Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

ANDREW MARVELL [Senior] was born at Mildred in this County, and bred a Master of Arts in Trinity College in Cambridge. He afterwards became minister in Hull, where for his life-time he was well beloved: most facetious in his discourse, yet grave in his carriage, a most excellent preacher, who, like a good husband, never broached what he had new brewed, but preached what he had pre-studied some competent time before; insomuch that he was wont to say, that he would cross the common proverb, which called “Saturday the working day, and Monday the holy-day of preachers.” It happened that, anno Domini 1640, Jan. 23, crossing Humber in a barrow-boat, the same was sand-warped [swept by the tide on to a sandbank – a localism?], and he drowned therein, by the carelessness (not to say drunkenness) of the boat-men, to the great grief of all good men.

Comment

Comment

Andrew Junior left to look after himself.

The manner of his father’s death, and the fact that the poet himself was born in reclaimed Holderness, should give pause to those who take offence at his lines on Holland:

How did they rivet with gigantic piles,
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles,
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground,
Building their watery Babel far more high,
To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky!
Yet still his claim the injured ocean laid,
And oft at leap-frog o’er their steeples played,
As if on purpose it on land had come
To show them what’s their mare liberum.
A daily deluge over them does boil;
The earth and water play at level coil.
The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossessed,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest (Marvell 1665).

I must find out more about Mrs. Skinner of Thornton, North Lincolnshire, who adopted him.

Marvell was not the only person with reason to dislike the crossing:

There are some good towns on the sea-coast; but I include not Barton, which stands on the Humber, as one of them, being a straggling mean town, noted for nothing but an ill-favoured dangerous passage, or ferry, over the Humber to Hull; where, in an open boat, in which we had about 15 horses, and 10 or 12 cows, mingled with about 17 or 18 passengers, we were about 4 hours tossed about on the Humber, before we could get into the harbour at Hull. Well may the Humber take its name from the noise it makes; for in an high wind it is incredibly great and terrible, like the crash and dashing together of ships (Defoe 1748).

In “To a Coy Mistress” Marvell laments his lover’s absence in the lines “I by the tide/ Of Humber would complain” (Marvell 1898), which inspired Angela Leighton to a rather excellent poem, “By the Tide of Humber” (Leighton 2023) which I hope I’ll be allowed to use.

I haven’t managed to access Nicholas von Maltzahn’s “Death by Drowning: Marvell’s ‘Lycidas’.”

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Original

ANDREW MARVAIL [Senior] was born at Mildred in this County, and bred a Master of Arts in Trinity College in Cambridge. He afterwards became minister in Hull, where for his life-time he was well beloved: most facetious in his discourse, yet grave in his carriage, a most excellent preacher, who, like a good husband, never broached what he had new brewed, but preached what he had pre-studied some competent time before; insomuch that he was wont to say, that he would cross the common proverb, which called “Saturday the working day, and Monday the holy-day of preachers.” It happened that, anno Domini 1640, Jan. 23, crossing Humber in a barrow-boat, the same was sand-warped [swept by the tide on to a sandbank – a localism?], and he drowned therein, by the carelessness (not to say drunkenness) of the boat-men, to the great grief of all good men.

146 words.

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• Alcohol (drug) (59) ·
• Anglo-Dutch Wars (2), three conflicts 1652-1674 and one 1780-1784, all mainly naval ·
• Barton-upon-Humber (1) ·
• Cambridge (4) ·
• Cattle (26) ·
• Daniel Defoe (4) ·
• Drowning (22) ·
• Dutch Republic (5) ·
• East Riding of Yorkshire (66) ·
• Holderness (14) ·
• Horse (71) ·
• Humber (20) ·
• Humour (26) ·
• 📌Kingston upon Hull (65) ·
• Land reclamation (2) ·
• Lincolnshire (15) ·
• Marvell (Senior), Andrew (2) ·
• Marvell, Andrew (1621-78) (5), metaphysical poet, satirist and politician, friend of John Milton, born near Hull ·
• Netherlands (9) ·
• Poetry (70) ·
• 📌Port of Hull (17) ·
• Second Anglo-Dutch War (3) ·
• University of Cambridge (5) ·

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Similar

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