MARVELL, ANDREW (1621-1678), English poet and satirist, son of Andrew Marvell and his wife Anne Pease, was born at the rectory house, Winestead, in the Holderness division of Yorkshire, March 31, 1621. In 1624 his father exchanged the liv ing of Winestead for the mastership of Hull grammar school. He also became lecturer at Holy Trinity church and master of the Charterhouse in the same town. Thomas Fuller (Worthies of Eng land, ed. 1811, i. 165) describes him as "a most excellent preacher." The younger Marvell was educated at Hull grammar school and at Trinity college, Cambridge. He contributed two poems to the Musa cantabrigiensis in 1637, and in the following year he received a scholarship at Trinity college, and took his B.A. degree in 1639. His father was drowned in 1640 while crossing the Humber in company with the daughter of a Mrs. Skinner, almost certainly connected with the Cyriack Skinner to whom two of Milton's son nets are addressed. Marvell travelled for four years on the Continent, visiting Holland, France, Italy and Spain. In Rome he met Richard Flecknoe, whom he satirized in the amusing verses on "Flecnoe, an English priest at Rome." Although Marvell ranks as a great Puritan poet his sympathies were at first with Charles I., and in the lines on "Tom May's Death" he found no words too strong to express his scorn for the historian of the Long Parliament. He himself was no partisan, but had a passion for law and order. He acquiesced, accordingly, in the strong rule of Cromwell, but in his famous "Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland" (1650) he inserts a well known tribute to the courage and dignity of Charles I. In 165o he became tutor to Lord Fairfax's daughter Mary, afterwards duchess of Buckingham. During his life with the Fairfaxes at Nunappleton, Yorkshire, he wrote the poems "Upon the Hill and Grove at Billborow" and "On Appleton House." Doubtless the other poems on country life, and his exquisite "garden poetry" may be referred to this period.
Marvell was acquainted with Milton, probably through their common friends, the Skinners, and in Feb. 1653 Milton recom
mended him as assistant to himself in his duties as foreign secre tary. The appointment was, however, given at the time to Philip Meadows, and Marvell became tutor to Cromwell's ward, William Dutton, at Eton, in the house of John Oxenbridge, then a fellow of the college, but formerly a minister in the Bermudas. No doubt the well-known verses, "Bermudas," were inspired by inter course with the Oxenbridges. He was employed by Milton in to convey to Bradshaw a copy of the Defensio secunda. When the secretaryship again fell vacant in 1657 Marvell was appointed, and retained the appointment until the accession of Charles II. During this period he wrote many political poems all of them displaying admiration for Cromwell.
Marvell's connection with Hull had been strengthened by the marriages of his sisters with persons of local importance, and in Jan. 1659 he was elected to represent the borough in parliament. He was re-elected in 166o, again in 1661, and continued to repre sent the town until his death. According to Milton's nephew, Edward Phillips, the poet owed his safety at the Restoration largely to the efforts of Marvell, who "made a considerable party for him" in the House of Commons. From 1663 to 1665 he acted as secretary to Charles Howard, 1st earl of Carlisle, on his difficult and unsuccessful embassy to Muscovy, Sweden, and Denmark; and this is the only official post he filled during the reign of Charles. With the exception of this absence, and of short visits to Holland on private business, Marvell was constant in his parlia mentary attendance to the day of his death. He looked after the special interests of the port of Hull. He was a member of the corporation of Trinity House, both in London and Hull, and be came a younger warden of the London Trinity House. His correspondence with his constituents, from 166o to 1678, some 400 letters in all, first printed by Dr. Grosart (Complete Works, vol. ii.) forms a useful source of information.