Fr. Parsons had reached the city not without adventure, but without mishap, a fortnight before. Yet as no word had been received since from him, Campion had no idea how to proceed or whither to go; nor could he inquire without arousing suspicion. Fortunately Parsons had given to some watchful young Catholics a description of the jewel-merchant and his man: Ralph Emerson was easily recognizable on account of his extremely short stature. Thus they had hardly touched the wharf at the Hythe before a stranger, Thomas Jay, stepped to the gangway, with a welcoming gesture, saying: “Mr. Edmunds, give me your hand: I stay here for you, to lead you to your friends.” Under this guidance Campion reached London and Chancery Lane, where he was clothed and armed, and provided with a horse. He must have been astonished to learn under whose roof he was so safe and so comfortable: for it was none other than that of the chief pursuivant! Here was, indeed, a case of the bird nesting in the cannon’s mouth. St. Augustine warns us that we are not to think that ungodly men are kept in this world for nothing, nor that God has no good purposes of His own to fulfil through them. One cause of the miraculous preservation of the ancient Faith under Elizabeth lay in the fact that many an official, high and low, of that time-serving Government, was in the pay of the Recusant gentry. A strange situation it was, and by no means an infrequent one, when some of these, brought before the magistrates, would be discharged on the assurance of the bought-over official that the prisoner was “an honest gentleman”: thus averting all suspicion from the latter for the time being. The band of lay Catholics, some of whom Campion had known from boyhood, like Henry Vaux and Richard Stanihurst, were acting as friends, freely leagued together, as occasion arose, for the helping of priests, and the furthering of religion. Their time, their thoughts, their self-sacrifice, their purses, were at the service particularly of the Jesuits, persons habitually being described by Sir Walter Mildmay in the Star Chamber as “lewd runagates,” “a sort of hypocrites,” “a rabble of vagrant friars.” The leader of them all, in his inspiring zeal, though not highest in station, was George Gilbert, a rich young squire owning estates (which were confiscated in the end) in Buckinghamshire and Suffolk. He was a convert, a great rider and athlete, dear to many; but in secret a lover of apostolic poverty, living for others: in short, a saint. He spent himself to the last breath for the Faith as truly as if he had perished at Tyburn Tree. In banishment, he still served the same cause by his forethought and his generosity in the use of such worldly goods as were left to him: for he became responsible, at Rome, for the series of paintings of the English martyrdoms which gave their chief historical standing to the Beatifications of 1886. Thus Gilbert, living and dead, was Blessed Edmund Campion’s availing friend and lover.