Ingram Frizer (/ˈɪŋɡrəm ˈfraɪzər/ ING-grəm FRY-zər; died August 1627) was an English gentleman and businessman of the late 16th and early 17th centuries who is notable for his reported killing[1] of the playwright Christopher Marlowe in the home of Eleanor Bull on 30 May 1593.
[3] 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.
[16][17][18] In the spring of 1593 he appears to have been staying at Thomas Walsingham's home at Scadbury, near Chislehurst in Kent, and had been invited by Frizer to a "feast" in Deptford,[19] a township on the river Thames some seven miles to the north, at the house of Eleanor Bull, the widow of a local official.
[23] Complete details of Marlowe's killing on 30 May 1593, as contained in an inquest run by the Coroner of the Queen's Household two days later, were discovered by Leslie Hotson in 1925.
Frizer, his freedom of movement restricted between Poley and Skeres, struggled to defend himself and in doing so stabbed Marlowe above the right eye, killing him immediately.
[32] Honan considers it possible that, given the circumstances, it was Thomas Walsingham, accustomed "not to look far into Frizer's...trickery", who initiated the deed by making his agent aware that Marlowe was becoming a liability to them both, and so indirectly securing his former friend's death.
[33] Another theory suggests that Marlowe, as a supposed member of The School of Night, became aware of Essex's plots against Raleigh, and Skeres was sent to warn him to keep silent.
[34] The Marlovian theory suggests that Frizer took part in the faking of Marlowe's death to allow him to escape trial and almost certain execution for his subversively atheistic activities.