SOURCE: "Andrew Marvell and Oliver Cromwell," in Renaissance and Modern Studies, Vol. XXVI, 1982, pp. 75-89.

In the following essay, Elliott argues that throughout his poems about Cromwell, Marvell remains favorable to Cromwell.'

Andrew Marvell was a servant of the Protectorate Government, tutor to the Lord-General Fairfax's daughter and, finally, a member of Parliament for Hull, wellknown for his opposition to the Crown's policies. A cultured, middle-class Puritan, he wrote political poetry in the 1640s and 1650s which clearly expresses the turbulence of the age and the anxieties of Long Parliament supporters who stubbornly resisted 'Stuart tyranny' only to find their victory threatened by radicals bent on loosening the whole fabric of society. Marvell catches the mood of a society in flux and his work serves as a corrective to notions of 'historical perspective' and 'inevitability' by reminding us that to contemporaries the outcome of the great rebellion...