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.
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