Are married to the State.
But if they Press
To imitate his Fame
Munster may Bless
The time that Villiers Came.”
Mrs. Charles Fleetwood, daughter of Oliver Cromwell and widow of General Ireton, who died from wounds during the siege of Limerick, is buried in the center of the chancel. Cromwell had his headquarters here for some time and appointed his son-in-law, Fleetwood, lord deputy in 1649.
Raleigh was twenty-eight years old when he came to Ireland from Devonshire in 1579 as captain of a levy of troops, and Youghal is the only home he ever had so far as we know. He sailed from there upon his last and fatal voyage on Aug. 6, 1617.
There is still another association which will appeal with force to the majority of the masculine readers of these lines. From Myrtle Lodge Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco into the United Kingdom, having brought it home from the West Indies where the Spaniards found the natives smoking it at the time of the discovery of America. Columbus and his followers carried it back with them to Spain. Fifty years afterward Sir Walter Raleigh introduced it at the court of Queen Elizabeth and brought to Youghal the first tobacco ever seen in Ireland, which he smoked under a group of four wonderful yew trees while he read the manuscript of Edmund Spenser’s “Faerie Queene,” which had been submitted for his criticism by the author. A considerable part of the fourth book of the poem was written at Myrtle Lodge while Spenser was Sir Walter’s guest, and the remainder at Kilcolman Castle on the River Blackwater. The poem was never finished, but its publication is due to Sir Walter, for he took the manuscript to London, placed it with the printer, and provided the means to pay the expense. He thought so highly of the poem that, in a double sonnet, composed while Spenser was visiting him at Youghal, he says:
“All suddenly I saw the Faerie Queene,
At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept.”