J. O.
EDMUND SPENSER.
(Vol. vii., p. 303.)
Mr. F. F. Spenser published the results of his researches relative to Spenser in the Gentleman's Magazine for August, 1842; and towards the end of his communication promised to record "many further interesting particulars," through the same medium, but failed to do so. Mr. Craik has made special reference to Mr. F. F. Spenser's paper in a little work upon which he must have bestowed a vast deal of labour, and which contains the completest investigation of all that has been discovered concerning the life, works, and descendants of the poet that I have met with: I refer to Spenser and his Poetry: by George L. Craik, M.A.: 3 vols. London, 1845. The appendix to vol. iii., devoted to an account of the descendants of Spenser, among other interesting matter, contains the history of the family descended from Sarah Spenser, a sister of Edmund Spenser, which is still represented. To which I may add that Spenser's own direct descendants are living in the city of Cork, and, I regret to say, in reduced circumstances. This should not be. A pension might well be bestowed on the descendants of Spenser, the only one of our four great poets whose posterity is not extinct.
J. M. B.
Tunbridge Wells.
I have read with much curiosity and surprise a paragraph engrafted into "N. & Q." (Vol. vii., p. 33.) from The Times newspaper, June 16, 1841, announcing that a Mr. F. F. Spenser, of Halifax, had ascertained that the ancient residence of his own family, at Hurstwood, near Burnley, Lancashire, was the identical spot where the great Elizabethan poet, Edmund Spenser, is said to have retired, when driven by academical disappointments to his relations in the north of England.
I confess all this appears to me very like a hoax, there is such a weight of negative testimony against it. Dr. Whitaker, the learned historian of Whalley, describes Hurstwood Hall as a strong and well-built old house, bearing on its front, in large characters, the name of "Barnard Townley," its founder, and that it was for several descents the property and residence of a family branched out from the parent stock of Townley, in the person of John Townley, third son of Sir Richard Townley, of Townley—died Sept. 1562. His son, Barnard Townley, died 1602, and married Agnes, daughter and coheiress of George Ormeroyd, of Ormeroyd, who died 1586.
It must be remembered that Hurstwood is in the immediate neighbourhood of Dr. Whitaker's ancient patrimonial estate of Holme; and he must have been familiar with all the traditionary history of that locality. Yet he is silent on this subject, and does not allude either to the occasional residence of the poet Spenser in those parts, or to the family of Spensers, who are stated in this paragraph to have resided at Hurstwood about four hundred years.