SOURCE: Black, Joseph. “The Rhetoric of Reaction: The Martin Marprelate Tracts (1588-89), Anti-Martinism, and the Uses of Print in Early Modern England.” Sixteenth Century Journal 28, no. 3 (fall 1997): 707-25.

In the following essay, Black explores the negative reaction resulting from the breach of religious and political norms by the Marprelate tracts.

On November 15, 1588, the antiquary Francis Thynne wrote Lord Burghley, Elizabeth's chief minister, to lobby for a position in the College of Arms. His letter is ostentatiously allusive, a rhetorical display designed to prove himself fit for office. Unfortunately for Thynne, the theme he is best able to embroider is that of bad luck and missed opportunity: “Your Lordship may suppose,” he begins, “that I have muche idle tyme and litle wisdome, to write so often & spede so seldome.”¹ Thynne had “knockt to late” to be considered for several positions recently available in the College,² so in the...