Marshall was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and at Trinity College, Cambridge.
[2] His first first-class cricket match as a tail-end right-handed batsman for Cambridge Town Club in 1857 also featured his elder brother, Joseph, who played for Cambridge University between 1855 and 1857, winning three Blues for cricket.
[3] John Marshall then won a Blue himself as a middle-order batsman for Cambridge University in 1859, appearing in the University Match against Oxford and top-scoring with an unbeaten 38 in the first innings: he scored just 7 in the second innings in a low-scoring game that Cambridge won by 28 runs.
Marshall graduated from Cambridge University in 1860 and, after a short spell as a schoolmaster at King Edward VI School, Bury St Edmunds, he was ordained as a Church of England clergyman in 1864.
[2] The year before he married Emily Louisa Merielina Rogers, the daughter of a clergyman in Bury St Edmunds, they went on to have four sons and a daughter including Patrick Marshall, a geologist, and Joy Marshall, a clergyman and sportsman.