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:—

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 1639.2

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, the Cambridge undergraduate. The Latin verses, which are Horatian in style, contain one pretty stanza, composed apparently before the sex of the new-born infant was known at Cambridge.

After taking his Bachelor’s degree in 1639, Marvell, being still a Scholar of the college, must have gone away, for the Conclusion Book of Trinity, under date September 24, 1641, records as follows:—

Dr. Lort, in his amiable letter of 1765, already mentioned, points out that this entry contains no reflection on Marvell’s morals, but shows that he was given “notice to quit” for non-residence, “then much more strictly enjoined than it is now.” The days referred to in the entry were, so the master obligingly explains, “the certain number allowed by statute to absentees,” whilst the “acts mean the Exercises also enjoyned by the statutes.” Dr. Lort adds, “It does not appear, by any subsequent entry, whether Marvell did or did not comply with this order.” We may now safely assume he did not. Marvell’s Cambridge days were over.

The vacations, no inconsiderable part of the year, were probably spent by Marvell under his father’s roof at Hull, where his two elder sisters were married and settled. It is not to be wondered at that Andrew Marvell should, for so many years, have represented Hull in the House of Commons, for both he and his family were well known in the town. The elder Marvell added to his reputation as a teacher and preacher the character of a devoted servant of his flock in the hour of danger. The plague twice visited Hull during the time of the elder Marvell, first in 1635 and again in 1638. In those days men might well pray to be delivered from “plague, pestilence, and famine.” Hull suffered terribly on both occasions. We have seen, in comparatively recent times, the effect of the cholera upon large towns, and the plague was worse than the cholera many times over. The Hull preacher, despite the stigma of facetiousness, which still clings to him, stuck to his post, visiting the sick, burying the dead, and even, which seems a little superfluous, preaching and afterwards printing “by request” their funeral sermons. A brave man, indeed, and one reserved for a tragic end.

In April 1638 the poet’s mother died. In the following November the elder Marvell married a widow lady, but his own end was close upon him. The earliest consecutive account of this strange event is in Gent’s History of Hull (1735):—“This year, 1640, the Rev. Mr. Andrew Marvell, Lecturer of Hull, sailing over the Humber in company with Madame Skinner of Thornton College and a young beautiful couple who were going to be wedded; a speedy Fate prevented the designed happy union thro’ a violent storm which overset the boat and put a period to all their lives, nor were there any remains of them or the vessel ever after found, tho’ earnestly sought for on distant shores.”

Thus died by drowning a brave man, a good Christian, and an excellent clergyman of the Reformed Church of England. The plain narrative just quoted has been embroidered by many long-subsequent writers in the interests of those who love presentiments and ghostly intimations of impending events, and in one of these versions it is recorded, that though the morning was clear, the breeze fair, and the