Lord Grey receives the sword of state and takes the oath of office. Spenser likely recalls this ceremony in the FQ when Artegall receives Chrysaor, "the sword of adamant and gold whose terrible strokes nothing on earth could resist." (Judson, 89)
“Biography.” Spenser Online, http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/spenseronline/scholarly-resources/biography/. Accessed March 2018. Hadfield, Andrew. Edmund Spenser: A Life. Oxford UP, 2012. Judson, Alexander C. The Life of Edmund Spenser.…
Spenser is buried in Westminster Abbey, with an inscription reading; “Here lyes, expecting the second comminge of our Saviour Christ Jesus, the body of Edmond Spenser, the Prince of Poets in his tyme, whose divine spirit needs noe other witnesse than…