also Patient Grissel, Rosamund,
Lancelot
du Lake.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v03
362 (#384) ############################################
362 Elizabethan Prose Fiction
>
we pass through tavern doors, enter haunts of iniquity and become
witnesses to the low cunning, the sordidness and the violence of
the society found there. Bohemian life is laid bare, various
characters of low life are drawn; and, in the middle of it all, a
notable youth is pointed out, as he, a veritable Shakescene, is
engaged in patching up old plays for the stage.
The next great realist, Thomas Nashe, was another of those
university wits who lived hard, wrote fiercely and died young.
He seems to have travelled in Germany and Italy; by 1589, he
had done with Cambridge, and was endeavouring, in the metropolis,
to live by his pen. His description as 'a fellow. . . whose muse was
armed with a gag tooth and his pen possessed with Hercules'
furies' shows how he struck a contemporary', but his vigour was
of the cheerful kind. With all his boisterousness, there is about
him an unconquerable gaiety, and, in spite of hopes of patronage
deferred, and an imprisonment on account of his unfortunate play,
the Isle of Dogs (1597), it was the ludicrous, rather than the
morbid, in life, that appealed to him.
Like his friend Greene, Nashe was responsible, in the first
place, for certain pamphlets dealing with the social life of London;
but he does not confine himself, as was the case with Greene, to
the outcast and the pariah, nor, on the other hand, does he find
much attraction in the steady-going citizen. His attack is directed
against respectable roguery, against foolish affectations and empty
superstition, and these things proved excellent whetstones for his
satirical wit. His Anatomie of Absurditie (1589) is a characteristic
study of contemporary manners. He plays with the theme of
Stubbes's Anatomy of Abuses (1583); but, while he does not deny
that much evil was abroad, he yet contrives to find much that is
amusing in the 'licentious follies' assailed by the puritan. In
Pierce Pennilesse, his Supplication to the Divell (1592), where he
figures as Pierce, Nashe gives a fair taste of his quality. He pillories,
among others, the travelled Englishman who would be humorous
forsooth, and have a broode of fashions by himselfe'; the brainless
politician who thought to be counted rare . . . by beeing solitarie';
and those inventors of religious sects who were a confusion to
their age. The result is a gallery of contemporary portraits,
faithfully reproduced, and tempered with wit. In 1593, he wrote
Christ's Teares over Jerusalem, a pamphlet which throws light
upon the morals of Elizabethan London, and, incidentally, depicts
the gamester, the threadbare scholar and tavern life generally.
1 For Nashe's share in the Marprelate coutroversy, see post, chap. XVII.
a
## p. 363 (#385) ############################################
Nashe's Unfortunate Traveller
363
He rails against those who put all their felicity in going
pompously and garishly, and then he turns his attack upon
dunce' preachers and usurers. The former he accuses of 'hotch-
potching' Scripture, 'without use or edification'; the latter had
drawn from Lodge his Alarum against Usurers (1584), while
their evil practices were numbered among notorious crimes in the
109th canon of 1603. The object of his ridicule in his next
pamphlet, Terrors of the Night (1594), is the superstition of the
age, and here Nashe amuses himself by discoursing on dreams,
devils and such like, in a way that must have proved entertaining
to many of his contemporaries. But his merriest effort was
reserved for his last: in Lenten Stuffe (1599), he writes in praise
of the red herring after a visit to Yarmouth, and his wit runs
riot, as he suggests the part which that homely fish had played in
the history of the world.
All this pamphleteering work, however, was completely over-
shadowed by his picaresque novel The Unfortunate Traveller or
the life of Jack Wilton, which appeared in 1594, and which was the
most remarkable work of its kind before the time of Defoe. It
relates the lively adventures of the rogue-hero, an English page,
who wanders abroad, and comes into contact with many kinds of
society. He enters taverns and palaces, makes acquaintance with
people worthy and unworthy, and so passes in review the Germany
and Italy of his day. The scene opens in the English camp before
Tournay, where the page is engaged in his knavish tricks. He
terrifies, for instance, a dull army victualler into distributing his
stores, so that the army had 'syder in boules, in scuppets and in
helmets. . . and if a man would have fild his bootes, there hee
might have had it. ' Such a humorist became, perforce, a
traveller, and he first appears at Münster in time to enjoy the con-
flict between the emperor and the anabaptists; then, in the
service of the earl of Surrey, he makes for Italy. Passing through
Rotterdam, the two travellers meet with Erasmus and Sir Thomas
More; they witness at Wittenberg an academic pageant and the old
play Acolastus, besides solemn disputations between Luther and
Carolostadius, and, finally, they strike up an acquaintance with the
famous magician, Cornelius Agrippa. At Venice, Jack elopes
with a magnifico's wife, but is overtaken once more by the earl at
Florence, where the latter enters a tournament on behalf of his
English lady-love Geraldine'. The page then moves on alone to
1 The authenticity of the episodes relating to Surrey is discussed in Courthope,
History of English Poetry, vol. 1, p. 77.
## p. 364 (#386) ############################################
364 Elizabethan Prose Fiction
Rome, where he remains for a short period in an atmosphere of
plague, robbery and murder, and, having learned, both by experi-
ence and bearsay, the gruesome horrors of the place, he finally
leaves the 'Sodom of Italy' for the less lively scenes of his own
country.
The form of this work, in the first place, is of great interest, for
it resembles the picaresque type indigenous to Spain. But this
need not imply that Nashe was a mere imitator ; on the contrary,
though he may have derived a definite stimulus from Lazarillo
de Tormes, the elements of his work represent a spontaneous
English growth. The Spanish rogue-novel was the outcome of a
widespread beggary brought about by the growth of militarism
and the decline of industry, by the increase of gypsies and the
indiscriminate charity of an all-powerful church. Similar social
conditions prevailed in Elizabethan England, though from different
causes, and the conditions which produced Lazarillo produced The
Unfortunate Traveller. It has, moreover, been shown, that while
Lyly and Sidney were indebted to Spain for certain elements in
their works, yet the ultimate origins of English courtesy-books
and of the Euphuistic manner, were wholly independent of Spanish
influence. ,
And so, in general, it may be said, that parallels exist-
ing between the Spanish and English literatures of the time were
the result of similar national conditions, of influences which were
common to both? In each case, the English development was later
than the Spanish but not due to it. Moreover, as regards Nashe in
particular, the matter and design of his novel would be quite
naturally suggested by the material of his pamphlets, and, possibly,
by reminiscences of his travels; while his choice of the realistic
form is partly accounted for by his strongly expressed scorn of
romances in general, as the fantasticall dreams of those exiled
Abbie lubbers [the monks). '
When compared with the Spanish picaresque type, The Un-
fortunate Traveller will be found to possess many points of
similarity. There is the same firm grasp of the realities of life, the
same penetrating observation and forceful expression; there are
the same qualities of humour and satire, the same rough drafts
of character-sketches; and the aim is that of entertainment rather
than reform. From the picaresque novel, however, it diverges in
its English mixture of tragedy with comedy, and, again, in the fact
6
1 See Underbill, Spanish Literature in the England of the Tudors ; Chandler,
Romances of Roguery (Pt I, the Picaresque Novel in Spain); and Utter, "The Beginnings
of the Picaresque Novel in England,' Harvard Monthly, Apr. 1906.
## p. 365 (#387) ############################################
Its Literary Qualities 365
that the animating impulse of its rogue-hero is not avarice but a
malignant and insatiable love of mischief. The Spanish picaro,
also, generally belonged to the lowest class and was wont to
confine his attentions very largely to Spanish society, but Jack
Wilton, a page, moves further afield and reviews no less expansive
a scene than that of western Europe in the first half of the six-
teenth century.
As regards its form in general, the work may be classified as a
novel of manners, though, obviously, it deals with different material
from that employed by Lyly in his Euphues. It also represents
our first historical novel. Nashe had promised some 'varietie of
mirth’; he had also proposed a “reasonable conveyance of history';
and thus the great intellectual and religious movements of the
preceding age are duly represented. They are represented, too, at
their most significant moments, and by the most impressive
personalities. Erasmus and Sir Thomas More are the representa-
tives of the humanistic movement; Surrey the courtier stands for a
vanishing chivalry; the militant Luther and the anabaptists repre-
sent religious thought; while the supernatural pretensions of Cor-
nelius Agrippa point to a still active superstition'. In this device
of mingling history with fiction, Nashe is practically original. In
introducing a tragic element into his work, he probably aimed at
presenting a more complete picture of actual life than was
possible by means of comedy alone; but in this he is not altogether
successful. His tragedy is apt to border upon the melodramatic,
and he is much happier in the comic vein. For his comedy, he
depends upon lively situation; he scorns Euphuistic wit, and futile
word play, as well as those cruder conceits which 'clownage kept
in pay. He is alike successful in his large bold outlines, and in
his detailed descriptions; his scenes are the more effective on
account of their incidental detail, and he is fully alive to the effect
of a pose, of the fold of a garment. ' The action is one of uniform
movement, retarded by no irrelevant episode or unnecessary
description; the novelist is proof even against the attractions of
Rome with its storied associations. The movements of the hero
are never lost sight of, and, in view of these facts, the work is
something more than a mere succession of scenes. It is true that
the author occasionally allows himsel some latitude in the matter
of personal reflections, but they can never be said to become
intrusive. For instance, he puts into the mouth of one of his
characters at Rome certain words of warning on the evils of travel;
his ardent enthusiasm for poetry is revealed when he writes,
i See Kollmann, "Nash's Unfortunate Traveller,' etc. , Anglia, XXI (x), 80–140.
'
## p. 366 (#388) ############################################
366
Prose Fiction
Elizabethan
6
6
concerning poets: “None come so neere to God in wit, none more
contemn the world. . . despised they are of the world because they
are not of the world'; and, again, his orthodox spirit cannot forbear
to point a moral to his story of the anabaptists: 'Heare what it is,'
he writes, “to be anabaptists, to be puritans, to be villains. '
The main characteristics of Nashe's mature prose are its
naturalness and force. Most of his contemporaries had aimed at
refinement rather than strength, they relied upon artifice which
soon lost its power of appeal. But Nashe, dealing with plain
things, writes in plain prose, and it was but natural for the satirist
of contemporary affectations to dismiss from his practice the prose
absurdities of the time. While he was at Cambridge, Euphues had
appeared to him as beyond all praise, and considerable regard for
Euphuistic effects appears in his earlier work. But, later, he dis-
carded, and helped Greene to discard, the specious aid of counterfeit
birds and hearbes and stones,' and his later 'vaine,' he took pride
in stating, was of his own begetting' and called 'no man father in
England. ' In the novel, the hero occasionally makes use of Euphuistic
similes and Latin tags, but a dramatic intention underlies this device,
for the page has frequently to‘engage his dupes with silver-sounding
tales. ' · From Nashe's later work, all this is absent; he successfully
aims at a familiar style, and the result embodies the strength
and weakness of actual conversation. In thus turning from
books to life, Nashe, like later writers in dialect, produces a style
fresh and picturesque, vivid, terse and droll: he avoids abstract
terms, and discards what is hackneyed. But, on the other hand,
not infrequently, he is faulty in his syntax, and inartistic, even
vulgar, in his colloquialisms. Not merely content with the force-
fulness of the ordinary conversational manner, he aims at heighten-
ing its effects in several ways; his scorn becomes more emphatic
in such descriptions as 'piperly pickthanke' and 'burlybond
butcher'; he is audacious in adaptation and coinage alike; he is a
lover of 'boystrous compound words,' for 'no speech or wordes of
any power or force . . . but must be swelling and boystrous. ' He
also appreciated the charm of Biblical phrase, for that stately
diction occasionally slips from his 'teare-stubbed pen,' while his
description of the anabaptists is the earliest example of Scott's
happy manner of dealing with the covenanters. In general, the
page's description of Aretino holds good of Nashe:
.
His penne was sharpe pointed like ponyard. . . . With more then musket
shot did he charge his quill where he meant to inveigh. . . . His sight pearst
like lightning into the entrailes of al abuses. . . . He was no timorous, servile,
flatterer of the common-wealth wherein he lived.
## p. 367 (#389) ############################################
Thomas Deloney
367
But, while the realistic type of work failed to attract as many
writers as the romance, Greene and Nashe do not stand alone.
Lodge's contribution consisted of The Life and Death of William
Longbeard (1593), which dealt, in humorous and realistic fashion,
with the story of a daring rogue. Breton wrote his Miseries of
a
Mavillia, which betrayed some want of acquaintance, however, with
the scenes of low life described; and, in 1595, appeared Chettle's
Piers Plainnes seaven yeres Prentiship, in which the picaro Piers
relates his life-story to Arcadian shepherds in Tempe. The work
thus hesitated between the Arcadian, the romantic and the
picaresque types, but its most successful passages are those which
relate to the hero's life in London, and to the haunts of usurers
and dealers in old clothes. Dickenson also adopted the same type
in his Greene in conceipt new raised from his grave (1598), a work,
which, following the methods of Greene, concerned itself, primarily,
with the tragic story of a fair Valeria of London, and, incidentally,
with low life in the metropolis.
More than ordinary interest is, however, attached to the
realistic prose fiction of Thomas Deloney, for he is the last of the
Elizabethans to come into his inheritance. As a novelist, he is,
practically, a recent discovery, though his work of the pamphlet
and ballad kind had previously been recognised. But, apart from
this, his prose tales possess considerable interest in themselves, no
less for their attractive narrative, their humour and colouring, than
for the fact that they help to fill in that picture of contemporary
life, which had been outlined, only in part, by the other writers.
Elizabethan prose fiction had, hitherto, been mainly concerned with
the wit and romance of rogues and gallants; Deloney as the
painter of the trading classes, discovers the humour, and even the
romance, of the prosaic citizen.
Born in 1543, Deloney seems to have worked for some time as a
silk weaver at Norwich, but, by 1586, he had moved to London,
and, before 1596, had written some fifty ballads. In this latter
year, however, he incurred official anger for introducing the queen
into one of his ballads in 'fond and indecent sort,' and was com-
pelled, in consequence, to seek temporary hiding. With his
ballads now silenced as well as his looms, he turned his attention
to literary work of another kind, and, having produced, between
1596 and 1600, his three prose narratives, before the century closed
he 'dyed poorely' and was 'honestly buried. '
His three works are built up on a common plan; a framework
See Lange, A. F. , The Gentle Craft,' Palaestra, XVIII.
## p. 368 (#390) ############################################
368
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
is constructed out of historical or legendary material, and into
this are then worked bourgeois descriptions of contemporary life;
each narrative, moreover, is devoted to the glorification of a craft,
and the craft is eulogised either by relating the story of some
successful captain of industry, or by glorying in the less tangible
forms of its earliest patrons.
Thomas of Reading is written to the honour and glory of the
clothiers' craft; it is designed to portray their honourable estate
under Henry I (thanks to a hint supplied by William of Malmes-
bury), and this it does by relating certain incidents in the lives of
six master-clothiers of the west country, whose wealth is repre-
sented by long lines of wagons creaking their way to London,
their importance by the ceremony paid them by royalty. To these
main incidents is added much humorous and descriptive matter, as
well as a somewhat tragic love-story concerning duke Robert.
There is no attempt at historical verisimilitude, for, in describing
Thomas and his fellows, the novelist is obviously sketching Eliza-
bethans. The humour, which is plentiful, arises out of a clever
reproduction of inn scenes and gossiping wives, but the love
passages are somewhat ineffective, being conducted on lines which
are strictly Euphuistic. The second novel, Jack of Newbury,
perpetuates the fame of a wealthy Berkshire weaver, one John
Winchcomb (1470—1514), and, at the same time, it commemorates
the ancient glories of the company of weavers. The hero is an
affable apprentice, who is wooed and won by his master's widow,
and, thereby, is raised to affluent circumstances. Subsequently, he
confounds his betters by his patriotism and philanthropy, enter-
tains Henry VIII in his Newbury establishment and helps his
fellow-weavers in Wolsey's despite. There is, in addition, the
usual digression and comic interlude. The widow's wooing, the
hero's fifteen pictures with their didactic intention, and the practi-
cal jokes played upon a jester and an Italian, are all characteristic
of Deloney's vein of humour. The work is amusing, in spite of
its crudity, while it also lights up the humbler but respectable
spheres of Elizabethan life.
The Gentle Craft, the third work, consists of a series of tales,
dedicated to the shoemaking cult. The first two stories, Sir Hugh
and Crispine and Crispinus, relate to early and noble patrons of the
gentle craft; but these works are not in Deloney's best style. They
aim at romantic and Euphuistic effects, and the author, obviously,
is uneasy under the greatness of his themes. The third story,
Simon Eyre, moves into the actual, and relates the career of the
a
## p. 369 (#391) ############################################
Deloney's Gentle Craft
369
philanthropic founder of Leadenhall (c. 1450), who, from a shoe-
maker's apprentice became lord mayor. A comic underplot is
added, in which a Frenchman and a Dutchman clumsily intrigue in
broken English for the hand of a serving-maid, and this forms an
excellent counterpart to Simon's stately progress through cere-
monies and banquets. The principal figure in the next story,
Richard Casteler, is that of Long Meg of Westminster, a
serving-maid, whose rattling deeds of 1540 or thereabouts had,
before 1582, become the subject of both ballad and pamphlet'.
The story consists of a series of attempts made by Meg and her
rival, Gillian, to win the love of the hero-apprentice. A most
effective situation is brought about when the two maids arrive at
the same hour at the supposed trysting-place in Tuttle Fields.
They each awkwardly offer an awkward explanation for their
presence there, but each sturdily refuses to leave the field; and
in this humour, they sat them down, and sometimes they stalkt round about
the field, till at last the watch met with them, who, contrary to Gillian's mind,
took pains to bring them home together. At what time they gave one another
such privie flouts that the watchmen took no little delight to hear it.
The upshot of it all is that the desirable Richard marries neither,
whereupon Meg indulges in a soliloquy reminiscent of Falstaff:
Wherefore is griefe good? ' asks the disappointed maid, 'Can it recall folly
past? No. Can it help a matter remediless? No. What then? Can grief
make unkind men courteous ? No. Then wherefore should I grieve? Nay,
soeing it is so, hang sorrow! I will never care for them that care not for me. '
The next story, Master Peachey and his men, gives a breezy
account of the cudgelling administered by the sturdy master-
shoemaker to certain insolent court bullies, and then goes on to
describe the rebuff experienced at the hands of a widow by the
journeyman Tom Drum, who, previously, had been an unfailing
diplomat in affairs of the heart. Tom's character is touched with
exquisite humour, while he has a pretty turn of verse, which he
exploits on his road to London, as follows:
6
The primrose in the grene forest,
The violets they be gay,
The double dazies and the rest
That trimly deck the way,
Doth move the spirits with brave delight
Who beauty's darlings be,
With hey tricksie, trim go tricksie
Under the greenwood tree.
1 For an account of Long Meg and the contemporary allusions to her fame, see
Chandler, Literature of Roguery, vol. 1, pp. 14+5.
E. L. III. CH. XVI.
24
## p. 370 (#392) ############################################
370
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
The last story is concerned with tavern-haunters and the
decayed race of minstrels. In it appears the figure of Anthony
Now-Now, one of the last of his tribe, from whose lips come the
following lines with their significant burden:
When should a man shew himself gor and kind?
When should a man comfort the sorrowful mind ?
O Anthony, now, now, now.
When is the best time to drink with a friend?
When is it meetest my money to spend ?
O Anthony, now, now, now.
In these works of Deloney, there is much that differs materially
from all previous types. Deloney, obviously, is far removed from
Lyly, though he, too, produces novels of manners, but it is the
bourgeois type which he handles, the city, not the court; he writes
to amuse rather than to instruct, and humour, not wit, is the main
ingredient of his style. He has reminiscences of the romance and
its peculiar style, but they form no real part of his production as a
whole; he succumbs to Euphuism when he diverges from his real
path, and these Euphuistic passages are precisely those which reveal
his limitations, namely, an occasional want of taste and an inability
to deal with certain situations which he creates. This is clearly seen
in the stilted character of all the love-passages and in the unreal
effect of the quasi-pathetic scene in Thomas of Reading. Romantic
themes, moreover, are as uncongenial to him as is the romantic
style. Passion lies outside bis ken; to him, love is rather a
matter of side-splitting laughter, a creator of absurd situations, a
provoker of rough practical jokes. His characters, therefore, have
but little in common with Greene's feminine creations, with Sidney's
Arcadians, or with Lodge's sylvan lovers. Nor does his work stand
much nearer to the rogue-novel of Nashe, though it deals abun-
dantly in practical jokes; for, while in the picaresque type these
jests form the narrative and are an end in themselves, in Deloney
they aim at describing manners, at affording an insight into con-
temporary life, or they are a device for inserting light interlude
into the body of the narrative. And, moreover, the hero, in
Deloney, is by no means a rogue: he is endowed, on the contrary,
with perhaps more than his share of virtue.
The influences which seem to have decided the actual form
of Deloney's novels are of various kinds. In the first place,
their bourgeois colouring was the result of circumstances;
a life spent within hearing of the looms had brought him into
## p. 371 (#393) ############################################
His Literary Characteristics
371
close sympathy with crafts and craftsmen. Then, again, his
earlier ballads, to some extent, suggest his material and shape
his style : so that in Deloney the ballad-maker, the potential
novelist is already visible. His themes in verse had been partly
historical', partly romantic and partly journalistics, and these
elements, particularly the first and the last, enter into his novels.
But his ballading days did more than suggest certain themes: the
experience simplified his style and encouraged him to adopt a more
self-effacing prose than even that of Nashe, for, in Nashe, the
scholar and the theorist are still visible. Deloney's 'quaint and
plain discourse,' with its lack of 'pickt words and choice phrases,
was, as he maintained, best fitted for 'matters of merriment,
especially as, for the most part, he treated of neither courtiers nor
scholars. Deloney's debt to the contemporary stage is also con-
siderable; that he had observed to some purpose is evident from the
happy parody which he devises of Falstaff's famous soliloquy. From
the stage, also, he borrows the idea of the comic underplot, which
forms an effective feature in all three works. To the same source
must, also, be ascribed his skilful dialogue, which is more natural,
less stilted than any that had yet appeared: while his use of
dialect and broken English in his attempts at verisimilitude, the
skill with which he drops and resumes the thread of his narrative,
must, again, have resulted from his observation of dramatic methods.
When Greene and Lyly wrote, the stage was yet to develop;
Deloney, writing at a later date, does not fail to profit by its rapid
extension, and his story of Simon Eyre, under Dekker's hands, was
to pass easily into comedy form, in The Shoemaker's Holiday".
Deloney's attraction for modern readers lies, to some extent, in
his scenes of London life. Familiar places like Billingsgate and
Islington, Fleet Street and Cheapside, appear in his works, though
it is the varied humanity which throngs those scenes that most
engages the attention. With great gusto, he portrays London
tradesmen and their apprentices, dignified aldermen and bragging
captains, stately city dames and rough serving-maids; dress is
described with knowledge and relish; he appreciates both the gay
1 Cf. the ballads, Edgar, King John, Wat Tyler and Flodden.
: Cf.
also Patient Grissel, Rosamund, Lancelot du Lake.
3 Cf. Lamentation of Page's wife of Plymouth and The Execution 14 Most
Wickett Traitors.
Wm Rowley's play The Shoemaker a Gentleman (1610) was based upon the first
two stories in The Gentle Craft. Henslowe also records a tragedy The Six Yeomen of
the West founded on Deloney's Thomas of Reading (see Schelling, Elis. Drama, 1908),'
vol. I, pp. 297–347.
24-2
## p. 372 (#394) ############################################
372
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
and the gray colouring of a picturesque age; and, while he notes
with precision and relates with effect, he is fully alive to the
humour of it all. He also revives earlier interesting traditions:
his work belongs, in the first instance, to the tradition represented
by the lay of Havelok, to the literature which celebrates the deeds
of ordinary folk. It belongs, also, to the traditions of the minstrel
and jester: he takes up their tasks where their oral labours leave
off. He witnesses to the passing of the old minstrel régime, for, in
him, minstrelsy merges into the novelist's craft: and in like
manner he absorbs the current jest-books, which were already
foretelling the decay of the jester. It is in this way that he
reflects, as does no other of his contemporaries, certain transitions
which were taking place in Elizabethan society and art.
His contribution to the Elizabethan novel is, in some sense, the
most interesting of all. Even in the best of contemporary novels,
there is much that is irksome, however interesting historically:
many of them are laboured, nearly all are affected and the story is
frequently hard to grasp, on account of the profuse efforts to
reveal the same. Deloney, on the other hand, tells his narrative
with a simple directness: almost everywhere there is present a
lightness of touch. He is a delightful humorist and an accurate
painter; his prose runs easily into spirited dialogue, and, when he
wishes to enliven the way, he is capable, like Tom Drum, of some
cheerful songs. His limitations are those of a pioneer; one must
not look for cunning structure or historical colouring, any more
than for analysis of motive or character development. He is
plying a craft as yet unformed; he uses a big brush to paint what
lay before him and he is successful in presenting a broad picture
of his age.
When all this prose fiction, however, has been placed in its
proper perspective, it presents a record of experiment rather than
of achievement; by the side of the drama, it is crude in form,
almost futile in effect. But the greatness of the drama was closely
bound up with temporary conditions, among which was a theatre
liberally patronised, important in social life and standing in close
touch with the life of the people. And then there was the public,
intensely fond of 'shows,' and finding in them what they were
unable to gather from the written word; a public, moreover, long
accustomed to dramatic representation, and whose idealistic tem-
perament demanded poetic form. These conditions were not to be
permanent, and the future lay with a type of work which provided
entertainment independent of these aids. It is in the prose fiction
## p. 373 (#395) ############################################
General Summary
373
of the time that the beginnings of this type are found, and this
historical interest is its first claim to recognition.
As to its actual achievement, one has to confess that this is
comparatively small, for it worked from no model and was inspired
by no tradition. It was wanting in coherent form and definite
purpose; its plots lacked logical development, the threads of a
story might be hopelessly confused; its characters were stiff and
formal, and its style was not always adapted to the matter in
hand. Nor can it be said to treat, as yet, the problems of life; it
was content, for the most part, with simple narrative, with rough
outlines of character and with studies of manners. But it im-
proved its methods as it went on, it experimented in styles both
simple and ornate, it made use of dialogue and it realised some-
thing of the wit and humour, as well as the descriptive power,
of which prose was capable.
In its own age, it appealed to both the court and the people,
and it was later social considerations which determined its future
line of progress. The courtly and heroic elements were to pass
with the Stuarts; but the more popular elements were to be taken
up in Addison's day by the growing middle class, and, with ever-
widening province and increasing art, were to result in the novel
as we now know it
## p. 374 (#396) ############################################
CHAPTER XVII
THE MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY
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 pro-
claim 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 pam-
phlets 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 contro-
versy of the period, form the topic of the present chapter.
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? , or, as it was later called, the presbyterian, doctrine had
1 The term 'puritan,' at this early period of the movement, was of almost entirely
doctrinal implication, and denoted one who supported the so-called church dig-
cipline. '
## p. 375 (#397) ############################################
The Origin of the Controversy 375
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 publica-
tion 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 ob-
noxious 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. Ex-
cuses 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
i See addenda.
• Prothero, Select Statutes, pp. xxxiii, lviii, 89, 169.
## p. 376 (#398) ############################################
376
The Marprelate Controversy
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.
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!
This pamphlet is almost certainly by John Udall-50 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
80 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
6
1 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 direot bearing upon the subject
of the Marprelate tracts, Ayliner, bishop of London, being constantly referred to.
## p. 377 (#399) ############################################
Penry's Aequity and Udall's Diotrephes 377
' 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.
Among Martin's forerunners, two were concerned in the
production of the famous tracts themselves. One of them,
John Penry, who has been called the father of Welsh noncon-
formity, published, in March 1587', a petition, which, at the same
time, was presented to parliament, calling attention to the de-
plorable state of religion in his native country, Wales. Five
hundred copies of this Treatise, containing the Aequity of an
humble supplication, were seized at once by Whitgift; and its
author was summoned before the court of high commission. After
being characteristically heckled by the archbishop, Penry was
retained for a month in prison and then released. In reading
his offending petition, it is difficult to find any justification for
such treatment. It has been described as a bitter attack upon
the church; but it contains nothing to support this description.
There are, indeed, certain passages that might be construed as
anti-episcopal ; but we have evidence for believing that it was
for treason rather than for heresy that Penry was arraigned”;
and there is a paragraph in The Aequity which lends colour to
this view. The puritans were loth, both from feelings of loyalty
and from fear of coming under the law of treason, to associate
Elizabeth with what they considered the evil practices of the
bishops; yet it was difficult to avoid accusing her by implication,
seeing that the bishops derived all the civil authority they pos-
sessed from her. Penry attempted to solve the problem by
turning the tables upon his adversaries and accusing them of
treason for laying the queen open to the possibility of such
slanders. It was this that seems to have roused the archbishop's
anger; though, as it was not in itself sufficient cause ior convic-
tion, the argument passed muster and reappears in the writings
of Udall and in the Marprelate tracts.
John Udall's personal connection with Martin was much
slighter than Penry's; but a small tractate of his, published
anonymously and printed without authority in April 1588, holds
a more important place in the history of the Marprelate contro-
versy than anything Penry is known to have written. Even were
it not so, The State of the Church of Englande or, as it is
generally called, Diotrephes, would still be worthy of notice in
i The Date of Penry's Aequity,' Cong. Hist. Soc. Trans. II, No. 2.
* Th' Appellation of John Penri, pp. 3-5.
## p. 378 (#400) ############################################
378
The Marprelate Controversy
a
a history of literature. King James is said to have considered
Udall “the greatest scholar in Europe,' and Diotrephes shows him
to have possessed humour as well as scholarship. The dialogue
in which the tract is written is, at times, handled a little crudely;
but the delineation of the time-serving publican, the cunning
papist and the worldly bishop, tolerant to all save those who
threaten his privileges, is a distinctly clever piece of work. There
is no mistaking Udall’s intentions. He puts a stern denunciation
of bishops and a defence of the new presbyterian discipline into
the mouth of Paul, a solemn and somewhat sententious 'preacher';
while the moral of the dialogue is that, while episcopacy is the
root of all social and religious evils, popery is the root of episcopacy.
A certain air of quietness and assurance about the whole contrasts
favourably with the boisterous spirit of raillery in which Martin
approaches the same topics. Diotrephes must take its place as
the first and most thoughtful of the puritan pamphlets in the
controversy.
If The Aequity was seized and its author cast into prison,
mercy could certainly not be expected for Diotrephes, which was
infinitely more outspoken and dangerous. For the time, Udall,
who was a preacher at Kingston-on-Thames, preserved his anony-
mity; and the whole weight of Whitgift's wrath fell upon the
printer, Robert Waldegrave. This man, who was to play an
extremely important part in the struggle that followed, had
already suffered several terms of imprisonment for printing
puritan discipline tracts! Early in 1588, he had again defied
the authorities by publishing Penry's second Welsh tract, An
Exhortation. On 16 April, his house was entered by the officers
of the Stationers' Company; and, by virtue of Whitgift's Star
chamber ordinance, a press, some pica type and many copies of
Diotrephes were confiscated. Waldegrave' managed to escape and
with him some small roman and italic type; but his occu-
pation was gone, and he had a wife and six children dependent
upon
him. His ruin, we shall see, was Martin's opportunity.
One more name must be mentioned before we come to close
quarters with Martin himself-that of John Field, a famous
puritan preacher, and part author of the first Admonition to
Parliament (1572), which, in the violence of its language and in
the secrecy of its production, reminds us forcibly of the Marprelate
tracts. He died in February 1588, at least eight months before
| Hay any worke for Cooper, ed. Petheram (1845), p. 65.
2 See addenda.
to carry
## p. 379 (#401) ############################################
The Story of the Press
379
the publication of Martin's first pamphlet; but the Marprelate
controversy was his legacy to his old enemies the bishops. We have
used gentle words too long,' he had remarked to the archbishop's
chaplain who visited him in prison, 'which have done us no good:
the wound grows desperate and needs a corrosive. 'l It was Martin
who applied this corrosive; but Field, before his death, had
prepared the ingredients. He is known to have collected certain
notes, consisting of stories to the discredit of the most prominent
bishops of the day. These came into the hands of Martin and
formed the basis of his earliest tract The Epistle. Had these
notes been destroyed, as, it is said, Field, upon his death-bed,
desired, there would perhaps have been no Marprelate con-
troversy ; certainly, without them, the first tract would have lost
all its point and very much of its piquancy.
It is now time to turn to Martin himself, and consider the
history of the secret printing press, which, like a masked gun,
dropped shell after shell into the episcopal camp. The type that
Waldegrave had rescued from the hands of the authorities was
conveyed to the London house of a certain Mistress Crane, a
well known puritan, where it remained, according to the evidence
of her servant, for two or three months, that is, until midsummer.
It is somewhat difficult to follow Waldegrave's movements after the
raid in April, as the information we possess about the Marprelate
press before November 1588 is very scanty and untrustworthy.
The seizure of the copies of Diotrephes probably necessitated its
reissue; and, as there are two distinct impressions extant, it is
legitimate to suppose that the printer, for some of this time, was
engaged upon this tasks. A close examination of the lettering and
workmanship of the tract, together with hints let fall by those
examined by the authorities in their investigation of the affair,
support the belief that it was printed by Waldegrave on a press
and with type belonging to Penry and secreted at Kingston-on-
Thames, of which town Udall was then parish priest. Hardby,
at the village of East Molesey, was Mistress Crane's country-house,
i Neal, Puritans (ed. 1837), vol. 1, p. 188.
Arber, Introductory Sketch to the Marprelate Controversy, p. 94. Most of the
facts relating to the Marprelate press are to be found in this collection of documents.
Field's importance has, hitherto, escaped notice. Penry confessed that his notes
formed the substance of The Epistle. Udall's notes, of which too much has been
heard, appear to bave concerned his own wrongs alone, the account of which covers
little more than a page of the first tract.
3 See addenda.
## p. 380 (#402) ############################################
380
The Marprelate Controversy
whither the rescued type was brought about midsummer, and, at
the same time, or in September, the black-letter in which the first
four Marprelate tracts were to be printed. On 10 June, the pur-
suivants had been at Kingston-on-Thames, looking for Waldegrave;
but, as they had failed to find him, he had probably moved to
East Molesey by that date. Anyhow, in July, he was probably
hard at work there upon a fresh tract by Udall, entitled A Demon-
stration of Discipline. This pamphlet possesses none of the
literary interest of Diotrephes, being little more than a bald
summary of the puritan arguments against episcopacy. Its author,
it may be noticed in passing, was, about this time, inhibited as a
preacher because of his outspoken sermons, and is, for that reason,
perhaps, much more bitter here than in the earlier tract. It
soon, however, became evident that something besides arguments
for church discipline and pleas for Wales was being hatched in
this little nest of puritans in the Thames valley. The first Mar-
prelate tract, commonly known as The Epistle, was printed by
Waldegrave under Penry's supervision at Mistress Crane's house,
and issued in October or at the beginning of the next month. It
burst upon the world with surprising effect. Early in November,
'Martin' was a name in everyone's mouth. So great, indeed, was
the stir that, on the 14th, we find Burghley, by royal command,
writing an urgent letter to Whitgift, bidding him use all the
means in his power to bring the authors to book. Penry had fore-
seen the coming storm, and the Thames valley had long been under
the eye of the pursuivants. On 1 November, therefore, Walde-
grave was already in Northamptonshire and his press on the road
behind him.
It was natural that the press should gravitate into this district.
Penry, on 8 September, had married a lady of Northampton and
made his home there; and there was another and no less im-
portant reason for the direction taken. At a village, called Hasely,
lying a little to the north-west of Warwick and, therefore, no very
great distance from Northampton, dwelt a certain Job Throck-
morton, who had much to do with the production of the tracts.
The place to which the press and printer were removed was the
house of Penry's friend, Sir Richard Knightley, at Fawsley,
twelve miles from Northampton on the Warwick side and, there-
fore, easily accessible both to Penry and Throckmorton. Not-
withstanding the strictest secrecy observed by all, it was found
impossible to remain long there. During the stay, only one tract
so far as we know, was printed—the second Martin,' known as
## p. 381 (#403) ############################################
381
The Story of the Press
The Epitome. This, the longest but one of Martin's productions,
was printed, distributed and already in the archbishop's hands,
before 6 December? : possibly, therefore, it had been partially
printed before the move from Molesey. Its appearance led the
authorities to redouble their efforts to discover the wandering press.
On 29 January 1589, a pursuivant made a raid on Penry's house at
Northampton, carrying off his papers; and, in February, a proclama-
tion was issued against 'sundry schismatical and seditious bookes,
diffamatorie Libels and other fantastical writings' that, of late, had
been 'secretly published and dispersed. ' Meanwhile, the press
was again on its travels. At the end of 1588, or the beginning of
1589, it was carted to another house belonging to Sir Richard
Knightley, situated at a little village near Daventry, called Norton.
Here it remained idle for about a fortnight, when it was taken
to Coventry and bestowed in the White Friars, a house belonging
to John Hales, a relative of Sir Richard. From thence, two
Marprelate tracts were issued, The Minerall Conclusions, at the
end of February, and Hay any worke for Cooper, about the 20th
of the following month, another of Penry's Welsh pamphlets,
known as A Supplication to the Parliament, appearing between
these two dates. At this juncture, a worse evil befell the Mar-
tinists than the compulsory nomadism they had hitherto endured.
The man behind the gun began to tire of his task. At the
beginning of April, Waldegrave informed a friend of his intention
to quit the Marprelate cause. He was encouraged in this
determination, not merely by personal fears, but, also, by the
dislike of Martin's methods, openly expressed by the majority of
puritan preachers. What happened to him immediately afterwards
is not clear. We hear of him next at Rochelle, whither he probably
found it safest to retire. He took away with him the black-letter
in which the first four Marprelate tracts are printed, leaving
it, perhaps, in London on his way through. Though no longer
the Marprelate printer, he did not, therefore, sever all con-
nection with Penry and Throckmorton. During the summer of
1589, he printed Th' appeilation of John Penri, and, about the
same time, an anonymous book M. Some laid open in his coulers,
said to be by Throckmorton and, therefore, of value as evidence
for the identity of Martin. It is generally believed that Walde-
grave also printed a little tract on the lines of Udall's Diotrephes,
entitled A Dialogue wherein is plainly laide open the tyrannicall
1 The Date of the second Marprelate Tract. ' W. Pierce, Journal Northants. Nat.
Hist. Soc. vol. XII, p. 103. Brook's Lives of the Puritans (1813), vol. I, p. 423.
## p. 382 (#404) ############################################
382
The Marprelate Controversy
dealing of L. Bishopps against God's children. It is not certain,
however, whether this was issued like the two others from
Rochelle, though undoubtedly, it appeared in 15891.
Waldegrave's desertion was a sad blow for Martin and silenced
his guns for a while. Another printer, one John Hodgkins, 'a
salt-petre man,' was engaged in May or early in June; but he
probably took some time in obtaining the necessary assistants, for
he did not begin to print until midsummer or after. The press,
or, perhaps we should say, one of the presses, had been removed
from Coventry and was now concealed in the house of Mistress
Wigston, at Wolston, a village some six miles to the south.
Hodgkins's first task was to print the Theses Martinianae or Martin
Junior, part of which, it is curious to notice, he had picked up in
the road, outside Throckmorton's house, when returning with Penry
from a visit there. He appears to have finished this about 22 July,
and its sequel, The just censure and reproofe of Martin Junior,
about a week later. He was then urged to take in hand another
tract called More worke for the Cooper. Not liking Penry's press,
however, he decided to take this manuscript away and print it on
a second press, previously sent by him to the neighbourhood of
Manchester, which, possibly, was his home.
362 Elizabethan Prose Fiction
>
we pass through tavern doors, enter haunts of iniquity and become
witnesses to the low cunning, the sordidness and the violence of
the society found there. Bohemian life is laid bare, various
characters of low life are drawn; and, in the middle of it all, a
notable youth is pointed out, as he, a veritable Shakescene, is
engaged in patching up old plays for the stage.
The next great realist, Thomas Nashe, was another of those
university wits who lived hard, wrote fiercely and died young.
He seems to have travelled in Germany and Italy; by 1589, he
had done with Cambridge, and was endeavouring, in the metropolis,
to live by his pen. His description as 'a fellow. . . whose muse was
armed with a gag tooth and his pen possessed with Hercules'
furies' shows how he struck a contemporary', but his vigour was
of the cheerful kind. With all his boisterousness, there is about
him an unconquerable gaiety, and, in spite of hopes of patronage
deferred, and an imprisonment on account of his unfortunate play,
the Isle of Dogs (1597), it was the ludicrous, rather than the
morbid, in life, that appealed to him.
Like his friend Greene, Nashe was responsible, in the first
place, for certain pamphlets dealing with the social life of London;
but he does not confine himself, as was the case with Greene, to
the outcast and the pariah, nor, on the other hand, does he find
much attraction in the steady-going citizen. His attack is directed
against respectable roguery, against foolish affectations and empty
superstition, and these things proved excellent whetstones for his
satirical wit. His Anatomie of Absurditie (1589) is a characteristic
study of contemporary manners. He plays with the theme of
Stubbes's Anatomy of Abuses (1583); but, while he does not deny
that much evil was abroad, he yet contrives to find much that is
amusing in the 'licentious follies' assailed by the puritan. In
Pierce Pennilesse, his Supplication to the Divell (1592), where he
figures as Pierce, Nashe gives a fair taste of his quality. He pillories,
among others, the travelled Englishman who would be humorous
forsooth, and have a broode of fashions by himselfe'; the brainless
politician who thought to be counted rare . . . by beeing solitarie';
and those inventors of religious sects who were a confusion to
their age. The result is a gallery of contemporary portraits,
faithfully reproduced, and tempered with wit. In 1593, he wrote
Christ's Teares over Jerusalem, a pamphlet which throws light
upon the morals of Elizabethan London, and, incidentally, depicts
the gamester, the threadbare scholar and tavern life generally.
1 For Nashe's share in the Marprelate coutroversy, see post, chap. XVII.
a
## p. 363 (#385) ############################################
Nashe's Unfortunate Traveller
363
He rails against those who put all their felicity in going
pompously and garishly, and then he turns his attack upon
dunce' preachers and usurers. The former he accuses of 'hotch-
potching' Scripture, 'without use or edification'; the latter had
drawn from Lodge his Alarum against Usurers (1584), while
their evil practices were numbered among notorious crimes in the
109th canon of 1603. The object of his ridicule in his next
pamphlet, Terrors of the Night (1594), is the superstition of the
age, and here Nashe amuses himself by discoursing on dreams,
devils and such like, in a way that must have proved entertaining
to many of his contemporaries. But his merriest effort was
reserved for his last: in Lenten Stuffe (1599), he writes in praise
of the red herring after a visit to Yarmouth, and his wit runs
riot, as he suggests the part which that homely fish had played in
the history of the world.
All this pamphleteering work, however, was completely over-
shadowed by his picaresque novel The Unfortunate Traveller or
the life of Jack Wilton, which appeared in 1594, and which was the
most remarkable work of its kind before the time of Defoe. It
relates the lively adventures of the rogue-hero, an English page,
who wanders abroad, and comes into contact with many kinds of
society. He enters taverns and palaces, makes acquaintance with
people worthy and unworthy, and so passes in review the Germany
and Italy of his day. The scene opens in the English camp before
Tournay, where the page is engaged in his knavish tricks. He
terrifies, for instance, a dull army victualler into distributing his
stores, so that the army had 'syder in boules, in scuppets and in
helmets. . . and if a man would have fild his bootes, there hee
might have had it. ' Such a humorist became, perforce, a
traveller, and he first appears at Münster in time to enjoy the con-
flict between the emperor and the anabaptists; then, in the
service of the earl of Surrey, he makes for Italy. Passing through
Rotterdam, the two travellers meet with Erasmus and Sir Thomas
More; they witness at Wittenberg an academic pageant and the old
play Acolastus, besides solemn disputations between Luther and
Carolostadius, and, finally, they strike up an acquaintance with the
famous magician, Cornelius Agrippa. At Venice, Jack elopes
with a magnifico's wife, but is overtaken once more by the earl at
Florence, where the latter enters a tournament on behalf of his
English lady-love Geraldine'. The page then moves on alone to
1 The authenticity of the episodes relating to Surrey is discussed in Courthope,
History of English Poetry, vol. 1, p. 77.
## p. 364 (#386) ############################################
364 Elizabethan Prose Fiction
Rome, where he remains for a short period in an atmosphere of
plague, robbery and murder, and, having learned, both by experi-
ence and bearsay, the gruesome horrors of the place, he finally
leaves the 'Sodom of Italy' for the less lively scenes of his own
country.
The form of this work, in the first place, is of great interest, for
it resembles the picaresque type indigenous to Spain. But this
need not imply that Nashe was a mere imitator ; on the contrary,
though he may have derived a definite stimulus from Lazarillo
de Tormes, the elements of his work represent a spontaneous
English growth. The Spanish rogue-novel was the outcome of a
widespread beggary brought about by the growth of militarism
and the decline of industry, by the increase of gypsies and the
indiscriminate charity of an all-powerful church. Similar social
conditions prevailed in Elizabethan England, though from different
causes, and the conditions which produced Lazarillo produced The
Unfortunate Traveller. It has, moreover, been shown, that while
Lyly and Sidney were indebted to Spain for certain elements in
their works, yet the ultimate origins of English courtesy-books
and of the Euphuistic manner, were wholly independent of Spanish
influence. ,
And so, in general, it may be said, that parallels exist-
ing between the Spanish and English literatures of the time were
the result of similar national conditions, of influences which were
common to both? In each case, the English development was later
than the Spanish but not due to it. Moreover, as regards Nashe in
particular, the matter and design of his novel would be quite
naturally suggested by the material of his pamphlets, and, possibly,
by reminiscences of his travels; while his choice of the realistic
form is partly accounted for by his strongly expressed scorn of
romances in general, as the fantasticall dreams of those exiled
Abbie lubbers [the monks). '
When compared with the Spanish picaresque type, The Un-
fortunate Traveller will be found to possess many points of
similarity. There is the same firm grasp of the realities of life, the
same penetrating observation and forceful expression; there are
the same qualities of humour and satire, the same rough drafts
of character-sketches; and the aim is that of entertainment rather
than reform. From the picaresque novel, however, it diverges in
its English mixture of tragedy with comedy, and, again, in the fact
6
1 See Underbill, Spanish Literature in the England of the Tudors ; Chandler,
Romances of Roguery (Pt I, the Picaresque Novel in Spain); and Utter, "The Beginnings
of the Picaresque Novel in England,' Harvard Monthly, Apr. 1906.
## p. 365 (#387) ############################################
Its Literary Qualities 365
that the animating impulse of its rogue-hero is not avarice but a
malignant and insatiable love of mischief. The Spanish picaro,
also, generally belonged to the lowest class and was wont to
confine his attentions very largely to Spanish society, but Jack
Wilton, a page, moves further afield and reviews no less expansive
a scene than that of western Europe in the first half of the six-
teenth century.
As regards its form in general, the work may be classified as a
novel of manners, though, obviously, it deals with different material
from that employed by Lyly in his Euphues. It also represents
our first historical novel. Nashe had promised some 'varietie of
mirth’; he had also proposed a “reasonable conveyance of history';
and thus the great intellectual and religious movements of the
preceding age are duly represented. They are represented, too, at
their most significant moments, and by the most impressive
personalities. Erasmus and Sir Thomas More are the representa-
tives of the humanistic movement; Surrey the courtier stands for a
vanishing chivalry; the militant Luther and the anabaptists repre-
sent religious thought; while the supernatural pretensions of Cor-
nelius Agrippa point to a still active superstition'. In this device
of mingling history with fiction, Nashe is practically original. In
introducing a tragic element into his work, he probably aimed at
presenting a more complete picture of actual life than was
possible by means of comedy alone; but in this he is not altogether
successful. His tragedy is apt to border upon the melodramatic,
and he is much happier in the comic vein. For his comedy, he
depends upon lively situation; he scorns Euphuistic wit, and futile
word play, as well as those cruder conceits which 'clownage kept
in pay. He is alike successful in his large bold outlines, and in
his detailed descriptions; his scenes are the more effective on
account of their incidental detail, and he is fully alive to the effect
of a pose, of the fold of a garment. ' The action is one of uniform
movement, retarded by no irrelevant episode or unnecessary
description; the novelist is proof even against the attractions of
Rome with its storied associations. The movements of the hero
are never lost sight of, and, in view of these facts, the work is
something more than a mere succession of scenes. It is true that
the author occasionally allows himsel some latitude in the matter
of personal reflections, but they can never be said to become
intrusive. For instance, he puts into the mouth of one of his
characters at Rome certain words of warning on the evils of travel;
his ardent enthusiasm for poetry is revealed when he writes,
i See Kollmann, "Nash's Unfortunate Traveller,' etc. , Anglia, XXI (x), 80–140.
'
## p. 366 (#388) ############################################
366
Prose Fiction
Elizabethan
6
6
concerning poets: “None come so neere to God in wit, none more
contemn the world. . . despised they are of the world because they
are not of the world'; and, again, his orthodox spirit cannot forbear
to point a moral to his story of the anabaptists: 'Heare what it is,'
he writes, “to be anabaptists, to be puritans, to be villains. '
The main characteristics of Nashe's mature prose are its
naturalness and force. Most of his contemporaries had aimed at
refinement rather than strength, they relied upon artifice which
soon lost its power of appeal. But Nashe, dealing with plain
things, writes in plain prose, and it was but natural for the satirist
of contemporary affectations to dismiss from his practice the prose
absurdities of the time. While he was at Cambridge, Euphues had
appeared to him as beyond all praise, and considerable regard for
Euphuistic effects appears in his earlier work. But, later, he dis-
carded, and helped Greene to discard, the specious aid of counterfeit
birds and hearbes and stones,' and his later 'vaine,' he took pride
in stating, was of his own begetting' and called 'no man father in
England. ' In the novel, the hero occasionally makes use of Euphuistic
similes and Latin tags, but a dramatic intention underlies this device,
for the page has frequently to‘engage his dupes with silver-sounding
tales. ' · From Nashe's later work, all this is absent; he successfully
aims at a familiar style, and the result embodies the strength
and weakness of actual conversation. In thus turning from
books to life, Nashe, like later writers in dialect, produces a style
fresh and picturesque, vivid, terse and droll: he avoids abstract
terms, and discards what is hackneyed. But, on the other hand,
not infrequently, he is faulty in his syntax, and inartistic, even
vulgar, in his colloquialisms. Not merely content with the force-
fulness of the ordinary conversational manner, he aims at heighten-
ing its effects in several ways; his scorn becomes more emphatic
in such descriptions as 'piperly pickthanke' and 'burlybond
butcher'; he is audacious in adaptation and coinage alike; he is a
lover of 'boystrous compound words,' for 'no speech or wordes of
any power or force . . . but must be swelling and boystrous. ' He
also appreciated the charm of Biblical phrase, for that stately
diction occasionally slips from his 'teare-stubbed pen,' while his
description of the anabaptists is the earliest example of Scott's
happy manner of dealing with the covenanters. In general, the
page's description of Aretino holds good of Nashe:
.
His penne was sharpe pointed like ponyard. . . . With more then musket
shot did he charge his quill where he meant to inveigh. . . . His sight pearst
like lightning into the entrailes of al abuses. . . . He was no timorous, servile,
flatterer of the common-wealth wherein he lived.
## p. 367 (#389) ############################################
Thomas Deloney
367
But, while the realistic type of work failed to attract as many
writers as the romance, Greene and Nashe do not stand alone.
Lodge's contribution consisted of The Life and Death of William
Longbeard (1593), which dealt, in humorous and realistic fashion,
with the story of a daring rogue. Breton wrote his Miseries of
a
Mavillia, which betrayed some want of acquaintance, however, with
the scenes of low life described; and, in 1595, appeared Chettle's
Piers Plainnes seaven yeres Prentiship, in which the picaro Piers
relates his life-story to Arcadian shepherds in Tempe. The work
thus hesitated between the Arcadian, the romantic and the
picaresque types, but its most successful passages are those which
relate to the hero's life in London, and to the haunts of usurers
and dealers in old clothes. Dickenson also adopted the same type
in his Greene in conceipt new raised from his grave (1598), a work,
which, following the methods of Greene, concerned itself, primarily,
with the tragic story of a fair Valeria of London, and, incidentally,
with low life in the metropolis.
More than ordinary interest is, however, attached to the
realistic prose fiction of Thomas Deloney, for he is the last of the
Elizabethans to come into his inheritance. As a novelist, he is,
practically, a recent discovery, though his work of the pamphlet
and ballad kind had previously been recognised. But, apart from
this, his prose tales possess considerable interest in themselves, no
less for their attractive narrative, their humour and colouring, than
for the fact that they help to fill in that picture of contemporary
life, which had been outlined, only in part, by the other writers.
Elizabethan prose fiction had, hitherto, been mainly concerned with
the wit and romance of rogues and gallants; Deloney as the
painter of the trading classes, discovers the humour, and even the
romance, of the prosaic citizen.
Born in 1543, Deloney seems to have worked for some time as a
silk weaver at Norwich, but, by 1586, he had moved to London,
and, before 1596, had written some fifty ballads. In this latter
year, however, he incurred official anger for introducing the queen
into one of his ballads in 'fond and indecent sort,' and was com-
pelled, in consequence, to seek temporary hiding. With his
ballads now silenced as well as his looms, he turned his attention
to literary work of another kind, and, having produced, between
1596 and 1600, his three prose narratives, before the century closed
he 'dyed poorely' and was 'honestly buried. '
His three works are built up on a common plan; a framework
See Lange, A. F. , The Gentle Craft,' Palaestra, XVIII.
## p. 368 (#390) ############################################
368
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
is constructed out of historical or legendary material, and into
this are then worked bourgeois descriptions of contemporary life;
each narrative, moreover, is devoted to the glorification of a craft,
and the craft is eulogised either by relating the story of some
successful captain of industry, or by glorying in the less tangible
forms of its earliest patrons.
Thomas of Reading is written to the honour and glory of the
clothiers' craft; it is designed to portray their honourable estate
under Henry I (thanks to a hint supplied by William of Malmes-
bury), and this it does by relating certain incidents in the lives of
six master-clothiers of the west country, whose wealth is repre-
sented by long lines of wagons creaking their way to London,
their importance by the ceremony paid them by royalty. To these
main incidents is added much humorous and descriptive matter, as
well as a somewhat tragic love-story concerning duke Robert.
There is no attempt at historical verisimilitude, for, in describing
Thomas and his fellows, the novelist is obviously sketching Eliza-
bethans. The humour, which is plentiful, arises out of a clever
reproduction of inn scenes and gossiping wives, but the love
passages are somewhat ineffective, being conducted on lines which
are strictly Euphuistic. The second novel, Jack of Newbury,
perpetuates the fame of a wealthy Berkshire weaver, one John
Winchcomb (1470—1514), and, at the same time, it commemorates
the ancient glories of the company of weavers. The hero is an
affable apprentice, who is wooed and won by his master's widow,
and, thereby, is raised to affluent circumstances. Subsequently, he
confounds his betters by his patriotism and philanthropy, enter-
tains Henry VIII in his Newbury establishment and helps his
fellow-weavers in Wolsey's despite. There is, in addition, the
usual digression and comic interlude. The widow's wooing, the
hero's fifteen pictures with their didactic intention, and the practi-
cal jokes played upon a jester and an Italian, are all characteristic
of Deloney's vein of humour. The work is amusing, in spite of
its crudity, while it also lights up the humbler but respectable
spheres of Elizabethan life.
The Gentle Craft, the third work, consists of a series of tales,
dedicated to the shoemaking cult. The first two stories, Sir Hugh
and Crispine and Crispinus, relate to early and noble patrons of the
gentle craft; but these works are not in Deloney's best style. They
aim at romantic and Euphuistic effects, and the author, obviously,
is uneasy under the greatness of his themes. The third story,
Simon Eyre, moves into the actual, and relates the career of the
a
## p. 369 (#391) ############################################
Deloney's Gentle Craft
369
philanthropic founder of Leadenhall (c. 1450), who, from a shoe-
maker's apprentice became lord mayor. A comic underplot is
added, in which a Frenchman and a Dutchman clumsily intrigue in
broken English for the hand of a serving-maid, and this forms an
excellent counterpart to Simon's stately progress through cere-
monies and banquets. The principal figure in the next story,
Richard Casteler, is that of Long Meg of Westminster, a
serving-maid, whose rattling deeds of 1540 or thereabouts had,
before 1582, become the subject of both ballad and pamphlet'.
The story consists of a series of attempts made by Meg and her
rival, Gillian, to win the love of the hero-apprentice. A most
effective situation is brought about when the two maids arrive at
the same hour at the supposed trysting-place in Tuttle Fields.
They each awkwardly offer an awkward explanation for their
presence there, but each sturdily refuses to leave the field; and
in this humour, they sat them down, and sometimes they stalkt round about
the field, till at last the watch met with them, who, contrary to Gillian's mind,
took pains to bring them home together. At what time they gave one another
such privie flouts that the watchmen took no little delight to hear it.
The upshot of it all is that the desirable Richard marries neither,
whereupon Meg indulges in a soliloquy reminiscent of Falstaff:
Wherefore is griefe good? ' asks the disappointed maid, 'Can it recall folly
past? No. Can it help a matter remediless? No. What then? Can grief
make unkind men courteous ? No. Then wherefore should I grieve? Nay,
soeing it is so, hang sorrow! I will never care for them that care not for me. '
The next story, Master Peachey and his men, gives a breezy
account of the cudgelling administered by the sturdy master-
shoemaker to certain insolent court bullies, and then goes on to
describe the rebuff experienced at the hands of a widow by the
journeyman Tom Drum, who, previously, had been an unfailing
diplomat in affairs of the heart. Tom's character is touched with
exquisite humour, while he has a pretty turn of verse, which he
exploits on his road to London, as follows:
6
The primrose in the grene forest,
The violets they be gay,
The double dazies and the rest
That trimly deck the way,
Doth move the spirits with brave delight
Who beauty's darlings be,
With hey tricksie, trim go tricksie
Under the greenwood tree.
1 For an account of Long Meg and the contemporary allusions to her fame, see
Chandler, Literature of Roguery, vol. 1, pp. 14+5.
E. L. III. CH. XVI.
24
## p. 370 (#392) ############################################
370
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
The last story is concerned with tavern-haunters and the
decayed race of minstrels. In it appears the figure of Anthony
Now-Now, one of the last of his tribe, from whose lips come the
following lines with their significant burden:
When should a man shew himself gor and kind?
When should a man comfort the sorrowful mind ?
O Anthony, now, now, now.
When is the best time to drink with a friend?
When is it meetest my money to spend ?
O Anthony, now, now, now.
In these works of Deloney, there is much that differs materially
from all previous types. Deloney, obviously, is far removed from
Lyly, though he, too, produces novels of manners, but it is the
bourgeois type which he handles, the city, not the court; he writes
to amuse rather than to instruct, and humour, not wit, is the main
ingredient of his style. He has reminiscences of the romance and
its peculiar style, but they form no real part of his production as a
whole; he succumbs to Euphuism when he diverges from his real
path, and these Euphuistic passages are precisely those which reveal
his limitations, namely, an occasional want of taste and an inability
to deal with certain situations which he creates. This is clearly seen
in the stilted character of all the love-passages and in the unreal
effect of the quasi-pathetic scene in Thomas of Reading. Romantic
themes, moreover, are as uncongenial to him as is the romantic
style. Passion lies outside bis ken; to him, love is rather a
matter of side-splitting laughter, a creator of absurd situations, a
provoker of rough practical jokes. His characters, therefore, have
but little in common with Greene's feminine creations, with Sidney's
Arcadians, or with Lodge's sylvan lovers. Nor does his work stand
much nearer to the rogue-novel of Nashe, though it deals abun-
dantly in practical jokes; for, while in the picaresque type these
jests form the narrative and are an end in themselves, in Deloney
they aim at describing manners, at affording an insight into con-
temporary life, or they are a device for inserting light interlude
into the body of the narrative. And, moreover, the hero, in
Deloney, is by no means a rogue: he is endowed, on the contrary,
with perhaps more than his share of virtue.
The influences which seem to have decided the actual form
of Deloney's novels are of various kinds. In the first place,
their bourgeois colouring was the result of circumstances;
a life spent within hearing of the looms had brought him into
## p. 371 (#393) ############################################
His Literary Characteristics
371
close sympathy with crafts and craftsmen. Then, again, his
earlier ballads, to some extent, suggest his material and shape
his style : so that in Deloney the ballad-maker, the potential
novelist is already visible. His themes in verse had been partly
historical', partly romantic and partly journalistics, and these
elements, particularly the first and the last, enter into his novels.
But his ballading days did more than suggest certain themes: the
experience simplified his style and encouraged him to adopt a more
self-effacing prose than even that of Nashe, for, in Nashe, the
scholar and the theorist are still visible. Deloney's 'quaint and
plain discourse,' with its lack of 'pickt words and choice phrases,
was, as he maintained, best fitted for 'matters of merriment,
especially as, for the most part, he treated of neither courtiers nor
scholars. Deloney's debt to the contemporary stage is also con-
siderable; that he had observed to some purpose is evident from the
happy parody which he devises of Falstaff's famous soliloquy. From
the stage, also, he borrows the idea of the comic underplot, which
forms an effective feature in all three works. To the same source
must, also, be ascribed his skilful dialogue, which is more natural,
less stilted than any that had yet appeared: while his use of
dialect and broken English in his attempts at verisimilitude, the
skill with which he drops and resumes the thread of his narrative,
must, again, have resulted from his observation of dramatic methods.
When Greene and Lyly wrote, the stage was yet to develop;
Deloney, writing at a later date, does not fail to profit by its rapid
extension, and his story of Simon Eyre, under Dekker's hands, was
to pass easily into comedy form, in The Shoemaker's Holiday".
Deloney's attraction for modern readers lies, to some extent, in
his scenes of London life. Familiar places like Billingsgate and
Islington, Fleet Street and Cheapside, appear in his works, though
it is the varied humanity which throngs those scenes that most
engages the attention. With great gusto, he portrays London
tradesmen and their apprentices, dignified aldermen and bragging
captains, stately city dames and rough serving-maids; dress is
described with knowledge and relish; he appreciates both the gay
1 Cf. the ballads, Edgar, King John, Wat Tyler and Flodden.
: Cf.
also Patient Grissel, Rosamund, Lancelot du Lake.
3 Cf. Lamentation of Page's wife of Plymouth and The Execution 14 Most
Wickett Traitors.
Wm Rowley's play The Shoemaker a Gentleman (1610) was based upon the first
two stories in The Gentle Craft. Henslowe also records a tragedy The Six Yeomen of
the West founded on Deloney's Thomas of Reading (see Schelling, Elis. Drama, 1908),'
vol. I, pp. 297–347.
24-2
## p. 372 (#394) ############################################
372
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
and the gray colouring of a picturesque age; and, while he notes
with precision and relates with effect, he is fully alive to the
humour of it all. He also revives earlier interesting traditions:
his work belongs, in the first instance, to the tradition represented
by the lay of Havelok, to the literature which celebrates the deeds
of ordinary folk. It belongs, also, to the traditions of the minstrel
and jester: he takes up their tasks where their oral labours leave
off. He witnesses to the passing of the old minstrel régime, for, in
him, minstrelsy merges into the novelist's craft: and in like
manner he absorbs the current jest-books, which were already
foretelling the decay of the jester. It is in this way that he
reflects, as does no other of his contemporaries, certain transitions
which were taking place in Elizabethan society and art.
His contribution to the Elizabethan novel is, in some sense, the
most interesting of all. Even in the best of contemporary novels,
there is much that is irksome, however interesting historically:
many of them are laboured, nearly all are affected and the story is
frequently hard to grasp, on account of the profuse efforts to
reveal the same. Deloney, on the other hand, tells his narrative
with a simple directness: almost everywhere there is present a
lightness of touch. He is a delightful humorist and an accurate
painter; his prose runs easily into spirited dialogue, and, when he
wishes to enliven the way, he is capable, like Tom Drum, of some
cheerful songs. His limitations are those of a pioneer; one must
not look for cunning structure or historical colouring, any more
than for analysis of motive or character development. He is
plying a craft as yet unformed; he uses a big brush to paint what
lay before him and he is successful in presenting a broad picture
of his age.
When all this prose fiction, however, has been placed in its
proper perspective, it presents a record of experiment rather than
of achievement; by the side of the drama, it is crude in form,
almost futile in effect. But the greatness of the drama was closely
bound up with temporary conditions, among which was a theatre
liberally patronised, important in social life and standing in close
touch with the life of the people. And then there was the public,
intensely fond of 'shows,' and finding in them what they were
unable to gather from the written word; a public, moreover, long
accustomed to dramatic representation, and whose idealistic tem-
perament demanded poetic form. These conditions were not to be
permanent, and the future lay with a type of work which provided
entertainment independent of these aids. It is in the prose fiction
## p. 373 (#395) ############################################
General Summary
373
of the time that the beginnings of this type are found, and this
historical interest is its first claim to recognition.
As to its actual achievement, one has to confess that this is
comparatively small, for it worked from no model and was inspired
by no tradition. It was wanting in coherent form and definite
purpose; its plots lacked logical development, the threads of a
story might be hopelessly confused; its characters were stiff and
formal, and its style was not always adapted to the matter in
hand. Nor can it be said to treat, as yet, the problems of life; it
was content, for the most part, with simple narrative, with rough
outlines of character and with studies of manners. But it im-
proved its methods as it went on, it experimented in styles both
simple and ornate, it made use of dialogue and it realised some-
thing of the wit and humour, as well as the descriptive power,
of which prose was capable.
In its own age, it appealed to both the court and the people,
and it was later social considerations which determined its future
line of progress. The courtly and heroic elements were to pass
with the Stuarts; but the more popular elements were to be taken
up in Addison's day by the growing middle class, and, with ever-
widening province and increasing art, were to result in the novel
as we now know it
## p. 374 (#396) ############################################
CHAPTER XVII
THE MARPRELATE CONTROVERSY
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 pro-
claim 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 pam-
phlets 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 contro-
versy of the period, form the topic of the present chapter.
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? , or, as it was later called, the presbyterian, doctrine had
1 The term 'puritan,' at this early period of the movement, was of almost entirely
doctrinal implication, and denoted one who supported the so-called church dig-
cipline. '
## p. 375 (#397) ############################################
The Origin of the Controversy 375
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 publica-
tion 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 ob-
noxious 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. Ex-
cuses 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
i See addenda.
• Prothero, Select Statutes, pp. xxxiii, lviii, 89, 169.
## p. 376 (#398) ############################################
376
The Marprelate Controversy
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.
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!
This pamphlet is almost certainly by John Udall-50 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
80 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
6
1 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 direot bearing upon the subject
of the Marprelate tracts, Ayliner, bishop of London, being constantly referred to.
## p. 377 (#399) ############################################
Penry's Aequity and Udall's Diotrephes 377
' 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.
Among Martin's forerunners, two were concerned in the
production of the famous tracts themselves. One of them,
John Penry, who has been called the father of Welsh noncon-
formity, published, in March 1587', a petition, which, at the same
time, was presented to parliament, calling attention to the de-
plorable state of religion in his native country, Wales. Five
hundred copies of this Treatise, containing the Aequity of an
humble supplication, were seized at once by Whitgift; and its
author was summoned before the court of high commission. After
being characteristically heckled by the archbishop, Penry was
retained for a month in prison and then released. In reading
his offending petition, it is difficult to find any justification for
such treatment. It has been described as a bitter attack upon
the church; but it contains nothing to support this description.
There are, indeed, certain passages that might be construed as
anti-episcopal ; but we have evidence for believing that it was
for treason rather than for heresy that Penry was arraigned”;
and there is a paragraph in The Aequity which lends colour to
this view. The puritans were loth, both from feelings of loyalty
and from fear of coming under the law of treason, to associate
Elizabeth with what they considered the evil practices of the
bishops; yet it was difficult to avoid accusing her by implication,
seeing that the bishops derived all the civil authority they pos-
sessed from her. Penry attempted to solve the problem by
turning the tables upon his adversaries and accusing them of
treason for laying the queen open to the possibility of such
slanders. It was this that seems to have roused the archbishop's
anger; though, as it was not in itself sufficient cause ior convic-
tion, the argument passed muster and reappears in the writings
of Udall and in the Marprelate tracts.
John Udall's personal connection with Martin was much
slighter than Penry's; but a small tractate of his, published
anonymously and printed without authority in April 1588, holds
a more important place in the history of the Marprelate contro-
versy than anything Penry is known to have written. Even were
it not so, The State of the Church of Englande or, as it is
generally called, Diotrephes, would still be worthy of notice in
i The Date of Penry's Aequity,' Cong. Hist. Soc. Trans. II, No. 2.
* Th' Appellation of John Penri, pp. 3-5.
## p. 378 (#400) ############################################
378
The Marprelate Controversy
a
a history of literature. King James is said to have considered
Udall “the greatest scholar in Europe,' and Diotrephes shows him
to have possessed humour as well as scholarship. The dialogue
in which the tract is written is, at times, handled a little crudely;
but the delineation of the time-serving publican, the cunning
papist and the worldly bishop, tolerant to all save those who
threaten his privileges, is a distinctly clever piece of work. There
is no mistaking Udall’s intentions. He puts a stern denunciation
of bishops and a defence of the new presbyterian discipline into
the mouth of Paul, a solemn and somewhat sententious 'preacher';
while the moral of the dialogue is that, while episcopacy is the
root of all social and religious evils, popery is the root of episcopacy.
A certain air of quietness and assurance about the whole contrasts
favourably with the boisterous spirit of raillery in which Martin
approaches the same topics. Diotrephes must take its place as
the first and most thoughtful of the puritan pamphlets in the
controversy.
If The Aequity was seized and its author cast into prison,
mercy could certainly not be expected for Diotrephes, which was
infinitely more outspoken and dangerous. For the time, Udall,
who was a preacher at Kingston-on-Thames, preserved his anony-
mity; and the whole weight of Whitgift's wrath fell upon the
printer, Robert Waldegrave. This man, who was to play an
extremely important part in the struggle that followed, had
already suffered several terms of imprisonment for printing
puritan discipline tracts! Early in 1588, he had again defied
the authorities by publishing Penry's second Welsh tract, An
Exhortation. On 16 April, his house was entered by the officers
of the Stationers' Company; and, by virtue of Whitgift's Star
chamber ordinance, a press, some pica type and many copies of
Diotrephes were confiscated. Waldegrave' managed to escape and
with him some small roman and italic type; but his occu-
pation was gone, and he had a wife and six children dependent
upon
him. His ruin, we shall see, was Martin's opportunity.
One more name must be mentioned before we come to close
quarters with Martin himself-that of John Field, a famous
puritan preacher, and part author of the first Admonition to
Parliament (1572), which, in the violence of its language and in
the secrecy of its production, reminds us forcibly of the Marprelate
tracts. He died in February 1588, at least eight months before
| Hay any worke for Cooper, ed. Petheram (1845), p. 65.
2 See addenda.
to carry
## p. 379 (#401) ############################################
The Story of the Press
379
the publication of Martin's first pamphlet; but the Marprelate
controversy was his legacy to his old enemies the bishops. We have
used gentle words too long,' he had remarked to the archbishop's
chaplain who visited him in prison, 'which have done us no good:
the wound grows desperate and needs a corrosive. 'l It was Martin
who applied this corrosive; but Field, before his death, had
prepared the ingredients. He is known to have collected certain
notes, consisting of stories to the discredit of the most prominent
bishops of the day. These came into the hands of Martin and
formed the basis of his earliest tract The Epistle. Had these
notes been destroyed, as, it is said, Field, upon his death-bed,
desired, there would perhaps have been no Marprelate con-
troversy ; certainly, without them, the first tract would have lost
all its point and very much of its piquancy.
It is now time to turn to Martin himself, and consider the
history of the secret printing press, which, like a masked gun,
dropped shell after shell into the episcopal camp. The type that
Waldegrave had rescued from the hands of the authorities was
conveyed to the London house of a certain Mistress Crane, a
well known puritan, where it remained, according to the evidence
of her servant, for two or three months, that is, until midsummer.
It is somewhat difficult to follow Waldegrave's movements after the
raid in April, as the information we possess about the Marprelate
press before November 1588 is very scanty and untrustworthy.
The seizure of the copies of Diotrephes probably necessitated its
reissue; and, as there are two distinct impressions extant, it is
legitimate to suppose that the printer, for some of this time, was
engaged upon this tasks. A close examination of the lettering and
workmanship of the tract, together with hints let fall by those
examined by the authorities in their investigation of the affair,
support the belief that it was printed by Waldegrave on a press
and with type belonging to Penry and secreted at Kingston-on-
Thames, of which town Udall was then parish priest. Hardby,
at the village of East Molesey, was Mistress Crane's country-house,
i Neal, Puritans (ed. 1837), vol. 1, p. 188.
Arber, Introductory Sketch to the Marprelate Controversy, p. 94. Most of the
facts relating to the Marprelate press are to be found in this collection of documents.
Field's importance has, hitherto, escaped notice. Penry confessed that his notes
formed the substance of The Epistle. Udall's notes, of which too much has been
heard, appear to bave concerned his own wrongs alone, the account of which covers
little more than a page of the first tract.
3 See addenda.
## p. 380 (#402) ############################################
380
The Marprelate Controversy
whither the rescued type was brought about midsummer, and, at
the same time, or in September, the black-letter in which the first
four Marprelate tracts were to be printed. On 10 June, the pur-
suivants had been at Kingston-on-Thames, looking for Waldegrave;
but, as they had failed to find him, he had probably moved to
East Molesey by that date. Anyhow, in July, he was probably
hard at work there upon a fresh tract by Udall, entitled A Demon-
stration of Discipline. This pamphlet possesses none of the
literary interest of Diotrephes, being little more than a bald
summary of the puritan arguments against episcopacy. Its author,
it may be noticed in passing, was, about this time, inhibited as a
preacher because of his outspoken sermons, and is, for that reason,
perhaps, much more bitter here than in the earlier tract. It
soon, however, became evident that something besides arguments
for church discipline and pleas for Wales was being hatched in
this little nest of puritans in the Thames valley. The first Mar-
prelate tract, commonly known as The Epistle, was printed by
Waldegrave under Penry's supervision at Mistress Crane's house,
and issued in October or at the beginning of the next month. It
burst upon the world with surprising effect. Early in November,
'Martin' was a name in everyone's mouth. So great, indeed, was
the stir that, on the 14th, we find Burghley, by royal command,
writing an urgent letter to Whitgift, bidding him use all the
means in his power to bring the authors to book. Penry had fore-
seen the coming storm, and the Thames valley had long been under
the eye of the pursuivants. On 1 November, therefore, Walde-
grave was already in Northamptonshire and his press on the road
behind him.
It was natural that the press should gravitate into this district.
Penry, on 8 September, had married a lady of Northampton and
made his home there; and there was another and no less im-
portant reason for the direction taken. At a village, called Hasely,
lying a little to the north-west of Warwick and, therefore, no very
great distance from Northampton, dwelt a certain Job Throck-
morton, who had much to do with the production of the tracts.
The place to which the press and printer were removed was the
house of Penry's friend, Sir Richard Knightley, at Fawsley,
twelve miles from Northampton on the Warwick side and, there-
fore, easily accessible both to Penry and Throckmorton. Not-
withstanding the strictest secrecy observed by all, it was found
impossible to remain long there. During the stay, only one tract
so far as we know, was printed—the second Martin,' known as
## p. 381 (#403) ############################################
381
The Story of the Press
The Epitome. This, the longest but one of Martin's productions,
was printed, distributed and already in the archbishop's hands,
before 6 December? : possibly, therefore, it had been partially
printed before the move from Molesey. Its appearance led the
authorities to redouble their efforts to discover the wandering press.
On 29 January 1589, a pursuivant made a raid on Penry's house at
Northampton, carrying off his papers; and, in February, a proclama-
tion was issued against 'sundry schismatical and seditious bookes,
diffamatorie Libels and other fantastical writings' that, of late, had
been 'secretly published and dispersed. ' Meanwhile, the press
was again on its travels. At the end of 1588, or the beginning of
1589, it was carted to another house belonging to Sir Richard
Knightley, situated at a little village near Daventry, called Norton.
Here it remained idle for about a fortnight, when it was taken
to Coventry and bestowed in the White Friars, a house belonging
to John Hales, a relative of Sir Richard. From thence, two
Marprelate tracts were issued, The Minerall Conclusions, at the
end of February, and Hay any worke for Cooper, about the 20th
of the following month, another of Penry's Welsh pamphlets,
known as A Supplication to the Parliament, appearing between
these two dates. At this juncture, a worse evil befell the Mar-
tinists than the compulsory nomadism they had hitherto endured.
The man behind the gun began to tire of his task. At the
beginning of April, Waldegrave informed a friend of his intention
to quit the Marprelate cause. He was encouraged in this
determination, not merely by personal fears, but, also, by the
dislike of Martin's methods, openly expressed by the majority of
puritan preachers. What happened to him immediately afterwards
is not clear. We hear of him next at Rochelle, whither he probably
found it safest to retire. He took away with him the black-letter
in which the first four Marprelate tracts are printed, leaving
it, perhaps, in London on his way through. Though no longer
the Marprelate printer, he did not, therefore, sever all con-
nection with Penry and Throckmorton. During the summer of
1589, he printed Th' appeilation of John Penri, and, about the
same time, an anonymous book M. Some laid open in his coulers,
said to be by Throckmorton and, therefore, of value as evidence
for the identity of Martin. It is generally believed that Walde-
grave also printed a little tract on the lines of Udall's Diotrephes,
entitled A Dialogue wherein is plainly laide open the tyrannicall
1 The Date of the second Marprelate Tract. ' W. Pierce, Journal Northants. Nat.
Hist. Soc. vol. XII, p. 103. Brook's Lives of the Puritans (1813), vol. I, p. 423.
## p. 382 (#404) ############################################
382
The Marprelate Controversy
dealing of L. Bishopps against God's children. It is not certain,
however, whether this was issued like the two others from
Rochelle, though undoubtedly, it appeared in 15891.
Waldegrave's desertion was a sad blow for Martin and silenced
his guns for a while. Another printer, one John Hodgkins, 'a
salt-petre man,' was engaged in May or early in June; but he
probably took some time in obtaining the necessary assistants, for
he did not begin to print until midsummer or after. The press,
or, perhaps we should say, one of the presses, had been removed
from Coventry and was now concealed in the house of Mistress
Wigston, at Wolston, a village some six miles to the south.
Hodgkins's first task was to print the Theses Martinianae or Martin
Junior, part of which, it is curious to notice, he had picked up in
the road, outside Throckmorton's house, when returning with Penry
from a visit there. He appears to have finished this about 22 July,
and its sequel, The just censure and reproofe of Martin Junior,
about a week later. He was then urged to take in hand another
tract called More worke for the Cooper. Not liking Penry's press,
however, he decided to take this manuscript away and print it on
a second press, previously sent by him to the neighbourhood of
Manchester, which, possibly, was his home.
