3 The Challenge
Campion, after finishing his letter and taking copy for himself, had consigned the other copy to Pounde. Persons had done the same; but whereas the latter took the precaution to seal his letter, Campion had handed over his unfastened. Then the company broke up. Persons made a wide circle from Northampton round to Gloucester, while Campion made a smaller circle from Oxfordshire up to Northampton. When they got back to town in September, they found all the world discussing “the Challenge.” What had happened was that proceedings had been taken by the Ecclesiastical Commission against Pounde, and he had been committed to solitary confinement in the ruinous castle of Bishop’s Stortford. Before he left London he began to communicate the letter to others, lest it should be altogether lost, and as soon as it was thus published it attracted everyone’s attention, and his adversaries had ironically christened it the challenge. The word was indeed one which Campion had used, but he had employed it precisely in order to avoid any charge that might have arisen, of being combative and presumptuous.
Thus in the course of three months Campion, as it were in spite of himself, had filled England with his name and with the message he had come to announce, and he had reduced his adversaries to a very ridiculous position. They had been dared to meet him in disputation, and this they feared to do. In effect, they in their thousands were hiding their heads in the sand, while their constables and pursuivants were raiding the houses of Catholics on every side in hopes of catching the homeless wanderer, and of stopping his mouth by violence. The pulpits, of course, rang with outcries against the newcomer, and in his absence his doctrines were rent and scoffed at; but, as Campion said in a contemporary letter, “The people hereupon is ours, and the error of spreading that letter abroad hath done us much good.” This was the first popular success which the Catholics had scored for years; and after so many years of oppression some popular success was of immense importance to the cause. Father Persons, in a contemporary letter, says that the Government found that there were 50,000 more recusants that autumn than they had known of before. The number is, of course, a round one, and is possibly much exaggerated, but it gives the Catholic leader’s view of the advantage won at this time.
We may now turn to The Challenge itself, the only piece of Campion’s English during this his golden period, which has survived.