But Cartwright, chilled by an imprisonment, and witnessing some of his party condemned, and some executed, after having long sustained the most elevated and rigid tone, suddenly let his alp of ice dissolve away in the gentlest thaw that ever occurred in political life. Ambitious he was, but not of martyrdom! His party appeared once formidable,[410] and his protection at Court sure. I have read several letters of the Earl of Leicester, in MS., that show he always shielded Cartwright, whenever in danger. Many of the ministers of Elizabeth were Puritans; but doubtless this was before their state policy had detected the politicians in mask. When some of his followers had dared to do what he had only thought, he appears to have forsaken them. They reproached him for this left-handed policy, some of the boldest of them declaring that they had neither acted nor written anything but what was warranted by his principles. I do 509 not know many political ejaculations more affecting than that of Henry Barrow, said to have been a dissipated youth, when Cartwright refused, before Barrow’s execution, to allow of a conference. The deluded man, after a deep sigh, said: “Shall I be thus forsaken by him? Was it not he that brought me first into these briars? and will he now leave me in the same? Was it not from him alone that I took my grounds? Or did I not, out of such premises as he pleased to give me, infer those propositions, and deduce those conclusions, for which I am now kept in these bonds?” He was soon after executed, with others.

Then occurred one of those political spectacles at which the simple-minded stare, and the politic smile; when, after the most cruel civil war of words,[411] Cartwright wrote very compliant letters to his old rival, Whitgift, now Archbishop of Canterbury; while the Archbishop was pleading with the Queen in favour of the inveterate Republican, declaring that had Cartwright not so far engaged himself in the beginning, he thought he would have been, latterly, drawn into conformity. To clear up this mysterious conduct, we must observe that Cartwright seems to have graduated his political ambition to the degree the government touched of weakness or of strength; and besides, he was now growing prudent as he was growing rich. For it seems that he who was for scrambling for the Church revenues, while telling the people of the Apostles, silver and gold they had none, was himself “feeding too fair and fat” for the meagre groaning state of a pretended reformation. He had early in life studied that part of the law by which he had learned the marketable price of 510 landed property; and as the cask still retains its old flavour, this despiser of bishops was still making the best interest for his money by land-jobbing.[412]

One of the memorable effects of this attempted innovation was that continued stream of libels which ran throughout the nation, under the portentous name of Martin Mar-Prelate.[413] This extraordinary personage, in his collective form, for he is to be splitted into more than one, long terrified Church and State. He walked about the kingdom invisibly, dropping here a libel, and there a proclamation for sedition; but wherever Martinism was found, Martin was not. He prided himself in what he calls “Pistling the Bishops.” Sometimes he hints to his pursuers how they may catch him, for he prints, “within two furlongs of a bouncing priest,” or “in Europe;” while he acquaints his friends, who were so often uneasy for his safety, that “he has neither wife nor child,” and prays “they may not be anxious for him, for he wishes that his head might not go to the grave in peace.”—“I come, with the rope about my neck, to save you, howsoever it goeth with me.” His press is interrupted, he is silent, and Lambeth seems to breathe in peace. But he has “a son; nay, five hundred sons!” and Martin Junior starts up! He inquires

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“Where his father is; he who had studied the art of pistle-making? Why has he been tongue-tied these four or five months? Good Nuncles (the bishops), have you closely murthered the gentleman in some of your prisons? Have you choaked him with a fat prebend or two? I trow my father will swallow down no such pills, for he would thus soon purge away all the conscience he hath. Do you mean to have the keeping of him? What need that? he hath five hundred sons in the land. My father would be sorry to put you to any such cost as you intend to be at with him. A meaner house, and less strength than the Tower, the Fleet, or Newgate, would serve him well enough. He is not of that ambitious vein that many of his brethren the bishops are, in seeking for more costly houses than even his father built for him.”

This same “Martin Junior,” who, though he is but young, as he says, “has a pretty smattering gift in this pistle-making; and I fear, in a while, I shall take a pride in it.” He had picked up beside a bush, where it had dropped from somebody, an imperfect paper of his father’s:—

“Theses Martinianæ—set forth as an after-birth of the noble gentleman himselfe, by a pretty stripling of his, Martin Junior, and dedicated by him to his good nuncka, Maister John Cankerbury (i.e. Canterbury). Printed without a sly privilege of the Cater Caps”—(i.e. the square caps the bishops wore).

But another of these five hundred sons, who declares himself to be his “reverend and elder brother, heir to the renowned Martin Mar-Prelate the Great,” publishes

“The just Censure and Reproof of Martin Junior; where, lest the Springall should be utterly discouraged in his good meaning, you shall finde that he is not bereaved of his due commendation.”

Martin Senior, after finding fault with Martin Junior for “his rash and indiscreet headiness,” notwithstanding agrees with everything he had said. He confirms all, and cheers him; but charges him,