mber and class of farms and inhabitants in each. Legal science
in England was to protect titles by lengthy patents and leases;
administrative watchfulness and firmness were to secure them in Ireland.
Privileges of trade were granted to the Undertakers: they were even
allowed to transport coin out of England to Ireland: and a long respite
was granted them before the Crown was to claim its rents. Strict rules
were laid down to keep the native Irish out of the English lands and
from intermarrying with the English families. In this partition,
Seignories were distributed by the Undertakers among themselves with the
free carelessness of men dividing the spoil. The great people, like
Hatton and Ralegh, were to have their two or three Seignories: the
county of Cork with its nineteen Seignories is assigned to the gentleman
undertakers from Somersetshire. The plan was an ambitious and tempting
one. But difficulties soon arose. The gentleman undertakers were not in
a hurry to leave England even on a visit to their desolate and dangerous
seignories in Munster. The "planting" did not thrive. The Irish were
inexhaustible in raising legal obstacles and in giving practical
annoyance. Claims and titles were hard to discover or to extinguish.
Even the very attainted and escheated lands were challenged by virtue of
settlements made before the attainders. The result was that a certain
number of Irish estates were added to the possessions of a certain
number of English families. But Munster was not planted. Burghley's
policy, and Walsingham's resolution, and Ralegh's daring inventiveness
were alike baffled by the conditions of a problem harder than the
peopling of America or the conquest of India. Munster could not be made
English. After all its desolation, it reverted in the main to its Irish
possessors.

Of all the schemes and efforts which accompanied the attempt, and the
records of which fill the Irish State papers of those years, Spenser was
the near and close spectator. He was in Dublin and on the spot, as Clerk
of the Council of Munster. And he had become acquainted, perhaps, by
this time, had formed a friendship, with Walter Ralegh, one of the most
active men in Irish business, whose influence was rising wherever he was
becoming known. Most of the knowledge which Spenser thus gathered, and
of the impressions which a practical handling of Irish affairs had left
on him, was embodied in his interesting work, written several years
later