Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/140

 lor, but declined it in favour of Sir Christopher Hatton, whose attitude to puritanism coincided with his own and rendered him a valuable ally. In government circles Whitgift's relentless persistency silenced all active opposition.

The archbishop was not indifferent to the advantage of effective literary support. Early in 1585 he recommended Richard Hooker [q. v.] for appointment to the mastership of the Temple, and next year he silenced Walter Travers [q. v.], the puritan champion, who was afternoon lecturer at the Temple, and had violently denounced Hooker's theological views. Hooker dedicated to Whitgift his ‘Answer’ to charges of heresy which Travers brought against him, and the archbishop evinced the strongest interest in Hooker's great effort in his ‘Ecclesiastical Polity’ to offer a logical justification of the Anglican establishment.

Meanwhile the activity of the archbishop exasperated the puritans, and, in spite of his enslavement of the press, they for a time triumphantly succeeded in defying him in print. John Penry [q. v.] and his friends arranged for the secret publication of a series of scurrilous attacks on the episcopate which appeared at intervals during nearly two years under the pseudonym of ‘Martin Mar-Prelate.’ The fusillade began in 1588 with the issue of Martin Mar-Prelate's ‘Epistle,’ and was sharply maintained until the end of 1589. Throughout, Whitgift was a chief object of the assault. ‘The Epistle’ (1588), the earliest of the tracts, opened with the taunt that Whitgift had never replied to Cartwright's latest contributions to the past controversy. Penry's address to parliament in 1589 was stated on the title-page to be an exposure of ‘the bad & injurious dealing of th' Archb. of Canterb. & other his colleagues of the high commission.’ In the ‘Dialogue of Tyrannical Dealing’ (1589) Whitgift was denounced as more ambitious than Wolsey, prouder than Gardiner, more tyrannical than Bonner. In the ‘Just Censure and Reproof’ (1589) the pomp which characterised Whitgift's progresses through his diocese was boisterously ridiculed: ‘Is seven score horse nothing, thinkest thou, to be in the train of an English priest?’ Elsewhere the archbishop was described as the ‘Beelzebub of Canterbury,’ ‘the Canterbury Caiaphas,’ ‘a monstrous Antichrist,’ and ‘a most bloody tyrant.’ The attack roused all Whitgift's resentment. He accepted Bancroft's proposal that men of letters should be induced to reply to the Mar-Prelate tracts after their own indecent fashion, but he deemed it his personal duty to suppress the controversy at all hazards. He personally directed the search for the offending libellers, and pushed the powers of the high commission court to the extremest limits in order first to obtain evidence against suspected persons, and then to secure their punishment. In his examination of prisoners he showed a brutal insolence which is alien to all modern conceptions of justice or religion. He invariably argued for the severest penalties. Of two of the most active Mar-Prelate pamphleteers, Penry died on the scaffold, and Udal in prison. Nor did he relax his efforts against older offenders. In 1590 Cartwright was committed to prison for refusing to take the ex-officio oath. In all parts of the country ministers met with the same fate. But Whitgift reached the conclusion that more remained to be done. In 1593 he induced the queen to appeal to parliament to pass an act providing that those who refused to attend church, or attended unauthorised religious meetings, should be banished. In the result the church's stoutest opponents left their homes and found in Holland the liberty denied them in their own country. By such means Whitgift was able to boast that he put an end for a season to militant nonconformity.

After the crisis Whitgift showed with bold lack of logical consistency that he remained in theory well disposed to those portions of Calvinist doctrine which did not touch ritual or discipline. Cambridge was still a stronghold of Calvinist doctrine, and the Calvinistic leaders of the university begged Whitgift in 1595 to pronounce authoritatively in their favour. He summoned William Whitaker [q. v.], the professor of divinity, and one or two other Cambridge tutors to Lambeth to confer with him in conjunction with the bishops of London and Bangor and the dean of Ely. As a result of the conference Whitgift drew up on 20 Nov. 1595 the so-called Lambeth articles, nine in number, which adopted without qualification the Calvinist views of predestination and election. The archbishop of York (Hutton), who was not present at the conference, wrote to express approval. Whitgift in a letter to the vice-chancellor and heads of colleges at Cambridge, while strongly urging them to allow no other doctrine to be taught publicly, stated that the propositions were not laws or decrees, but mere explanations of the doctrine of the church (24 Nov.) The queen did not appreciate Whitgift's attitude, and for the first time complained of his action. Through Sir Robert Cecil, her secretary, she bade the archbishop ‘suspend’ his pronouncement (5 Dec.) Three days later