Henry Marten, who attained such unenviable notoriety, was the son of Sir Henry Marten, a judge of the Admiralty, and M.P. for Berkshire. He was an able and active partisan of Oliver Cromwell, one of the “Executive Council;” and in the old prints representing the trial of the martyr-king, Marten occupies the chair on Cromwell’s left hand, immediately under the arms of the Commonwealth.[20] At the Restoration, he was brought to trial, and sentenced to death; but his sentence was afterwards commuted to imprisonment for life. In the keep of this castle, since called “Marten’s Tower,” he spent twenty years; but much was done to soften the rigour of his sentence. “His wife was permitted to share his imprisonment; he was attended by his own domestic servants, who were accommodated in the same tower; and he had permission to visit, and receive visits from his friends in the town and neighbourhood. He died in 1680, at the mature age of seventy-eight, neither disturbed by the qualms of conscience, nor enfeebled by the rigour of confinement; and left behind him the character of a liberal and indulgent master.” At a comparatively recent period, the principal chamber of the Keep was frequently used by the inhabitants of Chepstow as a ball-room; and there is now residing in the town a lady, who remembers having been present at more than one of these festive reunions.
For the following notice of this “stern republican,”—somewhat different from the preceding—we are indebted to Heath’s description of Chepstow:—
Henry Marten,[21] commonly called Harry Marten, was born in the city of Oxford, in the parish of St. John the Baptist, in a house opposite to Merton College Church, then lately built by Henry Sherburne, gent., and possessed, at the time of Harry’s birth, by Sir Henry, his father. After he had been instructed in grammar-learning in Oxford, he became a gentleman commoner of University College in the beginning of 1617, aged fifteen years, where, and in public, giving a manifestation of his pregnant mind, had the degree of Bachelor of Arts conferred upon him in the latter end of the year 1619. Afterwards he went to one of the Inns of Court, travelled into France, and on his return married a lady of considerable worth; but with whom, it is said, “he never afterwards lived.”[22]
In the beginning of the year 1640, he was elected one of the knights for Berks, to serve in the parliament that began at Westminster the 13th of April; and again, though not legally, in October, to serve in the parliament that began at the same place on the 3d of November following. We shall not enter into his political actions on the great theatre of public life—as they are to be found in all the histories of England, from the reign of Charles I. to the Restoration—but content ourselves with noticing those parts of it which are more peculiarly interesting to the traveller in Monmouthshire, namely, the manner in which he passed his time, with occasional anecdotes, during his confinement in the castle of Chepstow.
Wood, an ultra-royalist, gives the following character of him:—“He was a man of good natural parts—was a boon familiar, witty, and quick with repartees—was exceeding happy in apt instances, pertinent and very biting; so that his company, being deemed incomparable by many, would have been acceptable to the greatest persons, only he would be drunk too soon, and so put an end to all their mirth for the present. At length, after all his rogueries, acted for near twenty years together, were passed; he was at length called to account for that grand villany, of having a considerable hand in murdering his prince, of which being easily found guilty, he was not to suffer the loss of his life, as others did, but the loss of his estate, and perpetual imprisonment, for that he came in upon the proclamation of surrender. So that, after two or three removes from prison to prison, he was at length sent to Chepstow Castle, where he continued another twenty years, not in wantonness, riotousness, and villany, but in confinement and repentance, if he had so pleased.”
“This person—who lived very poor, and in a shabbeel condition in his confinement, and would be glad to take a pot of ale from any one that would give it to him—died with meat in his mouth, that is, suddenly, in Chepstow Castle (as before mentioned), in September, 1680; and was, on the 9th day of the same month, buried in the church of Chepstow. Some time before he died he made the epitaph, by way of acrostic, on himself, which is engraved on the stone which now covers his remains.”
Mrs. Williams—“wife of the person who had the care of the castle, and who died in 1798, at a very advanced age—well knew and was intimately acquainted with the women who waited and attended on Harry Marten during his confinement in the castle. They were two sisters, and their maiden name was Vick.
“From what I could learn, I am of opinion that the early part of Marten’s confinement was rather rigorous; for whatever Mrs. Williams mentioned had always a reference to the latter part of it; and in this conjecture I am supported by her remark, that though he had two daughters living, they were not indulged with sharing their father’s company in prison till near the close of his life. In the course of years, political rigour against him began to wear away, and he was permitted not only to walk about Chepstow, but to have the constant residence of his family, in order to attend upon him in the castle. This indulgence at last extended itself so far, as to permit him to visit any family in the neighbourhood, his host being responsible for his safe return to the castle at the hour appointed.
“One anecdote of Marten, as mentioned by Mrs. Williams, I shall here repeat. Among other families who showed a friendly attention to the prisoner, were the ancestors of the present worthy possessor of St. Pierre, near Chepstow. To a large company assembled round the festive dinner-board Marten had been invited. Soon after the cloth was removed, and the bottle put into gay circulation, Mr. Lewis, in a cheerful moment, jocularly said to Marten, ‘Harry, suppose the times were to come again in which you passed your life, what part would you act in them?’ ‘The part I have done,’ was his immediate reply. ‘Then, sir,’ says Mr. Lewis, ‘I never desire to see you at my table again;’ nor was he ever after invited.[23]
“Great credibility,” says our authority, “deserves to be attached to this story, as containing Marten’s political opinion at that day; and, to support a belief in it, the late Rev. J. Birt, canon of Hereford, thus speaks of him, in his letter to the Rev. J. Gardner, prefixed to his ‘Appendix to the History of Monmouthshire:’—‘Henry Marten, one of the incendiary preachers during the great rebellion, was, at the Restoration, imprisoned for life at Chepstow, and buried there. As far as I can recollect, he died as he lived, with the fierce spirit of a republican.’ The Rev. Mr. Birt, who died at the advanced age of ninety-two, held distinguished preferment in the neighbourhood of Chepstow, and had been in the habits of intimate acquaintance with all the first families in the county. His testimony might therefore be said to stamp the anecdote with the sanction of truth, without seeking for farther evidence.