through the intervention of Whitgift; but like all traditions of the Archbishop showing clemency to his reforming opponents, it is supported by no evidence. Indeed, as we have already said, the evidence lies entirely the other way.

6. Penry's Escape.-When the PROTESTATYON was out of hand at Wolston, the question of Penry's safety soon became one of anxious and pressing importance to himself and his friends. He was not only implicated in the Marprelate Tracts, but had secretly printed and circulated tracts on the scandalous religious and moral condition of Wales, bearing openly his own name or initials-tracts which were only in a degree less obnoxious to Whitgift than those bearing the name of Marprelate. He had a young wife at Northampton. But he was probably wise enough to know that his clerical enemies would naturally order Henry Godley's house to be under strict watch. The confessions of Simms and Thomlyn would put them on the track of Job Throkmorton. Matthew Sutcliffe tells us that for a while Penry was lurking in an ale-house eighteen miles from Fawsley-a sufficiently vague indication to-day of his whereabouts. But as soon as Throkmorton had supplied him with the necessary funds-he raised a special fund among his friends in London to pay Penry's debts-then Penry sought safety in Scotland. John Udall, under examination on January 13, 1590, stated that Penry called at his door at Newcastle a quarter of a year' before. He was then on his way north. He did not enter Udall's house, and apparently hurried on to get across the border.

While in Scotland Throkmorton supplied Penry with English news, and sent him copies of his own latest literary ventures. Bancroft found means to have the correspondence intercepted. This piece of smart detective work was one of the qualifications, as we know, noted by Whitgift when urging Bancroft's fitness to be a Bishop. Extracts were made from the letters, some of which are preserved in Sutcliffe's Answer to Job Throkmorton. They were written under a counterfeit name, and consist of ironical criticisms on current affairs.

'O Sir, hath not her Majesty reigned prosperously! and is it a time think you! to alter those and so many blessings bestowed upon us; to raise turmoils and innovations, and to pull the crown off her head? Well, your Worship will not meddle with any of these kind of seditious people.'

He tells Penry that the printers have confessed 'that Martin was made by Penry and one of the Throkmortons.' And again he writes that

'her Majesty had lately been in danger of poisoning and that other shrewd plots had been laid against her, and all by Penry!'1

We cannot deny that Throkmorton had some ground for his satiric fun, Probably no men in the kingdom were freer from thoughts of treason, or more loyal, irrationally loyal, one is tempted to write, than the men who were seeking the further reformation of the Church. Yet it suited the Bishops to represent their writings as seditious, and themselves as dangerous traitors, aiming at setting up another government in opposition to that of the Queen. Udall, as we have seen, appeared in court laden with irons as though he were a violent homicidal criminal.

7. Another Rendezvous at Haseley.—Within the next two months, probably during the latter half of November, Penry left Scotland for Northamptonshire. He had found friends among the reforming party in Edinburgh. But he had a double object in paying a secret visit to his old haunts. He had a wife and child at the house of his father-in-law, Henry Godley. The child, the eldest of his four daughters, was the Deliverance Penry of Hamptonshire [Northamptonshire], who on May 14, 1611, was married at Amsterdam to Samuel Whitaker, a 'bombazine worker.' Her age is given as twenty-one years; that is, twenty-one years and certain unmentioned months.2 The fact of the county being given in the Amsterdam records is an indication that she was born before her mother moved to Edinburgh.

1 Op. cit. 73, 74 [Arber's Sketch, 182, 183].

The

2 Trans. Congl. Hist. Soc. ii. 165. The Brownists in Amsterdam,' by T. G. Crippen.

P

Archbishop's pursuivant had peremptorily ordered the Mayor of Northampton to arrest Penry on sight. This would not have deterred Penry from running the risk of privately visiting the town, and the probability is that the Mayor and chief men of the Council sympathised with Penry's views. Walton, the arrogant pursuivant, suspected them of being wanting in zeal in carrying out Whitgift's commands. Penry's safety lay partly in the improbability that he would risk putting his head in the lion's mouth.

But Penry had another object in returning south. Waldegrave had been engaged at Rochelle in printing his Appellation and also Throkmorton's M. Some in his Coulers.1 Waldegrave, we conclude, was on his way to Scotland; but it was necessary to deliver the printed matter on his hands. to its respective authors. He no doubt wanted payment for his work, and it was desirable to get the pamphlets into circulation. When Penry reached the Manor-house at Haseley he found that the printer had already arrived with his packages of literature. It was, however, impossible for Throkmorton to keep these compromising pamphlets at his house. He had already on his hands the bulk of the copies of the PROTESTATYON. Matters were indeed becoming critical with him, for the pursuivant had been to Haseley seeking him, and only by the merest chance failed to execute his warrant. There was also a new inducement to clear his house of the contraband pamphlets. He had recently married Dorothy, daughter of Thomas Vernon of Houndhill, a hamlet lying on the borders of Staffordshire, on the north-east, between Tutbury and Uttoxeter.3

1 Sutcliffe's Answer to Throk. 72, 73; Arber's Sketch, 179, 181. the authorship of M. Some in his Coulers, see below, p. 233.

2 Ibid. 73; Arber, 181.

With

For

Camden's

3Dorothea filia Tho. Vernon de Hownall in Com. Staff.' Visitation of Warwickshire (ed. Camd. Soc.), 79. Houndhill is in the parish of Hanbury but in the chapelry of Marchington, the village close by Houndhill House. See Shaw's Hist. of Staffordshire, i. 85. Marchington church contains a fine alabaster tomb to Walter Vernon, who died in 1592-93. Job Throkmorton's eldest child, Clement, was baptised by Thomas Cartwright, who preached a sermon on the occasion. Whitgift complained of the doctrine ventilated in the sermon. His schedule of charges is dated Sept. 1, 1590. Fuller, Hist. iii, bk. ix. p. 198.

their powerful and distinguished friend, the master of Fawsley, and his neighbours Wigston and Hales, lying like common felons in the Fleet in London, it was time for the new mistress of Haseley to look after the safety of her dangerously witty and satirical husband, who was far more deeply involved than they in the business of Martin Marprelate. It was therefore speedily determined that the visitors should take the whole of the pamphlets to the house of Henry Godley at Northampton. They did well, as we shall see, not to tarry too long in the town but to hasten on their way north. Mrs. Penry was now of the company, though owing to the difficulties of the situation the child was left behind with its grandparents. The last of Penry's four children was born in London in the year of his execution or the close of the previous year. And in his final letter to his children he speaks of two of them and their mother having received great kindness from the people of Scotland. Moreover, we find that next year the authorities had discovered that Penry was in Edinburgh, and instructed Bowes, the ambassador, to complain to the king. This he did on May 16, 1590. James, in the beginning of August, issued through his Privy Council a writ banishing Penry from his realm; but in November Bowes complains that he is still in Scotland, and that it was merveiled in Ingland' that he should be suffered to remain. The king

, 1

replied in December that he was credibly informed that Penry had left the country, though Bowes states that 'his wife continueth in this Towne supported by benevolence of his friends here.' There is no mention here of a child, as we should have expected from the particular account of Bowes, had there been also a child living upon the benevolent help of the Scotch friends.

Waldegrave had confident hopes of finding employment in Scotland. Udall, who was then at Newcastle, and had preached at the Scotch General Assembly in June 1589 in the presence of the King and the Court, would be able to

1 State Papers Scot.—Eliz. 1590, vol. 45 (No. 44), vol. 46 (22) (64) (78). Reg. of the Privy Council Scot. iv. 1585-92, p. 517.

help his old printer. Early next year we have evidence that Waldegrave is following his calling; though complaints are presented by Bowes that he should be harboured in Scotland and allowed to print there books against his own country. But the king persistently pleads an excuse for him, stating that they are in need of a printer, and in December tells the English ambassador that he has appointed him his own printer.1

Meanwhile the informer had despatched news from Northampton concerning the secret visit of Penry and Waldegrave to the house of Henry Godley, and that they had brought packages with them which were suspected to contain tracts against the Bishops. But Throkmorton, who had apparently constant communication with the Court and Government circles in London, presently received private warning that once more Godley's house was to be raided. He was able to despatch one Garnet, a native of Northampton, with the information to Godley, who thereupon packed up the stock of pamphlets, consisting of 500 copies of Th' Appellation, 600 of M. Some in his Coulers, and 500 of the PROTESTATYON, and forwarded them on the shoulders of Garnet and Humfrey Newman to the keeping of a friend at Banbury.2 When Whitgift's pursuivants arrived the expected plunder had disappeared.

8. Imprisonment of Udall.-In November 1588 the Commission sitting at Richmond and at the neighbouring town of Kingston little knew how near they were to the temporary printing-house at East Molesey, whence issued the celebrated EPISTLE of Marprelate. But they elicited from certain witnesses, and subsequently from himself, that John Udall was in some indirect way responsible for certain facts to be found in its pages. This came to light mainly through the testimony of Stephen Chatfield, the vicar of Kingston. The evidence consisted principally of vague threats uttered by Udall that he would write if they

1 State Papers Scot.-Eliz. vol. 46 (64) (73).

In June 1592, James writes

a personal letter to Burleigh asking him to obtain Waldegrave's complete pardon. Ibid. vol. 48 (53).

2 Sutcliffe's Ans. to Throk. 73; Arber's Sketch, 181.