World Enough and Time by Nicholas Murray

Marvell wrote to Sir Edward Harley at Brampton Bryan in Herefordshire to bring him up to date with metropolitan gossip and share his thoughts about the Parker controversy. Sir Edward, father of the rather more famous Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, had been Governor of Dunkirk in 1660–61 and had opposed its sale to the French. Although he had not been a supporter of Cromwell, he belonged to the country party in the Cavalier Parliament and opposed anti-nonconformist legislation, and would naturally be in sympathy with Marvell. In the letter, Marvell revealed that he had been on ‘a sudden journy to Stanton-Harcourt’, 2 the seat, near Oxford, of his friend Sir Philip Harcourt, the MP with whom Marvell was, in 1677, to be involved in an incident in the House of Commons which his enemies tried to exploit. Marvell recounted for Harley’s benefit the appearance of S’Too Him Bayes which he thought was written ‘by one Hodges’. Marvell was clearly well informed about the progress of the controversy and what was being planned by his opponents for he wrote: ‘Gregory Gray-Beard is not yet out. Dr Parker will be out the next weeke.’ In some way Marvell had managed to see the first 330 pages of Parker’s work, enough to convince him that it was ‘the rudest book, one or other, that ever was publisht (I may say), since the first invention of printing’. Although it handled him roughly, he told Harley, ‘yet I am not at all amated [cast down] by it’, but he did want to consult his friends about the best strategy for replying to Parker, and indeed whether it was advisable to do so at all. In the end, he concluded that it was right to reply but, with his customary circumspection and subtlety, he asked them to maintain the pretence for the time being that no answer was deserved by ‘so scurrilous a book’. To Harley he disclosed his real intentions:
    However I will for mine own private satisfaction forthwith draw up an answer that shall haue as much of spirit and solidity in it as my ability will afford & the age we liue in will indure. I am (if I may say it with reverence) drawn in, I hope by a good Providence, to intermeddle in a noble and high argument wch therefore by how much it is above my capacity I shall use the more industry not to disparage it. 3
    But for the time being, Marvell declared, he would sequester himself some five miles off – presumably a reference to his retreat at Highgate – ‘to injoy the spring & my privacy’. Should Harley wish to contact him, he was instructed to send his letter to Richard Thompson, the businessman with whom Marvell would later become involved in a complicated financial affair. The letter was to be left with Thompson ‘at the Signe of the Golden Cock in Wooll-Church Market’.
    The following month, Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby, was appointed Lord Treasurer. Some time after this, possibly when Marvell had returned to London in the autumn to oversee publication of the second part of The Rehearsal, an incident is said to have occurred. In Marvell biography it has acquired the status of legend but it has no corroboration whatsoever except in tradition. ‘A Life of Andrew Marvell,’ wrote Grosart drily in 1872, ‘would be as imperfect without it, as a history of King Alfred without the neatherd’s cottage and the burnt cakes.’ 4 It would be churlish to omit it here. Collating the various accounts, 5 the following playlet suggests itself:
    The Incorruptible Member
    The scene is the simple bachelor lodgings of Andrew Marvell, Member of Parliament for Hull, on the morning after the poet and politician has been honoured with an evening’s entertainment by the King. Charmed by Marvell’s easy manners, sound judgement, and keen wit, and delighted to have met the man who settled the hash of the egregious opponent of his policy of toleration, Samuel Parker, the King has despatched no