time of peace the Irish are more fearful to offend the law than the English, or any other nation whatsoever." Let us turn now to the writers of these sketches. Edmund SpensER, one of the four greatest English poets,—for he is to be named with Milton, as Chaucer with Shakespeare,was born in East Smithfield, London, about the year 1552, son probably of a John Spenser who was a clothmaker, and whose family connections were about Hurstwood and Pendle, in the hill country of North-East Lancashire. Born, as he says, in- "Merry London, my most kindly nurse, That to me gave this life's first native source, Spenser was sent to Merchant Taylors' School immediately, or almost immediately, after its foundation in 1561, with Dr. Mulcaster for its head-master. Spenser was at school there in 1568; and in the next year, when he was leaving for Cambridge, he contributed translations of Visions from Petrarch and from Bellay to a miscellany by John van der Noodt, a Flemish physician, who had taken refuge in England from the persecutions of the Duke of Alva. Such work in such fellowship show Spenser's strong religious feeling when, as a youth of about seventeen, he was on his way from school to College. miscellany was called "A Theatre, wherein be represented as well the Miseries and Calamities that follow the Voluptuous Worldlings, as also the great Joys and Pleasures which the Faithful do enjoy. An Argument both Profitable and Delectable to all that sincerely love the Word of God." The Spenser went to Cambridge, and there matriculated as a sizar at Pembroke Hall on the 20th of May 1569. Having graduated as B.A. in 1573, and as M.A. in 1576, he left Cambridge, after seven years' study, aged about twenty-four, and went home into Lancashire, where he perhaps earned for a short time as a tutor, and fell in love with the daughter of a "widow of the glen," the Rosalind of early verses, who did not favour his suit. It does not at all matter who she was; Spenser's real love went to the wife he found years afterwards in Ireland. Gabriel Harvey, a good Cambridge friend of Spenser's, whom the Earl of Leicester sometimes employed on missions, and who was to have been sent abroad in 1577, had ambitions of his own at Cambridge-he was aiming at the post of Public Orator-and did not go; but he brought his friend Spenser from the north into the service of Leicester, and Spenser seems to have been sent to Ireland on some mission in the days when Sir Henry Sidney was Lord Deputy. For Spenser twice says that he saw the incident of the old foster-mother's drinking of the blood from the head of Murrough O'Brian at his execution; and that execution took place in the first week of July 1577, when Spenser's age was about five-and-twenty. In 1579 Spenser published his first volume of poems, The Shepheards Calendar, to which he did not set his name. Its various music represented love and loyalty, and above all, his strong interest in the religious questions of the day. He drew some inspiration from the French pastorals of Clement Marot, which figured good and bad pastors of congregations in the Church, under the good and bad pastors of flocks in the field. With all his loyalty to Elizabeth, Spenser boldly took his stand by Archbishop Grindal, who was in disgrace with her for opening the door to diversities of doctrine, by his strenuous encouragement of preaching based on independent searching of the Scriptures. In 1580, on the 12th of July, Arthur Lord Grey of Wilton landed in Dublin as Lord Deputy, having brought with him Edmund Spenser as his Secretary. On the 12th of September following, a merchant of Dingle, Garrat Trante, wrote information ! "that there came a Sunday last past over, foure shippes of the Pope's army, in which the Pope's nuncio is. There was in their company other foure shippes and a galley, which they suppose will be with them or it be long." On the next day, the 13th of September, Captain Andrew Marten wrote to Sir Warham St. Leger, Lord President of Munster, how he had that day heard from the Knight of Kerry that there were "four sail of Spaniards landed at Smerwick, also that a great fleet is to descend on the west." The landing in Smerwick Bay was at a fort called "del Ore," which had been used before as a point of foreign support for the conflict against England. On the 7th of November, Admiral Winter and Lord Grey, with Spenser as his secretary, arrived at the fort with a besieging force, and landed their artillery. On the 9th the besieged craved a parley. What followed was thus told in the despatch written on the 12th of November by Lord Grey himself to the Queen : Presently was sent one Alexandro, the camp master, who said that they were there on false speeches and great promises. I said I found two nations, and willed a Spanish captain to be by, who came. I said I marvelled, their nation at peace with your Majesty, they should come. The Spaniard said the King had not sent them, but one John Martines di Ricaldi, Governor for the King at Bilboa. The other avouched that they were all sent by the Pope for the defence of the Catholica Fide. I answered, I marvelled that men of that account as some of them made show of, should be carried into unjust, wicked, and desperate action by one that neither from God or man could claim any princely power or empire, but indeed a desperate shaveling, the right Antichrist, and general ambitious tyrant over all right principalities, and patron of the diabolico fide, I could not rest but greatly wonder. Their fault, therefore, I saw to be greatly aggravated by the malice of their commander, and at my hands no condition, no composition, were they to expect, other than they should simply render me the fort, and yield themselves to my will for life or death: with this answer they departed. There were but one or two that came to and fro to have gotten a certainty for some of their lives, but finding that it would not be, the Colonel came forth to ask respite; but finding it a gaining time, I would not grant it. "He then embraced my knees, simply putting himself to my mercy; only he prayed that for that night he might abide in the fort. I asked hostages, and they were given. "Morning came: I presented my forces in battle before the fort the Colonel came with ten or eleven of his chief gentlemen, trailing their ensigns rolled up, and presented them to me, with their lives and the fort. I sent straight certain gentlemen in to see their weapons and armours laid down, and to guard the munition and victual then left from spoil. Then I put in certain bands, who straight fell to execution. There were six hundred slain; ammunition and victual great store, though much wasted through the disorder of the soldiers, which in the fusion could not be helped." One of the two captains of the day sent in to carry out this order of execution was Walter Raleigh, then, like Spenser, about twenty-six years old. Twenty of the chief men were spared, chiefly for the prize money to be got by their ransom; but two of them, one Plunkett, a friar born near Drogheda, and an Englishman who was chief man to Dr. Sanders, the Pope's nuncio allied with Spain, were saved only for a more cruel death. They had their arms and legs broken before they were hanged on a gibbet on the walls of the fort, as traitors to their country. With this policy Edmund Spenser was in full accord. He justifies it in his "View of the State of Ireland," and justifies Lord Grey against those in England who saw cruelty in an uncompromising zeal which complained to the authorities at home of the pernicious practice of granting pardons to the rebels, "whereby the soldiers were letted from the destruction of their corn." The recall Grey had often asked for came in 1582, and he left Ireland on the 31st of August in that year. Spenser's justification of him will be found in this volume, on pages 145–148. If war be necessary, it must be sharp to be short; relentings in its course can only make it a long misery. That was his view. For the effectual and lasting triumph over wrong, and prompt establishment of right, he thought it mercy to be merciless. Sweet as its music is, the same austerity runs through Spenser's "Faerie Queene," in which also he is one with his patron Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, in looking on Catholicism as the diabolical faith. Spenser had begun his "Faerie Queene" before he went to Ireland with Lord Grey, who was his best friend and patron there. On the 22nd of March 1581 Spenser obtained, by purchase from his friend Lodowick Bryskett, the office of Clerk of Decrees and Recognizances in the Court of Chancery, or Registrar of Chancery for the Faculties. In the same year he received a lease of the Abbey and Castle and Manor of Enniscorthy, in the County of Wexford, which he sold to a Richard Synot, who sold it again to Sir Henry Wallop. He then bought, and sold again at profit, another Abbey in New Ross. In January 1582 Lord Grey thus included Edmund Spenser in a list of persons to whom he had given benefit from forfeited estates: "The lease of a house in Dublin belonging to Baltinglas, for six years to come unto Edmund Spenser, one of the Lord Deputy's Secretaries, valued at £5; and of a custodian of John Eustace's land of the Newland to Edmund Spenser, one of the Lord Deputy's Secretaries." Later in 1582, on the 24th of August, letters patent were passed to Spenser of the dissolved Franciscan house of New Abbey in Kildare, with its possession for twenty-one years at a rent of sixty shillings. This lease became forfeited seven or |