On the title-page is an engraving of the bear and ragged staff, and the book is dedicated to the Earl of Leicester, who is described as a "speciall Mecaenas to euery student, and "so fauorable and zelous a friend to the ministrie.
Some Latin hexameters and sapphics by graduates of Cambridge, addressed to the reader, preface the volume.
The work was prepared as a reply to the 'Hatchet of Heresies' (Antwerp, 1565), an anti-Lutheran pamphlet, translated by Richard Shacklock, of Trinity College, Cambridge, from the De origine haeresium nostri temporis of cardinal Stanislaus Hosius, bishop of Chełmno and Warmia.
His table of heretics is long, and includes such obscure sects as ‘Visiblers,’ ‘Quantitiners,’ ‘Metamorphistes,’ and ‘Mice-feeders.’ A letter from a John Bartelot to Thomas Cromwell, dated 1535, revealing a scandalous passage in the life of the prior of Crutched Friars in London, is printed from the Cottonian MS.[1] in Wright's 'Letters relating to the Suppression of Monasteries,’ p. 59 (Camden Soc.)
[2] 'One Barthlett, a divinity lecturer of St. Giles', Cripplegate,’ was suspended by Bishop Grindal on 4 May 1566.