Leonard Wright

Last updated

Leonard Wright (b.1555/6 [1] fl. 1591), was a controversialist who wrote many essays on religious and moral subjects which abound in scriptural references. He came into prominence as a champion of the cause of the bishops in the Martin Marprelate controversy, and was denounced by those who attacked episcopacy. The anti-episcopal author of ‘Theses Martinianæ’ (1590) anathematised him and six other ‘haggling and profane’ writers, and described them as ‘serving the established church if for no other use but to worke its ruine, and to bewray their owne shame and miserable ignorance’ (sig. B. iii, v.) [cf. art. Kemp, William]. [2]

Martin Marprelate

Martin Marprelate was the name used by the anonymous author or authors of the seven Marprelate tracts that circulated illegally in England in the years 1588 and 1589. Their principal focus was an attack on the episcopacy of the Anglican Church.

Anathema, in common usage, is something or someone that is detested or shunned. In its other main usage, it is a formal excommunication. The latter meaning, its ecclesiastical sense, is based on New Testament usage. In the Old Testament, anathema referred either to something that was consecrated or to something denounced as evil or accursed and set aside for sacrificial offering.

Contents

Works

Wright published: [2]

  1. A Summons for Sleepers. Wherein most grieuous and notorious offenders are cited to bring forth true frutes of repentance, before the day of the Lord now at hand. Hereunto is annexed, A Patterne for Pastors, deciphering briefly the dueties pertaining to that function, by Leonard Wright. [3] This was licensed for the press to John Wolfe on 4 March 1588–9, and was first published early in 1589. An edition ‘newly reprinted, corrected and amended’ bears the same date (black letter, 4to). A copy is in the British Museum. Neither place nor printer's name is given. Other editions are dated 1596 (‘imprinted by Adam Islip, and are to bee sold by Edward White;’ in the British Museum copy an engraving of the Seven Sleepers, dated 1740, is prefixed), 1615 (‘imprinted by George Purslowe’), and 1617 (‘newle corrected and augmented’).
  2. A Display of Dutie, dect with sage sayings, pythie sentences, and proper similies: Pleasant to read, delightful to heare, and profitable to practise, by L. Wright, London (printed by John Wolfe, 1589, 4to; black letter). This work, which was licensed on 13 Oct. 1589, was dedicated ‘to the Right worshipfull, most valiant, and famous Thomas Candish, Esquier.’ Other editions are dated 1602 (‘printed by V[alentine] S[ims] for Nicholas Lyng’) and 1614 (‘printed by Edward Griffin for George Purslowe’). The volume contains a poem of some merit (‘In Prayse of Friendship’).
  3. The Hunting of Antichrist, With a caueat to the contentious. By Leonard Wright, London (imprinted by John Wolfe, 1589; black letter, 4to). There is a sub-title at beginning of text, running ‘A briefe description of the Church of Rome from the time of Antichrist untill our present age’ (Brit. Mus.). Reference is made in the preface to Wright's ‘Summons to Sleepers.’ The work advocates the cause of prelacy.
  4. A friendly admonition to Martine Marprelate and his Mates, by Leonard Wright, London, 1590, 4to.
  5. The Pilgrimage to Paradise, by Leonard Wright (London, by John Wolfe), 1591, 4to. No copy of either 4 or 5 is in the British Museum.

Notes

  1. "Wright, Leonard", Early English Books online, Text Creation Partnership, via the U. Michigan Digital Collections
  2. 1 2 Lee 1900, p. 120.
  3. Leonard Wright, A summons for sleepers, at the French National Library (online)

Related Research Articles

Marprelate Controversy

The Marprelate Controversy was a war of pamphlets waged in England and Wales in 1588 and 1589, between a puritan writer who employed the pseudonym Martin Marprelate, and defenders of the Established Church.

Hugh Broughton English theologian

Hugh Broughton was an English scholar and theologian.

Second Folio 1632 second edition of the works of William Shakespeare

The Second Folio is the 1632 edition of the collected plays of William Shakespeare. It follows the First Folio of 1623. Much language was updated in the Second Folio and there are almost 1,700 changes.

Henry Lyte (botanist) Sixteenth century English botanist

Henry Lyte was an English botanist and antiquary. He is best known for two works, A niewe Herball (1578), which was a translation of the Cruydeboeck of Rembert Dodoens, and an antiquarian volume, The Light of Britayne (1588), both of which are dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I.

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.

Robert Some (Soame) (1542–1609) was an English churchman and academic. Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge from 1589, Some played a prominent part in the ecclesiastical controversies of his time, taking a middle course, hostile alike to extreme Puritans and Anglicans.

John Wolfe was an English bookseller and printer. His considerable ambition and his disdain for the printing patent system of Elizabethan England drew the ire of his competitors and authorities in his early career. After being jailed twice and having his printing materials seized, Wolfe transformed himself into an ardent defender of printing privileges. By 1593, he was appointed Printer to the City of London.

Thomas White (c.1550–1624) was an English clergyman, founder of Sion College, London, and of White's professorship of moral philosophy at the University of Oxford. Thomas Fuller in Worthies of England acquits him of being a pluralist or usurer; he made a number of other bequests, and was noted in his lifetime for charitable gifts.

Pasquill (the Cavaliero) Pseudonymous defender of the Anglican hierarchy

Pasquill is the pseudonym adopted by a defender of the Anglican hierarchy in an English political and theological controversy of the 1580s known as the "Marprelate controversy" after "Martin Marprelate", the nom de plume of a Puritan critic of the Anglican establishment. The names of Pasquill and his friend "Marforius", with whom he has a dialogue in the second of the tracts issued in his name, are derived from those of "Pasquino" and "Marforio", the two most famous of the talking statues of Rome, where from the early 16th century on it was customary to paste up anonymous notes or verses commenting on current affairs and scandals.

John Udall (1560?–1592) was an English clergyman of Puritan views, closely associated with the publication of the Martin Marprelate tracts, and prosecuted for controversial works of a similar polemical nature. He has been called "one of the most fluent and learned of puritan controversialists".

Timothie Bright, M.D. (1551?–1615) was an Early Modern English physician and clergyman, the inventor of modern shorthand.

John Farmery, M.D. was an English physician.

William Rogers (engraver) English engraver

William Rogers was an English engraver. A Citizen of the City of London – one of his surviving engravings is signed Anglus et Civis Lond(oniensis). – he is the first English craftsman known to have practised engraving and the greatest portrait engraver of the Tudor period. The English were extremely late in coming to printmaking, though several artists from the thriving Flemish industry had worked in England already; the engraved print had been invented over 150 years before Rogers began to produce them. Rogers was also a goldsmith, and presumably acquired his technique in that context. His portrait style reflects Flemish models, while his backgrounds are often "overloaded with ornament" that is "redolent of the goldsmith's shop".

John Hammond (1542–1589) was an English civil lawyer and politician.

Robert Waldegrave English printer

Robert Waldegrave or Walgrave, the son of Richard Waldegrave of Blockley, Worcestershire, was a 16th-century printer and publisher in England and Scotland. From 1578 to 1588 he printed numerous, mainly religious works in London, and from 1590 to 1603, more than 100 books in Scotland. In 1603, following King James I of England's accession to the English throne, he returned to England, but died later the same year.

John Hales (died 1608) British landowner

John Hales was the owner of the Whitefriars in Coventry at which two of the Marprelate tracts were printed on a secret press. He was the nephew and heir of John Hales, Clerk of the Hanaper, and the nephew of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote.

George Turner was an English physician in London. He is known for his interest in alchemy and friendship with Simon Forman. His wife was the convicted murderer Anne Turner.

Elizabeth Hussey, later Elizabeth Crane and Elizabeth Carleton, was a religious activist with strong Puritan sympathies. She and her second husband, George Carleton, were prosecuted for involvement in the Marprelate controversy. The first of the anonymous Marprelate tracts, Martin's Epistle, was printed at her home in East Molesey, Surrey, in October 1588.

Andrew Simson (c.1526–c.1591) was a Scottish minister and schoolmaster.

References

The public domain consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable.

Sidney Lee 19th/20th-century English biographer and critic

Sir Sidney Lee was an English biographer, writer and critic.

<i>Dictionary of National Biography</i> Multi-volume reference work

The Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) was published on 23 September 2004 in 60 volumes and online, with 50,113 biographical articles covering 54,922 lives.