Ingram Frizer - Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe

For several years before his death Marlowe had been employed in some intelligence capacity on behalf of the government. In the Spring of 1593 he appears to have been staying at Thomas Walsingham's home at Scadbury, near Chislehust in Kent, and had been invited by Frizer to a "feast" in Deptford, a township on the river Thames some seven miles to the north, at the house of Eleanor Bull, the widow of a local official. The status of Dame Bull's establishment is unclear, but it was probably a private victualling house, rather than a public tavern. Also in attendance were Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley, both of whom had been associated with Sir Francis Walsingham's intelligence operation. In fact Poley still was working for the Privy Council at the time.

Complete details of Marlowe's killing on 30 May 1593, as contained in an inquest run by the Coroner of the Queen's Household two days later, were discovered by Leslie Hotson in 1925. According to this report – based upon what the three of them had to say – Poley, Frizer and Skeres were in a private room, having had dinner, and were all seated facing a table with Frizer in the middle. Marlowe was lounging on a bed just behind them when Frizer and he got into an argument over "the reckyninge" — the bill. Marlowe suddenly jumped up, seized Frizer's dagger, which Frizer was wearing "at his back", and with it struck him twice on the head, leaving wounds two inches long and a quarter deep. Frizer, his freedom of movement restricted between Poley and Skeres, struggled to defend himself and in doing so stabbed Marlowe above the right eye, killing him immediately.

Frizer was found by the inquest jury on 1 June 1593 to be not guilty of murder for reasons of self defence and on 28 June the Queen granted him a formal pardon.