as
equivalent to high treason. The book was seized, and the author imprisoned
(1587). Now when, about a year after, and in the very height of the danger
from the Armada, Waldegrave's livelihood was threatened by the proceedings
above referred to, it would appear that he obtained from the Continent, or
had previously secreted from his confiscated stock, printing tools, and
that he and Penry, at the house of Mistress Crane, at East Molesey, in
Surrey, printed a certain tract, called, for shortness, "The Epistle."[43]
This tract, of the authorship and character of which more presently,
created a great sensation. It was immediately followed, the press being
shifted for safety to the houses of divers Puritan country gentlemen, by
the promised _Epitome_. So great was the stir, that a formal answer of
great length was put forth by "T. C." (well known to be Thomas Cooper,
Bishop of Winchester), entitled, _An Admonition to the People of England_.
The Martinists, from their invisible and shifting citadel, replied with
perhaps the cleverest tract of the whole controversy, named, with
deliberate quaintness, _Hay any Work for Cooper?_[44] ("Have You any Work
for the Cooper?" said to be an actual trade London cry). Thenceforward the
_melee_ of pamphlets, answers, "replies, duplies, quadruplies," became in
small space indescribable. Petheram's prospectus of reprints (only
partially carried out) enumerates twenty-six, almost all printed in the
three years 1588-1590; Mr. Arber, including preliminary works, counts some
thirty. The perambulating press was once seized (at Newton Lane, near
Manchester), but Martin was not silenced. It is certain (though there are
no remnants extant of the matter concerned) that Martin was brought on the
stage in some form or other, and though the duration of the controversy was
as short as its character was hot, it was rather suppressed than
extinguished by the death of Udall in prison, and the execution of Penry
and Barrow in 1593.

[42] Large extracts from it are given by Arber.

[43] As the titles of these productions are highly characteristic of the
style of the controversy, and, indeed, are sometimes considerably more
poignant than the text, it may be well to give some of them in full as
follows:--

_The Epistle._--Oh read over D. John Bridges, for it is a worthy work: Or
an Epitome of the first book of that right worshipful volume, written
against the Puritans, in the defence of the noble Clergy, by