ing centre where the initiated could obtain copies of the EPISTLE. As early as the first day of November we hear of a visitor at Fawsley seeking and obtaining copies.1 A ballad entitled Martin said to his man whoe is the foole nowe,' entered at Stationers' Hall on Nov. 9th, seems to allude to the popular subject.2

(5) THE EPISCOPAL HUE AND CRY.'-The episcopal juncta probably set on foot the activities of the Privy Council with the Queen's authority. Elizabeth might deplore some of the episcopal scandals, and object to the avarice of her Bishops; but their dignity was part of her conception of the necessary pomp of a sovereign state. And though she rated them soundly and threatened to unfrock a recalcitrant and intractable Prelate, it was a luxury she strictly reserved to herself. Moreover it was the assiduous care of her Bishops to instil into the Queen's mind the idea that opposition to themselves, and to the Church order as established by herself, was sedition. She therefore looked with anything but favour at all the world and his wife laughing at the expense of her Church dignitaries. It was easy in these circumstances for Whitgift to move the authorities to action. The Privy Council speedily issued an instruction to the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Treasurer to write to the Archbishop, enjoining him to set in motion the machinery of the High Commission, or by other action, 'to serch out the authors [of the EPISTLE] and the[i]r complices, and ye pryntors and ye secret dispersers of ye same, and to cause them to be apprehended and committed.' Their lordships' letter also declared the object of Martin's book to be, to create a dis

Whitgift if he had not been a means of distributing the EPISTLE, he replies, 'I understand by hearsay (that which I suppose you know well enough) that many Lords and Ladyes, and other greate and wealthy personages of all estates, have had and read it; and so they will joyne with me in mine having and reading of it, if I have done either or both. And in my simple judgement it would be more for your credit if you would examine indifferently all sorts [of persons] about, and not poor folke only as you use to do. The Second Parte of a Register (MS.), 845, Dr. Williams' Lib.

1 Lansd. MSS. 61, 22; Arber's Sketch, 114.

2 Arber's Sketch, 139.

like of the government of the Church by Bishops, and to give currency to 'slanderous reports ageynst your Grace and y rest of ye Bishoppes'; adding her Majesty's opinion, that it tended to subvert all government under her charge 'both in yo Church and commenweale.'1

The Prelates had discovered traces of Waldegrave's active presence at Kingston on Thames, and on the same date on which the Council's letter reached them opened an inquiry in that town. Nicholas Kydwell and John Good, two of the citizens, were examined; five days later Walter Rogers, a minister in the town, submitted himself to examination, and perhaps still a little later, Stephen Chatfield, the vicar of Kingston, a more important witness, made a deposition. Some of the actual distributers of the EPISTLE were discovered; and a very determined effort was made to identify John Udall, the silenced minister of Kingston, with the production of the pamphlet ; 2 with what amount of truth we shall consider later on.

3

(6) THE SECOND MARTIN.-All this while the Martinists at Fawsley have a second pamphlet busily in hand. It is the EPITOME-promised in the first tract. A day or two after the arrival of the press Waldegrave, the Puritan printer, appeared on the scene, bringing with him ‘a servant'; an assistant to help in working the press. Although some of the house servants at Fawsley must have known what was going on, the secret was probably kept within as narrow a circle as was possible. The 'nursery' was a chamber in the roof, not existing in the present building; in his evidence at his trial Sir Richard Knightley does not profess to know very much about the disposition of the press, 6 which was never in his own house at the farther end of the town.' 4 Waldegrave was known as Sheme or Shamne or Shamuel, though Stephen Gifford, Sir Richard's confidential man, gives him his right name. It

1 Lands. MSS. 103 f. 102. Arber's Sketch, 107, 108. The letter to the Archbishop bears the date, Nov. 14, 1588.

2 Harl. MSS. 6849 ff. 157, 159, 120, 130.

3 Harl. MSS. 7042 f. 1. Sketch, 130.

Arber's Sketch, 81 f.

4 Town the enclosure containing the house and adjoining buildings.

M

was pretended that he had come to examine and set in order the master's evidences,'-i.e. title-deeds. From Northampton, some fourteen miles away, came John Penry on frequent visits-too frequent to please the more cautious Waldegrave. Penry acted as press corrector. But in order to divert the suspicion of the dependents about the house, one of them, Peter Greve, who took 'Penry to be Martyn,' states, that 'Martyn went disguised in a long skycoloured Cloak, or of a light colour, and had the Coller of the said Cloak edged with gould and Silver and Silke Lace, and a light-coloured Hatt, with an arming Sworde by his side.'1 There is a slight ambiguity in the form of the words, and we know from much evidence that the rumours in the servants' hall respecting the mysterious visitors and their proceedings were by no means free from error. Yet likely enough the gaily attired visitor was Penry; the only difficulty of the situation being that Penry could have been no stranger to many persons at Fawsley. Had Waldegrave chosen so to disguise himself it might be more easily understood.2

It was the close application of the printers which probably was the cause of 'Waldegrave's man being sick.' He lacked exercise, and it was too dangerous to let him mix freely with the inmates; so that he was necessarily confined to the small chamber where the work was carried on. There Edward Sharpe, the minister of Fawsley, visited him; and there he found a copy of the newly printed book. He took one copy to Sir Richard Knightley, 'advertising him, what was done in his Howse.' Sharpe was a Puritan, and later on found himself in prison because of his views; but he evidently disapproved and feared this method of attack.

1 Harl. MSS. 7042 f. 7. Arber, Sketch, 128.

2 This is how Mr. Oswald Barrow, F.S.A. (in The Ancestor, July 1902), comments on the fact that the gaily attired person was identified as Penry. 'It may be that the sour fanatic did not carry these Babylonish garments with a convincing swagger, for curious eyes pried into the garret.' But he further states, against probability and weight of evidence, that the 'broadside' was also printed at Fawsley. So that, as Martin would say, there is a decorum observed by Mr. Oswald Barrow; his conception of Penry's character is in keeping with his acquaintance with the facts of the controversy.

Nor was it possible to keep the matter absolutely secret. The keeper's maid 'gave yt out . . . that there had bene Bookes printed lately at Fawsley.' Henry Sharpe, the Northampton bookbinder, an inveterate gossip and of a peculiarly inquisitive turn of mind, whose evidence, though mixed with much that is prima facie inaccurate, is our chief source of information on several points. Penry took him into his confidence to a certain degree; it was probably necessary to run the risk. Waldegrave was overladen with work in being obliged not only to set up the type, and assist at the press, but also to collate the sheets and stitch them (binding' it is called in all the official documents). Henry Sharpe accompanied Penry, it must have been towards the end of October, to Fawsley House. Penry, rendered, perhaps, more prudent by the warnings of Waldegrave, who had been 'in prisons oft,' left Sharpe baiting his horse in a field some distance from the house, until his return with a Cloke Bag with Bookes behind him.' Next day copies of the EPITOME were brought to Sharpe's house, who was willing enough to make money out of their sale. Sharpe says he paid Penry for them.2

But

(7) HUMFREY NEWMAN, CHIEF DISTRIBUTER.-At this juncture also a much more important agent of Marprelate comes upon the scene in the person of Humfrey Newman, known also by the alias Brownbread, and described as a cobbler. This silent man, the indefatigable distributer of the dangerous tracts, trudging backwards and forwards between the Midlands and London, depositing his parcels of books at various houses and places of call, not given to chatter, not seeking any selfish gain, makes a marked impression upon us. He appears frequently at Fawsley, attired at first 'in a grene Cloak and a grene Hat,' but in a short time in Sir Richard Knightley his livery.' A few days after Henry Sharpe had received his copies, Newman

1 See a brief discussion of the date of the EPITOME by the present writer in the Journal of the Northamptonshire Nat. Hist. Soc. Sept. 1905 (vol. xiii. No. 103).

2 Harl. MSS. 7042 f. 23 (Arber's Sketch, 96 [k]).

3 Ibid. f. 10 (Ibid. 131).

appeared at Northampton with the principal stock of the EPITOME. The interim had been occupied by Waldegrave in making up' and stitching. Newman's journey to London is made by way of Northampton, rather than by the more direct route through Banbury, presumably to avoid giving any hint as to the location of the press; and it is to be noted that in regard to his destination on leaving Northampton, that Sharpe only surmises that it was London. Sharpe's deposition never goes beyond 'he thinketh.' Not much gratuitous information was to be elicited from the reticent Newman.

(8) THE HIGH COMMISSION AT WORK.-Giles Wigginton, the deprived Yorkshire minister, was in London enjoying one of his periods of liberation from gaol, and during the first days of December had copies of the new tract. On December 6th he was once more convented before Whitgift at Lambeth, as already narrated, and was examined about the second Martin.' By the craft of Monday, the pursuivant, in whose charge he went to Lambeth and whom afterwards he sadly judged to be one who seemeth to favour the Pope and to be a great dissembler,' Wigginton was led on to 'speake more boldly to him of Church government and of the two Bookes extant of M[artin]. All which Mond[ay] promised to conceal, and pretended a desire to be instructed. But when he came to Lambeth he accused G. W. treacherously as having read the second Booke of Mar[tin], and as having told the tale of the "spell goose out of it.'

The persecution of Wigginton was a sign of the renewed activity of the Prelates in their search for the 'makers and distractors' of Martin Marprelate. The great political events of the year 1588 had somewhat overshadowed the ecclesiastical controversy and the growing opposition to Whitgift's rule. When Waldegrave and Penry were busy with their secret press at Molesey, the Armada of Spain was creeping up the Channel to its doom. And the same confederates were just completing the printing of Martin's EPITOME of Dean Bridge's Defence, as near as can be com