till 1704. She was ever a good friend to another ill-used solitary wife,
Catherine of Braganza. Marvell had every reason to be proud of his
pupil.

Beside the actual inmates of the great house, the whole countryside
swarmed with Fairfaxes. At the Rectory of Bolton Percy was the late
Lord-General's uncle, Henry Fairfax, and his two sons, Henry, who
succeeded to the title, and the better-known Brian, the biographer of
the Duke of Buckingham. At Stenton, four miles off, lived the widow of
the gallant Sir William Fairfax, who died, covered with wounds, in 1644
before Montgomery Castle. There were two sons and two daughters at
Stenton, whilst Charles Fairfax, another uncle, and the lawyer and
genealogist of the family, lived at no great distance with no less than
fourteen children. There were also sisters of Lord Fairfax, with
families of their own, all settled in the same part of the county.

Such were the agreeable surroundings of our poet for two years,
1650-1652. I must leave it to the imaginations of my readers to fill up
the picture, for excepting the poems, which we may safely assume were
written at Nunappleton House, and--who can doubt it?--read aloud to its
inmates, there is nothing more to be said.

Before considering the Nunappleton poetry, a word must be got in of
bibliography. College exercises and complimentary verses excepted,
Marvell printed none of his verse under his own name in his lifetime. So
far as his themes were political there is no need to wonder at this.
Indeed, the wonder is how, despite their anonymity, their author kept
his ears; but why the Nunappleton verse should have remained in
manuscript for more than thirty years is hard to explain.