The Hunt for Martin Marprelate
Who was Martin Marprelate, seditious pamphleteer and enemy of the Elizabethan Church and state? And, more importantly, how could he be stopped?
On a November night in 1588 Lawrence Jackson stood waiting at the gates of Fawsley Hall, a manor house on the outskirts of Northampton. Housekeeper at Fawsley for more than a decade, he was used to receiving deliveries. But this one was different. Before long, a wagon arrived. Its occupant stepped out and pressed a ring into the housekeeper’s palm. Recognising it instantly as his master’s, Jackson waved the wagon through and helped unload its cargo: two barrels of ink, a case of type, 12 reams of paper, and the component parts of a printing press. Assembled in a discrete room at the back of the property, this press would, over the next month, produce the second in a series of incendiary publications that shook Elizabethan England.
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