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,