September
1588-1589 A.D. Martin
Marprelate Tracts & the English Art of Pungent Castigation, Bite, & Satire
No
author. “The Marprelate
Controversy.” The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol.
III. N.d. http://www.bartleby.com/213/1701.html. Accessed 1 Sept 2014.
The
Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume III. Renascence and Reformation.
XVII. The Marprelate Controversy.
§ 1. The origin of the controversy.
Volume III. Renascence and Reformation.
XVII. The Marprelate Controversy.
§ 1. The origin of the controversy.
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THE fashion of printed discussion did not become general
in England before the reign of Elizabeth. Previous to her day, the chapbook
and the broadside, vehicles of popular literature, had contained little
beyond attractive romances or exciting pieces of news in ballad-form. Not
until a great party, eager to proclaim and to defend its principles, arose in
the nation, were the possibilities of the printing press, as an engine in the
warfare of opinion, fully realised. The puritan movement cannot, of course,
be held responsible for every one of those countless pamphlets in which the
age of Shakespeare was rich, but it is not too much to say that, excluding
purely personal squabbles, there is hardly a single controversy of the time
which is not directly or indirectly traceable to it. The revolution of the
seventeenth century was both religious and social, and it is important to
bear in mind that the pamphlet campaign preceding it shared its double
character. The religious and doctrinal tracts of the puritan
controversialists lie, for the most part, outside the literary field. One
series, however, wholly theological in intention, has won a place in the
annals of literature by originality of style and pungency of satire, and by
the fact that the first English novelist and the greatest Elizabethan
pamphleteer took up the fallen gauntlet. These, the so-called Marprelate
tracts, which gave rise to the most famous controversy of the period, form
the topic of the present chapter.
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The origin of the Marprelate controversy,
interesting as it may be to the church historian, is far removed from the
atmosphere of general literature, and must, therefore, be indicated as
briefly as possible. Under the weak archbishop Grindal, the puritan, 1 or, as it was later called, the
presbyterian, doctrine had been making great strides among the clergy of the
church of England. John Whitgift, long known as an uncompromising opponent of
puritanism, was raised to the throne of Canterbury in 1583, only just in time
to prevent the English reformation from following in the course already
marked out by the Scottish. As it was, matters had gone so far that Whitgift
found it necessary to adopt the most stringent measures, if the destinies of
the church were to be taken out of puritan hands. The most important of
these, from our present point of view, was the decree which he procured, in
1586, from the Star chamber, forbidding the publication of any book or
pamphlet unless previously authorised by himself or the bishop of London,
giving him full control over the Stationers’ company, empowering him to
determine the number of printing presses in use, and, finally, reviving a
previous law imposing the severest penalties on the printing of seditious or
slanderous books. In this way, he hoped to stem the ever-rising tide of
puritan pamphlets, and so to prevent the spread of doctrines which he
considered heretical. The Marprelate tracts were the direct outcome of the
feeling of indignation at his relentless policy of repression, and they
appeared in defiance of the newly created censorship. Episcopacy, as an
institution, had always been obnoxious to the puritans; it became doubly so
now, as the political instrument of their persecution. Elizabeth, while
sanctioning, and heartily approving of, Whitgift’s ecclesiastical policy, was
well content to allow all the unpopularity resulting from it to light upon
his shoulders; and the civil authorities, reluctant to persecute the
puritans, withheld their support from the bishops, and so forced them to fall
back upon the resources of their own prerogatives, and to strain these to the
uttermost. Excuses may, therefore, be found for both sides. Defenders of the
establishment were placed in an extremely difficult and disagreeable
position, while puritans cannot be blamed for converting an attack on
episcopacy in general into a diatribe against individual members of the
episcopate. After ten years of struggle, so strong a reaction set in that
parliament, formerly puritan in its sympathies, passed the famous
anti-puritan statute of 1593, punishing those who attacked the ecclesiastical
settlement with banishment or even death. The effect was magical. The
violence of the puritans abated as suddenly as it had sprung up in
1583. 2
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Thus was the vessel of puritanism wrecked on
its first trial voyage, in the teeth of the winds of tradition and authority.
But literature was the gainer by this storm of a decade, for the receding
waves left upon the shores of time a little body of tracts which are,
admittedly, the chief prose satires of the Elizabethan period. It was when
the battle between bishop and sectarian waxed hottest, that the quaint and
audacious personality calling himself “Martin Marprelate, gentleman,” first
made his appearance; and, though his activity only lasted two years, he
succeeded, during that short time, in thoroughly frightening the whole episcopal
bench, in doing much to undermine its authority and prestige with the common
people, and in providing the general public with food for laughter that has
not even yet entirely lost its savour.
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Martin took the field at the end of 1588;
light skirmishers, however, had been there before him. A year after
Whitgift’s accession to power there appeared a small octavo volume entitled A
Dialogue concerning the strife of our Church, from the press of the
puritan printer Robert Waldegrave, and in black-letter extremely like that
used by him later for the Marprelate tracts. 3 This pamphlet is almost certainly
by John Udall—so similar is it to other of his writings. The discussion is
chiefly carried on between a puritan divine and a bishop’s chaplain, and
turns upon topics such as non-residency, dumb ministers and the pomp of
bishops; but it contains no hint at all of the presbyterian discipline. Two
years later, in 1586, a clever satirical attack upon episcopacy attempted to
penetrate the archbishop’s lines of defence by masquerading in the guise of
anti-popery. The keen eye of Whitgift at once detected its real object, and
arrested its progress so effectually that, had he not himself preserved a
copy of it in his library at Lambeth, we might never have heard of it The
satire in question is an anonymous pamphlet, also in black-letter, styled A
Commission sente to the Pope, Cardynales, Bishops, Friers, Monkes, with all
the rable of that Viperous Generation by the highe and mighty Prince, and
King Sathanas, the Devill of Hell. It purports to be an infernal
despatch, instructing the officials mentioned on the title-page, and
especially “the great bishops our true messengers … whom we have constituted petty-popes
under the great Archpope of Rome,” as to the measures to be adopted against
the puritans. The constant allusions to “petty-popes,” “gatehouses,” “clinks”
and “proctors” leave no doubt as to the sympathies and intentions of the
author, who may, possibly, have been Martin himself, or his spiritual father
John Field.
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Note 3. Of this tract there is an interesting
copy in Trinity College library, Cambridge, with marginal notes in the
writing of two, if not three, different and, apparently, contemporary hands.
Some of the remarks have a direct bearing upon the subject of the Marprelate
tracts, Aylmer, bishop of London, being constantly referred to. [ back ]
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