MARTEN, Sir Henry (1562-1641), of Aldersgate, London, and Longworth, Berks.

Marten was a younger son of a wealthy London baker who was educated at Winchester College and Oxford University before embarking on a successful career as a civil lawyer. He was appointed advocate-general in 1609; judge of the high court of admiralty in 1617; chancellor of London diocese in 1619; a member of the court of high commission in 1620; and in 1624 judge of the prerogative court of Canterbury and dean of the court of arches. He owed his rise to the personal favour of James I, and his position under Charles I was more ambiguous. He was active in the House of Commons, as MP for St Germans (a seat controlled by (Sir) John Eliot†) in 1625 and 1626, and, in 1628, as MP for Oxford University, and although he supported the crown in most instances, relations between him and George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, were frosty.36HP Commons, 1604-29. Nor was Marten in favour with the bishop of London, William Laud, and matters came to a head in 1633, when he supported an appeal to the court of arches by the parishioners of St Gregory’s church in London against an order by the dean and chapter of St Paul’s that the communion table be removed to the east end of the chancel and railed ‘altarwise’. Laud called on the king to intervene, and the case was referred instead to the privy council. The episode confirmed Laud’s view that Marten was little more than a ‘schismatical … puritan’, and on his consecration as archbishop of Canterbury in the same year, Marten lost the post of dean of the arches.37CSP Dom 1641-3, pp. 531-2; ‘Sir Henry Marten’, Oxford DNB; Levack, Civil Lawyers, 190-2.

Despite his differences with Laud, during the 1630s Marten continued to be a prominent civil lawyer, retaining his offices in the prerogative court, the high commission and the admiralty. As an admiralty judge, he worked closely with the secretary of state, Sir John Coke, although his decisions on disputes over prize ships did not always attract royal approval, with Coke telling him in 1633 that the king ‘much misliketh the unnecessary scruple you raise’ in one case, ‘and blamed you for it’.38HMC Cowper, ii. 31, 38, 59, 102, 154, 182, 202. In June 1636 Marten was appointed as a commissioner to consider new statutes for Oxford University.39HMC Cowper, ii. 121. In September 1638, Edward Sackville, 4th earl of Dorset, described Marten as ‘the Delphian oracle, or rather the Sphinx’ for his insistence on delivering his judgements verbally rather than in writing.40CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 32. Marten’s political views in the later 1630s are equally difficult to discern. In February 1639 Secretary Francis Windebanke* asked him to use his influence to raise money for the Scottish war from Doctors’ Commons, but a month later he was criticised for making excuses rather than providing any money from his own extensive estates.41CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 451, 590. He may have relented, as he later referred to a loan of £3,000 to the king, which, he claimed, had prevented him from fulfilling a promise to repair the churches of Shrivenham and Longworth in Berkshire.42PROB11/187/218.

Marten continued this delicate balancing act for another 18 months. In the spring of 1640 he was returned to Parliament, on the court interest (though, oddly, not as the duchy’s candidate), for the Cornish borough of St Ives.43DCO, ‘letters and warrants, 1639-43’, f. 44v. His speech to the House on 23 April was an attempt at even-handedness. The Commons, he argued, should vote the king a bare subsidy, which was all they could do ‘out of trust to the country’, but promise more if grievances were addressed: ‘that you should have somewhat presently, we somewhat presently, neither the worse’. When it came to Ship Money, Marten was concerned at its legality, but added ‘if it proved lawful’ it was ‘a valuable sum’ for the government.44Aston’s Diary, 43. Marten’s committee appointments suggest that he was quietly with the opponents of royal policy during the same period. On 21 April he was named to the committee to view the commission granted to Convocation; on 24 April he was named to the committee to consider grievances; and on 27 April he was appointed to the committee to prepare an address to be presented to the Lords, ‘for righting our privileges’. In all three, he was joined by leading critics of the crown, like John Pym, Oliver St John and John Hampden.45CJ ii. 8a, 12a, 14a. Marten could not avoid criticism for his own part in the excesses of the Caroline regime, however. On 22 April the Commons had considered a complaint against him as an admiralty judge, and on 4 May the Lords ordered that he appear before the privileges committee to answer the charge that he had forced peers to make statements on oath, rather than accepting their word of honour.46Procs. Short Parl. 283; HMC 4th Rep. 25.

After the dissolution of the Short Parliament, Marten returned to his many legal and administrative duties, but not without reservations.47CSP Dom. 1640, p. 148. At the end of May 1640 he opposed the new Laudian church Canons when they were considered by the privy council, although his concerns were not religious but professional, as the new measures gave powers to bishops at the expense of diocesan chancellors.48Clarendon, Hist. i. 273; ‘Sir Henry Marten’, Oxford DNB. Marten was also fearful that such policies – and perhaps the backlash against the church courts they would provoke – would prove disastrous, and remarked in the autumn that ‘he was going to the funeral of his profession’ as a civil lawyer.49CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 197. When the Long Parliament convened, Marten became caught in the proceedings aimed at the Caroline administration generally, and church in particular. On 22 February 1641 the Commons declared that all those involved in the trial of Dr John Bastwick, including Marten and Laud, should face impeachment.50Procs. LP ii. 507n; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 479. This was apparently not pursued, and the greatest threat to Marten came from the Lords, acting as supreme court. On 22 December the Lords ordered that Marten and the dean of the arches, Sir John Lambe, pay £1,000 compensation to Sir Robert Howard*.51 LJ iv. 114b. On 27 January Simon Plysher petitioned for action against Marten as an admiralty judge; on 30 January there was a similar claim from Robert Harris and others, including Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick.52HMC 4th Rep. 43, 45. These were joined by other petitions during June and July, including that of Lady Goldsmith, who challenged Marten’s judgement over a case of intestacy.53HMC 4th Rep. 73, 74, 80, 88, 89; LJ iv. 293a, 311a, 317a, 326a, 335a, 361a, 362b. A series of judgements against Marten were made during the summer. On 16 June the Lords ordered that he pay £50 damages to one Mr Rookes; on 17 August he was ordered to pay one victim of the high commission, John Ekins, £120 damages; and on 26 August it was decided that Marten and William Langhorne either pay £2,400 to the earl of Warwick or provide bonds for the same while the case was heard again.54LJ iv. 277b, 367a, 369a, 378a-b; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 92.

The 1st earl of Clarendon (Sir Edward Hyde*) later alleged that Marten was among those ‘guilty persons’ who ‘by the wise managing their defence have been freed from their accusers, not only without censure but without reproach’.55Clarendon, Hist. i. 8. There is some truth in this. On 4 March 1641, when the members of the high commission were again in the firing line, this time over the harsh treatment of the Durham minister, Peter Smart, efforts were made to excuse Marten, ‘upon his son’s desire … as one who did nothing but sign a warrant with others to transmit Mr Smart back to York’.56Procs. LP ii. 624. On 15 June it was noted that although he had been fined by the Lords for an unfair judgement in the admiralty court, ‘that the House of Commons held that no commoner could be fined but by their House’, and the lord admiral (Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland) ‘promising the fine should be paid by Sir Henry Marten, the business was hushed’.57Harl. 6424, f. 72v. Marten’s son Henry* also did his best to blunt the attacks on his father. On 26 August he told the Commons that Sir Henry was prepared to make a loan to the ‘service of the public’, and complained that ‘the Lords intended to make his father’s estate from him’ altogether, asking that the Lower House might consider the case itself.58Procs. LP vi. 569-70.

Before the Lords could take its prosecution any further, death intervened. Marten had been suffering from ‘inability of body’ by mid-June: he was given leave to return to his Berkshire estates on 30 July; and by mid-August was said to be ‘very aged’ and ‘dangerously sick’.59LJ iv. 275b; HMC 4th Rep. 92, 96. He died at his house at Bray on 26 September 1641, at the age of 79, and was buried in the parish church of Longworth.60CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 126; Wood, Ath. Ox. iii. 17. He had already settled his estates on Henry, and his main concern when writing his will a month before his death was to give money to charities, including the founding of two almshouses, at Shrivenham and Longworth.61PROB11/187/218.