▶Date of birth:   12 March 1826       Place of birth: Canterbury

▶Father:  Henry Marlen     Mother: Charlotte Elizabeth Moore

▶Spouse(s):  Emily Hopwood    Date(s) of marriage:  14 June 1854     Place(s) of marriage: Blackburn

▶Occupation: Clergyman (Anglican); Author

▶Lifestory: Henry John Marlen enjoyed a distinguished career at Oxford before joining the ranks of Anglican curates; a good marriage but poor health brought him to Cheltenham after service in Blackburn and Ambleside. Marlen was the only son of the Revd. Henry Marlen, of St Paul’s, Canterbury and subsequently of Manchester, and his wife Charlotte Elizabeth (née Moore); he was baptised at Lady Huntingdon’s Union Chapel in Watling Street, Canterbury. Marlen attended the grammar school at Wye in Kent before matriculating at Wadham College, Oxford in 1846, Bible Clerk 1846-50, Hody Hebrew Exhibitioner, Pusey and Ellerton Hebrew Scholar 1848, BA (second class) 1849, MA 1853.

He was licensed Curate of Whalley, Lancashire in 1850, and in 1851 he was preferred to the Perpetual Curacy of St John’s Church, Blackburn, where, much admired, he threw himself into parish life, publishing one of his sermons in 1853; his advocate for the post had described him as “a hard-working man, [he] has a distinct, emphatic, and gentlemanly manner of reading, and is, as a preacher, impressive and popular, without any clap-trap, or attempt at effect”. In 1854 he married Emily, a “lady of wealth”, second daughter of merchant Robert Hopwood Esq., of Rockcliffe, Blackburn, and sister of John Turner Hopwood, MP for Clitheroe. In 1857 he sought to leave Blackburn “on the score of health and for other reasons”, but remained a further three years.

In early 1860 he left Blackburn to become he was Perpetual Curate at St Mary’s Church, Ambleside in Westmorland, where he was soon, in mid 1860, appointed Honorary Chaplain of the 5th Westmorland Rifle Volunteers. But his residency at Ambleside was short: he dabbled in ritualism, and was twice discovered in a drunken stupor; he resigned the living in 1861 and was suspended from exercising public ministry for three years. His father died in 1870, and by 1871 he had moved with his wife to 5 Promenade Terrace in Cheltenham, apparently without cure of souls though preaching occasionally. By now his wife was perhaps unwell; she suffered from depression and died by her own hand, aged forty-eight, at their house, 47 Clarence Square in Pittville, in 1880. In 1881 the Revd. Marlen lived at Ross House (now Wellesley and the Clarence Court Hotel), Clarence Square.

He died soon after, in Cheltenham in November 1881, at the age of fifty-five, and was buried in Leckhampton; his son Henry John Hopwood Marlen, then a law student, continued to live in his house in Clarence Square for several years. His estate at death was valued at just over £1,430.

▶Moved to Pittville from: Ambleside, Westmorland       Moved from Pittville to: (deceased)

▶Date of death:  15 November 1881      Place of death: 47 Clarence Square, Pittville

▶Date of burial:         Place of burial:

▶Notes: Sermon published in 1853; Blackburn Standard 6 October 1888. Between 1882 and 1884 he lived at 47 Clarence Square.       ID: 5868

Contributor(s):  John Simpson