Marlowe's Childhood

Christopher's Siblings

Christopher Marlowe was the eldest son and second of nine children born to John and Katherine Marlowe between 1562 and 1576. When he was four years old, his elder sister Mary died leaving Christopher as the eldest surviving child. With two younger brothers also dying within weeks of being born, the Marlowes' only other surviving son was their last child, Thomas, baptised in April 1576 and twelve years Christophe's junior. Kit would have spent his formative years in the family house on St George's Street with his four younger sisters and parents. By the time he departed for Cambridge University in December 1580, all of his brothers and sisters had been born, and some brief biographical details of each follows below.

1. Mary

  • Baptised: 21 May 1562 at St George the Martyr.1
  • Buried: 28 August 1568 at St George the Martyr, aged 6.
  • The Marlowes' first child was born exactly one year after John and Katherine married, but died at the age of six.

2. Christopher

  • Baptised: 26 February 1564 at St George the Martyr.
  • Died: Stabbed to death on 30 May 1593 "in the house of a certain Eleanor Bull" at "Detford Strand" aged 29.
  • Buried: 01 June 1593 at St. Nicholas Church, Deptford.
  • The subject of our interest, who attended Cambridge University and became a poet and playwright before being fatally stabbed above the right eye by Ingram Frizer in Deptford aged just 29.

3. Margaret

  • Baptised: 18 December 15662 at St George the Martyr.
  • Married: John Jordan on 15 June 1590 at St Mary Breadman, aged 23.
  • Buried: 1642 at All Saints,3 aged ~76.
  • His sister Margaret married John Jordan at the relatively late age of 23, three years before Christopher was killed in Deptford. Jordan was a tailor by trade, listed as a servant of Richard Rogers, Dean of Canterbury. Like all John Marlowe's son-in-laws, Jordan was able to become a freeman of the city on marriage by virtue of his wife's father holding that status. In Katherine's will of 1605, the 39-year-old Margaret was bequeathed her mother's "greatest golde ringe" and 40 shillings, perhaps favoured due to her position as eldest surviving child. Three of Margaret's children are also identified in the will, each bequeathed a (silver) spoon: the eldest son John, along with William and Elizabeth. Her husband John was buried one year after Margaret in 1643, also at All Saints Church in Canterbury according to Urry.3
St. Georges Gate
Engraving: A view of St George's Gate from outside the city, with a peek of St George's Street within.4

4. Unnamed Son

  • Baptised: 31 October 1568 at St George the Martyr.
  • Buried: 05 November 1568 at St George the Martyr, aged ~1 week.
  • A tough year for the Marlowes, with their second son dying less than a week after being baptised, and this tragedy coming two months after the death of their eldest daughter Mary at the end of August.

5. Jayne

  • Baptised: 20 August 1569 at St George the Martyr.
  • Married: John Moore on 22 April 1582 at St Andrew's, aged 12.
  • Buried: After 13 January 1583, aged 13.
  • The St George's birth register entry confusingly lists the christening of "John the sonne of John Marlow" on 20 August 1569, but both Urry5 and Kuriyama6 believe this to be an error and that the entry in fact refers to the daughter Jayne, aka Joan. If so, it would mean that Jane married John Moore at the age of 12. Whilst unusual, it was legal in Elizabethan England for a girl to marry from age 12 with parental consent.7 Nine months later (by 13 January 1583) she bore John Moore a child when she would have been aged just 13, both Jayne and her son sadly dying shortly afterwards.8 Christopher, aged 18 at this time, had been away at Cambridge two years. Jayne's husband was likely the John Moore born in 1559 at Ulcombe, some 20 miles west of Canterbury, who would have been aged around 23 when he married Jayne. His sister Ursula Moore had already married Thomas Arthur,9 Katherine Marlowe's brother, which would make the Moore siblings Christopher's aunt and brother-in-law. John Moore would soon remarry after Jayne's death, but appears to have still been fondly remembered over twenty years later by Katherine, who bequeathed him 40 shillings and "the joyne presse that standeth in the greate chamber where I lye" in her will.

6. Thomas I

  • Baptised: 26 July 1570 at St George the Martyr.
  • Buried: 07 August 1570 at St George the Martyr, aged ~2 weeks.
  • The Marlowes' third son died within two weeks of being baptised. Christopher was aged six at this time.
St George's Gate by Paul Sandby
Picture: St George's Gate at Canterbury by Paul Sandby (1792, aquatint print)

7. Anne

  • Baptised: 14 July 1571 at St George the Martyr.
  • Married: John Cranford (also spelled Crauforde) on 10 June 1593 at St Mary Breadman, aged 21.
  • Buried: 07 December 1652 at All Saints Church, aged 81.
  • A third surviving daughter for the Marlowes, Anne would live longer than any of her siblings, dying in her eighties during Cromwell's Commonwealth after giving birth to a dozen children. She married John Cranford who was seven years her senior and hailed originally from Henley in Oxfordshire. Their wedding took place at St Mary Breadman church just two weeks after her brother Christopher had died at Deptford. If there was any thought to postponing the ceremony after that recent tragedy, the fact that Anne was at least two months pregnant may well have persuaded the couple not to delay. A daughter Anne was born the following January, the first of 8 girls and 4 boys,10 of whom Anthonye, John and Elisabeth were named as the recipients of yet more spoons in Katherine Marlowe's will of 1605. John was literate and held a variety of jobs, including sergeant-at-mace in the city in 1609, dying at the age of 53 in 1617. The couple ran an alehouse, the Windmill, on White Horse Lane in the city centre.11 Anne seems to have inherited some of her father's spirited and feisty quarrelsomeness. She had a reputation as "a malicious contencious uncharitable person, seeking the unjust vexacion of her neighbours", and as a "scowlde, comon swearer, a blasphemer of the name of god".12 In 1626 when in her mid-fifties, Anne armed with staff and dagger was involved in a brawl with one William Prowde, and attacked the same man with sword and knife a year later.13 This all sounds a little familiar!

8. Dorothy

  • Baptised: 18 October 1573 at St George the Martyr.
  • Married: Thomas Graddell on 30 June 1594 at St Mary Breadman, aged 20.
  • Buried: No record, but she was still alive aged ~52 when her husband died in 1625.
  • Dorothy was a fourth sister for Christopher and nearly ten years his junior. At the age of 20, a year after Christopher's death, she married Thomas Graddell who at that time was aged around 29 and a glover by trade. Married life did not start well, and within a year Thomas was accusing one John Browne of lying with his wife and having carnal knowledge of her, but ended up losing a case of defamation brought by Browne. Graddell was landlord of The George Inn on Stour Street from at least 1595 until his death in 1625, whereafter an inventory of the inn was taken.14 Thomas was constantly in trouble and on the wrong side of litigation for not paying his debts, failing to renew his innkeeper's license, and dealing in stolen goods amongst other misdemeanours. He and Dorothy were accused in the early years of their marriage of not attending church. Katherine Marlowe in her will of 1605 bequeaths her daughter Anne "a golde ringe which my daughter [Dorothy Graddell] hath which I would have her to surrender up unto her sister An". There was plenty of legal action between the Jordans, Cranfords and Gradells over the Marlowe estate in 1605. The will mentions a son John Graddell who of course gets "on[e] of the greatest silver spoones". Thomas' own will15 made in 1624 (the year before he died) appears to mention two sons both called John as well as a one-year-old granddaughter Rebecca. Dorothy was left an annuity of £3 by Thomas, but no record has been found of her own death subsequently.16

9. Thomas II

  • Baptised: 08 April 1576 at St Andrew's.
  • Buried: No record found.
  • Little trace remains of the last of the Marlowe children. Thomas was twelve years younger than his brother Christopher, and only four when the latter departed for Cambridge University. He is recorded as a choirboy at the Cathedral during Archbishop Whitgift's Visitation in 1589. Not mentioned in his mother's will in 1605 when he would have been aged 28, he must either have already died or lost touch with his family. Urry finds mention of a Thomas Marloe in Virginia in 1624 as one who travelled on the ship Jonathan,17 but Marlowe was a relatively common surname and this was nineteen years after Katherine's death by which time her son would have been 48 years old.

Footnotes:

  • Note 1: All churches mentioned on this page are located in Canterbury unless otherwise stated. Back to Text
  • Note 2: [Urry-Canterbury] p.15 says "probably 1565" but [Kuriyama] p.177 cites 1566 from the Archdeacon's Transcript of the Register. Back to Text
  • Note 3: [Urry-Canterbury] p.32. Back to Text
  • Note 4: William Gostling, A Walk In and About the City of Canterbury (William Blackley, Canterbury, 1825) - St George's Gate p.53 - engraving by R.Pollard. Back to Text
  • Note 5: [Urry-Canterbury] p.15. Back to Text
  • Note 6: [Kuriyama] p.177. Back to Text
  • Note 7: Shakespeare's Juliet was of course aged 13 ("She's not fourteen") and Lady Capulet says she had already given birth to Juliet by that age: "Here in Verona, ladies of esteem, are made already mothers: by my count, I was your mother much upon these years that you are now a maid." - Romeo & Juliet, Act I Scene III. Back to Text
  • Note 8: One wonders if the extant baptismal registry entry referring to a son John is in fact correct, with the record of an earlier baptism for Jane missing for some reason. If she was born, for example, some time in 1565 between Christopher in February 1564 and Margaret in December 1566, that would make her around 17 when she married Moore. However, Urry was extremely thorough, and this would mean no other extant record of the son John. Back to Text
  • Note 9: Tragically, Thomas and Ursula Arthur would perish along with four of their five children in the plague outbreak of August and September 1593. The remaining daughter Dorothy was taken in by the Marlowes, but died four years later aged 15 - [Urry-Canterbury] p.16. Back to Text
  • Note 10: [Urry-Canterbury] p.34. Back to Text
  • Note 11: [Urry-Canterbury] p.33 citing Canterbury Cathedral Archives, Court of Quarter Sessions CCA-CC J/Q/408 (July 1608 Sessions) in which the "Wyndmyll" in St Mary Breadman is mentioned in the hands of the "Craufords". Back to Text
  • Note 12: [Urry-Canterbury] p.34, quoting the church-wardens of St Mary Breadman in an ecclesiastical Visitation of the City of Canterbury in 1603. Back to Text
  • Note 13: [Urry-Canterbury] p.34. Back to Text
  • Note 14: KHLC PRC 10/56/114. Back to Text
  • Note 15: KHLC PRC 17/64/109. Back to Text
  • Note 16: [Urry-Canterbury] pp.35-38 on the Graddells. Back to Text
  • Note 17: [Urry-Canterbury] p.17. Back to Text