A Biography of Edmund Spenser | Page 5

in the Books of the Treasurer of the Queen's Chamber in
1569, as paid for bearing letters from Sir Henry Norris, her Majesty's
ambassador in France, to the Queen,{1} and who with but slight
probability has been surmised to be the poet himself, is scarcely more

plausibly conjectured by Mr. Collier to be the poet's father. The utter
silence about his parents, with the single exception quoted, in the works
of one who, as has been said above, made poetry the confidante of all
his joys and sorrows, is remarkable. Whoever they were, he was well
connected on his father's side at least. 'The nobility of the Spensers,'
writes Gibbon, 'has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of
Marlborough; but I exhort them to consider the "Faerie Queen" as the
most precious jewel of their coronet.' Spenser was connected with the
then not ennobled, but highly influential family of the Spencers of
Althorpe, Northamptonshire. Theirs was the 'house of auncient fame,'
or perhaps we should rather say they too belonged to the 'house of
auncient fame' alluded to in the quotation made above from the
Prothalamion. He dedicates various poems to the daughters of Sir John
Spencer, who was the head of that family during the poet's youth and
earlier manhood down to 1580, and in other places mentions these
ladies with many expressions of regard and references to his affinity.
'Most faire and vertuous Ladie,' he writes to the 'Ladie Compton and
Mountegle,' the fifth daughter, in his dedication to her of his Mother
Hubberds Tale, 'having often sought opportunitie by some good
meanes to make knowen to your Ladiship the humble affection and
faithfull duetie, which I have alwaies professed and am bound to beare
to that house, from whence yee spring, I have at length found occasion
to remember the same by making a simple present to you of these my
idle labours, &c.' To another daughter, 'the right worthy and vertuous
ladie the Ladie Carey,' he dedicates his _Muiopotmos_; to another, 'the
right honorable the Ladie Strange,' his Teares of the Muses. In the latter
dedication he speaks of 'your particular bounties, and also some private
bands of affinitie, which it hath pleased your Ladiship to acknowledge.'
It was for this lady Strange, who became subsequently the wife of Sir
Thomas Egerton, that one who came after Spenser--Milton--wrote the
Arcades. Of these three kinswomen, under the names of Phyllis,
Charillis, and sweet Amaryllis, Spenser speaks once more in his _Colin
Clouts Come Home Again_; he speaks of them as
The honour of the noble familie Of which I meanest boast myself to be.
For the particular branch of the Spencer or Spenser family--one branch

wrote the name with s, another with _c_--to which the poet belonged, it
has been well suggested that it was that settled in East Lancashire in the
neighbourhood of Pendle Forest. It is known on the authority of his
friend Kirke, whom we shall mention again presently, that Spenser
retired to the North after leaving Cambridge; traces of a Northern
dialect appear in the _Shepheardes Calendar_; the Christian name
Edmund is shown by the parish registers to have been a favourite with
one part of the Lancashire branch--with that located near Filley Close,
three miles north of Hurstwood, near Burnley. Spenser then was born
in London, probably in East Smithfield, about a year before those
hideous Marian fires began to blaze in West Smithfield. He had at least
one sister, and probably at least one brother. His memory would begin
to be retentive about the time of Queen Elizabeth's accession. Of his
great contemporaries, with most of whom he was to be brought
eventually into contact, Raleigh was born at Hayes in Devonshire in the
same year with him, Camden in Old Bailey in 1551, Hooker near
Exeter in or about 1553, Sidney at Penshurst in 1554, Bacon at York
House in the West Strand, 1561, Shakspere at Stratford-on-Avon in
1564, Robert Devereux, afterwards second earl of Essex, in 1567. The
next assured fact concerning Spenser is that he was educated at the
Merchant Taylors' School, then just founded. This we learn from an
entry in 'The Spending of the Money of Robert Nowell, Esq.,' of Reade
Hall, Lancashire, brother of Alexander Nowell, Dean of St. Paul's. In
an accompt of sums 'geven to poor schollers of dyvers gramare
scholles' we find Xs. given, April 28, 1569, to 'Edmond Spensore
Scholler of the Merchante Tayler Scholl;' and the identification is
established by the occasion being described as 'his gowinge to
Penbrocke Hall in Chambridge,' for we know that the future poet was
admitted a Sizar of Pembroke College, then styled Hall, Cambridge, in
1569. Thus we may fairly conclude that Spenser was not only London
born but London bred, though he may have