MARSH, Lawrence (1620-65), of Dorking, Surr.

Marsh’s grandfather Peter Marsh (d. 1608) was a mercer and alderman of Wigan, Lancashire, but while Peter’s younger son Peter stayed there to become an alderman in his turn, the elder son, Roger, became a merchant taylor in London.16Families of the Name of Marsh, 21. Described as a ‘salesman’, in 1640 Roger was included among the ‘fourth set of people of ability’ in his parish for the loan to the king.17Principal Inhabitants of London 1640, 18. In his brief will, drafted in February 1644, he gave no details of the estate left to his only child – which may have included the land in London mentioned in Lawrence’s own will – but the document provides a key insight into the circle in which he moved and which may have provided Lawrence with education or employment. One of the witnesses was Henry Colbron, scrivener, of the adjacent and linked parish of St Antholin, Budge Row, in the heartland of Presbyterian London.18PROB11/198/48; PROB11/321/349.

Marsh proved his father’s will on 6 November 1646. It is not clear what part, if any, Marsh played in the civil wars and there is no direct evidence of his religious convictions. He was described as ‘of Highgate’, Middlesex, where he was possibly living as a landed gentleman, when on 2 February 1648 he married at Dorking, Surrey.19Surr. Arch. Coll. lv. 55. Neither he nor his bride, Anne Ihams or Johns, had any known previous connection to the area, but it is possible that one or other had acquired an interest locally through their mutual friend Colbron and his network. Colbron was a cousin and eventually executor of Anne’s father, William Ihams, a prosperous vintner from another Presbyterian-dominated parish, St Bartholomew by the Exchange, who in his 1651 will named as friends James Cranford, moderator of the London Presbyterian provincial assembly, and Thomas Cawton, a convicted Presbyterian plotter.20PROB11/218/164. Perhaps more importantly, from 1646 Colbron was appointed to a series of posts as registrar for the sale of confiscated lands, and thus was well placed to locate a suitable property for the young couple.21CJ vi. 249a; A. and O.

Apparently with well-placed friends and a capacity (like Colbron) to adapt to changed political circumstances, Marsh soon established himself in Dorking, although it may have helped that, in a place notorious for recusancy, he stood out as a potentially reliable local administrator.22Surr. Arch. Coll. lv. 56. He was named as an assessment commissioner from April 1649 and placed on the commission of the peace for his new county.23A. and O. In the latter capacity he investigated with the radical lay preacher Samuel Hyland* the alleged involvement of the rector of Bletchingley, William Hampton, in the rising that July of Henry Rich†, 1st earl of Holland, for which they found no proof.24Lambert, Bletchingley, 431. For reasons that are unclear, Marsh was removed from the commission in the final months of the Rump Parliament.25Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 128.

By this time Marsh may have worn his Presbyterian roots lightly, or at least cultivated a reputation for sincere but non-doctrinaire godliness. Nominated with Hyland to represent Surrey in the Nominated Parliament of 1653, he was not among those noted as a supporter of the learned ministry and universities, although this may have partly reflected his own lack of higher education.26TSP iii. 133. On 15 June he and Hyland were granted lodgings in Whitehall by the council of state.27CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 412. His sole committee nomination was, with Hyland, to the committee to investigate prisons and debtors (20 July 1653).28CJ vii. 287b. It may be no coincidence that when Parliament came to appoint commissioners for prisons in London and Surrey, Henry Colbron was among them (5 Oct.).29A. and O.

Marsh rapidly regained his place on the commission of the peace.30Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 128. In this role he conducted the majority of civil marriages in Dorking. Anne Marsh having died, he himself remarried in March 1655, although ‘in London’, according to the Dorking register. 31St Martin, Dorking par. reg. Once again, Henry Colbron provided the common link, being cousin and executor to the bride’s father, James Colbron of Brentwood, whose will he proved in May 1651. If, as seems more likely, Elizabeth Colbron was James’s elder daughter of that name, born of his first marriage, then she brought land at Brentwood; if his younger of the name, the land was at Childerwood; both had been living in St Antholin’s parish.32PROB11/216/513; Surr. Arch. Coll. lv. 55. A few months after the wedding, Henry Colbron named Marsh among the three executors and trustees instructed to undertake several land transactions for the benefit of his teenage son. That one involving the purchase from Dr John Owen*, dean of Christ Church, Oxford, of a lease on confiscated lands and tithes at Kirkham, Lancashire – undertaken in 1657 – was, exceptionally, confirmed at the Restoration, provides another instance of Marsh’s ability to weather change.33PROB11/244/535; SR.

Perhaps with a brief interruption before July 1659, Marsh continued as a justice of the peace for the rest of his life.34Surr. Quarter Sessions Recs. (Surr. Rec. Soc. xvi), 8-237. In August 1662 he was the chief signatory to a memorandum stating that the vicar of Dorking, whose failure to use the Prayer Book had landed him in trouble in the past, had complied with the Act of Uniformity.35Surr. Arch. Coll. lv. 56. Marsh’s will of May 1665 left the equivalent of £1,000 each to his three younger sons and land in three counties to the eldest.36PROB11/321/349. It seems to have been a substantial estate, although his widow was later to claim that it was depleted by the Great Fire of London. She died in 1671, having named James Foe (father of Daniel Defoe) as her executor.37Surr. Arch. Coll. lv. 56-7; Families of the Name of Marsh, 23-4. None of her four sons entered Parliament.