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were composed by Job Throckmorton. MS. Note by Thomas Baker. Udall, indeed, denied having any concern in these invectives, and pro- fessed to disapprove of them. We see Cart- wright, however, of quite a different opinion. In ndall's library, some manuscript notes had been seen by a person who considered them as materi- als for a Martin Mar-prelate work in embryo, which Udall confessed was written "by a friend." All the writers were silenced ministers; though it is not improbable that their scandalous tales, and much of the ribalrj', might have been con- tributed by their lowest retainers.
Of the puritans, the chief was Thomas Cart- wright, of whom we have already made mention at page 359 ante, was a person of great learning, and doubtless of great ambition. Early in life a disappointed man, the progress was easy to that of a dLsaffected subject. For some offence which he had taken at Cambridge, he expatri- ated himself several years, and returned fierce with the republican spirit he bad caught among the Calvinists, at Geneva, which aimed at the extirpation of the bishops. The whole hierarchy was to be exerminated for a republic of presby- ters; till through the church, the republican, as we shall see, discovered a secret passage to the cabinet of his sovereign. But, Cartvv right, 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 in the gentlest thaw that ever occurred in political life. Ambitious he was, but not of martyrdom! His party appeared once formidable, and his pro- tection sure. Cartwright well knew the concealed writers of the Marprelate tracts, and equally approved of them, for they frenuently consulted him, as appears by sir G. Paul's Life of Whit- gift, page 65.
Sir Francis Walsingham, 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 ispreserved in Collier's Eccl. Hut. vol. ii. 607. The Puri- tans had begun to divide the whole country into classes, provincial synods, Sec. They kept regis- ters, which recorded all the heads of their debates, to be finally transmitted to the secret head of the classes of Warwick, where Cart- wright governed as the perpetual moderator. These violent advocates for the freedom of the press had, however, an evident intention to mo- nopolise it, for they decreed that " no books should be put in print but by consent of the classes. The very star chamber they justly pro- tested against they were for raising among them- selves.
One of their chief objects of attack was Thomas Cooper, bishop of Lincoln, a labourious student, but married to a dissolute woman, whom the university of Oxford offered to sepa- rate 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 the bishop may be placed among that unlucky class of authors who have fallen victims to their names. Marprelate, besides many cruel hits at bishop Cooper's wife, was now always "making the Cooper's hoops tofiye off, and the bishop's tubs to leake out." The author of the books against bishop Cooper, is said to have been Job Throck- morton.*
Dr. John Aylmer, bishop of London, was anotherhero of the celebrated Martin Marprelate. " That bitter Puritan accompanied the bishop most pitilessly to his domestic amusements. "He will cry to his bowle," writes Martin, ' Rub! Rub! Rub! And when it goeth too far, he will say, 'the devill goe with it!' And then the bishop teill follow P'
Who could imagine that the writers of these satires were learned men, and that their patrons were men of rank. 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 by Aleyne one of our elder poets :
Want made them mnimor i for the people, who
To ^ their bread, do wrestle with their fiite,
Or those, who in saperfluons riot flow.
Soonest rebel. Convulsions in a State,
Like those which natural bodies do oppress.
Rise from repletion, or from emptiness.— HCTujf VII.
The writers of these Martin Marprelate books have been tolerably ascertained, considering the secrecy with which they were printed; some- times at night; sometimes hid m cellars, and never long in one place; besides the artificers used in their dispersion, by the motley personages, held togetlier by an invisible chain of confede- racy. This perambulatory press was first set up at Mousely, near Kingston, in Surry, thence conveyed to Fawsley, in Northamptonshire, the seat of sir Richard Knightley, who was a great favourer of the Puritan party, and at whose ex- pense these satires were printed. From Fawsley the press was removed to Norton, from there to an empty house belonging to Mr. Hales, cousin to sir Richard Knightley, situate in White Friars, in the city of Coventry, and which was
- llaif any work for Cooper; or a brief e piMiie, directed
by way of an huiUcation to the reverende bytAoppe, counsel- ling them, if they will need* be barrelled up, for feare of tmeliing in the noatriU of her Majeetie and the state, thai they would use the adeice of reverend Martin, for the pro- uiding of their Cooper. Because the reverend T. C. (by which mistical letters, is understood, eyther the bounstng parson of Easlmeane, or Tom Coakes, his c/taplainej to be an unskilful and deceytfull tubtrimmer. Wherein worthy Martin quits himselfelike a man J warraitt you, in the «io- dest defence of his selfe and his learned pisttes, and makes the Coopers hoopes toftye of, and the bishops tubs to leake ouiofailcrye. Penned andcompited by Martin the Metro- potUane. Printed in Europe, notfarre from some of the Mounting Priests. 158S. 4B pages *to.
A copy of this work was ofltered for £i %s.
An admonition to the people of England; wherein are answered, not only the slanderous untrvthes, reprochfulty uttered by Martin the loiter, InU alto many other crimes by some of his broode, objected generally against all bishops, and the chief of the clergie, purposely to deface and disere- dlt the present state of the exarch. By Thomas Cooper, afterwarda bishop of Lincoln, and translated to Rochester, London, printed by the deputies of Christopher Barker, 1S89, Ua.
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