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"Gaping Gulf" with Letters and Other Relevant Documents
278 pages, Hardcover
First published May 28, 1970
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About the author
John Stubbs
32 books24 followersJohn Stubbs received his PhD in Renaissance literature from Cambridge University. His biography John Donne: The Reformed Soul was shortlisted for the Costa Award and won the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award. He lives in Slovenia.
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July 7, 2016
John STUBBS
The Discovery of a Gaping Gulf
Whereinto England is like to be Swallowed
by Another French Marriage, if the Lord Forbid Not the Banes, by Letting Her Majesty See the Sin and Punishment Thereof.
Author: John Stubbs (c.1543-1591)
Target of the pamphlet: Royalty and Queen Elizabeth I
Date of publication: 1579
Location: London, England
Subject: "The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf Where into England is Likely to be Swallowed by another French Marriage," 1579: A virulent attack on the proposed marriage of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou.
First punishment: 1579 London, England: The copies of the book were burned in the kitchen stove of Stationer's Hall by the Stationers Company on order from the Queen, in application of the copyright charter of 1557.
Second Punishment: 1579 London, England: The author, John Stubbs, and the printer/publisher, William Page, were condemned to have their right hands cut off by means of a cleaver driven through the wrist by a mallet. John Stubbs, after the performing of the sentence, raised his hat with his left hand, cried, "God save the Queen" and, according to popular lore, gainted.
Source: Lloyd E. Berry, editor, published for The Folger Shakespeare Library by The University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1968. Available as a scanned text on the Internet (the scanning is not edited) at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A131... accessed June 6, 2016.
More: http://spartacus-educational.com/TUDs..., accessed June 6, 2016
William Camden, The History of Queen Elizabeth (1617)
“Stubbs and Page had their right hands cut off with a cleaver, driven through the wrist by the force of a mallet, upon a scaffold in the market-place at Westminster... I remember that Stubbs, after his right hand was cut off, took off his hat with his left, and said with a loud voice, "God Save the Queen"; the crowd standing about was deeply silent: either out of horror at this new punishment; or else out of sadness.” (Page 270)
The following opening excerpt shows the style of the pamphlet, quite typical of the period: long sentences particularly convoluted into many embedded clauses and phrases. We can also note the rather pompous rhetoric with the comparison of Queen Elizabeth to both Eve and Adam. Eve since she is seduced by the Duke of Anjou and Adam because she is the Lord – or lordly Lady – of the Realm. This highly complicated sophistication is typical of what the metaphysical poets were going to produce some time later (John Donne, 1572-1631, for example). We can also note the reference to the Anglican church as the only Christian one and to the Catholic church as some diabolical heresy from Rome. The Duke of Anjou is then seen as an invader.
(opening excerpt, 1579)
In all deliberations of most private actions, the very heathen are wont, first to consider honesty, and then profit. Some of them also many times, not without some blind regard to a certain divine nature which they worshipped before the altar of the unknown God. Oh the strange Christianity of some men in our age, who in their state consultations have not so much respect to Piety as those first men had to honesty, nor so much regard to honesty, as they had to profit: and are therefore justly given up of the Lord our God to seek profit where indeed it is not, and deceived by their lusts to embrace a showing and false Good instead of that which is the good end of a wise man. Yea, who neglecting the holy and sure wisdom of God in his word, wherein are the only honorable instructions for politics, and honestest rules of governing our houses and own person, do beat their brains in other books of wicked vile atheists and set before them the example of Turkish and Italian practices, whereby the Lord many times thrusts their hands into the nest of wasps and hornets while they seek the honey of the sweet bee.
This sickness of mind have the French drawn from those Eastern parts of the world, as they did that other horrible disease of the body: and having already too far westward communicated the one contagion, do now seek notably to infect our minds with the other. And because this infection spreads itself after another manner from the first, they have sent us hither not Satan in body of a serpent, but the old serpent in shape of a man whose sting is in his mouth, and who doth his endeavor to seduce our Eve, that she and we may lose this English Paradise. Who because she is also our Adam & sovereign lord or lordly lady of this land, it is so much the more dangerous & therefore he so much the more busily bestirs him.
Now although the truth be that upon further ripping up of this serpentine attempt, we shall find the Church notably undermined by the Pope: the very foundations of our commonweal dangerously digged at by the French: and our dear Queen Elizabeth (I shake to speak) led blindfold as a poor lamb to the slaughter: yet should not my fear be so great, knowing her Majesty’s wisdom sufficient to teach her, in such a matter as this, neither to trow a Frenchman nor once hear speak a daily hearer of mass (for she may know him by his hissing and lisping) but that some English mouths professing Christ are also persuaders of the same. And though this ship fraught with England’s bane were already under crossed sail with the freshest gale of wind in her stern that can blow in the sky for our best port: yet had we counter-puffs and counter-buffs enough to keep him aloof and to send him back again into the deeps, if he had none but only French mariners and only French tackle. But alas this ship of unhappy load hath among us and of ourselves (I would, not in prince’s Court) those who with all their might and main help to hale it in: and, as though the blustering winds of our enemy’s malice and the broad sails of our sins were not sufficient to give it a speedy passage hither, our own men walk on this shore and lay to their shoulders with fastened lines and cables to draw it in. This is our mischief, this is the swallowing Gulf of our bottomless destruction: else might we think ourselves impregnable. It is not the feeble assault of this carpet squire that would make us come to the walls or once shut the gates against him.
Therefore albeit I wot well you understand already in general, what is that great calamity thus imminent over our heads whereof I speak: and albeit the bare consideration of some few apparent circumstances of this strange sought marriage by France with England, do sufficiently move and affect every Christian heart, in respect of the hurt to the Church of Christ: every English heart, in respect of the detriment to England: and every honest affectionate heart of any her majesty’s loving true servant in regard of the great danger thereby coming to her royal Person: yet to the end our minds may be the more earnestly stirred up, by more particularly weighing the evils of this matter, we will enter into the parts of this practice and gauge the very belly of this great horse of hidden mischiefs and falsehood meant to us. And according as those not half taught Christians and half hearted Englishmen which persuade and solicit this French marriage, have in their mouths nothing but the church and commonweal, pretending hereby either against their own conscience or of some other humor that blindeth them, to bring great advancement to religion and advantage to the state, with many smooth words of I wot what assurance to her majesty’s person: I will likewise draw all my reasons to those chief heads of Religion, and the Policy, showing and proving, I hope that this is a counsel against the Church of Christ, an endeavor of no well advised Englishman, as well in regard of the common state, as of her majesty’s good estate, to every of which it is pernicious and capital. In the end I will answer such of their adverse or perverse reasons as shall be left undisproved in this my proof.
The Discovery of a Gaping Gulf
Whereinto England is like to be Swallowed
by Another French Marriage, if the Lord Forbid Not the Banes, by Letting Her Majesty See the Sin and Punishment Thereof.
Author: John Stubbs (c.1543-1591)
Target of the pamphlet: Royalty and Queen Elizabeth I
Date of publication: 1579
Location: London, England
Subject: "The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf Where into England is Likely to be Swallowed by another French Marriage," 1579: A virulent attack on the proposed marriage of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou.
First punishment: 1579 London, England: The copies of the book were burned in the kitchen stove of Stationer's Hall by the Stationers Company on order from the Queen, in application of the copyright charter of 1557.
Second Punishment: 1579 London, England: The author, John Stubbs, and the printer/publisher, William Page, were condemned to have their right hands cut off by means of a cleaver driven through the wrist by a mallet. John Stubbs, after the performing of the sentence, raised his hat with his left hand, cried, "God save the Queen" and, according to popular lore, gainted.
Source: Lloyd E. Berry, editor, published for The Folger Shakespeare Library by The University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1968. Available as a scanned text on the Internet (the scanning is not edited) at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A131... accessed June 6, 2016.
More: http://spartacus-educational.com/TUDs..., accessed June 6, 2016
William Camden, The History of Queen Elizabeth (1617)
“Stubbs and Page had their right hands cut off with a cleaver, driven through the wrist by the force of a mallet, upon a scaffold in the market-place at Westminster... I remember that Stubbs, after his right hand was cut off, took off his hat with his left, and said with a loud voice, "God Save the Queen"; the crowd standing about was deeply silent: either out of horror at this new punishment; or else out of sadness.” (Page 270)
The following opening excerpt shows the style of the pamphlet, quite typical of the period: long sentences particularly convoluted into many embedded clauses and phrases. We can also note the rather pompous rhetoric with the comparison of Queen Elizabeth to both Eve and Adam. Eve since she is seduced by the Duke of Anjou and Adam because she is the Lord – or lordly Lady – of the Realm. This highly complicated sophistication is typical of what the metaphysical poets were going to produce some time later (John Donne, 1572-1631, for example). We can also note the reference to the Anglican church as the only Christian one and to the Catholic church as some diabolical heresy from Rome. The Duke of Anjou is then seen as an invader.
(opening excerpt, 1579)
In all deliberations of most private actions, the very heathen are wont, first to consider honesty, and then profit. Some of them also many times, not without some blind regard to a certain divine nature which they worshipped before the altar of the unknown God. Oh the strange Christianity of some men in our age, who in their state consultations have not so much respect to Piety as those first men had to honesty, nor so much regard to honesty, as they had to profit: and are therefore justly given up of the Lord our God to seek profit where indeed it is not, and deceived by their lusts to embrace a showing and false Good instead of that which is the good end of a wise man. Yea, who neglecting the holy and sure wisdom of God in his word, wherein are the only honorable instructions for politics, and honestest rules of governing our houses and own person, do beat their brains in other books of wicked vile atheists and set before them the example of Turkish and Italian practices, whereby the Lord many times thrusts their hands into the nest of wasps and hornets while they seek the honey of the sweet bee.
This sickness of mind have the French drawn from those Eastern parts of the world, as they did that other horrible disease of the body: and having already too far westward communicated the one contagion, do now seek notably to infect our minds with the other. And because this infection spreads itself after another manner from the first, they have sent us hither not Satan in body of a serpent, but the old serpent in shape of a man whose sting is in his mouth, and who doth his endeavor to seduce our Eve, that she and we may lose this English Paradise. Who because she is also our Adam & sovereign lord or lordly lady of this land, it is so much the more dangerous & therefore he so much the more busily bestirs him.
Now although the truth be that upon further ripping up of this serpentine attempt, we shall find the Church notably undermined by the Pope: the very foundations of our commonweal dangerously digged at by the French: and our dear Queen Elizabeth (I shake to speak) led blindfold as a poor lamb to the slaughter: yet should not my fear be so great, knowing her Majesty’s wisdom sufficient to teach her, in such a matter as this, neither to trow a Frenchman nor once hear speak a daily hearer of mass (for she may know him by his hissing and lisping) but that some English mouths professing Christ are also persuaders of the same. And though this ship fraught with England’s bane were already under crossed sail with the freshest gale of wind in her stern that can blow in the sky for our best port: yet had we counter-puffs and counter-buffs enough to keep him aloof and to send him back again into the deeps, if he had none but only French mariners and only French tackle. But alas this ship of unhappy load hath among us and of ourselves (I would, not in prince’s Court) those who with all their might and main help to hale it in: and, as though the blustering winds of our enemy’s malice and the broad sails of our sins were not sufficient to give it a speedy passage hither, our own men walk on this shore and lay to their shoulders with fastened lines and cables to draw it in. This is our mischief, this is the swallowing Gulf of our bottomless destruction: else might we think ourselves impregnable. It is not the feeble assault of this carpet squire that would make us come to the walls or once shut the gates against him.
Therefore albeit I wot well you understand already in general, what is that great calamity thus imminent over our heads whereof I speak: and albeit the bare consideration of some few apparent circumstances of this strange sought marriage by France with England, do sufficiently move and affect every Christian heart, in respect of the hurt to the Church of Christ: every English heart, in respect of the detriment to England: and every honest affectionate heart of any her majesty’s loving true servant in regard of the great danger thereby coming to her royal Person: yet to the end our minds may be the more earnestly stirred up, by more particularly weighing the evils of this matter, we will enter into the parts of this practice and gauge the very belly of this great horse of hidden mischiefs and falsehood meant to us. And according as those not half taught Christians and half hearted Englishmen which persuade and solicit this French marriage, have in their mouths nothing but the church and commonweal, pretending hereby either against their own conscience or of some other humor that blindeth them, to bring great advancement to religion and advantage to the state, with many smooth words of I wot what assurance to her majesty’s person: I will likewise draw all my reasons to those chief heads of Religion, and the Policy, showing and proving, I hope that this is a counsel against the Church of Christ, an endeavor of no well advised Englishman, as well in regard of the common state, as of her majesty’s good estate, to every of which it is pernicious and capital. In the end I will answer such of their adverse or perverse reasons as shall be left undisproved in this my proof.
Displaying 1 of 1 review