What took him there nobody knows.  Writing to the Trinity House about the lighthouse business on the 8th of May 1662, Marvell says:—­

“But that which troubles me is that by the interest of some persons too potent for me to refuse, and who have a great direction and influence upon my counsels and fortune, I am obliged to go beyond sea before I have perfected it (i.e. the lighthouse business).  But first I do thereby make my Lord Carlisle (who is a member of the Privy Council and one of them to whom your business is referred) absolutely yours.  And my journey is but into Holland, from whence I shall weekly correspond as if I were at London with all the rest of my friends, towards the affecting your business.  Then I leave Col.  Gilbey there, whose ability for business and affection to yours is such that I cannot be wanted though I am missing.”

It is plain from this that Lord Carlisle is one of the powerful persons referred to—­but beyond this we cannot go.

Whilst in Holland Marvell wrote both to the Trinity House and to the corporation on business matters.

In March 1663 Marvell came back in a hurry, some complaints having been made in Hull about his absence.  He begins his first letter after his return as follows:—­

“Being newly arrived in town and full of business, yet I could not neglect to give you notice that this day (2nd April 1663) I have been in the House and found my place empty, though it seems, as I now hear, that some persons would have been so courteous as to have filled it for me.”

In none of these letters is any reference made to the debates in the House on the unhappy Bill of Uniformity, nor does any record of those discussions anywhere exist.  The Savoy Conference proved a failure, and no lay reader of Baxter’s account of it can profess wonder.  Not a single point in difference was settled.  In the meantime the restored Houses of Convocation, from which the Presbyterian members were excluded, had completed their revision of the Book of Common Prayer and presented it to Parliament.

In considering the Bill for Uniformity, the House of Lords, where Presbyterianism was powerfully represented, showed more regard for those “tender consciences” to which the king (by the new Prayer Book called for the first time “our most religious King”) had referred in his Breda Declaration than did the House of Commons.  “The Book, the whole Book, and nothing but the Book” was, in effect, the cry of the lower House, and on the 19th of May, ten days after Marvell had left for the Continent, the Act of Uniformity became law, and by the 24th of August 1662 all beneficed ministers and schoolmasters had to make the celebrated subscription and profession, or go out into the wilderness.

There has always been a dispute as to the physical possibility of perusing the compilation in question before the day fixed by the Statute.  The Book was advertised for sale in London on the 6th of August, but how many copies were actually available on that day is not known.