2»d S. No.95., Oct. 24. '57.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



321 



LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24. 1857. 



MARTIN MAR-PRELATE. 



Who was the author of one of the series of 

 these Tracts entitled " Plaine Percevall the Peace 

 Maker of England " ? 



It has been generally, and but with scarcely an 

 exception, attributed to Thomas Nash, who, it is 

 well known, was one of the chief writers against 

 Martin Mar-Prelate. The Rev. W. Maskell, in 

 his History of the Mar-Prelate Controversy^ is the 

 first to call in question this general consent, and 

 concludes, with some plausibility, that "it is in 

 fact a last gasp of the Puritans : an expression in 

 their extremity of some desire of peace : a wish 

 that they might for a time, until themselves spoke 

 again, be let alone." — H. 31. C. 199. But he 

 fails to discover the author. 



From its style alone we might conclude that 

 Nash did not write it. It is remarkable also that 

 the following lines, — 



" If any aske why thou art clad so garish 

 Say thou are dubd the forehorse of the parish," 



which appear at the end of the Tract, are to be 

 found, with a slight variation, in Gabriel Harvey's 

 Four Letters and Certain Sonnets, 1592, as an 

 epitaph on Robert Greene : 



" Heere Bedlam is : and heere a Poet garish 

 Gaily bedecked like forehorse of the parish j " 



and which there is good reason to believe were 

 written by Gabriel Harvey, or his brother Ri- 

 chard. In this place, therefore, the direct tes- 

 timony of Nash will be of importance. 



" Some what I am priuie to the cause of Greenes in- 

 neighing against the three brothers. Thy hot-spirited 

 brother Richard (a notable ruffian with his pen) hauing 

 first tooke vpon him in his blundring Persiual to play the 

 lacke of both sides twixt Martin and vs, and snarled 

 priuily at Pap-hatchet, Pasquil, and others, that opposde 

 themselues against the open slaunder of that mightie 

 platformer of Atheisme, presently after dribbed forth an- 

 other fooles bolt, a booke I should say, which be chris- 

 tened The Lambe of God." — Nash's Strange Newes, 1592, 

 sig. 2. 



Now if we refer to Plaine Percevall, we shall 

 find evidence of this " privily snarling." The 

 Dedication of it is, " To all whip lohns and whip 

 lackes ; not forgetting the Caualiero Pasquill 

 [Thomas Nash], or the Cooke Rufiian that drest 

 a dish for Martins diet [Pap with a Hatchet, by 

 John Lyly], and the residue of light fingred 

 younkers which make euery word a blow, and 

 euery booke a bobbe." Whether Greene is in- 

 cluded amongst the " whip lohns," or " whip 

 lackes," or the " light fingred younkers," is doubt- 

 ful ; but scarcely a doubt can remain, after con- 

 sidering the character of the present Tract, in 

 ■which the writer throughout plays the " lacke of 



both sides," that it must be the " blundring 

 Persiual," which Nash has fathered upon Richard 

 Harvey. 



The remarkable quarrel between Nash and 

 Harvey is given in a very graphic manner by 

 D'Israeli, in the Calamities of Authors. Unfor- 

 tunately, however, but few facts can be gleaned 

 from it ; and it would appear, too, as if the origin 

 of the quarrel had been misunderstood by him. 

 The sketch which I have here given may serve to 

 illustrate a very interesting period of our literary 

 history ; though so much of the contemporary 

 literature of this period has perished, that it is not 

 only a work of labour to give in a connected form 

 any series of remarks on a like subject, but it 

 renders on many occasions our conclusions doubt- 

 ful or erroneous. 



Gabriel Harvey, and his brothers Richard and 

 John, were of good family, though their father 

 carried on at Saffron Walden the humble trade of 

 a ropemaker. This disagreeable fact becoming 

 known, appears to have caused a great share of 

 the annoyance which the brothers (and especially 

 the elder of them) were fated to meet with in 

 life. The circumstances of the father were suffi- 

 ciently prosperous (" four sons him cost a thou- 

 sand pounds at least ") to enable him to send his 

 three sons (four it is stated in Harvey's Four 

 Letters) to Cambridge. The elder, born about 

 1545, was educated at Christ's college, and took 

 both his degrees in arts. He obtained a fellow- 

 ship in ^Trinity-hall, and served the office of 

 proctor. Having studied civil law, he obtained 

 his grace for a degree in that faculty ; in 1585 he 

 was admitted doctor of laws at Oxford, and sub- 

 sequently practised as an advocate in the Preroga- 

 tive Court of Canterbury at London. Richard, 

 the second, we find in 1583 about to profess di- 

 vinity ; he subsequently entered the Church, and 

 was presented to the vicarage of Saffron Walden. 

 John, the younger, after obtaining his degree in 

 medicine, settled at Lynn as a physician, and died 

 in July, 1592. 



As early as 1577, Gabriel Harvey had given to 

 the world his Rhetor, and Ciceronianus ; and in 

 the following year his Gratulatio Valdenensium, 

 and Srnithus, a Latin poem on the death of Sir 

 Thomas Smith, to whom it would appear he stood 

 in the relation of nephew. It is to this period, or 

 shortly after, we must refer the following auto- 

 biographical facts, mentioned in the Four Letters, 

 1592: 



" I was supposed not unmeet for the Oratorship of the 

 University, which in that spring of mine age, for my 

 exercise and credit I much aifected ; but mine own modest 

 petition, my friends' diligent labour, our High Chan- 

 cellor's most honourable and extraordinary commenda- 

 tion, were all peltingly defeated by a sly practice of the 

 old Fox, whose acts and monuments shall never die." — 

 Harvey's Four Letters, ^c, 1592, Reprint. 



Whether the allusion here is to Harvey's " old 



