Tracking Down a Murderer

I

ANCIENT murderers arouse in some of us a deep detecting interest. To ferret them out and to turn the world’s eye upon them gives a peculiar pleasure. The modern criminal, on the other hand, leaves us comparatively cold. We abandon him, with his large fortune and temporary mental aberration, to the sordid pillory of the headlines. Our preferred murderers are those far figures who, having drawn a cloak of centuries over their crime, are trying to slip unnoticed down the dark highway of history. Such we like to tap on the shoulder.

But ‘First catch your hare,’ says the oracle of the kitchen. And the greatest initial obstacle to the exposure of lost murderers is of course the catching them. Clues are clues only to those who have their eyes open. As a specimen of ancient hidden murder, I take the case of Nicholas Colfox. This man, we have just discovered, was a murderer denounced, under a cloak of poetry, by Geoffrey Chaucer. An obscure corner of history shows Colfox as the chief accomplice of Thomas Mowbray in the abduction and secret murder of Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, in 1397. This discovery has now for the first time opened our eyes to the damning finger which Chaucer points in his ‘Tale of the Cock and the Fox’: —

But the story we have to tell here is not the Hunting of the Colfox. We shall come down two centuries, and relate the chase of the man who killed the dramatist Christopher Marlowe. And the beginning of the story lies in Bloomsbury.

You must know, first, that the houses in Bloomsbury are all alike — on the outside. Idiosyncrasy may find a place within door, but it is drab uniformity which orders the antique right-dress and the jaded eyes-front of the smoky exteriors. In a garret of one of these indistinguishable houses, one raw November night, we were huddled over the gas stove. Mary was trying to toast bread and, Jupiter-like, I was pouring a well-aimed shower of coins into the lap of that Danaän stove, to coax from it a complaisant warmth. No one who has not experienced it can know the joy of an English fireside. When the ponderous penny has dropped, and the eager gas has launched its cheerful roar — then is the moment for scorched shins, shivering backs, and little abortive attempts to mitigate the monotony of the English cuisine.

To us enters our literary friend, partly for hot buttered toast, and partly for companionship. Our literary friend is an authority on Christopher Marlowe and his writings. Being on tour, he has paid a visit to Marlowe’s college at Cambridge, he has walked from the Bankside to Shoreditch, and is projecting a pilgrimage to the poet’s birthplace, Canterbury. Before taking his leave, our literary friend learns that we are spending our days in Chancery Lane, grubbing among the musty parchments and papers of the Public Record Office, finding here a new fact about John Harvard, and there a lawsuit concerning some property of John Milton’s. Thinking at once of the unknown man who destroyed the greatest early genius of the English drama, he shakes his head. Not much chance of finding a trace of that criminal in the Public Record Office. Scholars have ransacked the place in search of him. But Deptford, now — where Marlowe was killed? Why not try Deptford? No telling what you might find there, in some obscure corner.

After our literary friend had gone, I endeavored to think why I ought not to try Deptford. One very good reason that came to me was, I remember, that Peter the Great, Tsar of Muscovy, had tried it: and tsars were notorious for their bad taste — whether it were shown in accidentally beating their children to death, or in fostering revolution with the knout. The story goes that Peter went to Deptford ostensibly to learn shipbuilding as a common workman. But King Charles lodged him and his retinue in Sayes Court, the handsome Deptford mansion of Sir John Evelyn. When the Muscovites came to move out, Sir John made a bitter complaint to Parliament of the horror wrought within the house by the nasty nobility, and of the destruction of his cherished hedges by Peter. The potentate, it seems, as shipbuilding palled, would seat himself in quest of excitement in a wheelbarrow, and get a powerful gardener to rush him full tilt through a hedge. Evelyn naturally could not be expected to understand what an intoxicated thrill of Tsarility it gave one to smash through those hedges.

Then, too, I reflected that though Deptford, even as late as Peter’s time, may have been in a condition to be visited, it now was unquestionably a city slum. On picking up the Evening Standard I read that health officers were urging the establishment of public baths in Deptford, since it had been estimated that there was one bathroom for every one hundred houses. Finally, where in Deptford should I find an archive — a commodity no doubt scarcer even than bathrooms?

No; the prospect of Deptford was lacking in charm. Instead, I went to the British Museum to find out exactly what was already known of Marlowe’s murderer.

It took but a very short time to find that nothing was exactly known. Turning to the Dictionary of National Biography, I found this: —

In the register of the parish church of St. Nicholas, Deptford, appears the entry, which is ordinarily transcribed thus: ‘Christopher Marlow, slain by ffrancis Archer, 1 June 1593.’ Mr. HalliwellPhillipps read the surname of the assailant as ‘Frezer,’ i. e. Fraser.

Here at once was mystery fullfledged. The authorities did not agree even on the murderer’s name. Some read ‘Archer,’ and others ‘Frezer.’ Plainly the first step would be to settle the question to my own satisfaction by studying the original writing. But the burial register that contained it was still kept in the church at Deptford where Marlowe was buried. For some moments a bus pilgrimage to Dismal Deptford loomed up unavoidable — but I was spared. From the dim stack a book on Marlowe was produced, whose author had thoughtfully enriched his work with a photographic facsimile of the disputed entry. One careful glance proved beyond a doubt that the ‘Frezer’ reading was right and the ‘Archer’ reading impossible. The scholars and parsons had mistaken the ff of ffrezer (which was the old way of writing capital F) for a capital A, owing to the two uprights and the crossbar; and to take ez for ch in an Elizabethan hand is not so stupid as one might suppose. But ‘Francis Frezer’ was unquestionably the name written by the parish clerk.

So much for the name. What other dim light was there on Marlowe’s death? Well, there were two ancient brimstone accounts of the violent and well-merited end of Marlowe, the reputed atheist, which have survived. The first, written by Thomas Beard four years after Marlowe’s death, in his Theatre of Gods ludgements (a collection of terrific obituaries), runs as follows: —

Not inferiour to any of the former in Atheisme & impiety, and equall to all in maner of punishment was one of our own nation, of fresh and late memory, called Marlin [marginal note: Marlow], by profession a scholler, brought vp from his youth in the Vniuersitie of Cambridge, but by practise a playmaker, and a Poet of scurrilitie, who by giuing too large a swinge to his owne wit, and suffering his lust to haue the full raines, fell (not without iust desert) to that outrage and extremitie, that hee denied God and his sonne Christ, and not only in word blasphemed the trinitie, but also (as it is credibly reported) wrote books against it, affirming our Sauiour to be but a deceiuer, and Moses to be but a coniurer and seducer of the people, and the holy Bible to be but vaine and idle stories, and all religion but a deuice of pollicie. But see what a hooke the Lord put in the nosthrils of this barking dogge: It so fell out, that in London streets as he purposed to stab one whome hee ought a grudge vnto with his dagger, the other party perceiuing so auoided the stroke, that withall catching hold of his wrest, he stabbed his owne dagger into his owne head, in such sort, that notwithstanding all the meanes of surgerie that could be wrought, hee shortly after died thereof. The manner of his death being so terrible (for hee euen cursed and blasphemed to his last gaspe, and togither with his breath an oth flew out of his mouth) that it was not only a manifest signe of Gods Judgement, but also an horrible and fearefull terrour to all that beheld him. But herein did the iustice of God most notably appeare, in that hee compelled his owne hand which had written those blasphemies to be the instrument to punish him, and that in his braine, which had deuised the same.

It was to this story that Francis Meres, writing a year later, added the famous embroidery of scandal: ‘ Christopher Marlow was stabd to death by a bawdy Seruing man, a riuall of his in his lewde loue.’ Historians of literature, novelists, and playwrights have seized on this last unsavory morsel of gossip and have served it up under such an ingenious variety of forms that those who have heard nothing else about Marlowe have heard that.

William Vaughan, the author of the second long account, tells a more circumstantial and less expansive tale in his Golden Grove (1600): —

Not inferiour to these was one Christopher Marlow by profession a playmaker, who, as it is reported, about 7. yeeres a-goe wrote a booke against the Trinitie: but see the effects of Gods iustice; it so hapned, that at Detford, a little village about three miles distant from London, as he meant to stab with his ponyard one named Ingram, that had inuited him thither to a feast, and was then playing at tables, he quickly perceyuing it, so auoyded the thrust, that withall drawing out his dagger for his defence, hee stabd this Marlow into the eye, in such sort, that his braines comming out at the daggers point, hee shortlie after dyed. Thus did God, the true executioner of diuine iustice, worke the ende of impious Atheists.

It is to be noticed here that Vaughan gives the assailant’s name as one ‘Ingram,’ while the burial register, we remember, reported it as ‘ Francis Frezer.’ Which was correct? Someone had blundered over this name, but from this distance no one could tell where the age-old mistake lay.

II

Out of this tangle I took small encouragement. How could I hope to discover anything about so shadowy a criminal? In the first place, he was reputed to have been a serving man; and men of that class do not figure largely in the public records. Secondly, his very name was a matter of doubt. So hopeless it seemed that I gave up all thought of tracking him down, and returned to my other research.

Months passed, and took me far from Chancery Lane. But the magnetic power of the archives, that subtle and incalculable force, drew me back; and somewhere in the unconscious part of memory the names ‘Ingram’ and ‘Francis Frezer’ were still lurking. One day the gods of chance were propitious. I was going through the pages of one of the old index-books to the Close Rolls of the Chancery, searching it for Walter Raleighs, Francis Drakes, and the like. As my eye traveled through the entries for the year 1596, it was suddenly caught and held by the name ‘Ingram Frizer.’ In a flash came revelation. Something shouted in my brain that I had my finger on Marlowe’s murderer, whose trail I had so long abandoned. The mystery of the name was solved: Vaughan had mentioned the murderer as ‘Ingram,’ apparently taking this as his surname, while the parish clerk, though writing ‘Frezer’ correctly, had mistakenly substituted ‘Francis’ as his Christian name.

The date here was 1596, three years after the crime, and Frizer had not been hanged by the neck; on the contrary, here he was, indexed in the Close Rolls of the Chancery. What was he doing there? Referring to the enrolled document, I found it to be merely a deed of bargain and sale, by which Ingram Frizer of London purchased two houses and some land in Buckinghamshire; and in this, of course, there was no clue to the crime. But we had crossed a hot trail. A hazy contradiction of names had leaped into life as Ingram Frizer, a London man of business, living, moving, and having his being three years after killing Marlowe. He challenged me to a chase.

How was I to recover a trace of his crime of 1593? I could not believe that he had not come to some kind of trial for killing Marlowe, even though he had been acquitted. There must have been a record, somewhere. Casting about, I thought first of the great series of ancient Criminal Inquests — those investigations by coroners’ courts into questionable deaths — included in the Chancery records. Unfortunately this collection upon examination proved to contain nothing later than the reign of Henry VI.

Baffled here, I had to lead off in a new direction. It occurred to me that although Marlowe was killed at Deptford in Kent, perhaps the case was not tried in Kent. Perhaps Frizer had been indicted for Marlowe’s death in the great Court of the Queen’s Bench, Westminster, the highest criminal court in the realm. I therefore got out the Queen’s Bench Controlment Roll for 35 Elizabeth (1593) — a thick bundle of dark-brown parchments sewn together at the top. For two days I strained my eyes searching in the dim and difficult script, for an indictment of Ingram Frizer, and I finished by finding nothing.

Once more I paused and considered. The possibilities of Kent were not yet exhausted. Marlowe’s murderer might have been tried by the Justices of Assize, on circuit there. Hope rode high when the bundle of ancient rolls of the South-Eastern Circuit for 1593 was brought out for me. Black with thick dust they were, and appeared not to have been opened for centuries. I thought surely to make a discovery here. But as they slowly passed in dim and fragmentary procession under my eyes hope seemed to pass with them. In the long files of criminals I found no Ingram Frizer.

This was a dark moment. I could see nothing in any direction. While waiting for light, I read over the two old narratives of Marlowe’s death once more. Was there a possible clue still hidden there? What was Vaughan’s view of the circumstances of the fight? According to him Marlowe, dagger in fist, had attacked Ingram, who drew his own poniard and killed the poet in self-defense. If this were true, could Ingram properly be called a murderer? To freshen up my imagination I made an effort to put myself in his place. Here lay Kit Marlowe, whom I had stabbed to save my life. Was I to look forward quietly to a trial for murder, and then the gallows? But I killed him in self-defense! I thought that I could prove as much to the coroner’s jury. And after proving it, what then? Why, then I could appeal to the Queen for a pardon.

A pardon. A clue! A clue which — presto! — turned me back into my natural shape as a researcher. Where would the royal pardons be entered? Of a sudden I recalled having seen them mentioned in a description of the Patent Rolls of the Chancery. This series is made up of copies of the Litterœ Patentes or open letters from the sovereign to the subject (the originals are so called from being written upon open sheets of parchment with the Great Seal pendent at the bottom). Among many other kinds of documents, pardons of all sorts were issued through the Chancery as Letters Patent.

Now the index books to the Patent Rolls stand most conveniently on the shelves of the Legal Search Room, just a step down the gloomy corridor from the Round Room where I was working. In a moment I was there, taking down the volume containing 35 Elizabeth (1593), and running my excited finger down the time-faded names noted in the margins.

A dozen rapid leaves, a score or so of names, and treasure-trove! — ‘Frisar’ lay before me like a jewel on the page. I could not believe my good fortune. There beside it was the laconic description of the pardon, clearly written in the customary abbreviated Latin: —

R[egina] xxviij° die Junij con[cessit] Ingramo ffrisar p[er]don[am] de se defend[endo]

This may be put into English roughly as: —

The Queen 28th day of June granted pardon to Ingram ffrisar [for homicide] in selfdefense.

In a kind of whirling daze I realized that Marlowe’s name was not there. Still, the date was right: four weeks after Marlowe’s burial was sufficient time for issuing a pardon. This must be the pardon I was after. But before I could rest I must see the document to which this entry was the index. In an unsteady hand I made out the call ticket for Patent Roll 1401, to which the index referred me, only to find that the hands of the Record Office clock pointed to 4:15 — too late to see the roll that afternoon! That was another dark moment.

Conquering an absurd fear that the attendants must have guessed my secret from my face, I found my way out from the dark musty halls of the archives to the green quiet of the Rolls Yard, past the reflective eye of the guardian bobby under the massive gateway, and into the narrow rapid roar of Chancery Lane. Law clerks passed like so many hasty puppets. Nothing stood in my mind’s eye but the shining hope of finding the first authentic account of the death of Christopher Marlowe. That hope would be dashed or realized precisely at ten o’clock on the morrow, when the fatal roll would be waiting on my table. There would be a pardon, I knew; but suppose it should turn out to be only a bare statement, with no thrilling details? As I faced this staggering doubt in Holborn, I was very nearly juggernauted by a Charing Cross bus.

This would not do. I had no right to risk a violent death, when such a secret would die with me. I must live at least until 10 A.M., and that right rapidly. But my desire to speed the parting minutes fell beneath the inexorability of routine. I had to make my usual way by tube to Paddington with other ‘season ticket-holders’ (an Englishman never commutes) and take my seat in the customary Beaconsfield train. We were staying then at Jordans Hostel, which lies halfway between Chalfont St. Giles, where Milton wrote, and Beaconsfield, where Chesterton may still be seen from afar off, similarly occupied. On this night of nights the Great Western Railway dropped me in the most ordinary fashion at my little station, and the engine puffed off, remarking, ‘Whatever you may or may not discover, the world must go on, worldmust-go-on, worldmustgoon.’ I walked up past the old Friends’ Meeting House, through the orchard to the Hostel, and divulged the tremendous secret to Mary. Then followed an attempt to kill the long evening hours by means of a furious game of badminton with a small boy in the Mayflower Barn (a three-centuries-old affair, affirmed by tradition and at least one eminent, scholar to be built from the timbers of the Pilgrim ship). The night which succeeded was long, unusually long for the season. But morning came at length, and with it the London train.

III

Life goes by contraries. When I approached the Record Office as the bells of St. Clement’s were striking ten, I ought, no doubt, to have quickened my steps. Contrariwise, I fell into a kind of fatalistic saunter. If I should find it, well; if not, why, no need to have hurried. . . .

I reached my table. There was the brown roll waiting, as it had waited these three hundred years. Almost calmly I began to unroll the heavy involute of parchment, ten inches wide. But as I noted the length of the average entry my excitement waxed. Faster I rolled — faster, faster — until Frizer’s immortal name flashed into view, at the head of a pardon more than a foot long.

Surely an angel — perhaps the recording angel — had preserved me for this, or this for me. For me? I cast a furtive glance, half expecting the sharpeyed double circle of searchers to rise in a body and pounce on my roll — but they were deep in affairs, mostly genealogical, of their own. My eye raced over the pardon — it was written in Latin — and I saw that it quoted in full the details of the inquest held by the Queen’s Coroner, William Danby, on ‘the body of Christopher Morley, lying dead and slain’ at Deptford. Christopher Morley. Was this Christopher Marlowe the dramatist? My heart skipped a beat. It must be. The same name in a different spelling. Scholars had seen Marlowe’s name written ‘Marlin’ and ‘Marley’; but ‘Christopher Morley’ was a new and modern-sounding form. In passing I realized that the author of Shandygaff had here found a great namesake across three centuries.

No matter for the spelling — here was the precious story, the only authoritative and complete story of Kit Marlowe’s mysterious death. How did he die? What was the quarrel? Was there a woman in the case? I found the answers to these questions in the findings of sixteen men under oath — the Coroner’s jury. Stripped of a little verbiage, here follows a direct translation from the Latin: —

. . . When a certain Ingram Frysar, 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 mentioned, at Detford Strand aforesaid . . . 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 money, that is, le Reckonings; & the said Christopher Morley then lying upon a bed in the room where they supped, & moved with anger against the said Ingram Frysar 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 ... & 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 Frysar in no wise could take flight: it so befell that the said Christopher Morley on a sudden & of his malice towards the said 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 & of 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 defense & 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 in that affray that the said Ingram, in defense of his life, with the dagger aforesaid of the value of twelve pence, gave the said Christopher then & there a mortal wound over his right eye of the depth of two inches & of the width of one inch; of which mortal wound the aforesaid Christopher Morley then & there instantly died; And since that the said Ingram killed & slew the said Christopher Morley aforesaid at Detford Strand aforesaid ... in the manner & form aforesaid in the defense and saving of his own life, against our peace our crown & dignity, as more fully appears by the tenor of the Record of the Inquest aforesaid which we caused to come before us in our Chancery by virtue of our writ; We therefore moved by piety have pardoned the same Ingram Frisar the breach of our peace which pertains to us against the said Ingram for the death above mentioned & grant to him our firm peace. . . . Witness the Queen at Kew on the 28th day of June.

It will be noticed that this pardon, near the end, refers to the record of the inquest as though it were in the Court of Chancery; and yet I had searched the whole collection of Chancery Inquests with no result. I felt that to complete my documentary record I must find that inquest. But where could it be? I took up the printed description of the Chancery documents and thrashed through every item. At length, in an obscure corner of the Miscellany of the Chancery, a title met my eye: ‘Writs and Returns, Henry III to Charles II.’ This looked hopeful, for, as I had just seen, the inquest had been returned upon a writ into Chancery; and I got out the Index and Calendar to the Chancery Miscellany. Though the documents well merited the title of ‘miscellaneous,’ they had been roughly grouped together by counties. By going through all the items listed under Kent, I found at last what I wanted — the indented Coroner’s inquest (so called because two copies were cut apart on a wavy or indented line for purposes of tallying — whence indentures), and the Queen’s writ which summoned the case into Chancery. A comparison showed that this inquest had been copied word for word into the pardon, except for the jurors’ statement that ‘the said Ingram after the slaying aforesaid, perpetrated and done by him in the manner aforesaid, neither fled nor withdrew himself. But what goods or chattels, lands or tenements the said Ingram had at the time of the slaying . . . the said jurors are totally ignorant.’

With all the documents before me, every step in the proceedings was clear. Ingram Frizer killed Christopher Marlowe on the evening of Wednesday, May 30, 1593. The inquest was held on Friday, June 1; and on the same day they buried Marlowe’s body. Coroner Danby sent the record of the inquest into Chancery in obedience to a writ dated June 15. And Frizer’s pardon was granted at Kew on Thursday, June 28.

So much for the new dates. Returning to the scene of the inquest, we notice that there are two eyewitnesses to the killing, doubtless friends of Marlowe and Frizer, since they had been feasting with them. Coroner Danby opens his inquiry. The jury examines Marlowe’s body, the dagger used in the scuffle, the scalp wounds on Frizer’s head, and hears the oral testimony of the two eyewitnesses, Poley and Skeres. Upon deliberation, the jury brings in its finding of homicide in self-defense.

Two courses are open to us: (a) to believe as true the story of Marlowe’s attack on Frizer from behind, corroborated in so far as it is by the wounds on Frizer’s head, which wounds must have been inflicted before Marlowe received his deathblow; or (b) to suppose that Frizer, Poley, and Skeres after the slaying, and in order to save Frizer’s life on a plea of self-defense, concocted a lying account of Marlowe’s behavior, to which they swore at the inquest, and with which they deceived the jury.

The latter seems to me a possible but rather unlikely view of the case. In all probability the men had been drinking deep — the party had lasted from ten in the morning until night! — and the bitter debate over the score had roused Marlowe’s intoxicated feelings to such a pitch that, leaping from the bed, he took the nearest way to stop Frizer’s mouth.

We learn that the quarrel which brought on the fight was a dispute over the reckoning. Money is cause sufficient for a fight; there is no need to drag a woman into the case. The imaginary object of Marlowe’s so-called ‘lewde loue,’ about whom so much has been written, is noticeably absent from the picture, both as a cause and as a witness of the fray. In spite of the wishes of Francis Meres and his followers, she must now be returned with thanks to the fertile brain from which she sprang.

IV

Such is the true story of the death of Christopher Marlowe, as I found it in the records, stripped of scandal, and told by sixteen good men and true. But was this to be the end? Who could rest content without finding out more about this Ingram Frizer than his mere name? What manner of man was he? What’s Christopher to him, or he to Christopher? Questionings of this kind urged me along still farther on his trail; and before many days I had run down such a quantity of facts about his position and personal character that through them the killer of Christopher Marlowe will stand out as a living figure.

And as for Marlowe himself, the spelling of his name as ‘Morley’ afforded a pregnant suggestion. It led me to an official letter of the highest importance bearing on the dramatist’s early life; but that, as Kipling says, is another story.

Halliwell-Phillipps, great biographer of Shakespeare and a mighty man with the records, spoke once and for all for the Nimrods of the archives: ‘Which sport is it that elicits the keenest and most genuine enthusiasm— fox-hunting or record-hunting? Undoubtedly the latter.

‘For what devotee to field amusements, after galloping day after day for three months in search of a possible fox that does not turn up, would commence another session of the same description with undiminished alacrity? Where is the determined sportsman to be found who would continue to traverse downs and morass if he only winged a miserable sparrow once in a month? Would he persevere for a year or two on the chance of eventually bringing down a woodcock?

‘Not a bit of it! The record-hunter is your only true sportsman. Undeterred by hundreds of obstacles — carrying any height of fence — disheartened by no number of failures — merrily henting the stile-a—and, above all, when he once does catch a sight of his bird, never missing it!’

Foxes? Sparrows? Woodcocks? If such small deer stir his blood, picture the high adventure of a chase through a noble forest of parchment three hundred years old — and, at the end of the day, big game.