One of their works is “A Dialogue, wherein is laid open the tyrannical dealing of L. Bishopps against God’s children.” It is full of scurrilous stories, probably brought together by two active cobblers who were so useful to their junto. Yet the bishops of that day were not of dissolute manners; and the accusations are such, that it only proves their willingness to raise charges against them. Of one bishop they tell us, that after declaring he was poor, and what expenses he had been at, as Paul’s church could bear witness, shortly after hanged four of his servants for having robbed him of a considerable sum. Of another, who cut down all the woods at Hampstead, till the towns-women “fell a swaddling of his men,” and so saved Hampstead by their resolution. But when Martin would give a proof that the Bishop of London was one of the bishops of the devil, in his “Pistle to the terrible priests,” he tells this story:—“When the bishop throws his bowl (as he useth it commonly upon the Sabbath-day), he runnes after it; and if it be too hard, he cries Rub! rub! rub! the diuel goe with thee! and he goeth himself with it; so that by these words he names himself the Bishop of the Divel, and by his tirannical practice prooveth himselfe to be.” He tells, too, of a parson well known, who, being in the pulpit, and “hearing his dog cry, he out with this text: ‘Why, how now, hoe! can you not let my dog alone there? Come, Springe! come, Springe!’ and whistled the dog to the pulpit.” One of their chief objects of attack was Cooper, Bishop of Lincoln, a laborious student, but married to a dissolute woman, whom the University of Oxford offered to separate from him: but he said he knew his infirmity, and could not live without his wife, and was tender on the point of divorce. He had a greater misfortune than even this loose woman about him—his name could be punned on; and this bishop may be placed among that unlucky class of authors who have fallen victims to their names. Shenstone meant more than he expressed, when he thanked God that he could not be punned on. Mar-Prelate, besides many cruel hits at Bishop Cooper’s wife, was now always “making the Cooper’s hoops to flye off, and the bishop’s tubs to leake out.” In “The Protestatyon of Martin Marprelat,” where he tells of two bishops, “who so contended in throwing down elmes, as if the wager had bene whether of them should most have impoverished their bishopricks. Yet I blame not Mar-Elme so much as Cooper for this fact, because it is no less given him by his name to spoil elmes, than it is allowed him by the secret judgment of God to mar the Church. A man of Cooper’s age and occupation, so wel seene in that trade, might easily knowe that tubs made of green timber must needs leak out; and yet I do not so greatly marvel; for he that makes no conscience to be a deceiver in the building of the churche, will not stick for his game to be a deceitfull workeman in making of tubbs.”—p. 19. The author of the books against Bishop Cooper is said to have been Job Throckmorton, a learned man, affecting raillery and humour to court the mob.
Such was the strain of ribaldry and malice which Martin Mar-Prelate indulged, and by which he obtained full possession of the minds of the people for a considerable time. His libels were translated, and have been often quoted by the Roman Catholics abroad and at home for their particular purposes, just as the revolutionary publications in this country have been concluded abroad to be the general sentiments of the people of England; and thus our factions always will serve the interests of our enemies. Martin seems to have written little verse; but there is one epigram worth preserving for its bitterness.
Martin Senior, in his “Reproofe of Martin Junior,” complains that “his younger brother has not taken a little paines in ryming with Mar-Martin (one of their poetical antagonists), that the Cater-Caps may know how the meanest of my father’s sonnes is able to answeare them both at blunt and sharpe.” He then gives his younger brother a specimen of what he is hereafter to do. He attributes the satire of Mar-Martin to Dr. Bridges, Dean of Sarum, and John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury.
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“The first Rising, Generation, and Original of Mar-Martin.
“From Sarum came a goos’s egg, With specks and spots bepatched; A priest of Lambeth coucht thereon, Thus was Mar-Martin hatched. Whence hath Mar-Martin all his wit, But from that egge of Sarum? The rest comes all from great Sir John, Who rings us all this ’larum. What can the cockatrice hatch up But serpents like himselfe? What sees the ape within the glasse But a deformed elfe? Then must Mar-Martin have some smell Of forge, or else of fire: A sotte in wit, a beaste in minde, For so was damme and sire.” |
It would, however, appear that these revolutionary publications reached the universities, and probably fermented “the green heads” of our students, as the following grave admonition directed to them evidently proves:—
“Anti-Martinus sive monitio cujusdam Londinensis ad adolescentes vtrimque academiæ contra personatum quendam rabulam qui se Anglicè Martin Marprelat, &c. Londini, 1589, 4o.”
A popular favourite as he was, yet even Martin, in propria persona, acknowledges that his manner was not approved of by either party. His “Theses Martinianæ” opens thus: “I see my doings and my course misliked of many, both the good and the bad; though also I have favourers of both sortes. The bishops and their traine, though they stumble at the cause, yet especially mislike my maner of writing. Those whom foolishly men call Puritanes, like of the matter I have handled, but the forme they cannot brooke. So that herein I have them both for mine adversaries. But now what if I should take the course in certain theses or conclusions, without inveighing against either person or cause.” This was probably written after Martin had swallowed some of his own sauce, or taken his “Pap (offered to him) with a Hatchet,” as one of the most celebrated government pamphlets is entitled. But these “Theses Martinianæ,” without either scurrility or invective are the dullest things imaginable; abstract propositions were not palatable to the multitude; and then it was, after the trial had been made, that Martin Junior and Senior attempted to revive the spirit of the old gentleman; but if sedition has its progress, it has also its decline; and if it could not strike its blow when strongest, it only puled and made grimaces, prognostics of weakness and dissolution. This is admirably touched in “Pappe with an Hatchet.” “Now Old Martin appeared, with a wit worn into the socket, twingling and pinking like the snuffe of a candle; quantum mutatus ab illo, how unlike the knave he was before, not for malice, but for sharpnesse! The hogshead was even come to the hauncing, and nothing could be drawne from him but dregs; yet the emptie caske sounds lowder than when it was full, and protests more in his waining than he could performe in his waxing. I drew neere the sillie soul, whom I found quivering in two sheets of protestation paper (alluding to the work mentioned here in the following note). O how meager and leane he looked, so crest falne that his combe hung downe to his bill; and had I not been sure it was the picture of Envie, I should have sworn it had been the image of Death: so like the verie anatomie of Mischief, that one might see through all the ribbes of his conscience.”
In another rare pamphlet from the same school, “Pasquill of England to Martin Junior, in a countercuffe given to Martin Junior,” he humorously threatens to write “The Owle’s Almanack, wherein your night labours be set down;” and “some fruitful volumes of ‘The Lives of the Saints,’ which, maugre your father’s five hundred sons, shall be printed,” with “hays, jiggs, and roundelays, and madrigals, serving for epitaphs for his father’s hearse.”