Francis Marbury - Works and Legacy

Works and Legacy

Marbury's most noted work, The Contract of Marriage between Wit and Wisdom was written in 1579 while he was in prison. It was a moral interlude or "wit play", following The Play of Wyt and Science by John Redford, and an adaptation of its sequel The Marriage of Wit and Science. The play had actually been performed, being noted in 1590 as one of the "current plays of the time." Author T. N. S. Lennam described the work as a "lusty, occasionally very coarse, short interlude in which the morality material is dominated by rather imitative farcical episodes more elementally entertaining than didactic."

Marbury also helped write the preface to the works of other religious writers. One of these prefaces was written for Robert Rollock's A Treatise on God's Effectual Calling (1603), and another was for Richard Rogers' seminal work, Seven Treatises (1604). In the latter, Marbury praised Rogers "for having delivered a crushing blow against the Catholics and thereby vindicating the Church of England." This prefatory material summed up the puritan unitary vision for England: "one godly ruler, one godly church, and one godly path to heaven, with puritan ministers writing the guidebooks."

While Marbury was not considered one of the great Puritan ministers of his day, he was nevertheless well known. Sir Francis Bacon called him "The Preacher," and recognised him as such in his 1624 work Apothegm. A leading minister of the time, Reverend Robert Bolton, expressed a considerable respect for Marbury's teachings.

One negative aspect of Marbury's later career involved his time in Alford when he was the governor of the free grammar school there between 1595 and 1605. A 1618 court case pointed to Marbury's improper handling of the school's endowments, and following an inquisition, the surviving executors to Marbury's will were ordered to pay "certain sums unto the Governors" of the school as compensation.