SOURCE: Arber, Edward. “The Origin of This Controversy.” In An Introductory Sketch to the Martin Marprelate Controversy, 1588-1590, edited by Edward Arber, pp. 55-75. London: English Scholar's Library of Old and Modern Works, 1879.

In the following essay, Arber reprints a representative portion of the writings of John Penry, as well as some of the Marprelate texts, making a stylistic argument for Penry's direction of the controversial works.

I.

So far as it can be traced to any precise words or acts, the Martin Marprelate Controversy arose out of the following printed words which were published on or about the 1st March, 1587. Speaking on behalf of the Welsh nation, John Penry urges—

For what will our children that rise after vs and their children say, when they shal be brought vp in grosse superstition, but that it was not Queene Elizabethes will, that we their Parentes should haue that...