Francis Marbury, or Merbury (1555–1611) was a Cambridge educated English clergyman, school master, and Puritan reformer now remembered as a playwright and the father of Anne Hutchinson.
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Marbury matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge in 1571, but is not known to have graduated.[1] He was ordained deacon in 1578; his ordination as priest was delayed until 1605.[2]
As a young man he was a “hothead”[3] and collided with the church authorities, and in particular with John Aylmer, over the issue of the provision of well-educated preachers. Aylmer called him an "overthwart, proud, puritan knave" in November 1578, and sent him to the Marshalsea, after hearing Marbury's views on financing preachers by mulcting (fining) the bishops: "A man might cut a good large thong out of your hyde and the rest, and it would not be missed".[4][5] He was twice imprisoned, and spent time in Northampton, and Alford, Lincolnshire, unable to preach.
He became lecturer at St Saviour, Southwark.[6] With the support of Richard Vaughan, the Bishop of London, he was rehabilitated and moved to London.[7] He was rector of St Martin Vintry in 1605, of St Pancras, Soper Lane in 1608, and of St Margaret, New Fish Street in 1610.[8]
The Contract of Marriage between Wit and Wisdom was offered for acting if not certainly performed in 1579. 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.[9][10]
Marbury was married twice producing eighteen children of which several survived to adulthood. Two daughters are remembered in early American colonial history.
Anne Hutchinson, the early dissident pioneer and Protestant reformer, was his second daughter by his second marriage. Following in her father's footsteps, she was a reformer who was a pioneer settler in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Netherlands and the unauthorized minister of a dissident church discussion group.
His daughter Katherine married Richard Scott, moved to New England, and became one of the first Quakers in Providence.[11]