His interior struggle, from this day forth, went from bad to worse. With the unaffected simplicity of his character, he talked over his difficulties not only with Cheyney, but with any one at Oxford who seemed able to help him. As a consequence, the Grocers’ Company, whose exhibition he still held, heard rumours, grew uneasy, and began to suspect him, ending in 1568 by inviting Campion up to London to save his credit by preaching at Paul’s Cross, and publicly “favouring,” as they expressed it, “the religion now authorized.” He begged for time, and that being granted, for more time. He attended a court of the Company in order to plead engagements, and to say that he was not his own man, while deep in academic duties and at the service of undergraduates: “divers worshipful men’s children,” he calls them. He was Public Orator and Proctor, in fact, by now, as well as Fellow and Tutor of his College. (He never resided long enough to take his Doctor’s degree.) He exacted from the Company a written statement of the dogmas he was expected to avow; and finding it impossible to subscribe to the hot heterodoxy thus laid down, he cut his first tether by resigning his exhibition. His most brilliant colleague at St. John’s, Gregory Martin, who had protested in vain against Campion’s diaconate (which was to cause the recipient extreme remorse for a long time), had become a convert to Catholicism, and sacrificed all his secular prospects. He wrote to his dear friend to warn him against ambition, and to urge on him escape from moral bondage. “Come!” the fervent letter cried; “if we two can but live together, we can live on nothing. If this be too little, I have money; and if this also fails, one thing is left: ‘they that sow in tears shall reap in joy!’” Such earnest words, though seeming wasted, had their share in shaking Edmund Campion’s rest. With the summer term of 1570 his Proctorate expired. He spent the Long Vacation in tutoring the eight-years-old Harry Vaux, eldest son of Lord Vaux of Harrowden, who afterwards beautifully redeemed his childish promise. The end of Michaelmas term found Campion face to face for the last time with that life which he had so loved, and in which, with his scientific enthusiasm for letters, he had been such a wonderful inspiration to young men. There was no conscious motive in his heart deeper than a thirst for such freedom as had become difficult in a Puritanizing University, when he cut himself loose, slipped out of it for good, and took ship for Ireland.