petitioner's mother which they uniustly detayneth (sic); . . . and avoweth that the said Roger Seckerstone, his mouther's now husband, uniustly detayneth. . . .1

The conclusion drawn from this is that the heroine of the Amoretti (who is supposed to be Spenser's wife) was Elizabeth Boyle, and that she married again in 1603, and was again a widow in 1606. But it is necessary to assume for this conclusion that there was only one Elizabeth Seckerstone in that district at the time, whereas both those names may have been common ones there. Moreover, as I shall endeavour to show, the conclusion that the "three Elizabeths" sonnet applies to the poet's wife, though a natural one, is based on a misinterpretation. Finally, it is necessary to suppose that the widow deserted her young children, or at any rate her eldest boy, within a few years of her first husband's death, and that (as Grosart supposes) Sylvanus, who in 1603 could not have been more than eight years old,2 was represented in the legal proceedings by others. But this is most improbable ; there is nothing in the documents to suggest it, and they furnish, to my mind, an additional argument for an earlier marriage.3

The "three Elizabeths" sonnet (No. Ixxiv.) is as follows:

Most happy letters! fram'd by skilfull trade,
With which that happy name was first desynd,
The which three times thrise happy hath me made,
With guifts of body, fortune, and of mind.

The first my being to me gave by kind,

From mothers womb deriv'd by dew descent:

The second is my sovereigne Queene most kind,
That honour and large richesse to me lent:
The third, my love, my lifes last ornament,
By whom my spirit out of dust was raysed:
To speake her prayse and glory excellent,
Of all alive most worthy to be praysed.

Ye three Elizabeths! for ever live,

That three such graces did unto me give.

1 Grosart, Works of Spenser, i. 556.

The inference from the Sonnets and the Epithalamion is that Spenser's marriage took place on 11th June 1594.

3 Cf. Chapters II. and XIX.

The Sonnet Series appears to relate to the years 15921594, and Sonnet lx., with the line "Then al those fourty which my life out-went," is regarded as fixing the year of Spenser's birth at, or about, 1552. Now Ralegh was also born in or about the year 1552, and about forty years later, in 1592 or early in 1593, he married Elizabeth Throgmorton. These two facts therefore perfectly coincide with the circumstances mentioned in the two sonnets. The name of Ralegh's mother, however, was Katherine (Katherine Champernoune), third wife of Walter Ralegh of Hayes, in the County of Devon. But what ground is there for the assumption that the sonnet refers to the poet's mother? Evidently none, if words are to be taken in their ordinary acceptance, for how can a man reasonably be said to be "derived by due descent" from his mother? "Descent" and "derivation" connote time and ancestry, and the "first" Elizabeth may be presumed therefore to be a female ancestor. Spenser himself uses the phrase again, and in that sense, in the second of the "Mutabilitie" cantos:

My heritage...

From my great Grandsire Titan unto mee
Deriv'd by dew descent. . . . (16.)

Now let the reader attentively consider the following passage from the address of the antiquary John Hooker (alias Vowell) of Exeter to Ralegh (then Lord Warden of the Stanneries), prefixed to his translation of the Irish History of Giraldus Cambrensis, in his continuation of Holinshed's Chronicles, 1587:

I trust it shall not be offensive unto you that I doo a little digresse and speak somewhat of your selfe and your ancestors; who the more honourable they were in their times, the greater cause have you to look into the same. . . .

There were sundrie of your ancestors by the name of Raleigh, who were of great account and nobilitie, and allied as well to the Courtneis earls of Devon, as to other houses of great honour and nobilitie, and in sundrie succeding descents were honoured with the degree of knighthood. One of them, being your ancestor in the directest line, was named Sir John de Raleigh, who then

dwelled in the house of Furdell in Devon, an ancient house of your ancestors, and of their ancient inheritance: and which at these presents is in possession of your eldest brother. This knight married the daughter and heire to Sir Roger D'amerei, or de Amerei, whom our English chronicles doo name lord de Amereie, who was a noble man and of great linage, and descended of the earls de Amereie in Britaine, and allied to the Earls of Montfort in the same duchie and province. This man being come over into England, did serve in the court, and by the good pleasure of God and the good liking of the king he married the ladie Elizabeth, the third sister and coheire to the noble Gilbert earle of Clare and of Glocester, who was slaine in the battell of Banokesborough in Scotland, in the time of king Edward the second. This Earle died sans issue, he being the sonne and the said ladie Elizabeth the daughter to Gilbert de Clare, earle of Glocester, by his wife the ladie Jane de Acres or Acou, daughter to king Edward the first. This Gilbert descended of Robert earle of Glocester, sonne to king Henrie the first, and of his wife the ladie Mawd, daughter and heire to Robert Fitzhamon, lord of Astrouill in Normandie, coosen to the Conqueror, knight of the privie chamber to king William, and lord of the lordship of Glamorgan in Wales. So that your ancestor sir John de Raleigh married the daughter of de Amerei, Damereie of Clare, Clare of Edward the first, and which Clare by his father descended of king Henrie the first. And in like maner by your mother you maie be derived out of the same house.

Sir William Pole, another Devonshire antiquary, and a contemporary of Ralegh and Hooker, comments on this as follows:

Mr. Hooker, in his written booke to bee printed, hath so sophisticated this pedegree to give more attributes than belong to this famyly, and deducing them from the match of Damarell with ye house of Clare, and kinge Edw. I, daughter, where hee attempteth to enoble it, in my opinyon hee doth much deface it. It is noe dowbt a very ancient famyly of itself . . . and needes no other father then such as begate them, and not other mother then such as bare them. I do not denye yt Ralegh matched wth Dammorye's daughter by Elizabeth de Clare . . . But I affirme that this [is] another howse of Ralegh.

In the light of this passage, which I believe the author of the sonnet to have had in his mind, I can have no doubt that the "first" Elizabeth is "Elizabeth de Clare,"

and that the poet was lending his support to the genealogists, who were endeavouring, after their manner, to provide Ralegh, the novus homo, with a pedigree of distinction.1 Naturally Ralegh's rapid rise caused much jealousy. Essex, for instance, regarded Ralegh as an upstart; and there is a story among Bacon's Apothegms which shows the prevalence of this feeling at the Court. In such circumstances the implied endorsement of Hooker's version of Ralegh's origin would not be unwelcome to the Queen, and might help to maintain Ralegh in her favour. Like Othello, he could say

I fetch my life and being

From men of royal siege, and my demerits
May speak unbonneted to as proud a fortune
As this that I have reached.

Another point to notice is that Spenser makes no mention of his own father and mother, or (with the exception of a general allusion to Cambridge) of his bringing up, but he professes to connect himself with an aristocratic family of the same name, the Spencers of Althorpe "of which I meanest boast myself to be." Is it likely that a writer of this temperament should for the first and only time introduce the name of his mother, a person of humble birth and situation, together with that of his wife, who belonged to a then obscure and unknown family, in familiar conjunction with the name of the

1 "Sir Walter Ralegh had scarcely emerged from obscurity into the Court of Elizabeth, when we find him in busy communion both with Devonshire antiquaries and with the College of Heralds. He desires not only that his own pedigree may be fully established, but that his collateral and even his remote relationships may be put safely on record in the books of Garter and Clarencieux. Doubtless, part of the secret of a more than usual anxiety of this kind lay in his own quick observation of men, and his shrewd estimate of the new world into which he had entered. He soon saw that, in Queen Elizabeth's eyes, to be a well-descended gentleman was an additional grace, even for a very comely man."-Edwards, Life, i. 2.

2 "When Queen Elizabeth had advanced Raleigh, she was one day playing on the virginals, and my lord of Oxford and another nobleman stood by. It fell out so, that the ledge before the jacks was taken away, so as the jacks were seen my lord of Oxford and the other nobleman smiled, and a little whispered. The queen marked it, and would needs know what the matter was? My lord of Oxford answered; 'That they smiled to see that when jacks went up, heads went down." "

sovereign? In a piece of enigmatical writing the case is different, and there is no sense of unfitness in constructing a literary conundrum out of "three Elizabeths," who were, respectively, the granddaughter of Edward the First, Queen Elizabeth, and the Queen's maid of honour.

Lastly, though Spenser had done well for himself in Ireland, he owed this not to the Queen but to the powerful influence of such men as Lord Grey and Ralegh. The lines therefore

The second is my sovereigne Queene most kind,
That honour and large richesse to me lent,

are not true of him, even with the pension which he is said to have received as the reputed author of the Faerie Queene. But they are true of Ralegh, who had been raised by the Queen from slender means and comparative obscurity to a dazzling position of wealth and eminence. Moreover the lines, as applied to the poet, are in direct conflict with the complaint about his " long fruitlesse stay in Princes Court" in the Prothalamion, which was published in the following year.

Who, then, is the subject of these sonnets? In my opinion, Queen Elizabeth. Some of them are meaningless as applied to a woman of private station, and there are other indications which point directly to this conclusion, as will be seen from the following passages which I select as illustrations :—

Sonnet i.:

those lilly hands,

Which hold my life in their dead-doing might.

Queen Elizabeth is said to have been proud of her hands, which were very white and well shaped.1

1 The Venetian ambassador in 1557 sent home a description of Queen Elizabeth in which he says: "Her eyes, and still more her hands--which she takes care not to hide-are of special beauty." He also describes her as "of a stately and majestic comportment." There are other similar reports. (Edwards, Life of Ralegh, i. 53, and elsewhere.)