Job Throckmorton

Job Throckmorton (Throkmorton) (1545–1601) was an English religious pamphleteer and Member of Parliament. 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

He 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 was elected as Member of Parliament for Warwick in 1572 and 1586.[4]

In 1587 Throckmorton and Edward Dunn Lee presented to Parliament a petition of John Penry, on preaching in Wales.[5] It caused Penry to be arrested by John Whitgift.[6]

The seven Marprelate pamphlets appeared late in 1588.[7] Leland Carlson has argued strongly for Throckmorton as the sole author.[8]

Throckmorton's Master some laid open in his colours and A Dialogue in which is plainely laid open the tyrannical dealing of the Lord Bishopps were printed in La Rochelle in 1589.[9] 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.[10] In 1590 Throckmorton was held on a treason charge, which he escaped narrowly.[1]

He was attacked by Matthew Sutcliffe, Dean of Exeter in An answere to a certaine libel supplicatorie (1592), as a Marprelate author.[11] 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]

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 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. ↑ 3.0 3.1 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=56991
  4. ↑ Annabel M. Patterson, Reading Between the Lines (1993), pp. 69-70.
  5. ↑ Dennis Taylor, David N. Beauregard (editors), Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England (2003), p. 168.
  6. ↑ http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-PENR-JOH-1563.html
  7. ↑ http://www.britainexpress.com/History/tudor/marprelate.htm
  8. ↑ Leland Carlson, Martin Marprelate, Gentleman: Master Job Throckmorton Laid Open in All His Colors (1981).
  9. ↑ Cyndia Susan Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (1997), p. 174.
  10. ↑ http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=66643
  11. ↑ http://www.bartleby.com/213/1711.html