MARSH, HERBERT (1757-1839), English divine, was born at Faversham, Kent, on the 10th of December 1757, and was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, where he was elected fellow in 1782, having been second wrangler and second Smith's prizeman. For some years he studied at Leipzig, and between 1793 and 1801 published in four volumes a translation of J. D. Michaelis's _Introduction to the New Testament_, with notes of his own, in which he may be said to have introduced German methods of research into English biblical scholarship. His _History of the Politics of Great Britain and France_ (1799) brought him much notice and a pension from William Pitt. In 1807 he was appointed Lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge, and lectured to large audiences on biblical criticism, substituting English for the traditional Latin. Both here, and afterwards as bishop of Llandaff (1816) and of Peterborough (1819), he stoutly opposed hymn-singing, Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, and the Evangelical movement as represented by Charles Simeon and the Bible Society. Among his writings are _Lectures on the Criticism and Interpretation of the Bible_ (1828), _A Comparative View of the Churches of England and Rome_ (1814), and _Horae Pelasgicae_ (1815). He died at Peterborough on the 1st of May 1839.
MARSH, NARCISSUS (1638-1713), archbishop of Dublin and Armagh, was born at Hannington, Wiltshire, and educated at Oxford. He became a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, in 1658. In 1662 he was ordained, and presented to the living of Swindon, which he resigned in the following year. After acting as chaplain to Seth Ward, bishop of Exeter and Salisbury, and Lord Chancellor Clarendon, he was elected principal of St Alban Hall, Oxford, in 1673. In 1679 he was appointed provost of Trinity College, Dublin, where he did much to encourage the study of the Irish language. He helped to found the Royal Dublin Society, and contributed to it a paper entitled "Introductory Essay to the Doctrine of Sounds" (printed in _Philosophical Transactions_, No. 156, Oxford, 1684). In 1683 he was consecrated bishop of Ferns and Leighlin, but after the accession of James II. he was compelled by the turbulent soldiery to flee to England (1689), where he became vicar of Gresford, Flint, and canon of St Asaph. Returning to Ireland in 1691 after the battle of the Boyne, he was made archbishop of Cashel, and three years later he became archbishop of Dublin. About this time he founded the Marsh Library in Dublin. He became archbishop of Armagh in 1703. Between 1699 and 1711 he was six times a lord justice of Ireland. He died on the 2nd of November 1713.