September 1588-1589 A.D. Martin Marprelate Tracts & the English Art of Pungent Castigation
September
1588-1589 A.D. Martin
Marprelate Tracts & the English Art of Pungent Castigation
No author. “The
Marprelate Controversy.” The Cambridge History of English and
American Literature, Vol. III. N.d. http://www.bartleby.com/213/1701.html. Accessed 1 Sept 2014.
The
Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume III. Renascence and Reformation.
XVII. The Marprelate Controversy.
§ 1. The origin of the controversy.
Volume III. Renascence and Reformation.
XVII. The Marprelate Controversy.
§ 1. The origin of the controversy.
THE fashion of printed discussion did not
become general in England before the reign of Elizabeth. Previous to her day,
the chapbook and the broadside, vehicles of popular literature, had contained
little beyond attractive romances or exciting pieces of news in ballad-form.
Not until a great party, eager to proclaim and to defend its principles,
arose in the nation, were the possibilities of the printing press, as an
engine in the warfare of opinion, fully realised. The puritan movement
cannot, of course, be held responsible for every one of those countless
pamphlets in which the age of Shakespeare was rich, but it is not too much to
say that, excluding purely personal squabbles, there is hardly a single
controversy of the time which is not directly or indirectly traceable to it.
The revolution of the seventeenth century was both religious and social, and
it is important to bear in mind that the pamphlet campaign preceding it
shared its double character. The religious and doctrinal tracts of the
puritan controversialists lie, for the most part, outside the literary field.
One series, however, wholly theological in intention, has won a place in the
annals of literature by originality of style and pungency of satire, and by
the fact that the first English novelist and the greatest Elizabethan
pamphleteer took up the fallen gauntlet. These, the so-called Marprelate
tracts, which gave rise to the most famous controversy of the period, form
the topic of the present chapter.
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The origin of the Marprelate
controversy, interesting as it may be to the church historian, is far removed
from the atmosphere of general literature, and must, therefore, be indicated
as briefly as possible. Under the weak archbishop Grindal, the puritan, 1 or, as it was later called, the
presbyterian, doctrine had been making great strides among the clergy of the
church of England. John Whitgift, long known as an uncompromising opponent of
puritanism, was raised to the throne of Canterbury in 1583, only just in time
to prevent the English reformation from following in the course already
marked out by the Scottish. As it was, matters had gone so far that Whitgift
found it necessary to adopt the most stringent measures, if the destinies of
the church were to be taken out of puritan hands. The most important of
these, from our present point of view, was the decree which he procured, in
1586, from the Star chamber, forbidding the publication of any book or
pamphlet unless previously authorised by himself or the bishop of London,
giving him full control over the Stationers’ company, empowering him to
determine the number of printing presses in use, and, finally, reviving a
previous law imposing the severest penalties on the printing of seditious or
slanderous books. In this way, he hoped to stem the ever-rising tide of
puritan pamphlets, and so to prevent the spread of doctrines which he
considered heretical. The Marprelate tracts were the direct outcome of the
feeling of indignation at his relentless policy of repression, and they
appeared in defiance of the newly created censorship. Episcopacy, as an
institution, had always been obnoxious to the puritans; it became doubly so
now, as the political instrument of their persecution. Elizabeth, while
sanctioning, and heartily approving of, Whitgift’s ecclesiastical policy, was
well content to allow all the unpopularity resulting from it to light upon
his shoulders; and the civil authorities, reluctant to persecute the
puritans, withheld their support from the bishops, and so forced them to fall
back upon the resources of their own prerogatives, and to strain these to the
uttermost. Excuses may, therefore, be found for both sides. Defenders of the
establishment were placed in an extremely difficult and disagreeable
position, while puritans cannot be blamed for converting an attack on
episcopacy in general into a diatribe against individual members of the
episcopate. After ten years of struggle, so strong a reaction set in that
parliament, formerly puritan in its sympathies, passed the famous
anti-puritan statute of 1593, punishing those who attacked the ecclesiastical
settlement with banishment or even death. The effect was magical. The
violence of the puritans abated as suddenly as it had sprung up in
1583. 2
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Thus was the vessel of puritanism
wrecked on its first trial voyage, in the teeth of the winds of tradition and
authority. But literature was the gainer by this storm of a decade, for the
receding waves left upon the shores of time a little body of tracts which
are, admittedly, the chief prose satires of the Elizabethan period. It was
when the battle between bishop and sectarian waxed hottest, that the quaint
and audacious personality calling himself “Martin Marprelate, gentleman,”
first made his appearance; and, though his activity only lasted two years, he
succeeded, during that short time, in thoroughly frightening the whole
episcopal bench, in doing much to undermine its authority and prestige with
the common people, and in providing the general public with food for laughter
that has not even yet entirely lost its savour.
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Martin took the field at the end of
1588; light skirmishers, however, had been there before him. A year after
Whitgift’s accession to power there appeared a small octavo volume entitled A
Dialogue concerning the strife of our Church, from the press of the
puritan printer Robert Waldegrave, and in black-letter extremely like that
used by him later for the Marprelate tracts. 3 This pamphlet is almost certainly by
John Udall—so similar is it to other of his writings. The discussion is
chiefly carried on between a puritan divine and a bishop’s chaplain, and
turns upon topics such as non-residency, dumb ministers and the pomp of
bishops; but it contains no hint at all of the presbyterian discipline. Two
years later, in 1586, a clever satirical attack upon episcopacy attempted to
penetrate the archbishop’s lines of defence by masquerading in the guise of
anti-popery. The keen eye of Whitgift at once detected its real object, and
arrested its progress so effectually that, had he not himself preserved a copy
of it in his library at Lambeth, we might never have heard of it The satire
in question is an anonymous pamphlet, also in black-letter, styled A
Commission sente to the Pope, Cardynales, Bishops, Friers, Monkes, with all
the rable of that Viperous Generation by the highe and mighty Prince, and
King Sathanas, the Devill of Hell. It purports to be an infernal
despatch, instructing the officials mentioned on the title-page, and
especially “the great bishops our true messengers … whom we have constituted
petty-popes under the great Archpope of Rome,” as to the measures to be
adopted against the puritans. The constant allusions to “petty-popes,”
“gatehouses,” “clinks” and “proctors” leave no doubt as to the sympathies and
intentions of the author, who may, possibly, have been Martin himself, or his
spiritual father John Field.
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Note 3. Of this tract there is an interesting
copy in Trinity College library, Cambridge, with marginal notes in the
writing of two, if not three, different and, apparently, contemporary hands.
Some of the remarks have a direct bearing upon the subject of the Marprelate
tracts, Aylmer, bishop of London, being constantly referred to. [ back ]
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September 1588-1589 A.D. Martin
Marprelate Tracts & the English Art of Pungent Castigation, Bite, & Satire
Lewis, John D. “The
Marprelate Tracts.” The Anglican Library. 2000. http://www.anglicanlibrary.org/marprelate/index.htm. Accessed 1 Sept 2014.
THE MARPRELATE TRACTS
1588-1589
New HTML editions with original and modernised
spellings, prepared with an introduction by John D. Lewis, Department of
Theology, Murdoch University Western Australia.
CONTENTS
Introduction by John D. Lewis
Original Spelling
Modernised Spelling
The
Marprelate Tracts are mentioned in almost all histories of the Elizabethan era,
in histories of the Anglican Church, and in all considerations of the religious
disputes between the Puritans and the Church of England in the late sixteenth
century. The pamphlets are briefly described in terms of their presumed
scurrility and opposition to the office of bishop and the Elizabethan Religious
Settlement, but the contents of the writings, the underlying theology of the
writer and the degree to which they agree or disagree with other, better known
Puritan writings are not considered. Yet two men lost their lives because of
these pamphlets: Rev. Mr. Penry was hung for his part in the production, and
the Rev. Mr Udall died in prison. The printer, Waldegrave, had his press
confiscated, and there was a full-scale search made for the author(s) of the
tracts, the identity of whom is still not known for certain.
The
tracts ceased as suddenly as they had begun: seven pamphlets or small books in
less than a year, between October 1588 and September 1589. Presumably the
Government had either caught the author or had cowed him into silence. The
incident was over—a dangerous seditious libel in the eyes of the establishment,
an embarrassment to the more judicious Puritan who wished to campaign more
openly without fear of losing his head. The incident came in the closing years
of a campaign which had gone on through most of Elizabeth’s reign; the original
campaigners were getting old, they had lost support in the court and
Parliament, and the Anglican Church was defending the established order more
effectively. The first volumes of Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity were published in the same year as Marprelate, and for a
generation Puritanism could continue only as a subculture while the Anglican
Church consolidated its position.
Nevertheless,
it does appear that Martin Marprelate deserves to be better known than
he is. The only full consideration of the texts and historical setting prior to
1970 is that of William Pierce: An historical introduction to the Marprelate
Tracts (1908), and: The Marprelate Tracts 1588, 1589 edited with notes
historical and explanatory (1911). Neither of these books is widely available.
In 1970, the Scolar Press published a facsimile edition of the tracts from
copies in the Bodleian and Lambeth Palace Libraries, but this is not easily
read as the first four pamphlets are in ‘Black Letter’(Gothic) type, and the
remainder in a Roman type of small size. It is this volume which is transcribed
here.
In
the first series I have transcribed the text directly into modern characters,
with no alterations. Lower case ‘u’ and ‘v’ are commonly transposed, and in
Roman type the typesetter often had difficulty with ‘u’ and ‘n’. Variations in
spelling, and a few typographical errors, are retained. Punctuation is kept as
in the original text. In tracts 1-4, the Black Letter type is transcribed to
upright Roman type, while Roman type, used for quotations, is transcribed as
italic Roman. In tracts 5-7, upright and italic Roman type are directly
transcribed. For the title page of each tract I have attempted to copy the
layout, to give some feel for the original.
In
the second series I have modernised spelling and punctuation, but changed very
few words. Throughout, the word order is the same as the original. Most change
is brought about by dropping the second person singular: thee, thou and
thine, become ‘you, you, and your’. With this change, the -eth and -est
verb endings have also gone. Punctuation is more difficult to change without
changes to the words. Martin sometimes complains that the prose of his
opponents is poor and sentences so long that ‘there are not two full points to
the page’, yet his own sentences are sometimes equally long and convoluted,
with subordinate clause piled on subordinate clause, or rambling parentheses
inserted between verb and object, such that the meaning is often difficult to
determine. Under these conditions, and with the determination not to change the
words or word order, dividing the text into modern, relatively short sentences,
is not easy and some passages will still need to be read carefully.
I
have not attempted to provide more than the minimum of footnotes. These may be
to explain allusions in the text or to ‘translate’ specific words. The name of
the Bishop of London is not mentioned in the text but knowing that he was John
Elmar adds understanding to the pun of John Mar-elm for a bishop who would cut down
elm trees. Leaving words such as ‘trow’ or ‘bewray’ adds to the flavour of the
text, and throughout I have tried to maintain the original as closely as
possible.
The
result of this effort for myself has been to be able to read a popular and racy
account of the Puritan arguments for their ideas, their objections to the
religious settlement of Elizabeth, and to sample the Puritan mode of
disputation. A modern Martin would, I am sure, upset many modern bishops
and parliamentarians, just as he would scandalise some who oppose bishops in
the Church, but I doubt he would have half the police force out looking for
him.
John D.
Lewis,
Dept of Theology,
Murdoch University
Western Australia.
Dept of Theology,
Murdoch University
Western Australia.
June 1996.
Note: In these texts I have
produced a number of endnotes. In the original there are no endnotes, but
instead, a number of references to opponents’ texts, and comments, arranged as
margin notes. Unfortunately, it is not easy to reproduce the original, and some
of the ‘spice’ of the text is lost in looking up endnotes.
Page
numbers:
Original page numbers are given in square brackets, thus [51], the
number indicating the top right hand corner of the page. Some of the originals
had no printed page numbers and I have numbered the pages sequentially for ease
of reference.
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