On 1st April 1661 Marvell was returned for the third and last time for Hull, for Charles the Second’s first Parliament was of unconscionable long duration, not being dissolved till January 1679, after Marvell’s death.  It is known in history as the Pensionary or Long Parliament.  The election figures were as below:—­

        Colonel Gilbey, 294
        Mr. Andrew Marvell, 240
        Mr. Edward Barnard, 195
        Mr. John Ramsden, 122

Marvell was not present at or before the election, for on the 6th of April he writes:—­

“I perceive by Mr. Mayor that you have again (as if it were grown a thing of course) made choice of me now, the third time, to serve for you in Parliament, which as I cannot attribute to anything but your constancy, so shall I, God willing, as in gratitude obliged, with no less constancy and vigour continue to execute your commands and study your service.”

A word may here be said about payment of borough members.  The members’ fee was 6s. 8d. for every day the Parliament lasted.  The wages were paid by the corporation out of the borough funds.  It was never a popular charge.  Burgesses in many places cared as little for M.P.’s as do some of their successors for free libraries.  Prynne, perhaps the greatest parliamentary lawyer that ever lived, told Pepys one day, as they were driving to the Temple, that the number of burgesses to be returned to Parliament for any particular borough was not, for aught Prynne could find, fixed by law, but was at first left to the discretion of the sheriff, and that several boroughs had complained of the sheriff’s putting them to the charge of sending up burgesses.

In August 1661 the corporation paid Marvell L28 for his fee as one of their burgesses, being 6s. 8d. a day for eighty-four days, the length of the Convention Parliament.  Marvell continued to take his wages until the end of his days; but it is perhaps a mistake to suppose he was the very last member to do so.  It was, however, unusual in Marvell’s time.[96:1]

This Pensionary Parliament, though of a very decided “Church and King” complexion, was not in its original composition a body lacking character or independence, but it steadily deteriorated in both respects.  Vacancies, as they occurred, and they occurred very frequently in those days of short lives, were filled up by courtiers and pensioners.

In the small tract, entitled Flagellum Parliamentum, which is a highly libellous “Dod,” often attributed to Marvell, a record is preserved of more than two hundred members of this Parliament in 1675.  Despite some humorous touches, this Flagellum Parliamentum is still disagreeable to read.  But the most graphic picture we have of this Parliament is to be found in one of Lord Shaftesbury’s political tracts entitled “A letter from a Parliament man to his Friend” (1675):—­