John Stubbs

John Stubbs (or Stubbe) (c. 1544 – after 25 September 1589) was an English pamphleteer or political commentator during the Elizabethan era.

He was born in the County of Norfolk, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. After reading law at Lincoln's Inn, he lived at Thelveton, in the County of Norfolk. He was a committed Puritan, and he opposed the negotiations for marriage between Queen Elizabeth and François, Duke of Anjou, a French Roman Catholic who was the brother of the King of France.

In 1579 he put his opinions into a pamphlet entitled The Discovery of a Gaping Gulf whereunto England is like to be swallowed by another French Marriage, if the Lord forbid not the banns, by letting her Majesty see the sin and punishment thereof. Copies of the text were later publicly burned in the kitchen stove of Stationer's Hall. The pamphlet argued that at forty-six years old Elizabeth was too old to have children and therefore had no need for marriage. He argued that English values, customs, language and morality would be undermined by so close a relationship with the French monarchy.

Stubbs argued that his objective was to protect the freedom of thought and free speech that he said was associated with Protestantism. The proposed marriage could lead to a restoration of Catholic orthodoxy with its diminution of liberty.

Stubbs undiplomatically described the proposed wedding as a "contrary coupling," "an immoral union, an uneven yoking of the clean ox to the unclean ass, a thing forbidden in the law" as laid down by St. Paul, a "more foul and more gross" union that would draw the wrath of God on England and leave the English "pressed down with the heavy loins of a worse people and beaten as with scorpions by a more vile nation."

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