known in London to have been printed by Waldegrave, and in April his press was seized. Udall, whose responsibility remained unknown to the authorities, invited Waldegrave to Kingston to discuss the situation. Penry joined the consultation, with the result that schemes were laid for disseminating through the country further tracts of a like temper. Penry soon arranged to write a series of attacks on the bishops which should bear the pseudonym of Martin Mar-Prelate. Udall supplied him with some information that had come to his knowledge of the illegal practices of the bishop of London, and this information Penry embodied in the first of the Martin Mar-Prelate tracts, which was known as ‘The Epistle.’ But Udall made no other contribution to the series of pamphlets which bore the pseudonym of Martin Mar-Prelate. He had no relation with any of the Martin Mar-Prelate controversialists excepting Penry, and was associated with Penry only at the inception of the Mar-Prelate scheme.
Udall preferred to pursue the bishops single-handed. In July Waldegrave secretly set up a press in the neighbourhood of Kingston, at the house of a widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Crane, at East Molesey. There he printed a second anonymous polemic of Udall which was called: ‘A Demonstration of the trueth of that Discipline which Christe hath prescribed in his worde for the gouernement of his Church, in all times and places, untill the ende of the worlde.’ With great vehemence Udall denounced ‘the supposed governors of the church of England, the archbishops, lord-bishops, archdeacons, and the rest of that order.’ The ‘Demonstration’ was secretly distributed in November, at the same time as Penry's ‘Epistle,’ the first of the distinctive ‘Martin Mar-Prelate’ tracts, which Waldegrave also put into type at the East Molesey press. A reply to Udall appeared in 1590 with the title, ‘A Remonstrance, or plain detection of some of the faults … cobled together in a Booke entituled “A Demonstration.”’ Udall's ‘Dialogue’ and ‘Demonstration’ were both reprinted by Mr. Arber in 1880.
Meanwhile, in July 1588, Udall, although his authorship of the ‘Dialogue’ was hardly suspected, and the ‘Demonstration’ was as yet unpublished, again offended the court of high commission by his uncompromising sermons in the parish church of Kingston, and he was summarily deprived of his living.
After resting ‘about half a year,’ with the intention of leading thenceforth a ‘private life,’ he was invited in December by the Earl of Huntingdon and the inhabitants of Newcastle-upon-Tyne to resume his ministry in that town. He accepted the call, and laboured there assiduously for a year. During the time the plague raged furiously in the district. While at Newcastle Udall openly published in London, under his own name, a new volume of sermons entitled ‘Combat between Christ and the Devil.’ This was of non-controversial character. But meanwhile many Mar-Prelate tracts had been issued in rapid succession by Penry and his associates, and the bishops made every effort to discover their source. Udall was soon suspected of complicity, and on 29 Dec. 1589 he was summoned to London, ‘in the sorest weather,’ to be examined by the privy council. He arrived on 9 Jan. 1589–90, and four days later appeared at a council meeting that was held at Lord Cobham's house in Blackfriars. He was asked whether his ministry at Newcastle was authorised by the bishop of the diocese. He replied that both the bishopric of Durham and the archbishopric of York were vacant during the period of his ministry. He refused to say whether he was the author of the ‘Demonstration’ and ‘Dialogue.’ He acknowledged that Penry had passed through Newcastle three months before, but had merely saluted him at his door (cf. Arber's Sketch of Mar-Prelate Controversy, pp. 88–93). The council ordered Udall's detention in the Gatehouse at Westminster. A second examination by the council followed on 13 July 1590, when similar questions were put to the prisoner and similar answers made by him (ib. pp. 144–7).
On 24 July 1590 he was placed on his trial at the Croydon assizes, before Justice Clarke and Serjeant Puckering, on a charge of having published ‘a wicked, scandalous, and seditious libel’ entitled ‘A Demonstration.’ The indictment was laid under the statute 23 Eliz. cap. 3, which was aimed at attacks on the government made in print by Roman catholics. Udall was refused the aid of counsel, and the prosecution depended wholly on the written depositions previously obtained from witnesses in the high commission court. The judges invited Udall to deny on oath that he was author of the incriminated tract. This he refused to do. He was found guilty, but sentence was deferred, and he was ordered to be imprisoned in the White Lion prison in Southwark. Subsequently he was offered a pardon if he would sign a recantation, but he declined to accept the terms proposed. In February 1590–91 he was brought to the bar of the Southwark assizes, and raised some argu-
