This 750-year-old attic was the secret printing room of a martyr who was hung, drawn and quartered
The space amid the rafters at Stonor Park in Oxfordshire has an astonishing story to tell. John Goodall tells it.
Lord Camoys sits amid massive roof timbers, an unlikely backdrop to a drama of the English Counter-Reformation. A printing press was secretly installed here early in 1581 to publish Ten Reasons or Rationes Decem by the Jesuit priest Edmund Campion. It was a sequel to Campion’s Brag, his defence of Catholicism addressed to the Privy Council.
Following the Brag, Campion became the most wanted priest active in the perilous mission to Protestant England.
He came to Stonor to supervise the printing of Ten Reasons in May 1581 and left on July 11, 1581, after the first copies were completed. Six days later, he was betrayed by an informer at Lyford, now in Oxfordshire. At the Tower of London, he suffered three months of interrogation and torture before being charged with treason and hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on December 1, 1581. Campion was canonised in 1970.
The execution of Edmund Campion, depicted in an engraving by Giovanni Battista Cavalieri, which was based on Niccolò Circignani's frescoes in the chapel of the Venerable English College in Rome, which were painted in 1583, two years after Campion was martyred. This illustration was included in 'Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophaea', published a year later, in 1584.
Stonor Park was searched by the authorities on August 4, 1581. Dame Cecily Stonor, who hid Campion, was placed in custody and her younger son, John, was arrested. Stephen Brinkley, the printer, was imprisoned and tortured. Despite recusancy fines, the family refused to conform and the chapel remains a Catholic place of worship.
The title page from an original printing of Campion's book, on display at Stonor Park.
‘The story of Campion and my ancestors is particularly moving,’ observes Lord Camoys. ‘They faced imprisonment, persecution, exile and the loss of so much because they refused to abandon what they believed in. I often reflect on their courage.’ A rare sur-
viving copy of Rationes Decem remains at Stonor.
This feature originally appeared in the November 4, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
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