[148:1] For a full account of this remarkable case, see Clarendon’s Life, iii. 733-9.

[149:1] “Provided, etc., that neither this Act nor anything therein contained shall extend to invalidate or avoid his Majesty’s supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs [or to destroy any of his Majesty’s rights powers or prerogatives belonging to the Imperial Crown of this realm or at any time exercised by himself or any of his predecessors Kings or Queens of England] but that his Majesty his heirs and successors may from time to time and at all times hereafter exercise and enjoy all such powers and authorities aforesaid as fully and amply as himself or any of his predecessors have or might have done the same anything in this Act (or any other law statute or usage to the contrary) notwithstanding.”  The words in brackets were rejected by the Commons.  See Parliamentary History, iv. 446-7.

[150:1] Madame’s business is now well known.  The secret Treaty of Dover was the result of this visit.

CHAPTER V

“THE REHEARSAL TRANSPROSED”

It is never easy for ecclesiastical controversy to force its way into literature.  The importance of the theme will be questioned by few.  The ability displayed in its illumination can be denied by none.  It is the temper that usually spoils all.  A collection in any way approaching completeness, of the pamphlets this contention has produced in England, would contain tens of thousands of volumes; full of curious learning and anecdotes, of wide reading and conjecture, of shrewdness and wit; yet these books are certainly the last we would seek to save from fire or water.  Could they be piled into scales of moral measurement a single copy of the Imitatio, of the Holy Dying, of the Saint’s Rest, would outweigh them all.  Man may not be a religious animal, but he recognises and venerates the spirit of religion whenever he perceives it, and it is a spirit which is apt to evaporate amidst the strife of rival wits.  Who can doubt the sincerity of Milton, when he exclaimed with the sad prophet Jeremy, “Woe is me my Mother that thou hast borne me a man of strife and contention.”

Marvell’s chief prose work, the two parts of The Rehearsal Transprosed, is a very long pamphlet indeed, composed by way of reply to certain publications of Samuel Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford.  Controversially Marvell’s book was a great success.[152:1] It amused the king, delighted the wits, was welcomed, if not read, by the pious folk whose side it espoused, whilst its literary excellence was sufficient to win, in after years, the critical approval of Swift, whose style, though emphatically his own, bears traces of its master having given, I will not say his days and nights, but certainly some profitable hours, to the study of Marvell’s prose.