Nowhere in this little book, begun and broken off at Turvey House, and purposely non-committal in its religious expressions, is there any sign that its author had already, as some have thought, returned to the Church. For Parsons, his earliest biographer, whose facts concerning these years were supplied by Richard Stanihurst, says of Campion that his purity and devoutness in Ireland were marked, although he was not in the Church. Fr. Pollen, summing up the evidence of these written pages, considers Campion “near to the Church, but distinctly avoiding a confession of faith.” Chancellor Weston, a zealot of the most pronounced Protestant type, made a livelier pursuit after having been baffled by Campion’s escape from Dublin. The latter found himself quite unable to lead any sort of orderly life, thanks to the restless hue and cry after him; and one day he recognized with a shock of horror the penalties to which he was exposing the generous friends, so far unmolested, who were giving him shelter. His conscience would not allow him to come out with a flat denial of Catholic tenets or sympathies. His only alternative, after a half-year in Ireland, was flight homeward. Here once more he was aided (though they were in great sorrow at his decision) by his Anglo-Irish friends, those “dear friends which ever after he loved most entirely, and they him.” Richard Stanihurst, as private tutor to the children of the Earl of Kildare, had acquaintance with the Earl’s steward, Melchior Hussey. This man (a character by no means admirable) was about to embark at Drogheda for a visit to England, and it was arranged that Campion should be disguised to pass as his Irish servant. Thus, in the month of May, putting himself under the special patronage of the national Saint, and adopting his name, Campion boarded the ship as “Mr. Patrick.” Officers of the law promptly appeared on the track of the quasi-Papist, delaying the weighing of the anchor, annoying the crew, upsetting the cargo, and questioning every passenger on deck except the harmless-looking person who stood “in a lackey’s weed” behind Hussey. Edmund Campion was a born actor. He put on and kept up a highly stupid expression, while he was praying with might and main for St. Patrick’s intercession in his great danger! He had cause to thank his new patron in Heaven, although the party of searchers swooped upon his bags below deck, and carried off with them the rough draft of his precious manuscript, that _History of Ireland_ which he was to see no more for many a year.