On 22 September 1598 the playwright Ben Jonson fought a duel with the actor Gabriel Spencer in Hoxton Fields, the open ground north of Shoreditch, a short walk from the Curtain playhouse. Spencer died of a stab wound six inches deep in his right side, the inquest recorded.
Jonson, then 26, was a rising writer for Philip Henslowe’s company, the Admiral’s Men. Spencer, about 20, was one of its actors and a shareholder. Four days later Henslowe wrote to his son-in-law, the actor Edward Alleyn: “I have lost one of my company, which hurteth me greatly, that is Gabriel, for he is slain in Hogsden Fields by the hands of Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer.” Jonson had worked as a bricklayer, his stepfather’s trade, and disliked it.
A longer sword
Nobody knows what the fight was about. The two men had shared a cell the year before, when both were jailed over The Isle of Dogs, a play Jonson co-wrote with Thomas Nashe that the authorities called seditious. Years later Jonson said that Spencer had started the duel, wounded him in the arm first and fought with a sword 10 inches longer than his own.
Spencer had killed a man before. In December 1596, at a house in Shoreditch, he quarrelled with James Feake, a goldsmith’s son, who picked up a copper candlestick to throw at him. Spencer struck him in the eye with his sword. Feake died three days later. There is no record that Spencer was punished.
The neck verse
Jonson was held in Newgate and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He escaped hanging through benefit of clergy, an old legal privilege that spared a literate first offender from the gallows. He was asked to read a verse of the Bible in Latin, usually the opening of Psalm 51, which became known as the “neck verse” because it saved so many necks. He lost his goods and was branded on the thumb, so that he could never claim the privilege again.
While in Newgate, Jonson converted to Catholicism. He stayed a Catholic for about 12 years.
Supper with the plotters
Seven years later, in the second week of October 1605, Jonson was a guest at a supper party attended by most of the men behind the Gunpowder Plot, a few weeks before Guy Fawkes was found under the House of Lords on the night of 4-5 November. After the plot was discovered, Jonson told the investigator Robert Cecil and the Privy Council what he knew and avoided prison.
Where Spencer lies
Spencer was buried at St Leonard’s, Shoreditch Church, where James Burbage, the builder of The Theatre, and his sons Richard and Cuthbert are also buried, along with the comedian Richard Tarlton. A memorial put up in the church in 1913 by the London Shakespeare League names him among the actors who lie there.