An Almond for a Parrot: Being a reply to Martin Mar-Prelate

In Short

This pamphlet serves as a combative response to the "Martin Mar-Prelate" controversy, a series of illicit, anti-episcopal tracts that roiled late 16th-century England. Written by an author masking his identity behind the pseudonym "Cutbert Curry-knaue," the work functions as a satirical takedown of the Puritan factions seeking to dismantle the Church hierarchy. It has endured as a primary artifact of Renaissance vituperation, offering a visceral look at the intersection of early modern theology, political instability, and the sheer, unvarnished ferocity of Elizabethan prose warfare.

The Story

The narrative—if one can call a sustained, invective-filled rant a narrative—opens with a "resurrection." The author welcomes the phantom figure of Martin Mar-Prelate back from the dead, mocking the rumors of his demise. He paints a grotesque, comedic portrait of Martin’s followers, characterizing them as literal cobblers and tradesmen who, in their overweening pride, have deluded themselves into believing they possess a divine commission to interpret Scripture. The author dismisses their claims of revelation as nothing more than the hallucinations of "Lucifer’s ministers," suggesting that the entire reformist movement is a seditious enterprise born of jealousy and a desire to seize church lands.

As the text progresses, the author pivots from attacking the movement’s theology to deconstructing the character of its proponents. He employs a series of harsh analogies, comparing the fractured state of Martin’s faction to the war-torn provinces of the Netherlands and the chaotic state of France. He argues that Martin’s "reformed fraternity" is not interested in the salvation of souls, but rather in the redistribution of bishoprics. He imagines these church-livings being squandered by "decayed courtiers" in taverns, surrounded by "queanes and fidlers," a scenario he presents as the inevitable outcome of the Puritans' iconoclasm.

The author does not stop at generalities; he leans into the personal, targeting specific figures associated with the reformist cause. He mocks Philip Stubbes, a prominent Puritan writer, for his hypocrisy—contrasting his austere, self-righteous public moralizing with a private life marked by pettiness and vulgarity. He paints a picture of a man who preaches against the "dumb ministers" while having once worked for a pittance in a canvas doublet, cleaning a patron's boots. He recounts a tawdry tale of Stubbes attempting to woo a widow with a "spicke and spanne new Geneua Bible," framing the man’s spiritual rhetoric as a thin veil for crude, worldly ambition.

The argument culminates in a rejection of the possibility of public disputation. The author contends that debate is useless when one party denies the very foundations of the system they seek to reform. He asserts that the Puritans will only accept their own interpretations of the Bible, rendering any appeal to history, tradition, or the Church Fathers moot. The book ends not with a resolution of the conflict, but with a defiant, mocking sign-off. It leaves the reader with a final, stinging reminder that the author considers his targets worthy only of "two or three cudgellings," a parting gesture that captures the aggressive, scorched-earth nature of the entire enterprise.

How It Unfolds

The mock resurrection The author begins by gleefully greeting the supposedly deceased Martin, mocking the rumors of his end and the clumsy funeral rites of his followers. He uses this opening to establish the tone of the entire work: dismissive, irreverent, and profoundly combative.

The anatomy of a sect He moves to define the "Martinists" not as holy men, but as a seditious group of social climbers disguised as saints. He uses the analogy of the Low Countries to describe their faction as a map of internal decay and contradictory impulses.

The exposure of the printers The author details the underhanded methods of the reformist press, revealing how they hid their illegal printing operations behind the guise of saltpeter-men. He frames their work as a disruption of honest labor and a betrayal of the community.

The skewering of individuals Turning his aim toward specific figures like Philip Stubbes, the author tears down their moral credentials. By mixing accusations of theological error with gossip about their personal histories, he attempts to render them ridiculous.

The impossibility of reason The final section shifts to a broader defense of the established Church, arguing that the Puritans’ arrogance makes intellectual discourse impossible. He concludes that their true goal is the financial plunder of church holdings rather than any genuine reformation.

The People

The central figure of the author’s ire is Martin Mar-Prelate, a shifting, spectral antagonist representing the entire Puritan movement. To the author, Martin is not a coherent theologian but a "grout-headed" hypocrite whose only goal is the subversion of order for personal gain.

Standing alongside Martin is the hapless Philip Stubbes, whom the author treats with particular disdain. Stubbes appears as a man of glaring contradictions—a moralist who writes against "short heeld pantoffles" but struggles to maintain his own dignity. Through the author’s lens, Stubbes is reduced from a serious religious commentator to a social climber, a "good fellow" whose piety is merely a performance used to secure domestic and financial advantages.

Finally, there are the unnamed "Martinists," the cobblers and tradesmen who make up the rank-and-file of the movement. The author treats them as a collective, bumbling force of nature, "souterly" and foolish, whose attempts to interpret Scripture are compared to the prattling of parrots. They are the pawns of the movement, manipulated by the rhetoric of their leaders, and for them, the author has nothing but contempt.

In Its Own Voice

The author wastes no time in establishing a hostile atmosphere, immediately contrasting the supposed holiness of his opponents with their physical decay:

It was told me by the vndanted purseuants of your sonnes, and credibly beleeued in regard of your sinnes, that your grout-headed holinesse had turnd vppe your heeles like a tired iade in a medow, and snorted out your scornefull soule, like a mesled hogge on a mucke-hill.

When questioning the sincerity of his rivals, he dismisses the potential for genuine dialogue by highlighting their insistence on their own authority:

For such is the growth of their arrogancy, that they are not ashamed to compare themselus with Ierome or Austen, and in their tedious sermons preach against them as prophane.

What It's Really About

At its heart, this is a document about the fragility of authority during a moment of intense social and religious transition. It explores the tension between the established, centralized power of the Church and the burgeoning, decentralized impulse of individual conscience. The author is deeply concerned with the dangers of "private interpretation," arguing that if everyone is permitted to define truth for themselves, the fabric of civil and religious life will inevitably unravel. The book asks whether a society can survive when its primary institutions—the Church and the state—are subject to constant, mocking critique from anonymous, unaccountable voices. It is a defense of the "established order" that views dissent not as an honest intellectual pursuit, but as a dangerous, chaotic vanity.

Why Read It Today

Reading this today is an act of historical immersion. If you are interested in the evolution of English prose, you will find here the raw, unrefined energy that would eventually be polished by the next century of writers. It is a difficult read; the language is thick with period slang, obscure classical allusions, and the specific, often impenetrable, bitterness of the Mar-Prelate controversy. You will encounter attitudes that are deeply alien, characterized by a casual, brutal misogyny and a sense of social hierarchy that strikes a modern reader as jarringly rigid.

Yet, for the patient reader, the book offers something rare: a front-row seat to the intellectual combat that defined the late Elizabethan age. It feels less like a scholarly treatise and more like a transcript of a tavern brawl, where arguments are won not by logic, but by the sharpest insult and the most cutting caricature. What stays with you is the sheer, frantic vitality of the voice—the sense that the author truly believed the world was coming apart and that his only weapon was his ability to make his enemies look small, foolish, and inherently greedy. It is a portrait of a society in the heat of a crisis, captured in all its messy, vitriolic, and unmistakably human detail.