Education
At the age of twelve, Marvell attended Trinity College, Cambridge and eventually received his BA degree.[1] Afterwards, from the middle of 1642 onwards, Marvell probably travelled in continental Europe. He may well have served as a tutor for an aristocrat on the Grand Tour; but the facts are not clear on this point. While England was embroiled in the civil war, Marvell seems to have remained on the continent until 1647. It is not known exactly where his travels took him, except that he was in Rome in 1645 and Milton later reported that Marvell had mastered four languages, including French, Italian and Spanish
Career
Marvell also wrote anonymous prose satires criticizing the monarchy and Catholicism, defending Puritan dissenters, and denouncing censorship.
The Rehearsal Transpros'd, an attack on Samuel Parker, was published in two parts in 1672 and 1673.
In 1676, Mr. Smirke; or The Divine in Mode, a work critical of intolerance within the Church of England, was published together with a "Short Historical Essay, concerning General Councils, Creeds, and Impositions, in matters of Religion."
Marvell's pamphlet An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England, published in late 1677, claimed that:
“ There has now for diverse Years, a design been carried on, to change the Lawfull Government of England into an Absolute Tyranny, and to convert the established Protestant Religion into down-right Popery...[10] ”
John Kenyon described it as "one of the most influential pamphlets of the decade"[11] and G. M. Trevelyan called it: "A fine pamphlet, which throws light on causes provocative of the formation of the Whig party".[12]
A 1678 work published anonymously ("by a Protestant") in defense of John Howe against the attack of his fellow-dissenter, the severe Calvinist Thomas Danson, is also probably by Marvell. Its full title is Remarks upon a late disingenuous discourse, writ by one T.D. under the pretence de causa Dei, and of answering Mr. John Howe's letter and postscript of God's prescience, &c., affirming, as the Protestant docrine, that GOd doth by efficacious influence universally move and determine men to all their actions, even to those that are most wicked.
Religion
Although Marvell became a Parliamentarian, he was not a Puritan. He had flirted briefly with Catholicism as a youth,[13] and was described in his thirties (on the Saumur visit) as "a notable English Italo-Machiavellian".[14][15] During his lifetime, his prose satires were much better known than his verse.