the applicant. They were disposed of to boys under fourteen, provided they could raise the necessary sum of money.1 NOTES ... Who that knows anything of Bishop Latimer does not know his famous Sermon of the Plough, preached in St. Paul's, London, in 1548, in which he thus attacked his own order: "But this much I dare say, that since lording and loitering hath come up, preaching hath come down, contrary to the apostles' times; for they preached and lorded not, and now they lord and preach not. . . . For ever since the prelates were made lords and nobles, the plough standeth; there is no work done, the people starve. They hawk, they hunt, they card, they dice; they pastime in their prelacies with gallant gentlemen, with their dancing minions, and with their fresh companions, so that ploughing is set aside; and by their lording and loitering, preaching and ploughing is clean gone." It is in this sermon that the famous passage, which has become classical in pulpit literature, occurs: "And now I would ask a strange question: Who is the most diligentest bishop and prelate in all England? . . . There is one that passeth all the others, and is the most diligent prelate and preacher in all England. And will ye know who it is? I will tell It is the devil. He is the most diligent preacher of all others; he is never out of his diocese," etc. you. The order which Latimer thus so trenchantly assailed were the Protestant bishops of King Edward VI.'s reign. In the Appendix to his work on Church and State under the Tudors, Mr. Child has introduced a somewhat lengthy note on the alleged corruption of the clergy in the sixteenth century. Canon Dixon, in his History of the Church of England, vol. i. p. 23, had alleged that “ no general charge of corruption has ever been made good against the English clergy." Mr. Child subjects this statement to a searching examination, and reaches the conclusion that "to say, as Canon Dixon does, that no proof of deep corruption has been made good against the English clergy, is simply to fly in the face of the evidence, not only of satirists and lampooners, but of annalists and historians, of records and law reports." It is true that the evidence 1 Froude's History, vol. xi. p. 82. he adduces is mainly directed to prove the deep corruption of the "late pre-Reformation clergy," but he indicates very plainly how it was not confined to the Catholic clergy, but extended to their Protestant successors. "Three times in modern English history have the bulk of the clergy, as a class, been corrupt and rotten. In Henry VIII.'s reign, when the remedy came by the Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries. In Whitgift's primacy, when it came through the rise of the Puritans. In Queen Anne's reign, when it came through the lay-Reformers, the moral teachers Defoe, Steele, and Addison, in their penny folio half sheets, the Review, the Tatler, the Spectator, the Guardian," etc. . . . "In 1588 a small minority of the clergy, for the most part at work in towns, were intensely earnest, thoroughly pious, spiritually-minded men, but with a narrowness of view, and no great learning, and consequently with little general culture. At this time the bishops were thrusting hundreds of men into the ministry of the Church who were utterly unfit for their work.”— Introduction to the Epistle, by E. Arber, p. viii. II THE MARTIN MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY, 1588-1590. For I "I am called Martin Marprelat. There be many that greatly dislike of my doinges. I may haue my wants, I know. am a man. But my course I knowe to be ordinary and lawfull. I sawe the cause of Christs gouernment, and of the Bishops Antichristian dealing to be hidden. The most part of men could not be gotten to read any thing, written in the defence of the on[e] and against the other. I bethought mee therefore, of a way whereby men might be drawne to do both, perceiuing the humors of men in these times (especialy of those that are in any place) to be giuen to mirth. I tooke that course. I might lawfully do it. I [aye] for iesting is lawful by circumstances, euen in the greatest matters. The circumstances of time, place and persons vrged me thereunto. I neuer profaned the word in any iest. Other mirth I used as a couert, wherein I would bring the truth into light. The Lord being the authour both of mirth and grauitie, is it not lawfull in it selfe, for the trueth to vse eyther of these wayes, when the circumstances do make it lawful? "My purpose was and is to do good. I know I haue don no harme, howsoeuer som may iudg Martin to mar al. They are very weake on[e]s that so think. In that which I have written I know vndoubtedly, that I haue done the Lord and the state of this kingdom great seruice. Because I haue in som sort discouered the greatest enemies thereof. And by so much the most pestilent enemies, because they wound Gods relligion, and corrupt the state with Atheism and loosnes, and so cal for Gods vengance vppon vs all, euen vnder the coulor of relligion. I affirm them to be the greatest enemies that now our state hath, for if it were not for them, the trueth should haue more free passage herein, then now it hath. All [e]states thereby would be amended and so we should not be subiect vnto Gods displeasure, as now we are by reason of them."-Hay any Worke, etc. No account of English Puritanism and the desperate endeavour of the dominant hierarchy to strangle it in its cradle, would be at all complete if it contained no allusion to the famous Martin Marprelate Controversy,' "the Controversy," as Mr. Maskell calls it, " of the Elizabethan age." This controversy has a double interest, an interest to the student of English literature, as being the first successful, if not actually the earliest attempt to employ satire in ecclesiastical polemics, and also a very special interest to those who sympathise with the struggle for freedom of faith and conscience. These pungent tracts or pasquinades began to appear in 1588, the year of the Armada, and were issued under the nom de plume of Martin Marprelate. The proximate cause or 1 We need scarcely say that for what appears under this head we are greatly indebted to the valuable reprints in The English Scholar's Library of Old and Modern Works, edited by Edward Arber, F.S.A., Lecturer in English Literature, etc., University College, London, An Introductory Sketch to the Martin Marprelate Controversy, and The Epistle [1588]; also to the well-informed, careful, and elaborate lecture on The Martin Marprelate Controversy, by the Rev. H. M. Dexter, D.D., of New Bedford, Massachusetts, in his work on The Congregationalism of the last three hundred years, as seen in its Literature; also on the principle—Audi alteram partem-to a History of the Martin Marprelate Controversy, by the Rev. William Maskell, M.A., a reprint, with considerable additions of an article, "Martin Marprelate," in the Christian Remembrancer of 1845. These three works form a complete thesaurus of information regarding this famous controversy. Chap. ii. and Appendix, in Hunt's Religious Thought in England, may also be consulted with advantage. provocation of the Martinist pasquinades was the publication of a ponderous book by Dr. John Bridges, dean of Sarum, entitled, Defence of the Government Established in the Church of England for Ecclesiastical Matters, a reply to Travers' book on the Discipline, and an attempt to undermine the Puritan position generally. The Epistle.-The rejoinder appeared in the shape of a quarto tract, which bore the descriptive title, Oh read ouer D. John Bridges, for it is a worthy worke: Or an Epitome of the fyrste Booke of that right worshipfull volume, written against the Puritanes, in the defence of the noble cleargie, by as worshipfull a prieste, Iohn Bridges, Presbyter, Priest, or elder, doctor of Diuillitie, and Deane of Sarum. Wherein the arguments of the puritans are wisely prevented, that when they come to answere M. Doctor, they must needes say something that hath bene spoken. Compiled for the behoofe and overthrow of the Parsons, Fyckers, and Currats, that have lernt their Catechismes, and are past grace: By the reverend and worthie Martin Marprelate, gentleman, and dedicated to the Confocationhouse. The Epitome is not yet published, but it shall be when the Bishops are at conuenient leysure to view the same. the meane time, let them be content with this learned Epistle. Printed oversea, in Europe, within two furlongs of a Bounsing Priest, at the cost and charges of M. Marprelate, gentleman. In Without any preliminary skirmishing this broadside is at once discharged straight into the ranks of the bishops. "Right poysond, [puissant], persecuting, and terrible priests, the theame of mine Epistle vnto your |
