Notwithstanding this payment Marvell’s means were always very limited, and for some years he lived in a state bordering upon actual poverty. But the scantiness of his means did not cause him to swerve from what he considered to be the path of honesty, and the tale is told of how Danby, the Lord Treasurer, tried unsuccessfully to bribe him with the offer of £1,000. ‘Up two pair of stairs in a little court in the Strand’ Marvell was found by the Lord Treasurer’s messenger. And there he was also left, incorruptible in his honesty. Marvell earned considerable fame as a writer of political satires, and also as a poet. The poems by which he is best remembered are probably those entitled _Thoughts in a Garden_ and _An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland_. In the latter poem occur the famous lines in which the author, himself a strong Parliamentarian, honours the way in which King Charles I. met his death:— He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene, But with his keener eye The axe’s edge did try; Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite, To vindicate his helpless right; But bowed his comely head Down, as upon a bed. Marvell died in 1678, so poor that his funeral expenses were paid by the Corporation of Hull. How great his worth was may be judged from the words of the great statesman William Pitt:—‘Every man has his own price; I know of but one exception, and that is Marvell, in the past.’ * * * * * [Illustration: WILBERFORCE HOUSE, HIGH STREET, HULL. The Birthplace of William Wilberforce. ] The house in which Sir John Lister entertained King Charles on his visit to Hull in 1639 was also that in which was born Hull’s greatest son, WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. Tradition states, further, that he was born in the room in which the King had slept. William Wilberforce was born on August 24th, 1759, the grandson of another William Wilberforce, who had been a Baltic merchant and an alderman of the town. Delicate as a child, and reared in luxury, he yet grew up filled with an understanding of the earnestness of life; and after leaving Cambridge he entered Parliament at the age of twenty-one, as a member for Hull. Four years later he was chosen a member for both the county of York and the town of Hull. The former of these distinctions was the one that he selected, and thenceforth for twenty-eight years he remained one of the two members of Parliament for the ‘Shire of Broad Acres.’