SPENSER IN IRELAND.
[1580.]
In the first week of October, 1579, Spenser was at Leicester House,
expecting "next week" to be despatched on Leicester's service to France.
Whether he was sent or not, we do not know. Gabriel Harvey, writing at
the end of the month, wagers that "for all his saying, he will not be
gone over sea, neither this week nor the next." In one of the Æglogues
(September) there are some lines which suggest, but do not necessarily
imply, the experience of an eye-witness of the state of religion in a
Roman Catholic country. But we can have nothing but conjecture whether
at this time or any other Spenser was on the Continent. The _Shepherd's
Calendar_ was entered at Stationers' Hall, December 5, 1579. In April,
1580, as we know from one of his letters to Harvey, he was at
Westminster. He speaks of the _Shepherd's Calendar_ as published; he is
contemplating the publication of other pieces, and then "he will in hand
forthwith with his _Fairie Queene_," of which he had sent Harvey a
specimen. He speaks especially of his _Dreams_ as a considerable work.
I take best my _Dreams_ should come forth alone, being grown
by means of the Gloss (running continually in manner of a
Paraphrase) full as great as my _Calendar_. Therein be some
things excellently, and many things wittily discoursed of E.
K., and the pictures so singularly set forth and portrayed, as
if Michael Angelo were there, he could (I think) nor amend the
best, nor reprehend the worst. I know you would like them
passing well.
It is remarkable that of a book so spoken of, as of the _Nine Comedies_,
not a trace, as far as appears, is to be found. He goes on to speak with
much satisfaction of another composition, which was probably
incorporated, like the _Epithalamion Thamesis_, in his later work.
Of my _Stemmata Dudleiana_, and specially of the sundry
Apostrophes therein, addressed you know to whom, much more
advisement he had, than so lightly to send them abroad: now
list, trust me (though 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
scholarship; and the poet or man of letters only trusted that his work,
by attracting the favour of the great, might open to him the door of
advancement. Spenser was probably expecting to push his fortunes in some
public employment under the patronage of two such powerful favourites as
Sidney and his uncle Leicester. Spenser's heart was set on poetry: but
what leisure he might have for it would depend on the course his life
might take. To have hung on Sidney's protection, or gone with him as his
secretary to the wars, to have been employed at home or abroad in
Leicester's intrigues, to have stayed in London filling by Leicester's
favour some government office, to have had his habits moulded and his
thoughts affected by the brilliant and unscrupulous society of the
court, or by the powerful and daring minds which were fast thronging the
political and literary scene--any of these contingencies might have
given his poetical faculty a different direction; nay, might have even
abridged its exercise or suppressed it. But his life was otherwise
ordered. A new opening presented itself. He had, and he accepted, the
chance of making his fortune another way. And to his new manner of life,
with its peculiar conditions, may be ascribed, not indeed the original
idea of that which was to be his great work, but the circumstances under
which the work was carried out, and which not merely coloured it, but
gave 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 moulding of his work, was his
migration to Ireland, and his settlement there for the greater part of
the remaining eighteen years of his life. We know little more than the
main facts of this change from the court and the growing intellectual
activity of England, to the fierce and narrow interests of a cruel and
unsuccessful struggle for colonization, in a country which was to
England much what Algeria was to France some thirty years ago. Ireland,
always unquiet, had became a serious danger to Elizabeth's Government.
It was its "bleeding ulcer." Lord Essex's great colonizing scheme, with
his unscrupulous severity, had failed. Sir Henry Sidney, wise, firm, and
wishing to be just, had tried his hand as Deputy for the third time in
the thankless charge of keeping 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 kingdom threatened to become a vantage-ground to
the foreign enemy. In November, 1579, the Government turned their eyes
on Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, a man of high 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 many things in
the policy of the Queen in England: his discontent had led him, strong
Protestant as he was, to coquet with Norfolk and the partisans of Mary
Queen of Scots, when England was threatened with a French marriage ten
years before. His name stands among the forty nobles on whom Mary's
friends counted.[54:1] And on the other hand, Elizabeth did not like him
or trust him. For some time she refused to employ him. At length, in the
summer of 1580, he was appointed to fill that great 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 who was interested in the literary enterprise of
the time. In the midst of his public employment in Holland, he had been
the friend and patron of George 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 numerous translators of the time. He had dedicated Tragical
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 time, he was recommended by his
brother to Walsingham for foreign 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 Walsingham. He had his eye on the proceedings of Deputies
and Presidents, and reported freely their misdoings or their
unpopularity. His letters form a considerable part of the Irish Papers.
He became a powerful and successful public servant. He became Sir
Geoffrey Fenton; he kept his high place for his life; he obtained grants
and lands; and he was commemorated as a great personage, 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 man in whom his friends saw a high and heroic
spirit. He was a statesman in whose motives and actions his religion had
a dominant influence: and his religion--he is called by the vague name
of Puritan--was one which combined a strong and doubtless genuine 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 enemy,
the Anti-Christ of Rome. The "good Lord Grey," he was, if we believe
his secretary, writing many years after this time, and when he was dead,
"most gentle, affable, loving, and temperate; always known to be a most
just, sincere, godly, and right noble man, far from sternness, far from
unrighteousness." But the infelicity of his times bore hardly upon him,
and Spenser admits, what is known otherwise, that he left a terrible
name behind him. He was certainly a man of severe and unshrinking sense
of duty, and like many great Englishmen of the time, so resolute in
carrying it 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 admire and reverence him,
had to lament deeply that "that good lord was blotted with the name of a
bloody man," one who "regarded not the life of the queen's subjects no
more than dogs, and had wasted and consumed all, so as now she had
nothing almost left, but to reign in their ashes."
Lord Grey was sent over at a moment of the utmost confusion and danger.
In July, 1579, Drury wrote to Burghley to stand firmly to the helm, for
"that a great storm was at hand." The South of Ireland was in fierce
rebellion, under the Earl of Desmond and Dr. Nicolas Sanders, who was
acting under the commission of the Pope, and promising 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, small as they
were, could not only hold their own against the ill-armed and
undisciplined Irish bands, but could inflict terrible chastisement on
the insurgents. 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 Desmond. But
the English chiefs were not strong enough 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, of mercy, of industry;
and among his counsellors and subordinates, the only remedy thought of
was that of remorseless and increasing 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 Wicklow, where 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 number of distinguished 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 Smerwick,
in order to prevent the rebellion being 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 formed at the time a
heavy charge against 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 no means of knowing how Lord Grey employed Spenser, or whether he
composed his own despatches. But from Spenser's position, the Secretary,
if he had not some hand in the following vivid and forcible account of
the taking of Smerwick,[58:2] must probably have been cognizant of it;
though there are some slight differences in the despatch, and in the
account which Spenser himself wrote afterwards in his pamphlet on Irish
Affairs.
After describing 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 promises, which
altogether vain and false they found; and that it was no part
of their intent to molest or take any government from your
Majesty; for proof, that they were ready to depart as they
came and deliver into my hands the fort. Mine answer was, 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 them that went about to
maintain rebels against you. . . And taking it that it could
not be his king's will, I was to know by whom 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, whom he followed as a blind man, not
knowing whither. The other avouched that they were all sent by
the Pope for the defence of the _Catholica fede_. My answer
was, that I would not greatly have marvelled if men being
commanded by natural and absolute princes did sometimes take
in hand wrong 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 empire, but (was) indeed
a detestable shaveling, the right Antichrist and general
ambitious tyrant over all right 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 more, to have gotten a certainty
for some of their lives: but finding that it would not be, the
colonel himself about sunsetting came forth and requested
respite with surcease of arms till the next morning, and then
he would give a resolute answer.
Finding that to be but a gain of time to them, and a loss of
the same for myself, I definitely answered I would not grant
it, and therefore presently either that he took my offer or
else return and I would fall to my business. He then embraced
my knees simply putting himself to my mercy, only he prayed
that for that night he might abide in the fort, and that in
the morning all should be put into my hands. I asked hostages
for the performance; they were given. Morning came; I
presented my companies in battle before the fort, the colonel
comes forth with ten or twelve of his chief gentlemen,
trailing their ensigns rolled up, and presented them unto me
with their lives and the fort. I sent straight certain
gentlemen in, to see their weapons and armour laid down, and
to guard 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 much wasted through 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 deserved. . . Of 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 enemies into your Highnesses' 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 men and women were hanged,
with an Englishman who had served Dr. Sanders, and two others whose arms
and legs were broken for torture."
Such scenes as those of Glenmalure and Smerwick, terrible as they were,
it might 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 combatants was made more savage and unforgiving
by religious 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 same fashion a band of French adventurers, some eighty
noblemen and gentlemen and two hundred soldiers, who were taken in an
attempt on the Azores during 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 Smerwick was
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
complain of this treatment of its subjects, who had no legal commission.
But the change of scene and life to Spenser was much more than merely
the sight of a disastrous skirmish and a capitulation without quarter.
He had passed to an entirely altered condition of social life; he had
passed from pleasant and merry England, with its comparative order and
peace, its thriving homesteads and wealthy cities, its industry and
magnificence,--
Eliza's blessed field,
That still with people, peace, and plenty flows--
to a land, beautiful indeed, and alluring, but of which the only law was
disorder, and the only rule failure. The Cambridge student, the follower
of country life in Lancashire or Kent, the scholar discussing with
Philip Sidney and corresponding with Gabriel Harvey about classical
metres and English rimes; the shepherd poet, Colin Clout, delicately
fashioning his innocent pastorals, his love complaints, or his dexterous
panegyrics or satires; the courtier, aspiring to shine in the train of
Leicester before the eyes of the great queen,--found himself
transplanted into a wild and turbulent savagery, 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 Parliament, its
representative of the Crown. It had its great earls and lords, with
noble and romantic titles, its courts and councils and administration;
the Queen's laws were there, and where they were acknowledged, which was
not, however, everywhere, the English speech was current. But underneath
this name and outside, all was coarse, and obstinately set against
civilized order. There was nothing but the wreck and clashing of
disintegrated customs, the lawlessness of fierce and ignorant
barbarians, whose own laws had been destroyed, and who would recognize
no other; the blood-feuds of rival septs; the ambitious and deadly
treacheries of rival nobles, oppressing all weaker than themselves, and
maintaining in waste and idleness their crowds of brutal retainers. In
one thing only was there agreement, though not even in this was there
union; and that was in deep, implacable hatred of their English masters.
And with these English masters, too, amid their own jealousies and
backbitings and mischief-making, their own bitter antipathies and
chronic despair, there was only one point of agreement, and that was
their deep scorn and loathing of the Irish.
This is Irish dealing with Irish, in Munster at this time:--
The Lord Roche kept a freeholder, who had eight plowlands,
prisoner, and hand-locked him till he had surrendered seven
plowlands and a half, on agreement to keep the remaining
plowland free; but when this was done, the Lord Roche extorted
as many exactions from that half-plowland, as from any other
half-plowland in his country. . . . And even the great men
were under the same oppression from the greater: for the Earl
of Desmond forcibly took away the Seneschal of Imokilly's corn
from his own land, though he was one of the most considerable
gentlemen in Munster.[62:3]
And this is English dealing with Irish:--
Mr. Henry Sheffield asks Lord Burghley's interest with Sir
George Carew, to be made his deputy at Leighlin, in place of
Mr. Bagenall, who met his death under the following
circumstances:--
Mr. Bagenall, after he had bought 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 November, one Henry Heron,
Mr. Bagenall's brother-in-law, having lost four kine, making
that his quarrel, he being accompanied with divers others to
the number of twenty or thereabouts, by the procurement of his
brother-in-law, went to the house of Mortagh Oge, a man
seventy years old, the chief of the Kavanaghs, with their
swords drawn: which the old man seeing, for fear of his life,
sought to go 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 men kill him, he desiring
to be brought for trial at the sessions. Further, the morrow
after they went again into the woods, and there they found
another old man, a servant of Mortagh Oge, and likewise killed
him, Mr. Heron saying that it was because he would not confess
the cows.
On these murders, the sons of the old man laid an ambush for
Mr. Bagenall; who, following them more upon will than with
discretion, fell into their hands, and were slain with
thirteen more. He had sixteen wounds above his girdle, and one
of his legs cut off, and his tongue drawn out of his mouth and
slit. There is not one man dwelling in all this country that
was Sir George Carew's, but every man fled, and left the whole
country waste; and so I fear me it will continue, now the
deadly feud is so great between them.[63:4]
Something like this has been occasionally seen in our colonies towards
the native races; but there it never reached the same height of
unrestrained and frankly justified indulgence. The English officials and
settlers knew well 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 from
nothing. And to meet it, the English on the spot--all but a few who were
denounced as unpractical sentimentalists for favouring 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 no means of restoring
peace except turning the rich land into a wilderness, and rooting out by
famine those whom the soldier or the hangman had not overtaken. "No
governor shall do any good here," wrote an English observer in 1581,
"except he show himself a Tamerlane."
In a general account, even contemporary, such statements might suggest a
violent suspicion of exaggeration. We possess the means of testing it.
The Irish State Papers of the time contain the ample reports and
letters, from day to day, of the energetic 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 William Drury, Sir
Nicolas Malby, Sir Warham St. Leger, Sir John Norreys, and John Zouch.
These papers are the basis of Mr. Froude's terrible chapters on the
Desmond rebellion, and their substance in abstract or abridgment 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 Tamerlane, "they could never be worse
than these Irish rogues--rather dogs, and worse than dogs, for dogs do
but after their kind, and they degenerate from all humanity." There is
but one way of dealing with wild dogs 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 made so great a gash that all the world doth
know that there is no remedy but to make a new." This means, in the
language 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 some memorandum of execution and
destruction. The progress of a Deputy, or the President of a province,
through the country is always accompanied with its tale of hangings.
There is sometimes a touch of the grotesque. "At Kilkenny," writes Sir
W. Drury, "the jail being full, we caused sessions immediately to begin.
Thirty-six persons were executed, among which some good ones; two for
treason, a blackamoor, and two witches by natural law, for that we found
no law to try them by in this realm." It is like the account of some
unusual kind of game in a successful bag. "If taking of cows, and
killing of kerne and churles had been worth advertizing," writes Lord
Grey to the Queen, "I would have had every day to have troubled your
Highness." Yet Lord Grey protests in the same letter that he has never
taken the life of any, however evil, who submitted. At the end of the
Desmond outbreak, the chiefs in the different provinces send in their
tale of death. Ormond complains of the false reports of his "slackness
in but killing three men," whereas the number was more than 3000; and he
sends in his "brief note" of his contribution to the slaughter, "598
persons of quality, besides 3000 or 4000 others, and 158 slain since his
discharge." The end was that, as one of the chief actors writes, Sir
Warham St. Leger, "Munster is nearly unpeopled by the murders done by
the rebels, and the killings by the soldiers; 30,000 dead of famine in
half a year, besides numbers that are hanged and killed. The realm," he
adds, "was never in greater danger, or in like misery." But in the
murderous work itself there was not much danger. "Our wars," writes Sir
Henry Wallop, in the height of the struggle, "are but like fox-hunting."
And when the English Government remonstrates against this system of
massacre, the Lord-Deputy writes back that "he sorrows that pity for the
wicked and evil should be enchanted into her Majesty."
And of this dreadful policy, involving, as the price of the extinction
of Desmond's rebellion, the absolute desolation of the South and West of
Ireland, Lord Grey came to be the deliberate and unfaltering champion.
His administration lasted only two years, and in spite of his natural
kindness of temper, which we need not doubt, it was, from the supposed
necessities of his position, and the unwavering consent of all English
opinions round him, a rule of extermination. No scruple ever crossed his
mind, except that he had not been sufficiently uncompromising in putting
first the religious aspect of the quarrel. "If Elizabeth had allowed
him," writes Mr. Froude, "he would have now made a Mahommedan conquest
of the whole island, and offered the Irish the alternative of the
Gospel or the sword." With the terrible sincerity of a Puritan, he
reproached himself that he had allowed even the Queen's commands to come
before the "one article of looking to God's dear service." "I confess my
sin," he wrote to Walsingham, "I have followed man too much," and he saw
why his efforts had been in vain. "Baal's prophets and councillors shall
prevail. I see it is so. I see it is just. I see it past help. I rest
despaired." His policy of blood and devastation, breaking the neck of
Desmond's rebellion, but failing to put an end to it, became at length
more than the home Government could bear; and with mutual
dissatisfaction he was recalled before his work was done. Among the
documents relating to his explanations with the English Government, is
one of which this is the abstract: "Declaration (Dec. 1583), by Arthur,
Lord Grey, of Wilton, to the Queen, showing the state of Ireland when he
was appointed Deputy, with the services of his government, and the
plight he left it in. 1485 chief men and gentlemen slain, not accounting
those of meaner sort, nor yet executions by law, and killing of churles,
which were innumerable."
This was the world into which Spenser was abruptly thrown, and in which
he was henceforward to have his home. He first became acquainted with it
as Lord Grey's Secretary in the Munster war. He himself in later days
with ample experience and knowledge reviewed the whole of this dreadful
history, its policy, its necessities, its results: and no more
instructive document has come down to us from those times. But his
description of the way in which the plan of extermination was carried
out in Munster before his eyes, may fittingly form a supplement to the
language on the spot of those responsible for it.
_Eudox._ But what, then, shall be the conclusion of this
war? . . .
_Iren._--The end will I assure me be very short and much
sooner than can be, in so great a trouble, as it seemeth,
hoped for, although there should none of them fall by the
sword nor be slain by the soldier: yet thus being kept from
manurance and their cattle from running abroad, by this hard
restraint they would quickly consume themselves, and devour
one another. The proof whereof I saw sufficiently exampled in
these late wars of Munster; for notwithstanding that the same
was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle
that you would have thought they should have been able to
stand long, yet ere one year and a half they were brought to
such wretchedness as that any stony heart would have rued the
same. Out of every corner of the woods and glynnes they came
creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear
them; they looked like anatomies of death, they spake like
ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat the dead
carrions, happy where they could find them, yea and one
another soon after, insomuch that the very carcases they
spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a
plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a
feast for a time, yet not able long to continue there withal;
that in a short space there were none almost left, and a most
populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man and
beast; yet sure in all that war there perished not many by the
sword, but all by the extremity of famine which they
themselves had wrought.
It is hardly surprising that Lord Grey's Secretary should share the
opinions and the feelings of his master and patron. Certainly in his
company and service, Spenser learned to look upon Ireland and the Irish
with the impatience and loathing which filled most Englishmen; and it
must be added with the same greedy eyes. In this new atmosphere, in
which his life was henceforth spent, amid the daily talk of ravage and
death, the daily scramble for the spoils of rebels and traitors, the
daily alarms of treachery and insurrection, a man naturally learns
hardness. Under Spenser's imaginative richness, and poetic delicacy of
feeling, there appeared two features. There was a shrewd sense of the
practical side of things: and there was a full share of that sternness
of temper which belonged to the time. He came to Ireland for no romantic
purpose: he came to make his fortune as well as he could: and he
accepted the conditions of the place and scene, and entered at once into
the game of adventure and gain which was the natural one for all English
comers, and of which the prizes were lucrative offices and forfeited
manors and abbeys. And in the native population and native interests, he
saw nothing but what called forth not merely antipathy, but deep moral
condemnation. It was not merely that the Irish were ignorant,
thriftless, filthy, debased and loathsome in their pitiable misery and
despair: it was that in his view, justice, truth, honesty had utterly
perished among them, and therefore were not due to them. Of any other
side to the picture, he like other good Englishmen, was entirely
unconscious: he saw only on all sides of him the empire of barbarism and
misrule which valiant and godly Englishmen were fighting to vanquish and
destroy--fighting against apparent but not real odds. And all this was
aggravated by the stiff adherence of the Irish to their old religion.
Spenser came over with the common opinion of Protestant Englishmen, that
they had at least in England the pure and undoubted religion of the
Bible: and in Ireland, he found himself face to face with the very
superstition in its lowest forms which he had so hated in England. He
left it plotting in England; he found it in armed rebellion in Ireland.
Like Lord Grey, he saw in Popery the root of all the mischiefs of
Ireland; and his sense of true religion, as well as his convictions of
right, conspired to recommend to him Lord Grey's pitiless government.
The opinion was everywhere--it was undisputed and unexamined--that a
policy of force, direct or indirect, was the natural and right way of
reducing diverging religions to submission and uniformity: that
religious disagreement ought as a matter of principle to be subdued by
violence of one degree or another. All wise and good men thought so: all
statesmen and rulers acted so. Spenser found in Ireland a state of
things which seemed to make this doctrine the simplest dictate of common
sense.
In August, 1582, Lord Grey left Ireland. He had accepted his office with
the utmost reluctance, from the known want of agreement between the
Queen and himself as to policy. He had executed it in a way which
greatly displeased the home Government. And he gave it up with his
special work, the extinction of Desmond's rebellion, still
unaccomplished. In spite of the thousands slain, and a province made a
desert, Desmond was still at large and dangerous. Lord Grey had been
ruthlessly severe, and yet not successful. For months there had been an
interchange of angry letters between him and the Government. Burghley,
he complains to Walsingham, was "so heavy against him." The Queen and
Burghley wanted order restored, but did not like either the expense of
war, or the responsibility before other governments for the severity
which their agents on the spot judged necessary. Knowing that he did not
please, he had begun to solicit his recall before he had been a year in
Ireland; and at length he was recalled, not to receive thanks, but to
meet a strict, if not hostile, inquiry into his administration. Besides
what had been on the surface of his proceedings to dissatisfy the
Queen, there had been, as in the case of every Deputy, a continued
underground stream of backbiting and insinuation going home against him.
Spenser did not forget this, when in the _Faery Queen_ he shadowed forth
Lord Grey's career in the adventures of Arthegal, the great Knight of
Justice, met on his return home from his triumphs by the hags, Envy and
Detraction, and the braying of the hundred tongues of the Blatant Beast.
Irish lords and partisans, calling themselves loyal, when they could not
get what they wanted, or when he threatened them for their insincerity
or insolence, at once wrote to England. His English colleagues, civil
and military, were his natural rivals or enemies, ever on the watch to
spy out and report, if necessary, to misrepresent, what was questionable
or unfortunate in his proceedings. Permanent officials like Archbishop
Adam Loftus the Chancellor, or Treasurer Wallop, or Secretary Fenton,
knew more than he did; they corresponded directly with the ministers;
they knew that they were expected to keep a strict watch on his
expenditure; and they had no scruple to send home complaints against him
behind his back, as they did against one another. A secretary in Dublin
like Geoffrey Fenton is described as a moth in the garment of every
Deputy. Grey himself complains of the underhand work; he cannot prevent
"backbiters' report:" he has found of late "very suspicious dealing
amongst all his best esteemed associates;" he "dislikes not to be
informed of the charges against him." In fact, they were accusing him of
one of the gravest sins of which a Deputy could be guilty; they were
writing home that he was lavishing the forfeited estates among his
favourites, under pretence of rewarding service, to the great loss and
permanent damage of her Majesty's revenue; and they were forwarding
plans for commissions to distribute these estates, of which the Deputy
should not be a member.
He had the common fate of those who accepted great responsibilities
under the Queen. He was expected to do very hard tasks with insufficient
means, and to receive more blame where he failed than thanks where he
succeeded. He had every one, English and Irish, against him in Ireland,
and no one for him in England. He was driven to violence because he
wanted strength; he took liberties with forfeitures belonging to the
Queen because he had no other means of rewarding public services. It is
not easy to feel much sympathy for a man who, brave and public spirited
as he was, could think of no remedy for the miseries of Ireland but
wholesale bloodshed. Yet, compared with the resident officials who
caballed against him, and who got rich on these miseries, the Wallops
and Fentons of the Irish Council, this stern Puritan, so remorseless in
what he believed to be his duty to his Queen and his faith, stands out
as an honest and faithful public servant of a Government which seemed
hardly to know its own mind, which vacillated between indulgence and
severity, and which hampered its officers by contradictory policies,
ignorant of their difficulties, and incapable of controlling the
supplies for a costly and wasteful war. Lord Grey's strong hand, though
incapable of reaching the real causes of Irish evils, undoubtedly saved
the country at a moment of serious peril, and once more taught lawless
Geraldines, and Eustaces, and Burkes the terrible lesson of English
power. The work which he had half done in crushing Desmond was soon
finished by Desmond's hereditary rival, Ormond; and under the milder,
but not more popular, rule of his successor, the proud and irritable
Sir John Perrot, Ireland had for a few years the peace which consisted
in the absence of a definite rebellion, till Tyrone began to stir in
1595, and Perrot went back a disgraced man, to die a prisoner in the
Tower.
Lord Grey left behind him unappeasable animosities, and returned to meet
jealous rivals and an ill-satisfied mistress. But he had left behind one
whose admiration and reverence he had won, and who was not afraid to
take care of his reputation. Whether Spenser went back with his patron
or not in 1582, he was from henceforth mainly resident in Ireland. Lord
Grey's administration, and the principles on which it had been carried
on, had made a deep impression on Spenser's mind. His first ideal had
been Philip Sidney, the attractive and all-accomplished gentleman,--
The President
Of noblesse and of chevalrie,--
And to the end the pastoral Colin Clout, for he ever retained his first
poetic name, was faithful to his ideal. But in the stern Proconsul,
under whom he had become hardened into a keen and resolute colonist, he
had come in contact with a new type of character; a governor under the
sense of duty, doing the roughest of work in the roughest of ways. In
Lord Grey, he had this character, not as he might read of it in books,
but acting out its qualities in present life, amid the unexpected
emergencies, the desperate alternatives, the calls for instant decision,
the pressing necessities and the anxious hazards, of a course full of
uncertainty and peril. He had before his eyes day by day, fearless,
unshrinking determination, in a hateful and most unpromising task. He
believed that he saw a living example of strength, manliness, and
nobleness; of unsparing and unswerving zeal for order and religion, and
good government; of single-hearted devotion to truth and right, and to
the Queen. Lord Grey grew at last, in the poet's imagination, into the
image and representative of perfect and masculine justice. When Spenser
began to enshrine in a great allegory his ideas of human life and
character, Lord Grey supplied the moral features, and almost the name,
of one of its chief heroes. Spenser did more than embody his memory in
poetical allegories. In Spenser's _View of the present State of
Ireland_, written some years after Lord Grey's death, he gives his
mature, and then at any rate, disinterested approbation of Lord Grey's
administration, and his opinion of the causes of its failure. He kindles
into indignation when "most untruely and maliciously, those evil tongues
backbite and slander the sacred ashes of that most just and honourable
personage, whose least virtue, of many most excellent, which abounded in
his heroical spirit, they were never able to aspire unto."
Lord Grey's patronage had brought Spenser into the public service;
perhaps that patronage, the patronage of a man who had powerful enemies,
was the cause that Spenser's preferments, after Lord Grey's recall, were
on so moderate a scale. The notices which we glean from indirect sources
about Spenser's employment in Ireland are meagre enough, but they are
distinct. They show him as a subordinate public servant, of no great
account, but yet, like other public servants in Ireland, profiting, in
his degree, by the opportunities of the time. In the spring following
Lord Grey's arrival (March 22, 1581), Spenser was appointed Clerk of
Decrees and Recognizances in the Irish Court of Chancery, retaining his
place as Secretary to the Lord-Deputy, in which character his signature
sometimes appears in the Irish Records, certifying State documents sent
to England. This office is said by Fuller to have been a "lucrative"
one. In the same year he received a lease of the Abbey and Manor of
Enniscorthy, in the County of Wexford. Enniscorthy was an important post
in the network of English garrisons, on one of the roads from Dublin to
the South. He held it but for a short time. It was transferred by him to
a citizen of Wexford, Richard Synot, an agent, apparently, of the
powerful Sir Henry Wallop, the Treasurer; and it was soon after
transferred by Synot to his patron, an official who secured to himself a
large share of the spoils of Desmond's rebellion. Further, Spenser's
name appears, in a list of persons (January, 1582), among whom Lord Grey
had distributed some of the forfeited property of the rebels--a list
sent home by him in answer to charges of waste and damage to the Queen's
revenue, busily urged against him in Ireland by men like Wallop and
Fenton, and readily listened to by English ministers like Burghley, who
complained that Ireland was a "gulf of consuming treasure." The grant
was mostly to persons active in service, among others one to Wallop
himself; and a certain number of smaller value to persons of Lord Grey's
own household. There, among yeomen ushers, gentlemen ushers, gentlemen
serving the Lord-Deputy, and Welshmen and Irishmen with uncouth names,
to whom small gratifications had been allotted out of the spoil, we
read--"the lease of a house in Dublin belonging to [Lord] Baltinglas for
six years to come to Edmund Spenser, one of the Lord-Deputy's
Secretaries, valued at 5_l._" . . . "of a 'custodiam' of John Eustace's
[one of Baltinglas' family] land of the Newland to Edmund Spenser, one
of the Lord-Deputy's Secretaries." In July, 1586, when every one was
full of the project for "planting" Munster, he was still in Dublin, for
he addresses from thence a sonnet to Gabriel Harvey. In March, 1588/9,
we find the following, in a list of officers on the establishment of the
province of Munster, which the government was endeavouring to colonize
from the west of England: "Lodovick Briskett, clerk to the council (at
20_l._ per annum), 13_l._ 6_s._ 8_d._ (this is exercised by one Spenser,
as deputy for the said Briskett), to whom (i. e. Briskett) it was
granted by patent 6 Nov. 25 Eliz. (1583)." (_Carew MSS._) Bryskett was a
man much employed in Irish business. He had been Clerk to the Irish
Council, had been a correspondent of Burghley and Walsingham, and had
aspired to be Secretary of State when Fenton obtained the post: possibly
in disappointment, he had retired, with an office which he exercised by
deputy, to his lands in Wexford. He was a poet, and a friend of
Spenser's: and it may have been by his interest with the dispensers of
patronage, that "one Spenser," who had been his deputy, succeeded to his
office.
In this position Spenser was brought into communication with the
powerful English chiefs on the Council of Munster, and also with the
leading men among the Undertakers as they were called, among whom more
than half a million of acres of the escheated and desolate lands of the
fallen Desmond were to be divided, on condition of each Undertaker
settling on his estate a proportionate number of English gentlemen,
yeomen, artisans and labourers with their families, who were to bring
the ruined province into order and cultivation. The President and
Vice-President of the Council were the two Norreys, John and Thomas, two
of the most gallant of a gallant family. The project for the planting of
Munster had been originally started before the rebellion, in 1568. It
had been one of the causes of the rebellion; but now that Desmond was
fallen, it was revived. It had been received in England with favour and
hope. Men of influence and enterprise, Sir Christopher Hatton,
Walsingham, Walter Ralegh, had embarked in it: and the government had
made an appeal to the English country gentlemen to take advantage of
this new opening for their younger sons, and to send them over at the
head of colonies from the families of their tenants and dependants, to
occupy a rich and beautiful land on easy terms of rent. In the Western
Counties, north and south, the appeal had awakened interest. In the list
of Undertakers are found Cheshire and Lancashire names, Stanley,
Fleetwood, Molyneux: and a still larger number for Somerset, Devon, and
Dorset, Popham, Rogers, Coles, Ralegh, Chudleigh, Champernown. The plan
of settlement was carefully and methodically traced out. The province
was surveyed as well as it could be under great difficulties. Maps were
made which Lord Burghley annotated. "Seignories" were created of varying
size, 12,000, 8000, 6000, 4000 acres, with corresponding obligations as
to the number and class of farms and inhabitants in each. Legal science
in England was to protect titles by lengthy patents and leases;
administrative watchfulness and firmness were to secure them in Ireland.
Privileges of trade were granted to the Undertakers: they were even
allowed to transport coin out of England to Ireland: and a long respite
was granted them before the Crown was to claim its rents. Strict rules
were laid down to keep the native Irish out of the English lands and
from intermarrying with the English families. In this partition,
Seignories were distributed by the Undertakers among themselves with the
free carelessness of men dividing the spoil. The great people, like
Hatton and Ralegh, were to have their two or three Seignories: the
county of Cork with its nineteen Seignories is assigned to the gentleman
undertakers from Somersetshire. The plan was an ambitious and tempting
one. But difficulties soon arose. The gentleman undertakers were not in
a hurry to leave England even on a visit to their desolate and dangerous
seignories in Munster. The "planting" did not thrive. The Irish were
inexhaustible in raising legal obstacles and in giving practical
annoyance. Claims and titles were hard to discover or to extinguish.
Even the very attainted and escheated lands were challenged by virtue of
settlements made before the attainders. The result was that a certain
number of Irish estates were added to the possessions of a certain
number of English families. But Munster was not planted. Burghley's
policy, and Walsingham's resolution, and Ralegh's daring inventiveness
were alike baffled by the conditions of a problem harder than the
peopling of America or the conquest of India. Munster could not be made
English. After all its desolation, it reverted in the main to its Irish
possessors.
Of all the schemes and efforts which accompanied the attempt, and the
records of which fill the Irish State papers of those years, Spenser was
the near and close spectator. He was in Dublin and on the spot, as Clerk
of the Council of Munster. And he had become acquainted, perhaps, by
this time, had formed a friendship, with Walter Ralegh, one of the most
active men in Irish business, whose influence was rising wherever he was
becoming known. Most of the knowledge which Spenser thus gathered, and
of the impressions which a practical handling of Irish affairs had left
on him, was embodied in his interesting work, written several years
later--_A View of the present State of Ireland_. But his connexion with
Munster not unnaturally brought him also an accession of fortune. When
Ralegh and the "Somersetshire men" were dividing among them the County
of Cork, the Clerk of the Council was remembered by some of his friends.
He was admitted among the Undertakers. His name appears in the list,
among great statesmen and captains with their seignories of 12,000
acres, as holding a grant of some 3000. It was the manor and castle of
Kilcolman, a ruined house of the Desmonds, under the Galtee Hills. It
appears to have been first assigned to another person.[79:5] But it came
at last into Spenser's hands, probably in 1586; and henceforward, this
was his abode and his home.
Kilcolman Castle was near the high road between Mallow and Limerick,
about three miles from Buttevant and Doneraile, in a plain at the foot
of the last western falls of the Galtee range, watered by a stream now
called the Awbeg, but which he celebrates under the name of the Mulla.
In Spenser's time it was probably surrounded with woods. The earlier
writers describe it as a pleasant abode with fine views, and so Spenser
celebrated its natural beauties. The more recent accounts are not so
favourable. "Kilcolman," says the writer in Murray's Handbook, "is a
small peel tower, with cramped and dark rooms, a form which every
gentleman's house assumed in turbulent times. It is situated on the
margin of a small lake, and, it must be confessed, overlooking an
extremely dreary tract of country." It was in the immediate
neighbourhood of the wild country to the north, half forest, half bog,
the wood and hill of Aharlo, or Arlo, as Spenser writes it, which was
the refuge and the "great fastness" of the Desmond rebellion. It was
amid such scenes, amid such occupations, in such society and
companionship, that the poet of the _Faery Queen_ accomplished as much
of his work as was given him to do. In one of his later poems, he thus
contrasts the peace of England with his own home:--
No wayling there nor wretchednesse is heard,
No bloodie issues nor no leprosies,
No griesly famine, nor no raging sweard,
No nightly bordrags [= border ravage], nor no hue and cries;
The shepheards there abroad may safely lie,
On hills and downes, withouten dread or daunger:
No ravenous wolves the good mans hope destroy,
Nor outlawes fell affray the forest raunger.
FOOTNOTES:
[54:1] Froude, x. 158.
[58:2] Calendar of State Papers Ireland, 1574-1585. Mr. H. C. Hamilton's
Pref. p. lxxi-lxxiii. Nov. 12, 1580.
[62:3] Cox, Hist. of Ireland, 354.
[63:4] Irish Papers, March 29, 1587.
[79:5] Carew MSS. Calendar, 1587, p. 449. Cf. Irish Papers; Calendar,
1587, p. 309, 450.