years, we can only guess at them from those to which he afterwards gave
expression. Marvell was neither a Republican nor a Puritan. Like his
father before him, he was a Protestant and a member of the Reformed
Church of England. He stood for both King and Parliament. Archbishop
Laud he distrusted, and it may well be detested, but good churchmen have
often distrusted and even detested their archbishops. Mr. Gladstone had
no great regard for Archbishop Tait. Before the Act of Uniformity and
the repressive legislation that followed upon its heels had driven
English dissent into its final moulds, it was not doctrine but
ceremonies that disturbed men's minds; and Marvell belonged to that
school of English churchmen, by no means the least distinguished school,
which was not disposed to quarrel with their fellow-Christians over
white surplices, the ring in matrimony, or the attitude during Holy
Communion. He shared the belief of a contemporary that no system is bad
enough to destroy a good man, or good enough to save a bad one.

The Civil War was to Marvell what it was to most wise men not devoured
by faction--a deplorable event. Twenty years after he wrote in the
_Rehearsal Transprosed_:--

"Whether it be a war of religion or of liberty it is not worth the
labour to inquire. Whichsoever was at the top, the other was at the
bottom; but upon considering all, I think the cause was too good to
have been fought for. Men ought to have trusted God--they ought to
have trusted the King with that whole matter. The arms of the Church
are prayers and tears, the arms of the subject are patience and
petitions. The King himself being of so accurate and piercing a
judgment would soon have felt it where it stuck. For men may spare
their pains when Nature is at work, and the world will not go the
faster for our driving. Even as his present Majesty's happy