Job Throckmorton Explained

Job Throckmorton (Throkmorton) (1545–1601) was a Puritan English religious pamphleteer and Member of Parliament during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Possibly with John Penry and John Udall, he authored the Martin Marprelate anonymous anti-clerical satires; scholarly consensus now makes him the main author.[1]

Life

Throckmorton was of the Warwickshire gentry, resident at Haseley, the son of a land-owning Member of Parliament, Clement Throckmorton, and nephew of the influential diplomat Sir Nicholas Throckmorton.[2] He was educated at Queen's College, Oxford, graduating in 1566.[3]

He served as Member of Parliament for East Retford from 1572 to 1583, and Member of Parliament for Warwick from 1586–87 (Queen Elizabeth I's 4th and 6th parliaments, respectively).[4] [5] In 1587 Throckmorton and Edward Dunn Lee presented to Parliament a petition of John Penry, on preaching in Wales.[6] It caused Penry to be arrested by John Whitgift.[7]

The seven Marprelate pamphlets appeared late in 1588.[8] Leland Carlson has argued strongly for Throckmorton as the sole author.[9] This was not universally agreed-upon; for example, author Ritchie Kendall suggested that at least some of the Marprelate pamphlets could have been the work of a committee of authors.[10] However, in more recent years, scholarly consensus has more or less emerged that Throckmorton was the primary author. For example, Joseph Black asserted in his annotated edition of the pamphlets that Throckmorton was the primary author, assisted by Penry.[11]

Throkmorton's pamphlets Master Some laid open in his colours and English, Middle (1100-1500);: A Dialogue in which is plainely laid open the tyrannical dealing of the Lord Bishopps were printed in La Rochelle in 1589.[12] The former was a reply to Robert Some, author of A Godly Treatise ... Touching the Ministerie, Sacraments, and the Church, who in 1589 became Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge.[13] In 1590 Throckmorton was held on a treason charge, which he escaped narrowly.[1]

He was attacked by Matthew Sutcliffe, Dean of Exeter in English, Middle (1100-1500);: An answere to a certaine libel supplicatorie (1592), as a Marprelate author.[14] His denial appeared in 1594 as The Defence of Job Throkmorton, against the slaunders of Maister Sutcliffe, and the controversy continued. Towards the end of his life he was close to John Dod, and moved to Canons Ashby.[3]

Works

  1. Oh Read Over Dr. John Bridges – The Epistle (October 1588)
  2. Oh Read Over Dr. John Bridges – The Epitome (November 1588)
  3. Certain Mineral and Metaphysical Schoolpoints (20 February 1589)
  4. Hay any Work for Cooper (March 1589)
  5. Theses Martinianæ (22 July 1589)
  6. The Just Censure and Reproof of Martin Junior (29 July 1589)
  7. The Protestation of Martin Marprelate (September 1589)

Notes and References

  1. Dorothy Auchter, Dictionary of Literary and Dramatic Censorship in Tudor and Stuart England (2001), p. 231.
  2. J E Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons (London: Jonathan Cape, 1949), p. 251
  3. Book: A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 3, Barlichway Hundred . Parishes: Haseley . 104–108 . 1945 . Victoria County History . London . British History Online . 2 March 2018.
  4. Throckmorton, Job. Lee. Sidney . Sidney Lee. 56. 329-330.
  5. Annabel M. Patterson, Reading Between the Lines (1993), pp. 69-70.
  6. Dennis Taylor, David N. Beauregard (editors), Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England (2003), p. 168.
  7. s-PENR-JOH-1563. PENRY, JOHN (1563 - 1593), Puritan author.
  8. Web site: The Marprelate Tracts, 1588.
  9. Leland Carlson, Martin Marprelate, Gentleman: Master Job Throckmorton Laid Open in All His Colors (1981).
  10. Book: Kendall, Ritchie. The Drama of Dissent: The Radical Poetics of Nonconformity, 1380–1590. 1986. Chapel Hill. 258–59.
  11. Book: Marprelate, Martin. The Martin Marprelate tracts : a modernized and annotated edition. 2008. Cambridge University Press. Joseph Black. 978-0-521-87579-0. Cambridge. 166357728.
  12. Cyndia Susan Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (1997), p. 174.
  13. Web site: The colleges and halls: Peterhouse | British History Online.
  14. Web site: §11. The authorship of the tracts. XVII. The Marprelate Controversy. Vol. 3. Renascence and Reformation. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907–21. 25 June 2022 .
  15. Patterson, p. 70

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