n 



Shakespere, Dumfrieshire with Burns, and Westmoreland with 

 Wordsworth. The first iDerson to take np the subject was Mr. 

 F. C. Spenser, of Hahfax. He had searched the Burnley Church 

 registers, and found the name of Edmund Spenser very common. 

 In a letter to the Gentleman s JMcKjazine, dated 5th July, 1842, 

 Mr. Spenser published the result of his inquiries. These might be 

 summed up thus : — First, that the poet was remotely connected 

 with the Spencers of Althorp. He stated that he had additional 

 proof of this beyond what he adduced, but, owing probably to 

 his sudden death shortly afterwards, these facts were not forth- 

 coming. Second, that Spenser resided with his relatives in the 

 North of England. There was a tradition in the Travers family 

 who migrated from Lancashire to Ireland, that Sarah, the sister 

 of the poet (wife of a Travers), came fi'om Lancashire. Third, 

 that it was probable the poet's father was born at Spenser's, in 

 Filly Close (near the confluence of the Calder with Pendle Water 

 below Eoyle.) Mi. F. C. Spenser also drew attention to the fact 

 that the Spensers of Hurstwood invariably spelt their name with 

 an S in the second syllable, whereas the common spelling was 

 with a C. He considered the coincidence of the oft-recurring 

 names of Edmund and Lawrence in the local family of Spensers 

 most important. He also drew attention to the descriptions of 

 the mountain region given in the ShephercVs Calendar, and to 

 the fact that the Poet's tomb in Westminster Abbey was erected 

 at the cost of Ann Clifford, of Skiptou Castle, a few miles away 

 from Hurstwood. Other writers have followed in the wake of 

 Mr. F. C. Spenser. Professor Craik in 1848 wrote on the sub- 

 ject, and the Kev. W. Gaskell in his lecture on the Lancashire 

 dialect said it was interesting to notice in the Shepherd's Calendar 

 the large number of Lancashire words used. Mr. T. T. Wilkinson, 

 in a communication to the Historic Society, in 1867, enumerated 

 a large number of words and idioms contained in the Calendar 

 which were peculiar to North-East Lancashire. He analysed the 

 language, idioms, and descriptions of the hilly country in which 

 the scenes of the Shepherd's Calendar were laid, and arrived at 

 the conclusion that Spenser must have been famihar with the 

 dialect spoken on these borderlands of Lancashire and Yorkshire, 

 and that the scenery around Cliviger Pass and Pendle Forest was 

 such as Spenser roamed amidst and depicted in his poetry. Mr, 

 Wilkinson in the latter years of his life held it as one of the 

 settled facts of literary biography that Edmund Spenser lived 

 with his paternal relations at Hurstwood and Filly Close. 



About a dozen years ago Mr. R. B. Knowles, a Eoyal Com- 

 missioner on Historical Manuscripts, visited Towneley Hall for 

 the purpose of inspecting the extremely curious and extensive 

 collection of Towneley Manuscripts, and afterwards described 

 them in the fourth report of the Commission. One of them 



