“Of his personal appearance, a friend of mine—on the authority of the late Mr. Harry Morgan, attorney at Usk, whose father had been in Marten’s company, and by whom he had been informed of it—says that Mr. Morgan described him, in general terms, as ‘a smart, active little man, and the merriest companion he ever was in company with in his life.’ Wood praises his social qualities, and talent for conversation; but that ‘he lived in a shabbeel condition, and would take a pot of ale from any one that would give it to him,’ may be doubted; unless he meant that the kindness shown to him by the families in and near Chepstow admitted such an interpretation.[24]
“Let us attend him to the grave. It is hardly possible to admit that such a mind as that of Marten would have penned—much less to suppose that he would have wished to have engraved on his tomb—the wretched doggerel that goes under the name of his ‘Epitaph,’ and which is said to have been written by him during his confinement in the castle. Not the smallest circumstance respecting his funeral is left on record; and whether his obsequies were marked with public procession, or whether he retired to the grave unnoticed and unregarded, tradition has not preserved the slightest memorandum.”
His biographer might, without difficulty, have concluded that—in those times, at all events—an imprisoned rebel would not be permitted to have any but the most private funeral. All that we are certain of is, that he was buried in the chancel of the church of Chepstow; and that, on a large stone from the Forest of Dean, is still to be traced the following “Epitaph, written on himself,” by way of acrostic, but now much defaced:—
(ARMS.)
Here, September the ninth,
was buried
A true Englishman,
Who, in Berkshire, was well known
To love his country’s freedom ’bove his own;
But being immured full twenty year,
Had time to write, as doth appear,
HIS EPITAPH.
H ere or elsewhere—all’s one to you, to me—
E arth, air, or water, gripes my ghostly dust,
N one knows how soon to be by fire set free:
R eader, if you an oft-tryed rule will trust,
Y ou’ll gladly do and suffer what you must.
M y time was spent in serving you, and you;
A nd death’s my pay, it seems, and welcome too:
R evenge destroying but itself, while I
T o birds of prey leave my old cage, and fly.
E xamples preach to the eye.—Care thou, mine says,
N ot how you end, but how you spend your days.[25]
Having retired to that asylum which is the common lot of humanity, his ashes were for some years permitted to rest in peace. But at length a clergyman of the name of Chest, we are told, was appointed to the vicarage of Chepstow, who, glowing with admiration for those principles of the constitution which he considered had been subverted, openly declared that the bones of a regicide should never pollute the chancel of that church of which he was vicar, and immediately ordered the corpse to be disinterred, and removed to the place where it now reposes, in the middle of the north transept, and over it the stone is placed that bears the epitaph before mentioned.
About this time, as Heath informs us, “there came to reside at Chepstow a person of the name of Downton, who afterwards married a daughter of the Rev. Mr. Chest; but, whatever affection he might cherish for the lady, the father was one unceasing object of his ridicule and contempt; and when the vicar died, he publicly satyrised him in the following lines:—
‘Here lies at rest, I do protest,
One Chest within another;
The chest of wood was very good—
Who says so of the other?’”