A Boarding School for Boys

Abstract

When James Foe ‘went away to Dorking in Surry’ to attend the funeral of Lawrence Marsh in July 1665, this was far from the end of his connection with the Marsh family or with Dorking.¹ Lawrence Marsh, only son of Roger Marsh, citizen and merchant tailor, descended from a prominent Wigan family, had settled in Dorking during the Commonwealth and Protectorate, acquiring, amongst other property, a large house of twelve hearths, later known as Shrub Hill, on the northern edge of the common of Cotmandene, on the eastern outskirts of the town. At that time he had been the leading figure in Dorking, and one of the two Surrey representatives in Bareb ones Parliament. A fellow member of this ‘Parliament of Saints’ had been Henry Colbron, a prosperous scrivener who, as ‘Register of Crown Lands’, had acted as estate agent when these were put up for sale. It must have been at the latter’s house in Budge Row, in the London parish of St Antholin, that Marsh met Colbron’s young kinswoman and established member of his household, Elizabeth Colbron. In 1655 she became his second wife and went to live with him at Dorking, where between 1656 and 1660 four sons were born. After surviving the Restoration apparently unscathed, Marsh died in 1665.