Of the actual preparations for printing the _Ten Reasons_,
Persons gives this account in his memoirs[3]: Persons was of
opinion that Campion should come up to London immediately after
Easter [March 26th] to examine the passages quoted, and to assist
the print. Meanwhile Persons began to prepare new means of
printing, making use of friends and in particular of a certain
priest called William Morris, a learned and resourceful man, who
afterwards died in Rome.[4] This was necessary, as the first
press near London, where the first two books had been printed,
had been taken down. Eventually and with very great difficulty he
found, after much trying, a house belonging to a widow, by name
Lady Stonor, in which she was not living at that time. It was
situated in the middle of a wood, twenty miles from London.
To this house were taken all things necessary, that is, type,
press, paper, &c., though not without many risks. Mr. Stephen
Brinkley, a gentleman of high attainments both in literature and
in virtue, superintended the printing. Father Campion then coming
to London, with his book already revised, went at once to the
house in the wood, where the book was printed and eventually
published. Persons too went down to stay with him for some days
to take counsel on their affairs.
* * * * *
Stonor Park, to which Campion and Persons had betaken
themselves,[5] is still in the possession of the old Catholic
family of that name, of which Lord Camoys is the representative.
Father Morris says that "the printing, according to the
traditions of the place, was carried on in the attics of the old
house."[6] Being near Henley it was possible to go there by road
or by water, and one might come and go on the Oxford high-road
without attracting attention.
Still there was grave risk of discovery from the noise made by
the press, and from the number of extra men about the house, as
to the fidelity of each of whom it was impossible to be
absolutely sure. Day by day the dangers thickened round them.
One evening, soon after their arrival, William Hartley, a priest
and afterwards a martyr, who was helping in the work, and had
then just come back from a visit to Oxford, mentioned casually
that Roland Jenks, the Catholic stationer and book-binder there,
was again in trouble, having been accused by his own servant.
Jenks was doubtless known to all Oxford men, indeed but three
years before his name had been noised all over Europe. He had
been sentenced to have his ears cut off for some religious
offence, when the Judge was taken ill in the court itself, and,
the infection travelling with marvellous rapidity, the greater
part both of the bench and of the jury were stricken down with
gaol fever, and two judges, twelve justices, and other high
officials, almost the whole jury, and many others, died within
the space of two days.[7]
In mentioning Jenks's new troubles Hartley probably did not
realize the extent of the danger to the whole party which they
portended. Persons had in fact employed the very servant who had
now turned traitor, to bind a number of books for him at his
house near Bridewell Church, London, which with all its contents
was thus in a perilous condition. Early next morning an express
messenger was sent in to town with orders to hide or destroy
Persons' papers and other effects. It was already too late: that
very night the house had been searched, and Persons' letters,
books, vestments, rosaries, pictures, and other pious objects,
had all fallen into the hands of the pursuivants. Worse still,
Father Alexander Briant, afterwards a martyr, and one of the
brightest and most lovable of the missionaries, was seized next
door, and hurried off first to the Counter, then to the Tower,
where he was repeatedly and most cruelly racked to make him say
where Persons might be found.
Information about his torture was brought to the Jesuits at
Stonor, and one can easily see how grave and disturbing such
bad news must have been. "For almost the whole of one night,"
says Persons, "Campion and I sat up talking of what we had
better do, if we should fall into their hands. A fate which
befell him soon after."
The Registers of the Privy Council inform us that their Lordships
gave orders to have Jenks sent up to London on the 28th of April.
This settles approximately the date of the beginning of the
printing at Stonor, and the book was not finished till nearly the
end of June. So the work lasted about nine weeks, a fairly long
period when we consider the smallness of the Latin book, here
reproduced. It will, however, be shown from intrinsic evidence,
that the stock of type was very small. The printers had to set up
a few pages at a time, to correct them at once, and to print off,
before they could go any further. Then they distributed the type
and began again. When all was finished they rapidly stabbed and
bound their sheets. Considering the fewness of the workmen[8] and
the unforeseen delays which so often occur during printing, the
time taken over the production does not seem extraordinary.
For many years no example of the original edition of the _Decem
Rationes_ was known to exist: none of our great public libraries
in London or at the Universities possesses a copy. But it was the
singular good fortune of the late Marquess of Bute to pick up two
copies of this extremely rare volume, and he munificently
presented one of them to Stonyhurst College. Canon Gunning of
Winchester is the happy owner of a third copy. By the courtesy of
the Rector of Stonyhurst, I am able to offer a minute description
of the precious little book.
The volume is, considering the printing of that time, distinctly
well got up. There is nothing at first sight to suggest that its
publication had been a matter of so much difficulty and danger;
but when one scrutinizes every page with care, one finds that it
bears about it some traces of the unusual circumstances under
which it was produced.
If we look first for the water-mark in the paper we shall find
that it is the pot--the ordinary English sign; a proof, if one
were needed, that the book was really printed in this country.
The sheets run from A to K (with prefixed [double-dagger]), in
fours, 16mo; the folios are 44, of which 39 are numbered (but by
accident the pagination is omitted from 1 to 4 and 40 is blank as
well as the fly-leaves).
Let us think of what this means. Eleven signatures for 44 folios,
16mo, means that only eight pages 16mo went into each printing
frame, or, in other words, that the frame was so small that it
would have been covered by half a folio sheet, 9 by 13 inches.
They probably printed off each little sheet by itself, for if
they had had a larger frame so as to print an entire folio
sheet--then we should have found in the finished book that the
water-mark would recur once in each sixteen pages. In point of
fact, however, it only recurs irregularly in the first, fifth,
and tenth gathering. This could not have occurred unless the
sheets used were of half folio size.
A Greek fount was evidently wanting. Campion was fond, after the
fashion of scholars of that day, of throwing into his Latin
letters a word or two of Greek, which in his autograph are
written, as Mr. Simpson has remarked, with the facility of one
familiar with the language. Here on fol. 24 a we find _adynata_,
where [Greek: adunata] would have been in Campion's epistolary
manner. Again, on fol. 4 b he quotes, "Hic calix novum
testamentum in sanguine meo, qui (calix) pro vobis fundetur," and
in the margin _Poterion Ekchynomenon_, in Italics, where Greek
script, if obtainable, would obviously have been preferred. A
further indication of the difficulties under which type had been
procured is seen in the use of a query sign of a black-letter
fount (_i.e. [different question mark]_) instead of the Roman
fount (_i.e.,?_). This will be the more readily comprehended when
we remember that Father Persons' books, which Brinkley had
printed before, were in English, and that English prose was then
still generally printed in Gothic character[9].
So Persons also made use of it in order that there might be
nothing in his books to strike the eye as unusual in books of
that class. Campion's volume on the other hand being in Latin, it
was necessary to procure a new set of "Roman" type. The use of
the black-letter query-signs would not at once attract attention,
so they were kept, though all else was changed.
A further trace of the difficulty in finding type is found in
the signs for a, e, diphthong. This combination recurred very
frequently in Latin, and the printers had very few of them. Very
soon after starting we find them substituting for Roman an
Italic diphthong, [ae ligature] also o, e ([oe ligature]), and
even e, an ordinary mediaeval form of the sign. It will be
noticed that these substitutions become increasingly frequent,
as we approach fol. 12 (end of signature C), fol. 32 (end of
signature H), and 36 (end of signature I), whereas as soon as
the next signature begins the fount of [ae ligature] is ready to
hand again. The conclusion to be deduced is that leaves C, H,
and I were each printed off, and the type distributed, before
the setting up of D, I, and K could be proceeded with. This
illustrates what has been said before of the very small stock of
type in the printing establishment.
Another slight peculiarity ought perhaps to be noticed: it is
the accentuation of the Latin. Adverbs, for instance, are
generally accented on the last syllable, e.g., doctiu's,
facile', qua'm, eo', quo': the rule, however, is by no means
regularly kept. But this has evidently nothing to do with the
peculiar conditions under which Campion's book was produced, and
is to be accounted for by the use of accents in other
publications of the same class. Nothing was then definitely
settled about the accentuation of either French, Italian, or
Latin, and Campion's volume does but reproduce the uncertainty
on the matter which was everywhere prevalent.
Whilst the printers were contending with the difficulties arising
from the smallness of their stock of type, difficulties which no
doubt caused vexatious and dangerous delays, Campion and Persons
resumed their missionary labours with vigour. In his Memoirs
Persons writes:
* * * * *
Whilst the preparations were being made Campion preached
unweariedly, sometimes in London, sometimes making excursions.
There was one place [that of the Bellamy's] whither we often
went, about five miles from London, called Harohill. In going
thither we had to pass through Tyburn. But Campion would always
pass bareheaded, and making a 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.