Henry Marten (1602 – 9 September 1680) was a Member of Parliament from Oxford, who sat in the English House of Commons at various times between 1640 and 1653. An ardent republican, he was jailed by Parliament during the First English Civil War in 1643 for demanding the abolition of the monarchy. He approved the execution of Charles I in January 1649 and was found guilty of regicide following the 1660 Stuart Restoration.
Spared execution thanks to his Royalist friends, he was held in captivity until his death at Chepstow Castle in 1680.
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Personal details
Henry Marten was born in Oxford in 1602, eldest son of lawyer and diplomat Sir Henry Marten (1561-1641), and his wife Elizabeth (1574-1618). He had a younger brother, George, and three sisters, Elizabeth, Jane, and Mary.
In 1627, Marten married Elizabeth, sister of John Lovelace, 2nd Baron Lovelace, and they had three daughters before her death in 1634, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Mary (1634-1700). He had another five children with his second wife Margaret Staunton, Anne, Jane, Henry (1639-?), Frances, and Rebecca (1642-1693). Shortly after the outbreak of the First English Civil War in August 1642, Marten allegedly abandoned his wife in Berkshire and thereafter lived in London with his partner, Mary Ward.
Career
As a public figure, Marten first came to prominence in 1639 when he refused to contribute to a general loan. In April 1640, he was elected Member of Parliament for Berkshire in the Short Parliament. He was re-elected MP for Berkshire for the Long Parliament in November 1640. He lived at Beckett Hall in Shrivenham (now in Oxfordshire) and soon afterwards, his official residence became Longworth House in nearby Longworth. He preferred to live in London. In the House of Commons, he joined the popular party, spoke in favour of the proposed bill of attainder against Strafford, and in 1642 was a member of the committee of safety. Some of his language about the king was so frank that Charles demanded his arrest and his trial for high treason.
When the English Civil War broke out Marten did not take the field, although he was appointed governor of Reading, Berkshire, but in Parliament he was very active. On one occasion his zeal in the parliamentary cause led him to open a letter from the Earl of Northumberland to his countess, an impertinence for which, says Clarendon, he was cudgelled by the Earl.
In 1643 he was expelled from the Houses of Parliament and briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London for expressing the view that the royal family should be extirpated and monarchy brought to an end.
In 1644, however, he was made governor of Aylesbury, and about this time took direct part in the war. Allowed to return to Parliament in January 1646, Marten again advocated extreme republican views. He spoke of his desire to prepare the king for heaven; he attacked the Presbyterians, and, supporting the New Model Army against the Long Parliament, he signed the agreement of August 1647. He was closely associated with John Lilburne and the Levellers, and was one of those who suspected the sincerity of Oliver Cromwell, whose murder he is said personally to have contemplated.
However, he acted with Cromwell in bringing Charles I to trial; he was one of the most prominent of the 31 of 59 Commissioners to sign the death warrant in 1649. He was then energetic in establishing the Commonwealth and in destroying the remaining vestiges of the monarchical system. He was chosen a member of the Council of State in 1649, and as compensation for his losses and reward for his services during the war, lands valued at £1000 a year were settled upon him. In parliament he spoke often and with effect, but he took no part in public life during the Protectorate, passing part of this time in prison, where he was placed on account of his debts.
Character and beliefs
Although a leading Puritan, Marten enjoyed good living. He had a contemporary reputation as a heavy drinker and was widely said to be a man of loose morals. According to John Aubrey he was "a great lover of pretty girls to whom he was so liberal that he spent the greatest part of his estate" upon them. In the opinion of King Charles I he was "an ugly rascal and whore-master". He married twice (to Elizabeth Lovelace, daughter of Richard Lovelace, 1st Baron Lovelace; and to Margaret Staunton, née West) but had an open and lengthy relationship with Mary Ward, a woman not his wife, by whom he had three daughters. Ward ultimately was to remain with him throughout his later imprisonment. His enemies branded him an atheist but his religious views were more complex, and influenced his position regarding the need to allow freedom of worship and conscience. His political views throughout his life were constant: he opposed one-man rule and was in favour of representative government. In 1643, even while the king was losing the First Civil War and Parliament's cause was beginning to triumph, Marten's republican sentiments led to his arrest and brief imprisonment.
Thus for his time Marten was unusual in his political stance, being unashamedly in favour not of reforming the monarchy but of replacing it with a republic.
Works
Marten was not a copious author, often beginning works and not carrying them through to completion. Nevertheless, he wrote and published several pamphlets, all on political topics:
A Corrector of the Answerer to the Speech out of Doores (1646)
An Unhappie Game at Scotch and English (1646)
The Independency of England Endeavoured to be Maintained (1648)
The Parliaments Proceedings Justified in Declining a Personall Treaty (1648)
In 1662 there appeared Henry Marten's Familiar Letters to his Lady of Delight, containing letters Marten had written to his common-law wife, Mary Ward, which had been seized and published without permission.