There is one case on record of these Protestant landowners which is such a curious example of how the English settler of one generation had in the next become an Irishman whose property, itself acquired by confiscation, might now be disposed of again to a brand new Englishman, that it deserves to be quoted.
The poet Edmund Spencer had served in Ireland as secretary to the Lord Deputy Grey in Elizabeth's day. As a reward he had received grants of land in various parts of the country which had been confiscated from the Irish proprietors. Of these the chief estate was the castle and lands of Kilcolman not very far from Buttevant. Spencer had distinguished himself as a political writer by propounding various ingenious plans by which the Irish might be exterminated by famine.
He had married an Englishwoman of the Boyle family and left several sons, of whom one, in due course, inherited Kilcolman. But this son, following the example of hundreds of the other Elizabethan settlers, married an Irishwoman and a Catholic. He was apparently dead in 1641 when the rebellion broke out, leaving a son aged seven, William by name, under the care of his mother. When the County Cork joined in the rising Mrs. Spencer and her son fled to Cork, and during the whole course of the war remained in the English quarters, receiving no profits from Kilcolman. As soon as young Spencer came to years of discretion he utterly renounced the Popish religion in which his mother had brought him up.[1] But as in 1641
- ↑ This at least is his own account.
