Robert Poley

Robert Poley, or Pooley (fl. 1568–1602) was an English double agent, government messenger and agent provocateur employed by members of the Privy Council during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I; he was described as "the very genius of the Elizabethan underworld". Poley is particularly noted for his central role in uncovering the so-called Babington plot to assassinate the Queen in 1586, and for being a witness of, and even a possible party to, the reported killing in self-defence by Ingram Frizer of the famous poet/dramatist Christopher Marlowe in May 1593.

There is no known record of Poley's birth and early education, the first information being his matriculation as a lowly sizar at Cambridge University's Clare College in the Michaelmas trimester of 1568. Although there was a fairly wide range, the typical age at matriculation was about 17 which would suggest that he was born in the early 1550s. He didn't go on to take a degree which could indicate that he was in fact a Catholic, as was certainly the cover he adopted later.

After his spell at university, nothing is known of his whereabouts or occupation until the early 1580s, apparently with large sums of money at his disposal. In 1582 he married someone referred to as "Watson's daughter", by whom he had a daughter, Anne, who was baptised on 21 August 1583. At around this time, he started a campaign to work for Sir Francis Walsingham as a Catholic informer, the only result of which seems to have been his imprisonment in the Marshalsea on Walsingham's orders until May the next year. During this imprisonment he refused to see his wife, but regularly entertained a married woman called Joan Yeomans to "many fine banquets" there.

Following his release he continued his attempts to find employment in the government's service, both with Sir Francis Walsingham (via Walsingham's young relative Thomas Walsingham) and with the Earl of Leicester. The latter approach seems to have met with some success, since in June 1585 he was working with Christopher Blount (possibly a relative of Poley's?) under Leicester's aegis. He was sent as a 'special messenger' – in other words a Catholic sympathiser – to Paris to contact Thomas Morgan, one of the main conspirators working on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots, and to deliver a letter from Blount. He returned around 10 July.

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