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Martin Marprelate (sometimes printed as Martin Mar-prelate and Marre–Martin) was the name used by the anonymous author or authors of the seven Marprelate tracts that circulated illegally in England in the years 1588 and 1589. Their principal focus was an attack on the episcopacy of the Anglican Church.
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Background
In 1583, the appointment of John Whitgift as Archbishop of Canterbury had signalled the beginning of a drive against the Presbyterian movement in the church, and an era of censorship began. In 1586, by an edict of the Star Chamber, the archbishop was empowered to license and control all of the printing apparatus in the country.
Identity and authorship
The true identity of "Martin" has long been the subject of speculation. For many years, the main candidate was John Penry, a Welsh preacher and author of several impassioned polemics against the state of the church. Renaissance historian John Dover Wilson posits, in his book Martin Marprelate and Shakespeare's Fluellen, the Welsh soldier Roger Williams was the author of the first three tracts signed "Martin Prelate", with Penry authoring the subsequent tracts signed "Martin Junior" and the Warwickshire squire and Member of Parliament Job Throckmorton the author of those signed "Martin Senior". Dover Wilson argues the last Marprelate tract, the unsigned "Protestation", has Penry writing the initial fourteen pages wherein he claims to be married with children, and completed thereafter by Throckmorton, wherein he claims to be a bachelor about to wed. In 1981 Leland Carlson suggested that Job Throckmorton was the primary author and that Penry assisted him. Kathryn M. Longley and Patrick Collinson have suggested George Carleton.
The tracts had to be printed in secrecy, and some sort of organisation was involved to handle their production and distribution. Penry was definitely involved in the printing, and the press was frequently relocated to different parts of the country in order to avoid the authorities. Penry himself denied any involvement in the actual authorship.
Official reaction
The government was concerned enough at the virulence of the attacks on the ecclesiastical hierarchy to respond in kind, hiring professional writers such as Thomas Nashe, Robert Greene and John Lyly to write counter-tracts. The tracts are invectives against the episcopacy and sometimes described the bishops as representing the Antichrist. The most prolific and effective of the anti-Martinists went by the colorful sobriquet, "the renowned Cavaliero Pasquill,". Pasquill was traditionally believed to have been Thomas Nashe, however R. B. McKerrow, the editor of Nashe's complete works refutes this: "further study led me to suspect - indeed, to feel almost certain - that Nashe had nothing to do with them (anti-Marprelates texts)."
Some scholars, notably Arul Kumuran, have argued Robert Greene's later works were influenced by the Marprelate pamphlets, though Greene is noted as an anti-Martinist author.
Later influence and interpretation
Some of the Marprelate pamphlets were reprinted in the seventeenth century, and an extensive scholarship has commented on their historical and literary significance. The anti-Martinist literature, including the Pasquill pamphlets, by contrast, has suffered from relative neglect by scholars of early modern England.
The Marprelate tracts are important documents in the history of English satire: critics from C. S. Lewis to John Carey have recognised their originality. In particular, the pamphlets show concern with the status of the text, wittily pastiching conventions such as the colophon and marginalia.