What fascinating e-mails... and let us not forget the irony that many of Custer's soldiers were recent Irish immigrants, as well as Germans.  The revisionist historians and battlefield archaeologists are doing wonderful things with Little Big Horn, now, in debunking the myth of the "last stand" promulgated so effectively in 19th-century paintings and prints (what's the best poem on Custer, by the way?).  Instead, bullet traces reveal a gradual route and panicky break-down of discipline.  Custer's troops were dangerously forging ahead in any case to trap the women and children of the Sioux, thus forcing the men to surrender; hardly noble tactics but pragmatic.  

Miller wrote:  "His assignments left blood on his hands, but to Spenser and most of his contemporaries the military importance of Ireland was unquestioned: it was the avenue through which a Spanish invasion would almost certainly be mounted, and therefore a territory that England saw as essential to its self-defense."

Maybe I can take issue with the phrase "most of his contemporaries" and even whether Ireland was a practical place of Spanish involvement through which to attack England.  Of interest is the regular lack in the 1580's of proper coastal defenses in Munster and elsewhere to defend against a Spanish invasion; Ireland, while threatening as the back-door into England, was not the ideal launching point of the Spanish, and the English admin. knew this, despite the regular protests of officers in Ireland that it needed better defenses.  The Spanish in any case mistrusted many of the Irish and considered most of them barbarians, those who didn't swear fealty to the English in any case; indeed the Armada tried to link up with the Netherlands forces and invade southern England; how much more difficult it would be to invade via Ireland!  Many of the Armada survivors in Ulster and Connaught were slaughtered by natives on the spot or handed over to English! authorities (as they were compelled to do). Only a few stood and rebelled with the Burkes (highly angry at Bingham) and later the O'Donnells and O'Neills.  Most tried to get home via Scotland. 

As for the intentional Spanish invasions, Smerwick was an expeditionary force of mostly Italians, which Desmond in their dire hour of need failed or refused to rescue; and even Kinsale, in 1601, occured only after intense begging by the Irish and the bold successes of O'Neill (including the sack of the Munster plantation).  Yet the fleet landed in one of the worst possible spots, probably because of the weather, a harbor far from O'Neill's power base and encircled by high hills convenient to besiegers, and the Spanish commander turned out to be extremely passive to the point of incompetence. O'Neill was forced to try to succor them with terrible results.  The Spanish were let go and never came back, unlike the French in later centuries.

Spenser, then, was arguably exaggerating the threat in his View and his poetry (via the Souldan, Grantorto, etc), as served his turn:  when enemies are everywhere the govt. must give the settlers more arms and trust them with martial law, wich they then used for highly local purposes. (Nonetheless, the 9-Years War had begun by the time of Book V's publication and Kinsale did eventually occur as a result.)

I agree with the insight that a modern analogy for Spenser's life would be as an Israeli, esp. as a settler and administrator in the occupied Palestinian territories.  Only %20 of these are religious fanatics, apparently (I have this from some vague source), and the other %80 opportunists.  These %80 seem happy to couch behind the rhetoric of the religiosos, or are cowered by it, including Christian conservatives in this country (USA), to serve their own security needs.  --TH