Note 422 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 5)

Penry’s unfinished petition, which he designed to have presented to the Queen before the trial, is a bold and energetic composition; his protestation, after the trial, a pathetic prayer! Neale has preserved both in his “History of the Puritans.” With what simplicity of eloquence he remonstrates on the temporising government of Elizabeth. He thus addresses the Queen, under the title of Madam!—“Your standing is, and has been, by the Gospel: it is little beholden to you for anything that appears. The practice of your government shows that if you could have ruled without the Gospel, it would have been doubtful whether the Gospel should be established or not; for now that you are established in your throne by the Gospel, you suffer it to reach no farther than the end of your sceptre limiteth unto it.” Of a milder, and more melancholy cast, is the touching language, when the hope of life, but not the firmness of his cause had deserted him. “I look not to live this week to an end. I never took myself for a rebuker, much less for a reformer of states and kingdoms. I never did anything in this cause for contention, vainglory, or to draw disciples after me. Great things, in this life, I never sought for: sufficiency I had, with great outward trouble; but most content I was with my lot, and content with my untimely death, though I leave behind me a friendless widow and four infants.”—Such is often the pathetic cry of the simple-hearted, who fall the victims to the political views of more designing heads.

We could hardly have imagined that this eloquent and serious young man was that Martin Mar-Prelate who so long played the political ape before the populace, with all the mummery of their low buffoonery, and even mimicking their own idioms. The populace, however, seems to have been divided in their opinions respecting the sanity of his politics, as appears by some ludicrous lines, made on Penry’s death, by a northern rhymer.

“The Welshman is hanged, Who at our kirke flanged, And at the state banged, And brened are his buks. And though he be hanged, Yet he is not wranged; The deil has him fanged In his kruked kluks.” Weever’s Funerall Monuments, p. 56. Edit. 1631.