We cannot here do more than mention the masters of the fierce controversial prose; indeed their names, often, can only be guessed. They fought like wild cats, with the yells of these animals when enraged, in the wordy war of "Martin Marprelate," or "Bishop's bane". Archbishop Whitgift (1586) obtained a decree from the Star Chamber for the suppression of pamphlets that attacked the usages of the Established Church. Till 1593 the battle of books lasted; and then Parliament silenced the Puritans--for a while. The authors, taking the name of "Martin Marprelate," entered the fray, on the Puritan side, with the weapon of satire, banter, and Billingsgate, in autumn, 1588. Martin, whoever he or they may have been, employed a secret press, owned by one Waldegrave, that was set up now in one place, now in another. The history of the secret presses, of Waldegrave and of his successors, is curious. The learned Udall, John Penry ("the Father of Welsh Dissent") and other combatants, were imprisoned; Penry was hanged. There remain seven tracts by Marprelate, in a style of variegated abuse, banter, and "gag": Bishop Cooper found that his name yielded gross palpable quips and puns to the Puritan wags who wrote for "the man in the street". Martin was no Pascal, his weapons were not the small sword but the jester's bladder on a stick, and the bully's bludgeon. The Anti-Martinists answered with the same weapons, as Nash and Lyly were responsible for certain pamphlets; Greene took a hand in the fray, and it faded out in a literary and personal squabble with Gabriel Harvey. The Martin Marprelate tracts were revolutionary, and afford a singular instance in which the wit exhibited itself on the Puritan side. Serious treatment of serious themes, on the other hand, is nobly vindicated in the great work of Richard Hooker. Bacon.