Was Andrew Marvell another Cambridge spy?

Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,

As but th’ off-scouring of the British sand;

And so much earth as was contributed

By English pilots when they heav’d the lead;

Or what by th’ ocean’s slow alluvion fell,

Of shipwrack’d cockle and the mussel-shell;

This indigested vomit of the sea

Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.

Thus begins one of my favourite poems, The Character of Holland by Marvell. Imagine my surprise to read today in The Times as I meditatively drank my third cup of coffee (with cream, a hard thing to find in Bucharest), that he was a Dutch spy.

Another spy who went to Trinity College, Cambridge (where I so wish I had gone, by the way). Or was he? The evidence seems weak to me.

He came from Hull, like another very good poet, Philip Larkin. Whereas Philip Larkin's father, the Town Clerk of Coventry, wanted Germany to win the war his son was neutral.