SOURCE: Kastan, David Scott. “The Death of William Baldwin.” Notes and Queries 28, no. 6 (December 1981): 516-17.

In the following essay, Kastan conjectures that Baldwin probably died in the autumn of 1563.

The date of William Baldwin's death has eluded scholars. Anthony Wood writes, ‘As for Baldewyn he lived, as 'tis said, some years after Qu. Eliz. came to the Crown, but when he died it appears not.’¹ Facts concerning Baldwin's death have, however, slowly begun to appear. In spite of Arthur Freeman's claim that Baldwin lived well into the 1580s,² Paul Gaudet has recently endorsed Eveline I. Feasey's suggestion that Baldwin died in 1563.³ Thomas Churchyard's references to Baldwin in the 1587 Mirror for Magistrates as ‘a Minister and a Preacher’ make probable the identification of the writer Baldwin with the Baldwin ordained a deacon in 1559 (the year Baldwin, in the 1563 Mirror, claims that he was ‘called to an other trade of...