“divinely wrought,
  And of the brood of Angels heavenly born;
  And with the crew of blessed Saints upbrought,
  Each of which did her with their gifts adorn.”

Here we have distinctly her birth and education, each assigned to a different source.  She is of the “brood” or family of anagrammatic “Angels,”—­otherwise, Nagles; but has been “upbrought,” or instructed, by persons whom Spenser denominates “Saints,” or Orthodox Protestants; for Spenser was by party and profession a Puritan; and the Puritans were “Saints,”—­to such as chose to accept their own account of the matter.

But there may be a yet deeper meaning, an anagrammatic appropriateness, in this phrase, “crew of blessed Saints.”  The Nagles of Moneanymmy had intermarried frequently with the St. Legers of Doneraile; and thus such a close intimacy was established between the families as to warrant the supposition that a child of the one house might have been reared amongst the members of the other.  Elizabeth Spenser (born Nagle) may not unlikely have been educated by the Puritan St. Legers.  The name St. Leger, as Camden remarks, is a compound name, derived from the German Leodigar or Leger, signifying “the Gatherer of the People.”  Verstigan also gives it the same translation, as originating from Leod, Lud, or Luyd, which, he says, means “folk or people.” [23] Therefore St. Leger seems to signify a folk, a gathering, a legion or “crew” of saints, a holy crowd or crew,—­which may have been the quibble extorted by Spenser’s “alchemy of wit” from the “upbringing” of Elizabeth Nagle, his wife.  He calls her with marked emphasis his “sweet Saint,” his “sovereign Saint”; and in the “Epithalamion” the temple-gates are called on to: 

  “Receive this Saint with honors due.”

In praying to the gods for a large posterity, he places his request on the ground,

  “That from the earth (which may they long possess
  With lasting happiness!)
  Up to your haughty palaces may mount
  Of blessed Saints for to increase the count.”

There is yet another solution, beside the anagrammatic one, for the name of “Angel” so sedulously applied by the poet to his beloved.  The Nagle family, according to heraldry, were divided into three branches, distinguished by peculiarities of surname.  The Southern branch signed themselves “Nagle,”—­the Meath or Midland branch, “Nangle,”—­while the Connaught or Western shoot rejoiced in the more euphonious cognomen of Costello!  Let the heralds account for these variations; we take them as we find them.  The letter N, as we are informed, according to the genius of the Irish tongue, is nothing more than a prefix, set, euphoniae gratia, before the radical name itself, when commencing with a vowel.  Thus, the N’Angles of Ireland were the Angles whose heroic deeds are duly recorded in the lists of