Notes and Queries, Number 179, April 2, 1853.; A Medium of Inter-Communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, Etc (Paperback)

Excerpt: ... Wells. I have read with much curiosity and surprise a paragraph engrafted into "N. & Q." (Vol. vii., p. 33.) from The Times newspaper, June 16, 1841, announcing that a Mr. F. F. Spenser, of Halifax, had ascertained that the ancient residence of his own family, at Hurstwood, near Burnley, Lancashire, was the identical spot where the great Elizabethan poet, Edmund Spenser, is said to have retired, when driven by academical disappointments to his relations in the north of England. I confess all this appears to me very like a hoax, there is such a weight of negative testimony against it. Dr. Whitaker, the learned historian of Whalley, describes Hurstwood Hall as a strong and well-built old house, bearing on its front, in large characters, the name of "Barnard Townley," its founder, and that it was for several descents the property and residence of a family branched out from the parent stock of Townley, in the person of John Townley, third son of Sir Richard Townley, of Townley