He is particularly noted for having presided over the inquest into the controversial death at Deptford in 1593 of the poet/dramatist Christopher Marlowe.
In 1589 Danby apparently took over the role of Coroner of The Queen's Household from Richard Vale.
The first time Danby's name appears in this capacity (in the Middlesex records held at the London Metropolitan Archives) was for an inquest held in October 1589—in Shepperton, Middlesex—when he presided together with a county coroner, John Chalkhill, at the inquest on one Robert Wrote.
Some biographers still accept the story told at the inquest as a true account,[9] but the majority of the more recent ones find the verdict of a killing in self-defence difficult to accept, and think that it must have been a deliberate murder, even though there is no agreement as to who was behind it or just what their motive might have been for arranging it.
[10] 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.