's early years should be spent at the epicentre of the violently moving plates of religious and political conflict.
