Medieval Murder - Christopher Marlowe

while most historical murder mysteries were solved not long after the crime was committed sometimes it's left up to modern science and historians to determine how and why a person died in this series we'll look at some of the great unsolved deaths of the past bringing to life the many theories surrounding them and piecing together the evidence hundreds of years may have passed since these events took place but with the help forensics criminologist and specialists experts will attempt to solve these medieval murder mysteries according to the official line he died in a drunken brawl perfectly acceptable story is that they were smothered and so died King Edward the second murder legend has it that Prince Arthur died of the shock castration it's a possibility but on the other hand it's a most unreliable way of killing somebody England 1593 in a house just outside of London Christopher Marlowe England's most celebrated poet and playwright came to an abrupt and violent end from the London playhouses to the Elizabethan secret service Marlowe's intriguing and mysterious life has led many to question the official events on that fateful day there are a lot of inconsistencies in the inquest document and so something much more sinister its thought was taking place some say died in a brawl judging by what we know about Marlowe's character that he was someone who could easily get involved in quarrels and abroad it seems to me perfectly possible that that's what happened on that occasion we cannot detract the presence of alcohol I wouldn't be surprised if you've got people sitting in a bar arguing over a bill that because of the alcohol that they then become aggressive and then that leads to murder others that he was assassinated the real story of Marlo's death was altogether more dark it may have been not just murder but assassination he dies of welts a single stab wound above the eye if by this they mean that he's been stabbed in the forehead I'm afraid that doesn't work if you stab somebody like that the knife's going to skate off it's going to continue under the scalp but not penetrate or just slide out and give you a slash wound and there are those who believe that he faked his own death no one has managed to come up with a really good theory for who would want to kill him and why and why it needed to be quite so elaborate at the moment I think the escape hypothesis is actually the strongest one so what did happen to Christopher Marlowe [Music] Canterbury the birthplace of Christopher Marlowe as a long theatrical tradition as a young boy Marlowe would have seen the local actors performing religious plays around the streets and courtyards of the town Marlo was born six years into the reign of Queen Elizabeth the first in a period known as the English Renaissance where art literature and the theater were all experiencing a great revival phillipe Lechem is a local historian and residents of cancer brain [Music] now this is one of the last physical links there is with Christopher Marlowe this is Paul Sir Georges tower and is all that's left of a Norman Church called George's where he was actually baptised and we don't know when he was born because there's no records but we know it must have been only a few days before the 24th february because in those days people baptized their children very quickly because they might not survive [Music] as a poet playwright and creator of English blank verse Christopher Marlowe was at the forefront of the Elizabethan dramatic Renaissance an impressive rise for someone who came from relatively modest origins he was the son of a shoemaker so he came from very humble beginnings clearly from an early age he he was recognized as a scholar he had a great aptitude for learning and won a scholarship to the King's School when he was 14 Marlo became a king's scholar one of 50 boys considered too poor to pay for their education but endowed with great minds while at the king's school he studied Latin religion and learned about the arts he did so well there that he was awarded a scholarship to Corpus Christi College in Cambridge an early age of 16 although he was best known for being a poet and playwright there was another less public side to his life the murky world of Elizabethan espionage Christopher Marlowe was a great poet and a great playwright it was also a translator of Latin into English and he may have been a government spy when he was up at university there are some myths about what he did and about some absences that he had from the college in those days you signified your presence in the college by your equivalent of the mess bill in other words the food you bought from the lardo and there are several absences over his six-and-a-half years at the college where there was no food purchased at all which means he wasn't there and some of these absences were six or seven months and this is something that fed the myth or perhaps not a myth that he was serving his queen Sir Francis Walsingham was the spymaster Marlowe with one of his boys and that he was disappearing off into the Low Countries to foment possibly insurrection over there as head of England Secret Service Sir Francis Walsingham was a key figure in the English government in charge of ensuring the safety of his Queen and country immediately after leaving Cambridge he was in London and we know that he had his first big hit that year with the play called Tamburlaine it was extraordinarily successful and he then followed it with other successful plays dr. Faustus Edward the second the Jew of Malta all of this time we don't know what he was doing in terms of spying because if he was going to be a successful intelligence agent clearly it needed to be secretive but in January of 1592 he was arrested in the Netherlands in what looks like some fairly dodgy business he was arrested for counterfeiting coins which was a potentially treasonous offence but when he was sent back to Lord Burleigh who was very probably his boss because he wasn't put into prison nothing happens to him so we think he was actually on government business and he was trying to infiltrate a plot against the Queen's life Lord Burleigh was chief advisor to Queen Elizabeth the first and one of the most powerful men in England along with Sir Francis Walsingham he run England's large network of spies throughout Europe Marlowe himself was a little bit of a feisty individual and he had two or three occasions when he would have been hung up in the course for what we would call today common assault it was obviously a man who was pretty much a genius I think I mean judging by the blank verse that he wrote in his plays and the characterization and plotting of the plays he was also something I think of a brawler what we do know about him shows him an unsavory company and it also shows that he was guilty of a couple of breaches of the peace it said that he was an atheist but some of the evidence for that has been challenged it's also said that he was a homosexual but that's based on a misunderstanding of homosexuality and homoeroticism of the 16th century so we can't be certain of that either Marlowe lived in an age when England was experiencing rising tensions between Protestants and Catholics and it wasn't long before he got caught up in the religious conflict of the times things started to go wrong for Marlowe in the beginning of May 1593 somebody posted a poem up on the wall of a Dutch Church in London it was a poem in blank verse which was Marlowe's recognized style it mentioned three of his plays it was signed Tamburlaine was the name of his most famous protagonist and it was advocating violence against immigrants [Music] during the Elizabethan period Protestant refugees from across Europe were routinely subjected to persecution and threats often in the form of written pamphlets called libels Thomas Kyd a friend of Marlowe's and fellow poet and playwright was arrested on suspicion of being involved in writing the libel his papers were seized and in those papers were something that was referred to as vile heretical conceits which Thomas Kyd said were Marlo's papers not his subsequently there was a warrant issued for Marlowe's arrest and he appeared before the Privy Council ten days later rather conveniently Malo was dead the official account of Marlowe's death states that he died from a single stab wound which is killer claimed to have inflicted in self-defense [Music] [Music] the official reports on Marlowe's death said that he was killed in a drunken brawl in a pub in Deptford the coroner's reports say that he went to a house in Deptford at 10 o'clock in the morning and there he met some friends and all was well until after supper they discussed the bill of the reckoning as it was called and that there was a quarrel over the amount and that he grabbed hold of a dagger and in self-defense one of his companions that man called frizzier killed him the inquest document is very specific about what happened Ingram Fraser was sitting between Robert Poli and Nicolas skiers it says that Marlowe graft prizes knife which was at his back Ingram Fraser somehow turned the top of his body wrestled with Marlowe tried to wrestle his knife back and in the process of doing so stabbed Marlowe just above his right eye to a depth of 2 inches and 1 inch wide and it says that Marlowe's died instantly from the wound he received [Music] on the surface it seems to be a plausible story but after reviewing the evidence what would a modern-day barrister pathologist and criminal psychologist make of Marlowe's death from royal tribunals to international murder cases barrister Andrew Rose has both defended and prosecuted at numerous criminal trials over his career looking at the evidence and it stands it would seem perfectly possible that Varna was killed in the course of a brawl we don't know how much each individual had to drink they all seem to be rather strong characters and these were um Buster's times so it doesn't seem to be wholly implausible that there wasn't a defense of self-defense available to fries out which was accepted by by the jury of the day but could something as small as a disagreement over the bill really escalate into a killing there are two reasons why going out for a drink and a simple thing in terms of paying a bill might escalate into violence and murder we cannot detract their the presence of alcohol we know that alcohol lowers inhibitions can in some people accrete increase aggression and so therefore even the smallest thing for example bumping into somebody and spilling their pint can result in a fight in aggression and so therefore I wouldn't be surprised if you've got people sitting in a bar arguing over a bill that because of the alcohol that they then become aggressive and then that leads to murder during the inquest Ingram Fraser entered a plea of self-defense should we simply accept his account that Marlowe's death was not premeditated is the murder intentional that's another question it might be an accidental murder because of the aggression because of the fight if it's intentional then we need to look at something else that's going on that it's not necessarily just the alcohol one of the biggest obstacles in finding out what really happened is the lack of impartial witnesses first task is to assess exactly what happened which is probably very difficult to do the amount of material available is going to be limited a lot of it seems to derive from the coroner's report and coroner's in those days were appointed by the crown they were answerable to the crown and they would be likely to behave in a way which would not cause any problems was the crown since the killing was deemed to have taken place within a 12 mile vicinity of the monarch the inquest was conducted by William Bambi the queen's coroner but in the Elizabethan period Deptford was part of the English county of Kent and by law a Kent County coroner should have been present Danby however conducted the inquest on his own we know that the parties involved had some kind of links with government and I didn't even a percent sure that he fulfilled his duty completely as a corona perhaps should do the coroner's task is to investigate the cause of deaths they how the where and the why of the death and of course to establish the identity of the deceased in this case there's no doubt he was it was Christopher Marlowe as to the unaffected of course what was going to the coroner's mind and the way in which he was handling the case may well have affected the way in which questions were put so to that extent we have to study any documentation I think with great care professor Mike Greene is a former Home Office pathologist his years of experience have seen him carry out countless examinations at crime scenes to determine the exact cause of death Christopher Marlowe according to the contemporary accounts dies in a brawl in Deptford he dies of quotes a single stab wound above the eye chief by this they mean that he's been stabbed in the forehead I'm afraid that doesn't work because as you can see the skulls are pretty solid object and if you stab somebody like that the knife's going to skate off it's going to continue under the scalp but not penetrate or just slide out and give you a slash in the course of my career which spend 40 years I only saw two cases where a stab wound actually got through the skull and they both got through the skill round the sign here a temporary region where the bone is very thin but if we look at our alternative scenario and assume that the description wasn't entirely accurate and these been stabbed above the right eye but into the orbit we've got a different story the knife goes over the top of the eyeball as you might be able to see when I held the skull up the skill of the roof of the orbit is so thin that it lets light through it it's just a a single layer of bone as opposed to a three layer sandwich of bone like the rest of the skillet and if the knife goes through that way above the eyeball and then comes out here we get into contact with the base of the brain if Marlow received a stab wound just below the forehead and through the orbit it's possible that one of the major blood vessels in his brain could have been severed causing internal bleeding the brain is fairly tightly wrapped up in the mountain man brains which surrounded so literally only 25 50 mils of blood the equivalent of a double shot of scotch he's going to be enough to cause the pressure on the brain to rise so quickly that he's going to die within a very short space of time my feeling on Marlo is if what they meant is that it went through the sort of eyebrow region but below the bony Ridge yes it could well have happened if the stab wound is appear you've got to be looking for something else which has not been described and which should have been dr. Karen O'Keefe his head of criminal psychology at Buckinghamshire new University he studies and assesses the causes that lead people to criminal behavior such as violence or murder simply because you've got an activity a social activity that takes place on a regular occasion where with the alcohol fueling the environment - you've got people who will need to show that they're more powerful than others and if an argument develops over something as simple as a bill or a spilt drink having gone through these stages of brutalization and and reflection you would then decide I'm not going to be the person to back down and the only way that I can exert my power and aggression is by being completely violent to the person that's in front of me because then everybody else will see that I'm not somebody to be messed with but for what reason had Marlo come to Deptford why Marlo was meeting with these companions at the end it just seemed like a normal social occasion I think that's extremely unlikely Marla was under high pressure at that time he was being investigated by the Privy Council a warrant had been up for his arrest Thomas Kyd who had been his roommate was under investigation and had been arrested I think it's highly unlikely that he went out for a drink with the boys at that particular time something was definitely going on and whatever was going on was hushed up there are a lot of inconsistencies as soon as the inquest document was found which was in 1925 a doctor said that it was impossible that Marlowe would have died instantly from the kind of wound that he was given the other problem with the inquest document is that it rests on the testimony of three professional liars all three men had questionable backgrounds both nicholas skiers and robert Puli were employed by the government as secret agents while Ingram Frizer had a reputation as a confidence trickster and was known to have swindled wealthy gentlemen out of money Robert only was a consummate liar he's down in the history books of that time William Camden the Tudor chronicler called him a very expert dissembler we even have a letter from Robert Polie saying I would swear and forswear myself rather than I would do myself any harm he's essentially saying there that he would he would lie to the Lord treasurer along Burley rather than gave himself into trouble it seems plausible that Marlo could have died in a brawl but with many unanswered questions and the involvement of shadowy Elizabethan figures it's easy to see our alternative theories might have arisen theories such as faking his own death [Music] [Music] dr. Ross barber is an author and scholar whose research the life are more importantly death of Christopher Marlowe she believes that despite official accounts there is evidence to suggest that Marlow may not have actually died in Deptford it is possible that the answer to the Marlow mystery is that he faked his death and went off to the continent it isn't as ludicrous an idea as some people seem to think most people if they know anything about Christopher Marlowe at all they know that he was killed in a tavern brawl in Deptford but mrs. ball's house wasn't a tavern it was a government safehouse for something off point for agents going to and from the continent [Music] despite what many people believe Eleanor bull was not an innkeeper but two well-to-do widow with family connections in government and the royal court with marleau facing possible execution for heresy could she have somehow been involved in helping him fake his own death he had a really good reason to want to escape and in-state for such a way that people wouldn't go looking for him no one goes looking for a dead man what if he did faked his death how did he do it officialy christopher marlowe is buried in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of st. nicholas in Deptford and for the coroner and jury to pronounce Marlow dead at the scene they would have to obtain a body so Marlow isn't buried in Deptford who is if it's not Christopher Marlowe who's buried here than it is the Welsh Protestant martyr John Penry who was executed it's in Thomas of watering just three miles to the west of here suddenly very quickly without notice to his family on the 29th of May John Penry was a Protestant preacher who was executed for treason the day before Marlowe's death it's not known what happened to Penry's body and it was never returned to his family but what is known is that the body was under the care of the Queen's Coroner William Danby it was a very unusual time for a hanging it was noted by Penry's biographers he was taken away from his supper at 5 p.m. and hanged and nobody knows where his body is Coroner William Danby was a close friend of Lord Burleigh Queen Elizabeth right-hand man coincidentally Lord Burleigh was reported to have employed Marlow on several occasions as a spy this is where Deptford meets the thames and it would have been an ideal place to take off for the continent we don't actually know why the meeting was arranged here at mrs. Bulls house there's no particular reason why they would meet here to murder Marlow or to have a fight with Marlo but it makes complete sense to meet here if he was going to take off if the attention was to go get on a ship go up the Thames and disappear somewhere in Scotland or in Europe could christopher marlowe a faked his own death to evade prosecution it's a fascinating story of true but what evidence is there to support this claim well the easier then we'll know to switch bodies if had happened but even then I think it would have been pretty difficult to do but not beyond which is something feel about might depend if some of the evidence of murder by mothers case but a motor situation was something that day for some time and a few factors that occur their physical appearance and also people were led to believe that it was X when it was why I kind of think these are unsophisticated times it didn't have up a modern portrait and that sort of so yes I mean it was feasible though I just thought it was unlikely could Marlo abused the body of a recently executed man to trick people into believing he was dead [Music] there is an allegation that there was a substitution of the body of a recently hanged person obviously the people who would have been able to properly identify Marlowe would be people who knew Marlowe possibly some members of the jury did because the whole point of a jury originally was it was summoned from people who lived around about the place where the person died but even if the jury were simply looking at a body and being asked how did this fellow die they would have noticed if it was the body of a hand person their face need not have been purple but the tone would almost certainly have been truly Nia they would almost certainly have been a mark on the neck and I'm sure that one of the seven to fifteen people there would have had sufficient now's to look at the neck and look at their body generally so unless there's some degree of collusion bribery connivance to affect concealment I don't think that's a starter if there was a body there with a cut above the right eye that was Marlowe thank you very much I think the basis of identifying of body in Marla's time would be very similar to process today obviously it would be on the part of those people who knew Marlo and they would be called forward to say that the body that they saw was the person they knew and of course they could be asked about how well I knew him they had a fleeting glimpse or whether they were good friends or family something of that sort but he evidentially I always think the position is very much the same today is it possible that the witness's injury who viewed the body was somehow influenced into supporting the conspiracy interesting point to say about kind of the staging of Christopher Marlowe's death and whether a a lie or deceit of that size will mean that people will believe it at the time when this occurred if that's if there's any truth to that theory they would have had to have been quite a few people involved in that for it to succeed and undoubtedly they would have had to have been bribery but ultimately all you need is a few witnesses to it a few witnesses to say I saw Christopher Marlowe in a in a fight in that particular in and he died he was killed and then it can choose spiral and then if you got in addition to that official announcement by coroner's by the government then it can only fuel that if Marlo and his powerful connections in government had wanted to fake his death they certainly had the means to make it happen but with no concrete evidence to support this theory we have to look at other possible explanations for his death some people believe that Marlo did die in Deptford but not in a drunken brawl they believe he was assassinated [Music] Tracy Borman is a historian she believes that there may have been a more sinister reason behind Marlowe's death the death of Christopher Marlowe was one of the greatest unsolved mysteries according to the official line he was murdered in a pub brawl an argument over the bill broke out they'd been drinking all day and Marlowe was stabbed in the eye he died instantly but the real story was altogether darker than that Marlowe was under suspicion of treason of heresy it's possible that he was a spy for Sir Francis Walsingham and almost certainly the real story of Marlowe's death was more to do with assassination than murder but if Marlo was assassinated who ordered it and why Sir Walter Raleigh and Christopher Marlowe were great friends they were both famous poets they actually wrote poems to each other and it's possible that Raleigh was somehow involved in the same treasonous activities for which Marlo was being investigated at the time of his death so it said that Raleigh might have had him murdered because his own guilt would have come to light Sir Walter Raleigh was one of the most notable figures in Elizabethan England he was a poet Explorer and favorite of Queen Elizabeth the first but it was also said that he was an atheist exactly what Sir Walter Raleigh was afraid that would come to light is not clear it may have been that like Marlowe he shared his beliefs in heresy that he was a blasphemer like Marlowe was believed to be or even an atheist and that was punishable by death in the Elizabethan period [Music] [Applause] [Music] in 1592 Raleigh was accused of being the leader of a group known as the school of atheism it said that amongst its members were noted scientists scholars and Christopher Marlowe could Marlowe have been killed on the orders of Sir Walter Raleigh so his own heresy would not be exposed the situation which occurred in Marla's case rather is a suspicion that witnesses were rubbed out a does strike a chord in modern times only got to sink and flee the Kray brothers and their activities in the 60s people of that sort was always been a temptation to to make a way with witnesses who might cause you caused your harm but without any evidence how could it be proven that Raley was behind Marlowe's murder one of the ways of assessing these matters is to look to use the old expression cui bono to whom the benefit who is the person who is most likely to benefit from the problem of this sort and in an investigation that's usually the first port of call to assess what had happened and to put somebody in the dark if possible if Marlowe did have evidence that Sir Walter Raleigh was a heretic then rally what about good cause to be worried when Marla was arrested under torture Marlo could have revealed secrets leading to his own arrest but there is no solid evidence that rally had any involvement in Marlowe's death [Music] [Music] [Music] should we accept the findings of the coroner's inquest that Marlowe was killed in self-defense [Music] could there be any truth to the story that he was assassinated on the orders of Sir Walter Raleigh or did he fake his own death to avoid trial and execution is it possible that the vague details recorded on the coroner's inquest have led people to misinterpret the location of the stab wound could Christopher Marlowe have died with a single stab wound above the right eye in short the answer is yes if the stab wound is immediately above the eye it's going to go along the roof of the orbit over the eyeball it's going to go through a bit of skull which is only half a millimeter thick a millimeter at the most and requires minimal force to penetrate once it's through there within a matter of half an inch 1.5 centimeters it's in contact with a fairly large vessel or group of vessels under the base of the brain once these are cut within secretaries there's going to be enough blood around the brain squashing it within its membranes to lead to almost immediate death based on the given evidence many experts see nothing wrong with the official accounts of Marlowe's death on the face of it a defense of self-defense given that daggers were involved nor rest of it might still be plausible of course these days would be a matter of much closer investigation the more hope that the prosecuting authorities would not be under the same political pressure as the coroner was likely to have been in the time of Marlowe there were much more thorough investigation from us if darker consequences to darker possibilities emerged that might make a big difference as to the conduct of the prosecution but in the absence of that simple rumor itself wouldn't wouldn't be enough there was evidence of a brawl a man was clearly killed in that brawl and it was open to the person who inflicted the the fatal wound to say I did this in self-defense so I was afraid for my life and Marlo's actions seem to be consistent with his personality judging by what we know about Marlowe's character that he was someone who could easily get involved in quarrels and abroad it seems to me perfectly possible that that's what happened on that occasion why he met with these companions is another story he was at the time under investigation for atheism and possibly being suspected of interactions with Roman Catholics which were not on government service so it's quite possible that he was meeting them with something related to that kind of accusation possibly to carry out government business but I don't think some of the conspiracy theories that have been put forward hold water christopher marlowe lived in turbulent times and evidence seems to strongly support the theory that it was involved in espionage activities Marlowe is accused of atheism and it would also be fir to assume that the reason for the meeting in Deptford was most likely something to do with the charges he was facing but Marlowe also had a volatile and violent side that had led him into altercations before so what evidence are we left with it's a fascinating story and if true it would be one of history's greatest ever disappearing acts but to pull it off it would have taken the involvement of higher up government officials and while Marlowe what about the motive to fake his own death experts agree that there is no solid evidence to prove this theory I think on the available evidence as far as Mara is concerned we can rule act disappearance some mysterious disappearance the evidence seemed pretty conclusive that he was killed that night how or why he was killed of course is another matter could Marlowe have been killed on the orders of Sir Walter Raleigh to stop him revealing that he too was an atheist even in modern times it's not unheard of for witnesses to disappear or be killed and there seems to be overwhelming proof that Marlowe did in fact die in Deptford I think the evidence for Marlowe's death is really very thin but the witnesses accounts are suspect on the other hand we don't have anything else at all although many scholars and experts have cast doubt on the testimony of Ingram Frazer we do know that Marlowe could at times be aggressive and volatile so for him to become involved in an argument that escalated into violence would not be out of character it therefore seems that the official verdict stands and he lost his life in a brawl that ended in tragedy but over 400 years later there are still many unanswered questions some of which could only be answered by those present in Deptford on that fateful day so what became of those people in 1601 Nicklaus skiers was charged with treason for his part in a rebellion against Elizabeth the first he was found guilty Robert Pauly continued to serve in a Majesty's Secret Service frequently been used as a spy by Lord Burleigh after 1602 there is no record of what happened to Polly when and where he died remains a mystery the coroner William Danby who also had a mysterious fit after file in the inquest report of Marlowe's death the queen's coroner seems to have simply disappeared while ingram Frizer the man responsible for Marlowe's death received a full royal pardon for his part in the killing he eventually became a parish tax assessor and lived out his years in respectability until his death in 1627 and what of Christopher Marlowe it was a life cut tragically short but even in death Marlowe would go on to influence the likes of William Shakespeare and generations of writers to follow and to this day he continues to be one of the most important poets and playwrights the world has ever seen [Music] the crime scenes are long gone but historical experts hope to piece together the past by some intriguing clues next yesterday is investigating medieval murder mysteries

Channel: Hal Monroe

Views: 15,269

Rating: 4.9166665 out of 5

Keywords: Medieval, Murder, Christopher, Marlowe

Id: LCrE7eLAnPw

Length: 44min 0sec (2640 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 12 2017