Roaring Boys

by Judith Cook

  The shepherds, swains shall dance and sing,

  For thy delight each May morning,

  If these delights thy mind may move,

  Then live with me, and be my love.

  To which Ralegh had replied verse for verse in ‘The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd’, pouring cold water and mocking the whole notion:

  But Time drives flocks from field to fold;

  When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;

  And Philomel becometh dumb;

  The rest complains of cares to come.

  But could youth last, and love still breed,

  Had joys no date, nor age no need,

  Then these delights my mind might move,

  To live with thee and be thy love.

  It is hardly surprising, given the political climate, that a group or society which met under the leadership of a high profile person such as Ralegh to investigate and discuss subjects proscribed by the university curricula of the day became the object of rumour and speculation, and that its activities were drawn to the attention of Cecil. While Ralegh remained one of the Queen’s great favourites he was obviously reluctant to make any move but Ralegh’s clandestine marriage in 1592 to Elizabeth Throckmorton, one of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting, had earned him a stretch in the Tower and he no longer enjoyed his previous power at Court, so leaving vulnerable those associated with him. There are a number of reasons why Marlowe might have been singled out for surveillance and possibly his association with Ralegh’s circle was one of them, but whatever the reasoning behind it, a government intelligencer and informer of the name of Richard Baines was employed to make a note of what he did and said.

  Spring 1593 came to a tense and uneasy London where fear of the plague and general dissatisfaction was compounded by the growing number of asylum seekers from France and the Low Countries fleeing possible massacre or death at the stake. It is with a sense of déj vu that one reads the accounts of the time. Far from welcoming fellow Protestants and offering them refuge, the reverse was the case. In spite of the fact that the majority of them were artisans capable of earning a living who would not therefore be a charge on the state, they were accused of forcing taxes to be raised, taking away honest employment from others, turning to crime, stealing wives and daughters and, last but not least, bringing in even more cases of plague. Therefore they should be sent back at once to where they came from. Graffiti to that effect was painted on walls, along with flyposting of an unpleasant verse:

  You strangers that inhabit this land

  Note this same writing, do it understand,

  Conceive it well for safeguard of your lives,

  Your goods, your children and your dearest wives.

  The matter was discussed at Westminster when a new Bill ‘against Alien Strangers selling by way of Retail any Commodities’ was up for discussion and, as predictably as today, speakers in the subsequent debate took opposing sides. Several Honourable Members did object to the way asylum seekers were being spoken of and treated. ‘This Bill should be ill for London, for the riches and renown of the City cometh by entertaining of Strangers and giving liberty unto them’, said Sir John Wolley, while a Master Fuller added ‘the exclamations of the City are exceeding pitiful and great against these Strangers who had not quiet times in their own countries’, otherwise they would have returned home of their own accord. Master Finch took the well-known political fence-sitting view that ‘we ought not to be uncharitable, but this must be the Rule. None must so relieve Strangers as to beggar themselves.’ Others straight-forwardly opposed any notion of welcome or charity and wanted them deported without further delay.

  Presumably it was the topicality of the issue that prompted a group of writers to unearth an old play dealing with episodes in the life of Sir Thomas More, which included scenes detailing a past insurrection following an influx of refugees into the country seeking sanctuary. At least six people originally had an input into the script, and academics have identified the hands of Thomas Kyd, Thomas Dekker, George Chapman, Thomas Heywood (who was to become a popular dramatist himself), Henry Chettle and Anthony Mundy. Once it was knocked into some sort of shape it was sent off to Sir Edward Tylney, Master of the Revels, for his approval and the necessary licence. Its authors obviously hoped that the theatres would soon reopen but even if this was not the case at least the play could be taken out on tour.

  But Tylney did not like the script and it was returned with a note to the effect that no licence for its performance would be issued until substantial alterations had been made. On it Tylney had written ‘leave out the insurrection wholly and the cause thereof and begin with Sir Tho. Moore at the Mayor’s Sessions with a report afterwards of his good service done, being Sheriff of London, upon a mutiny against the Lombards only by a short report, and not otherwise at your own perils’. There were repeated marginal notes too objecting to the word ‘strangers’, demanding that the writers ‘mend this’, and whole scenes were crossed out. Some sources also suggest that Tylney was so concerned about the content of the play that he submitted the names of its authors to the Privy Council.2

  Faced with this, yet another writer was called in. His identity remains a mystery, but because of the quality of the three folio pages he inserted in the text both Marlowe and Shakespeare have been suggested.3 The insurrection scene was removed and the insertion put in its place, a piece of writing as relevant today as when it was written. More, faced with overwhelming prejudice against Flemish refugees, the ‘strangers’ in question, is given the words:

  . . . you’ll put down strangers?

  Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,

  And lead the majesty of law in liam (leash),

  To slip him like a hound?

  Suppose those opposing their presence in the country were, in turn, to become refugees, to which country would they flee?

  Go you to France or Flanders,

  To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,

  Nay anywhere that not adheres to England,

  Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased

  To find a nation of such barbarous temper,

  That breaking out in hideous violence,

  Would not afford you an abode on earth?

  The problem of the contemporary asylum seekers refused to go away. On 22 April 1593, following further public protests against them, a ‘printed libel’ was circulated, a bitter attack on Belgian, French and Dutch immigrants and other ‘Strangers’ living in London in which, in the name of ‘the workers’, they were threatened with severe beatings or worse at the hands of bands of apprentices and journeymen and given until 9 July to flee the country or else. Copies of this and other petitions currently circulating came to the attention of the Privy Council and they acted almost at once, publishing an Order to the effect that the publishing and circulating of such malicious libels must cease forthwith and that anyone found so doing would be punished with the utmost severity. In order to hunt down such persons and bring them to justice, law officers would, from now on, be entitled to search the house, workplace or lodgings of anyone suspected of this or similar crimes. Should there be any cause, however slight, to think that such a person had been discovered, then they must be arrested.

  It ends on a chilling note: ‘. . . and after you shall have examined this person, if you shall find them to be suspected and they shall refuse to confess the truth, you shall, by the authority hereof, put them to the torture in Bridewell and by the extremity therefore, draw them to discover the knowledge they have. We pray you use your utmost travail and endeavour.’ Torture aside, the rest of the Order appears a worthy response to the plight of an unfortunate minority. However, it also gave those employed by the Privy Council the freedom to enter anyone’s house on the pretext of searching for malicious libels and Cecil was to use it.

  By late April, although the plague was now fast abating, the theatres were still closed and Alleyn was again out on tour; on 2 May he wrote from Chelmsford to h
is ‘good sweetheart and loving mouse’, teasing her about the gossip that had reached him as to the part she played the previous day in the festivities greeting the beginning of May, when you were, by my Lord Mayor’s officer, made to ride in a cart (in the procession), you and all your fellows. I am sorry to hear that those supporters, your strong legs, would not carry you away but let you fall into the hands of such termagants, but, mouse, when I come home, I’ll be revenged on them, till when, mouse I bid thee farewell and prithee send me word how thou dost, and so my hearty commendations to my father, mother and sister, and so sweetheart the lord bless thee – from Chelmsford the 2nd day of May 1593, thine and nobody else’s by God of Heaven, Edward Alleyn. Farewell mouse.4

  This at least suggests that in some ways London was finally beginning to return to normal.

  In early May, Marlowe was at Scadbury again. This was no doubt a relief to his friends for his behaviour was becoming increasingly wild. If he was aware that he was being watched (which he might well have been), then he made no attempt to curb what he did or said and with his tongue loosened by heavy drinking he is alleged to have said a great deal. It was almost as if he had programmed himself to self-destruct. Meanwhile Kyd was working away, very likely on the script of the More play so that it could be returned to the Master of the Revels. Certainly it was hoped that this time it would be passed for performance since, as well as Kyd’s marginal notes, there are others suggesting possible casting. Fortune was finally about to smile on him. He told those who knew him that he had at last acquired a patron although he did not reveal who it was. It has been suggested that it was Lord Strange, Earl of Derby, which is quite likely since he had a company of players of his own. Certainly he could have had no idea that the sky was about to fall in on him.

  We are unlikely ever to know why the authorities finally decided to move against Marlowe when they did but on 12 May, without warning, a number of officers burst open the door to the room where Kyd was working, flourishing a warrant to turn over his room and search for – what? Publications of Malicious Libels, he was told in answer to his query; the officers were acting under the terms of the Order. But why Kyd, the most inoffensive, unremarkable and respectable of all the dramatists who, apart from the success of Spanish Tragedy, had made no name for himself and still worked at his old trade of scrivener? It is highly unlikely that he could seriously have been suspected of publishing such stuff. But that was not what the officers were looking for. Apparently they knew that some eighteen months previously Marlowe, when he was in London, had shared the room with Kyd, using it as a much-needed place in which to work, an essential in the overcrowded noisy London of the day where privacy was a luxury afforded only to the wealthy. It did not take them long to find something incriminating: a pamphlet, considered heretical, written half a century earlier by a man called Arius.

  Kyd protested that the pamphlet was nothing to do with him but one of a number of old papers left behind by Marlowe months before. His protests ignored, he was dragged off – ominously – to Bridewell where he was first questioned as to what his attitude was to blasphemy. Kyd, at a loss to understand why he should be asked such a thing, assured his interrogators that he loathed it and, no, he had never said anything that could be construed to the contrary. It worsened. When the interrogation then turned to treason he became really frightened, unable to understand what his questioners were hinting at since he had never involved himself in political matters. He was even more at a loss as to why they were so interested in Marlowe and what it was he was supposed to have done. If they were so concerned then why did they not ask him themselves? At the end of the interrogation, utterly bewildered, he simply did not know how to answer them or what it really was they wanted to know. It was then that the real nightmare began as the officers, using the powers given to them under the special Order, took him down below and put him to the rack to extract the information they required. This they achieved, Kyd offering to put his name to anything they wanted if it would stop the pain.

  Six days later, on 18 May, a warrant was issued for Marlowe’s arrest at Scadbury: ‘Warrant to Henry Maunder one of the Messengers of Her Majesty’s Chamber to repair to the house of Thomas Walsingham in Kent, or to any other place where he shall understand Christopher Marlowe to be remaining, and by virtue hereof to apprehend and bring him to the Court in his Company. And in case of need to require aid.’ By this time poor Kyd had signed (as well as he could after having his limbs dislocated), the first of the two statements he was forced to make. It is a pathetic document in which he rakes together everything he had ever heard Marlowe say, drunk or sober, when ranting on of an evening in the tavern or holding forth backstage at the theatre. Marlowe had made jokes about the divine scriptures, mocked prayers, had argued against the holy writings of many of the prophets and other such men. He had said that St Paul was little better than a juggler, that the prodigal son’s portion was but four nobles which did not seem very much of an inheritance, that things deemed to have been done by Divine Power could just as well have been done by men and probably were. Most damning, and all too likely given Marlowe’s love of the outrageous, he was also alleged to have said that ‘John was Jesus’ Alexis. I cover it with reverence and trembling,’ adds Kyd, ‘that is that Christ did love him with an extraordinary love.’5

  The story of Marlowe’s last ten days of life is lit with a lurid glow. He was duly arrested and brought to London to appear before the Star Chamber, a fate feared by all. Which is when it all becomes distinctly odd. Not for Marlowe the rack in the bowels of Bridewell although the allegations made against him included both blasphemy and treason. ‘This day Christopher Marlowe of London, gentleman, being sent for by warrant from their Lordships, has entered his appearance accordingly for his Indemnity herein, and is commanded to give his daily attendance to their Lordships until he shall be licensed to the contrary.’ He was then released, in spite of the gravity of the charges, on his promise to return and sign in every morning. Ten days later he was dead in Deptford, ‘stab’t with a dagger’ through the eye, the received wisdom for several centuries being that it had come about following a quarrel in a tavern kept by a Mistress Eleanor Bull over who should pay the reckoning which, given his previous record, would not have caused any surprise.

  That doubt was finally cast on the official version is due almost entirely to a brilliant piece of detective work carried out in 1925 by the American scholar, J.L. Hotson.6 Following the inquest on his death, Marlowe was hastily buried in the churchyard of St Nicholas, Deptford, the name of his killer wrongly transcribed as ‘ffrancis archer’. Hotson, fascinated by the subject, was told of a tradition that Marlowe had in fact been killed by a man called ‘Ingram’ and so he began searching through documents of the period in the Public Record Office until he came across a reference to an Ingram Frizer in a deed relating to a property transfer. But when he turned his attention to more important documents, neither the inquisitions of post mortems nor the Assize Rolls yielded anything. Then it occurred to him to look under pardons for the relevant date and there he found a brief entry ‘granted to Ingram Frizer (sc. for homicide) in self-defence’. If this was what he was looking for then there had to be a cross-reference to an indictment or inquest but by then it was the end of the afternoon and the office was about to close. Fired with a desire to know if he was right and after a sleepless night, Hotson was outside the door when it opened the next morning, ready to follow every clue ‘until by examining every item listed under Kent, I found at length what I wanted. The Writ and Inquisition were preserved and legible.’

  The document (in Latin) lists the names of the jury members called to Deptford on 1 June 1593 ‘upon the view of Christopher Morley [sic] there lying dead and slain’. There follows the version of events as given to the coroner: that Marlowe, accompanied by three men, Frizer, Nicholas Skeres and none other than Robert Poley, he of Babington Plot fame, had met in the room of a widow, Eleanor Bull, passed time together and later walked in the gar
den, then returned to the room for supper, during or after which Marlowe, without warning and following some angry words, had attacked Frizer, which could have happened – except that the description of the event simply does not make sense.

  Frizer, we are expected to believe, was sitting on a bench between Skeres and Poley eating his supper when Marlowe suddenly wrenched Frizer’s own dagger ‘from his belt and cut him on the head’. The three men were sitting so close together on the bench that Frizer could not properly defend himself but, without moving from his seat, he somehow managed to grasp Marlowe’s dagger hand and, in pushing hand and arm away, inadvertently drove the dagger into Marlowe’s eye socket ‘. . . and so it befell in the affray that the said Ingram, in defence of his life, with the dagger aforesaid to the value of 12d [pence] gave the said Christopher then and there a mortal wound over his right eye to the depth of two inches and the width of one inch; of which mortal wound the aforesaid Christopher Morley then and there instantly died.’ The document is signed not by the ordinary Deptford coroner but by the Queen’s coroner, Sir William Danby. Whether the jurors believed that a man who had the freedom to move about could have been so stabbed by a man sitting on a bench in front of him trapped between two others, or had it made known to them that they had better appear to do so, they duly cleared Frizer of murder on the grounds of self-defence.

  Immediately after his death a number of rumours circulated: that he was struck down by God for blaspheming in the street, that he had died in a quarrel over a lewd wench (somewhat unlikely), that he was killed in a street brawl, but soon the tale of the row over the reckoning became the accepted version. Until Hotson’s discovery the true identity of Marlowe’s killer was not known, nor were those of the other two members of the party present when apparently Marlowe and Frizer fought for their lives. But Poley, as we know, was a highly experienced agent in the secret service and Skeres, it turns out, a part-time agent who had worked with him in infiltrating the Babington Plot, while Ingram Frizer actually lived on the Scadbury estate and was used by Thomas Walsingham for work such as debt-collecting. Frizer had recently been involved in a court case in which he had defrauded a young man out of a substantial sum of money using a confidence trick worthy of one of today’s television rogues – a scam, by the by, for which for some unknown reason he was not punished. He had agreed to lend the young innocent a sum of money against an IOU, but when the lad arrived to collect the cash Frizer gave him only half of it and a bag of worthless old guns, telling him he could sell them to make up the rest. The lad, of course, discovered nobody wanted them and so found himself owing twice the amount he had actually been loaned by Frizer. It was at this stage that his mother stepped in and took Frizer to court.