Thomas Cartwright was the leader of the Elizabethan Puritans and his intellectual pre-eminence was widely acknowledged. Standard-bearer of the Presbytero-Puritans against Whitgift, he was held to have vanquished his powerful adversary by the publication of his Rest of the Second Replie (1557).

Cartwrightiana is the first of two volumes giving authoritative editions of the works of the early Elizabethan Puritans--Cartwright, Browne and Harrison. It contains among other texts: accounts of Cartwright's examination before the Commissioners in 1590, Resolution of Doubts about Entering the Ministry, several of his letters, A Short Catechism (1579), The Holy Exercise of A True Fast (1580) and A Preface to An Hospitall for the Diseased (1579).