Authors, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography; Marvell, Andrew, 1621-1678
Monk, in the meanwhile, was advancing with his army from Edinburgh, and
affected not to approve of the force put upon Parliament. The feeling
for a Free Parliament increased in strength and violence every day. The
Rump was for a third time restored in December by the section of the
London army that supported its claim. Lenthall was once more in the
chair, and the journals were resumed without the least notice of past
occurrences. Monk, having reached London amidst great excitement, went
down to the House and delivered an ambiguous speech. Up to the last Monk
seems to have remained uncertain what to do. The temper of the City,
which was fiercely anti-Rump, may have decided him. At all events he
invited the secluded, that is the expelled, members of the old Long
Parliament to take their seats along with the others, and in a formal
declaration addressed to Parliament, dated the 21st of February 1660, he
counselled it among other things to dissolve legally "in order to make
way for a succession of Parliaments." In a word, Monk declared for a
Free Parliament. Great indeed were the national rejoicings.
On the 16th of March 1660 a Bill was read a third time dissolving the
Parliament begun and holden at Westminster, 3rd November 1640, and for
the calling and holding of a Parliament at Westminster on the 25th of
April 1660. This time an end was really made of the Rump, though for
many a long day there were parliamentary pedants to be found in the land
ready to maintain that the Long Parliament had never been legally
dissolved and still _de jure_ existed; so long, I presume, as any
single member of it remained alive.
Marvell was not a "Rumper," but on the 2nd of April 1660 he was again
elected for Hull to sit in what is usually called the Convention
Parliament. John Ramsden was returned at the head of the poll with 227
votes, Marvell receiving 141. There were four defeated candidates.
With this Convention Parliament begins Marvell's remarkable
correspondence, on fine folio sheets of paper, with the corporation of
Hull, whose faithful servant he remained until death parted them in
1678.
This correspondence, which if we include in it, as we well may, the
letters to the Worshipful Society of Masters and Pilots of the Trinity
House in Hull, numbers upwards of 350 letters, and with but one
considerable gap (from July 1663 to October 1665) covers the whole
period of Marvell's membership, is, I believe, unique in our public
records. The letters are preserved at Hull, where I hope care is taken
to preserve them from the autograph hunter and the autograph thief.
Captain Thompson printed a great part of this correspondence in 1776,
and Mr. Grosart gave the world the whole of it in the second volume of
his edition of Marvell's complete works.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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