Ingram Frizer

Ingram Frizer (/ˈɪŋɡrəm ˈfraɪzər/ ING-grəm FRY-zər; died August 1627) was an English gentleman and businessman of the late 16th and early 17th centuries who is notable for his reported killing of the playwright Christopher Marlowe in the home of Eleanor Bull on 30 May 1593. He has been described as "a property speculator, a commodity broker, a fixer for gentlemen of good worship" and a confidence trickster gulling "young fools" out of their money.

There is no definite information regarding Frizer's origins, but he may have been born in or near Kingsclere in Hampshire, and the not always reliable International Genealogical Index does in fact show the baptism there of a female child called Ingram Frysar on 26 September 1561. Parish records for Kingsclere held at Hampshire Record Office show an Ingram Frizer, son of Stephen, christened 26 September 1561 in Kingsclere, Hampshire.

Surviving legal records show Frizer to have been a fairly well-to-do businessman profiting from buying and selling property. At the time of Marlowe's death the landowner Thomas Walsingham was Frizer's "master", but this does not imply that Frizer was a servant. As well as acting on his own behalf, Frizer appears to have been Walsingham's business agent. Walsingham was a young relative of Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State, Sir Francis Walsingham; both Walsinghams had been heavily involved with intelligence work a few years earlier but there is no evidence that Frizer ever had any connection with it.

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