George Marsh was born in the parish of Dean, in the county of Lancaster, and, having received a good education, his parents brought him up in the habits of trade and industry. About the 25th year of his age, he married a young woman of the country; with whom he continued living upon a farm, having several children. His wife dying, he having formed a proper establishment for his children, went into the university of Cambridge, where he studied, and much increased in learning, and was a minister of God’s holy word and sacraments, and was for awhile curate to the Rev. Laurence Saunders. In this situation he continued for a time, earnestly setting forth the true religion, to the weakening of false doctrine, by his godly readings and sermons, as well there and in the parish of Dean, as elsewhere in Lancashire. But such a zealous protestant could hardly be safe. At length he was apprehended, and kept close prisoner in Chester, by the bishop of that see, about the space of four months, not being permitted to have the relief and comfort of his friends; but charge being given unto the porter, to mark who they were that asked for him, and to signify their names to the bishop. He was afterwards sent to Lancaster castle; and being brought with other prisoners to the sessions, he was made to hold up his hand with the malefactors; when the Earl of Derby had the following conversation with him, which is given to us partly in his own expressive and unaffected language. “I told his lordship, that I had not dwelt in the country these three or four years past, and came home but lately to visit my mother, children, and other friends, and that I meant to have departed out of the country before Easter, and to have gone out of the realm. Wherefore I trusted, seeing nothing could be laid against me, wherein I had offended against the laws, that his lordship would not with captious questions examine me, to bring my body into danger of death, to the great discomfort of my mother. On the earl asking me into what land I would have gone? I answered, I would have gone either into Germany, or else into Denmark. He said to his council, that in Denmark they used such heresy as they have done in England: but as for Germany the emperor had destroyed it.