Richard Baines

Last updated • 5 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Richard Baines (fl. 1568–1593) was an Elizabethan double agent, informer and ordained Catholic priest. [1] He is best known for the so-called Baines Note, a list of accusations against the poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe, which has been described by Paul Kocher as the "master key to the mind of Marlowe" and that "for revolutionary impact and scope it stands alone, an extraordinary document in the history of free thought". [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Nothing is known about where and when Baines was born, but 1554 would seem to be a reasonable estimate for the latter. [3] One of the first mentions of him were his matriculation in November 1568 as a pensioner at Christ's College, Cambridge. There was another Richard Baines, favoured by earlier biographers, who was at Oxford, but Kendall has convincingly argued that the Baines who was connected with Marlowe was the Cambridge one. [4] Assuming that this was the right Richard Baines, he gained his BA (Bachelor of Arts) degree in 1573, commencing his MA (i.e. being awarded the degree of Master of Arts) at Caius College, Cambridge, in 1576.

Double agent

The English College at Rheims in France was a Catholic seminary at which English Catholics studied for the priesthood, with the aim of returning covertly to England to provide Catholic clergy for those who still adhered to the "old religion" in what was now a Protestant country. Some would support action to return England to the Catholic faith, even if this entailed the assassination of its Protestant Queen, Elizabeth I.

On 4 July 1579 Baines arrived at Rheims, being ordained a sub-deacon three years later on 25 March 1581, a deacon on 8 May, and a priest on 21 September that year. On 4 October 1581 he celebrated his first Mass as a priest.

Unfortunately for him, however, he confided to a fellow-seminarist his rejection of the Catholic faith and his plans to return to England to report to the queen's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham about the various plots being hatched in Rheims. In May 1582 he was imprisoned in Rheims town gaol, but a year later was back at the seminary, still a prisoner, where he wrote a lengthy confession of his offences. [5] It seems quite likely that he had in fact been an agent of Sir Francis Walsingham all along. [6]

Flushing

Walsingham died in 1590, and Baines was next heard of in early 1592, when he was in Flushing, at that time an English possession in the Netherlands, apparently sharing a room with Christopher Marlowe. [7] According to a letter [8] sent by the Governor, Sir Robert Sidney, to the Lord Treasurer, Lord Burghley, Baines accused Marlowe of having been involved in the counterfeiting of coins. Only one of these—a Dutch shilling made of pewter—had been put into circulation ('uttered'), but some pieces of "Her Majesty's coin" had also been counterfeited, and this made it petty treason, a capital offence. Marlowe was sent back under guard to face Lord Burghley, but seems to have been released almost immediately, suggesting that whatever he was doing was on behalf of Burghley, and that Baines was unaware of this. Whether Baines was there on behalf of some rival faction of the Privy Council is a possibility, but at the moment unknowable.

The Baines Note

A year later, in May 1593, it seems that Baines was instrumental in getting the playwright Thomas Kyd wrongly accused of an offence for which he was imprisoned and tortured [9] and shortly after this Baines was called upon, apparently by the Lord Keeper, Lord Puckering, to provide an account of what he knew of the heretical views of Christopher Marlowe. Seemingly relishing the task, he produced the so-called Baines Note [10] which, with some amendment by Puckering, [11] was sent to the Queen. Before any action could be taken against Marlowe, however, an inquest reported him dead, stabbed in self-defence by Ingram Frizer—a man with whom he had been dining—in a dispute over payment of the bill or "reckoning". [12] A majority of Marlowe's more recent biographers have nevertheless expressed doubts about whether the inquest jury's finding was what really happened.

Vicar or thief?

It had been thought of in the past that a Richard Baines who finished up as a vicar in Waltham, Lincolnshire, might have been the one described as Marlowe's nemesis. [13] Roy Kendall, however, has persuasively argued that he was framed for a capital crime the following year by an unnamed man with whom he went drinking, a crime about which a ballad was even written. The details of the cup-stealing scene in Doctor Faustus between "Dick" and "Robin" in fact seem so similar to those of the Baines case [14] that it may well have been an addition made after 1594, in December of which year this Richard Baines was hanged at Tyburn. [15]

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Nicholl 2002 , pp. 146–153
  2. ↑ Kocher (1962 , p. 33) quoted by Kendall (2003 , p. 23) in his Christopher Marlowe and Richard Baines: Journeys Through the Elizabethan Underground (based on his Ph.D. thesis with a similar title).
  3. ↑ Kendall 2003 , p. 34
  4. ↑ Kendall 2003 , p. 32
  5. ↑ This included the possible intention to murder the members of the college by poisoning either the soup or its well, something which appeared—probably not by coincidence—in Marlowe's play The Jew of Malta .
  6. ↑ Nicholl 2002 , p. 448
  7. ↑ Nicholl 2002 , pp. 278–284
  8. ↑ http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/flushing.htm Archived 19 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ↑ Nicholl 2002 , pp. 371–373
  10. ↑ See a transcript of the original at http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/baines1.htm Archived 12 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ↑ Nicholl 2002 , p. 323. For example, he removed the famous comment alleged to have been made by Marlowe, "that all they that love not Tobacco & Boys were fools". A transcript of the version eventually sent to her is at http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/baines3.htm
  12. ↑ Discovered by Leslie Hotson in 1925, his translation of the inquisition is at http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/inquis~2.htm Archived 19 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine .
  13. ↑ Nicholl 2002 , p. 421
  14. ↑ In fact the name 'Rafe' in the "A text"—thought more likely to be nearer Marlowe's original—was even changed to Baines's name "Dick" in the 1616 "B text".
  15. ↑ Kendall 2003 , pp. 308–31

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Marlowe</span> 16th-century English dramatist, poet, and translator

Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the "many imitations" of his play Tamburlaine, modern scholars consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the preeminent Elizabethan playwright. Marlowe was the first to achieve critical reputation for his use of blank verse, which became the standard for the era. His plays are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his catering to the prurient tastes of his Elizabethan audiences for generous displays of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed.

Thomas Kyd was an English playwright, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francis Walsingham</span> English spy and politician (c. 1532–1590)

Sir Francis Walsingham was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 20 December 1573 until his death and is popularly remembered as her "spymaster".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley</span> English statesman and chief adviser to Queen Elizabeth I (1520–1598)

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley was an English statesman, the chief adviser of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign, twice Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer from 1572. In his description in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, A.F. Pollard wrote, "From 1558 for forty years the biography of Cecil is almost indistinguishable from that of Elizabeth and from the history of England."

Richard Topcliffe was a priest hunter and practitioner of torture during the reign of Elizabeth I of England. A landowner and Member of Parliament, he became notorious as the government's chief enforcer of the penal laws against the practice of Catholicism.

Calvin Hoffman, born Leo Hochman in Brooklyn, NY, was an American theater critic, press agent and writer who popularized in his 1955 book The Man Who Was Shakespeare the Marlovian theory that playwright Christopher Marlowe was the actual author of the works attributed to William Shakespeare. Like other alternate Shakespearean authorship theories, Hoffman's claims have been largely dismissed by mainstream Shakespearean scholars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roderigo Lopes</span> 16th century physician

Roderigo Lopes served as a physician-in-chief to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 1581 until his death by execution, having been found guilty of plotting to poison her. A Portuguese converso or New Christian of Jewish ancestry, he is the only royal doctor in English history to have been executed, and may have inspired the character of Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, which was written within four years of his death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marlovian theory of Shakespeare authorship</span> Fringe theory that Christopher Marlowe was the real author of William Shakespeares works

The Marlovian theory of Shakespeare authorship holds that the Elizabethan poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe was the main author of the poems and plays attributed to William Shakespeare. Further, the theory says Marlowe did not die in Deptford on 30 May 1593, as the historical records state, but that his death was faked.

Thomas Drury was a British government informer, messenger and swindler, who is noted for having been one of the main people responsible for accusations of heresy, blasphemy, and seditious atheism on the part of the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe given to the Privy Council in May 1593. Within a couple of weeks, Marlowe, just 29 and the same age as William Shakespeare, but one of the single greatest influences upon his work, was dead.

Ingram Frizer was an English gentleman and businessman of the late 16th and early 17th centuries who is notable for his reported killing of the playwright Christopher Marlowe in the home of Eleanor Bull on 30 May 1593. He has been described as "a property speculator, a commodity broker, a fixer for gentlemen of good worship" and a confidence trickster gulling "young fools" out of their money.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul H. Kocher</span> American scholar of literature

Paul Harold Kocher was an American scholar, writer, and professor of English. He wrote extensively on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien as well as on Elizabethan English drama, philosophy, religion, and medicine. His numerous publications include studies of Christopher Marlowe and Francis Bacon. He also authored books on the Franciscan missions of 18th- and 19th-century California.

The 1583 Throckmorton Plot was one of a series of attempts by English Roman Catholics to depose Elizabeth I of England and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots, then held under house arrest in England. The alleged objective was to facilitate a Spanish invasion of England, assassinate Elizabeth, and put Mary on the English throne.

Annie Doris "Dolly" Walker-Wraight was a British school teacher and writer. Under the name A.D. Wraight, she published in support of the Marlovian theory, the argument that Christopher Marlowe was the true author of William Shakespeare's works.

Eleanor Bull was an English woman, known for owning the establishment in which Christopher Marlowe, the Elizabethan playwright and poet, was killed in 1593.

Nicholas Skeres was an Elizabethan con-man and government informer—i.e. a "professional deceiver"—and one of the three "gentlemen" who were with the poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe when he was killed in Deptford in May 1593. Together with another of the men there, Robert Poley, he had played a part in the discovery of the Babington plot against the life of the Queen in 1586, and at the time of Marlowe's death was engaged in a money-lending swindle with the third of them, Marlowe's reported killer Ingram Frizer.

Sir Thomas Walsingham was a courtier to Queen Elizabeth I and literary patron to such poets as Thomas Watson, Thomas Nashe, George Chapman and Christopher Marlowe. He was related to Elizabeth's spymaster Francis Walsingham and the employer of Marlowe's murderer Ingram Frizer. This connection is one of the reasons offered for suggesting that Marlowe's death may have been linked with intelligence work, and not a dispute over a bill for food and accommodation, as in the coroner's verdict.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Beale (diplomat)</span> Member of the Parliament of England

Robert Beale was an English diplomat, administrator, and antiquary in the reign of Elizabeth I. As Clerk of the Privy Council, Beale wrote the official record of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, to which he was an eyewitness.

Sir Edward Stafford was an English Member of Parliament, courtier, and diplomat to France during the time of Queen Elizabeth I.

Robert Poley, or Pooley was an English double agent, government messenger and agent provocateur employed by members of the Privy Council during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I; he was described as "the very genius of the Elizabethan underworld". Poley is particularly noted for his central role in uncovering the so-called Babington plot to assassinate the Queen in 1586, and for being a witness of, and even a possible party to, the reported killing in self-defence by Ingram Frizer of the famous poet/dramatist Christopher Marlowe in May 1593.

William Danby was a sixteenth-century lawyer and Coroner of the Queen's Household towards the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. He is particularly noted for having presided over the inquest into the controversial death at Deptford in 1593 of the poet/dramatist Christopher Marlowe.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.