The chief count against the defendant was the old, old one of the Bull of Deposition, and the denied authority of the Queen in spirituals: that wretched family skeleton trotted out once more! “You refused to swear to the Supremacy, a notorious token of an evil willer to the Crown.” Campion, who was surely what Antony Wood quaintly calls him, “a sweete Disposition, and a well-polish’d Man,” stated his position once more, lucidly, and with perfect temper. He began by referring to what passed at the Earl of Leicester’s London house. “Not long since it pleased her Majesty to demand of me whether I did acknowledge her to be my Queen or no. I answered that I did acknowledge her Highness not only as my Queen, but also as my most lawful governess. And being further required by her Majesty whether I thought the Pope might lawfully excommunicate her or no, I answered: ‘I confess myself an insufficient umpire between her Majesty and the Pope for so high a controversy, whereof neither the certainty is yet known, nor the best divines in Christendom stand fully resolved!... I acknowledge her Highness as my governor and sovereign; I acknowledge her Majesty both in fact and by right to be Queen; I confess an obedience due to the Crown as to my temporal head and primate.’ This I said then; so I say now. If then I failed in aught, I am now ready to supply it. What would you more? I will willingly pay to her Majesty what is hers; yet I must pay to God what is His. Then as for excommunicating her Majesty, it was exacted of me (admitting that excommunication were of effect, and that the Pope had sufficient authority so to do), whether then I thought myself discharged of my allegiance or no? I said that this was a dangerous question, and that they that demanded this demanded my blood. Admitting (why admitting?) I would admit his authority, and then he should excommunicate her, I would then do as God should give me grace: but I never admitted any such matter, neither ought I to be wrested with any such suppositions.” To all this no rejoinder was made. It was the identical position taken up by many another harassed martyr. The prosecution next turned to the remaining prisoners, using the same weak, wrong, skirmishing tactics,—Campion often putting in a word to hearten one, to defend another, to guide a third. At a certain point he exclaimed: “So great are the treasons that I and the others have wrought, that the gaoler who has us in charge told me at night that would we but go to the Anglican services they would pardon us straightway!” Serrano, who reports this, adds: “They answered things in general.” At the close of the proceedings, their issue being prearranged, Campion was allowed to make a speech to the jurors. He eloquently begged them to seek for certainties, and to remember the character of the “evidence” brought before them. Alas! he was appealing to bought men, who dared not be true.