Who Killed Kit Marlowe?

by M. J. Trow

  In other words, we are at liberty to rewrite the man’s death. If we cannot accept the version of Frizer, Poley and Skeres, so readily accepted by Danby and his jurors and the Queen, then we have a blank canvas to work with. We do not even know if it was Frizer who struck the fatal blow. In fact, we believe that the actual killer of Kit Marlowe was Robert Poley.

  What no-one knows is the precise relationship between the men at the house in Deptford Strand. Because Marlowe and Poley were both agents, working for Walsingham or Burghley as time and conditions dictate, it is highly likely that they already knew each other, although no documentary evidence exists to this effect. Both were Cambridge men, although ten years apart and at different colleges; both came from humble backgrounds. Both, if the veiled references from Poley’s letters to the Earl of Leicester are true, entered the secret service in the same year, 1585. Both men, though for different reasons, served time in London prisons. In the early 1590s Poley had become something of an expert on the Low Countries, carrying out ‘Her Majesty’s special affairs’ in Brussels a month after Marlowe’s extradition from Vlissingen for coining. The surviving documents in the Public Record Office make it clear that he was an important cog in the secret service wheel by the time he came to Deptford, responsible for a team of agents like Michael Moody in the Low Countries and Robert Rutkin in London, both men posing as merchants. Letters from Moody to Poley survive and add another piece in the Marlowe-Poley jigsaw – the information that they both lived in Shoreditch. The final connection is that, again through intelligence circles, Poley knew Tom Watson, the poet with whom Marlowe shared lodgings and on whose behalf he fought William Bradley in Hog Lane.

  Skeres’s link with Marlowe is altogether vaguer. Certainly there was a connection via the poet Matthew Roydon, who, while Marlowe was still in Cambridge, co-signed a bond for £40 to a goldsmith with Skeres in January 1582. The fact that Skeres was a ‘coney-catcher’, fleecing young gentlemen on the London circuit, may not have been known to either Roydon or Marlowe. George Chapman, Marlowe’s fellow poet of the School of Night, was also caught up as a ‘gull’ by the time of Deptford, in debt to Skeres’s sometime partner, John Wolfall.

  Frizer’s connections with Marlowe are the weakest of all, to the extent that they probably revolve around one man – Thomas Walsingham. We know that Marlowe was at Scadbury, Walsingham’s home in Chislehurst, when he was summoned to the Council’s presence by Henry Maunder on 18 May. By that time, Frizer was working as some sort of property agent for Walsingham, although in what context is unknown. He used the word ‘servant’ but this was a blanket term in Elizabethan England, surviving for another three centuries in the formal letter ending ‘your obedient servant’. It is not likely that Frizer actually lived at Scadbury, but he certainly visited. Whether he did so during Marlowe’s stay we cannot know.

  The gloss on Marlowe’s death given by Francis Meres several years afterwards, refers to Frizer as a ‘bawdy serving man’. Again, setting aside obsessive Puritan prurience, was there any basis in fact here? Was Frizer a pimp, procuring girls for clients in the stews of Southward? Or is Meres’s mention of ‘lewd love’ a veiled reference to homosexuality?

  It is impossible now to decide whether Marlowe died as a result of the gay connection. As we have seen, there was an ambivalent attitude by the authorities to homosexuality, but the actual law of the land prescribed death and the increasing Puritanism of the 1590s perhaps made this more likely in practice. The need to keep the lid on homosexual affairs was therefore far greater than would be the case today. Is this why Marlowe died?

  Let us look again at Poley, in particular his involvement in the Babington Plot. The letter written by Anthony Babington, so trusting and so terrified, has distinct homosexual overtones – ‘Sweet Robyn, if, as I take thee, true to me’ and ‘what my love toward you you yourself can best tell’. In the semantics of Elizabethan speech, this may mean nothing, but we know from the ease with which Poley lured Babington that he had a glib tongue, a way with words. After a stony interview with spymaster Walsingham, one of the most redoubtable and sure-footed of interrogators of the reign, Poley was able to boast, probably truthfully, ‘he putt Mr Secretary into that heate that he looked out of his wyndoe and grynned like a dogge.’ If Poley ensnared Babington with overt homosexual advances, he would not be the last spy to do so. Let us look again at Poley’s background. As a sizar of Clare College, Cambridge, he was forced to act as servant to the richer students, which may have involved all sorts of bed-hopping. The fact that he married and abandoned his wife for the charms of Joan Yeomans in prison makes him bisexual perhaps, but it also proves that he offered his sexual services freely and set little store by them.

  Were Marlowe and Poley lovers? Was the killing in Deptford the result of a tiff? Sexual jealousy? This is entirely plausible. It is easy to create a motive like this one because the nature of the case meant a great deal of secrecy. In 1967 the homosexual playwright Joe Orton was bludgeoned to death by his flatmate and lover Kenneth Halliwell, who subsequently killed himself with an overdose of Nembutal. The motivation in this case lay, according to Halliwell, in Orton’s diaries. The playwright was achieving far more fame than his lover, and Halliwell had a history of depression. Like Marlowe, Orton had a desire to shock and subvert, the hallmarks of his plays. In Orton’s case, the early forms of this showed themselves in his gleeful defacing of books in Islington Library to offend other borrowers; in Marlowe’s perhaps it was ‘reading the atheist lecture’ and other examples of braggadocio in the School of Night.

  In all other respects, however, the Orton-Marlowe parallel cannot be taken further. It was Poley the intelligencer rather than Poley the man, however bisexual he may have been, whom we contend killed Marlowe. He did not run, as Halliwell did, to the medicine cabinet to escape punishment. He did not run because he did not have to.

  The Walter Ralegh Theory

  Spurred on by Hotson’s discovery of Danby’s inquest report, Eugenie de Kalbe went into print in the Times Literary Supplement in May 1925 with a theory that went beyond Hotson. She suggested, plausibly enough, that Frizer’s head wounds might have been self-inflicted to ‘prove’ the official story that Marlowe had attacked him. This is of course, possible, but head wounds are painful and would not be the most likely point of self-mutilation given the scenario that Marlowe had the dagger and a time advantage in which to use it. This took Ms de Kalbe off in a direction that will be examined below, but Dr Stephen Tannenbaum of New York produced The Assassination of Christopher Marlowe in 1928 in which he proffered the theory that the ‘great Lucifer’ Walter Ralegh was behind Frizer’s attack.

  Tannenbaum too doubted that anyone’s Elizabethan dagger could pierce a skull, but in 1927 the ‘wigwam’ murder of Joan Wolfe had not yet happened and clearly he was unaware of parallel cases. Tannenbaum’s more reasonable hypothesis, that death might not occur at all, has led more recent hopefuls like Peter Zenner to conclude that Marlowe did not die at Deptford, but that the wound to his right eye remained visible and obvious for the rest of his life.

  Tannenbaum conjectured that Marlowe was invited to Eleanor Bull’s house (as at least one Puritan commentator contended), given enough drink to make him comatose, and stabbed to death by Frizer. Interestingly, the chivalric Tannenbaum has Eleanor Bull ‘out of the way in another part of the building’. Tannenbaum believed Ralegh to be responsible because of Marlowe’s arrest by Maunder and his daily reporting to the Privy Council. What would the man say after hours or days in the company of Richard Topcliffe, the rack-master? What secrets regarding the School of Night would he give away? Accordingly, in order, as Richard Baines suggested in his Note, that Marlowe’s ‘mouth may be stopped’, Ralegh employed Frizer to kill the whistle-blower with Poley and Skeres as back up.

  This theory falls apart very quickly and was demolished by Dr Frederick Boas in his 1940 biography of Marlowe. Apart from the fact that there is no known link between Ralegh and any of the three at Deptford, the wh
ole hypothesis collapses because of the lack of motive. What characterised Walter Ralegh was his fierce courage. Soldier, poet, explorer, romantic, this most universal of men was a soldier first, a man of action. If he had a quarrel with Marlowe and wanted to see him dead, he would have challenged him personally and gone head-to-head with rapiers, not hired some lackey to do the job in an obscure house on Deptford Strand. More crucially, what would be gained by silencing Marlowe? We have already seen that the Jesuit Robert Parsons knew about Ralegh’s ‘atheist school’ and attacked its existence in diatribes from France. Ralegh’s cool attitude in defence of his beliefs at Cerne Abbas – indeed, it could be argued, the actions of his entire life – indicates an utter disregard for public opinion.

  In other words, too many people already knew about the School of Night and Ralegh did not care whether they knew or not. There is no motive here for killing a man whom Ralegh liked and respected, at least enough to flatter by copying his poetry. ‘The great Lucifer’ is an angel in the context of the murder of Kit Marlowe.

  The Thomas and Audrey Walsingham Theory

  There were some very odd things happening at Scadbury in 1593, and they led Eugenie de Kalbe to point the finger of suspicion at Marlowe’s last patron, the house’s owner, Thomas Walsingham. We know there was a link between this Walsingham and his much older cousin, Francis, the spymaster, that probably led to Marlowe’s seeking out Thomas as his patron in the first place. We know that Marlowe and Thomas Walsingham were friends. It was by no means usual for poets and playwrights to live in with their patrons and in the case of Marlowe, we must always question the gay connection. The publisher Edward Blount, dedicating an edition of poetry to Walsingham, refers to the latter’s relationship with Marlowe – ‘in his lifetime you bestowed many kind favours, entertaining the parts of reckoning and worth which you found in him’. Peter Zenner openly states that Marlowe was the gay lover of both Walsingham and Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. There is not, of course, a shred of evidence for this, but it is possible to read a great deal into the flowery, fawning poetry and prose of the time. It is possible too that Walsingham may have been a member of Ralegh’s School of Night, giving him an altogether more arcane relationship with Marlowe.

  What is odd at Scadbury is this. The official version says that Ingram Frizer worked in a property-buying capacity for Walsingham, and was, in that sense, his servant. The very day after Frizer’s pardon from the Queen, the man resumed his service with Walsingham, almost as though nothing had happened. In 1603-4 he was involved in law suits and property deals on behalf of Walsingham’s wife, Audrey, and was by then living in Eltham, Kent. He was a churchwarden (like Marlowe’s father) in 1605, had two daughters and a servant, Margaret. He was buried in the local church on 14 August 1627. Marlowe’s friend George Chapman, the poet and member of the School of Night, was also a protégé of Walsingham’s and continued to be so for several years. It was he who finished Marlowe’s Hero and Leander and dedicated it to Audrey Walsingham in 1598. If Walsingham was innocent of Marlowe’s death, why did he welcome Frizer back with open arms and why would Chapman not look elsewhere for patronage, if he suspected Walsingham’s involvement? According to this theory, the answer lies with the direction in which politics was going in the 1590s, with the king-in-waiting James VI of Scotland and Thomas Walsingham’s enigmatic wife, Audrey.

  In 1597 the Queen visited Scadbury, on a private visit that was not part of her royal progress. It is very possible that she knighted Walsingham then and also gave him the local manors of Dartford, Cobham, Combe and Chislehurst on a 21 year lease. There is no date given to Walsingham’s marriage to Audrey, but it was probably 1598, the year before she first appeared at Court. Their son, Thomas, was born in 1600 and both Walsinghams continued to patronise the arts as George Chapman’s fawning dedication of Marlowe’s Hero and Leander in 1598 makes clear:

  This poor Dedication, in figure of the other uniting betwixt Sir Thomas and yourself, hath rejoined you with him, my honoured best friend, whose continuance of ancient kindness to my still-obscured estate, though it cannot increase my love to him...To My Best Esteemed and Wortheley Honoured Lady, the Lady Walsingham, one of the ladies of her Majesties Bed-Chamber.

  Audrey had been born Audrey (Ethelreda) Shelton of an ancient Norfolk family who had long years of royal service. Five years younger than Walsingham, it is likely that a sickly childhood kept her from Court. That she was keen to foster her husband’s courtly career is obvious from her first appearance at Harefield, where the Queen was visiting in 1599. Audrey laid on a lavish entertainment called ‘The Robe of Rainbowes’ and wrote flattering verses which Elizabeth (now sixty three and looking every minute of it) adored:

  Beauty’s rose and Virtue’s look

  Angell’s mind and Angell’s look

  To all Saints and Angells deare,

  Clearest Majestie on Earth,

  Heaven did smile at your faire birth.

  De Kalbe’s theory was that the rapid rise in favour of the Walsinghams under James I after 1603 is explained by the fact that they were conniving in his accession for years while pretending total loyalty to Elizabeth. The letter, written by Thomas Kyd to Sir John Puckering, by 1594 Principal Secretary, refers to Marlowe’s involvement in the same area:

  He [Marlowe] would persuade with men of quality to go unto the King of Scotts whether [where] I heare Royden [the poet] is gon and where if he had lived he told me when I saw him last he meant to be.

  We do not know when Kyd saw Marlowe last and in any case, doubt the testimony of either of the man’s letters. He had been broken by torture and was being ignored by everyone as a coward, a failure and a traitor to Marlowe.

  Certainly, Audrey Walsingham’s rise under James was meteoric. She may have become Robert Cecil’s mistress (one of his portraits probably hung at Scadbury). She was certainly employed to welcome the new queen, Anne of Denmark, and the Walsinghams were made Keepers of the Queen’s Wardrobe. Before blotting her copybook by becoming involved in various scandals including the poisoning of Thomas Overbury, she was James’s favourite.

  De Kalbe’s theory, that Marlowe died as a result of the Scottish succession chicanery, is more complex than Tannenbaum’s, but it is still hopelessly vague. There is no evidence at all that Walsingham and Audrey Shelton were even an ‘item’ as early as the spring of 1593. Other than Kyd’s bitter and terrified ramblings, we have no link between Marlowe and Scotland. The Walsinghams certainly benefited from the Stuart accession, but they were already doing very nicely under the Tudor regime. Clearly, Audrey in particular was a vivacious go-getter but every courtier had an eye on Scotland in the 1590s; it would be surprising if they did not.

  Charles Norman writing in 1948 found the Audrey connection unacceptable – ‘it would have been scandalous – even in that cynical era – to accept the honour of a dedication under the circumstances.’ Perhaps 1948 was a more naïve year. We believe that Thomas Walsingham was fully aware of what was to happen to Christopher Marlowe at Deptford, but it had nothing to do with his own ambitions.

  The Ralegh-Essex Theory

  The only book to date that deals in depth with the murder of Marlowe is Charles Nicholl’s The Reckoning. It is a masterly piece of research, chronicling as it does the intensely small world of Walsingham’s secret service network. Everybody seemed to be linked to everybody else in Elizabethan England, either by marriage, occupation or perhaps even coincidence. Nicholl lovingly unravels these tangles to create his theory and reach his conclusions; then he throws it away.

  Nicholl’s theory is that Marlowe died as a result of being a pawn in the on-going rivalry between Walter Ralegh and the Earl of Essex, the rising star of the 1590s. Essex, Nicholl contends, saw his chance to discredit the ‘great Lucifer’ over the business of the Dutch libel. Ralegh certainly did himself no favours when he stood up in the Commons as MP for Devon to attack the foreigners:

  Whereas it is presented that for strangers it is against Charity, Hon
our, against profit to expel them’ in my opinion it is no matter of Charity to relieve them. For first, such as fly hither have forsaken their own king and religion is no pretext for them, for we have no Dutchmen here, but such as came from those princes where the gospel is preached, and here they live disliking our church.

  Ralegh made the valid point that Englishmen were barely tolerated at all in Antwerp or Milan, whereas in England foreigners were given subsidies. We must beware of modern political correctness. It was parliament, not Ralegh, who were out of joint with the times. Giordano Bruno spoke of the rudeness of Londoners, watermen in particular, because he was a foreigner – so did Philip Hentzler. In 1593, Ralegh spoke for England.

  Nicholl argues that since Marlowe was well known in Ralegh’s circle via the School of Night, the idea came to Essex to link the Dutch church libel with the author of Tamburlaine, an appallingly crude piece of anti-Marlovian propaganda. In some obscure way, both Richard Baines and Richard Cholmeley also worked for Essex, providing evidence of Marlowe’s atheism and blasphemy which would further blacken Ralegh’s reputation. What clinched matters for Nicholl was that by 1593 Robert Poley was working for Essex and therefore was the catalyst that led to Deptford.

  The murder itself, Nicholl contends, was not necessarily planned. Marlowe was a maverick; he could not be trusted. The purpose of the day’s meeting at Eleanor Bull’s house was to find out what Marlowe knew, to discover whether his silence could be bought, to see if he would turn against Ralegh, leaving the field clear for Essex as the Queen’s favourite. Nicholl believes that Nicholas Skeres is the true villain of the piece, but only by implication because he believes that both Poley and Frizer were less prone to physical violence.