Just before that, however, there arrived as a deputy to them, Mr. Thomas Pounde of Belmont, the best-known, perhaps, of all English prisoners for the Faith: he was committed to gaol sixteen times and passed thirty years in durance. Pounde had managed to bribe the gaoler of the Marshalsea to let him out for this short journey. Most anxious for the good repute of the Fathers, he rode post-haste to tell them that enemies in London were spreading the report that they had come over for political purposes, and that if in the midst of their apostolic work in the shires they should be taken and executed, the Government would be sure to issue pamphlets, as was its habit, defaming their motives, and slandering the Catholic body. Therefore he begged both Jesuits to write “a vindication of their presence and purpose in England,” which, signed and sealed, might be given to the public, if things came to the worst. The certain accusation and its answer had been debated before, in council, by many clergy, who had contented themselves with agreeing to swear, when called upon, that they had no business whatever in hand but that of religion. But Campion now drew up his own document then and there at a table, while the others were talking. In it, he declares that “my charge is of free cost to preach the Gospel ... to cry alarm spiritual;” that “matters of state are things which appertain not to my vocation,” and are “straitly forbid”: things “from which I do gladly estrange and sequester my thoughts.” And never thinking of himself, but fired with confidence in his cause, he goes on to beg leave for a public presentment of the Faith. He says, in the course of this splendid little philippic: “I should be loath to speak anything that might sound of an insolent brag or challenge ... in this noble realm, my dear country.” It shows completely the partisan temper of the time that his statement got exactly that name, and no other, fastened upon it. It was called everywhere “Campion’s Brag and Challenge,” and its modest author was contemned and ridiculed for the implication that his own powers were so very superior that he must of course get the better of others in any argument!