Wood, Echard, and Zachary Grey have heaped invective on his memory; they add nothing of moment to what Clarendon has said in better taste. Marsden has given a wiser estimate of him. He was no demagogue; he accumulated no preferments; his private life was exemplary. The consistency of his career is in his lifelong devotion to the interests of evangelical religion as he understood it, all else with him being means to an end.
He published, besides some twenty-five separate sermons on public occasions, 1640-1650, often with striking titles: 1. 'A True and Succinct Relation of the late Battel neere Kineton,' &c., 1642, fol. 2. 'A Copy of a Letter ... for the necessary Vindication of himself and his Ministry . . . And . . . the Lawfulnesse of the Parliaments taking up Defensive Arms,' &c., 1643, 4to (in reply to an anonymous 'Letter of Spiritual Advice,' &c., 1643, 4to). 3. 'A Defence of Infant Baptism, in answer to ... Tombes,' &c., 1 646, 4to. 4. 'An Expedient to preserve Peace and Amitie among Dissenting Brethren,' &c., 1646, 4to. 5. 'An Apology for the Sequestered Clergy,' &c., 1649, 4to. His speech at Guildhall, 27 Oct. 1643, is printed with Vane's in 'Two Speeches,' &c., 1643, 4to. Some of his sermons on evangelical topics were published posthumously by Giles Firmin. His part in the written discussion of 1648 was reprinted in ' Questions between Conformists and Nonconformists,' &c., 1681, 4to, by G. F., i.e. Giles Firmin.
[The Godly Man's Legacy … the Life of … Stephen Marshal … by way of Letter to a Friend, not printed till 1680, seems to have been written soon after the Restoration; it contains much gossip, some of it unsavoury, but the writer evidently knew Marshall, and furnishes particulars which may be accepted with allowance for caricature; some corrections will be found in ‘A Brief Vindication of Mr. Stephen Marshal,’ by Firmin, appended to Questions between Conformists and Nonconformists, 1681. The life in Brook's Lives of the Puritans, 1813, iii. 241, is meagre; there are some valuable additions in Davids's Evang. Nonconformity in Essex, 1863, pp. 184, 190, 290, 392 sq.; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1636–7, pp. 260, 545; Clement Walker's Hist. of Independency, 1648–9 (reprinted 1661), i. 79 sq., ii. 157; Fuller's Church Hist. of Britain, 1655, xi. 174 sq.; Fuller's Worthies, 1672, ii. 52 sq.; Heylyn's Aerius Redivivus, 1670, p. 479; L'Estrange's Dissenters' Sayings, 1681, pt. ii.; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 76, 173, 477, 682, 963 sq., 979 sq.; Wood's Fasti (Bliss), i. 372; Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, 1696, i. 42, 62, ii. 197; Clarendon's Hist. of the Rebellion, 1707, i. 204, 302, ii. 81; Rushworth's Historical Collections, Abridged, 1708, iv. 571, 576, v. 453, vi. 336; Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, 1714, i. 15; Calamy's Continuation, 1727, i. 467, ii. 737; Oldmixon's Hist. of Engl. 1730, ii. 214; Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, 1779, ii. 387 sq.; Neal's Hist. of the Puritans (Toulmin), 1822, iii. 3, 204, 211, 218, 255 sq., 296, 305, 423 sq., iv. 89, 93, 133 sq., 502; William's Life of P. Henry, 1825, p. 6; Aiton's Life of Henderson, 1836, pp. 505 sq.; Baillie's Letters and Journals (Laing), 1841, vols. ii. and iii.; Acts of General Assembly of Church of Scotland, 1843, pp. 49, 66; Stanley Papers (Chetham Society), 1853, ii. 173 sq. (cf. Ormerod's Cheshire, 1882, i. 653); Pepys's Diary (Braybrooke), 1854, iii. 289; Notes and Queries, 18 Dec. 1858, p. 510; Cox's Literature of the Sabbath Question, 1865, i. 229; Stanley's Westminster Abbey, 1868, pp. 225, 438; Masson's Life of Milton, 1871, ii. 219 sq., 260 sq.; Marsden's Later Puritans, 1872, pp. 117 sq.; Mitchell and Struthers's Minutes of Westminster Assembly, 1874, pp. 92 sq.; Hook's Life of Laud, 1875, p. 379; Chester's Registers of St. Peter, Westminster, 1876, pp. 149, 523; Browne's Hist. Congr. Norf. and Suff., 1877, p. 151; Mitchell's Westminster Assembly, 1883, pp. 98, 214, 409 sq.; Gardiner's Great Civil War, 1886, i. 268 sq., 314; Shaw's Introd. to Minutes of Manchester Presbyterian Classis (Chetham Society), 1890, i. xxxvi sq.; information from the master of Emmanuel; Marshall's will. The parish register of Godmanchester does not begin till 1604.]
MARSHALL, THOMAS (1621–1685), dean of Gloucester, son of Thomas Marshall, was born at Barkby in Leicestershire, and baptised there on 9 Jan. 1620-1. He was educated first under Francis Foe, vicar of Barkby, matriculated at Oxford on 23 Oct. 1640, as a batler of Lincoln College, and was Traps scholar from 31 July 1641 till 1648. Towards the close of the following year, Oxford being garrisoned for the king, Marshall served in the regiment of Henry, earl of Dover, at his own expense; in consideration he was excused all fees when graduating B.A. on 9 July 1645. On the approach of a parliamentary visitation in 1647 Marshall quitted the university and went abroad. On 14 July 1648 he was expelled for absence by the visitors. Proceeding to Rotterdam, he became preacher to the company of merchant adventurers in that city at the end of 1650. In 1656, on the removal of the merchants to Dort, he accompanied them and remained there for sixteen years. On 1 July 1661 he graduated B.D. at Oxford.
Marshall was an enthusiastic student of Anglo-Saxon and Gothic. The excellence of his 'Observations' on Anglo-Saxon and Gothic versions of the gospel, which he published in 1665, led to his unsolicited election to a fellowship of Lincoln College on 17 Dec.
