• Home
• The Marprelate Controversy
• The Authorship Question
• A Chronological Narrative
• The Documents
  • Textual Introduction
  • The Search for the Press
  • Depositions and Examinations
  • Summaries of Evidence
  • Trial Records
• Biographies
• References

 

THE MARTIN MARPRELATE PRESS: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY offers a freshly edited collection of primary documents connected with the secret press that produced the Martin Marprelate tracts (1588-89), the notorious anti-episcopal satires that sparked the most famous pamphlet war of the English Renaissance. The depositions, examinations, investigative summaries, trial records, and other documents generated by the hunt for the Marprelate press provide extraordinary evidence, unmatched for the period, for the day-to-day workings of an underground print campaign. Several of these documents are published here for the first time.

This collection acts as a companion to The Martin Marprelate Tracts: A Modernized and Annotated Edition, ed. Joseph L. Black (Cambridge University Press, 2008). The introductory material on this website is drawn from that edition, which supplies a great deal of additional information about the Marprelate controversy.

I welcome questions, comments, and corrections: jblack@english.umass.edu

 

   

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