search Mrs. Griffin's house near Uxbridge, where Campion was once or twice.

There is no further mention of Campion in the Council-book, except an order to examine him and others on the 29th of October, "and to put them unto the rack, &c.;" a command which was given to the Attorney and Solicitor-General, Hopton, Hammond, Wilkes, and Norton, and was executed with all barbarity.

CHAPTER XIII.

IN the last chapter I traced the means used by the government to discredit Campion's moral superiority. In the present I have to show how they tried to disparage his intellect. In their own hearts fear, perhaps, caused them to overrate his powers; but publicly they ludicrously contemned him as a fool.

When the Decem Rationes was dispersed abroad, the Establishment was in a flutter. Burghley wrote about it to Aylmer, Bishop of London, who replied:02 "I have not Campion's book, and yet have I sent to Oxford and searched in other places for it. And if I had it, yet my ague being now SO sore fallen down to my leg, I am not able to travail in study without great danger. Nevertheless if I can get the book, I will do what my health will suffer me. But I guess that the things wherewith he reproacheth our ancient learned men are nothing else but such railing accusations as are gathered against them by the Apostata Staphilus. This note was answered by Burghley the same day; and Aylmer wrote again:30 "Since I received your letters, I gave thought of those reproaches which the Jesuit objecteth against our learned men, and know there be divers navi in them, as lightly be in all men's writings; as some things spoke of Luther hyperbolically, and some of Calvin." Then he retorts that the same blots may be found in Catholic divines;

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then, after a compliment to Burghley, on whom comes the care of all the churches as well as that of the State, he proposes "to have a letter sent from the Lords of the Council to my Lord of Canterbury or to me, to enjoin the deans, archdeacons and doctors to make some collections for these matters. For such as have not great dealings in the Church, as they have not,—yea, and some bishops also,-might, having that leisure, help well to this building: wherefore else have they their livings? And for books, it were not amiss to point such a number as should serve for that purpose. Sed sus Minervam.” Then he annexes a schedule of the divines whom he would commission to reply to Campion. They are the Deans of Paul's (Nowell), Winton, York, Christ Church, Windsor (Day), Sarum, Ely, Worcester, and Canterbury; the Archdeacons of Canterbury, London, Middlesex, Essex (Dr. Walker), Lincoln, Conventry (Dr. James), Sudbury (Dr. Styll); and three more to be "doers in writing," Dr. Fulke, Dr. Goode, and Dr. Some.

After this portentous list of commissioners to answer Campion, it is amusing, but not surprising, to find two of them, Nowell and Day," 305 opining that his book "was none of his writing, much less penned by him as he was in his journey; but that it was elaborate before, by the common and long study of all the best learned Jesuits, to serve at all opportunities." If the mother, says the old saw, had not been in the oven, she had never sought her daughter there.

Two days after the date of Aylmer's last letter, he writes again306 to thank Burghley for Campion's pamphlet, and to promise to read it, and set some others awork. "For his collections in the chapter Paradoxa,807 I think none of our Church mean to defend Luther's hyperbolas, or all things that have passed the pens of Calvin and

Beza." Similar collections might be made from Catholic divines; Campion follows the LXX. and not the Hebrew, so "his credit will be small." Then a text is quoted to suggest to Burghley the proper treatment for his prisoner"Ambitio ligata est in corde pueri, sed virga disciplinæ fugabit eam." "It is the property of a spider to gather the worst and leave the best. If this toil of mine were not, I could gladly occupy myself in searching out of his vanities. Truly, my lord, you shall find them but arrogant vanities of a Porphyrian or a Julian."

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Besides the committee named above, Aylmer wrote to the Regius Professors of Divinity at the two Universities to reply at once to Campion. Whitaker did so in a Latin pamphlet; of which Aylmer wrote to Burghley, Sept. 29, 1581: "The translating of Whitaker's book and the publishing thereof I mean to stay, if it come to my hands."'308 I suppose it was too abusive; for two years later, on occasion of his publishing his book against Duræus, Whitaker wrote to Burghley that he had followed his advice in sticking to his theme, and avoiding personalities. Humphrey, the Oxford divine, was slower; he published the first part of his Jesuitism only in 1582, where he thus excused himself for his tardiness:10 "It was a matter of time and difficulty to get Campion's book; it was late in August when I received the letter which laid this task on me; I was in the country, away from books and friends, and ill. I was long in doubt whether to answer, for I like gentler studies, and do not willingly mix up in strife and quarrels; and I should not have entered on this, if I had not been called by those whom I was obliged to obey, and more than once hastened by those whom I would not displease.311 While I was at work, I, among others, was summoned by a letter of Bishop Aylmer to dispute with Campion on the 13th

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of October; this somewhat retarded my writing; and I was ready to start, when another letter countermanded my journey. It was then, perhaps, smelt out (subolfactum) that a different course was to be taken with the Jesuits, and that they would have to plead not for religion, but for life, and be accused not of heresy, but of treason."

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While Aylmer was thus tasking the best pens at his command to answer Campion, he thought it good policy to speak slightingly of him in public. For which the Catholics reprehended his folly, in that he, "a man of known wisdom and judgment, notwithstanding the known learning of Campion, was not ashamed at a sessions at Newgate to say openly that Mr. Campion was unlearned, and that a note-book or two of his fellows, being taken from him, he had nothing in him . . . and much more to the discredit of Mr. Campion."

The anxiety of Ministers and Bishops about the effects of Campion's book was not without some justification. There is a letter from Dr. John Reynolds of C. C. C.(the man who, being nearly Catholic himself, undertook to convert his brother William of New College, and succeeded, but lost his own faith in the process)-to his pupil George Cranmer, one of the most rising Englishmen of the last quarter of the 16th century, which affords curious evidence of the enthusiasm excited by the style of the Decem Rationes. Cranmer had written to Reynolds comparing Scotus with Aquinas, and Cicero with Campion: Reynolds replies; "In your second parallel, wherein you join Campion with Cicero, I much more dissent from you, nor can I own that I think either your affection therein is sober, or your judgment sound. For when you say you always have him at hand when you write, and praise him as a new son of Esculapius, and (as though it were a little thing to rank him next to Cicero) declare him