of early wills those of several Marvells and Mervells of Meldreth
and Shepreth, belonging to pre-Reformation times, as their pious gifts
to the "High Altar" and to "Our Lady's Light" pleasingly testify. But
our Andrew was a determined Protestant.

The poet's father is an interesting figure in our Church history.
Educated at Emmanuel College, from whence he proceeded a Master of Arts
in 1608, he took Orders; and after serving as curate at Flamborough, was
inducted to the living of Winestead in 1614, where he remained till
1624, in which year he went to Hull as master of the Grammar School and
lecturer, that is preacher, of Trinity Church. The elder Marvell
belonged, from the beginning to the end of his useful and even heroic
life, to the Reformed Church of England, or, as his son puts it, "a
conformist to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of England, though
I confess none of the most over-running and eager in them." The younger
Marvell, with one boyish interval, belonged all through his life to the
paternal school of religious thought.

Fuller's account of the elder Marvell is too good to be passed over:--

"He afterwards became Minister at Hull, where for his lifetime he was
well beloved. Most facetious in discourse, yet grave in his carriage,
a most excellent preacher who, like a good husband, never broached
what he had new brewed, but preached what he had pre-studied some
competent time before. Insomuch that he was wont to say that he would
cross the common proverb which called Saturday the working-day and
Monday the holyday of preachers. It happened that Anno Dom. 1640,
Jan. 23, crossing Humber in a Barrow boat, the same was sandwarpt,
and he was drowned therein (with Mrs. Skinner, daughter to Sir Edward
Coke, a very religious gentlewoman) by the carelessness, not to say
drunkenness of the boatmen, to the great grief of all good men. His
excellent comment upon St. Peter is daily desired and expected, if
the envy and covetousness of private persons _for their own use_
deprive not the public of the benefit thereof."[6:1]

This good man, to whom perhaps, remembering the date of his death, the
words may apply, _Tu vero felix non vitae tantum claritate sed etiam
opportunitate mortis_, was married at Cherry Burton, on the 22nd of
October 1612, to Anne Pease, a member of a family destined to become
widely known throughout the north of England. Of this marriage there
were fi