Who Killed Kit Marlowe?
Page 3
It is signed simply ‘Powle’, presumably a clerk.
Sir William Danby, the Queen’s coroner, complied with the order, this time with one or two English phrases creeping into the legal Latin. It is the official version of Christopher Marlowe’s death:
Inquisition indented taken at Deptford Strand in the aforesaid County of Kent within the verge on the first day of June in the year of the reign of Elizabeth by grace of God of England, France and Ireland, Queen, defender of the faith &c thirty fifth, in the presence of William Danby, Gentleman, Coroner of the household of our said lady the Queen, upon view of the body of Christopher Morley, there lying dead & slain, upon oath of Nicholas Draper, Gentleman, Wolstan Randall, Gentleman, William Curry, Adrian Walker, John Barber, Robert Baldwyn, Giles ffeld, George Halfepenny, Henry Awger, James Barr, Henry Bendyn, Thomas Batt senior, John Baldwyn, Alexander Burrage, Edmund Goodcheepe & Henry Dabyns, Who say [upon] their oath that when a certain Ingram ffrysar, late of London, Gentleman, and the aforesaid Christopher Morley and one Nicholas Skeres, late of London, Gentleman, and Robert Poley of London aforesaid, Gentleman, on the thirtieth day of May in the thirty fifth year above named, at Detford Strand aforesaid in the said County of Kent within the verge, about the tenth hour before noon of the same day, met together in a room in the house of a certain Eleanor Bull, widow; & there passed the time together & dined & after dinner were in quiet sort together there & walked in the garden belonging to the said house until the sixth hour after noon of the same day & then returned from the said garden to the room aforesaid & there together and in company supped; & after supper the said Ingram & Christopher Morley were in speech & uttered one to the other divers malicious words for the reason that they could not be at one nor agree about the payment of the sum of pence, that is le recknynge [an odd survival of Medieval French], there; & the said Christopher Morley then lying on a bed in the room where they supped & moved with anger against the said Ingram ffrysar upon the words as aforesaid spoken between them, And the said Ingram then & there sitting in the room aforesaid with his back towards the bed where the said Christopher Morley was then lying, sitting near the bed, that is, nere the bed, & with the front part of his body towards the table & the aforesaid Nicholas Skeres & Robert Poley sitting on either side of the said Ingram in such a manner that the same Ingram ffrysar in no wise could take flight; it so befell that the said Christopher Morley on a sudden & of his malice towards the same Ingram aforethought, then & there maliciously drew the dagger of the said Ingram which was at his back, and with the same dagger the said Christopher Morley then & there maliciously gave the aforesaid Ingram two wounds on his head of the length of two inches & the depth of a quarter of an inch; whereupon the said Ingram, in fear of being slain, & sitting in the manner aforesaid between the said Nicholas Skeres & Robert Poley so that he could not in any wise get away, in his own defence & for the saving of his life, then & there struggled with the said Christopher Morley to get back from him his dagger aforesaid; in which affray the same Ingram could not get away from the said Christopher Morley; and so it befell that in that affray that the said Ingram in defence of his life, with the dagger aforesaid of the value of 12d. gave the said Christopher then & there a mortal wound over his right eye of the depth of two inches & the width of one inch; of which mortal wound the aforesaid Christopher Morley than & there instantly died. And so the Jurors aforesaid say upon their oath that the said Ingram killed & slew Christopher Morley aforesaid on the thirtieth day of May in the thirty fifth year named above at Detford Strand aforesaid within the verge in the room aforesaid within the verge in the manner and form aforesaid in the defence and saving of his own life, against the peace of our said lady the Queen, her now crown and dignity; And further the said Jurors say upon their oath that the said Ingram after slaying aforesaid perpetrated & done by him in the manner & form aforesaid neither fled nor withdrew himself; But what goods or chattels, lands or tenements the said Ingram had at the time of the slaying aforesaid, done & perpetrated by him in the manner & form aforesaid, the said Jurors are totally ignorant. In witness of which the said Coroner as well as the Jurors aforesaid to this Inquisition have interchangeably set their seals.
Given the day & year named above etc.
By William Danby,
Coroner.
The turgid legalistic prose, laced so heavily with bureaucratic jargon and dripping with ‘aforesaids’ nonetheless makes it clear what happened. It was a cut and dried case of self defence and the final document which Hotson discovered in the Chancery records repeats the details of the killing and ends:
And so that the said Ingram killed & slew Christopher Morley aforesaid at Detford Strande aforesaid in our said County of Kent within the verge in the room aforesaid within the verge in the manner & form aforesaid in the defence and saving of his own life against our peace, our crown & dignity. As more fully appears by the tenor of the record of Inquisition aforesaid which we caused to come before us in Chancery by virtue of our writ. We therefore moved by piety have pardoned the same Ingram ffrisar the breach of our peace which pertains to us against the said Ingram for the death above mentioned & grant to him our firm peace Provided nevertheless that the right remain in our Court if anyone should wish to complain of him concerning the death above mentioned in the testimony &c Witness the Queen at Kewe on the 28th day of June.
Commentators and theorists ever since Hotson have found Coroner Danby’s version of the events at Deptford Strand a little difficult to swallow. It rests entirely on the word of three men and perhaps one woman. There is no record of the specific questions asked of them or of the answers they gave. Above all, because of the lack of forensic knowledge at the time, the dead man could tell no tales. Today, we would know exactly how Christopher Marlowe died, precisely where and when from the nature of his wounds and the condition of his body and the murder scene. We would even know what delicacies the widow Bull fed him for his last meal.
We wish to take up the challenge that the Queen left open in her pardon and to complain of Ingram Frizer concerning the death above mentioned, although at 425 years distance in time, it may be a little late. Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres, Robert Poley, Eleanor Bull; these are names that lurk like spiders in the web that sucked in the fly that was Christopher Marlowe. It was a web of intrigue and subterfuge, a web of darkness and murder. And other spiders lived in its myriad strands. We shall meet them all in this book.
TWO
MERLIN’S RACE
. . . mad and scoffing poets, that have propheticall spirits as bred of Merlin’s race.
Robert Greene, Epistle to Perimedes (1588)
T
here is an old adage in police circles: if you want to know how a man died, look at how he lived.
Christopher Marlowe, known to his friends and perhaps his family, as Kit, was born in the parish of St. George the Martyr in the city of Canterbury, Kent, on 6 February 1564. The parish records mark his christening:
The 26th day of ffebruary was Christened
Christoper the sonne of John Marlow.
Christopher – the carrier of Christ – was a slightly unusual name in the 1560s and its irony cannot have been lost on the intellectual world that the future poet came to know; the atheist bearing the name of the son of God.
Canterbury lies on the banks of the Stour, meandering today a little sluggishly between the half-timbered houses that were new in Marlowe’s day. The Romans called it Durovernum; the Saxons, Cantwaraburh (the fortress of the men of Kent) and as such it was the capital of one of the seven Saxon kingdoms. The Vikings sacked the town repeatedly, attracted by the great cathedral founded by Augustine in 597. It survived to be enlarged by Archbishop Odo in 950 and rebuilt by the Normans Lanfranc and Anselm from 1070. Fires and rebuilding continued throughout the Middle Ages.
It was another murder, that of Thomas Becket in 1170, that turned Canterbury Cathedral into the first of the English shrines. The prelate had suddenly found religion after a highly secular life
at Court and clashed continually with his king, Henry II, over the issue of criminous clerks and the degree of obedience that he should show to the pope. The matter was resolved on the night of 29 December 1170 by four knights, Reginald fitz Urse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy and Richard le Breton. Clattering through the cloisters and into the chapel of St Benedict, one of them launched the attack on the praying Archbishop and he died with his brains spilled on the altar steps. Miracles were attributed to the dead man within weeks and on 21 February 1173 he was canonized as St. Thomas of Canterbury.
It was the elaborate shrine erected over Becket’s tomb that gave Canterbury its pre-eminence, only a little diminished by the time Christopher Marlowe was born. Pilgrims travelled the civilized world in the Middle Ages, out of piety or wanderlust or both and Canterbury was reckoned on a par with the shrines of St James at Compostela or Jerusalem itself. It is no accident that almost the first work of fiction written in English, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, should centre on a visit to the place.
In its heyday, the shrine was a fabulously gilded casket, studded with pearls, rubies, diamonds and sapphires, some, as the humanist Erasmus marvelled, ‘larger than a goose’s egg’. Pilgrims crawled on their hands and knees on the cold, worn stones to the tinkling of Canterbury bells, the choking smell of incense and the Gregorian bass echoing and re-echoing through the vaulted chambers. Then came the Reformation.
This book does not have the scope to chronicle in detail Henry VIII’s quarrel with Rome, although the rift’s bearing on the murder of Christopher Marlowe is important. The English, as opposed to the European, Reformation always had a political, dynastic and in a way parochial element to it. In what was very much a man’s world, the girl (Mary) who stood as Henry’s heir would not do as a ruler of a growing, powerful and disputatious realm, Hence the famous request in 1529 to the pope for a divorce, leading to an equally famous refusal. In desperation, the good Catholic king broke the centuries’ old bonds with Rome, established himself as head of the Church in England and stage-managed the divorce he sought from Catherine of Aragon.
Under excommunication as he was and, with the birth of Elizabeth in 1533, still without the heir he longed for, Henry went the whole hog and destroyed the monasteries. The aim was twofold. First he could eliminate the centres of papal support and second he could obtain the vast resources of the Church for his own treasury.
As the most sumptuous cathedral in the country, Canterbury was an obvious target. Between 1537 and 1538, when Marlowe’s grandfather, also Christopher, was still alive and a tanner in the city, over four hundred sacred items were pillaged by order of Thomas Cromwell and the King’s Commissioners. Legend says it took more than thirty carts to remove it all. Perhaps Canterbury came in for special treatment because of the symbolic image of the murdered saint – a churchman who had dared defy a king. The immaculate shrine was destroyed and a way of life came to an end.
Since the twelfth century an endless throng of pilgrims, themselves drawn from all ranks of society, had made their journey along the Pilgrim’s Way once the spring rains were over. They were rich pickings for craftsmen, victuallers and innkeepers all over northern Kent. Canterbury also lay on the main road from Dover, the largest port for travellers from Europe. Merchants passed this way with silks and spices, battered troops returning from foreign wars, eager recruits marching off to others. Courtiers on palfreys and sailors on foot mingled with the priests who came and went, and Canterbury had become a large and cosmopolitan city.
William Urry, the City Archivist in the 1960s, has done more than anyone to chart the life of Marlowe in the city common to them both. Lancastrians and Yorkshiremen lived amicably enough side by side there. Marlowe’s father’s friend was Thomas Plessington, a baker from Cheshire; the future poet’s brother-in-law came from Preston in Lancashire. There were Scotsmen living in Canterbury, lured down from their harsh wilderness by the promise of a softer life; Irishmen from the desperate peat bogs of the west; Welshmen seeking their fortunes – the family names have survived – Davy, Vaughan, Williams, Evans.
The Marlowes had settled in Canterbury by 1414 when the name first appears in the city records. Variant spellings of the family name abound – Marlow, Marlo, Marloe, Marley, Morley, Marlye, Morle, Marlin, Marlen, Marlynge and Merlin – all are recorded. The poet’s only known signature, even allowing for the idiosyncrasies of Elizabethan quill work, is clearly Marley.
Merlin’s race underwent various changes of occupation. They were fullers (thickening and shrinking woollen cloth); vintners (involved in the importation of wine along the Dover road); rope makers and tanners (dyeing and finishing cowhides for the leather trades). In the fifteenth century the tanneries, with their appalling stench, were strung along the city walls, facing away from the town. The poet’s grandfather followed this trade and in his will left two houses to his unborn child, ‘to the child that she [his wife, Joan] goyth with all if hitt be a man child.’ The son, John, born about 1540, became a shoemaker. This is not much of a departure from type – tanners and cobblers shared the same guild as leatherworkers in Canterbury, as in most other towns. Marlowe senior served his apprenticeship, traditionally for seven years, under Gerard Richardson.
On 22 May 1561, now a master in his own right, he married Katherine Arthur, whose family came from Dover. In the social and economic melting pot of the sixteenth century, families and even individual rose and fell according to the vagaries of fortune, the harvest or the ways of the Lord, depending on how they viewed the world. It was once believed that Katherine’s father was a priest in Elizabeth’s new and struggling Anglican church. William Urry established that he was a general dealer and A.D. Wraight, probably the expert on Marlowe’s life, says he was of yeoman stock. Katherine’s brother Thomas was a bailiff of the Archbishop’s secular court, a post which placed the Arthur family on a higher social footing and may well explain how John and Katherine first met.
The couple were married in the church of St. George the Martyr near to the south-eastern gate of 1470 (now demolished) with its drum towers and portcullis. These powerful defences (an exact copy of which still stand at Westgate) loomed large over the Marlowe’s in Christopher’s boyhood. ‘Two lofty Turrets that command the Towne’ which he refers to in his play The Jew of Malta almost certainly bear witness to this. The tower of St George’s with its odd Victorian clock, stand incongruously today on the pavement. The church took a direct hit during a bombing raid on 1 June 1942 and the nave was demolished in 1954.
The Marlowes moved often within the Medieval walls of the city, usually because John Marlowe seemed to have a habit of quarrelling with his neighbours. There were also times when he did not pay his rent or his rates. William Urry paints a picture of the man as a ‘busy, active, pugnacious fellow, clearly very fond of the limelight, prone to go to law at the slightest excuse, ready to perform public business [he became churchwarden] and probably rather neglectful of his business.’ Urry has found the Marlowes living in North Lane, which ran north-west from Westgate. Christopher Marlowe’s Canterbury, the current town trail of the poet, lists their residence at the corner of St. George’s Lane near the church. Charles Norman, writing in 1968, says that tradition dictates that Christopher was born in a house on the corner of St. George’s Street and St George’s Lane.
The willingness to rush to law, the respectable status of churchwarden coupled with the non-payment of debts are typical of the complexity and paradox of the age. The Shakespeare family, whose son William was born miles to the north-west in Stratford two months after Kit Marlowe, presents a very similar history.
The Marlowes’ first child was Mary and although the parish records of St George are unclear, it is likely that she was born in the first year of their marriage, christened on 21 May 1562. Christopher followed in February 1564, Margaret in May 1565, Thomas in October 1568 and John in August 1569. The list is a copy and may be inaccurate.
We can know nothing about the circumstances of Marlowe’s b
irth. By 1559 all churches and their congregations were nominally Anglican by virtue of Elizabeth’s creation of the Church of England in that year, but the melting-pot of the Reformation had created a fluid situation in which nominal Anglicans were actually closet Catholics. Whether this applied to the Marlowes we do not know. Childbirth was another matter. It happened at home, probably with Katherine sitting in a specially adapted chair and with the attendance of a local female who doubled as a midwife and who swore not to exchange the baby for a changeling. Katherine, in what was still an age of signs and portents, may have worn coral around her neck to protect the boy ‘from fascination and bewitching’. John would have been kept well away from the last stages of confinement, checking that the bell-ringers of St George rang their chimes to frighten away evil spirits. He hammered his shoe-soles and pattens in the open-fronted workshop of the room that faced the street and loosened all the knots in the house as was the custom at the time of a birth. Did he gaze up at the stars on the previous night? Check the almanac for signs in the heavens? Superstition had not been left behind by the new queen and her via media. Little Kit would have been dressed in his sister’s clothes and if the boy was born downstairs, John would have carried him upstairs as a sign of good luck.
It was common, in an age of chronic infant mortality, to baptize the child within a day or two of its birth. We cannot know why the Marlowes waited. Was the baby or mother ill? All the more reason to hurry, to ‘church’ the child by bringing priests to the house. On the day itself, little Kit would have been dressed in his Chrism clothes, the symbolic garb of a new Christian. Perhaps John had a ‘Rocking Cake’ baked and friends gave the baby Apostle spoons and yet more coral. He was named for his grandfather – ‘God send thee sound rest, my little boykin.’