-------------------------------------------------- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Marvell

<<Andrew Marvell (31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678) was an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend of John
Milton. His poems range from the love-song "To His Coy Mistress", to evocations of an aristocratic country house and garden in "Upon Appleton House" and "The Garden", the political address "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland", and the
later personal and political satires "Flecknoe" and "The Character of Holland".

Marvell was born in Winestead-in-Holderness, East Riding of Yorkshire, near the city of Kingston upon Hull, the son of a Church of England clergyman also named Andrew Marvell. The family moved to Hull when his father was appointed Lecturer at Holy
Trinity Church there, and Marvell was educated at Hull Grammar School. A secondary school in the city, the Andrew Marvell Business and Enterprise College, is named after him.

At the age of 13, Marvell attended Trinity College, Cambridge and eventually received a BA degree. A portrait of Marvell attributed to Godfrey Kneller hangs in Trinity College's collection.

Afterwards, from the middle of 1642 onwards, Marvell probably travelled in continental Europe. He may well have served as a tutor for an aristocrat on the Grand Tour. While England was embroiled in the civil war, Marvell seems to have remained on the
continent until 1647. In Rome in 1645 he probably met the Villiers brothers, Lord Francis and the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, as well as Richard Flecknoe, about whom he would later on write a satirical poem. It is not known exactly where his travels took him
except that Milton later reported that Marvell had mastered four languages, including French, Italian and Spanish.

Marvell's first poems, which were written in Latin and Greek and published when he was still at Cambridge, lamented a visitation of the plague and celebrated the birth of a child to King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria. He only belatedly became
sympathetic to the successive regimes during the Interregnum after Charles I's execution on 30 January 1649. His "Horatian Ode", a political poem dated to early 1650, responds with lament to the regicide even as it praises Oliver Cromwell's return from
Ireland.

Circa 1650–52, Marvell served as tutor to the daughter of the Lord General Thomas Fairfax, who had recently relinquished command of the Parliamentary army to Cromwell. He lived during that time at Nun Appleton Hall, near York, where he continued to
write poetry. One poem, "Upon Appleton House, To My Lord Fairfax", uses a description of the estate as a way of exploring Fairfax's and Marvell's own situation in a time of war and political change. Probably the best-known poem he wrote at this time is "
To His Coy Mistress".

During the period of increasing tensions leading up to the First Anglo-Dutch War of 1652, Marvell wrote the satirical "Character of Holland," repeating the then-current stereotype of the Dutch as "drunken and profane": "This indigested vomit of the Sea,/
Fell to the Dutch by Just Propriety."

He became a tutor to Cromwell's ward, William Dutton, in 1653, and moved to live with his pupil at the house of John Oxenbridge in Eton. Oxenbridge had made two trips to Bermuda, and it is thought that this inspired Marvell to write his poem Bermudas. He
also wrote several poems in praise of Cromwell, who was by this time Lord Protector of England. In 1656 Marvell and Dutton travelled to France, to visit the Protestant Academy of Saumur.

In 1657, Marvell joined Milton, who by that time had lost his sight, in service as Latin secretary to Cromwell's Council of State at a salary of £200 a year, which represented financial security at that time. Oliver Cromwell died in 1658. He was
succeeded as Lord Protector by his son Richard. In 1659 Marvell was elected Member of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull in the Third Protectorate Parliament. He was paid a rate of 6 shillings, 8 pence per day during sittings of parliament, a financial
support derived from the contributions of his constituency. He was re-elected MP for Hull in 1660 for the Convention Parliament.

The monarchy was restored to Charles II in 1660. Marvell avoided punishment for his own co-operation with republicanism, and he helped convince the government of Charles II not to execute John Milton for his antimonarchical writings and revolutionary
activities. The closeness of the relationship between the two former colleagues is indicated by the fact that Marvell contributed an eloquent prefatory poem, entitled "On Mr. Milton's Paradise Lost", to the second edition of Milton's epic Paradise Lost.
According to a biographer: "Skilled in the arts of self-preservation, he was not a toady."

In 1661 Marvell was re-elected MP for Hull in the Cavalier Parliament.[12] He eventually came to write several long and bitterly satirical verses against the corruption of the court. Although circulated in manuscript form, some finding anonymous
publication in print, they were too politically sensitive and thus dangerous to be published under his name until well after his death. Marvell took up opposition to the 'court party', and satirised them anonymously. In his longest verse satire, Last
Instructions to a Painter, written in 1667, Marvell responded to the political corruption that had contributed to English failures during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. The poem did not find print publication until after the Revolution of 1688–9. The poem
instructs an imaginary painter how to picture the state without a proper navy to defend them, led by men without intelligence or courage, a corrupt and dissolute court, and dishonest officials. Of another such satire, Samuel Pepys, himself a government
official, commented in his diary, "Here I met with a fourth Advice to a Painter upon the coming in of the Dutch and the End of the War, that made my heart ake to read, it being too sharp and so true."[16]

From 1659 until his death in 1678, Marvell was serving as London agent for the Hull Trinity House, a shipmasters' guild.[citation needed] He went on two missions to the continent, one to the Dutch Republic and the other encompassing Russia, Sweden, and
Denmark.[citation needed] He spent some time living in a cottage on Highgate Hill in north London, where his time in the area is recorded by a bronze plaque that bears the following inscription:

Four feet below this spot is the stone step, formerly the entrance to the cottage in which lived Andrew Marvell, poet, wit, and satirist; colleague with John Milton in the foreign or Latin secretaryship during the Commonwealth; and for about twenty
years M.P. for Hull. Born at Winestead, Yorkshire, 31st March, 1621, died in London, 18th August, 1678, and buried in the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. This memorial is placed here by the London County Council, December, 1898.[17]

A floral sundial in the nearby Lauderdale House bears an inscription quoting lines from his poem "The Garden".[18] He died suddenly in 1678, while in attendance at a popular meeting of his old constituents at Hull. His health had previously been
remarkably good; and it was supposed by many that he was poisoned by some of his political or clerical enemies. Marvell was buried in the church of St Giles in the Fields in central London. His monument, erected by his grateful constituency, bears the
following inscription:

Near this place lyeth the body of Andrew Marvell, Esq., a man so endowed by Nature, so improved by Education, Study, and Travel, so consummated by Experience, that, joining the peculiar graces of Wit and Learning, with a singular penetration and
strength of judgment; and exercising all these in the whole course of his life, with an unutterable steadiness in the ways of Virtue, he became the ornament and example of his age, beloved by good men, feared by bad, admired by all, though imitated by
few; and scarce paralleled by any. But a Tombstone can neither contain his character, nor is Marble necessary to transmit it to posterity; it is engraved in the minds of this generation, and will be always legible in his inimitable writings, nevertheless.
He having served twenty years successfully in Parliament, and that with such Wisdom, Dexterity, and Courage, as becomes a true Patriot, the town of Kingston-upon-Hull, from whence he was deputed to that Assembly, lamenting in his death the public loss,
have erected this Monument of their Grief and their Gratitude, 1688.

Marvell also wrote anonymous prose satires criticizing the monarchy and Roman Catholicism, defending Puritan dissenters, and denouncing censorship. The Rehearsal Transpros'd, an attack on Samuel Parker, was published in two parts in 1672 and 1673. In
1676, Mr. Smirke; or The Divine in Mode, a work critical of intolerance within the Church of England, was published together with a "Short Historical Essay, concerning General Councils, Creeds, and Impositions, in matters of Religion."

Marvell's pamphlet An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England, published in late 1677, alleged that: "There has now for diverse Years, a design been carried on, to change the Lawfull Government of England into an Absolute
Tyranny, and to convert the established Protestant Religion into down-right Popery". John Kenyon described it as "one of the most influential pamphlets of the decade" and G. M. Trevelyan called it: "A fine pamphlet, which throws light on causes
provocative of the formation of the Whig party".

A 1678 work published anonymously ("by a Protestant") in defense of John Howe against the attack of his fellow-dissenter, the severe Calvinist Thomas Danson, is also probably by Marvell. Its full title is Remarks upon a late disingenuous discourse, writ
by one T.D. under the pretence de causa Dei, and of answering Mr. John Howe's letter and postscript of God's prescience, &c., affirming, as the Protestant doctrine, that God doth by efficacious influence universally move and determine men to all their
actions, even to those that are most wicked.

Although Marvell became a Parliamentarian and was opposed to episcopacy, he was not a Puritan. Later in life especially, he seems to have been a conforming Anglican. Marvell positively identifies himself as "a Protestant" in pamphlets. He had flirted
briefly with Catholicism as a youth, and was described in his thirties (on the Saumur visit) as "a notable English Italo-Machiavellian". His strong Biblical influence is clear in poems such as "The Garden", the "Coronet" and "The Bermudas".

Vincent Palmieri noted that Marvell is sometimes known as the "British Aristides" for his incorruptible integrity in life and poverty at death. Many of his poems were not published until 1681, three years after his death, from a collection owned by Mary
Palmer, his housekeeper. After Marvell's death she laid dubious claim to having been his wife, from the time of a secret marriage in 1667.>>
------------------------------------------- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Fairfax

<<Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron (17 January 1612 – 12 November 1671), also known as Sir Thomas Fairfax, was an English politician, general and Parliamentary commander-in-chief during the English Civil War. An adept and talented commander,
Fairfax led Parliament to many victories, notably the crucial Battle of Naseby, becoming effectively military ruler of England, but was eventually overshadowed by his subordinate Oliver Cromwell, who was more politically adept and radical in action
against Charles I. Fairfax became unhappy with Cromwell's policy and publicly refused to take part in Charles's show trial. Eventually he resigned, leaving Cromwell to control the country. Because of this, and also his honourable battlefield conduct and
his active role in the Restoration of the monarchy after Cromwell's death, he was exempted from the retribution exacted on many other leaders of the revolution.

Thomas Fairfax was born at Denton Hall, halfway between Ilkley and Otley in the West Riding of Yorkshire, on 17 January 1612, the eldest son of Ferdinando Fairfax, 2nd Lord Fairfax of Cameron (his family title of Lord Fairfax of Cameron was in the
peerage of Scotland, then still independent from England, which was why he was able to sit in the English House of Commons after he inherited it). His dark hair and eyes and a swarthy complexion earned him the nickname "Black Tom".

Fairfax studied at St John's College, Cambridge, and Gray's Inn (1626–1628), then volunteered to join Sir Horace Vere's expedition to fight for the Protestant cause in the Netherlands. In 1639 he commanded a troop of Yorkshire dragoons which marched
with King Charles I against the Scots in the First Bishops' War, which ended with the Pacification of Berwick before any fighting took place. In the Second Bishops' War the following year, the English army was routed at the Battle of Newburn. Fairfax
fled with the rest of the defeated army but was nevertheless knighted in January 1641 for his services.

The Fairfaxes, father and son, though serving at first under King Charles I, were opposed to the arbitrary prerogative of the Crown, and Sir Thomas declared that "his judgment was for the Parliament as the king and kingdom's great and safest council".
When Charles endeavoured to raise a guard for his own person at York, intending it, as the event afterwards proved, to form the nucleus of an army, Fairfax was employed to present a petition to his sovereign, entreating him to hearken to the voice of his
parliament, and to discontinue the raising of troops. This was at a great meeting of the freeholders and farmers of Yorkshire convened by the king on Heworth Moor near York. Charles attempted to ignore the petition, pressing his horse forward, but
Fairfax followed him and placed the petition on the pommel of the king's saddle.

When the civil war broke out in 1642, his father, Lord Fairfax, was appointed general of the Parliamentary forces in the north, and Sir Thomas was made lieutenant-general of the horse under him. Both father and son distinguished themselves in the
campaigns in Yorkshire.[a]

In 1643 a minor battle between Royalists for Charles I and a small group of Roundheads under Fairfax, who were en route from Tadcaster to Leeds, took place at Seacroft. Fairfax was obliged to retreat across Bramham moor and summed up the Battle of
Seacroft Moor as 'the greatest loss we ever received'.

Sometimes severely defeated, but more often successful, and always energetic, prudent and resourceful, father and son contrived to keep up the struggle until the crisis of 1644, when York was held by the Marquess of Newcastle against the combined forces
of the English Parliamentarians and the Scots, and Prince Rupert hastened with all available forces to its relief. A gathering of eager national forces within a few square miles of ground naturally led to a battle, and Marston Moor (2 July 1644) proved
decisive for the struggle in the north. The younger Fairfax bore himself with the greatest gallantry in the battle and, though severely wounded, managed to join Oliver Cromwell and the victorious cavalry on the other wing. One of his brothers, Colonel
Charles Fairfax, was killed in the action. But the Marquess of Newcastle fled the kingdom, and the Royalists abandoned all hope of retrieving their affairs. The city of York was taken, and nearly the whole of the north submitted to the Parliament.

In the West, South and South West of England, however, the Royalist cause was still strong. The war had lasted two years, and the nation began to complain of the contributions that were exacted of and the excesses that were committed by the military.
Dissatisfaction was expressed with the military commanders and, as a preliminary step to reform, the Self-denying Ordinance was passed. This involved the removal of the Earl of Essex from the supreme command, along with other Members of Parliament. This
was followed by the New Model Ordinance, which replaced the locally raised Parliamentary regiments with a unified army. Sir Thomas Fairfax was selected as the new Lord General, with Cromwell as his Lieutenant-General and cavalry commander. After a short
preliminary campaign, the New Model Army justified its existence, and "the rebels' new brutish general", as the king called him, proved his capacity as commander-in-chief in the decisive Battle of Naseby (14 June 1645). The king fled to Wales. Fairfax
besieged Leicester, and was successful at Taunton, Bridgwater and Bristol. The whole of the west was soon reduced.

Fairfax arrived in London on 12 November 1645. In his progress towards the capital he was accompanied by applauding crowds. Complimentary speeches and thanks were presented to him by both houses of parliament, along with a jewel of great value set with
diamonds, and a sum of money. The king had returned from Wales and established himself at Oxford, where there was a strong garrison but, ever vacillating, he withdrew secretly, and proceeded to Newark to throw himself into the arms of the Scots
Covenanter army there. Oxford capitulated in June 1646 following the final siege, and by the end of September 1646 Charles had neither army nor garrison in England, following the surrender of Thomas Blagge at Wallingford Castle after a siege conducted by
Fairfax. In January 1647 the King was delivered up by the Covenanters to the commissioners of England's parliament. Fairfax met the king beyond Nottingham, and accompanied him during the journey to Holdenby, treating him with the utmost consideration in
every way. "The general", said Charles, "is a man of honour, and keeps his word which he had pledged to me."

With the collapse of the Royalist cause came a confused period of negotiations between the Parliament and the King, between the King and the Scots, and between the Presbyterians and the Independents in and out of Parliament. In these negotiations the New
Model Army soon began to take a most active part. The Lord General was placed in the unpleasant position of intermediary between his own officers and Parliament. In July the person of the King was seized by Cornet Joyce, a subaltern of cavalry—an act
which sufficiently demonstrated the hopelessness of controlling the army by its Articles of War.

Fairfax was more at home in the field than at the head of a political committee, and, finding events too strong for him and that his officers were rallying around the more radical and politically shrewd Cromwell, he sought to resign his commission as
commander-in-chief. He was, however, persuaded to retain it. He thus remained the titular chief of the army party, and with the greater part of its objects he was in complete, sometimes most active, sympathy. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second
Civil War, Fairfax succeeded his father in the barony and in the office of governor of Hull. In the field against the English Royalists in 1648 he displayed his former energy and skill, and his operations culminated in the successful siege of Colchester,
after the surrender of which place he approved the execution of the Royalist leaders Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, holding that these officers had broken their parole. At the same time Cromwell's great victory of Preston crushed the faction of
the Scots Covenanters who had made an engagement with the king, the Engagers.

John Milton, in a sonnet written during the siege of Colchester, called upon the Lord General to settle the kingdom, but the crisis was now at hand. Fairfax was in agreement with Cromwell and the army leaders in demanding the punishment of Charles, and
he was still the effective head of the army. He approved, if he did not take an active part in, Pride's Purge (6 December 1648), but on the last and gravest of the questions at issue he set himself in deliberate and open opposition to the policy of the
officers. He was placed at the head of the judges who were to try the King, and attended the preliminary sitting of the court, but absented himself after this. The most likely explanation is that when he saw that they were serious about intending to
execute the king he declined to have anything to do with this.

In calling over the court, when the crier pronounced the name of Fairfax, it is said that his wife, Anne Fairfax, shouted from the gallery that "he had more wit than to be there". Later when the court said that they were acting for "all the good people
of England", she shouted "No, nor the hundredth part of them!". This resulted in an investigation and Anne was asked or required to leave the court. It was said that Anne could not forbear, as Bulstrode Whitelocke says, to exclaim aloud against the
proceedings of the High Court of Justice. In February 1649 Fairfax was elected Member of Parliament for Cirencester in the Rump Parliament. Anne was later approached to intercede on the King's behalf to prevent his execution.

Fairfax's last service as Commander-in-chief was the suppression of the Leveller mutiny at Burford in May 1649. He had given his adhesion to the new order of things, and had been reappointed Lord General, but he merely administered the affairs of the
army; when in 1650 Scots Covenanter Kirk Party eventually declared for Charles II, and the Council of State resolved to send an army to Scotland in order to prevent an invasion of England, Fairfax resigned his commission. Cromwell desired to see him
continue as Commander-in-chief, as did those planning the war, but Fairfax could not support the war. Cromwell was appointed his successor, "Captain-general and Commander-in-chief of all the forces raised or to be raised at authority of Parliament within
the Commonwealth of England."

In 1654 Fairfax was elected MP for the newly created constituency of West Riding in the First Protectorate Parliament. He received a pension of £5,000 a year, and lived in retirement at his Yorkshire home of Nunappleton until after the death of the Lord
Protector in 1658. Nunappleton and Fairfax's retirement there are the subject of Andrew Marvell's country house poem, Upon Appleton House. The troubles of the later Commonwealth recalled Lord Fairfax to political activity, and in 1659 he was elected MP
for Yorkshire in the Third Protectorate

For the last time Fairfax's appearance in arms helped to shape the future of the country, when George Monck invited him to assist in the operations about to be undertaken against John Lambert's army. In December 1659 he appeared at the head of a body of
Yorkshire gentlemen, and such was the influence of Fairfax's name and reputation that 1,200 horse quit Lambert's colours and joined him. This was speedily followed by the breaking up of all Lambert's forces, and that day secured the restoration of the
monarchy. For these actions, along with his honourable conduct in the civil war, he was spared from the wave of Royalist retributions. In April 1660 Fairfax was re-elected MP for Yorkshire in the Convention Parliament. He was put at the head of the
commission appointed by the House of Commons to wait upon Charles II, at the Hague and urge his speedy return. Fairfax provided the horse which Charles rode at his coronation.

The remaining eleven years of the life of Lord Fairfax were spent in retirement at his seat in Yorkshire. His wife died in 1665 and Fairfax died at Nunappleton in 1671. He was buried at Bilbrough, near York.

Fairfax had a taste for literature. He translated some of the Psalms, and wrote poems on solitude, the Christian warfare, the shortness of life, etc. During the last year or two of his life he wrote two Memorials which have been published—one on the
northern actions in which he was engaged in 1642–44, and the other on some events in his tenure of the chief command. At York and at Oxford he endeavoured to save the libraries from pillage, and he enriched the Bodleian with some valuable manuscripts.
His correspondence was edited by G.W. Johnson and published in 1848–49 in four volumes.

The metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell wrote "Upon Appleton House, To My Lord Fairfax", nominally about Fairfax's home, but also his character as well as England during his era. Fairfax married Hon. Anne de Vere, daughter of Horace Vere, 1st Baron Vere of
Tilbury and Mary Tracy, on 20 June 1637. They had a daughter, Hon. Mary Fairfax (30 July 1638 – 20 October 1704), who married George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham.

As a soldier he was exact and methodical in planning, in the heat of battle "so highly transported that scarce any one durst speak a word to him",[16] chivalrous and punctilious in his dealings with his own men and the enemy. Honour and conscientiousness
were equally the characteristics of his private and public character. But his modesty and distrust of his powers made him less effectual as a statesman than as a soldier, and above all he is placed at a disadvantage by being both in war and peace
overshadowed by his associate Cromwell, who was politically talented and able to manipulate public antipathy against Charles to lead to his execution, something Fairfax never wanted.>>
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Art Neuendorffer

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