A Fine Madness by Alan Judd (best classic books TXT) 📕

and when I protested, mildly enough, he replied that those privileged to perform the Lord’s work should not complain of the yoke. In fairness, he was as exacting of himself as of others, but that did not make for an easy life.

I collected Christopher from Newgate. He was heartily glad to be freed but worried for Watson since many there died of fever, it being such an ill-favoured place with airs to make you retch and a stench that lingered about you for days after. He and Watson were thrown into the common cell for their first night, an evil dark place called Stone Hold. It was underground and overcrowded, with some prisoners chained to the dripping walls. There was one candle set in the middle but the rats took it and thereafter ran freely across men’s legs in the dark, nibbling their clothes. One poor shivering wretch had no clothes at all, having been there, he said, nine years.

But Christopher and Watson had access to money and next morning, after words with their gaoler, they were moved to their own upper-floor cell with a window. They had doubtless been thrown into Stone Hold in order to encourage a better bribe. My experience here in King’s Bench gaol persuades me it is the same in all gaols. Conditions here improved greatly as soon as it was known that you, sir, were taking an interest in me on behalf of the Court. I am treated almost as a guest, for which I thank you heartily. I am most anxious to be of use to His Majesty but still I do not understand what of Christopher Marlowe he wants to hear from me. It would help my memory and my interpretation if you could afford me some hint of the direction of the King’s interest.

Very well, I shall continue with everything. Tom Watson was duly pardoned at the next sessions, at the same time as Christopher’s bail was discharged. They appeared before Sir Roger Manwood, the Kent judge who had been patron for Christopher’s scholarship. He despatched the matter swiftly. I suspect Mr Secretary, also a Kent man, might have spoken to him, since when he asked me the date of the session he asked also that I should find out who was due to sit. Although Christopher was discharged immediately and Watson’s pardon recommended, it was some months more before his pardon came and he was released. He died, poor man, not many years later of a sickness of the chest caught in Newgate. So William Bradley had his revenge from beyond the grave.

Watson was acknowledged a great poet, especially of the Latin, though I do not know that he is much read now. He asked Christopher to see his last work published with a dedication to his patroness, the Lady Sidney, whom you will recall was Mr Secretary’s beloved only daughter and widow to the great Sir Philip Sidney. All this Christopher performed dutifully.

It was not the only epitaph he composed. He wrote most generously in Latin of his patron, Sir Roger, who may of course have helped him in sundry other ways of which I knew nothing. I never knew Christopher to be short of money – at least, he never complained of it – and I suspect he received generous patronage in his youth. Later, of course, his plays and verses made him famous and he must have earned well though he was always careful with money, perhaps even tight. But when we were paying him he never asked for more, as many did. In fact, Mr Secretary always paid well: ‘Knowledge is never too dear,’ he would say, as I may have told you already. He knew very well how costly our business can be because he often had to pay for it himself. Queen Elizabeth always preferred her subjects to spend on her behalf.

You ask about fights. I have already mentioned his readiness and the Bradley business was not his only affray in those years. He was brought before Sir Owen Hopton a second time for threatening the constables in Holywell Street and was bound over to keep the peace on promise of payment of twenty pounds, to be raised if necessary from the sale of any goods and property he might acquire. Then in Canterbury he fought a duel with one William Corkine, a musician of the cathedral. I do not know what about but neither was injured. Corkine started legal proceedings afterwards but dropped them. Around the time of Christopher’s death Thomas Kyd and Richard Baines wrote that he was wont to cause ‘sudden privy injuries to men’. It was true he would not hold back in argument and he was certainly prepared to settle matters with his fists, as I have said, but I never knew him start the argument.

You ask whether his arguments were personal, whether he had personal relations with those he fought, whether the fights were about those relations. I cannot help. I never heard that they were, or were not. You see, there were long periods when we saw nothing of each other, our daily lives being so different. But I do recall taxing him once over his temper. We were in Mary’s house, seated at table. Mary was there but not Watson, so it may have been just after Christopher was released from Newgate. He was telling us how he had learned about counterfeiting coins from another prisoner, John Poole, incarcerated for that crime. He laughed that Newgate had given him ‘as good a right to coin as the Queen of England’ and that if he found a cunning stamp-maker he would coin French crowns and English shillings. I took him more seriously than perhaps he meant – at the time, anyway – and reminded him that this was a capital offence that could have him boiled in oil. Even jesting about it was dangerous.

‘My apologies, your Honour. It is so good to be free that cheerfulness will