Christopher Marlowe - The Scadbury Connection

Christopher Marlowe was born at Canterbury in 1563 and became one of the greatest poets and playwrights of his age.
Thomas Walsingham IV became Marlowe's patron and the poet is known to have stayed at Scadbury from time to time, and to have attended services at St.Nicholas' Church in Chislehurst.
He may have obtained material for 'The Massacre in Paris' from the Walsinghams. Sir Francis Walsingham, Thomas Walsingham's cousin, was the English Ambassador in Paris at the time of the St.Bartholomew's Day massacre of Protestant Huguenots in 1572.

Marlowe was arrested at Scadbury on 18 May 1593 on a charge of heresy brought after allegations made by Richard Baines. Baines appears to have been a doubtful witness, being hanged at Tyburn the following year for a ‘degrading offence’. Marlowe was freed following examination by the Privy Council on condition he remained within a few miles of the Court at Greenwich.
He died in a brawl in the house of Eleanor Bull at Deptford Strand on 30 May 1593. He was with there with Ingram Frizer, Robert Poley and Nicholas Skeres, all of whom were associated with Thomas Walsingham and probably companions of Marlowe at Scadbury. The subsequent Coroner’s report stated that they ‘could not be at one nor agree about the payment of the sum of pence, that is, le recknynge..’, and in the ensuing struggle Marlowe was fatally wounded above the eye.

Another faction believes that Christopher Marlowe was not killed at Deptford but was spirited away and went on to write Shakespeare's works.
Calvin Hoffman, an American theatre critic, claimed in 1952 that Marlowe was the author of Shakespeare's plays while in hiding at Scadbury or elsewhere following his contrived 'death'. He developed a theory that copies of the plays in Marlowe's hand could have been entombed with his patron, Sir Thomas Walsingham, in 1630. In 1956 the monument in St.Nicholas' Church was opened and found to contain no manuscripts. The remains of Walsingham were not disturbed, being in the vault below. It is interesting to note that Scadbury has another connection with the 'Shakespeare authorship' question. Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland, is said by some to be the author of the plays and was married to the grand-daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham.