ved the
account books of the executors of a bountiful London citizen, Robert
Nowell, the brother of Dr. Alexander Nowell, who was Dean of St. Paul's
during Elizabeth's reign, and was a leading person in the ecclesiastical
affairs of the time. In these books, in a crowd of unknown names of
needy relations and dependents, distressed foreigners, and parish
paupers, who shared from time to time the liberality of Mr. Robert
Nowell's representatives, there appear among the numerous "poor
scholars" whom his wealth assisted, the names of Richard Hooker, and
Lancelot Andrewes. And there, also, in the roll of the expenditure at
Mr. Nowell's pompous funeral at St. Paul's in February, 1568/9, among
long lists of unknown men and women, high and low, who had mourning
given them, among bills for fees to officials, for undertakers' charges,
for heraldic pageantry and ornamentation, for abundant supplies for the
sumptuous funeral banquet, are put down lists of boys, from the chief
London schools, St. Paul's, Westminster, and others, to whom two yards
of cloth were to be given to make their gowns: and at the head of the
six scholars named from Merchant Taylors' is the name of Edmund Spenser.

He was then, probably, the senior boy of the school, and in the
following May he went to Cambridge. The Nowells still helped him: we
read in their account books under April 28, 1569, "to Edmond Spensore,
scholler of the m'chante tayler scholl, at his gowinge to penbrocke
hall in chambridge, x{s}." On the 20th of May, he was admitted sizar,
or serving clerk at Pembroke Hall; and on more than one occasion
afterwards, like Hooker and like Lancelot Andrewes, also a Merchant
Taylors' boy, two or three years Spenser's junior, and a member of the
same college, Spenser had a share in the benefactions, small in
themselves, but very numerous, with which the Nowells after the fine
fashion of the time, were accustomed to assist poor scholars at the
Universities. In the visitations of Merchant Taylors' School, at which
Grindal, Bishop of London, was frequently present,[9:8] it is not
unlikely that his interest was attracted, in the appositions or
examinations, to the promising senior boy of the school. At any rate
Spenser, who afterwards celebrated Grindal's qualities as a bishop, was
admitted to a place, one which befitted a scholar in humble
circumstances, in Grindal's old college. It is perhaps worth noticing
that all Spenser's early friends, Grindal, the Now