We find little account of the family which Spenser left behind him, only that in a few particulars of his life prefixed to the last folio edition of his works, it is said that his great grandson Hugolin Spenser, after the restoration of king Charles ii. was restored by the court of claims to so much of the lands as could be found to have been his ancestors; there is another remarkable passage of which (says Hughes) I can give the reader much better assurance:  that a person came over from Ireland, in King William’s time, to sollicit the same affair, and brought with him letters of recommendation, as a defendant of Spenser.  His name procured him a favourable reception, and he applied himself particularly to Mr. Congreve, by whom he was generously recommended to the favour of the earl of Hallifax, who was then at the head of the treasury; and by that means he obtained his suit.  This man was somewhat advanced in years, and might be the same mentioned before, who had possibly recovered only some part of his estate at first, or had been disturbed in the possession of it.  He could give no account of the works of his ancestor, which are wanting, and which are therefore in all probability irrecoverably lost.

The following stanzas are said to be those with which Sir Philip Sidney was first struck.

  From him returning, sad and comfortless,
  As on the way together we did fare,
  We met that villain (God from him me bless)
  That cursed wight, from whom I ’scaped whylear,
  A man of hell that calls himself despair;
  Who first us greets, and after fair areeds
  Of tidings strange, and of adventures rare: 
  So creeping close, as snake in hidden weeds,
  Inquireth of our states, and of our Knight’y deeds.

  Which when he knew, and felt our feeble hearts
  Emboss’d with bale, and bitter-biting grief,
  Which love had launced with his deadly darts,
  With wounding words, and terms of foul reprief,
  He plucked from us all hope of due relief;
  That erst us held in love of ling’ring life;
  Then hopeless, heartless, ’gan the cunning thief
  Persuade us die, to stint all further strife: 
  To me he lent this rope, to him a rusty knife.

The following is the picture.

  The darksome cave they enter, where they find,
  That cursed man, low sitting on the ground,
  Musing full sadly in his sullen mind;
  His greasy locks, long growing and unbound,
  Disordered hung about his shoulders round,
  And hid his face; through which his hollow eyne,
  Look’d deadly dull, and stared as astound;
  His raw bone cheeks thro’ penury and pine,
  Were shrunk into his jaws, as he did never dine,

  His garments nought, but many ragged clouts,
  With thorns together pinn’d and patched was,
  The which his naked sides he wrapt abouts;
  And him beside, there lay upon the grass
  A dreary corse, whose life away did pass,
  All wallowed in his own, yet luke-warm blood,
  That from his wound yet welled fresh alas;
  In which a rusty knife fast fixed stood,
  And made an open passage for the gushing flood.