March indefatigably on!
And for the last effect,
Still keep the sword erect.
The spirits of the shady night,
The same arts that did gain
A power, must it maintain.”1
It is not surprising that this Ode was not published in 1650—if indeed it was the work of that, and not of a later year. There is nothing either of the courtier or of the partisan about its stately versification and sober, solemn thought. Entire self-possession, dignity, criticism of a great man and a strange career by one well entitled to criticise, are among the chief characteristics of this noble poem. It is infinitely refreshing, when reading and thinking about Cromwell, to get as far away as possible from the fanatic’s scream and the fury of the bigot, whether of the school of Laud or Hobbes. Andrew Marvell knew Oliver Cromwell alive, and gazed on his features as he lay dead—he knew his ambition, his greatness, his power, and where that power lay. How much might we unwittingly have lost, if Captain Thompson had not printed a poem which for more than a century of years had remained unknown, and exposed to all the risks of a single manuscript copy!
When Cromwell sent his picture to Queen Christina of Sweden to commemorate the peace he concluded with her in 1654, Marvell, though not then attached to the public service, was employed to write the Latin couplet that accompanied the picture. He discharged his task as follows:—
At sub quâ cives otia lenta terunt.”
The authorship of these lines is often attributed to Milton, but there is little doubt they are of Marvell’s composition. They might easily have been better.
Marvell became Milton’s assistant in September 1657, and the friendship between the two men was thus consolidated by the strong ties of a common duty. Milton’s blindness making him unfit to attend the reception of foreign embassies, Marvell took his place and joined in respectfully greeting the Dutch ambassadors. After all he was but a junior clerk, still he doubtless rejoiced that his lines on Holland had been published anonymously. Literature was strongly represented in this department of State just then, for Cromwell’s Chamberlain, Sir Gilbert Pickering, who represented Northamptonshire in Parliament, had taken occasion to introduce his nephew, John Dryden, to the public service, and he was attached to the same office as Andrew Marvell. Poets, like pigeons, have often taken shelter under our public roofs, but Milton, Marvell, and Dryden, all at the same time, form a remarkable constellation. Old Noll, we may be sure, had nothing to do with it. Marvell must have known Cromwell personally; but there is nothing to show that Milton and Cromwell ever met. The popular engraving which represents a theatrical Lord-Protector dictating despatches to a meek Milton is highly ludicrous. Cromwell could have as easily dictated a book of Paradise Lost, on the composition of which Milton began to be engaged during the last year of the Protectorate, as one of Milton’s despatches.
In April 1657 Admiral Blake, the first great name in the annals of our navy, performed his last feat of arms by destroying the Spanish West Indian fleet at Santa Cruz without the loss of an English vessel. The gallant sailor died of fever on his way home, and was buried according to his deserts in the Abbey. His body, with that of his master, was by a vote of Parliament, December 4, 1660, taken from the grave and drawn to the gallows-tree, and there hanged and buried under it. Pepys, who was to know something of naval administration under the second Charles, has his reflections on this unpleasing incident.
Marvell’s lines on Blake’s victory over the Spaniards are not worthy of so glorious an occasion, but our great doings by land and sea have seldom been suitably recorded in verse. Drayton’s Song of Agincourt is imperishable, but was composed nearly two centuries after the battle. The wail of Flodden Field still floats over the Border; but Miss Elliot’s famous ballad was published in 1765. Even the Spanish Armada had to wait for Macaulay’s spirited fragment. Mr. Addison’s Blenheim stirred no man’s blood; no poet sang Chatham’s victories.1 Campbell at a later day did better. We must be content with what we get.
Marvell’s poem contains some vigorous lines, which show he was a good hater:—
Leaves the new world, and hastens for the old;
But though the wind was fair, they slowly swum,
Freighted with acted guilt, and guilt to come;
For this rich load, of which so proud they are,
Was raised by tyranny, and raised for war.
...
...
For now upon the main themselves they saw
That boundless empire, where you give the law.”
The Canary Islands are rapturously described—their delightful climate and their excellent wine. Obviously they should be annexed:—
The fight begins. “Bold Stayner leads” and “War turned the temperate to the torrid zone”:—
Who fight, as if for both those worlds they fought.
...
...
The all-seeing sun ne’er gazed on such a sight,
Two dreadful navies there at anchor fight,
And neither have, or power, or will, to fly;
There one must conquer, or there both must die.”
Blake sinks the Spanish ships:—
The only place where it can cause no ill”;
and the poet concludes:—
Were buried in as large, and deep a grave!
War’s chief support with them would buried be,
And the land owe her peace unto the sea.
Ages to come your conquering arms will bless.
There they destroyed what had destroyed their peace;
And in one war the present age may boast,
The certain seeds of many wars are lost.”
Good politics, if but second-rate poetry. This was the last time the Spanish war-cry Santiago, y cierra España rang in hostility in English ears.
Turning for a moment from war to love, on the 19th of November 1657 Cromwell’s third daughter, the Lady Mary Cromwell, was married to Viscount, afterwards Earl, Fauconberg. The Fauconbergs took revolutions calmly and, despite the disinterment of their great relative, accepted the Restoration gladly and lived to chuckle over the Revolution. The forgetfulness, no less than the vindictiveness, of men is often surprising. Marvell, who played the part of Laureate during the Protectorate, produced two songs for the conventionally joyful occasion. The second of the two is decidedly pretty for a November wedding:—
Never such a merry day,
For the northern shepherd’s son
Has Menalcas’ daughter won.
In a garland for the bride.
Phillis, you may wait the spring:
They have chosen such an hour
When she is the only flower.
Without each a sprig of green.
There are bays enough for all.
He, when young as we, did graze,
But when old he planted bays.
Far more catching than my hook;
’Twas those eyes, I now dare swear,
Led our lambs we knew not where.
Curled so lovely as her hair,
Nor our sheep new-washed can be
Half so white or sweet as she.
Somewhat else than silly sheep.
Pay to love and them their due.
Whose hopes united banish our despair.
What shepherd could for love pretend,
Whilst all the nymphs on Damon’s choice attend?
What shepherdess could hope to wed
Before Marina’s turn were sped?
Now lesser beauties may take place
And meaner virtues come in play;
While they
Looking from high
Shall grace
Our flocks and us with a propitious eye.”
All this merriment came to an end on the 3rd of September 1658, when Oliver Cromwell died on the anniversary of Dunbar fight and of the field of Worcester. And yet the end, though it was to be sudden, did not at once seem likely to be so. There was time for the poets to tune their lyres. Waller, Dryden, Sprat, and Marvell had no doubt that “Tumbledown Dick” was to sit on the throne of his father and “still keep the sword erect,” and were ready with their verses.
Westminster Abbey has never witnessed a statelier, costlier funeral than that of “the late man who made himself to be called Protector,” to quote words from one of the most impressive passages in English prose, the opening sentences of Cowley’s Discourse by way of Vision concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell. The representatives of kings, potentates, and powers crowded the aisles, and all was done that pomp and ceremony could do. Marvell, arrayed in the six yards of mourning the Council had voted him on the 7th of September, was, we may be sure, in the Abbey, and it may well be that his blind colleague, to whom the same liberal allowance had been made, leant on his arm during the service. Milton’s muse remained silent. The vote of the House of Commons ordering the undoing of this great ceremony was little more than two years ahead. O caeca mens hominum!
Among the poems first printed by Captain Thompson from the old manuscript book was one which was written therein in Marvell’s own hand entitled “A poem upon the Death of his late Highness the Protector.” Its composition was evidently not long delayed:—
Earth ne’er more glad nor Heaven more serene.
Cease now our griefs, calm peace succeeds a war,
Rainbows to storms, Richard to Oliver.”
The lines best worth remembering in the poem are the following:—
And mortal sleep over those wakeful eyes;
Those gentle rays under the lids were fled,
Which through his looks that piercing sweetness shed;
That port, which so majestic was and strong,
Loose, and deprived of vigour, stretched along;
All withered, all discoloured, pale and wan,
How much another thing, no more that man!
O, human glory vain! O, Death! O, wings!
O, worthless world! O, transitory things!
Yet dwelt that greatness in his shape decayed,
That still though dead, greater than Death he laid,
And in his altered face you something feign
That threatens Death, he yet will live again.”
49:1 In 1659 Clarendon, then Sir Edward Hyde, and in Brussels, writing to Sir Richard Fanshaw, says, “You are the secretary of the Latin tongue and I will mend the warrant you sent, and have it despatched as soon as I hear again from you, but I must tell you the place in itself, if it be not dignified by the person who hath some other qualification, is not to be valued. There is no signet belongs to it, which can be only kept by a Secretary of State, from whom the Latin Secretary always receives orders and prepares no despatches without his direction, and hath only a fee of a hundred pound a year. And therefore, except it hath been in the hands of a person who hath had some other employment, it hath fallen to the fortune of inconsiderable men as Weckerlin was the last” (Hist. MSS. Com., Heathcote Papers, 1899, p. 9).
51:1 The Rehearsal Transprosed.—Grosart, iii. 126.
55:1 Even Mr. Firth can tell me nothing about this Ward of Cromwell’s.
56:1 For reprints of these tracts, see Social England Illustrated, Constable and Co., 1903.
57:1 “England’s Way to Win Wealth.” See Social England Illustrated, p. 253.
57:2 Ibid. p. 265.
58:1 Dr. Dee’s “Petty Navy Royal.” Social England Illustrated, p. 46.
58:2 “England’s Way to Win Wealth.” Social England Illustrated, p. 268.
59:1 Ranke’s History of England during the Seventeenth Century, vol. iii. p. 68.
61:1 See Leigh Hunt’s Wit and Humour (1846), pp. 38, 237.
62:1 Butler’s lines, A Description of Holland, are very like Marvell’s:—
In which men live as in a hold of nature.
...
...
They dwell in ships, like swarms of rats, and prey
Upon the goods all nations’ fleets convey;
...
...
That feed like cannibals on other fishes,
And serve their cousin-germans up in dishes:
A land that rides at anchor and is moor’d,
In which they do not live but go aboard.”
Marvell and Butler were rival wits, but Holland was a common butt; so powerful a motive is trade jealousy.
67:1 “To one unacquainted with Horace, this Ode, not perhaps so perfect as his are in form, and with occasional obscurities of expression, which Horace would not have left, will give a truer notion of the kind of greatness which he achieved than could, so far as I know, be obtained from any other poem in our language.”—Dean Trench.
70:1 “In the last war, when France was disgraced and overpowered in every quarter of the globe, when Spain coming to her assistance only shared her calamities, and the name of an Englishman was reverenced through Europe, no poet was heard amidst the general acclamation; the fame of our counsellors and heroes was entrusted to the gazetteer.”—Dr. Johnson’s Life of Prior.
CHAPTER IV
IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
Cromwell’s death was an epoch in Marvell’s history. Up to that date he had, since he left the University, led the life of a scholar, with a turn for business, and was known to many as an agreeable companion and a lively wit. He was keenly interested in public affairs, and personally acquainted with some men in great place, and for a year before Cromwell’s death he had been in a branch of the Civil Service; but of the wear and tear, the strife and contention, of what are called “practical politics” he knew nothing from personal experience.
Within a year of the Protector’s death all this was changed and, for the rest of his days, with but the shortest of occasional intervals, Andrew Marvell led the life of an active, eager member of Parliament, knowing all that was going on in the Chamber and hearing of everything that was alleged to be going on in the Court; busily occupied with the affairs of his constituents in Hull, and daily watching, with an increasingly heavy heart and a bitter humour, the corruption of the times, the declension of our sea-power, the growing shame of England, and what he believed to be a dangerous conspiracy afoot for the undoing of the Reformation and the destruction of the Constitution in both Church and State.
“Garden-poetry” could not be reared on such a soil as this. The age of Cromwell and Blake was over. The remainder of Marvell’s life (save so far as personal friendship sweetened it) was spent in politics, public business, in concocting roughly rhymed and bitter satirical poems, and in the composition of prose pamphlets.
Through it all Marvell remained very much the man of letters, though one with a great natural aptitude for business. His was always the critical attitude. He was the friend of Milton and Harrington, of the political philosophers who invented paper constitutions in the “Rota” Club, and of the new race of men whose thoughts turned to Natural Science, and who founded the Royal Society. Office he never thought of. He could have had it had he chosen, for he was a man of mark, even of distinction, from the first. Clarendon has told us how members of the House of Commons “got on” in the Long Parliament of Charles the Second. It was full of the king’s friends, who ran out of the House to tell their shrewd master the gossip of the lobbies, “commended this man and discommended another who deserved better, and would many times, when His Majesty spoke well of any man, ask His Majesty if he would give them leave to let that person know how gracious His Majesty was to him, or bring him to kiss his hand. To which he commonly consenting, every one of his servants delivered some message from him to a Parliament man, and invited him to Court, as if the King would be willing to see him. And by this means the rooms at Court were always full of the members of the House of Commons. This man brought to kiss his hand, and the King induced to confer with that man and to thank him for his affection, which could never conclude without some general expression of grace or promise, which the poor gentleman always interpreted to his own advantage, and expected some fruit from it that it could never yield.”
The suspicious Clarendon, already shaking to his fall, goes on to add, “all which, being contrary to all former order, did the King no good, and rendered those unable to do him service who were inclined to it.”1
It is a lifelike picture Clarendon draws of the crowded rooms, and of the witty king moving about fooling vanity, ambition, and corruption to the top of their bent. That the king chose his own ministers is plain enough.
Marvell was at the beginning well disposed towards Charles. They had some points in common; and among them a quick sense of humour and a turn for business. But the member for Hull must soon have recognised that there was no place for an honest quick-witted man in any Stuart administration.
Marvell and his great chief remained in their offices until the close of the year 1659, when the impending Restoration enforced their retirement. Milton used his leisure to pour forth excited tracts to prove how easy it would still be to establish a Free Commonwealth. Once again, and for the last time, he prompted the age to quit its clogs
These pamphlets of Milton’s prove how little that solitary thinker ever knew of the real mind and temper of the English people.
The Lord Richard Cromwell was exactly the sort of eldest son a great soldier like Oliver, who had put his foot on fortune’s neck, was likely to have. Richard (1626-1712) was not, indeed, born in the purple, but his early manhood was nurtured in it. Religion, as represented by long sermons, tiresome treatises, and prayerful exercises, bored him to death. Of enthusiasm he had not a trace, nor was he bred to arms. He delighted in hunting, in the open air, and the company of sportsmen. Whatever came his way easily, and as a matter of right, he was well content to take. He bore himself well on State occasions, and could make a better speech than ever his father was able to do. But he was not a “restless” Cromwell, and had no faith in his destiny. I do not know whether he had ever read Don Quixote, in Shelton’s translation, a very popular book of the time; probably not, for, though Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Richard was not a reading man, but if he had, he must have sympathised with Sancho Panza’s attitude of mind towards the famous island.
“If your highness has no mind that the government you promised should be given me, God made me of less, and perhaps it may be easier for Sancho, the Squire, to get to Heaven than for Sancho, the Governor. In the dark all cats are gray.”
The new Protector took up the reins of power with proper forms and ceremonies, and at once proceeded to summon a Parliament, an Imperial Cromwellian Parliament, containing representatives both from Scotland and Ireland. In this Parliament Andrew Marvell sat for the first time as one of the two members for Kingston-upon-Hull. His election took place on the 10th of January 1659, being the first county day after the sheriff had received the writ. Five candidates were nominated: Thomas Strickland, Andrew Marvell, John Ramsden, Henry Smyth, and Sir Henry Vane, and a vote being taken in the presence of the mayor, aldermen, and many of the burgesses, John Ramsden and Andrew Marvell were declared duly elected.
Nobody to-day, glancing his eye over a list of the knights and burgesses who made up Richard Cromwell’s first and last Parliament, would ever guess that it represented an order of things of the most recent date which was just about to disappear. On paper it has a solid look. The fine old crusted Parliamentary names with which the clerks were to remain so long familiar as the members trooped out to divide were more than well represented.1 The Drakes of Amersham were there; Boscawens, Bullers, and Trelawneys flocked from Cornwall; Sir Wilfred Lawson sat for Cumberland, and his son for Cockermouth; a Knightly represented Northamptonshire, whilst Lucys from Charlecote looked after Warwick, both town and county. Arthur Onslow came from Surrey, a Townshend from Norfolk, and, of course, a Bankes from Corfe Castle;2 Oxford University, contented, as she occasionally is, to be represented by a great man, had chosen Sir Matthew Hale, whilst the no less useful and laborious Thurloe sat for the sister University. Anthony Ashley Cooper was there, but in opposition, snuffing the morrow. Mildmays, Lawleys, Binghams, Herberts, Pelhams, all travelled up to London with the Lord-Protector’s writs in their pockets. A less revolutionary assembly never met, though there was a regicide or two among them. But when the members found themselves alone together there was some loose talk.
On the 27th of January 1659 Marvell attended for the first time in his place, when the new Protector opened Parliament, and made a speech in the House of Lords, which was pronounced at the time to be “a very handsome oration.”
The first business of the Commons was to elect a Speaker, nor was their choice a very lucky one, for it first fell on Chaloner Chute, who speedily breaking down in health, the Recorder of London was appointed his substitute, but the Recorder being on his deathbed at the time, and Chute dying very shortly afterwards, Thomas Bampfield was elected Speaker, and continued so to be until the Parliament was dissolved by proclamation on the 22nd of April. This proclamation was Richard Cromwell’s last act of State.
Marvell’s first Parliament was both short and inglorious. One only of its resolutions is worth quoting:—
“That a very considerable navy be forthwith provided, and put to sea for the safety of the Commonwealth and the preservation of the trade and commerce thereof.”
It was, however, the army and not the navy that had to be reckoned with—an army unpaid, angry, suspicious, and happily divided. I must not trace the history of faction. There is no less exalted page in English history since the days of Stephen. Monk is its fitting hero, and Charles the Second its expensive saviour of society. The story how the Restoration was engineered by General Monk, who, if vulgar, was adroit, both on land and sea, is best told from Monk’s point of view in the concluding chapter of Baker’s Chronicle (Sir Roger de Coverley’s favourite Sunday reading), whilst that old-fashioned remnant, who still love to read history for fun, may not object to be told that they will find printed in the Report of the Leyborne-Popham Papers (Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1899, p. 204) a Narrative of the Restoration, by Mr. John Collins, the Chief Butler of the Inner Temple, proving in great and highly diverting detail how this remarkable event was really the work not so much of Monk as of the Chief Butler.
Richard Cromwell having slipped the collar, the officers assumed command, as they were only too ready to do, and recalled the old, dishonoured, but pertinacious Rump Parliament, which, though mustering at first but forty-two members, at once began to talk and keep journals as if nothing had happened since the day ten years before, when it was sent about its business. Old Speaker Lenthall was routed out of obscurity, and much against his will, and despite his protests, clapped once more into the chair. Dr. John Owen, an old parliamentary preaching hand, was once again requisitioned to preach before the House, which he did at enormous length one fine Sunday in May.
The Rump did not prove a popular favourite. It was worse than Old Noll himself, who could at least thrash both Dutchman and Spaniard, and be even more feared abroad than he was hated at home. The City of London, then almost an Estate of the Realm, declared for a Free Parliament, and it soon became apparent to every one that the whole country was eager to return as soon as possible to the old mould. Nothing now stood between Charles and his own but half a dozen fierce old soldiers and their dubious, discontented, unpaid men.
It was once commonly supposed (it is so no longer), that the Restoration party was exclusively composed of dispossessed Cavaliers, bishops in hiding, ejected parsons, high-flying jure divino Episcopalians, talkative toss-pots, and the great pleasure-loving crowd, cruelly repressed under the rule of the saints. Had it been left to these ragged regiments, the issue would have been doubtful, and the result very different. The Presbyterian ministers who occupied the rectories and vicarages of the Church of England and their well-to-do flocks in both town and country were, with but few exceptions, all for King Charles and a restored monarchy. In this the ministers may have shown a sound political instinct, for none of them had any more mind than the Anglican bishops to tolerate Papists, Socinians, Quakers, and Fifth Monarchy men, but in their management of the business of the Restoration these divines exposed themselves to the same condemnation that Clarendon in an often-quoted passage passed upon his own clerical allies. When read by the light of the Act of “Uniformity,” the “Corporation,” the “Five Mile,” and the “Conventicle” Acts, the conduct of the Presbyterians seems recklessness itself, whilst the ignorance their ministers displayed of the temper of the people they had lived amongst all their lives, and whom they adjured to cry God save the King, but not to drink his Majesty’s health (because health-drinking was forbidden in the Old Testament), would be startling were it not so eminently characteristic.1
The Rump, amidst the ridicule and contempt of the populace, was again expelled by military force on the 13th of October 1659. The officers were divided in opinion, some supporting, others, headed by Lambert, opposing the Parliament; but vis major, or superior cunning, was on the side of Lambert, who placed his soldiers in the streets leading to Westminster Hall, and when the Speaker came in his coach, his horses were turned, and he was conducted very civilly home. The regiments that should have resisted, “observing that they were exposed to derision,” peaceably returned to their quarters.
Monk, in the meanwhile, was advancing with his army from Edinburgh, and affected not to approve of the force put upon Parliament. The feeling for a Free Parliament increased in strength and violence every day. The Rump was for a third time restored in December by the section of the London army that supported its claim. Lenthall was once more in the chair, and the journals were resumed without the least notice of past occurrences. Monk, having reached London amidst great excitement, went down to the House and delivered an ambiguous speech. Up to the last Monk seems to have remained uncertain what to do. The temper of the City, which was fiercely anti-Rump, may have decided him. At all events he invited the secluded, that is the expelled, members of the old Long Parliament to take their seats along with the others, and in a formal declaration addressed to Parliament, dated the 21st of February 1660, he counselled it among other things to dissolve legally “in order to make way for a succession of Parliaments.” In a word, Monk declared for a Free Parliament. Great indeed were the national rejoicings.
On the 16th of March 1660 a Bill was read a third time dissolving the Parliament begun and holden at Westminster, 3rd November 1640, and for the calling and holding of a Parliament at Westminster on the 25th of April 1660. This time an end was really made of the Rump, though for many a long day there were parliamentary pedants to be found in the land ready to maintain that the Long Parliament had never been legally dissolved and still de jure existed; so long, I presume, as any single member of it remained alive.
Marvell was not a “Rumper,” but on the 2nd of April 1660 he was again elected for Hull to sit in what is usually called the Convention Parliament. John Ramsden was returned at the head of the poll with 227 votes, Marvell receiving 141. There were four defeated candidates.
With this Convention Parliament begins Marvell’s remarkable correspondence, on fine folio sheets of paper, with the corporation of Hull, whose faithful servant he remained until death parted them in 1678.
This correspondence, which if we include in it, as we well may, the letters to the Worshipful Society of Masters and Pilots of the Trinity House in Hull, numbers upwards of 350 letters, and with but one considerable gap (from July 1663 to October 1665) covers the whole period of Marvell’s membership, is, I believe, unique in our public records. The letters are preserved at Hull, where I hope care is taken to preserve them from the autograph hunter and the autograph thief. Captain Thompson printed a great part of this correspondence in 1776, and Mr. Grosart gave the world the whole of it in the second volume of his edition of Marvell’s complete works.
An admission may as well be made at once. This correspondence is not so interesting as it might have been expected to prove. Marvell did not write letters for his biographer, nor to instruct posterity, nor to serve any party purpose, nor even to exhibit honest emotion, but simply to tell his employers, whose wages he took, what was happening at Westminster. He kept his reflections either to himself or for his political broadsheets, and indeed they were seldom of the kind it would have been safe to entrust to the post.
Good Mr. Grosart fusses and frets terribly over Marvell’s astonishing capacity for chronicling in sombre silence every kind of legislative abomination. It is at times a little hard to understand it, for Hull was what may be called a Puritan place. No doubt caution dictated some of the reticence—but the reserve of Marvell’s character is one of the few traits of his personality that has survived. He was a satirist, not an enthusiast.
I will give the first letter in extenso to serve as a specimen, and a very favourable one, of the whole correspondence:—
“Nov. 17, 1660.
“Gentlemen, my worthy Friends,—Although during the necessary absence of my partner, Mr. Ramsden, I write with but halfe a penn, and can scarce perswade myselfe to send you so imperfect an account of your own and the publick affairs, as I needs must for want of his assistance; yet I had rather expose mine own defects to your good interpretation, then excuse thereby a totall neglect of my duty, and that trust which is divided upon me. At my late absence out of Town I had taken such order that if you had commanded me any thing, I might soon haue received it, and so returned on purpose to this place to haue obeyed you. But hearing nothing of that nature howeuer, I was present the first day of the Parliament’s sitting, and tooke care to write to Mr. Maior what work we had cut out. Since when, we have had little new, but onely been making a progresse in those things I then mentioned. There is yet brought in an Act in which of all others your corporation is the least concerned: that is, where wives shall refuse to cohabit with their husbands, that in such case the husband shall not be liable to pay any debts which she may run into, for clothing, diet, lodging, or other expenses. I wish with all my heart you were no more touched in a vote that we haue made for bringing in an Act of a new Assessment for six moneths, of 70,000li. per mensem, to begin next January. The truth is, the delay ere monyes can be got in, eats up a great part of all that is levying, and that growing charge of the Army and Navy doubles upon us. And that is all that can be said for excuse of ourselues to the Country, to whom we had giuen our own hopes of no further sessment to be raised, but must now needs incurre the censure of improvidence before or prodigality now, though it becomes no private member, the resolution having passed the House, to interpose further his own judgment in a thing that can not be remedied; and it will be each man’s ingenuity not to grudge an after-payment for that settlement and freedome from Armyes and Navyes, which before he would haue been glad to purchase with his whole fortune. There remain some eight Regiments to be disbanded, but those all horse in a manner, and some seauenteen shipps to be payd of, that haue laid so long upon charge in the harbour, beside fourscore shipps which are reckoned to us for this Winter guard. But after that, all things are to go upon his Majestye’s own purse out of the Tunnage and Poundage and his other revenues. But there being so great a provision made for mony, I doubt not but ere we rise, to see the whole army disbanded, and according to the Act, hope to see your Town once more ungarrisond, in which I should be glad and happy to be instrumentall to the uttermost. For I can not but remember, though then a child, those blessed days when the youth of your own town were trained for your militia, and did, methought, become their arms much better than any soldiers that I haue seen there since. And it will not be amisse if you please (now that we are about a new Act of regulating the Militia, that it may be as a standing strength, but not as ill as a perpetuall Army to the Nation) to signify to me any thing in that matter that were according to your ancient custome and desirable for you. For though I can promise little, yet I intend all things for your service. The Act for review of the Poll bill proceeds, and that for making this Declaration of his Majesty a Law in religious matters. Order likewise is giuen for drawing up all the votes made during our last sitting, in the businesse of Sales of Bishops’ and Deans’ and Chapters’ lands into an Act, which I should be glad to see passed. The purchasers the other day offerd the house 600,000li. in ready mony, and to make the Bishops’, etc., revenue as good or better then before. But the House thought it not fit or seasonable to hearken to it. We are so much the more concernd to see that great interest of the purchasers satisfyed and quieted, at least in that way which our own votes haue propounded. On Munday next we are to return to the consideration of apportioning 100,000li. per annum upon all the lands in the nation, in lieu of the Court of Wards. The debate among the Countyes, each thinking it self overrated, makes the successe of that businesse something casuall, and truly I shall not assist it much for my part, for it is little reason that your Town should contribute in that charge. The Excise bill for longer continuance (I wish it proue not too long) will come in also next weeke. And I foresee we shall be called upon shortly to effect our vote made the former sitting, of raising his Majestie’s revenue to 1,200,000li. per Annum. I do not love to write so much of this mony news. But I think you haue observed that Parliaments have been always made use of to that purpose, and though we may buy gold too deare, yet we must at any rate be glad of Peace, Freedom, and a good Conscience. Mr. Maior tells me, your duplicates of the Poll are coming up. I shall go with them to the Exchequer and make your excuse, if any be requisite. My long silence hath made me now trespasse on the other hand in a long letter, but I doubt not of your good construction of so much familiarity and trouble from, Gentlemen, your most affectionate friend and servant,
“Andr: Marvell.
“Westminster, Nov. 17, 1660.”
Although this first letter of the Hull correspondence is dated the 17th of November 1660, the Convention Parliament began its sittings on the 25th of April.
In composition this Convention Parliament was very like Richard Cromwell’s, and indeed it contained many of the same members, whose loyalty, however, was less restrained than in 1659. All the world knew what brought this Parliament together. It was to make the nation’s peace with its king, either on terms or without terms. “We are all Royalists now” are words which must often have been on the lips of the members of this House. One can imagine the smiles, half grim, half ironical, that would accompany their utterance. Such a right-about-face could never be dignified. It is impossible not to be reminded of schoolboys at the inevitable end of “a barring out.” The sarcastic comment of Clarendon has not lost its sting. “From this time there was such an emulation and impatience in Lords, Commons, and City, and generally over the Kingdom, who should make the most lively expressions of their duty and of their joy, that a man could not but wonder where those people dwelt who had done all the mischief and kept the King so many years from enjoying the comfort and support of such excellent subjects.”1
The most significant sentence in Marvell’s first letter to his constituents is that in which he refers to the Bill for making Charles’s declaration in religious matters the law of the land. Had the passing of any such Bill been possible, how different the history of England would have been!
The declaration Marvell is referring to was contained in the famous message from Breda, which was addressed by Charles to all his loving subjects of what degree or quality, and was expressed as follows:—