Marlowe's Childhood

Baptism at St. George the Martyr, Canterbury

Christopher Marlowe was baptised at the church of St. George the Martyr in Canterbury on Saturday 26 February, 1564.1 St George's was one of a dozen parish churches inside the city walls, situated near to St George's Gate (aka Newingate) on the east side of the city. The entry in the church register records:

The 26th day of ffebruary was Christened
Christofer the sonne of John Marlow 2

Marlowe's exact date of birth is not known, but it is likely that he was born only a few days before being baptised. Elizabethan children were commonly baptised as soon as possible after birth, usually within a week.3 Whilst Catholics believed that the soul of an unbaptised child was condemned to Limbo, Anglicans also saw the rite as necessary for salvation. Parents thus greatly feared the death of a new-born child before baptism, and the infant mortality rates of the time certainly added further pressure. Indeed, Christopher may have been lucky to survive himself, for Canterbury experienced high mortality rates during a sustained outbreak of plague in the city between 1563 and 1565.4

The vicar who would have likely have conducted Christopher's baptism (as well as recording the event in the parish register) was one Reverend William Sweeting, who was admitted as vicar at St George's on 23 May 1561.5 There continued to be a shortage of clerics, and Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker initiated ordinations of willing candidates on a large scale in an attempt to fill the vacant parish church livings. Sweeting was originally a tailor by trade, and was recorded as a layman helping the Catholic curate John Bashendon at St George's in 1556, the year before his wife died. But in March 1560 he was ordained deacon at Lambeth Palace, and then ordained priest the very next month before returning to St George's in Canterbury.6 The church had lacked a priest since Bashendon had preached on the Mass at Lent in 1559 in defiance of new Government regulations. Bashendon attempted to flee the country but was apprehended at the port of Dover and taken to London, before being imprisoned in Canterbury until such time as he would "in humble sort to acknowledge his folly and recant the same".7

The hastily installed Sweeting appears to have been somewhat lacking in his new role. A Visitation in the year of Marlowe's baptism notes that he was unable to preach, and that only two of the expected four sermons a year had been performed, and those by other clergymen brought in by Sweeting. Undaunted, by 1569 Sweeting also held the office of curate at St Mary Bredin close by, but despite the two livings he died a poor man and was buried at St George's on 03 May 1574.8

The parish church of St George the Martyr was likely first built in the latter decades of the eleventh century, after the consecration in 1070 of Lanfranc as Archbishop of Canterbury following the Norman invasion. The first documented record of the church comes from the middle of the twelfth century, in the form of a cathedral rental.9 The west tower likely dates from this time, when the nave and chancel were also rebuilt. In the fifteenth century, a new tower was built and new windows in the perpendicular gothic style were added to the south wall along the modern St George's Street. A round stair turret was also appended to the south wall, with a spirelet and weathercock.10

The outstanding feature of the church was a beautiful thirteenth century octagonal font that would already have been around three centuries old by the time Christopher Marlowe was baptised in it. The font "stood on a central column, surrounded by seven smaller columns with moulded bell-shaped capitals and bases".11 It would survive nearly four more centuries until the Second World War.

By 1569, when Marlowe was five years old, the parish contained 208 communicants.13 The church of St George the Martyr also housed the great waking bell for the whole city, cast in the fourteenth century and inscribed "Sate Georgi ora pro nobis" (St George, pray for us). The Chamber of Canterbury accounts record that in 1586, "an annual stipend of 1l. 6s. 8d. is paid to a person, who shall every morning, at four o'clock, ring the great bell, in Saint George's steeple, for one quarter of an hour".14

Alas, after standing for the best part of nine centuries, the church of St. George the Martyr was largely destroyed by fire during a German Luftwaffe air-raid on 01 June 1942, an attack that formed part of the so-called Baedeker Blitz on cultural and historical targets and named for the German tourist guidebooks. The attack in the early hours killed 43 people and destroyed 800 buildings, although fortunately the cathedral was not seriously damaged. The clock that had protruded from the tower of St George's since 1836 stopped at 02:18 am,15 and the bells (those dating from the 1600s together with the one that had survived from before Marlowe's time) fell to the ground partly melted and subsequently 'disappeared'.

The remaining shell of the church building was levelled in 1952, but although the spire had been lost the surviving church tower was restored and left to stand alone as a monument and Grade II Listed Building. In 1955, the clock dials were repaired and time began to move once more. A plaque on the tower records it as the church where Marlowe was baptised, with another unveiled in 1992 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Baedeker raid.