It was the fashion with the poets connected with the theatre to wear long hair. Nashe censures Greene “for his fond (foolish) disguising of a Master of Arts (which was Greene’s degree) with ruffianly hair.”—Ed.
Alluding to the trial of the Poetasters, which takes place before Augustus and his poetical jury of Virgil, Ovid, Tibullus, &c., in Ben’s play.
Decker alludes here to the bastard of Burgundy, who considered himself unmatchable, till he was overthrown in Smithfield by Woodville, Earl Rivers.
Horace acknowledges he played Zulziman at Paris-garden. “Sir Vaughan: Then, master Horace, you played the part of an honest man—”
Tucca exclaims: “Death of Hercules! he could never play that part well in ’s life!”
Among those arts of imitation which man has derived from the practice of animals, naturalists assure us that he owes the use of clysters to the Egyptian Ibis. There are some who pretend this medicinal invention comes from the stork. The French are more like Ibises than we are: ils se donnent des lavements eux-mêmes. But as it is rather uncertain what the Egyptian Ibis is; whether, as translated in Leviticus xi. 17, the cormorant, or a species of stork, or only “a great owl,” as we find in Calmet; it would be safest to attribute the invention to the unknown bird. I recollect, in Wickliffe’s version of the Pentateuch, which I once saw in MS. in the possession of my valued friend Mr. Douce, that that venerable translator interpolates a little, to tell us that the Ibis “giveth to herself a purge.”
This work was not given to the public till 1724, a small quarto, with a fine portrait of Brooke. More than a century had elapsed since its forcible suppression. Anstis printed it from the fair MS. which Brooke had left behind him. The author’s paternal affection seemed fondly to imagine its child might be worthy of posterity, though calumniated by its contemporaries.
“Verum enimverò de his et hoc genere hominum ne verbum amplius addam, tabellam tamen summi illius artificis Apellis, cùm colorum vivacitate depingere non possim, verbis leviter adumbrabo et proponam, ut Antiphilus noster, suique similes, et qui calumniis credunt, hanc, et in hac seipsos semel simulque intueantur.
“Ad dextram sedet quidam, quia credulus, auribus prælongis insignis, quales ferè illæ Midæ feruntur. Manum porrigit procul accedenti Calumniæ. Circumstant eum mulierculæ duæ, Ignorantia ac Suspicio. Adit aliunde propiùs Calumnia eximiè compta, vultu ipso et gestu corporis efferens rabiem, et iram æstuanti conceptam pectore præ se ferens: sinistra facem tenens flammantem, dextra secum adolescentem capillis arreptum, manus ad superos tendentem, obtestantemque immortalium deorum fidem, trahit. Anteit vir pallidus, in specium impurus, acie oculorum minimè hebeti, cæterùm planè iis símilis, qui gravi aliquo morbo contabuerunt. Hic livor est, ut facilè conjicias. Quin, et mulierculæ aliquot Insidiæ et Fallaciæ ut comites Calumniam comitantur. Harum est munus, dominam hortari, instruere, comere, et subornare. A tergo, habitu lugubri, pullato, laceroque Pœnitentia subsequitur, quæ capite in tergum deflexo, cum lachrymis, ac pudore procul venientem Veritatem agnoscit, et excipit.”
Brooke died at the old mansion opposite the Roman town of Reculver in Kent. The house is still known as Brooke-farm; and the original gateway of decorative brickwork still exists. He was buried in Reculver Church, now destroyed, where a mural monument was erected to his memory, having a rhyming inscription, which told the reader:—
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“Fifteenth October he was last alive, |
Brooke was originally a painter-stainer. His enmity to Camden appears to have originated in the appointment of the latter to the office of Clarencieux on the death of Richard Lee; he believing himself to be qualified for the place by greater knowledge, and by his long connexion with the College of Arms. His mode of righting himself lacked judgment, and he was twice suspended from his office, and was even attempted to be expelled therefrom.—Ed.
In Anstis’s edition of “A Second Discoverie of Errors in the Much-commended ‘Britannia,’ &c.,” 1724, the reader will find all the passages in the “Britannia” of the edition of 1594 to which Brooke made exceptions, placed column-wise with the following edition of it in 1600. It is, as Anstis observes, a debt to truth, without making any reflections.
There is a sensible observation in the old “Biographia Britannica” on Brooke. “From the splenetic attack originally made by Rafe Brooke upon the ‘Britannia’ arose very great advantages to the public, by the shifting and bringing to light as good, perhaps a better and more authentic account of our nobility, than had been given at that time of those in any other country of Europe.”—p. 1135.
The Church History by Dodd, a Catholic, fills three vols. folio: it is very rare and curious. Much of our own domestic history is interwoven in that of the fugitive papists, and the materials of this work are frequently drawn from their own archives, preserved in their seminaries at Douay, Valladolid, &c., which have not been accessible to Protestant writers. Here I discovered a copious nomenclature of eminent persons, and many literary men, with many unknown facts, both of a private and public nature. It is useful, at times, to know whether an English author was a Catholic.
I refer the reader to Selden’s “Table Talk” for many admirable ideas on “Bishops.” That enlightened genius, who was no friend to the ecclesiastical temporal power, acknowledges the absolute necessity of this order in a great government. The preservers of our literature and our morals they ought to be, and many have been. When the political reformers ejected the bishops out of the house, what did they gain? a more vulgar prating race, but even more lordly! Selden says—“The bishops being put out of the house, whom will they lay the fault upon now? When the dog is beat out of the room, where will they lay the stink?”
The freedom of the press hardly subsisted in Elizabeth’s reign; and yet libels abounded! A clear demonstration that nothing is really gained by those violent suppressions and expurgatory indexes which power in its usurpation may enforce. At a time when they did not dare even to publish the titles of such libels, yet were they spread about, and even hoarded. The most ancient catalogue of our vernacular literature is that by Andrew Maunsell, published in 1595. It consists of Divinity, Mathematics, Medicine, &c.; but the third part which he promised, and which to us would have been the most interesting, of “Rhetoric, History, Poetry, and Policy,” never appeared. In the Preface, such was the temper of the times, and of Elizabeth, we discover that he has deprived us of a catalogue of the works alluded to in our text, for he thus distinctly points at them:—“The books written by the fugitive papistes, as also those that are written against the present government (meaning those of the Puritans), I doe not think meete for me to meddle withall.” In one part of his catalogue, however, he contrived to insert the following passage; the burden of the song seems to have been chorused by the ear of our cautious Maunsell. He is noticing a Pierce Plowman in prose. “I did not see the beginning of this booke, but it ended thus:—
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“God save the king, and speed the plough |
Few of our native productions are so rare as the Martin Mar-Prelate publications. I have not found them in the public repositories of our national literature. There they have been probably rejected with indignity, though their answerers have been preserved; yet even these are almost of equal rarity and price. They were rejected in times less enlightened than the present. In a national library every book deserves preservation. By the rejection of these satires, however absurd or infamous, we have lost a link in the great chain of our National Literature and History. [Since the above was written, many have been added to our library; and the Rev. William Maskell, M.A., has published his “History of the Martin Mar-Prelate Controversy.” It is a most careful summary of the writings and proceedings of all connected with this important event, and is worthy the attentive perusal of such as desire accurate information in this chapter of our Church history.]
We know them by the name of Puritans, a nickname obtained by their affecting superior sanctity; but I find them often distinguished by the more humble appellative of Precisians. As men do not leap up, but climb on rocks, it is probable they were only precise before they were pure. A satirist of their day, in “Rythmes against Martin Marre-Prelate,” melts their attributes into one verse:—
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“The sacred sect, and perfect pure precise.” |
A more laughing satirist, “Pasquill of England to Martin Junior,” persists in calling them Puritans, a pruritu! for their perpetual itching, or a desire to do something. Elizabeth herself only considered them as “a troublesome sort of people:” even that great politician could not detect the political monster in a mere chrysalis of reform. I find, however, in a poet of the Elizabethan age, an evident change in the public feeling respecting the Puritans, who being always most active when the government was most in trouble, their political views were discovered. Warner, in his “Albion’s England,” describes them:—
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“If ever England will in aught prevent her own mishap, |
The gentle-humoured Fuller, in his “Church History,” felt a tenderness for the name of Puritan, which, after the mad follies they had played during the Commonwealth, was then held in abhorrence. He could not venture to laud the good men of that party, without employing a new term to conceal the odium. In noticing, under the date of 1563, that the bishops urged the clergy of their dioceses to press uniformity, &c., he adds—“Such as refused were branded with the name of Puritans—a name which in this nation began in this year, subject to several senses, and various in the acceptions. Puritan was taken for the opposers of hierarchy and church service, as resenting of superstition. But the nickname was quickly improved by profane mouths to abuse pious persons. We will decline the word to prevent exceptions, which, if casually slipping from our pen, the reader knoweth that only nonconformists are intended,” lib. ix. p. 76. Fuller, however, divided them into classes—“the mild and moderate, and the fierce and fiery.” Heylin, in his “History of the Presbyterians,” blackens them as so many political devils; and Neale, in his “History of the Puritans,” blanches them into a sweet and almond whiteness.
Let us be thankful to these Puritans for a political lesson. They began their quarrels on the most indifferent matters. They raised disturbances about the “Romish Rags,” by which they described the decent surplice as well as the splendid scarlet chimere[407] thrown over the white linen rochet, with the square cap worn by the bishops. The scarlet robe, to please their sullen fancy, was changed into black satin; but these men soon resolved to deprive the bishops of more than a scarlet robe. The affected niceties of these Precisians, dismembering our images, and scratching at our paintings, disturbed the uniformity of the religious service. A clergyman in a surplice was turned out of the church. Some wore square caps, some round, some abhorred all caps. The communion-table placed in the East was considered as an idolatrous altar, and was now dragged into the middle of the church, where, to show their contempt, it was always made the filthiest seat in the church. They used to kneel at the sacrament; now they would sit, because that was a proper attitude for a supper; then they would not sit, but stand: at length they tossed the elements about, because the bread was wafers, and not from a loaf. Among their preciseness was a qualm at baptism: the water was to be taken from a basin, and not from a fount; then they would not name their children, or if they did, they would neither have Grecian, nor Roman, nor Saxon names, but Hebrew ones, which they ludicrously translated into English, and which, as Heylin observes, “many of them when they came of age were ashamed to own”—such as “Accepted, Ashes, Fight-the-good-Fight-of-Faith, Joy-again, Kill-sin, &c.”
Who could have foreseen that some pious men quarrelling about the square caps and the rochets of bishops should at length attack bishops themselves; and, by an easy transition, passing from bishops to kings, finally close in levellers!
The origin of the controversy may be fixed about 1588. “A far less easy task,” says the Rev. Mr. Maskell, “is it to guess at the authors. The tracts on the Mar-Prelate side have been usually attributed to Penry, Throgmorton, Udal, and Fenner. Very considerable information may be obtained about these writers in Wood’s ‘Athenæ,’ art. Penry; in Collier, Strype, and Herbert’s edition of ‘Arnes,’ to whom I would refer. After a careful examination of these and other authorities on the subject, the question remains, in my judgment, as obscure as before; and I think that it is very far from clear that either one of the three last-named was actually concerned in the authorship of any of the pamphlets.”—Ed.
So Heylin writes the word; but in the “Rythmes against Martin,” a contemporary production, the term is Chiver. It is not in Cotgrave.
In the “Just Censure and Reproof of Martin Junior” (circæ 1589), we are told: “There is Cartwright, too, at Warwick; he hath got him such a company of disciples, both of the worshipfull and other of the poorer sort, as wee have no cause to thank him. Never tell me that he is too grave to trouble himself with Martin’s conceits. Cartwright seeks the peace of the Church no otherwise than his platform may stand.” He was accused before the commissioners in 1590 of knowing who wrote and printed these squibs, which he did not deny.—Ed.
I give a remarkable extract from the writings of Cartwright. It will prove two points. First, that the religion of those men became a cover for a political design; which was to raise the ecclesiastical above the civil power. Just the reverse of Hobbes’s after scheme; but while theorists thus differ and seem to refute one another, they in reality work for an identical purpose. Secondly, it will show the not uncommon absurdity of man; while these nonconformists were affecting to annihilate the hierarchy of England as a remains of the Romish supremacy, they themselves were designing one according to their own fresher scheme. It was to be a state or republic of Presbyters, in which all Sovereigns were to hold themselves, to use their style, as “Nourisses, or servants under the Church; the Sovereigns were to be as subjects; they were to vail their sceptres and to offer their crowns as the prophet speaketh, to lick the dust of the feet of the Church.” These are Cartwright’s words, in his “Defence of the Admonition.” But he is still bolder, in a joint production with Travers. He insists that “the Monarchs of the World should give up their sceptres and crowns unto him (Jesus Christ) who is represented by the Officers of the Church.” See “A Full and Plain Declaration of Ecclesiastical Discipline,” p. 185. One would imagine he was a disguised Jesuit, and an advocate for the Pope’s supremacy. But observe how these saintly Republicans would govern the State. Cartwright is explicit, and very ingenious. “The world is now deceived that thinketh that the Church must be framed according to the Commonwealth, and the Church Government according to the Civil Government, which is as much as to say, as if a man should fashion his house according to his hangings; whereas, indeed, it is clean contrary. That as the hangings are made fit for the house, so the Commonwealth must be made to agree with the Church, and the government thereof with her government; for, as the house is before the hangings, therefore the hangings, which come after, must be framed to the house, which was before; so the Church being before there was a commonwealth, and the commonwealth coming after, must be fashioned and made suitable to the Church; otherwise, God is made to give place to men, heaven to earth.”—Cartwright’s Defence of the Admonition, p. 181.
Warburton’s “Alliance between Church and State,” which was in his time considered as a hardy paradox, is mawkish in its pretensions, compared with this sacerdotal republic. It is not wonderful that the wisest of our Sovereigns, that great politician Elizabeth, should have punished with death these democrats: but it is wonderful to discover that these inveterate enemies to the Church of Rome were only trying to transfer its absolute power into their own hands! They wanted to turn the Church into a democracy. They fascinated the people by telling them that there would be no beggars were there no bishops; that every man would be a governor by setting up a Presbytery. From the Church, I repeat, it is scarcely a single step to the Cabinet. Yet the early Puritans come down to us as persecuted saints. Doubtless, there were a few honest saints among them; but they were as mad politicians as their race afterwards proved to be, to whom they left so many fatal legacies. Cartwright uses the very language a certain cast of political reformers have recently done. He declares “An establishment may be made without the magistrate;” and told the people that “if every hair of their head was a life, it ought to be offered for such a cause.” Another of this faction is for “registering the names of the fittest and hottest brethren without lingering for Parliament;” and another exults that “there are a hundred thousand hands ready.” Another, that “we may overthrow the bishops and all the government in one day.” Such was the style, and such the confidence in the plans which the lowest orders of revolutionists promulgated during their transient exhibition in this country. More in this strain may be found in “Maddox’s Vindication Against Neale,” the advocate for the Puritans, p. 255; and in an admirable letter of that great politician, Sir Francis Walsingham, who, with many others of the ministers of Elizabeth, was a favourer of the Puritans, till he detected their secret object to subvert the government. This letter is preserved in “Collier’s Eccl. Hist.” vol. ii. 607. They had begun to divide the whole country into classes, provincial synods, &c. They kept registers, which recorded all the heads of their debates, to be finally transmitted to the secret head of the Classis of Warwick, where Cartwright governed as the perpetual moderator! Heylin’s Hist. of Presbyt. p. 277. These violent advocates for the freedom of the press had, however, an evident intention to monopolise it; for they decreed that “no book should be put in print but by consent of the Classes.”—Sir G. Paul’s Life of Whitgift, p. 65. The very Star-Chamber they justly protested against, they were for raising among themselves!
Under the denomination of Barrowists and Brownists. I find Sir Walter Raleigh declaring, in the House of Commons, on a motion for reducing disloyal subjects, that “they are worthy to be rooted out of a Commonwealth.” He is alarmed at the danger, “for it is to be feared that men not guilty will be included in the law about to be passed. I am sorry for it. I am afraid there is near twenty thousand of them in England; and when they be gone (that is, expelled) who shall maintain their wives and children?”—Sir Simonds D’Ewes’ Journal, p. 517.
The controversies of Whitgift and Cartwright were of a nature which could never close, for toleration was a notion which never occurred to either. These rivals from early days wrote with such bitterness against each other, that at length it produced mutual reproaches. Whitgift complains to Cartwright: “If you were writing against the veriest Papist, or the ignorantest dolt, you could not be more spiteful and malicious.” And Cartwright replies: “If peace had been so precious unto you as you pretend, you would not have brought so many hard words and bitter reproaches, as it were sticks and coals, to double and treble the heat of contention.”
After this it is curious, even to those accustomed to such speculations, to observe some men changing with the times, and furious rivals converted into brothers. Whitgift, whom Elizabeth, as a mark of her favour, called “her black husband,” soliciting Cartwright’s pardon from the Queen; and the proud Presbyter Cartwright styling Whitgift his Lord the Archbishop’s Grace of Canterbury, and visiting him!
Sir George Paul, a contemporary, attributes his wealth “to the benevolence and bounty of his followers.” Dr. Sutcliffe, one of his adversaries, sharply upbraids him, that “in the persecution he perpetually complained of, he was grown rich.” A Puritan advocate reproves Dr. Sutcliffe for always carping at Cartwright’s purchases:—“Why may not Cartwright sell the lands he had from his father, and buy others with the money, as well as some of the bishops, who by bribery, simony, extortion, racking of rents, wasting of woods, and such like stratagems, wax rich, and purchase great lordships for their posterity?”
To this Sutcliffe replied:
“I do not carpe alway, no, nor once, at Master Cartwright’s purchase. I hinder him not; I envy him not. Only thus much I must tell him, that Thomas Cartwright, a man that hath more landes of his own in possession than any bishop that I know, and that fareth daintily every day, and feedeth fayre and fatte, and lyeth as soft as any tenderling of that brood, and hath wonne much wealth in short time, and will leave more to his posterity than any bishop, should not cry out either of persecution or of excess of bishop’s livinges.”—Sutcliffe’s Answer to Certain Calumnious Petitions.
“The author of these libels,” says Bishop Cooper, in his “Admonition to the People of England,” 1589, “calleth himself by a feigned name, Martin Mar-Prelate, a very fit name undoubtedly. But if this outrageous spirit of boldness be not stopped speedily, I fear he will prove himself to be, not only Mar-Prelate, but Mar-Prince, Mar-State, Mar-Law, Mar-Magistrate, and altogether, until he bring it to an Anabaptistical equality and community.”—Ed.
Cartwright approved of them, and well knew the concealed writers, who frequently consulted him: this appears by Sir G. Paul’s “Life of Whitgift,” p. 65. Being asked his opinion of such books, he said, that “since the bishops, and others there touched, would not amend by grave books, it was therefore meet they should be dealt withal to their farther reproach; and that some books must be earnest, some more mild and temperate, whereby they may be both of the spirit of Elias and Eliseus;” the one the great mocker, the other the more solemn reprover. It must be confessed Cartwright here discovers a deep knowledge of human nature. He knew the power of ridicule and of invective. At a later day, a writer of the same stamp, in “The Second Wash, or the Moore Scoured once more,” (written against Dr. Henry More, the Platonist), in defence of that vocabulary of names which he has poured on More, asserts it is a practice allowed by the high authority of Christ himself. I transcribe the curious passage:—“It is the practice of Christ himself to character men by those things to which they assimilate. Thus hath he called Herod a fox; Judas a devil; false pastors he calls wolves; the buyers and sellers, theeves; and those Hebrew Puritans the Pharisees, hypocrites. This rule and justice of his Master St. Paul hath well observed, and he acts freely thereby; for when he reproves the Cretians, he makes use of that ignominious proverb, Evil beasts and slow bellies. When the high priest commanded the Jews to smite him on the face, he replied to him, not without some bitterness, God shall smite thee, thou white wall. I cite not these places to justify an injurious spleen, but to argue the liberty of the truth.”—The Second Wash, or the Moore Scoured once more. 1651. P. 8.
One of their works is “A Dialogue, wherein is laid open the tyrannical dealing of L. Bishopps against God’s children.” It is full of scurrilous stories, probably brought together by two active cobblers who were so useful to their junto. Yet the bishops of that day were not of dissolute manners; and the accusations are such, that it only proves their willingness to raise charges against them. Of one bishop they tell us, that after declaring he was poor, and what expenses he had been at, as Paul’s church could bear witness, shortly after hanged four of his servants for having robbed him of a considerable sum. Of another, who cut down all the woods at Hampstead, till the towns-women “fell a swaddling of his men,” and so saved Hampstead by their resolution. But when Martin would give a proof that the Bishop of London was one of the bishops of the devil, in his “Pistle to the terrible priests,” he tells this story:—“When the bishop throws his bowl (as he useth it commonly upon the Sabbath-day), he runnes after it; and if it be too hard, he cries Rub! rub! rub! the diuel goe with thee! and he goeth himself with it; so that by these words he names himself the Bishop of the Divel, and by his tirannical practice prooveth himselfe to be.” He tells, too, of a parson well known, who, being in the pulpit, and “hearing his dog cry, he out with this text: ‘Why, how now, hoe! can you not let my dog alone there? Come, Springe! come, Springe!’ and whistled the dog to the pulpit.” One of their chief objects of attack was Cooper, Bishop of Lincoln, a laborious student, but married to a dissolute woman, whom the University of Oxford offered to separate from him: but he said he knew his infirmity, and could not live without his wife, and was tender on the point of divorce. He had a greater misfortune than even this loose woman about him—his name could be punned on; and this bishop may be placed among that unlucky class of authors who have fallen victims to their names. Shenstone meant more than he expressed, when he thanked God that he could not be punned on. Mar-Prelate, besides many cruel hits at Bishop Cooper’s wife, was now always “making the Cooper’s hoops to flye off, and the bishop’s tubs to leake out.” In “The Protestatyon of Martin Marprelat,” where he tells of two bishops, “who so contended in throwing down elmes, as if the wager had bene whether of them should most have impoverished their bishopricks. Yet I blame not Mar-Elme so much as Cooper for this fact, because it is no less given him by his name to spoil elmes, than it is allowed him by the secret judgment of God to mar the Church. A man of Cooper’s age and occupation, so wel seene in that trade, might easily knowe that tubs made of green timber must needs leak out; and yet I do not so greatly marvel; for he that makes no conscience to be a deceiver in the building of the churche, will not stick for his game to be a deceitfull workeman in making of tubbs.”—p. 19. The author of the books against Bishop Cooper is said to have been Job Throckmorton, a learned man, affecting raillery and humour to court the mob.
Such was the strain of ribaldry and malice which Martin Mar-Prelate indulged, and by which he obtained full possession of the minds of the people for a considerable time. His libels were translated, and have been often quoted by the Roman Catholics abroad and at home for their particular purposes, just as the revolutionary publications in this country have been concluded abroad to be the general sentiments of the people of England; and thus our factions always will serve the interests of our enemies. Martin seems to have written little verse; but there is one epigram worth preserving for its bitterness.
Martin Senior, in his “Reproofe of Martin Junior,” complains that “his younger brother has not taken a little paines in ryming with Mar-Martin (one of their poetical antagonists), that the Cater-Caps may know how the meanest of my father’s sonnes is able to answeare them both at blunt and sharpe.” He then gives his younger brother a specimen of what he is hereafter to do. He attributes the satire of Mar-Martin to Dr. Bridges, Dean of Sarum, and John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury.
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“The first Rising, Generation, and Original of Mar-Martin.
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It would, however, appear that these revolutionary publications reached the universities, and probably fermented “the green heads” of our students, as the following grave admonition directed to them evidently proves:—
“Anti-Martinus sive monitio cujusdam Londinensis ad adolescentes vtrimque academiæ contra personatum quendam rabulam qui se Anglicè Martin Marprelat, &c. Londini, 1589, 4o.”
A popular favourite as he was, yet even Martin, in propria persona, acknowledges that his manner was not approved of by either party. His “Theses Martinianæ” opens thus: “I see my doings and my course misliked of many, both the good and the bad; though also I have favourers of both sortes. The bishops and their traine, though they stumble at the cause, yet especially mislike my maner of writing. Those whom foolishly men call Puritanes, like of the matter I have handled, but the forme they cannot brooke. So that herein I have them both for mine adversaries. But now what if I should take the course in certain theses or conclusions, without inveighing against either person or cause.” This was probably written after Martin had swallowed some of his own sauce, or taken his “Pap (offered to him) with a Hatchet,” as one of the most celebrated government pamphlets is entitled. But these “Theses Martinianæ,” without either scurrility or invective are the dullest things imaginable; abstract propositions were not palatable to the multitude; and then it was, after the trial had been made, that Martin Junior and Senior attempted to revive the spirit of the old gentleman; but if sedition has its progress, it has also its decline; and if it could not strike its blow when strongest, it only puled and made grimaces, prognostics of weakness and dissolution. This is admirably touched in “Pappe with an Hatchet.” “Now Old Martin appeared, with a wit worn into the socket, twingling and pinking like the snuffe of a candle; quantum mutatus ab illo, how unlike the knave he was before, not for malice, but for sharpnesse! The hogshead was even come to the hauncing, and nothing could be drawne from him but dregs; yet the emptie caske sounds lowder than when it was full, and protests more in his waining than he could performe in his waxing. I drew neere the sillie soul, whom I found quivering in two sheets of protestation paper (alluding to the work mentioned here in the following note). O how meager and leane he looked, so crest falne that his combe hung downe to his bill; and had I not been sure it was the picture of Envie, I should have sworn it had been the image of Death: so like the verie anatomie of Mischief, that one might see through all the ribbes of his conscience.”
In another rare pamphlet from the same school, “Pasquill of England to Martin Junior, in a countercuffe given to Martin Junior,” he humorously threatens to write “The Owle’s Almanack, wherein your night labours be set down;” and “some fruitful volumes of ‘The Lives of the Saints,’ which, maugre your father’s five hundred sons, shall be printed,” with “hays, jiggs, and roundelays, and madrigals, serving for epitaphs for his father’s hearse.”
Some of these works still bear evident marks that the “pursuivants” were hunting the printers. “The Protestatyon of Martin Mar-Prelate, wherein, notwithstanding the surprising of the printer, he maketh it knowne vnto the world that he feareth neither proud priest, tirannous prelate, nor godlesse cater-cap; but defieth all the race of them,” including “a challenge” to meet them personally; was probably one of their latest efforts. The printing and the orthography show all the imperfections of that haste in which they were forced to print this work. As they lost their strength, they were getting more venomous. Among the little Martins disturbed in the hour of parturition, but already christened, there were: “Episto Mastix;” “The Lives and Doings of English Popes;” “Itinerarium, or Visitations;” “Lambethisms.” The “Itinerary” was a survey of every clergyman of England! and served as a model to a similar work, which appeared during the time of the Commonwealth. The “Lambethisms” were secrets divulged by Martin, who, it seems, had got into the palace itself! Their productions were, probably, often got up in haste, in utter scorn of the Horatian precept. [These pamphlets were printed with difficulty and danger, in secrecy and fear, for they were rigidly denounced by the government of Elizabeth. Sir George Paul, in his “Life of Archbishop Whitgift,” informs us that they were printed with a kind of wandering press, which was first set up at Moulsey, near Kingston-on-Thames, and from thence conveyed to Fauseley in Northamptonshire, and from thence to Norton, afterwards to Coventry, from thence to Welstone in Warwickshire, from which place the letters were sent to another press in or near Manchester; where by the means of Henry, Earl of Derby, the press was discovered in printing “More Work for a Cooper;” an answer to Bishop Cooper’s attack on the party, and a work so rare Mr. Maskell says, “I believe no copy of it, in any state, remains.”]
As a great curiosity, I preserve a fragment in the Scottish dialect, which well describes them and their views. The title is wanting in the only copy I have seen; but its extreme rarity is not its only value: there is something venerable in the criticism, and poignant in the political sarcasm.
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“Weil lettred clarkis endite their warkes, quoth Horace, slow and geasoun, |
“Most of the books under Martin’s name were composed by John Penry, John Udall, John Field, and Job Throckmorton, who all concurred in making Martin. See ‘Answer to Throgmorton’s Letter by Sutcliffe,’ p. 70; ‘More Work for a Cooper;’ and ‘Hay any Work for a Cooper;’ and ‘Some layd open in his Colours;’ were composed by Job Throckmorton.”—MS. Note by Thomas Baker. Udall, indeed, denied having any concern in these invectives, and professed to disapprove of them. We see Cartwright, however, of quite a different opinion. In Udall’s library some MS. notes had been seen by a person who considered them as materials for a Martin Mar-Prelate work in embryo, which Udall confessed were written “by a friend.” All the writers were silenced ministers; though it is not improbable that their scandalous tales, and much of the ribaldry, might have been contributed by their lowest retainers, those purveyors for the mob, of what they lately chose to call their “Pig’s-meat.”
The execution of Hacket, and condemnation of his party, who had declared him “King of Europe,” so that England was only a province to him, is noted in our “General History of England.” This was the first serious blow which alarmed the Puritanic party. Doubtless, this man was a mere maniac, and his ferocious passions broke out early in life; but, in that day, they permitted no lunacy as a plea for any politician. Cartwright held an intercourse with that party, as he had with Barrow, said to have been a debauched youth; yet we had a sect of Barrowists; and Robert Brown, the founder of another sect, named after him Brownists; which became very formidable. This Brown, for his relationship, was patronised by Cecil, Earl of Burleigh. He was a man of violent passions. He had a wife, with whom he never lived; and a church, wherein he never preached, observes the characterising Fuller, who knew him when Fuller was young. In one of the pamphlets of the time I have seen, it is mentioned that being reproached with beating his wife, he replied, “I do not beat Mrs. Brown as my wife, but as a curst cross old woman.” He closed his life in prison; not for his opinions, but for his brutality to a constable. The old women and the cobblers connected with these Martin Mar-Prelates are noticed in the burlesque epitaphs on Martin’s death, supposed to be made by his favourites; a humorous appendix to “Martin’s Monthminde.” Few political conspiracies, whenever religion forms a pretext, is without a woman. One Dame Lawson is distinguished, changing her “silke for sacke;” and other names might be added of ladies. Two cobblers are particularly noticed as some of the industrious purveyors of sedition through the kingdom—Cliffe, the cobbler, and one Newman. Cliffe’s epitaph on his friend Martin is not without humour:—
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“Adieu, both naule and bristles now for euer; |
Nor is Newman, the other cobbler, less mortified and pathetic. “The London Corresponding Society” had a more ancient origin than that sodality was aware.
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“My hope once was, my old shoes should be sticht; |
Among the Martin Mar-Prelate books was one entitled “The Cobbler’s Book.” This I have not seen; but these cobblers probably picked up intelligence for these scandalous chronicles. The writers, too, condescended to intersperse the cant dialect of the populace, with which the cobblers doubtless assisted these learned men, when busied in their buffoonery. Hence all their vulgar gibberish; the Shibboleth of the numerous class of their admirers—such as, “O, whose tat?” John Kankerbury, for Canterbury; Paltri-politans, for Metropolitans; See Villains, for Civilians; and Doctor of Devility, for Divinity! and more of this stamp. Who could imagine that the writers of these scurrilities were learned men, and that their patrons were men of rank! We find two knights heavily fined for secreting these books in their cellars. But it is the nature of rebellion to unite the two extremes; for want stirs the populace to rise, and excess the higher orders. This idea is admirably expressed in one of our elder poets:—
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“Want made them murmur; for the people, who Aleyne’s Henry VII. |