things. Two puritan ministers, John Field and John Udall, offered to help Penry in the composition of a series of anti-clerical pamphlets; but Field died a few months later. The design was communicated to a puritan country gentleman, Job Throckmorton of Haseley, Warwickshire, who promised both literary and pecuniary aid. The bishops' sense of dignity was to be mercilessly outraged by means of coarse sarcasm and homely wit. Such weapons had been habitually used by Knox, Beza, and other protestant controversialists. Beza's ‘Epistola … Passauantij’ (Geneva, 1552) Penry had carefully studied, and his ‘Treatise’ illustrated how scandalous innuendo might be effectively employed in polemical theology. The joint writings of the confederacy should, it was determined, bear the pseudonymous signature of Martin Mar-Prelate. Martin was doubtless suggested by Luther's christian name.
Before Michaelmas 1588 Penry purchased a printing-press, which he deposited with the utmost secrecy in the house of Mrs. Elizabeth Crane, at East Moulsey, near Kingston-on-Thames. Robert Waldegrave, a London printer, was engaged to superintend the typographic arrangements, and he placed at Penry's disposal two compositors, who worked with great rapidity. Penry corrected the proofs of all the publications, and paid the workmen. Within three weeks the first of the Martin Mar-Prelate tracts was printed and circulated. It was known as ‘The Epistle,’ and was announced as a preliminary onslaught on the long and elaborate ‘Defence of the Church of England’ which Dr. John Bridges [q. v.], dean of Salisbury, had published in 1587. It is doubtful if Penry himself did more than revise the manuscript of ‘The Epistle.’ There followed from the Moulsey press, under Penry's own name and from his pen alone, ‘An exhortation unto the governours and people of his Maiesties countrie of Wales, to labour earnestly to have the preaching of the Gospell planted among them.’ This was dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke, lord president of Wales, and the rest of the governors. Thereupon Dr. Robert Some [q. v.], a member of Penry's own college at Cambridge, in ‘A godly treatise … and a confutation of errours broached in M. Penries last treatise,’ endeavoured to prove that Penry's account of the incompetence of the clergy was wilfully exaggerated. Penry immediately issued a second edition of his ‘Exhortation,’ in which he claimed to have answered Some's objections by anticipation. The postscript ran: ‘I have read Master D. Some's booke. The reasons he useth in the questions of the dumbe ministrie and communicating with them I had answered (as you may see in this booke) before he had written. The man I reverence as a goodly and a learned man. The weaknes of his reasons shalbe showed at large Godwilling.’ This promise he at once fulfilled in ‘A Defence of that which hath bin written in the questions of the ignorant ministerie and the communicating with them,’ 16mo, 1588. A further defence of Penry against Some's attack was written by John Greenwood [q. v.], and bore the title ‘M. Some laid open in his coulers.’
At this juncture Mrs. Crane, from whose house these pamphlets emanated, showed signs of alarm, and Penry found it necessary to secure a new home for his press. Through either his father-in-law, Godley, or his patron Throckmorton he obtained introductions to Sir Richard Knightley [q. v.], a puritan squire, who readily offered him and his press an asylum at his mansion of Fawsley in Northamptonshire. Penry's press was in working order at Fawsley in November, and there were printed in that month a fuller criticism of Dean Bridges's ‘Defence,’ entitled ‘The Epitome.’ There followed a broadside, ‘Certain minerall and metaphisicall school-points to be defended by the reuerende bishops’ (Lambeth Library). Throckmorton shares with Penry the responsibility for these lucubrations, which exasperated the champions of episcopacy, and Penry and his coadjutors found themselves the objects of biting attack by assailants who improved upon their own violence of language. Their antagonists included not only divines, but many men of letters [see Harvey, John, 1563–1592; Lyly, John; Nash or Nashe, Thomas]. Public excitement grew, and the need of concealment on the part of Penry and his friends was greater than before. While at Fawsley, Penry went about disguised like a gallant, wearing a light-coloured hat, a sword at his side, and ‘a long skye-coloured cloak,’ of which the collar was edged with gold and silver and silk lace. At Christmas the press was removed to another house of Knightley's at Norton. But it was deemed imprudent to make a prolonged stay in one place, and early next year Penry temporarily settled with another sympathiser, John Hales, who lived at a house at Coventry, known as the White Friars. From Coventry he issued, on 9 March 1588–9, in continuation of his earlier appeals on behalf of Wales, ‘A viewe of some part of such publike wants and disorders as are in the service of God, within her Maiesties countrie of Wales, togither with an humble Petition unto this high court of Parliament for their speedy
