At what date he acquired the title of “poet to the city” does not appear:  he wrote the Lord Mayor’s Pageant in 1605; but he had certainly earlier been similarly employed, as Ben Jonson introduces him in that capacity in “The Case is Altered,” which was written in the end of 1598 or beginning of 1599.[149] He there throws some ridicule upon Don Antonio Balladino (as he calls Munday), and Mr Gifford was of opinion that Middleton meant to censure him in his “Triumphs of Truth,” as the impudent “common writer” of city pageants; but this is hardly consistent with the mention Middleton introduces of Munday at the close of that performance.  Besides, Dekker wrote the pageant for the year 1612, immediately preceding that for which Middleton was engaged; and that Munday was not in disrepute is obvious from the fact that in 1614, 1615, and 1616, his pen was again in request for the same purpose.

Whatever might have been Munday’s previous life, in the year 1582 he was placed in no very enviable situation.  He had been mainly instrumental in detecting the Popish Conspiracy in that year, which drew down upon him the bitter animosity of the Jesuits.  They charged him in their publications (from which extracts may be seen in Mr A. Chalmers’ “Biographical Dictionary,” and elsewhere) with having been “first a stage-player and afterwards an apprentice,” and after being “hissed from the stage” and residing at Rome, with having returned to his original occupation.  Munday himself admits, in the account he published of Edmund Campion and his confederates, that he was “some time the Pope’s scholar in the Seminary of Rome,” but always stoutly denied that he was a Roman Catholic.  Perhaps the most curious tract upon this subject is that entitled, “A breefe and true reporte of the Execution of certaine Traytours at Tiborne the xxviii, and xxx dayes of May 1582.  Gathered by A.M. who was there present.”  He signs the Dedication at length “A.  Munday,” and mentions that he had been a witness against some of the offenders.  The persons he saw executed were, Thomas Foord, John Shert, Robert Johnson, William Filbie, Luke Kirbie, Lawrance Richardson, and Thomas Cottom; and he seems to have been publicly employed to confute them at the foot of the gallows, and to convince the populace that they were traitors and Papists, denying the supremacy of Queen Elizabeth.  He there had a long dispute with Kirbie upon matters of fact, and, according to his own showing, was guilty while abroad, at least of a little duplicity.  He notices having seen Captain Stukely at Rome, who was killed at the Battle of Alcazar in 1578.  In the conclusion he promises his “English Romaine Lyfe” “so soon as it can be printed,” in which he purposes to disclose the “Romish and Sathanical juglings,” of the Jesuits.