This agreed to, all separated once more, and Campion rode northwards on a tour which he took in Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Lancashire, and which was not over for six months. Meantime Father Persons had set up his "magic press" near London, and issued from it five volumes of small size indeed, but of remarkable vigour and merit. As soon as any notable attack was made on the Catholics, an answer was brought out in a wonderfully short time, and these answers were pithy, vigorous, and pointed, in no ordinary degree. When one remembers how much co-operation is needed to bring out even the slightest volume, one is truly astonished at the feat of bringing out so many and such good ones, while the hourly fear of capture, torture, and death hung over the heads of all. When threatened with danger in one place the press was bodily transported to another.
However, our business at present is not with Persons, but with Campion. His book was finished and sent up to Persons in March, 1581, with a title altered to suit the controversy which had already begun. It was now Decem Rationes: quibus fretus, certamen adversariis obtulit in causa Fidei, Edmundus Campianus &c. "Ten Reasons, for the confidence with which Edmund Campion offered his adversaries to dispute on behalf of the Faith, set before the famous men of our Universities." Persons was charmed, as he had expected to be, with its literary grace. It was in Latin, as had been agreed, and Campion's Latin prose, (though critics of our time find it somewhat silvery and Livian), suited the tastes of that day to perfection. The only thing which made Persons at all thoughtful was the number of references. Campion declared that he was sure he had verified them, as he entered them in his notebook, but Persons, with greater caution, declared that they must be verified anew.
The difficulty of this for men living under the ban, and cut off from access to large libraries, was of course great, but through the help of others, especially through Mr. Thomas Fitzherbert of Swynnerton, the task was happily accomplished. Campion came up from the north to Stonor, on the Oxfordshire border where the secret press then was; and there, amid a thousand fears, alarms and dangers, the book was printed.
5. THE PRINTING.
Of the actual preparations for printing the Ten Reasons, Persons gives this account in his memoirs[3]: Persons was of opinion that Campion should come up to London immediately after Easter [March 26th] to examine the passages quoted, and to assist the print. Meanwhile Persons began to prepare new means of printing, making use of friends and in particular of a certain priest called William Morris, a learned and resourceful man, who afterwards died in Rome.[4] This was necessary, as the first press near London, where the first two books had been printed, had been taken down. Eventually and with very great difficulty he found, after much trying, a house belonging to a widow, by name Lady Stonor, in which she was not living at that time. It was situated in the middle of a wood, twenty miles from London.
To this house were taken all things necessary, that is, type, press, paper, &c., though not without many risks. Mr. Stephen Brinkley, a gentleman of high attainments both in literature and in virtue, superintended the printing. Father Campion then coming to London, with his book already revised, went at once to the house in the wood, where the book was printed and eventually published. Persons too went down to stay with him for some days to take counsel on their affairs.
* * * * *
Stonor Park, to which Campion and Persons had betaken themselves,[5] is still in the possession of the old Catholic family of that name, of which Lord Camoys is the representative. Father Morris says that "the printing, according to the traditions of the place, was carried on in the attics of the old house."[6] Being near Henley it was possible to go there by road or by water, and one might come and go on the Oxford high-road without attracting attention.
Still there was grave risk of discovery from the noise made by the press, and from the number of extra men about the house, as to the fidelity of each of whom it was impossible to be absolutely sure. Day by day the dangers thickened round them. One evening, soon after their arrival, William Hartley, a priest and afterwards a martyr, who was helping in the work, and had then just come back from a visit to Oxford, mentioned casually that Roland Jenks, the Catholic stationer and book-binder there, was again in trouble, having been accused by his own servant. Jenks was doubtless known to all Oxford men, indeed but three years before his name had been noised all over Europe. He had been sentenced to have his ears cut off for some religious offence, when the Judge was taken ill in the court itself, and, the infection travelling with marvellous rapidity, the greater part both of the bench and of the jury were stricken down with gaol fever, and two judges, twelve justices, and other high officials, almost the whole jury, and many others, died within the space of two days.[7]
In mentioning Jenks's new troubles Hartley probably did not realize the extent of the danger to the whole party which they portended. Persons had in fact employed the very servant who had now turned traitor, to bind a number of books for him at his house near Bridewell Church, London, which with all its contents was thus in a perilous condition. Early next morning an express messenger was sent in to town with orders to hide or destroy Persons' papers and other effects. It was already too late: that very night the house had been searched, and Persons' letters, books, vestments, rosaries, pictures, and other pious objects, had all fallen into the hands of the pursuivants. Worse still, Father Alexander Briant, afterwards a martyr, and one of the brightest and most lovable of the missionaries, was seized next door, and hurried off first to the Counter, then to the Tower, where he was repeatedly and most cruelly racked to make him say where Persons might be found.