¹ Mr. J. C. Smith, in his article on Spenser in the 14th edition of the Britannica, is the first biographer to say that Spenser, acting as Bryskett's deputy, was clerk of the Council of Munster in 1585. Apparently, he considers the evidence advanced in Plomer's Life of Bryskett sufficient to warrant this conclusion.

² H. R. Plomer and T. P. Cross, The Life and Correspondence of Lodowick Bryskett (University of Chicago Press, 1927), p. 11.

³ Cal. of Carew MSS., 1575–1588, p. 104.

⁴ Fiants, Eliz., no. 3969. The official lease for New Abbey was not granted until August 24, 1582.

⁵ Plomer, op. cit., p. 36.

⁶ Ibid., pp. 17 ff.

⁷ Although two incumbents were intended by the statute creating the office, the work of both the Clerk of Chancery for Faculties and the Sole Registrar of Appeals Ecclesiastical appears to have been performed by one person, first by Rowland Cowyk and later by his successor, Arland Uscher. No documents appear to be extant which prove that Spenser ever performed in person the duties of either office. For Cowyk's connection with this office, see Pauline Henley, Spenser in Ireland, p. 34.

⁸ Fiants, Eliz., no. 3694.

⁹ Plomer, op. cit., p. 9.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 33.

¹¹ Liber Munerum Publicorum Hiberniae, Vol. 1, pt. ii, p. 187.

¹² Plomer, op. cit., pp. 50–52.

¹³ Ibid., p. 46. Quoted from S.P., Ireland, Vol. 115, p. 45.

¹⁴ Ibid., pp. 43–44.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 47.

¹⁶ Ibid., pp. 50–51. Quoted from S.P., Ireland, Vol. 146, 7 (1).

¹⁷ Spenser sold this property to Richard Synot, who was probably the agent of Lord Justice Wallop.

¹⁸ S.P., Ireland, 1588–1592, p. 341. Also, from the State Papers (p. 404), Chichester is still occupying the position on July 10, 1591.

¹⁹ Lismore Papers, ed. Grosart, Vol. 1, 2nd ser., 19 ff. Eryskett, of course, officially drew the fees and emoluments of the office from October 18, 1583, until 1600.

²⁰ If the public records of Ireland in the Four Courts had not been destroyed in 1922, this problem could have been put beyond dispute.

²¹ For instance, after the year 1585, the note is: (No records?). The inference is that scholars have probably been searching the wrong records, those of Dublin instead of those connected with Limerick and Cork.

²² Pp. 44–46.

²³ P. Cunningham, Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels, p. xxx.

²⁴ The substance of the sonnet to Harvey becomes more significant if we regard Spenser, by virtue of his position with Norris, as deeply concerned with quarrels in the Irish Parliament and too much in the world's business. We understand, then, why Spenser, an actor on the world's stage, envies his friend Harvey in his scholarly retreat at Cambridge, for Spenser then most desired to be a looker-on of this world's stage that he might be about his main business, the composition of the Faerie Queene. To Harvey, however, chafing at being a mere looker-on, these lines must have seemed sadly and bitterly ironical.

²⁵ The fact that Spenser apparently sold his position in the Court of Chancery for Faculties in 1588, since the patent passed to Arland Uscher on June 22 of that year, is of no weight as evidence that Spenser was in Dublin at the time, for a deputy had performed the duties of the office at least for eight months, since we know that Spenser was Clerk at Munster as early as October 1, 1587.

²⁶ Article on Thomas Norris in D.N.B.

²⁷ Cal. of Carew MSS., Vol. 632, p. 88. In the Stale Papers for Ireland, Vol. 124, under the date of May 11, is cited the protest of certain knights and burgesses who refused to give their consent to the passage of the acts of attainder. The reason for nullifying all conveyances made twelve years before the rebellion is indicated by the note under May 8, which indicates that Desmond had conveyed his possessions to James Butler, Baron of Dunboyne, on September 10, 1572.

²⁸ Veue of the Present State of Ireland, ed. Grosart, p. 50.

²⁹ S.P., Ireland, Vol. 124, May 30.

³⁰ Fiants, Elizabeth, nos. 4150 and 4464.

³¹ Apparently Spenser either did not pay any rent at all or else only in August, 1583; therefore, on February 17, 1589, the lease was given to Thomas Lambyn and the patent was granted him in December, 1590.

³² Cal. of Carew MSS., 1575–1588, p. 462.

³³ MS. Rawl. A. 317, Bodleian Library. Quoted in R.E.S., 1926, by F. P. Wilson.

³⁴ 1586–1588, p. 222.

³⁵ Since the living was so poor that Spenser was delinquent in the payment of first fruits, we may conjecture that he had his own experience in mind in the Veue when he complains of the unnecessary rigor of the bishop of the diocese, presumably Irish, who, though he may accede to the appointment of an Englishman to a benefice at the dictation of a superior, “yet he will underhande carrye such a hand over him, or by his officers wringe him so sore, as he will soone make him weary of his poore living.”

³⁶ It would have been physically impossible for Spenser to have performed for six years all the drudgery connected with the Clerkship of Chancery for Faculties and at the same time to have written the first three books of the Faerie Queene. Spenser doubtless regarded this office as a sinecure. From March 22, 1581, the date of his appointment, till the departure of Grey in September, 1582, the duties of the office must have been performed by a deputy, for Spenser was during this period the private secretary of Grey. For information regarding the common practice of selling offices, see Pauline Henley, Spenser in Ireland, pp. 46, 47.