Christopher Marlowe and his associates Author:John Henry Ingram Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III LONDON : MANHOOD No promise or hope of preferment would have been needed to draw Marlowe to London, the centre of literary activity as well as ... more »of political affairs. That he intended to rely upon his literary abilities for fame and fortune is self-evident. He was not the sort of man likely to look for the help of others to make a career for him, although most of his school and college associates had already migrated to the metropolis, and could prove serviceable in time of need, should such ever arise. Amongst old Cambridge companions there was Richard Boyle, who had been destined for the Bar, but who, finding he was unable to support himself at that, had forsaken Jurisprudence, and had, as he records in his textit{Remembrances, 'put myself into the service of Sir Roger Manwood, Lord Chief Baron . . . where I served as one of his clerks.'78 It was probably through the Boyles, or some of his Canterbury friends, that Marlowe made the acquaintance of Roger Manwood. Like so many of Marlowe's associates, Manwood was of Kentish extraction, having been born at Sandwich, wherehis father was in business as a draper, and of which place his grandfather had been twice mayor, and, in 1523, its parliamentary representative. Soon after he had been called to the Bar, Roger Manwood was appointed Recorder of Sandwich and then elected to represent that ancient Cinque Port in Parliament. In 1578 he had been made Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, was knighted, and was in great favour at Court. Evidently he was a very desirable acquaintance for a young man having to make his position in the world, and there is every reason to believe that he was on friendly terms with the poet. It is worth notice that in early life the future judge had displayed his dramatic proclivities by appeari...« less