There were then many more Manor-houses, kept up as such, than there are now; most of those which Campion visited had their hiding-place or “priests’ hole,” to which he could always fly when safety demanded it. He settled a host of weak Catholics in their religion, and also received a great many conspicuous converts. It will be noted that the little Jesuit mission was directed to the gentry. This was not through accident, or partiality, or snobbery. The gentry had most personal weight; they were better able to protect a hunted man; and they were naturally supposed to have stricter notions of honour: this last was a point on which everything depended. Moreover, the old spirit of feudalism was not so dead but that through them all workmen on their estates, or connected by interest with them in the towns, could be reached and influenced. In a hurried campaign, every consideration of prudence and forethought would choose them, so to speak, as the outworks of the citadel. The country districts north and south were all still favourable to Catholicism. London, the University of Cambridge, and some larger towns and seaports, especially in the West, were half Puritan or Calvinistic, half irreligious and indifferent. The ancient Faith, as was well said by Sir Cuthbert Sharpe, for the most part “still lay like lees at the bottom of men’s hearts; and if the vessel were ever so little stirred, came to the top.” A thoughtful living writer sums it up as his conclusion that England would have resumed the Faith with a sigh of relief, had it not been for the resentments bred by the Catholic “plotters.” Considering the frightful circumstances of the body to which these men belonged, it is putting too great a strain, perhaps, upon human nature to expect smooth behaviour from every individual in it. The genuine “plotters” were few. Against them stands the passionate loyalty of our persecuted minority, both all along, and in the one great crisis. When the deliverer loomed up in the shape of Philip’s Armada, blessed and indulgenced like a crusade of old, where were they, supposed to be so sick of Queen and country? Hand in impoverished pocket, strengthening the national defences; cutlass on thigh, manning the English fleet. X MANY LABOURS: AND A BOOK: 1580 CAMPION passed four months of pleasant weather in hard and happy work, moving about Northamptonshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire. Some lovely little spiritual adventure starred his path, and the paths of others, wherever he went. He must have seen more than once, from some hilly road afar off, even if he never entered it, “The towery City, branchy between towers,”