MARSHALL, Robert (1594-1668), of St Peter at Arches, Lincoln, and Fiskerton, Lincs.

Marshall belonged to a junior branch of a minor Nottinghamshire family, the Marshalls of Rampton. His father, Robert Marshall senior, had settled in Lincoln by 1590, when he purchased his freedom of the city as a mercer.20Marshall, Misc. Marescalliana. i. 137. Evidently a man of some standing, Robert Marshall senior was elected sheriff of Lincoln in 1608 and would probably have risen further in the civic hierarchy but for his death in 1610.21Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/4, f. 58v. In his will, he made bequests totalling £154 10s, but gave no indication of the size or value of his landed estate.22Lincs. RO, LCC Wills 1610/175. Robert Marshall followed closely in his father’s footsteps, serving his apprenticeship as a mercer and obtaining his freedom of the city in 1613.23Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/4, f. 110. He then rose rapidly in the civic cursus honorum, serving in the municipal offices of chamberlain, common councilman, sheriff, homager and chief constable, before his election as an alderman in September 1629.24Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/4, ff. 119v, 128, 161, 179, 180, 234v. His principal residence during this period was apparently a messuage, which he leased from the corporation, upon Lincoln ‘high bridge’ over the River Witham.25Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/4, f. 123v; L1/1/1/6, f. 60.

Marshall was elected mayor in September 1632 and, like his predecessor, Alderman Richard White, neglected to keep the ‘freemen’s feasts’ as civic custom required.26Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/4, f. 260v. This failure to observe the city’s festive rites may well have been justified as an exercise in municipal retrenchment, but in Marshall’s case it was almost certainly motivated, at least in part, by religious considerations. Certainly his career after 1640 suggests that he was a man of puritan convictions. He also shared the typical godly civic leader’s concern to provide relief and work for the poor. In January 1632, the godly Lincolnshire knight and future parliamentarian Sir William Armyne* wrote to the bishop of Lincoln, John Williams, concerning the disposal of a plague-relief fund for Lincoln that the bishop had organized. Armyne informed Williams that he had spoken with Marshall (who had just returned from attending the bishop at Westminster) and that there was great concern, presumably among the local godly, that the poor of Lincoln had not been ‘so well dealt withall as they should have been’.27Lincs. RO, COR/B/3, no. 15. Williams evidently agreed, appointing Marshall treasurer of the relief fund and supporting the corporation’s plans for its disposal (which Marshall had probably helped to devise), which apportioned £400 towards setting the poor on work and £200 for providing them with coals.28Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/4, f. 259v; Red Bk. (Episcopal act bk. 1611-93), ff. 151-3v; CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 408-9; F. Hill, Tudor and Stuart Lincoln, 137. Regardless of any puritan sympathies he may have harboured, Marshall, like his younger brother William Marshall*, was active on the 1633 Lincoln commission for collecting donations for the repair of St Paul’s Cathedral – a project much favoured by the king and Archbishop Laud.29LMA, CLC/313/I/B/004/MS25474/001, p. 31.

Marshall sided with Parliament during the civil war and was involved in the work of the 1644 parliamentary commission for removing ‘idle, ill-affected, scandalous and insolent [i.e. royalist] clergy’ in Lincolnshire.30HMC Portland, i. 237-8; ‘The royalist clergy of Lincs.’ ed. Hill, 37-8, 70, 71, 105. As mayor in 1644-5, he was probably instrumental in persuading Edward Reyner, Lincoln’s foremost godly minister, to return to the city after the royalists had driven him out in 1643.31E. Calamy, The Nonconformist’s Memorial (1775), ii. 152. Marshall apparently had no qualms about serving under the Rump, signing an order of the Lincolnshire militia commissioners in June 1651.32SP28/236, pt. 3, unfol. In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in 1654, the city returned his brother Alderman William Marshall (although for some reason Robert Marshall was not named among the parties to the electoral indenture).33Supra, ‘Lincoln’. And having appointed Marshall’s eldest son Robert as the city’s legal counsel in October 1656, the corporation elected him recorder in place of Henry Pelham* in November 1658.34Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/6, f. 57v, p. 76. In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, it was ‘Alderman Robert Marshall’ rather than his son who was returned for Lincoln.35Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’; A Perfect List of the Lords of the Other House... (1659). He received no appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate.

Marshall continued to take an active part in municipal affairs after the Restoration, although it is not clear to what extent, if at all, he welcomed the return to monarchy.36Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/6, pp. 89, 105, 109. His son Robert was apparently a supporter of the new regime and was ordered by the corporation to draw up Lincoln’s loyal address to Charles II in June 1660.37Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/6, pp. 86, 87. However, in October 1660 he lost his recordership to the pre-civil war incumbent Sir Charles Dallison.38Lincs. RO, Lincoln City Officials, f. 97. Inevitably, perhaps, given his puritan leanings and support for Parliament during the civil war, Marshall senior (together with his brother William and five other aldermen) was removed from municipal office by the corporation commissioners in August 1662.39Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/6, p. 111. He then withdrew from civic affairs and probably spent his final few years living quietly at Fiskerton, a village a few miles to the west of Lincoln.

Marshall died early in 1668 and was buried at Fiskerton on 17 February.40Fiskerton par. reg. In his will, he made bequests totalling about £45, but made no mention of his estate, having settled his ‘lands and tenements’ by prior arrangement.41Lincs. RO, Stow Wills 1666-8/227. Apart from his brother William, none of his immediate family sat in Parliament.