- Order order.
It may be that this mention of Sir Thomas More, whom as a Catholic martyr Lord Strange was known privily to admire, put into the heads of some, perhaps his lordship himself as protector of his players, the notion of a play on the man that some thought blessed and others cursed, and it is certain that Sir Thomas Tilney, that was Master of the Revels, received such a play for his approval and he rejected it instanter as foully seditious, though not returning the fee of seven shillings that had accompanied the submission. It was known that Tom Kyd had the chief hand in writing it, and this was to do him little good.
Indeed, it was the writers rather than the brawlers who now became most under suspicion during the time of the troubles. I come to the month of May, a most perilous period, and in particular to May 5, when the verse libel was set up in several copies on the walls of the Dutch Church and there was great howling in the Dutch embassy. It began
And it went on
And then it attacked not the Dutch but those high English that protected them and doubtless were paid in foreign gold to do so.
It was clear that the poor but vicious poetaster had read or seen Kit's plays, for not only did he invoke Kit's last play in
but he signed with the pseudonym of Tamburlaine.
Kit knew little of this, being at Scadbury. News of Tom Watson's death and burial, brought to the manor house by Frizer, hurt him sorely, but he would not go to London to throw flowers of the season on his deep grave. Talk in the town of what Greene had writ on his atheism was also, by the same messenger, brought, with, Kit thought, a certain glee unconcealed. Of the libel nailed to the Dutch Church he as yet knew nothing, nor the one in prose that followed, ending with these words: Be it known to all Flemings and Frenchmen that it is best for them to depart out of the realm before the ninth of July next. If not then to take what follows. For there shall be many a sore stripe. Apprentices will rise to the number of 2336. And all prentices and journeymen will down with Flemings and Strangers.
And it was now that the Privy Council instructed the Lord Mayor and aldermen to search out the writers of libels, examine such as were quick with the pen, rake them for admission of seditious scribbling, and, for the speedier execution of a confession, put them to the torture in Bridewell. So it was, on May 12, the very day after the Council put out its order, that two officers appeared at Tom Kyd's lodging to arrest him.
- On what warrant?
- We will have no talk of warrants. You are under suspicion of expeditious writings and must come your ways.
- Not expeditious, said the other officer, seditious is the word.
- All one. Here is the basket and here are the papers, there are a many. It is unnatural that there be so many. And both officers proceeded to thrust in, with fists that had never handled book, papers they crumpled, all and every paper, bills and notes and plays unfinished, the poem on St Paul, documents well copied beginning Noverint, all. And one led Kyd manacled to the Bridewell while the other grumbled at his basketload. May rain fell, though not heavily. The Bridewell stank of its freight of misery, but the room to which Kyd was pushed, with a jovial tripping or two on the way, had large May light coming in from the window and there were May flowers on the table of the man who was to examine him. He was a well-fleshed gentleman of some thirty years, who had ale and rolls by him and kind eyes. He said:
- Sit, sit. He of the Spanish Tragedy? Well, I have seen it, blood and the biting out of a tongue, difficult to do. It will save time for us all if you state at once what here in this over-filled basket is pertinent to our enquiry. For I take it you admit guilt.
- Guilt of what?
- Of dangerous writing.
- Never, never. I write for the theatre and you will find there an heroic poem on the blessed St Paul. I court no danger.
- I have a note here sent from high up on your writing a play on Sir Thomas More. Do you admit this?
- I admit it.
- He was a notable scoundrel that denied the lawfulness of our gracious Queen's father his rule of the Church, and he was tortured and lopped for it. And you writ a play on him.
- A play on him only in his time as Sheriff of London.
- But he ended on the scaffold rightly and it was perilous to write on him.
- The play was not permitted to be performed. Nor was the play my notion, it came from my lord Strange in the manner of a commandment and I could not well disobey.
- Well, that is one thing but there are others. We will not throw away time which is a most precious commodity. I will read and you will proceed to the torture. Nick Gardner, he called.
- Why is this? Why torture? I hold nothing back. I beg, no torture, I claim the clerk's exemption by law.
- On that you can read and write? That will save you only from Tyburn. Yours is not a Tyburn matter. Or I think not. Ah, here.
The Nick Gardner he had called entered, a gross man in a leathern apron, chewing a bever and cheery enough. He led Kyd somewhat kindly to his chamber of terror, where an assistant or prentice was cheery too, though with few teeth and those black. Gardner shewed Kyd with some pride the machines of his profession - a rack well bloodied, a thumb and finger screw, the ceiling manacles for hanging, the oil lamp for skin-singeing, the wire whips of fine steel for whipping.
- What is to be, master? You are to be put to it till you scream you are ripe to confess of infamy, that being the manner of it. Will you come to this gear?
- I will confess now. And Kyd shook as in a dance that the assistant greatly admired. There is no need of this.
- Ah nay, master, you know not the game of it. Well, there are others to be done, this is a fretful morning, so we will break fingers only. See, Jack, this is how it is done. Aaaaargh.
Kyd's writing hand was a mess of throbbing and swollen flesh, a nail or two had been pincered out before the cracking of bone in the little render as it was termed, and he howled and groaned as he was led back to his interrogator who had been steady in his reading.
- Well, all this is enough and more, it shall be taped in red and sent up to the Council. And writ with so fine a hand, what, man, were you thinking on, what were you then about? And he showed Kyd what he had written in a crude hand on the verso of the outer folded leaf. 12 May 1593: Vile Heretical Conceits denying the Deity of Jesus Christ our Saviour found among the papers of Thomas Kyd prisoner.
- Aaargh. Not mine.
- You deny this to be your scrivener's fist?
- No. Writ under constraint. Dagger at back. Mr Marlin, Marley, Marlowe. Kyd swooned but was face-flapped back to attention.
- Marlowe of Tamburlaine and The Yew? His words but your copy?
- That.
- It is not always good to interrogate directly after the torture, I have said that often. A man does not speak clear. Well, you shall have a day and night in the cells, you may bind up your wounds in rags of your own shirt and tomorrow we may resume.
AND, of course, at Scadbury Kit knew nothing of this. He was being honoured by a visit from Robert Poley, who had ridden express from the Garden. He greeted Tom Walsingham friendlily and with a superior affability slapped Frizer on the back, a known confederate in lowly tasks in the past. Great swollen left ballock of St Athanasius, was the whole world then in it?
- To talk, Kit. We will take a turn among the trees this fine May morning. Such fine leafy canopies that bid the sun be gentle, but in this blessed uninvaded island always gentle. The Spanish are fiery because they have a fiery luminary in the heavens burning their souls to furious madness. They will come, Kit, if they can.
- I am to do something?
- You are not longer sporting with the flummeries of the playhouse, that is a good thing. What do you do?
- I finish my heroic poem. I translate a little Ovid, a little Lucan.
- Like a gentleman, good. Well, here is the story. The Catholic earls of Scotland did not arrive in Berwick. Who forewarned them? We do not know. Do you know?
- How could I k
now? Unless you suggest -
- Suggest nothing. Your loyalty is unassailable. I have my suspicions of our little man in Edinburgh, the world is full of turners about and twisters, a foul world. To my story. The Scottish Catholic earls will not appear on English soil at all, not yet. All seems to be in the hands of Sir William Stanley. I told you of him?
- The cousin of Lord Strange.
- Even so. He has this papist army in the Low Countries, English scoundrels and Irish kerns. He is to come over to meet his noble cousin and confirm that he is to be the centre of Scottish Catholic hopes. And, of course, Spanish. There is to be a London meeting - when it is to be I must find out in Flanders. It seems that we are go back to the old days, Kit - Babington and the rest of them. Will Lord Strange be able to accept your feigned conversion?
- Lord Strange will no doubt have heard of my supposed atheism. I have not met him. But atheism and Catholicism are easily wrapped in the one blanket.
- We shall know better what to do when I return from Flanders. Two weeks only of absence, I cannot afford more. I sail out from Deptford and sail back thither. Let us meet there on May the thirtieth. You know the house, Tom Walsingham tells me. Mistress Bull is now the Widow Bull. Come early in the day to be on the safest side.
- I am unsure of this. Unsure of my power to perform the old feigning.
- That is why we shall have to talk. Deptford is cool, the garden is leafy. The plague has not struck there, it seems unwilling to swim the Thames.
- No harm in our meeting.
Tom Kyd was dragged from his cell in the early May morning, haggard and in pulsing pain. With his left hand he could raise the cup of water he was surlily given, but he could eat no bread, having small stock of saliva. He was taken, not pushed, to the room of his yesterday's interrogation. Here there were now two men, the one he knew who, in acknowledgment of the formality bestowed by the other, now gave his name as Cooper. The new man was of a higher order, a servant of the Privy Council who called himself Stephen Wheelwright. Kyd's spinning world of great agony caught a bond of ancestral craft between the two names, what he could not say, something to do with axeing, cutting and sawing. Mr Wheelwright was in black very neat and smelling at the new flowers of the morning. He said somewhat grimly to Kyd:
I dislike not these verses. Odd lines of your tragedy adhere to the memory. You are not to be dealt with as any common scribbler of subversion. That is why you are not to be put further to the torture. I take it you are dextrous not sinstrous. Your writing will be somewhat hampered. This now must be explained. And he gave Kyd's face a cooling draught from the waved papers marked Vile Heretical Conceits.
- I have already. Marlowe.
- Or Marley or Morley or Merlin. Copied under duress saith Mr Cooper here. How then?
- He is of extremest violence. The copying of heresies from a book he brought. A commission. From Sir Walter Raleigh. He said. I would not but there was vile and foul importunacy.
- For Sir Walter Raleigh you say. Yet they remain among your papers. That argueth contra.
- They were never collected. The commission was forgot.
- You were paid for an act of scrivening?
- I am owed still. Those papers not truly mine were shuffled among papers mine truly. I am in pain.
- A man of violence, you say, this Marlowe. Also of violent and atheistical speech, as is much reported. His atheism has gone into recent print. Or the imputation thereof. You confirm this from your knowledge?
- Ever mocking God and our blessed Saviour. He mocked at my great poem of St Paul. He said that St Paul was but a juggler. That Harlot that is a Raleigh man could perform better.
- Back ever to Sir Walter Raleigh. Did he speak of a nest of atheism?
- He spoke of no nest. The heretical speech was all his own.
- Do you swear to all you have said?
- Bring me the blessed Bible and I will swear on it. Bring me the communion cup to drain. So fervent am I in abhorrence. I swear as I hope to be saved.
- You will see the virtue of torture, Mr Kyd. It bringeth a man to a manner of humility in which the truth is the sole garment. He cannot say like your Hieronimo Why then I'll fit you. All is not over but you may go. You will be called when wanted. And then we shall have done with the matter.
So Kyd left in great agony to abide the subsidence of the gross swelling and the mending of his fingers to strange and useless shapes, like twigs of a dead tree. And the interrogation was reported to the Privy Council and the Heretical Conceits delivered up to the same. And on May 18 one of the Messengers of Her Majesty's Chamber, a Mr Henry Maunder, was directed, in the words of his commission, to repair to the house of Mr Thomas Walsingham or to any. other place where he shall understand Christopher Marlowe to be staying and to apprehend him and bring him to court.
PART THREE
i'r had long to wait, in that afternoon of May 20, in the gallery outside the chamber where he was to be examined. It was in Westminster and he wondered why not in the cooler salt air of Greenwich, away from the stench and howls and moans and bells of the ever-present plague, though that, they said, was abating. It had all something to do with Tom Kyd, and he did not properly understand. Mr Maunder, who had ridden with him from Scadbury, spoke in a manner saturnine of Kyd's not writing much any more since he was dextrous of fist, and this he did not understand either. So he patrolled on soft shoes the corridor, murky with dusty mullioned windows against which leafy summer struck silently like ghosts of old time in vain demand of entrance. There were in a corner between the great doorway of the chamber and the windowed wall dried-up flies, muscal mummies, in abandoned webs and, as a good poet, he forbore to convert them into figures of a possible future state for himself. He was not under arrest, merely here for examination in some matter pertinent to no longer dextrous Kyd, whatever that signified. A liveried man, bald though young, was near-deferential when he came out of the examining chamber, nodding that Kit might now enter and holding open the door.
- Sit, sir, sit. So he sat. The Archbishop of Canterbury had spoken, for this session not garbed for ceremony but in the plain gown and square cap of his quotidian business. That lined and acid face was of Sir Thomas Heneage, appointed head of the Service: him Poley had once pointed out at a distance. There was Sir Robert Cecil, of the great family, whom fate, unmindful of familial greatness, had endowed with a hump on his back. His eyes were affable, he even nodded. Of course, they were of a year at Cambridge, what now had been his college? And the peevish boy's face over a snowy ruff and gold and scarlet beneath was of my lord of Essex. Kit had not thought him to have joined the Privy Council; this was exceptional honour for one so young and must be of most recent date. His Grace of Canterbury held up a taped bundle, saying:
- To be brief, there are heresies written here duly noted, found in the chambers of a Mr Thomas Kyd, yeoman not gentleman, admitted by him to be in his own hand, imputed by him to have provenience in your request or, as he puts it, impetuous importunacy that they be copied from your dictation. The heresies are foul and blasphemous. What do you say?
- I deny the impetuous importunacy, as your grace or Mr Kyd has it. I admit that this work was done. As a noverint by trade turned playwright Mr Kyd was willing for a fee to do it.
- These are not Kyd's opinions?
- Far from it. I know him for a man of somewhat whining piety.
If he had expected then a smile he did not get it. His lordship of Essex said:
- Are these then your opinions?
- No, my lord - if, as I take it, that is how you are to be addressed, I have not had the honour of an introduction - no, they are Arian arguments taken from an old book. They were copied that they might be discussed and refuted. My lord of Canterbury will doubtless know the book. It came my way in my studies of theology. It was printed in the reign of Queen Mary of inglorious memory. The Fall of the Late Arian is the title. Its author I have forgot.
- Let me say now, the Earl said, that you had best not
teeter in the direction of insolence. These be grave matters and modesty and deference are on your part in order.
- I modestly defer, my lord. The Archbishop said:
- I do not see what this is about. The book, as you say, I know or knew. Arianism is finally confuted and there is no further need of argument. Did you consider you could do better?
- Not I, your grace. I was fully satisfied. But some whose learning I respect thought there were gaping holes in the arguments that might lead some to consider there was a possible truth in the heresy that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God.
- Who are these paragons of learning? Sir Robert Cecil gently asked.
Kit now hesitated. He smelt danger. He said:
- Mr Thomas Harlot, for one. The Earl of Northumberland for another. There are several men of learning most warm to give to the truths of our faith the structuring of what must appeal to reason.
- Reason and faith, the Archbishop said, do not of necessity cohere. Reason saith that water will not be transformed to wine. Faith has a contrary answer.
- We were warned at Cambridge, your grace, of the dangers of what is termed fideism. The Summa of Aquinas makes an appeal to reason.
- Was this Kyd one of these reasonable enquirers? Sir Thomas Heneage asked.
- Never, sir, never.
- And you? the Earl of Essex asked.
- I was admitted to the company, my lord.
-A company that held up the truths of religion to the examination of reason?
- Yes, my lord.
- A company that met at Durham House under the shield of the man Raleigh?
- Sir Walter, if I am to be absolute in matters of title and address. This company enquired in full legitimacy of the nature of the stars and the planets, and of divers matters of cosmogony.
- And, the Archbishop asked, of the nature of Almighty God and His Blessed Son?
- The presence of the outlines of Arian heresy in those papers you hold, your grace, doth indicate that that most deep and awful matter was never raised. The company deferred to the teachings of the Church over which your grace presides.