From the commencement of the Civil Wars he was a violent Republican; and as early as 1643 openly expressed his opinion of the desirability of the destruction of the King and his children, for which rather premature advice he was expelled from the House of Commons, and underwent a short imprisonment in the Tower. He was appointed by the House of Commons a Colonel of Horse and Governor of Reading, but made less mark as a soldier than as a rapacious spoiler of the adherents of the King, which earned him the opprobrious nickname of “Plunder-master General”.
Being empowered to dispose of the Regalia and royal trappings, he once invested George Wither—who had been made one of Cromwell’s Major-Generals—with them, and so accoutred induced the old Poet to strut up and down Westminster Abbey to the scandal of right-thinking people.
To him also were referred the alterations in the public arms, the Great Seal, and the legends upon the money. Upon the latter was a shield bearing the cross of St. George, encircled by a palm and olive branch, and inscribed The Commonwealth of England, and on the reverse, God with us, 1648; which occasioned the remark “that God and the Commonwealth were not on the same side”.
Nothing apparently could damp the ill-timed jocosity too often prevalent in those troublous times, for at Marten’s trial, 16th October, 1660, Ewer, who had been his servant, swore that “at the signing of the warrant for the King’s execution he did see a pen in Mr. Cromwell’s hand, and he marked Mr. Marten in the face with it, and Mr. Marten did the like to him”. But many of his excesses were condoned in the eyes of both his friends and enemies by his generous and humane spirit.
D’Israeli, in his Commentaries on the life and Reign of Charles I., describes the ingenious way in which Marten saved the life of David Jenkins, a loyal and obstinate Welsh judge, who, when brought to the bar of the House of Commons to answer for imprisoning several persons for bearing arms against the King, peremptorily disowned their jurisdiction, and defied them in the following bold terms: “‘But, Mr. Speaker, since you and this House have renounced your allegiance to your Sovereign, and are become a den of thieves, should I bow myself in this House of Rimmon the Lord would not pardon me’. The whole House were electrified.... He was voted guilty of high treason without any trial. The day of execution was then debated. Harry Marten, who had not yet spoken, rose, not to dissent from the vote of the House, he observed, but he had something to say about the time of the execution. ‘Mr. Speaker,’ said he, ‘everyone must believe that this old gentleman here is fully possessed in his head resolved to die a martyr in his cause, for otherwise he would never have provoked the House by such biting expressions. If you execute him, you do precisely that which he hopes for, and his execution will have a great influence over the people, since he is condemned without a jury. I therefore move that we should suspend the day of execution, and in meantime force him to live in spite of his teeth.’ The drollery of the motion put the House into better humour, and he was reprieved. After being kept in various prisons for eleven years, he was released by Cromwell, and died in 1663, aged eighty-one.”
Another instance may be given of Marten’s felicitous humour and humane temper. When the Commons had rid themselves of the Sovereign, they voted the Lords to be dangerous and useless. But Marten proposed an amendment in their favour; namely, that they were useless, but not dangerous.
His speeches in the House were represented to have been not long, “but wondrous poynant, pertinent, and witty. He was exceedingly apt in apt instances; he alone hath sometimes turned the whole House.”
He wrote several tracts on parliamentary subjects, and Verses on the Death of his Nephew, Charles Edmonds, 7th July, 1661, æt. 30. But the most amusing of the publications bearing his name is one entitled Familiar Letters to his Lady of Delight; also her kinde Returnes: with his Rivall R. Pettingall’s Heroicall Epistles. Printed by Edmundus de Speciosâ Villâ [i.e., Edmund Gayton]. Bellositi Dobunorum [Oxford], 1662 and 1663, 4to. Another edition, with additions, appeared in 1685. “These epistles,” says D’Israeli, “paint to the life the loose habits and espiègleries of this witty profligate; and I think they have been referred to by some inconsiderate writers as a genuine correspondence.” They were probably altogether concocted by Gayton. He was severely attacked in various scurrilous lampoons, some of which are printed among the Rump Songs, 1662.
On his trial he was found guilty and sentenced to death; but the good feeling created among many who had in his prosperous days enjoyed his society and hospitality, and even among many of his former opponents by his generous treatment of them when in danger, stood him in good stead, and it was by a well-timed and humorous appeal to the Judges—such as he himself might have used—that his life was saved. Henry, fourth Viscount Falkland, whose virtuous and heroic father fell at the first Battle of Newbury while fighting for the King, said to the Judges: “Gentlemen, ye talk here of making a sacrifice: it was old law that all sacrifices were to be without spot or blemish; and now you are going to make an old rotten rascal a sacrifice”. This piece of wit pleased his Judges, and his sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life. He was confined in Chepstow Castle, Monmouthshire, for twenty years, and died in September, 1680, aged seventy-eight.
He must have felt some contrition for his vicious life, for some time before his death he made this epitaph, by way of acrostic, on himself: