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Spenser's View and Essex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Rudolf B. Gottfried
Rudolf B. Gottfried*
Affiliation:
The University of Cincinnati
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Extract

William Cliff Martin in his paper “The Date and Purpose of Spenser's Veue” interprets Spenser's View of the Present State of Ireland as intended to be a subtle and timely compliment to that newest and most powerful of Elizabeth's favorites, the Earl of Essex.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , September 1937 , pp. 645 - 651
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1937

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References

1 PMLA, xlvii (1932), 137–143.

2 On a point not essential to the Essex identification, however, one must decidedly disagree with Martin. The dissension between Grey and another great lord to which the View alludes (Globe Edition, p. 655) Martin finds to have been caused by Raleigh between Grey and Ormond, and he adds: “This discussion is given to Eudoxus, cleverly enough, who says he cannot forget the unhappy issue of that situation” (p. 141). The allusion is actually made by Irenius; and, although Ormond is the lord to whose trouble with Grey in 1581 Irenius probably refers, there is no sound reason for believing that Spenser accuses Raleigh of having caused that trouble. Grey had shown his dislike of Ormond before February 27, 1581, when the Spanish Ambassador reports it from London, while Raleigh's first extant complaint to Grey against Ormond is dated May 1 (Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, 1580–1586, p. 85; John Pope Hennessy, Sir Walter Raleigh in Ireland [London, 1883], pp. 162–166); when articles against Ormond's government were drawn up in March, 1582, there were numerous important witnesses besides Raleigh (Calendar of the Carew Papers, 1575–1588, pp. 325–327); and in any case it is inconceivable that the iron-fisted Raleigh could have been motivated by a desire to undo Grey's military conquest. On the other hand, if Raleigh had so fatally deceived Grey, Spenser would have known of it before 1590 when he and the former were on terms of intimacy; and even if the difficulty could be explained, how, given that intimacy, explain an attack on Raleigh in 1596?

3 Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1592–1596, clxx. 16 and clxxiii. 93; Historical Manuscripts Commission, Salisbury MSS., vi, 558; State Papers, Ireland, 1596–1597, cxcii. 33.

4 Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1754), ii, 142.

5 Birch, ii, 118–119 and 131.

6 Deborah Jones, “Lodowick Bryskett and his Family,” in Thomas Lodge and Other Elizabethans, ed. Charles J. Sisson (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), pp. 243–361, particular reference to pp. 327–345; Salisbury MSS., iv, 447–448, 472, 476 and viii, 493; Henry R. Plomer and Tom P. Cross, The Life and Correspondence of Lodowick Bryskett (Chicago, 1927), p. 54. For Bryskett's relations with Spenser see Frederic I. Carpenter, “Spenser in Ireland,” MP., xix, 405–419 and Raymond Jenkins, “Spenser and the Clerkship in Munster,” PMLA, xlvii (1932), 109–121.

7 State Papers, Ireland, 1598–1599, cciii. 119.

8 Richard Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors (London, 1885–90), iii, 302.

9 State Papers, Ireland, 1598–1599, Introduction by Ernest G. Atkinson, p. lvii; Frederic I. Carpenter, “Spenser Apocrypha,” in The Manly Anniversary Studies (1923), p. 64.

10 Rotographs of first and last pages of the Book, calendared State Papers, Ireland, 1598–1599, cciii. 119.

11 State Papers, Ireland, 1600–1601, ccviii. 57; Edward Edwards, The Life of Sir Walter Raleigh (1868), i, 680–683.

12 Rotograph of first page of the Book.

13 Sixteenth Report of the Deputy Keeper of Public Records of Ireland (1884), Fiants Elizabeth, no. 5066; State Papers, Ireland, 1586–1588, cxxxii. 39; Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, liv (1924), 139; English Historical Review, iii (1888), 268, map.

14 State Papers, Ireland, 1588–1592, cxlvii. 15 and 15.1.

15 State Papers, Ireland, 1598–1599, ccii. part 3. 140.

16 Carew Papers, 1589–1600, p. 365; State Papers, Ireland, 1600, ccvii, part 3.17 and part 4. 12.

17 I have used a rotograph of the letter calendared State Papers, Ireland, 1600–1601, ccviii. part 1. 104.

18 DNB., article on Henry Cuffe by Sidney Lee; Anthony à Wood, Athenae Oxonienses and Fasti, ed. Philip Bliss (London, 1813–20), 1, cols. 704–709; Andrew Kippis, Biographia Britannica (London, 1778–93), iv, 549–558.

19 Walter E. Devereux, Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of Essex (London, 1853), i, 378–379.

20 Salisbury MSS., vii, 424; viii, 76; ix, passim.

21 DNB., article on Henry Cuffe by Sidney Lee.

22 James Spedding, Letters and Life of Francis Bacon (London, 1861–74), iv, 260; William Camden, The Historie of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princesse Elizabeth, trans. William Norton (London, 1630), pt. iv, 194.

23 John Lodge, The Peerage of Ireland, ed. Mervyn Archdall (London, 1789), vi, 55–56; Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, Second Series, ii (1896), 276.

24 Salisbury MSS., xi, 267–268.

25 The Visitations of the County of Somerset, 1531–1575, ed. Frederic W. Weaver (Exeter, 1885), p. 18; a genealogy of the family of Robert Cuffe of Creech is given in The Visitation of Somerset in 1623, ed. Frederic T. Colby, Harleian Society (London, 1876), p. 30, but his descendants occur too late to concern us here.

26 Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England (London, 1840), iii, 103.

27 DNB., article on Henry Cuffe.

28 John Collinson, The History and Antiquities of the County of Somersetshire (Bath, 1791), i, pt. 2, 76.

29 Letters from Sir Robert Cecil to Sir George Carew, ed. John Maclean, Camden Society (London, 1864), p. 73.

30 The Acts of the Privy Council of England, New Series, ed. John R. Dasent, xxix (1598–99), 205.

31 Historie, pt. iv, 135. On help extended to the dying poet by Essex, see Ray Heffner, “Did Spenser Die in Poverty?”, MLN, xlviii (1933), 221–226.