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stitious of the natives, the belief in witclicraft, charms, spells, 

 omens and the like, are strikingly imaged in some of the colloquies 

 of the Shepherd'' s Calendar. 6. That the printer selected to print 

 the Shepherd's Calendar, a poem so full of dialect-phrases and 

 words that a south-country printer would have been puzzled 

 with the MS., was a Lancashire man — Hugh Singleton — who 

 had settled in London, and who took an apprentice from Preston, 

 in this county, in the year of its publication. 7. That the Poet 

 Spenser was encouraged by the ladies of the family of Sir .John 

 Spencer, of Althorp, to avow " some bands of affinity " with that 

 house, though no near kinship was either claimed or ever made 

 out; that the Poet boasted to have derived his name from "a 

 house of ancient fame;" in accordance with this, that the 

 Spensers of Hurstwood (whom we have various grounds for 

 believing were nearly related to the Poet) and the Spencers of 

 Althorp alike bore the arms of the ancient house of the Barons 

 Despenser, in each case with an heraldic difference indicating 

 distinct younger branches, surviving the extinction of the chief 

 line. That these facts at once explain Spenser's ambiguous 

 allusions to his family traditions, and reconcile them with the 

 supposition that the Spensers of Hurstwood and Peudle Forest 

 were his nearest kith and kin." 



During the evening, Mr. Abram exhibited some exceedingly 

 precious documentary relics of the poet's family after his untimely 

 death, which Dr. Grosart (who is editing them as a portion of 

 the Lismore Papers, in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire, 

 at Lismore Castle, co. Cork) courteously permitted him to show. 

 They were, two letters of the wife of Spenser, then his widow, 

 and married to Sir Eobert Tinte, to her cousin the " Great Earl " 

 of Cork ; two letters of the poet's and her son. Peregrine Spenser, 

 to the same nobleman ; and one letter by the celebrated Sir 

 Walter Ealegh, all of them originals. Mr. F. J. Grant exhibited 

 (by the kindness of Col. Thursby) the curious and finely-carved 

 old oaken panel, preserved at Ormerod House, bearing the arms 

 of " Spenser de Hurstwood," executed probably in the early part 

 of the 17th century; also a deed of release, dated 1661, by 

 Edmund Spenser, of Hurstwood, to Oliver Ormerod, of the 

 tenement of Foxstones, near Hurstwood. Dr. Dean exhibited 

 a copy, in good preservation and handsomely bound, of the first 

 edition of the Faerie Queene printed in 1590, in the author's life- 

 time. The members of the club and ladies present were greatly 

 interested in these vestiges of the poet, his wife and son, and of 

 the local Spensers. 



