Robert Baldock († 28 May 1327) was Archdeacon of Middlesex when Edward II appointed him Lord Privy Seal in 1320. Probably the Despensers promoted his career. In 1325 he even became Lord Chancellor. In 1326 he was one of the few men who stayed with Edward II until the end, while he fled to Wales with the Despensers from Mortimer and Isabella. As a cleric, he was not to be tried in a secular court. However, the enraged people of London took him from the residence of the Bishop of Hereford and threw him into Newgate Prison, where he died.
Edward II
Baldock is not a member of the nobility, but a graduate of Oxford University. On attaining the Bachelor of Arts degree, one was allowed to call oneself "Dominus", which was translated into English as "Sir". 1 While Spencer in Marlowe is the typical upstart from the lower nobility, Baldock symbolises the Elizabethan upstarts from the educated classes, which after all included men like William Cecil and Francis Walsingham. As already explained, it is unclear what Marlowe intended with this portrayal. However, Baldock’s last words in the drama could be the motto of all Marlowe’s heroes: "[…] all live to die, and rise to fall."2
