Family and Education

b. c.1555, 1st s. of Henry Marvyn (d.1614), of Durford by Edith, da. of Sir Anthony Windsor of Harting. educ. Clement’s Inn; M. Temple 1572, called 1581. m. by 1583, Anne, da. of William Jephson of Froyle, 1s. and other ch.1

Offices Held

J.p.q. Hants by 1601.

Biography

Marvyn was the grandson of Sir Edmund Marvyn (a younger son of the Marvyns of Fonthill Gifford, Wiltshire) who was a judge in the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Queen Mary. Marrying into the Pakenham family, Sir Edmund acquired the Hampshire manor of Bramshott, and he was later granted the site of Durford abbey, Sussex, and a manor at Petersfield. Marvyn himself married into a good Hampshire family, and lived at Petersfield, being returned for the borough at the first election after his marriage, and for the two succeeding Parliaments. He did not sit after 1589, for in 1593 the junior seat was taken by a member of the Weston family, the absentee owners of the borough, and by the election of 1597 the Westons had given way to a new and active resident owner who wanted both seats.2

Marvyn was in chambers at the Middle Temple at intervals throughout his life. In 1596 his reading was deferred because of his sickness, and in 1599 he was heavily fined for not reading. Among other Hampshire men admitted to his chambers was Richard Norton, son of Richard Norton II of Rotherfield, who had sat for Petersfield in 1572. The Nortons were inclined to puritanism, as was Sir Henry Wallop, who in 1585 asked that Marvyn be allowed to act as his deputy in the stewardships of Somerford and Lymington, Hampshire; and Marvyn’s father and father-in-law had both been listed as ‘favourers’ of true religion in the bishop’s report on the j.p.s of 1564. Possibly Marvyn himself had puritan sympathies; his will expresses his confidence in his election as a ‘citizen of [Christ’s] celestial court in heaven’.3

Marvyn died v.p. 9 Sept. 1604. Henry, his son and heir, was then betrothed to Christine Audley, the granddaughter of (Sir) James Marvyn of Fonthill, who had arranged the match in order to keep Fonthill in the ownership of Marvyns, for Lucy, Christine Audley’s mother, the wife of George, Lord Audley, later 1st Earl of Castlehaven, was his only child. Sir James, having settled Fonthill on the young couple, complained in his will that Edmund Marvyn had not made them the equivalent gift which had been agreed upon. The marriage took place, however, and Henry Marvyn’s son, who rose to be vice-admiral of the narrow seas, inherited Fonthill.4

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: Alan Harding

Notes

• 1. Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. liii), 76-7; Wilts. Peds. (Harl. Soc. cv, cvi), 124; C142/683/187; Mousley thesis, 605-7.
• 2. VCH Hants, ii. 492; iii, 117; VCH Suss. iv. 15, 25; Lansd. 49, f. 144; PCC 11 Hayes; CSP Dom. 1591-4, p. 510.
• 3. M.T. Recs. i. 234, 247, 258, 368, 380, 395, 398, 412, 421; ii. 448; CSP Ire. 1574-85, p. 546; Cam. Misc. ix(3), pp. 9, 55; PCC 11 Hayes.
• 4. C142/683/187; CP, iii. 86; PCC 89 Wood.