[33] It is at least interesting to note that the day before Marlowe's cruel end Richard Baines had included in his report to the Privy Council these words: "I think all men in Cristianity ought to indevor that the mouth of so dangerous a member [as this Marlowe] may be stopped." Was this a mere coincidence? or was it a broad hint to their Lordships of what was about to happen? or was it only an unintended betrayal of a secret of which the writer had cognizance? That it was not the pious indignation of a good Christian which prompted Baines' prophetic utterance is sufficiently evident from what we know of that worthy's career.

II

If, then, Christopher Marlowe did not make his "great reckoning in a little room" accidentally but was the victim of a deliberate and planned murder, it seems impossible not to believe that the outrage was the outcome of the events immediately preceding it and intimately connected with Kyd's difficulties and accusations. To accept this view we need only think that Kyd, living in a city having a population of over one hundred thousand, was pounced upon by the police on the very day following the Privy Council's action; that Kyd could not but suspect that Marlowe, his quondam room-mate, had betrayed him to the officers of the law; that in his defence he attributed the incriminating "disputation" to Marlowe; that he subsequently charged Marlowe with numerous criminal offences (atheism, Socinianism, blasphemy, converting others to atheism, plotting against the State); that, not content with this, he named certain men—Harriott, Warner, Royden—with having associated with the "outcast Ismael" and listened to his atheistical doctrines; and that he very clearly threatened to divulge the identity of certain "men of quallitie" who (he implied) were not only intimates of the "outcast" but were leagued with him in conspiring with King James against Queen Elizabeth. At the same time we must not lose sight of this significant fact—Marlowe was the subject of attack from other quarters too. Baines' report to the Council not only duplicated and confirmed Kyd's charges, but added the grave accusations that Marlowe openly advocated sexual perversions, claimed to have as good a right to coin as the Queen of England had, and had converted at least one other to atheism. In another spy's memorandum (MS. Harl. 6848, fo. 190) "Sr Walter Raliegh & others" are coupled with "one Marlowe [who] is able to shewe more sounde reasons for Atheisme then any devine in Englande is able to geue to prove devinitie." That Marlowe, one of Walsingham's secret agents, was being apprised of the powerful forces at work to destroy him can hardly be doubted. He must have realized now that his ex-associate knew too much, suspected him, and was ready to sacrifice everything and everybody to save himself and to be revenged on the causer of his miseries. Kyd was safe in jail and was being closely guarded by the authorities, who hoped that the names of the "men of quallitie" he had implicated might yet be "drawn" from the prisoner.

And what about the "men of quallitie" whose lives were being threatened? From what we know of the characters of the Council's spies we may safely assume that these noblemen were not wholly ignorant of what Kyd had charged them with and what certain spies had reported to the Council. There were "leaks" in those days, as there are now. That Marlowe's situation was desperate is certain. The only ones who could have saved him—by the use of their political influence—were the men who were most in danger from him. From Kyd's reticence—a politic reticence, no doubt—the "men of quallitie" knew that they were safe if he was. Marlowe was the only one they had cause to fear. Marlowe, therefore, had to be silenced.[34] Ingram Frizer, a servant of Mr. Thomas Walsingham, and therefore an associate of Marlowe (and not likely to be distrusted), was assigned the task of stopping the poet-spy's career. Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley were schooled to corroborate the assassin's defense. Kyd was instructed to hold his tongue and wait. May 30th came and Marlowe walked into the trap which had been set for him. What followed we know.

When we attempt to answer the question what Englishman or Englishmen of that day could have been so situated as to be in sufficiently great danger from Marlowe's possible revelations to desire his death, it seems that we must restrict our investigation to the "men of quallitie" who constituted Sir Walter Ralegh's coterie. And when we consider that Sir Walter was not only hinted at in Kyd's accusing memorandum but was actually named in Baines' "Note," that he had a reputation for atheism, and that a few months later he had to submit to being examined regarding his religious views, we have no choice but to focus our attention on him. When, in addition to the facts just mentioned, we find him so constituted as to be eminently capable of so bold and ruthless an act as the assassination of an enemy in the furtherance of his own interests, and so situated as to be almost driven to such an act of desperation, it becomes a reasonable assumption that the responsibility for Marlowe's violent and cruel taking-off should be laid at his door.

Tradition says that Marlowe was one of the choice spirits who were received at the weekly gatherings of brilliant literary and scientific men at Sir Walter's house, "where religious topics were often discussed with perilous freedom." Mr. Ingram, following Dyce, says (Christopher Marlowe and his Associates, 1904, p. 184): "The earliest references to the poet not only allude to his friendship with Raleigh but even assert that he read a paper on the Trinity before Sir Walter Raleigh and his brother Carew and others at the Knight's house."[35] The alleged friendship is in all probability a myth, though Ralegh must have been fascinated by the creator of Tamburlaine and Faust, two portraits in which that bold and aspiring spirit may very well have seen himself. But the relations between them were probably of a sufficiently intimate nature to cause Sir Walter considerable anxiety on learning—as he must have learned—that this "god of undaunted verse," who had enjoyed his hospitality, was not only a disciple of Machiavelli but a secret agent of the Government and had been responsible for Kyd's arrest. That at this critical moment Marlowe might have made it clear to Sir Walter that he looked to him to save him is not at all improbable. But Ralegh knew that he was then in no position to do what was demanded of him.

To an ambitious, cruel, and unscrupulous Elizabethan adventurer, to such a "soldier, sailor, and courtier" as Ralegh was—careers which he himself subsequently blamed for his "courses of wickedness and vice" (his own words)—the removal by assassination of a dangerous foe, who might not only frustrate the fulfilment of his dreams but land him in the Tower, or worse (especially at a time when he was in disgrace with the furious Elizabeth and the subject of almost universal hatred and obloquy), was as obvious as it was practicable. This many-gifted, brilliant, enigmatical Englishman—as striking a case of dual personality as history affords—was capable of "unspeakable cold-blooded cruelty," of "treachery and false faith," of "bold unscrupulousness," of almost "any act of baseness." That is the verdict of those of his biographers (Stebbing, Gosse, Buchan, Thoreau) who are not obviously his apologists. Ralegh's wanton brutality and wholesale butcheries in Ireland—"that commonwealth of common woe," as he called it—is one of the saddest and darkest pages in the history of the English-Irish troubles. To attain his ends all means were permissible. Is it any wonder, then, that "he was hated by all and sundry, from the citizens of London to the courtiers who jostled him in the Queen's antechamber"?[36] To the popular mind, and even to the best men of his day, "Raleigh remained the ambitious courtier, the able and unscrupulous soldier, and the man who wrought ever for his own ends." To this vain, egotistical man, this victim of an insatiable passion for fame, wealth, and rule, who dreamed of founding empires, and who realized all too keenly how his many enemies—envying him for his great wealth, his ostentation, his adventures, his talents, his special privileges—would revel in his ruin,—to such a man it would have been the most trivial undertaking to sweep out of his path a hot-headed, quarrelsome, vainglorious, and treacherous son of a shoemaker, a fellow whom he had befriended and admitted into the privacy of his sanctum. He knew, none so well as he, that his and his friends' fortunes were desperate if Marlowe divulged what he knew.

To understand what Ralegh's state of mind was at this time it is necessary to recount the occurrences of the preceding year. After having for several years played the rôle of devoted and impassioned lover to the Virgin Queen—"love's queen and the goddess of his life"—he had permitted himself to fall a victim to the charms of one of the Queen's maids of honor, the witty, beautiful (tall, slender, blue-eyed, golden-haired) and altogether lovely Elizabeth Throgmorton, some thirty-five years younger than her royal rival. The Queen, "who loved the presence of handsome young men with unmaidenly ardour," notwithstanding her alleged prudery and the sixty years she carried on her ulcerous back, was furious—"fiercely incensed," says a contemporary. Sir Walter was immediately dismissed from the royal favor and committed to the Tower where he was detained from June to September, 1592. While imprisoned there, he behaved like a spoiled child, quarrelling with his keepers, bemoaning his hard lot, and writing lovesick letters to the Queen—even though his betrothed was confined in a suite only a few feet from his.