MARTIN MAR-PRELATE.

Of the two prevalent factions in the reign of Elizabeth, the Catholics and the Puritans -Elizabeth's philosophical indifference offends both-Maunsell's Catalogue omits the books of both parties-of the Puritans, "the mild and moderate, with the fierce and fiery," a great religious body covering a political one-Thomas Cartwright, the chief of the Puritans, and his rival Whitgift-attempts to make the Ecclesiastical paramount to the Civil power-his plan in dividing the country into comitial, provincial, and national assemblies, to be concentrated under the secret head at Warwick, where Cartwright was elected "perpetual Moderator!"-after the most bitter controversies, Cartwright became very compliant to his old rival Whitgift, when Archbishop of Canterbury-of MARTIN MAR-PRELATE―his sons-specimens of their popular ridicule and invective-Cartwright approves of this mode of controversy-better counteracted by the wits than by the grave admonishers-specimens of the ANTI-MARTIN MAR-PRELATES of the authors of these surreptitious publications.

THE Reformation, or the new Religion, as it was then called, under Elizabeth, was the most philosophical she could form, and therefore the most hateful to the zealots of all parties. It was worthy of her genius, and of a better age! Her sole object was, a deliverance from the Papal usurpation. Her own supremacy maintained, she designed to be the great sovereign of a great people; and the Catholic, for some time, was called to her council-board, and entered with the Reformer into the same church. But wisdom itself is too weak to regulate human affairs, when the passions of men rise up in obstinate insurrection. Elizabeth neither won over the Reformers nor the Catholics. An excommunicating bull, precipitated by Papal Machiavelism, driving on the brutalised obedience of its slaves, separated the friends. This was a political error arising from a misconception of the weakness of our government; and when discovered as such, a tolerating dispensation was granted "till better times; " an unhealing expedient, to join again a dismembered nation! It would surprise many, were they aware how numerous were our ancient families and our eminent characters who still remained Catholics. The country was then divided, and Englishmen who were heroic Romanists, fell the terrible victims.

The Church History by Dodd, a Catholic, fills three vols, folio: it is very rare and curious. Much of our own domestic history is interwoven in that of the fugitive papists, and the materials of this work are frequently drawn from their own archives, preserved in their seminaries at Douay, Valladolid, etc. which have not been accessible to Protestant writers. Here I discovered a copious nomenclature of eminent persons, and many literary men, with many unknown facts, both of a private and public nature. It is useful, at times, to know whether an English author was a Catholic.

On the other side, the national evil took a new form. It is probable that the Queen, regarding the mere ceremonies of religion, now venerable with age, as matters of indifference, and her fine taste perhaps still lingering amid the solemn gorgeousness of the Roman service, and her senses and her emotions excited by the religious scenery, did not share in that abhorrence of the paintings and the images, the chant and the music, the censer and the altar, and the pomp of the prelatical habits, which was prompting many well-intentioned Reformers to reduce the ecclesiastical state into apostolical nakedness and primitive rudeness. She was slow to meet this austerity of feeling, which in this country at length extirpated those arts which exalt our nature; and for this, these pious Vandals nicknamed the Queen "the untamed heifer;" and the fierce Knox expressly wrote his "First Blast against the monstrous Government of Women." Of these Reformers, many had imbibed the republican notions of Calvin. In their hatred of Popery, they imagined that they had not gone far enough in their wild notions of reform, for they viewed it, still shadowed out in the new hierarchy of the bishops. The fierce Calvin, in his little church at Geneva, presumed to rule a great nation on the scale of a parish institution; copying the apostolical equality at a time when the church (say the Episcopalians) had all the weakness of infancy, and could live together in a community of all things, from a sense of their common poverty. Be this as it may; the dignified ecclesiastical order was a vulnerable institution, which could do no greater injury, and might effect as much public good, as any other order in the state'. My business is not with this discussion. I mean to show how the republican system of these Reformers ended in a political struggle, which, crushed in the reign of Elizabeth, and beaten down in that of James, so furiously triumphed under Charles. Their history exhibits the curious spectacle of a great religious body covering a political one; such as was discovered among the Jesuits, and such as may again distract the empire, in some new and unexpected shape.

Elizabeth was harassed by the two factions of the intriguing Catholic, and the disguised Republican. The age abounded

'I refer the reader to Selden's "Table Talk" for many admirable ideas on "Bishops." That enlightened genius, who was no friend to the ecclesiastical temporal power, acknowledges the absolute necessity of this order in a great government. The preservers of our literature and our morals they ought to be, and many have been. When the political reformers ejected the bishops out of the house, what did they gain? a more vulgar prating race, but even more lordly! Selden says, "The bishops being put out of the house, whom will they lay the fault upon now? When the dog is beat out of the room, where will they lay the stink ?"

with libels. Many a Benedicite was handed to her from the Catholics; but a portentous personage, masked, stepped forth from a club of PURITANS, and terrified the nation by continued visitations, yet was never visible till the instant of his adieus"starting, like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons!"

Men echo the tone of their age, yet still the same unvarying human nature is at work; and the Puritans', who in the reign of Elizabeth imagined it was impossible to go too far in the business of reform, were the spirits called Roundheads under

'The freedom of the press hardly subsisted in Elizabeth's reign; and yet libels abounded! A clear demonstration that nothing is really gained by those violent suppressions and expurgatory indexes which power in its usurpation may enforce. At a time when they did not dare even to publish the titles of such libels, yet were they spread about, and even hoarded. The most ancient catalogue of our vernacular literature is that by Andrew Maunsell, published in 1595. It consists of Divinity, Mathematics, Medicine, etc.; but the third part which he promised, and which to us would have been the most interesting, of "Rhetoric, History, Poetry, and Policy," never appeared. In the Preface, such was the temper of the times, and of Elizabeth, we discover that he has deprived us of a catalogue of the works alluded to in our text, for he thus distinctly points at them: "The books written by the fugitive papistes, as also those that are written against the present government (meaning those of the Puritans), I doe not think meete for me to meddle withall.” In one part of his catalogue, however, he contrived to insert the following passage; the burden of the song seems to have been chorused by the ear of our cautious Maunsell. He is noticing a Pierce Plowman in prose. "I did not see the beginning of this booke, but it ended thus:

"God save the king, and speed the Plough,
And send the prelats care inough,

Inough, inough, inough." p. 80.

Few of our native productions are so rare as the Martin Mar-Prelate publications. I have not found them in the public repositories of our national literature. There they have been probably rejected with indignity, though their answerers have been preserved; yet even these are almost of equal rarity and price. They were rejected in times less enlightened than the present. In a National Library every book deserves preservation. By the rejection of these satires, however absurd or infamous, we have lost a link in the great chain of our National Literature and History.

"We know them by the name of Puritans, a nickname obtained by their affecting superior sanctity; but I find them often distinguished by the more humble appellative of Precisians. As men do not leap up, but climb on rocks, it is probable they were only precise before they were pure. A satirist of their day, in Rythmes against Martin Marre-Prelate," melts their attributes into

one verse ;

"The sacred sect, and perfect pure precise."

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A more laughing satirist, "Pasquill of England to Martin Junior," persists in calling them Pruritans, a pruritu! for their perpetual itching, or a desire to do something. Elizabeth herself only considered them as a troublesome sort of people: " even that great politician could not detect the political monster in a mere chrysalis of Reform. I find, however, in a poet of the Elizabethan age, an evident change in the public feeling respecting the Purilans, who being

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Charles, and who have got another nickname in our days. These wanted a Reformation of a Reformation: they aimed at reform,

always most active when the government was most in trouble, their political
views were discovered. Warner, in his "Albion's England," describes them :—
"If ever England will in aught prevent her own mishap,

Against these Skommes (no terme too gross) let England shut the gap;
With giddie heads-

Their countrie's foes they helpt, and most their country harm'd.

If Hypocrites why Puritaines we term, be asked, in breefe,

'Tis but an ironised terme good-fellow so spells theefe!"

The gentle-humoured FULLER, in his Church History, felt a tenderness for the name of Puritan, which after the mad follies they had played during the Commonwealth, was then held in abhorrence. He could not venture to laud the good men of that party, without employing a new term to conceal the odium. In noticing, under the date of 1563, that the bishops urged the clergy of their dioceses to press uniformity, etc. he adds, "Such as refused were branded with the name of Puritans; a name which in this nation began in this year, subject to several senses, and various in the acceptions. Puritan was taken for the opposers of hierarchy and church service, as resenting of superstition. But the nick-name was quickly improved by profane mouths to abuse pious persons. We will decline the word to prevent exceptions, which, if casually slipping from our pen, the reader knoweth that only non-conformists are intended." lib. ix. p. 76. Fuller, however, divides them into two classes, "the mild and moderate, and the fierce and fiery." HEYLIN, in his history of the Presbyterians, blackens them as so many political devils; and NEALE, in his history of the Puritans, blanches them into a sweet and almond whiteness.

Let us be thankful to the PURITANS for a political lesson. They began their quarrels on the most indifferent matters. They raised disturbances about the "Romish Rags," by which they described the decent surplice as well as the splendid scarlet chimere * thrown over the white linen rochet with the square cap worn by the bishops. The scarlet robe, to please their sullen fancy, was changed into black satin: but these men soon resolved to deprive the bishops of more than a scarlet robe. The affected niceties of these PRECISIANS, dismembering our images, and scratching at our paintings, disturbed the uniforImity of the religious service. A clergyman in a surplice was turned out of the church. Some wore square caps, some round, some abhorred all caps. The communion-table placed in the East, was considered as an idolatrous altar, and was now dragged into the middle of the church, where, to show their contempt, it was always made the filthiest seat in the church. They used to kneel at the sacrament; now they would sit, because that was a proper attitude for a supper; then they would not sit, but stand at length they tossed the elements about, because the bread was wafers, and not from a loaf. Among their preciseness was a qualm at baptism : the water was to be taken from a basin, and not from a fount; then they would not name their children; or if they did, they would neither have Grecian, nor Roman, nor Saxon names, but Hebrew ones, which they ludicrously translated into English, and which, as Heylin observes, "many of them when they came to age were ashamed to own;' such as Accepted - Ashes-Fight-the-good-Fight-of-Faith - Joy-again--Killsin, etc."

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Who could have foreseen, that some pious men, quarrelling about the square caps and the rochets of bishops, should at length attack bishops themselves; and, by an easy transition, passing from bishops to kings, finally close in levellers!

So Heylin writes the word: but in the "Rythmes against Martin," a contemporary production, the term is Chiver. It is not in Cotgrave.

but they designed Revolution; and they would not accept of toleration, because they had determined on predominance.

Of this faction, the chief was THOMAS CARTWRIGHT, a person of great learning, and doubtless of great ambition. Early in life a disappointed man, the progress was easy to a disaffected subject. At a philosophy act, in the University of Cambridge, in the royal presence, the queen preferred and rewarded his opponent, for the slighter and more attractive elegances, in which the learned Cartwright was deficient. He felt the wound rankle in his ambitious spirit. He began, as Sir George Paul, in his Life of Archbishop Whitgift, expresses it, "to kick against her Ecclesiastical Government." He expatriated himself several years, and returned fierce with the republican spirit he had caught among the Calvinists at Geneva, which aimed at the extirpation of the Bishops. It was once more his fate to be poised against another rival, Whitgift, the Queen's Professor of Divinity. Cartwright, in some lectures, advanced his new doctrines; and these innovations soon raised a formidable party, "buzzing their conceits into the green heads of the University." Whitgift regularly preached at Cartwright, but to little purpose; for, when Cartwright preached at St. Mary's, they were forced to take down the windows. Once, our sly polemic, taking advantage of the absence of Whitgift, so powerfully operated, in three sermons on one Sunday, that in the evening his victory declared itself, by the students of Trinity College rejecting their surplices, as Papistical badges. Cartwright was now to be confuted by other means. The University refused him his degree of D. D.; condemned the lecturer to silence; and at length performed that last feeble act of power, Expulsion. In a heart already alienated from the established authorities, this could only envenom a bitter spirit. Already he had felt a personal dislike to royalty, and now he had received an insult from the University: these were motives, which, though concealed, could not fail to work, in a courageous mind, whose new forms of religion accorded with his political feelings. The "Degrees" of the Uni-. versity, which he now declared to be "unlawful," were to be considered “as limbs of Antichrist." The whole hierarchy was to be exterminated for a republic of Presbyters; till, through the church, the republican, as we shall see, discovered a secret passage to the Cabinet of his Sovereign, where he had many protectors.

Such is my conception of the character of Cartwright. The reader is enabled to judge for himself, by the note'.

'I give a remarkable extract from the Writings of Cartwright. It will prove two points. First, that the religion of those men became a cover for a political