Part 3 (1/2)

Of my _Stemmata Dudleiana_, and specially of the sundry Apostrophes therein, addressed you knohohtly to send theh I do never very well) yet, in mine own fancy, I never did better _Veruntamen te sequor solum: nunquam vero assequar_

He is plainly not dissatisfied with his success, and is looking forward to more But no one in those days could live by poetry Even scholars, in spite of university endowments, did not hope to live by their scholarshi+p; and the poet orthe favour of the great, ht open to hi to push his fortunes in soe of two such powerful favourites as Sidney and his uncle Leicester Spenser's heart was set on poetry: but what leisure he ht take To have hung on Sidney's protection, or gone with him as his secretary to the wars, to have been eues, to have stayed in London filling by Leicester's favour soovernhts affected by the brilliant and unscrupulous society of the court, or by the powerful and daringthe political and literary scene--any of these contingencies iven his poetical faculty a different direction; nay, ed its exercise or suppressed it But his life was otherwise ordered A new opening presented itself He had, and he accepted, the chance ofhis fortune another way And to his new manner of life, with its peculiar conditions, inal idea of that which was to be his great work, but the circumstances under which the as carried out, and which not ave it some of its special and characteristic features

That which turned the course of his career, and exercised a decisive influence, certainly on its events and fate, probably also on the turn of his thoughts and the shape and ration to Ireland, and his settlehteen years of his life We know little e froland, to the fierce and narrow interests of a cruel and unsuccessful struggle for colonization, in a country which was to England o Ireland, always unquiet, had becaer to Elizabeth's Governreat colonizing scheme, with his unscrupulous severity, had failed Sir Henry Sidney, wise, fir to be just, had tried his hand as Deputy for the third ti order; he, too, after a short gleam of peace, had failed also For two years Ireland had been left to the local administration, totally unable to heal its wounds, or cope with its disorders And now, the kingdon enemy In November, 1579, the Government turned their eyes on Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, a h character, and a soldier of distinction He, or they, seem to have hesitated; or rather, the hesitation was on both sides He was not satisfied with land: his discontent had led hi Protestant as he was, to coquet with Norfolk and the partisans of Mary Queen of Scots, when England was threatened with a Frenchthe forty nobles on whom Mary's friends counted[54:1] And on the other hand, Elizabeth did not like him or trust hith, in the sureat place which had wrecked the reputation and broken the hearts of a succession of able and high-spirited servants of the English Crown, the place of Lord-Deputy in Ireland He was a man as interested in the literary enterprise of the time In the midst of his public employe Gascoigne, who left a high reputation, for those days, as poet, wit, satirist, and critic Lord Grey now took Spenser, the ”new poet,” the friend of Philip Sidney, to Ireland as his Secretary

Spenser was not the only scholar and poet who about this time found public employment in Ireland Names which appear in literary records, such as Warton's _History of English Poetry_, poets like Barnaby Googe and Ludovic Bryskett, reappear as despatch-writers or agents in the Irish State Papers But one man came over to Ireland about the same time as Spenser, whose fortunes were a contrast to his Geoffrey Fenton was one of the nuical Tales from the French and Italian to Lady Mary Sidney, Guevara's Epistles from the Spanish to Lady Oxford, and a translation of Guicciardini to the Queen About this tin service; he was soon after in Ireland: and in the summer of 1580, he was made Secretary to the Government He shortly became one of the most important persons in the Irish administration He corresponded confidentially and continually with Burghley and Walsinghas of Deputies and Presidents, and reported freely their s or their unpopularity His letters form a considerable part of the Irish Papers

He became a powerful and successful public servant He becah place for his life; he obtained grants and lands; and he was coe, in a pompous monument in St Patrick's Cathedral This kind of success was not to be Spenser's

Lord Grey of Wilton was a h and heroic spirit He was a statesion had a doue naenuine zeal for the truth of Christian doctrine and for purity of morals, with the deepest and deadliest hatred of what he held to be their natural eneood Lord Grey,” he was, if we believe his secretary, writing entle, affable, loving, and temperate; always known to be a ht noble hteousness” But the infelicity of his times bore hardly upon him, and Spenser admits, what is known otherwise, that he left a terrible name behind hi sense of duty, and likeit out to the end, that it reached, when he thought it necessary, to the point of ferocity Naturally, he had enemies, who did not spare his fame; and Spenser, who came to adood lord was blotted with the naarded not the life of the queen's subjects no s, and had wasted and consun in their ashes”

Lord Grey was sent over at a er

In July, 1579, Drury wrote to Burghley to stand firreat storm was at hand” The South of Ireland was in fierce rebellion, under the Earl of Des under the co the assistance of the King of Spain; and a band of Spanish and Italian adventurers, unauthorized, but not uncountenanced by their Government, like Drake in the Indies, had landed with arms and stores, and had fortified a port at Smerwick, on the south-western coast of Kerry The North was deep in treason, restless, and threatening to strike Round Dublin itself, the great Irish Lords of the Pale, under Lord Baltinglass, in the summer of 1580, had broken into open insurrection, and were holding out a hand to the rebels of the South The English garrisons, indeed, sainst the ill-armed and undisciplined Irish bands, but could inflict terrible chastiseents The native feuds were turned to account; Butlers were set to destroy their natural enemies the Geraldines, and the Earl of Ormond their head, was appointed General in Munster, to execute English vengeance and his own on the lands and people of his rival Desh to put down the revolt ”The conspiracy throughout Ireland,” wrote Lord Grey, ”is so general, that without a main force it will not be appeased There are cold service and unsound dealing generally” On the 12th of August, 1580, Lord Grey landed, amid a universal wreck of order, of law, ofhis counsellors and subordinates, the only re severity

It can hardly be doubted that Spenser must have come over with him It is likely that where he went, his Secretary would accompany him And if so, Spenser must soon have become acquainted with some of the scenes and necessities of Irish life Within three weeks after Lord Grey's landing, he and those with him were present at the disaster of Glenmalure, a rocky defile near Wicklohere the rebels enticed the English captains into a position in which an ambuscade had been prepared, after the manner of Red Indians in the last century, and of South African savages now, and where, in spite of Lord Grey's courage, ”which could not have been bettered by Hercules,” a bloody defeat was inflicted on his troops, and a nuuished officers were cut off But Spenser was soon to see a still more terrible example of this ruthless warfare It was necessary, above all things to destroy the Spanish fort at S fed from abroad: and in November, 1580, Lord Grey in person undertook the work The incidents of this tragedy have been fully recorded, and they forainst Lord Grey's humanity, and even his honour In this instance Spenser must almost certainly have been on the spot Years afterwards, in his _View of the State of Ireland_, he describes and vindicates Lord Grey's proceedings; and he does so, ”being,” as he writes, ”as near them as any” And we have Lord Grey's own despatch to Queen Elizabeth, containing a full report of the tragical business We have nohow Lord Grey employed Spenser, or whether he composed his own despatches But from Spenser's position, the Secretary, if he had not so vivid and forcible account of the taking of Sh there are soht differences in the despatch, and in the account which Spenser himself wrote afterwards in his pa the proposal of the garrison for a parley, Lord Grey proceeds,--

There was presently sent unto me one Alexandro, their camp master; he told me that certain Spaniards and Italians were there arrived upon fair speeches and great proether vain and false they found; and that it was no part of their intent to overnment from your Majesty; for proof, that they were ready to depart as they came and deliver into my hands the fort Mine ansas, that for that I perceived their people to stand of two nations, Italian and Spanish, I would give no answer unless a Spaniard was likewise by He presently went and returned with a Spanish captain I then told the Spaniard that I knew their nation to have an absolute prince, one that was in good league and amity with your Majesty, which made me to marvell that any of his people should be found associate with theainst youAnd taking it that it could not be his king's will, I was to knohom and for what cause they were sent His reply was that the king had not sent them, but that one John Martinez de Ricaldi, Governor for the king at Bilboa, had willed him to levy a band and repair with it to St Andrews (Santander), and there to be directed by this their colonel here, who whither The other avouched that they were all sent by the Pope for the defence of the _Catholica fede_ My ansas, that I would not greatly havecommanded by natural and absolute princes did so actions; but that men, and that of account as some of them made show of, should be carried into unjust, desperate, and wicked actions, by one that neither from God or man could claim any princely power or eht Antichrist and general aht principalities, and patron of the _Diabolica fede_--this I could not but greatly rest in wonder Their fault therefore far to be aggravated by the vileness of their commander; and that at my hands no condition or composition they were to expect, other than they should render me the fort, and yield their selves to my will for life or death With this answer he departed; after which there was one or two courses to and fro otten a certainty for so that it would not be, the colonel hi came forth and requested respite with surcease of arive a resolute answer

Finding that to be but a gain of time to them, and a loss of the sarant it, and therefore presently either that he took my offer or else return and I would fall tohiht abide in the fort, and that in the es for the perfor came; I presented my companies in battle before the fort, the colonel co their ensigns rolled up, and presented theht certain gentleuard the munition and victual there left for spoil Then put I in certain bands, who straight fell to execution There were six hundred slain Munition and victual great store: though h the disorder of the soldier, which in that fury could not be helped Those that I gave life unto, I have bestowed upon the captains and gentlemen whose service hath well deservedOf the six hundred slain, four hundred were as gallant and goodly personages as of any (soldiers) I ever beheld So hath it pleased the Lord of Hosts to deliver your enehnesses' hand, and so too as one only excepted, not one of yours is either lost or hurt

Another account adds to this that ”the Irish lishman who had served Dr Sanders, and two others whose ars were broken for torture”

Such scenes as those of Glenht have been any one's lot to witness who found himself in presence of the atrocious warfare of those cruel days, in which the ordinary exasperation of coious hatred, and by the license which religious hatred gave to irregular adventure and the sanguinary repression of it They were not confined to Ireland Two years later the Marquis de Santa Cruz treated in exactly the sahty nobleentlemen and two hundred soldiers, ere taken in an atte a time of nominal peace between the crowns of France and Spain In the Low Countries, and in the religious wars of France, it need not be said that even the 'execution' at Smeras continually outdone; and it is what the Spaniards would of course have done to Drake if they had caught him Nor did the Spanish Government coal coe of scene and life to Spenser was ht of a disastrous skirmish and a capitulation without quarter

He had passed to an entirely altered condition of social life; he had passed froland, with its co honificence,--

Eliza's blessed field, That still with people, peace, and plenty flows--

to a land, beautiful indeed, and alluring, but of which the only laas disorder, and the only rule failure The Cae student, the follower of country life in Lancashi+re or Kent, the scholar discussing with Philip Sidney and corresponding with Gabriel Harvey about classical lish ri his innocent pastorals, his love coyrics or satires; the courtier, aspiring to shi+ne in the train of Leicester before the eyes of the great queen,--found hiery, where the elements of civil society hardly existed, and which had the fatal power of drawing into its own evil and lawless ways the English who came into contact with it Ireland had the name and the framework of a Christian realm It had its hierarchy of officers in Church and State, its Parliareat earls and lords, with noble and romantic titles, its courts and councils and administration; the Queen's laere there, and where they were acknowledged, which was not, however, everywhere, the English speech was current But underneath this naainst civilized order There was nothing but the wreck and clashi+ng of disintegrated custonorant barbarians, whose os had been destroyed, and ould recognize no other; the blood-feuds of rival septs; the a all weaker than the in waste and idleness their crowds of brutal retainers In one thing only was there agreeh not even in this was there union; and that was in deep, ilish lish s and , their own bitter antipathies and chronic despair, there was only one point of agree of the Irish

This is Irish dealing with Irish, in Munster at this tiht plowlands, prisoner, and hand-locked hiree plowland free; but when this was done, the Lord Roche extorted as many exactions from that half-plowland, as froreat reater: for the Earl of Desmond forcibly took away the Seneschal of Ih he was one of the entle with Irish:--

Mr Henry Sheffield asks Lord Burghley's interest with Sir George Carew, to be enall, whocircuht the barony of Odrone of Sir George Carew, could not be contented to let the Kavanaghs enjoy such lands as old Sir Peter Carew, young Sir Peter, and last, Sir George were content that they should have, but threatened to kill them wherever he could meet them As it is now fallen out, about the last of Nove lost four kine,accompanied with divers others to the number of twenty or thereabouts, by the procuree, a hs, with their swords drahich the old o into the woods, but was taken and brought before Mr Heron, who charged him that his son had taken the cows

The old man answered that he could pay for them Mr Heron would not be contented, but bade his ht for trial at the sessions Further, the ain into the woods, and there they found another old e, and likewise killed hi that it was because he would not confess the cows

On these enall; who, following them more upon will than with discretion, fell into their hands, and were slain with thirteen irdle, and one of his legs cut off, and his tongue drawn out of hisin all this country that was Sir George Carew's, but every man fled, and left the whole country waste; and so I fear reat between the like this has been occasionally seen in our colonies towards the native races; but there it never reached the saence The English officials and settlers kneell enough that the only thought of the native Irish was to restore their abolished customs, to recover their confiscated lands, to re-establish the crippled power of their chiefs; they knew that for this insurrection was ever ready, and that treachery would shrink frolish on the spot--all but a feere denounced as unpractical senti an irreconcilable foe--could think of no way of enforcing order, except by a wholesale use of the sword and the gallows They could find nothe rich land into a wilderness, and rooting out by faood here,” wrote an English observer in 1581, ”except he show hieneral account, even conteest a violent suspicion of exaggeration We possess theit

The Irish State Papers of the time contain the aetic and resolute Englishmen employed in council or in the field--men of business like Sir William Pelham, Sir Henry Wallop, Edward Waterhouse, and Geoffrey Fenton;--daring and brilliant officers, like Sir Williaer, Sir John Norreys, and John Zouch

These papers are the basis of Mr Froude's terrible chapters on the Desment is easily accessible in the printed calendars of the Record Office They show that from first to last, in principle and practice, in council and in act, the Tamerlane system was believed in, and carried out without a trace of remorse or question as to its morality ”If hell were open, and all the evil spirits were abroad,” writes Walsingham's correspondent Andrew Trollope, who talked about Taues--rather dogs, and worse than dogs, for dogs do but after their kind, and they degenerate fros or wolves; and accordingly the English chiefs insisted that this was the way to deal with the Irish

The state of Ireland, writes one, ”is like an old cloak often before patched, wherein is now ash that all the world doth know that there is no ree of another, ”that there is no way to daunt these people but by the edge of the sword, and to plant better in their place, or rather, let them cut one another's throats” These were no idle words Every page of these papers contains soress of a Deputy, or the President of a province, through the country is always accos