The Spanish Armada, Ireland, and Spenser's The Faerie Queene

Abstract

When word first came that a large group of damaged ships scattered from the defeated Spanish Armada had crashed along Ireland's northern and western coasts in the fall of 1588, Edmund Spenser's thoughts may have turned to the spoil at hand. He would also have worried greatly about Spanish survivors, those healthy enough to aid Irish rebels and cause him and his friends problems. He would also have dreaded the spread of the Counter Reformation at the expense of Protestantism. Though raised and educated in London and Cambridge, Spenser had moved to Ireland in 1580. There he served as secretary and clerk in successive colonial administrations. As a property owner, he acted ambitiously, having first leased land in Counties Dublin, Kildare, and Wexford, before moving on to war-torn County Cork in the latter part of the decade. Thanks to his enviable position there, he acquired, and by spring of 1589, occupied more than 3,000 acres at Kilcolman, near Doneraile. His estate, "Hap Hazard," was part of the Munster Plantation, a vast colonial project established in the wake of the Desmond rebellion of 1579-83. Spenser lived as a landed gentleman until 1598, when he was burned out of his home as a result of the southern spread of the Nine-Years War (1594-1603), aided by the Spanish and led by the native Irish lord Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone. Spenser fled Ireland and died in London in 1599, never having finished his great epic, The Faerie Queene. 1