s and Recognizances in the Irish Court of Chancery, retaining his
place as Secretary to the Lord-Deputy, in which character his signature
sometimes appears in the Irish Records, certifying State documents sent
to England. This office is said by Fuller to have been a "lucrative"
one. In the same year he received a lease of the Abbey and Manor of
Enniscorthy, in the County of Wexford. Enniscorthy was an important post
in the network of English garrisons, on one of the roads from Dublin to
the South. He held it but for a short time. It was transferred by him to
a citizen of Wexford, Richard Synot, an agent, apparently, of the
powerful Sir Henry Wallop, the Treasurer; and it was soon after
transferred by Synot to his patron, an official who secured to himself a
large share of the spoils of Desmond's rebellion. Further, Spenser's
name appears, in a list of persons (January, 1582), among whom Lord Grey
had distributed some of the forfeited property of the rebels--a list
sent home by him in answer to charges of waste and damage to the Queen's
revenue, busily urged against him in Ireland by men like Wallop and
Fenton, and readily listened to by English ministers like Burghley, who
complained that Ireland was a "gulf of consuming treasure." The grant
was mostly to persons active in service, among others one to Wallop
himself; and a certain number of smaller value to persons of Lord Grey's
own household. There, among yeomen ushers, gentlemen ushers, gentlemen
serving the Lord-Deputy, and Welshmen and Irishmen with uncouth names,
to whom small gratifications had been allotted out of the spoil, we
read--"the lease of a house in Dublin belonging to [Lord] Baltinglas for
six years to come to Edmund Spenser, one of the Lord-Deputy's
Secretaries, valued at 5_l._" . . . "of a 'custodiam' of John Eustace's
[one of Baltinglas' family] land of the Newland to Edmund Spenser, one
of the Lord-Deputy's Secretaries." In July, 1586, when every one was
full of the project for "planting" Munster, he was still in Dublin, for
he addresses from thence a sonnet to Gabriel Harvey. In March, 1588/9,
we find the following, in a list of officers on the establishment of the
province of Munster, which the government was endeavouring to colonize
from the west of England: "Lodovick Briskett, clerk to the council (at
20_l._ per annum), 13_l._ 6_s._ 8_d._ (this is exercised by one Spenser,
as deputy for the said Briskett), to whom (i. e. Briskett) it was
granted