As part of the IJBS Blog Series, Dr Ariel Hessayon (@ArielHessayon), Reader in early modern History at Goldsmiths, University of London, explores the origins and legacies of the comical, controversial and anti-clerical Martin Marprelate pamphlets across the 16th-17th centuries.

Whereas Part One of this blog post examined the religio-political context of the Martin Marprelate tracts, Part Two explores the tracts themselves. The objective of the Martinists was, in a manner of speaking, to push the Church of England further away from Rome (Popery) and closer to Geneva (Calvinism). The middle way – as they saw it – that had been navigated in the form of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, with its reintroduced Book of Common Prayer (1559) and modified Thirty-Nine Articles (1571), did not go far enough. Rather, the tightly knit and well-organised network of ‘Martinists’ responsible for the tracts wanted a separation of secular from ecclesiastical power, that is distinct spheres of influence for the magistracy and ministry. Moreover, they placed great emphasis on the Bible as the word of God, a divine word which had greater authority than traditions and the pronouncements of bishops. Indeed, it was high ranking ecclesiastical officials and academics – ‘petty popes, and petty antichrists’– that the Martinists initially had in their sights. Among them was a dean of Salisbury called John Bridge, who had written an exceptionally lengthy and tedious defence of the Church of England; the Archbishop of Canterbury; the Bishops of Winchester and London; and the master of a Cambridge College. This was at a time, it must be stressed, when printed works were strictly censored by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop of London and those delegated by them for that purpose. And while there was no Inquisition in the manner of Catholic Spain, there was still a Court of High Commission for investigating and punishing those found guilty of committing religious offences. Mercifully, this court could not sanction torture to extract confessions nor could it impose the death penalty. It did, however, operate in tandem with the secular Court of Star Chamber, whose officials investigated and heavily fined some of those suspected of being involved in the Marprelate affair.

As part of the IJBS Blog Series, Dr Ariel Hessayon (@ArielHessayon), Reader in early modern History at Goldsmiths, University of London, explores the origins and legacies of the comical, controversial and anti-clerical Martin Marprelate pamphlets across the 16th-17th centuries.

On 6 April 1593 the Cambridge-educated religious separatists Henry Barrow (c.1550–1593) and John Greenwood (c.1560–1593) were hanged for treason at Tyburn – a notorious site of execution outside the city of London. They had been found guilty of writing and publishing seditious literature with malicious intent. Just over a month later another Cambridge-educated religious dissident, the Welsh preacher and pamphleteer John Penry (1562/63–1593), was tried twice: firstly for inciting rebellion and insurrection, and then for attacking the Church of England through the publication of scandalous writings. Penry was found guilty and on 29 May 1593 likewise hanged, this time in Surrey. As for Penry’s co-conspirator, the Warwick MP Job Throckmorton (1545–1601), he too had been put on trial in 1590. In Throckmorton’s case this was a result of the government crackdown on Protestant dissenters suspected of being involved in the writing, publication and circulation of a series of texts issued under the pseudonym ‘Martin Marprelate’ and its subsequent variants.  Throckmorton, however, pleaded innocence: ‘I am not Martin, I knew not Martin’ he claimed.  And because of his relatively high social status and extensive connections, not to mention legal technicalities, Throckmorton escaped the fate that would befall Barrow, Greenwood and Penry. Instead he died in relative obscurity.