This connection is one of the reasons offered for suggesting that Marlowe's death may have been linked with intelligence work, and not a dispute over a bill for food and accommodation, as in the coroner's verdict.
[2] The inheritance came as Thomas's debts were mounting but it was not in time to prevent a short spell in the Fleet debtors' prison early in 1590, before he was able to take up residence at Scadbury.
Frizer may have had a further role: he may have acted as a messenger between Walsingham and his former contacts in the intelligence world, entrusted with keeping them at arm's length from his employer's new life as landed gentleman and courtier.
[4] Francis Walsingham made use of his young relative as early as October 1580, when he appointed him as one of the trusted couriers between the English court and the queen's ambassador in France.
[7] The first poet to seek Walsingham's patronage was Thomas Watson, an old acquaintance from the time when both men had been engaged on Sir Francis's secret business in France.
[8] His timely dedication to Thomas Walsingham, newly come into money through his inheritance, prefaced A Lament for Meliboeus, an elegy on the death of Sir Francis.
Watson's venture was based on the family relationship between the dedicatee and the dead statesman, but Thomas Walsingham proved to be a genuine patron of literary endeavour and other poets followed the example.