_
Here now and then he was visited, it may be
supposed, by old friends. Perhaps that distinguished
son of the University of Cambridge, Gabriel Harvey, may
for a while have been his guest; he is introduced under
his pastoral name of Hobbinol, as present at the poet's
house on his return to Ireland. The most memorable of
these visits was that already alluded to--that paid to
him in 1589 by Sir Walter Raleigh, with whom it will be
remembered he had become acquainted some nine years
before. Raleigh, too, had received a grant from the
same huge forfeited estate, a fragment of which had
been given to Spenser. The granting of these, and
other shares of the Desmond estates, formed part of a
policy then vigorously entertained by the English
Government--the colonising of the so lately disordered
and still restless districts of Southern Ireland. The
recipients were termed 'undertakers;' it was one of
their duties to repair the ravages inflicted during the
recent tumults and bring the lands committed to them
into some state of cultivation and order.
The wars had been followed by a famine. 'Even in
the history of Ireland,' writes a recent biographer of
Sir Walter Raleigh, 'there are not many scenes more
full of horror that those which the historians of that
period rapidly sketch when showing us the condition of
almost the whole province of Munster in the year 1584,
and the years immediately succeeding.
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