pointed by the ‘little parliament’ to draw up ‘fundamentals of religion.’ Baxter, who met him at this business, calls him ‘a sober worthy man.’ It was Baxter's opinion that if Ussher, Marshall, and Jeremiah Burroughes [q. v.] had been fair specimens of their respective parties, the differences between episcopalian, presbyterian, and independent would have been easily composed. On 20 March 1654 Marshall was appointed one of Cromwell's ‘triers;’ most of these were independents, but there were some presbyterians of high standing, e.g. John Arrowsmith, D.D. [q. v.], Caryl, and Tuckney, and a few baptists such as Henry Jessey [q. v.] Heylyn, following Clement Walker, asserts that Marshall ‘warped to the independents;’ Fuller reports that ‘he is said on his deathbed to have given full satisfaction’ in regard to the sincerity of his presbyterianism. Some months before his death he lost the use of his hands from gout. Giles Firmin attended him at the last.
He died of consumption on 19 Nov. 1655; he was buried on 23 Nov. with great solemnity in the south aisle of Westminster Abbey; his remains were taken up on 14 Sept. 1661 (by royal warrant of 12 Sept.) and cast into a pit ‘at the back door of the prebendary's lodgings’ in St. Margaret's churchyard. He was of middle height, swarthy, and broad-shouldered, rolling his eyes in conversation, not fixing them on those whom he addressed; his gait was ‘shackling,’ and he had no polish. He could jest, and ‘he frequently read himself asleep with a playbook or romance.’ He married, about 1629, a rich widow, Elizabeth, daughter of John Dutton, of Dutton, Cheshire. She died before him; her estate was settled on herself, with power of disposal to her children, which she exercised. On his marriage Wiltshire is said to have settled an estate of 30l. or 40l. a year on him and his wife, but this Firmin denies. He is said to have died worth 10,000l. The anonymous ‘Life’ accuses him of neglecting his father in his old age. He had a son (drowned at Hamburg) and six daughters, three of whom died before him. He was an indulgent father, and allowed his daughters to dress in unpuritanical fashion. His will, with codicil (12 Nov. 1655), was proved on 11 Feb. 1656 by Susan or Susanna Marshall, his only unmarried daughter. His deceased daughters had married respectively William Venter, John Nye (son of Philip), and John Vale; of the other survivors Jane was wife of Peter Smith, and Mary of one Langham. Some of his children, says Firmin, ‘were very pious, the rest hopeful.’ Marshall's sister married Thomas Newman, ejected in 1662 from Heydon, Norfolk. Beck and Nan Marshall, actresses at the king's theatre, were daughters of Stephen Marshall, according to Pepys, who admired the acting and the handsome hand of Beck Marshall, and reports a ‘falling out’ between her and Nell Gwyn, when the ‘presbyter's praying daughter’ was worsted in the strife of tongues. Pepys is clearly wrong as to the parentage of the actresses; they are said to have been daughters of a clergyman named Marshall, who was at some time chaplain to Gilbert Gerard, lord Gerard (d. 1622) of Gerards Bromley, Staffordshire. Toulmin gives authority for the statement that one of them, ‘a woman of virtue,’ had been ‘tricked into a sham marriage by a nobleman.’
Clarendon thinks the influence exercised on parliament by Marshall, whom he couples with Burges, was greater than that of Laud at court (on this Stanley founds his odd description of Marshall as ‘primate of the presbyterian church’). Laud's was a master mind, which originated a policy and impressed it upon others. Marshall was himself impressed by the action of stronger minds; he was listened to because no man could rival his power of translating the dominant sentiment of his party into the language of irresistible appeal. His sermons, denuded of the preacher's living passion, often have the effect of uncouth rhapsodies. His funeral sermon for Pym (December 1643) made an indelible impression, and is the finest extant specimen of his pulpit eloquence as well as of his ‘feeling and discernment’ (Marsden). His ordinary preaching is described as plain and homely, seasoned with ‘odd country phrases’ and ‘very taking with a country auditory.’ Throughout life he preached on an average three times a week, but, says his biographer, ‘he had an art of spreading his butter very thin.’ Cleveland in ‘The Rebel Scot’ has the phrase ‘roar like Marshall, that Geneva bull,’ &c. His great sermons he frequently repeated; his ‘Meroz Cursed,’ printed in 1641, had been delivered ‘threescore times.’ Edmund Hickeringill [q. v.], in his ‘Curse Ye Meroz,’ 1680, refers to this ‘common theme’ as having ‘usher'd in, as well as promoted, the late bloody civil wars.’ He was a man of natural ability rather than learning, having ‘little Greek and no Hebrew;’ hence he declined all university preferment and never commenced D.D. His argumentative pieces, calm in style and cautious in treatment, are the productions of a mind that saw various sides of a question, and really strove to enter into the difficulties of others. Writers like Heylyn,
