nevertheless, was as much against the laws of England then (though not against the laws of some less humane countries), as it is now. XII THE THICK OF THE FRAY: 1581 CAMPION, in between the working of the rollers, was asked his opinion of certain political utterances in the works of his old friends Allen and Bristow, and of Dr. Sander; also whether he considered the Queen “true and lawful,” or “pretensed and deprived.” He refused to answer. Physical anguish could be little worse than the ineffable boredom of these two never-quiet questions. He was then asked by the Governor, the Rackmaster, and others present, by whose command and counsel he had returned to England; by whom in England he had been received and befriended; in whose houses he had said Mass, heard Confessions, and reconciled persons to his Church; where his recent book was printed, and to whom copies were given; lastly, what was his opinion of the Bull of Pius V against Queen Elizabeth? A letter written at the time to Lord Shrewsbury by Lord Burghley, and still extant, shows that nothing of moment could be got out of Campion. During the next fortnight, however, there was poured into the ear of the Government information regarding the second and third items in the above category. Houses were searched; persons of mark were apprehended, tried in the Star Chamber, and sentenced. Almost every manse or town house where Campion had been harboured became known, and even the names of those Oxford Masters of Arts who had followed him to Lyford. The Government gave out that he had confessed upon the rack, and implicated his too trusting friends. The alleged facts naturally became a general scandal, and bred grief and horror among the Catholics who, no less than Protestants, were thus driven to believe them. The secrets were probably given up, under panic, by three serving-men, and by poor Gervase Pierrepoint. It was a common trick of the time, though not peculiar to it, to show a prisoner a lying list of names purporting to have been extracted from colleagues, so that he himself might be trapped into endorsing the suspicions held in regard to those names. But it is clear that Campion was brought to mention only a few who, as he was aware, were formerly known to his examiners as Catholic Recusants; and only after a solemn oath from the Commissioners that no harm could accrue to them in consequence of such supplementary mention. Even this he had every cause to regret. The gentlemen and gentlewomen on Lord Burghley’s lists were carefully informed, when arrested, that it was Campion who had betrayed them: a cruel slander which he could refute only at the foot of the scaffold. Thanks to the reports, first of his backsliding, then of his treachery, his great reputation, for the time being, was clean gone. Having thus been given forth to the public as a knave, he was now to be set before them as a fool, and shown to be one who possessed neither sort of superiority, moral or mental.