The writer of Algernon Sidney’s Memoirs could not have known this fact, or he would not have said that “this was the first indictment of high treason upon which any man lost his life for writing anything without publishing it.”—Edit. 1751, p. 21. It is curious to have Sidney’s own opinion on this point. We discover this on his trial. He gives it, assuming one of his own noble principles, not likely to have been allowed by the wretched Tories of that day. Addressing the villanous Jeffries, the Lord Chief Justice:—“My Lord, I think it is a right of mankind, and ’tis exercised by all studious men, to write, in their own closets, what they please, for their own memory; and no man can be answerable for it, unless they publish it.” Jeffries replied:—“Pray don’t go away with that right of mankind, that it is lawful for me to write what I will in my own closet, so I do not publish it. We must not endure men to talk thus, that by the right of nature every man may contrive mischief in his own chamber, and is not to be punished till he thinks fit to be called to it.” Jeffries was a profligate sophist, but his talents were as great as his vices.
Penry’s unfinished petition, which he designed to have presented to the Queen before the trial, is a bold and energetic composition; his protestation, after the trial, a pathetic prayer! Neale has preserved both in his “History of the Puritans.” With what simplicity of eloquence he remonstrates on the temporising government of Elizabeth. He thus addresses the Queen, under the title of Madam!—“Your standing is, and has been, by the Gospel: it is little beholden to you for anything that appears. The practice of your government shows that if you could have ruled without the Gospel, it would have been doubtful whether the Gospel should be established or not; for now that you are established in your throne by the Gospel, you suffer it to reach no farther than the end of your sceptre limiteth unto it.” Of a milder, and more melancholy cast, is the touching language, when the hope of life, but not the firmness of his cause had deserted him. “I look not to live this week to an end. I never took myself for a rebuker, much less for a reformer of states and kingdoms. I never did anything in this cause for contention, vainglory, or to draw disciples after me. Great things, in this life, I never sought for: sufficiency I had, with great outward trouble; but most content I was with my lot, and content with my untimely death, though I leave behind me a friendless widow and four infants.”—Such is often the pathetic cry of the simple-hearted, who fall the victims to the political views of more designing heads.
We could hardly have imagined that this eloquent and serious young man was that Martin Mar-Prelate who so long played the political ape before the populace, with all the mummery of their low buffoonery, and even mimicking their own idioms. The populace, however, seems to have been divided in their opinions respecting the sanity of his politics, as appears by some ludicrous lines, made on Penry’s death, by a northern rhymer.
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“The Welshman is hanged, Weever’s Funerall Monuments, p. 56. Edit. 1631. |
Observe what different conclusions are drawn from the same fact by opposite writers. Heylin, arguing that Udall had been justly condemned, adds, “the man remained a living monument of the archbishop’s extraordinary goodness to him in the preserving of that life which by the law he had forfeited.” But Neale, on the same point, considers him as one who “died for his conscience, and stands upon record as a monument of the oppression and cruelty of the government.” All this opposition of feeling is of the nature of party-spirit; but what is more curious in the history of human nature, is the change of opinion in the same family in the course of the same generation. The son of this Udall was as great a zealot for Conformity, and as great a sufferer for it from his father’s party, when they possessed political power. This son would not submit to their oaths and covenants, but, with his bedridden wife, was left unmercifully to perish in the open streets,—Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy, part ii. p. 178.
In Herbert’s “Typographical Antiquities,” p. 1689, this tract is intituled, “A Whip for an Ape, or Martin Displaied.” I have also seen the poem with this title. Readers were then often invited to an old book by a change of title: in some cases, I think the same work has been published with several titles.
Martin was a name for a bird, and a cant term for an Ass; and, as it appears here, an Ape. Our Martins, considered as birds, were often reminded that their proper food was “hempen seed,” which at length choked them. That it meant an Ass, appears from “Pappe with a Hatchet.” “Be thou Martin the bird or Martin the beast, a bird with the longest bill, or a beast with the longest ears, there’s a net spread for your neck.”—Sign. B. 5. There is an old French proverb, quoted by Cotgrave, voce Martin:—“Plus d’un ASNE à la foire, a nom Martin.”
Martin was a protégé of this Dame Lawson. There appear to have been few political conspiracies without a woman, whenever religion forms a part. This dame is thus noticed in the mock epitaphs on Martin’s funeral—
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“Away with silk, for I will mourn in sacke; Dame Lawson. |
“Sir Jeffrie’s Ale-tub” alludes to two knights who were ruinously fined, and hardly escaped with life, for their patronage of Martin.
Chwere, i.e. “that I were,” alluding to their frequently adopting the corrupt phraseology of the populace, to catch the ears of the mob.
It is a singular coincidence that Arnauld, in his caustic retort on the Jesuits, said—“I do not fear your pen, but your penknife.” The play on the word, tells even better in our language than in the original—plume and canife.
I know of only one Laneham, who wrote “A Narrative of the Queen’s Visit at Kenilworth Castle,” 1575. He was probably a redoubtable satirist. I do not find his name in Ritson’s “Bibliographia Poetica.”
Alluding to the title of one of their most virulent libels against Bishop Cooper [“Hay any worke for Cooper,” which was a pun on the Bishop’s name, conveyed in the street cry of an itinerant trader, and was followed by another entitled] “More work for a Cooper.” Cooper, in his “Admonition to the People of England,” had justly observed that this Mar-Prelate ought to have many other names. See note, p. 510.
I will close this note with an extract from “Pappe with a Hatchet,” which illustrates the ill effects of all sudden reforms, by an apposite and original image.
“There was an aged man that lived in a well-ordered Commonwealth by the space of threescore years, and finding, at the length, that by the heate of some men’s braines, and the warmness of other men’s blood, that newe alterations were in hammering, and that it grewe to such an height, that all the desperate and discontented persons were readie to runne their heads against their head; comming into the midst of these mutiners, cried, as loude as his yeeres would allow:—‘Springalls, and vnripened youthes, whose wisedomes are yet in the blade, when this snowe shall be melted (laying his hand on his siluer haires) then shall you find store of dust, and rather wish for the continuance of a long frost, than the incomming of an vntimely thaw.’”—Sig. D. 3. verso.