ABSTRACT
Richard Baines (b. 1566?) has been identified with some assurance by Brooke and Boas as a member of the Middle Temple, a shady character who appears here as an informer (see F. S. Boas, ‘Christopher Marlowe’, Oxford, 1940, 245–50). He seems to have sent his note to the council about the time of Marlowe's death; a copy was sent to the queen on 2 June. The most useful discussion of Marlowe's ‘atheism’, his possible connection with the circle of free-thinking intellectuals about Sir Walter Ralegh, including Thomas Harriot the distinguished mathematician, and, with other connections, one Richard Chomley, is in Boas, chs xiv and xv.
