In 1580, through Leicester’s influence, Spenser, who was utterly weary of his dependent position, was made secretary to Lord Grey, the queen’s deputy in Ireland, and the third period of his life began.  He accompanied his chief through one campaign of savage brutality in putting down an Irish rebellion, and was given an immense estate with the castle of Kilcolman, in Munster, which had been confiscated from Earl Desmond, one of the Irish leaders.  His life here, where according to the terms of his grant he must reside as an English settler, he regarded as lonely exile: 

    My luckless lot,
    That banished had myself, like wight forlore,
    Into that waste, where I was quite forgot.

It is interesting to note here a gentle poet’s view of the “unhappy island.”  After nearly sixteen years’ residence he wrote his View of the State of Ireland (1596),[116] his only prose work, in which he submits a plan for “pacifying the oppressed and rebellious people.”  This was to bring a huge force of cavalry and infantry into the country, give the Irish a brief time to submit, and after that to hunt them down like wild beasts.  He calculated that cold, famine, and sickness would help the work of the sword, and that after the rebels had been well hounded for two winters the following summer would find the country peaceful.  This plan, from the poet of harmony and beauty, was somewhat milder than the usual treatment of a brave people whose offense was that they loved liberty and religion.  Strange as it may seem, the View was considered most statesmanlike, and was excellently well received in England.

In Kilcolman, surrounded by great natural beauty, Spenser finished the first three books of the Faery Queen.  In 1589 Raleigh visited him, heard the poem with enthusiasm, hurried the poet off to London, and presented him to Elizabeth.  The first three books met with instant success when published and were acclaimed as the greatest work in the English language.  A yearly pension of fifty pounds was conferred by Elizabeth, but rarely paid, and the poet turned back to exile, that is, to Ireland again.

Soon after his return, Spenser fell in love with his beautiful Elizabeth, an Irish girl; wrote his Amoretti, or sonnets, in her honor; and afterwards represented her, in the Faery Queen, as the beautiful woman dancing among the Graces.  In 1594 he married Elizabeth, celebrating his wedding with his “Epithalamion,” one of the most beautiful wedding hymns in any language.

Spenser’s next visit to London was in 1595, when he published “Astrophel,” an elegy on the death of his friend Sidney, and three more books of the Faery Queen.  On this visit he lived again at Leicester House, now occupied by the new favorite Essex, where he probably met Shakespeare and the other literary lights of the Elizabethan Age.  Soon after his return to Ireland, Spenser was appointed Sheriff of Cork, a queer office for a poet, which probably brought about his undoing.  The same year Tyrone’s Rebellion broke out in Munster.  Kilcolman, the ancient house of Desmond, was one of the first places attacked by the rebels, and Spenser barely escaped with his wife and two children.  It is supposed that some unfinished parts of the Faery Queen were burned in the castle.