Browse Items (44 total)

The lute was a popular renaissance instrument similar to the modern-day guitar. Eric Klingelhofer’s excavations of Kilcolman in the mid-1990s uncovered a tuning peg for a lute or similar stringed instrument. The find was located in a stratification…

Spenser the administrator would have taken a keen interest in the extent and progress of the Munster plantation. As a government official, he was intimately familiar with Ireland’s lawcourts, including those concerning property rights. As one of the…

The spiral horn from the narwhal was sometimes mistaken in the Middle Ages and Renaissance for a more fantastic object, a unicorn horn. Spenser’s New English contemporary on the Munster plantation, Sir William Herbert, lists a ’unicorn horn’ in the…

This oil portrait is copied from a painting currently owned by the Elizabethan Gardens, Manteo, North Carolina. It is a variant of the famous Ditchley portrait and was probably painted in the 1590s by the studio of Marcus Gheeraerts the…

This oil portrait is copied from one currently hanging in the Wilson Library of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. It is thought to have been painted in the 1590s. There is no evidence that Spenser owned such a portrait. He did, however,…

Spenser’s second wife, Elizabeth Boyle, would likely have lived at Kilcolman with him from the time they married, on June 11, 1594 (the date identified in his wedding poem, “Epithalamion”). If so, she would have managed many aspects of the household…

Many well-to-do Elizabethans, like other Europeans, would have had tapestries on their walls, both for decoration and for the purpose of keeping their rooms warm. Many tapestries were woven in France and the Netherlands. We do not know the true…

Many tower houses had a private chapel. The east-facing window and layout of this room, including an “aumbry“ (a niche), suggests that it could have served as a chapel before Spenser took possession of the tower house. If so, then Spenser could have…

On the west wall, facing the window, is a mural of St Christopher carrying the boy Jesus across the river. At his foot is a snake, representing sin and the devil, who is trodden underfoot.

St Christopher does not appear in the Bible but was…

Near the fireplace was a logical place to stay warm at all times of year in chilly Ireland. Spenser raised at least three children at Kilcolman: from his second marriage (in 1594, to Elizabeth Boyle), a son, Peregrine; from his first marriage (in…