When the presiding judge asked the accused if they had anything to say, Campion replied: "The only thing that we have now to say is that if our religion makes us traitors we are worthy to be condemned, but otherwise we are and have been as true subjects as ever the queen had. In condemning us, you condemn all your own ancestors, all that was once the glory of England, the Island of Saints, and the most devoted child of the See of St. Peter. For what have we taught, however you may qualify it with the odious name of treason, that they did not uniformly teach? To be condemned along with those who were the glory not of England alone but of the whole world by their degenerate descendants is both glory and gladness to us. God lives; posterity will live, and their judgment is not so liable to corruption as that of those who are now going to condemn us to death." When the sentence was uttered, Campion lifting up his voice intoned the "Te Deum laudamus" in which the others joined, following with the anthem "Hæc est dies quam fecit Dominus, exultemus et lætemur in ea" (This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and exult in it.) There were conversions in the courtroom that day. The scene at the scaffold on December 1, was characterized by the brutality of savages. The victims were placed on hurdles and dragged through the streets to Tyburn. Campion was the first to mount the fatal cart, and when the rope was put about his neck and he was addressing the crowd that thronged around, Knowles interrupted him with, "Stop your preaching and confess yourself a traitor." To which Campion replied, "If it be a crime to be a Catholic, I am a traitor." He continued to speak, but the cart was drawn from under him and he was left dangling in the air. Before he breathed his last he was cut down, his heart was torn out and the hangman holding it aloft in his bloody hand, cried out, "Behold the heart of a traitor!" and flung it into the fire. Alexander Briant and Ralph Sherwin then met the same fate. Previous to this gruesome tragedy, 4,000 people had been won back to the Faith.