Thomas Drury

Thomas Drury (8 May 1551 – 26 August 1603) was one of a group of men in England in 1591 believed to be involved in reporting the playwright, Christopher Marlowe, for blasphemy.[1]

Contents

Early life

Thomas Drury was born to Robert Drury of Hawstead, Suffolk, and his wife Audrey, nee Rich, the daughter of Lord Richard Rich, who had been Lord Chancellor. He had two elder brothers, William and Robert. In 1564, he went up to Cambridge as a gentleman pensioner at Caius College.[2][3] He was a friend of the Earl of Oxford, and was believed once to have been asked to kill Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel.[4]

On 13 May 1591, a warrant was issued for his arrest, and his home was searched for "matters of state," possibly a report he had prepared on Marlowe. He was taken to the Marshalsea two days later and charged with "diuerse greate and fonde matters,"[5] and spent 15–24 months there.

He died of the plague in 1603 in his lodgings at the Swan Inn in Southwark.[6]

Notes

  1. ^ Cheney 2004, p. 37.
  2. ^ Drury, Thomas in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
  3. ^ Nicholl 2006, pp. 157–158.
  4. ^ Nicholl 2006, p. 159.
  5. ^ Kendall 2003, p. 244.
  6. ^ Nicholl 2006, p. 164.

References

  • Cheney, Patrick Gerard (2004). The Cambridge companion to Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge University Press.
  • Kendall, Roy (2003). Christopher Marlowe and Richard Baines: journeys through the Elizabethan underground. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
  • Nicholl, Charles (2006). "By my onely meanes sett downe: The Texts of Marlow's Atheism," in Kozuka, Takashi and Mulryne, J.R. (2006). Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson: new directions in biography. Ashgate Publishing.
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