On 7 July 1585, writing to Lord Burghley, William Fleetwood mentioned a "Nicholas Skeeres" among a number of "maisterles men & cut-purses, whose practice is to robbe Gentlemen's chambers and Artificers' shoppes in and about London".
[7] Skeres had lured Smith into Wolfall's clutches, a role he admitted to having undertaken many times before over the past ten or twelve years.
"[11] In 1589 Skeres was also paid on a warrant signed by Sir Francis Walsingham for the carrying of confidential letters between the Earl of Essex (in Exeter) and the court.
[12] In 1925, Leslie Hotson discovered details of the inquest on the death of the famous poet/dramatist, Christopher Marlowe, in the house of Eleanor Bull in Deptford, at which Nicholas Skeres was one of the three "gentlemen" also present.
[13] The report itself tells us that one of them, Ingram Frizer, having been attacked by Marlowe from behind because of a dispute over payment of the bill (the "reckoning"), killed him in self-defence by stabbing him over the right eye.
Although some biographers still accept the story told at the inquest as a true account,[14] the majority nowadays find it hard to believe, and suggest that it was a deliberate murder, even though there is little agreement as to just who was behind it or their motive for such a course of action.
[15] The Marlovian theory even argues that the most logical reason for those people to have been there at that time was to fake Marlowe's death, allowing him to escape almost certain trial and execution for his seditious atheism.
In this case, the letter seems to have worked, since (as Hotson puts it) "'Nicholas Kyrse, alias Skeers, servant to the Earl of Essex' was arrested on 13 March 1594/5 by Sir Richard Martin, Alderman,[18] "in a very dangerous company" at the house of Edmund Williamson.