The Rhetoric of Reaction: The Martin Marprelate Tracts (1588-89), Anti- Martinism, and the Uses of Print in Early Modern England

Abstract

The pseudonymous Marprelate tracts sparked one of the most famous pamphlet wars in sixteenth-century England. This article focuses on the anti-Martinist response, drawing on manuscript and printed sources to explore the ways in which church and state sought to counter Martin's Presbyterian message. At the heart of the controversy lay questions not only of ecclesiology but also of style, decorum, and audience. The tracts' notoriety stemmed largely from their use of polemical strategies aimed at attracting a popular audience, and the anti-Martinist campaign reveals the anxiety with which Elizabethan officials viewed these efforts to foster public debate by means of the press. To some contemporaries, however, the polemic deployed to defend the Church helped legitimize rather than suppress Martinist discursive freedom. The Marprelate controversy consequently provides a case study of a society still negotiating the social and political implications of print culture.