e

no other child than that which was burnt. But two children, at least, were preserved; for a wife and children, as we shall presently discover, survived the poet. What then! would the tender-minded Spenser, with a wife and children participating his temporary distress, think only of himself on the melancholy occasion, and decline the offer of assistance so seasonable at least to them? I must require the corroboration of such a fact from the mouth of more witnesses than that of Jonson; especially when I consider what Drummond has recorded of his friend Ben, that he was guilty of "interpreting the best sayings, and deeds, often to the worst." If the Earl of Essex sent Spenser a donation, which is very probable, I am persuaded that it was not declined with the ungrateful and unnatural answer alleged by Jonson. To fugitives from their own abode, not possessed of an immediate supply for their wants, and resident at an inn, the generosity of Essex was well-timed ; and it corresponds with the friendship which he had always shewn to Spenser. It would be an aid till the accustomed time of the payment of the royal pension to Spenser, and till his case had undergone an inquiry necessary to entitle him to publick remuneration.

k

But, leaving for a moment the particular point of Essex's generosity, may we not suppose that the poet experienced, in his present accidental want, the kindness "of the auncient house" of Spencer? In his earlier days he had been often obliged by persons of that noble family; and he appears not, by any subsequent circumstance, to have forfeited their notice. It is an extraordinary assertion of a late biographer of Spenser, where, speaking of the Spencers of Althorp, he says, " It does not appear that the poet ever claimed kindred with that house, or was acknowledged by it." The claim of kindred with that house, as we have seen, was the h favourite theme of Spenser; and the admission of that claim was also repeatedly avowed by him. In his utmost need, then, can we believe him to have been so deserted as to want a morsel of bread? Was his poverty, the effect of national misfortune, a crime? Would none of those, who had acknowledged the private bands of his affinitie and honoured him with particular bounties," listen to the representation of the misery, in which a kinsman of whom they could not be ashamed, (a man of exemplary taste and learning and a man of blameless character,) was now involved?—When to this expectation of alleviated calamity we add the means of Spenser already mentioned, and the probability of Essex's generosity being not slighted; common sense and humanity seem to revolt at the supposition of Spenser's dying in want of bread.

m

Of Essex's friendly interference Mr. Warton has continued a mis-statement, in his " History of English Poetry; subjoined to a very elegant discrimination between the accomplishments and the errors of that nobleman. "A few of his Sonnets are in the Ashmolean Museum, which have no marks of poetick genius. He is a vigorous and elegant writer of prose. But if Essex was no poet, few noblemen of his age were more courted by poets. From Spenser to the lowest rhymer, he was the subject of numerous sonnets or popular ballads. I will not except Sidney. I could produce evidence to prove, that he scarce ever went out of England, or even left London, on the most frivolous enterprise, without a pastoral in his praise, or a panegyrick in metre, which were sold and sung in the streets. Having interested himself in the fashionable poetry of the times, he was placed high in the ideal Arcadia now just established; and, among other instances which might be brought, on his return from Portugal in 1589 he was complimented with a poem, called, 'An Egloge gratulatorie entituled to the right honorable and renowned shepherd of Albions Arcadie, Robert earl of Essex; and for his returne lately into

• Mr. Chalmers is entirely of this opinion. "The Irish of Munster, rising universally in October 1598, laid waste the country and expelled the English. Neither Kilcolman nor Spenser were spared. He was thus constrained to return with his wife, and family, to England; but in ruined circumstances." Supplemental Apolog. p. 34.

f See Drummond's character of Jonson in Brydges's edition of Phillip's Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum, p, 248, which, however disadvantageously, is not, in the opinion of the learned editor, very unjustly drawn.

8 Dr. Aikin, in his Life of Spenser, prefixed to the edition of Spenser's Poetical Works in 1802. h See before, pages xxxi, xxxii, xxxiii, &c.

i See the same pages.

k See before, p. xlviii, xlix. The reader might be also led into this belief of Spenser's being starved by Oldham's Satire against Poetry; by Granger's Biographical History; by Dunster's edition of Philips's Cider, p. 88, &c. &c.

See the Dedications to Muiopotmos, and the Teares of the Muses.

England.' This is a light in which Lord Essex is seldom viewed. I know not if the queen's fatal partiality, or his own inherent attractions, his love of literature, his heroism, integrity, and generosity, qualities which abundantly overbalance his presumption, his vanity, and impetuosity, had the greater share in dictating these praises. If adulation were any where justifiable, it must be when paid to the man who endeavoured to save Spenser from starving in the streets of Dublin, and who buried him in Westminster abbey with becoming solemnity." By the death of the poet I can conceive Lord Essex to have been much affected. From his ingenuous and liberal mind the praises of such a man as Spenser would not easily be effaced. He was now on the eve of his departure to Ireland in the character of Lord Lieutenant; the appointment of which exalted station Spenser is believed to have recommended, in his View of the State of Ireland, to be bestowed on him, as "upon whom the eye of all England is fixed, and our last hopes now rest." Essex therefore was deprived of Spenser's political assistance; a circumstance (as I conceive) of great disappointment, if not of distress, to a vice-roy nominated at a period so critical. Nor can I read the following Letter, which Essex had occasion to write in the Autumn after his arrival in Ireland, without thinking that, in the general allusion to the dearest friends whom he has outlived, Spenser also is intended. It is an original Letter to the Lord Keeper Egerton, on the loss of his eldest son Sir Thomas Egerton, who had accompanied Essex into Ireland, and who died there on the 23d of August, 1599, at the age of 25.

"Whatt can you receave from a cursed country butt vnfortunate newes? whatt can be my stile (whom heaven and earth are agreed to make a martyr) butt a stile of mourning? nott for myself thatt I smart, for I wold I had in my hart the sorow of all my frends, but I mourne thatt my destiny is to overlive my decrest frendes. Of y'. losse yt is neither good for me to write nor you to reade. But I protest I felt myself sensibly dismembred when I lost my frend. Shew y'. strength in lyfe. Lett me, yf yt be Gods will, shew yt in taking leave of the world and hasting after my frends. Butt I will live and dy

"Arbrackan this last of August," [1599.]

Р

More y'. lps then any
mans living,

ESSEX.

Little did the generous but unfortunate Essex then imagine, that the learned statesman, to whom this letter of condolence was addressed, would be directed very soon afterwards to issue an order for his execution. The original warrant, to which the name of Elizabeth is prefixed, is now in the possession of the Marquis of Stafford; and the queen has written her name, not with that firmness observable in numerous documents existing in the same and other collections, but with apparent tremor and hesitation. Perhaps no apology will be expected for the long digression I have made on the history of Spenser's friend, and indeed the general friend of literature.

What became of the wife and children of Spenser immediately after his death, does not appear. The following original Letter proves, what I have asserted throughout this account of the Life of the poet, that he had children besides the infant which is said to have perished in the flames; which has induced me to fix the date of his marriage earlier than in 1596. The Letter is from the Lords of the Privy Council in England to Sir George Carew, Lord President of Munster, " in the behalf of Mrs. Spenser."

• In the collection of the Marquis of Stafford.

P This Warrant is in the most perfect preservation. It is one of the numerous important documents, subservient to the history of this country, which were carefully preserved by Lord Chancellor Egerton, and were bequeathed by the late Duke of Bridgewater to the present Marquis of Stafford.

q"We think," says the author of the Life of Spenser prefixed to Mr. Church's edition of the Faerie Queene," that Spenser could hardly leave more than one son; considering that, as before stated, one child was burnt." But this opinion is not correct.

r In the Carew manuscripts at Lambeth Library, the original of this Letter and the copy exist. It is worthy of observation, that Sir George Carew, while he was Lord President of Munster, preserved the originals, and directed copies to be made of all the letters sent to him "from the lordes of her Maties, moste Honorable Pryvie Councell." See Memorand. in MS. No. 620.

"After o'. Right hartie Comendacons to y' lordship. By the inclosed Petition it may appeare vnto you the humble sute that is made vnto vs in the behalf of the wyff and children of Edmond Spenser late Clerke of the Councell of that Provynce: In regard he was a Servitor of that Realme, we have ben moved to recomend the consideracon of the Sute made vnto vs, vnto y lordship and withall to praye you, that you will vpon due informacon of the state of the Cause, and the wronges pretended to be done in preiudice of the wyff and children of Spenser, afforde them that favour and assistance wch the iustice and equitie of the Cause shall deserve for recovery and holdinge those thinges wch by right ought to appteyne to them. And so we byd you right hartely fare well: ffrom the Court at Whytehall, the xxixth of March 1601. ["Receved in July 1601."]

To this Letter the inclosed Petition is unfortunately not an accompaniment. It was probably deposited among the Munster records by the Lord President. I am inclined to think that the Petition was presented before the widow and children departed from England.

In regard, however, to the family, I am enabled to state that two sons certainly survived the poet; Silvanus and Peregrine; of whom the former was probably a native of the woody Kilcolman; and the latter perhaps was born in England soon after the arrival of Spenser and his wife from Ireland, or might be a posthumous child, and received his name from the strange and unexpected place of his birth. In two manuscripts preserved in the library of Trinity College at Dublin, it appears that Silvanus, the son of Edmund Spenser, married Ellen Nangle, eldest daughter of David Nangle of Moneanymy in the county of Cork and of Ellen Roche who was daughter to William Roche of Ballyhowly in the county of Cork; and by that marriage he had two sons, Edmund and William Spenser. It further appears in Smith's History of the County and City of Cork, as the learned librarian Dr. Barrett remarks, that this family, called in the manuscripts Nangle of Moneanymy, is otherwise called Nagle; and the historian mentions "Ballygriffin, a pretty seat of Mr. David Nagle, below which is the ruined church of Monanimy, with a large chancel, and in it is a modern tomb of the Nagles." And Monanimy appears, in Smith's map of the county, a little way to the south of Kilcolman, the residence of Spenser. From the 'manuscript depositions relative to the rebellion of 1641, still remaining in the library just mentioned, persons of the name of Nagle of Monanimy, and also of the name of Roche, (the families to which Spenser's son was by marriage connected,) appear to have taken a part in those disturbances; and probably might, some of them at least, have forfeited their property. The biographers of Spenser have informed us that his "grandson Hugolin Spenser, was, after the restoration of King Charles the second, restored by the Court of Claims to so much of the lands as could be found to have been his ancestor's. This circumstance seems to prove that the estate had again been seized by rebels, as it had been in the time of the poet; for Peregrine Spenser, the father of Hugolin, is described, in the lastmentioned manuscript, by an attestation dated May 4. 1642, as 'a Protestant, resident about the barony of Fermoy, and so impoverished by the troubles as to be unable to pay his debts ;" and a part of the estate had been assigned to him by his elder brother Silvanus, as the Case of William Spenser, his nephew, will presently demonstrate. It no where appears that Silvanus, notwithstanding his connection with the popish families of Roche and Nagle, was involved in the rebellion of 1641. Hugolin, however, followed the example of Sir Richard Nagle, the

MS. F. 4. 18. Page 118. Entitled, Irish Pedigrees. MS. F. 3. 27. Page 42.

t MS. F. 2. 15. Pages 1511, 1563, 1573, 1667.

u The biographers call him, inaccurately, the great-grandson of Spenser. See Birch, Church's edit. Faer. Qu., Biograph. Brit. &c.

* Namely, MS. F. 2. 15 page 1667. And for all these notices in the Dublin manuscripts I am highly obliged, through the kind application of Joseph Cooper Walker, Esq., to the Rev. Dr. Barrett.

attorney-general of James the second and the great persecutor of the Irish Protestants, in resisting the designs of the Prince of Orange; and was accordingly, after the revolution, outlawed for treason and rebellion. On this event his cousin William Spenser, the son of Silvanus, became a suitor for the forfeited property. The affair brought him to England; and his name is said to have procured him a favourable reception. By the poet Congreve he was introduced to Mr. Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax, then at the head of the Treasury, through whose interest he obtained his suit. Dr. Birch has described him as a man somewhat advanced in years, and as unable to give any account of the works of his ancestor which are wanting. The "Case of William Spenser, printed on a single sheet, and since deposited by the republisher of it in the British Museum, has been accepted by the publick as a proof of that active perseverance, and liberal curiosity, by which Mr. George Chalmers is animated; and is too interesting to be omitted here.

"The Case of William Spencer, of Kilcolman, in the county of Cork, in the kingdom of Ireland, Esq. grandson and heir to Edmond Spenser the poet :

"THAT Sylvanus Spencer, Esq. father of William, in his life-time, in order to prefer his second brother Peregrine in marriage, did give and assign to him part of his estate in the said county of Cork.

"Peregrine dies, and that part of the estate that was settled on him by Silvanus, descended and came to Hugoline, son of the said Peregrine.

"Hugoline, being seized and possessed of the said estate, was outlawed for treason and rebellion after the late revolution.

"William Spencer finding Hugoline's estate vested in the king, and being the next protestant heir, as also heir at law to him, that part of the estate being formerly vested in Sylvanus, (to whom William was eldest son and heir) did apply himself to his Majesty for a grant thereof, and by his petition did set forth his claim to the said estate, and also his services, sufferings, and losses, in the late rebellion in Ireland, in behalf of the government, which are very well known.

"Upon which petition his Majesty was graciously pleased to refer the same to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury in England, and they were pleased to refer it further to the Earls of Montrath, Drogheda, and Galloway, then Lords Justices of Ireland, to examine the matter, and make their report.

"The Lords Justices reported it back to the Lords of the Treasury of England: wherein they recommend the said William to his Majesty for his great services, sufferings, and losses, in the late troubles, and that he was next protestant heir to Hugoline, and to deserve his Majesty's grace and favour.

“His Majesty was thereupon graciously pleased to grant the said Hugoline's estate to the said William, by his letters patent bearing date at Dublin the fourteenth day of June, in the ninth year of his reign.

"That the said estate was then of the yearly value of sixty-seven pounds, seventeen shillings and six-pence.

"That there is a mortgage upon the said estate for five hundred pounds, which is yet unpaid. "That it cost the said William above six hundred pounds, the best part of his fortune, in improving the said estate, and procuring the said grant, and hath received little or no profit. thereof.

"For by a late act of parliament, all grants were made void in Ireland, and the forfeited estates were vested in trustees, to be sold for the use of the public; and whilst that act was in agitation, the said William was so disabled by sickness, that he could not apply himself to this honourable House for a saving clause, whereby the trustees have dispossessed the said William of the said estate, without any manner of consideration for his improvements and other charges about the same, to his utter ruin and impoverishment.

y Dr. Birch, Church's edit. Faer. Q., and Biograph. Brit.

* See the Supplemental Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare-Papers, &c. 1799, pp. 35, 36, &c.

"That this is conceived to be the only case of this nature in the whole kingdom of Ireland, he being the next protestant heir, and whose grandfather, Edmond Spencer, by his book, entituled, A View of Ireland, modled the settlement of that kingdom, and these lands were given him by Queen Elizabeth, of blessed memory, for his services to the crown.

"That your petitioner having applied himself to this honourable House last sessions of parliament for relief herein :

"The petitioner was referred to the trustees then in England, who reported the same to this honourable House; and, upon further consideration of that report, the same was refer'd to the trustees in Ireland, who now have made their report to this effect :

"That the petitioner was very serviceable to the publick, by being a guide to his Majesty's General the Earl of Athlone, during the late wars in that kingdom.

"That he had 300 head of black cattle, and 1500 sheep taken from him, and had several houses burnt That his family was stript, his house plundered, and his only son had above twenty wounds given him by the Irish army.

"That in consideration of his said services and sufferings, and of his being next protestant heir to Hugoline Spenser attainted, his Majesty was pleased to grant the forfeited estate of the said Hugoline to the petitioner in 1697, now set at sixty pounds per ann.

"That there is a claim heard and allowed as an incumbrance of 3001. absolute, on the said estate, and 2001. more in case Hugoline, who is very old and unmarried, dies without issue male.

"That the petitioner has expended near the sum mentioned in his petition, in making jorneys into England to procure his grant, in passing his patent in Ireland, and in building a house and planting an orchard on the premises, so that his grant has hitherto been a charge to him, and not an advantage; all which they submit to this honourable House.

"And the petitioner humbly hopes this honourable House will be pleased to take his case into consideration, and re-establish him in his said estate, or otherwise relieve him as to your great wisdom shall seem meet."

Dr. Birch informs the reader in 1751, that some a of the descendants of Spenser were then remaining in the county of Cork. An Edmund Spenser of Mallow is yet remembered in Dublin; and the daughter of this gentleman, the last lineal descendant of the poet, is now married, as I am informed, to Mr. Burne, who fills, or lately filled, some office in the EnglishCustom-house; in whose possession an original picture of Spenser has been said to exist; but an inquiry after it has not been attended with success. Whether it may be confounded with the painting, reported to be at Castle-Saffron in the neighbourhood of Kilcolman, the seat of John Love, Esq., I am unable to say.

e

d

To the memory of Spenser a handsome monument, with an inscription, was erected in Westminster Abbey by Anne, Countess of Dorset. This mark of respect had been usually ascribed to the Earl of Essex, till 'Fenton, in his notes on Waller, related the discovery which he had made in the manuscript diary of Stone, master-mason to King Charles the first; that the monument was set up above thirty years after the poet's death, and that the Countess of Dorset paid forty pounds for it. In the inscription, however, the dates both of his birth and his death, owing to the blunder of the carver or the writer of the brief memorial, were false. For he was stated to have been born in 1510, and to have died in 1596. This interval presents a lengthened span, of which little more than half was allotted to Spenser. "Obiit immatura morte," says Camden in his little treatise describing the monuments of Westminster in 1600, r anno salutis 1598;" which expression, his dying an untimely death, is used not without propriety

• Smith's Hist. of Cork, and Dr. Birch's Life of Spenser.

d As Mr. Walker had been informed.

f See the Life of Spenser prefixed to Church's edition of the Faerie Queene, and the Biographia Britannica. 6 Viz.

"Reges, Reginæ, Nobiles, et alii in Eccl. Coll. B. Petri Westmon. sepulti, &c." 4to. Impr. E. Bollifant, 1600.