5 The Printing
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.