Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name | Page 8

deep bow both because of the sign of the Cross, and in
honour of some martyrs who had suffered there, and also because he
used to say that he would have his combat there.[10]
* * * * *

Father Bombino[11] managed to find out some further details. Mrs.
Bellamy's house, he tells us, had a good library, and as to Campion's
conduct at Tyburn, he explains that the shape of the gallows was a
triangle, supported at its three angles by three baulks of timber; the
tie-beams, however, suggested to Campion the Cross of Christ.
From the State Papers we hear of other families and places said to have
been visited by Campion at this period: the Prices, of Huntingdon; Mr.
William Griffith, of Uxbridge; Mr. Edwin East, of Bledlow, Bucks;
Lady Babington, at Twyford, Bucks; Mr. Dormer, at Wynge, and Mrs.
Pollard.[12]
In spite of alarms, dangers, and interruptions, the work of printing was
concluded without mishap. The method of publication was singular.
Hartley took the bulk of the copies to Oxford, where the chief
academical display of the year, the Act, as it was called, was taking
place in St. Mary's, on several successive days. Hartley, coming in at
the end of the first day, waited for every one to go out, then slipped his
little books under the papers left on the seats, and was gone. Next
morning he entered with the rest, and soon saw that his plan had been
perfectly successful. The public disputation began, but the attention of
the audience was elsewhere. There was whispering and comparing
notes, and passing about of little books, and as soon as the seance was
over, open discussion of Campion's "Reasons." Hartley did not wait for
more, but rode back to Stonor with the news that the book had surely
hit its mark.
At Oxford, as Father Persons says, many remembered and loved the
man, or at least knew of his gentle character, and of the career he had
abandoned to become a Catholic missionary. The book recalled all this;
and to those who were able to enter into its spirit it preached with a
strange penetrating force. By all the lovers of classical Latin, and there
were many such at that day, it was read greedily. The Catholics and
lovers of the old Faith received it with enthusiasm, but a still more
valid testimony to its power was given by the Protestant Government,
which gave orders to its placemen that they should elaborate replies.
These replies drew forth answers from the Catholics, and the
controversy lasted for several years. Mr. Simpson has included an
outline of this controversy in his Life of Campion, and to it I may refer
my readers, having nothing substantial to add to his account.

6. CRITICISM.
It would not be necessary for me to say more about its success, except
that to us nowadays, the Rationes will not seem at all so remarkable as
it did to our ancestors. Religious controversy, in itself, does not much
interest us moderns; and those who will read Latin merely to enjoy the
style are very few. But in the sixteenth century, as Sir Arthur Helps
truly says, men found in the thrill of controversy the interest they now
take in novels. At that time, too, of all literary charms, that of good
Latin prose was by far the most popular, and the language was still the
"lingua franca" of the learned all the world over. Once we get so far as
to appreciate that both subject and style were in its favour, the
popularity of the volume will seem natural enough, for it is bright,
pointed, strong, full of matter, bold, eloquent, convincing.
Without attempting anything like a complete account of the reception
of the book by the public, I may mention as the most obvious proof of
its popularity, that more strenuous endeavours were made (so far as I
can discover) to answer it than were made in the case of any other
assault upon the Elizabethan religious settlement. Lord Burghley
himself, the chief minister of the Crown, called upon the Bishop of
London, perhaps the most forward man then on the episcopal bench, to
use all endeavours to ensure the publication of a sufficient answer.
Finally they appointed the Regius Professors of Divinity both at Oxford
and at Cambridge to provide for the occasion, and it took both of these
a long series of months to propound their answers to Campion's tract,
which is only as long as a magazine article. Speaking broadly, we may
say that this was the most that Elizabeth's Establishment could do
officially; and besides this, there were sermons innumerable, and
pamphlets not a few by lesser men, as well as disputations in the Tower,
of which more must be