was a great friend of Hobbes.

In March 1679 joint administration was granted by the Prerogative Court
of Canterbury, _Mariae Marvell relictae et Johni Greni Creditori_. This is
the first time we hear of there being any wife in the case. A creditor
of a deceased person could not obtain administration without citing the
next of kin, but a widow was entitled, under a statute of Henry
VIII., as of right, to administration, and it may be that Mr.
Green thought the quickest way of being paid his debt was to invent a
widow. The practice of the court required an affidavit from the widow
deposing that she was the lawful relict of the deceased, but this
assertion on oath seems in ordinary cases to have been sufficient, if
the customary fees were forthcoming. Captain Thompson roundly asserts
that the alleged Mary Marvell was a cheat, and no more than the
lodging-house keeper where he had last lived--and Marvell was a
migratory man.[223:1] Mary Marvell's name appears once again, in the
forefront of the first edition of Marvell's _Poems_ (1681), where she
certifies all the contents to be her husband's works. This may have been
a publisher's, as the affidavit may have been a creditor's, artifice. As
against this, Mr. Grosart, who believed in Mary Marvell, reminds us that
Mr. Robert Boulter, the publisher of the poems, was a most respectable
man, and a friend both of Milton's and Marvell's, and not at all likely
either to cheat the public with a falsely signed certificate, or to be
cheated by a London lodging-house keeper. Whatever "Mary Marvell" may
have been, "widow, wife, or maid," she is heard of no more.

Hull was not wholly unmindful of her late and (William Wilberforce
notwithstanding) her most famous member. "On Thursday the 26th of
September 1678, in consideration of the kindness the Town and Borough
had for Andrew Marvell, Esq., one of the Burgesses of Parliament for the
same Borough (lately deceased), and for his great merits from the
Corporation. It is this day ordered by the Court that Fifty pounds be
paid out of the Town's Chest towards the discharge of his funerals
(_sic_), and to perpetuate his memory by a gravestone" (_Bench Books of
Hull_).

The incumbent of Trinity Church is said to have objected to the erection
of any monument. At all events there is none. Marvell had many enemies
in the Church. Sharp, afterwards Archbishop of York, was a Yorkshire
man, and had been domestic chaplain to Sir Heneage Finch, a
la