Edmund Spenser had been with Lord Deputy Grey when Ralegh was a Munster captain. But, if the poet be taken literally, they were not acquainted before 1589. His Irish services, as Ralegh's, were rewarded out of the Desmond forfeitures. He received 3028 acres in Cork, with Kilcolman Castle, two miles from Doneraile. The estate formed part of a wide plain, well watered, and, in the sixteenth century, well wooded. The castle is now a roofless ivy-clad ruin. The poet was turning it into a pleasant residence. Ralegh came to see it and him. Spenser has described the visit in the tenderest and least artificial of his poems. _Colin Clout's Come Home Again_, printed in 1595, was inscribed to his friend in 1591. The dedication was expressed to be in part payment of an infinite debt. The poet declared it unworthy of Sir Walter's higher conceit for the meanness of the style, but agreeable to the truth in circumstance and matter. Lines in the poem corroborate the hypothesis that Elizabeth had for a time, perhaps in the summer of 1589, been estranged from Ralegh:--
His song was all a lamentable lay Of great unkindness, and of usage hard, Of Cynthia, the Ladie of the Sea, Which from her presence faultlesse him debard.
They equally imply that, before Colin Clout's lay was indited, great Cynthia had been induced by his complainings to abate her sore displeasure--
And moved to take him to her grace againe.
The circumstances of Spenser's own introduction to Court indicate that Ralegh had recovered favour. He read or lent to Ralegh during the visit to Kilcolman the first three books of the _Faerie Queene_. According to Ben Jonson he also delivered to him now or later 'the meaning of the Allegory in papers.' The poem enchanted the visitor, who offered to become the author's sponsor to Elizabeth. Together, if Colin Clout is to be believed, they crossed the sea, and repaired to the Court. There--
The Shepheard of the Ocean--quoth he-- Unto that Goddesse grace me first enhanced, And to my oaten pipe enclin'd her eare.
The first three books of the _Faerie Queene_ were published early in 1590, with an expository letter from the most humbly affectionate author to the Right Noble and Valorous Sir Walter Ralegh. First of all the copies of commendatory verses prefixed to the poems stood two signed W.R.