ABSTRACT
Edmund Campion's reply started with a statement of the basis of English law that could have come straight from Sir John Fortescue; continued with a parody of the swinging rhythm of Edmund Anderson's rhetorical questions and, by linguistic analysis of the word 'reconcile'. Campion was perfectly correct: under English common law, a defendant had a right not to incriminate himself, a right defended by all the great jurists of the period, including Francis Bacon, who wrote to King James that 'By the laws of England no man is bound to accuse himself'. Campion, and many of the priests, had entered the country several months before the proclamation of January 1581 against Jesuits and seminarists. The Crown settled on treason under a statute of Edward III, of 1352, but two draft indictments preserved in Burghley's papers make clear that the initial indictment was for Campion alone, while the second was for Campion and 19 others.
