Tarlton's News out of purgatory (1590) : a modern-spelling edition ...

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to Sir Francis Walsingham, begging him to protect the rights
of his mother and son.- The wording of this letter suggests
that Katharine Tarlton was indeed the injured party in the
case, and supports her version of events. Tarlton describes
Adams as f a sly fellow ... being more fuller of law then
vertew 1 , which shows a change of heart after writing his will,
in which he speaks of 'my very lovinge and trustie frendes
Robert Adams .>..', and says that Adams, seeing that Tarlton
was dying, f provoked 1 him to make him [Adams] trustee of his
property. He also adds that Adams owes him £60. The most
interesting biographical fact that appears in the letter is
that Tarlton*s son is the godson of Sir Philip Sidney, after
whom he is named. The letter is signed in three places by
Tarlton, and according to Robert Lemon, editor of the State
Papers for the relevant period, 'the last time evidently in
the agonies of death 1 . The letter is endorsed '5 September
1588 1 , which presumably is the date on which it was received
by Walsingham, as the registers of St Leonard's Shoreditch
indicate that Tarlton was buried on 3 September.
After the death of Tarlton numerous references to him
appeared in widely varying types of literature. Many of these
are of dubious authority, particularly the later ones, and
such information must be treated with caution. Many take the
form of laments for his death, or of remarks about his clowning;
most seem to be by people who never saw him, and certainly
could not have known him.
Two conflicting accounts of Tarlton's early life exist.
Thomas Fuller, writing in the second half of the seventeenth-
century, claims that he was born in Condover in Shropshire,