Andrew Marvell | Page 6

the Olympian Games he was counted the Conqueror who could
drive his chariot wheels nearest the mark yet so as not to hinder his
running or to stick thereon, so he who in his Sermons could preach
near Popery and yet no Popery, there was your man. And indeed it
now began to be the general complaint of most moderate men that
many in the University, both in the schools and pulpits, approached the
opinions of the Church of Rome nearer than ever before."
Archbishop Laud, unlike the bishops of Dr. Newman's day, favoured
the Catholic revival, and when Mr. Bernard, the lecturer of St.
Sepulchre's, London, preached a "No Popery" sermon at St. Mary's,
Cambridge, he was dragged into the High Commission Court, and, as
the hateful practice then was, a practice dear to the soul of Laud, was
bidden to subscribe a formal recantation. This Mr. Bernard refused to
do, though professing his sincere sorrow and penitence for any
oversights and hasty expressions in his sermon. Thereupon he was sent
back to prison, where he died. "If," adds Fuller, "he was miserably
abused in prison by the keepers (as some have reported) to the
shortening of his life, He that maketh inquisition for blood either hath
or will be a revenger thereof."[14:1]
By the side of this grim story the much-written-about incidents of the
Oxford Movement seem trivial enough.
Not a few Cambridge scholars of this period, Richard Crashaw among
the number, found permanent refuge in Rome.
The story of Marvell's conversion is emphatic but vague in its details.
The "Jesuits," who were well represented in Cambridge at the time, are
said to have persuaded him to leave Cambridge secretly, and to take

refuge in one of their houses in London. Thither the elder Marvell
followed in pursuit, and after search came across his son in a
bookseller's shop, where he succeeded both in convincing the boy of
his errors and in persuading him to return to Trinity. An odd story, and
not, as it stands, very credible; but Mr. Grosart discovered among the
Marvell papers at Hull a fragment of a letter without signature, address,
or date, which throws some sort of light on the incident. This letter was
evidently, as Mr. Grosart surmises, sent to the elder Marvell by some
similarly afflicted parent. In its fragmentary state the letter reads as
follows:--
"Worthy S^r,--M^r Breerecliffe being w^th me to-day, I related vnto
him a fearfull passage lately at Cambridg touching a sonne of mine,
Bachelor of Arts in Katherine Hall, w^ch was this. He was lately
inuited to a supper in towne by a gentlewoman, where was one M^r
Nichols a felow of Peterhouse, and another or two masters of arts, I
know not directly whether felowes or not: my sonne hauing noe
p'ferment, but liuing meerely of my penny, they pressed him much to
come to liue at their house, and for chamber and extraordinary bookes
they promised farre: and then earnestly moued him to goe to Somerset
house, where they could doe much for p'ferring him to some eminent
place, and in conclusion to popish arguments to seduce him soe rotten
and vnsauory as being ouerheard it was brought in question before the
heads of the Uniuersity: _Dr. Cosens_, being Vice Chancelor noe
punishment is inioined him: but on Ash-wednesday next a recantation
in regent house of some popish tenets Nicols let fall: I p'ceive by M^r
Breercliffe some such prank vsed towards y^r sonne: I desire to know
what y^u did therin: thinking I cannot doe god better seruice then bring
it vppon the stage either in Parliament if it hold: or informing some
Lords of the Counsail to whom I stand much oblieged if a bill in
Starchamber be meete To terrify others by making these some publique
spectacle: for if such fearfull practises may goe vnpunished I take care
whether I may send a child ... the lord."[15:1]
The reference to Dr. Cosens, or Cosin, being Vice-Chancellor gives a
clue to the date, for Cosin was chosen Vice-Chancellor on the 4th of
November 1639.[15:2]

Though we can know nothing of the elder Marvell's methods of
re-conversion, they were more successful than the elder Gibbon's, who,
as we know, packed the future historian off to Lausanne and a Swiss
pastor's house. What Gibbon became on leaving off his Romanism we
can guess for ourselves, whereas Marvell, once out of the hands of
these very shadowy "Jesuits," remained the staunchest of Christian
Protestants to the end of his days.
This strange incident, and two college exercises or poems, one in Greek,
the other in Latin, both having reference to an addition to the Royal
Family, and appearing in the Musa Cantabrigiensis for 1637, are all the
materials that exist for weaving the story of Marvell,