You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
An illuminating biography of a republican convicted of regicide, drawing on the letters he wrote from within the Tower of London. Henry Marten—soldier, member of parliament, organizer of the trial of Charles I, and signatory of the King’s death warrant—is today a neglected figure of the seventeenth century. Yet his life was both extraordinary and emblematic: he was at the fulcrum of English history during the turbulent years of the civil war, the protectorate, and the restoration. Imprisoned in the Tower of London and tried at the Old Bailey, Marten was found guilty of high treason, only to be held captive for years on the equivalent of death row. While he was in prison, his letters to...
In this, the first and long overdue biography of Marten, Sarah Barber examines his turbulent career, his fascinating personality and his controversial politics. Vigorously written and argued throughout, the book analyses the two contrasting images of Marten: one a libertinistic, high-living rake, every aspect of whose life was unmeasured, and expressed in ribald joviality, shared with his adulterous partner, Mary Ward; the other a serious politician and thinker, whose views were, by his own admission, not widely held, but unusual, influential and feared. Barber argues that Marten's politics were indeed far more important than historians have previously thought. She also reveals Marten's key role in bankrolling parliamentary operations before and during the Civil War, and shows how assiduously and successfully the royalist presses worked to paint the blackest possible picture of him.