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An essay by Isaac Disraeli |
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Martin Mar-Prelate |
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Title: Martin Mar-Prelate Author: Isaac Disraeli [More Titles by Disraeli] Of the two prevalent factions in the reign of Elizabeth, the Catholics and the Puritans--Elizabeth's philosophical indifference offends both--Maunsell's Catalogue omits the books of both parties--of the Puritans, "the mild and moderate, with the fierce and fiery," a great religious body covering a political one--Thomas Cartwright, the chief of the Puritans, and his rival Whitgift--attempts to make the Ecclesiastical paramount to the Civil Power--his plan in dividing the country into comitial, provincial, and national assemblies, to be concentrated under the secret head at Warwick, where Cartwright was elected "perpetual Moderator!"--after the most bitter controversies, Cartwright became very compliant to his old rival Whitgift, when Archbishop of Canterbury--of MARTIN MAR-PRELATE--his sons--specimens of their popular ridicule and invective--Cartwright approves of this mode of controversy--better counteracted by the wits than by the grave admonishers--specimens of the ANTI-MARTIN MAR-PRELATES--of the authors of these surreptitious publications.
On the other side, the national evil took a new form. It is probable that the Queen, regarding the mere ceremonies of religion, now venerable with age, as matters of indifference, and her fine taste perhaps still lingering amid the solemn gorgeousness of the Roman service, and her senses and her emotions excited by the religious scenery, did not share in that abhorrence of the paintings and the images, the chant and the music, the censer and the altar, and the pomp of the prelatical habits, which was prompting many well-intentioned Reformers to reduce the ecclesiastical state into apostolical nakedness and primitive rudeness. She was slow to meet this austerity of feeling, which in this country at length extirpated those arts which exalt our nature, and for this these pious Vandals nicknamed the Queen "the untamed heifer;" and the fierce Knox expressly wrote his "First Blast Against the Monstrous Government of Women." Of these Reformers, many had imbibed the republican notions of Calvin. In their hatred of Popery, they imagined that they had not gone far enough in their wild notions of reform, for they viewed it, still shadowed out in the new hierarchy of the bishops. The fierce Calvin, in his little church at Geneva, presumed to rule a great nation on the scale of a parish institution; copying the apostolical equality at a time when the Church (say the Episcopalians) had all the weakness of infancy, and could live together in a community of all things, from a sense of their common poverty. Be this as it may, the dignified ecclesiastical order was a vulnerable institution, which could do no greater injury, and might effect as much public good as any other order in the state.[2] My business is not with this discussion. I mean to show how the republican system of these Reformers ended in a political struggle which, crushed in the reign of Elizabeth, and beaten down in that of James, so furiously triumphed under Charles. Their history exhibits the curious spectacle of a great religious body covering a political one--such as was discovered among the Jesuits, and such as may again distract the empire, in some new and unexpected shape. Elizabeth was harassed by the two factions of the intriguing Catholic and the disguised Republican. The age abounded with libels.[3] Many a Benedicite was handed to her from the Catholics; but a portentous personage, masked, stepped forth from a club of PURITANS, and terrified the nation by continued visitations, yet was never visible till the instant of his adieus--"starting like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons!" Men echo the tone of their age, yet still the same unvarying human nature is at work; and the Puritans,[4] who in the reign of Elizabeth imagined it was impossible to go too far in the business of reform, were the spirits called Roundheads under Charles, and who have got another nickname in our days. These wanted a Reformation of a Reformation--they aimed at reform, but they designed Revolution; and they would not accept of toleration, because they had determined on predominance.[5] Of this faction, the chief was THOMAS CARTWRIGHT, a person of great learning, and doubtless of great ambition. Early in life a disappointed man, the progress was easy to a disaffected subject. At a Philosophy Act, in the University of Cambridge, in the royal presence, the queen preferred and rewarded his opponent for the slighter and more attractive elegances in which the learned Cartwright was deficient. He felt the wound rankle in his ambitious spirit. He began, as Sir George Paul, in his "Life of Archbishop Whitgift," expresses it, "to kick against her Ecclesiastical Government." He expatriated himself several years, and returned fierce with the republican spirit he had caught among the Calvinists at Geneva, which aimed at the extirpation of the bishops. It was once more his fate to be poised against another rival, Whitgift, the Queen's Professor of Divinity. Cartwright, in some lectures, advanced his new doctrines; and these innovations soon raised a formidable party, "buzzing their conceits into the green heads of the University."[7] Whitgift regularly preached at Cartwright, but to little purpose; for when Cartwright preached at St. Mary's they were forced to take down the windows. Once our sly polemic, taking advantage of the absence of Whitgift, so powerfully operated, in three sermons on one Sunday, that in the evening his victory declared itself, by the students of Trinity College rejecting their surplices, as Papistical badges. Cartwright was now to be confuted by other means. The University refused him his degree of D.D.; condemned the lecturer to silence; and at length performed that last feeble act of power, expulsion. In a heart already alienated from the established authorities, this could only envenom a bitter spirit. Already he had felt a personal dislike to royalty, and now he had received an insult from the University: these were motives which, though concealed, could not fail to work in a courageous mind, whose new forms of religion accorded with his political feelings. The "Degrees" of the University, which he now declared to be "unlawful," were to be considered "as limbs of Antichrist." The whole hierarchy was to be exterminated for a republic of Presbyters; till, through the church, the republican, as we shall see, discovered a secret passage to the Cabinet of his Sovereign, where he had many protectors. Such is my conception of the character of Cartwright. The reader is enabled to judge for himself by the note.[8] But Cartwright, chilled by an imprisonment, and witnessing some of his party condemned, and some executed, after having long sustained the most elevated and rigid tone, suddenly let his alp of ice dissolve away in the gentlest thaw that ever occurred in political life. Ambitious he was, but not of martyrdom! His party appeared once formidable,[9] and his protection at Court sure. I have read several letters of the Earl of Leicester, in MS., that show he always shielded Cartwright, whenever in danger. Many of the ministers of Elizabeth were Puritans; but doubtless this was before their state policy had detected the politicians in mask. When some of his followers had dared to do what he had only thought, he appears to have forsaken them. They reproached him for this left-handed policy, some of the boldest of them declaring that they had neither acted nor written anything but what was warranted by his principles. I do not know many political ejaculations more affecting than that of Henry Barrow, said to have been a dissipated youth, when Cartwright refused, before Barrow's execution, to allow of a conference. The deluded man, after a deep sigh, said: "Shall I be thus forsaken by him? Was it not he that brought me first into these briars? and will he now leave me in the same? Was it not from him alone that I took my grounds? Or did I not, out of such premises as he pleased to give me, infer those propositions, and deduce those conclusions, for which I am now kept in these bonds?" He was soon after executed, with others. Then occurred one of those political spectacles at which the simple-minded stare, and the politic smile; when, after the most cruel civil war of words,[10] Cartwright wrote very compliant letters to his old rival, Whitgift, now Archbishop of Canterbury; while the Archbishop was pleading with the Queen in favour of the inveterate Republican, declaring that had Cartwright not so far engaged himself in the beginning, he thought he would have been, latterly, drawn into conformity. To clear up this mysterious conduct, we must observe that Cartwright seems to have graduated his political ambition to the degree the government touched of weakness or of strength; and besides, he was now growing prudent as he was growing rich. For it seems that he who was for scrambling for the Church revenues, while telling the people of the Apostles, silver and gold they had none, was himself "feeding too fair and fat" for the meagre groaning state of a pretended reformation. He had early in life studied that part of the law by which he had learned the marketable price of landed property; and as the cask still retains its old flavour, this despiser of bishops was still making the best interest for his money by land-jobbing.[11] One of the memorable effects of this attempted innovation was that continued stream of libels which ran throughout the nation, under the portentous name of Martin Mar-Prelate.[12] This extraordinary personage, in his collective form, for he is to be splitted into more than one, long terrified Church and State. He walked about the kingdom invisibly, dropping here a libel, and there a proclamation for sedition; but wherever Martinism was found, Martin was not. He prided himself in what he calls "Pistling the Bishops." Sometimes he hints to his pursuers how they may catch him, for he prints, "within two furlongs of a bouncing priest," or "in Europe;" while he acquaints his friends, who were so often uneasy for his safety, that "he has neither wife nor child," and prays "they may not be anxious for him, for he wishes that his head might not go to the grave in peace."--"I come, with the rope about my neck, to save you, howsoever it goeth with me." His press is interrupted, he is silent, and Lambeth seems to breathe in peace. But he has "a son; nay, five hundred sons!" and Martin Junior starts up! He inquires "Where his father is; he who had studied the art of pistle-making? Why has he been tongue-tied these four or five months? Good Nuncles (the bishops), have you closely murthered the gentleman in some of your prisons? Have you choaked him with a fat prebend or two? I trow my father will swallow down no such pills, for he would thus soon purge away all the conscience he hath. Do you mean to have the keeping of him? What need that? he hath five hundred sons in the land. My father would be sorry to put you to any such cost as you intend to be at with him. A meaner house, and less strength than the Tower, the Fleet, or Newgate, would serve him well enough. He is not of that ambitious vein that many of his brethren the bishops are, in seeking for more costly houses than even his father built for him." This same "Martin Junior," who, though he is but young, as he says, "has a pretty smattering gift in this pistle-making; and I fear, in a while, I shall take a pride in it." He had picked up beside a bush, where it had dropped from somebody, an imperfect paper of his father's:-- "Theses Martinianæ--set forth as an after-birth of the noble gentleman himselfe, by a pretty stripling of his, Martin Junior, and dedicated by him to his good nuncka, Maister John Cankerbury (i.e. Canterbury). Printed without a sly privilege of the Cater Caps"--(i.e. the square caps the bishops wore). But another of these five hundred sons, who declares himself to be his "reverend and elder brother, heir to the renowned Martin Mar-Prelate the Great," publishes "The just Censure and Reproof of Martin Junior; where, lest the Springall should be utterly discouraged in his good meaning, you shall finde that he is not bereaved of his due commendation." Martin Senior, after finding fault with Martin Junior for "his rash and indiscreet headiness," notwithstanding agrees with everything he had said. He confirms all, and cheers him; but charges him, "Should he meet their father in the street, never to ask his blessing, but walke smoothly and circumspectly; and if anie offer to talk with thee of Martin, talke thou straite of the voyage into Portugal, or of the happie death of the Duke of Guise, or some such accident; but meddle not with thy father. Only, if thou have gathered anie thing in visitation for thy father, intreate him to signify, in some secret printed pistle, where a will have it lefte. I feare least some of us should fall into John Canterburie's hand." Such were the mysterious personages who, for a long time, haunted the palaces of the bishops and the vicarages of the clergy, disappearing at the moment they were suddenly perceived to be near. Their slanders were not only coarse buffooneries, but the hottest effusions of hatred, with an unparalleled invective of nicknames.[13] Levelled at the bishops, even the natural defects, the personal infirmities, the domestic privacies, much more the tyranny, of these now "petty popes," now "bouncing priests," now "terrible priests," were the inexhaustible subjects of these popular invectives.[14] Those "pillars of the State" were now called "its caterpillars;" and the inferior clergy, who perhaps were not always friendly to their superiors, yet dreaded this new race of innovators, were distinguished as "halting neutrals." These invectives were well farced for the gross taste of the multitude; and even the jargon of the lowest of the populace affected, and perhaps the coarse malignity of two cobblers who were connected with the party, often enlivened the satirical page. The Martin Mar-Prelate productions are not, however, effusions of genius; they were addressed to the coarser passions of mankind, their hatred and contempt. The authors were grave men, but who affected to gain over the populace with a popular familiarity.[15] In vain the startled bishops remonstrated: they were supposed to be criminals, and were little attended to as their own advocates. Besides, they were solemn admonishers, and the mob are composed of laughers and scorners. The Court-party did not succeed more happily when they persecuted Martin, broke up his presses, and imprisoned his assistants. Never did sedition travel so fast, nor conceal itself so closely; for they employed a moveable press; and, as soon as it was surmised that Martin was in Surrey, it was found he was removed to Northamptonshire, while the next account came that he was showing his head in Warwickshire. And long they invisibly conveyed themselves, till in Lancashire the snake was scotched by the Earl of Derby, with all its little brood.[16] These pamphlets were "speedily dispersed and greedily read," not only by the people; they had readers and even patrons among persons of condition. They were found in the corners of chambers at Court; and when a prohibition issued that no person should carry about them any of the Mar-Prelate pamphlets on pain of punishment, the Earl of Essex observed to the Queen, "What then is to become of me?" drawing one of these pamphlets out of his bosom, and presenting it to her. The Martinists were better counteracted by the Wits, in some extraordinary effusions, prodigal of humour and invective Wit and raillery were happily exercised against these masked divines: for the gaiety of the Wits was not foreign to their feelings. The Mar-Prelates showed merry faces, but it was with a sardonic grin they had swallowed the convulsing herb; they horridly laughed against their will--at bottom all was gloom and despair. The extraordinary style of their pamphlets, concocted in the basest language of the populace, might have originated less from design than from the impotence of the writers. Grave and learned persons have often found to their cost that wit and humour must spring from the soil; no art of man can plant them there. With such, this play and grace of the intellect can never be the movements of their nature, but its convulsions. Father Martin and his two sons received "A sound boxe of the eare," in "a pistle" to "the father and the two sonnes, Huffe, Ruffe, and Snuffe, the three tame ruffians of the Church, who take pepper in the nose because they cannot marre prelates grating," when they once met with an adversary who openly declared-- "I profess rayling, and think it is as good a cudgel for a Martin as a stone for a dogge, or a whip for an ape, or poison for a rat. Who would curry an ass with an ivory comb? Give this beast thistles for provender. I doe but yet angle with a silken flie, to see whether Martins will nibble; and if I see that, why then I have wormes for the nonce, and will give them line enough, like a trowte, till they swallow both hooke and line, and then, Martin, beware your gills, for I'll make you daunce at the pole's end." "Fill thy answer as full of lies as of lines, swell like a toade, hiss like an adder, bite like a dog, and chatter like a monkey, my pen is prepared, and my mind; and if you chaunce to find anie worse words than you broughte, let them be put in your dad's dictionarie. Farewell, and be hanged; and I pray God you fare no worse.--Yours at an hour's warning." This was the proper way to reply to such writers, by driving them out of the field with their own implements of warfare. "Pasquill of England"[17] admirably observed of the papers of this faction--"Doubt not but that the same reckoning in the ende will be made of you which your favourers commonly make of their old shooes--when they are past wearing, they barter them awaie for newe broomes, or carrie them forth to the dunghill and leave them there." The writers of these Martin Mar-Prelate books have been tolerably ascertained,[18] considering the secrecy with which they were printed--sometimes at night, sometimes hid in cellars, and never long in one place: besides the artifices used in their dispersion, by motley personages, held together by an invisible chain of confederacy. Conspiracy, like other misery, "acquaints a man with strange bedfellows;" and the present confederacy combined persons of the most various descriptions, and perhaps of very opposite views. I find men of learning, and of rigid lives, intimately associated with dissipated, or with too ardently-tempered youths; connected, too, with maniacs, whose lunacy had taken a revolutionary turn; and men of rank combining with old women and cobblers.[19] Such are the party-coloured apostles of insurrection! and thus their honourable and dishonourable motives lie so blended together, that the historian cannot separate them. At the moment the haughty spirit of a conspirator is striking at the head of established authority, he is himself crouching to the basest intimates; and to escape often from an ideal degradation, he can bear with a real one. Of the heads of this party, I shall notice Penry and Udall, two self-devoted victims to Nonconformity. The most active was John Penry, or Ap Henry. He exulted that "he was born and bred in the mountains of Wales:" he had, however, studied at both our Universities. He had all the heat of his soil and of his party. He "wished that his head might not go down to the grave in peace," and was just the man to obtain his purpose. When he and his papers were at length seized, Penry pleaded that he could not be tried for sedition, professing unbounded loyalty to the Queen: such is the usual plea of even violent Reformers. Yet how could Elizabeth be the sovereign, unless she adopted the mode of government planned by these Reformers? In defence of his papers, he declared that they were only the private memorandums of a scholar, in which, during his wanderings about the kingdom, he had collected all the objections he had heard against the government. Yet these, though written down, might not be his own. He observed that they were not even English, nor intelligible to his accusers; but a few Welshisms could not save Ap Henry; and the judge, assuming the hardy position, that scribere est agere, the author found more honour conferred on his MSS. than his genius cared to receive. It was this very principle which proved so fatal, at a later period, to a more elevated politician than Penry; yet Algernon Sidney, perhaps, possessed not a spirit more Roman.[20] State necessity claimed another victim; and this ardent young man, whose execution had been at first unexpectedly postponed, was suddenly hurried from his dinner to a temporary gallows; a circumstance marked by its cruelty, but designed to prevent an expected tumult.[21] Contrasted with this fiery Mar-Prelate was another, the learned subtile John Udall. His was the spirit which dared to do all that Penry had dared, yet conducting himself in the heat of action with the tempered wariness of age: "If they silence me as a minister," said he, "it will allow me leisure to write; and then I will give the bishops such a blow as shall make their hearts ache." It was agreed among the party neither to deny, or to confess, writing any of their books, lest among the suspected the real author might thus be discovered, or forced solemnly to deny his own work; and when the Bishop of Rochester, to catch Udall by surprise, suddenly said, "Let me ask you a question concerning your book," the wary Udall replied, "It is not yet proved to be mine!" He adroitly explained away the offending passages the lawyers picked out of his book, and in a contest between him and the judge, not only repelled him with his own arms, but when his lordship would have wrestled on points of divinity, Udall expertly perplexed the lawyer by showing he had committed an anachronism of four hundred years! He was equally acute with the witnesses; for when one deposed that he had seen a catalogue of Udall's library, in which was inserted "The Demonstration of Discipline," the anonymous book for which Udall was prosecuted; with great ingenuity he observed that this was rather an argument that he was not the author, for "scholars use not to put their own books in the catalogue of those they have in their study." We observe with astonishment the tyrannical decrees of our courts of justice, which lasted till the happy Revolution. The bench was as depraved in their notions of the rights of the subject in the reign of Elizabeth as in those of Charles II. and James II. The Court refused to hear Udall's witnesses, on this strange principle, that "witnesses in favour of the prisoner were against the queen!" To which Udall replied, "It is for the queen to hear all things when the life of any of her subjects is in question." The criminal felt what was just more than his judges; and yet the judge, though to be reprobated for his mode, calling so learned a man "Sirrah!" was right in the thing, when he declared that "you would bring the queen and the crown under your girdles." It is remarkable that Udall repeatedly employed that expression which Algernon Sidney left as his last legacy to the people, when he told them he was about to die for "that Old Cause in which I was from my youth engaged." Udall perpetually insisted on "The Cause." This was a term which served at least for a watchword: it rallied the scattered members of the republican party. The precision of the expression might have been difficult to ascertain; and, perhaps, like every popular expedient, varied with "existing circumstances." I did not, however, know it had so remote an origin as in the reign of Elizabeth; and suspect it may still be freshened up, and varnished over, for any present occasion. The last stroke for Udall's character is the history of his condemnation. He suffered the cruel mockery of a pardon granted conditionally, by the intercession of the Scottish monarch but never signed by the Queen--and Udall mouldered away the remnant of his days in a rigid imprisonment.[22] Cartwright and Travers, the chief movers of this faction, retreated with haste and caution from the victims they had conducted to the place of execution, while they themselves sunk into a quiet forgetfulness and selfish repose.
[1] 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. [2] 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?" [3] 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:--
[4] 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:--
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! [5] 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. [6] So Heylin writes the word; but in the "Rythmes against Martin," a contemporary production, the term is Chiver. It is not in Cotgrave. [7] 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. [8] 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! [9] 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. [10] 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! [11] 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. [12] "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. [13] 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. [14] 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.
"From Sarum came a goos's egg, Whence hath Mar-Martin all his wit, What can the cockatrice hatch up Then must Mar-Martin have some smell
"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." [16] 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.
[18] "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." [19] 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:--
[21] 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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