Apologies for going on and on here in public, but I managed to check the
books last night, and can offer limited clarification of a thing or two re
Talus, cannonades, and flails.

First, I made a mistake; Niall Fallon's book, entitled *The Armada in
Ireland* (1978), does not have a portrait of Bingham differing from the one
in Highley; they print the same one, which I presume is the NPG one.
Fallon does have an interesting portrait of Lord Deputy William
Fitzwilliam, however, who had just come into office when the Armada hit the
shores.  As to Bingham's bloodiness, Fitzwilliam was slightly worse in this
instance; Bingham wanted at least to spare the Dutch cabin boys among the
Armada survivors, but Fitzwilliam ordered their execution, too, along with
any Spanish (and sympathizers) caught, which were in the hundreds.

2)  Re AZ's comment, below, Highley (in *Shakespeare, Spenser, and the
Crisis in Ireland*, 117-8) also discusses the appropriateness of Bingham as
a legal model for Talus, in that Bingham was known for his unmoving
severity in prosecuting laws and going beyond the ineffectual law where
necessary. He and Grey are lauded by name for the same in Richard Beacon's
*Solon His Follie* (1594).  Highley also is at pains to stress the
looseness of the allegory surrounding Talus, noting that it could apply to
Bingham's methods as well as the man himself.  I apologize to Highley for
casually narrowing his critical focus, and agree with his attitude; I also
feel, however, that more "factual" allegories remain to be found in the FQ.

Having said that, Highley has a few minor factual errors.  First, he states
that Bingham, as related in Hooker (in Holinshed VI.437), launched a naval
bombardment from sea on Smerwick Fort.  This is not true.  Hooker states
Bingham arrived with Admiral Winter (cf. Sp.'s Terwin?) to provide "all
things necessarie" to assault the fort by land.  But he notes only that
Winter bombarded the fort from the sea.

Richard Bagwell, in *Ireland Under the Tudors* III.70-1, which relies
heavily on the CSPI, including Bingham's own correspondence, states that
Winter brought heavy artillery by sea (this would fit with
Talus-as-Artillery wading ashore to fight Grantorto).  Bingham oversaw the
initial placement of artillery on the battlements aiming at the fort,
before heavier artillery arrived from the sea (I am unclear as to what ship
exactly Bingham arrived on, and when).

Highley also discusses possible echoes (found by Renwick) of Bingham's
military stretegies in the *View*, and vice-versa.

Bingham also cuts a romantic figure in that he purportedly fought with the
Spanish against the Turk at Lepanto (DNB; Bagwell).  Somebody should write
a biography of him.

3)  The Flail.  Highley (120 and endnote) notes Fallon as his source for
the "Flail of Connaught" comment, but Fallon gives no source for it that I
could find.  Though he is a careful scholar, Fallon does slightly overdo
the anti-English rhetoric of the episode, and so he may have gladly used
Bingham's sobriquet for dramatic effect, at the expense of contemporary
relevance.  [Highley cites Fallon p. 243, a page that doesn't exist;
rather, I found the Flail of Connaught reference in the accompanying note
to the portrait on p. 33.  Fallon also entitles one of his chapters "The
Flail of Connaught."]

To quibble with Anne Prescott, she notes that Aptekar, in *Icons of
Justice*, has Jove holding a flail in one image; to me, this looks like
thunderbolts; rather, Mars (performing Jove's will) holds a jointed flail
in another plate.  But my iconographic knowledge is weak and I may be
missing something.

4)  Finally, in response to AZ below, I would state that Herbert's
*Croftus* is only slightly more sympathetic to peaceful reform in Ireland,
including the idea that conversion of the Catholics should take place in
their native tongue, Irish; but it must occur nonetheless.  Does the book
forego military solutions altogether?  Having a "softer heart" than Sp or
Bingham isn't saying much.  --Tom H

>I think it is probably a mistake to equate Talus with Bingham on the
>strength of Bingham's reputation as the 'Flail of Connaught'--but
>certainly the ruthlessness of Talus's style of 'execution' recalls the
>program of unrepetant 'scourging' to which Grey, Spenser, and Bingham all
>subscribed in formulating policy for the civil reformation of Ireland. It
>is, I think significant that one of Bingham's chief supporters among the
>New English (see, for example PRO SP 63/116/24) was that other secretary
>of Grey's, Geoffrey Fenton (whose daughter married Richard Boyle, kinsman
>of Spenser's wife Elizabeth), the translator of Guicciardini. Fenton, a
>client and apparently an agent of Walsingham's, must have known
>Spenser--as fellow secretaries in Dublin, but also afterwards--and I'd say
>it is probable that they discussed the 'ragione di stato' of which
>Guicciardini was the first exponent (and celebrated exponent in England:
>Harvey cites in 1580 a translation of Guicciardini--probably Fenton's--as
>one of the popular books of the day). So while equating Bingham with Talus
>is I think too specific, there seems to me no doubt that Talus and his
>flail *were* intended to evoke the kind of ruthless, unyielding
>prosecution of civil reform that Grey, Bingham, Spenser, and probably
>Fenton, too, supported (in constrast to softer hearts like that of Sir
>William Herbert, who gave up his plantation at Castleisland to go home to
>Monmouth and draft Croftus; or of Perrot, who as T. H. noted had a mortal
>hatred for Bingham, and persecuted him relentlessly during his Deputyship).
>
>The flail is interesting apart from its possible association with Bingham.
>It is obviously a prop with not only Biblical connotations, but strong
>military resonances. But it is also the tool of the husbandman, and
>familiar in georgic poetry (Thomas Tusser, for example, is full of flails,
>mattocks, and rakes, and Virgil speaks of an indiscriminate flail in his
>Georgics). I'm not sure that Marshall Grossman's comments about the loom
>are all that funny--the pivoting arm on the flail was its essential and
>most deadly feature, and that it was mechanical seems to have attracted
>the attention of Spenser's contemporaries. The 'joint' of the flail is
>particularly important, for example, to understanding the wordplay at
>V.xi.29: there Prince Arthur, fighting Gerioneo's idol monster, mars 'the
>swinging of her flaile' (i.e. her tail) by 'ioynt'-ing it.
>
>I don't recall ever seeing mention of another use of the word 'flail'
>(though I could be missing something obvious, and AC Hamilton may correct
>me): to describe any hinged arm, for instance that used to operate buckets
>in a well, or the lever of a cider-press. This seems to have been largely
>a dialect use, or a northern use, but then dialect and northern words are
>common in Spenser's poetry. This hinged arm is pretty similar in form to
>the beam of a balance (so much so that the OED, in Flail, n., 3., actually
>describes it as 'a beam like that of a balance'), which brings me to
>another curious poetic use of 'flail', in Cowley's Davideis:
>
>With the same Goad Samgar his Oxen drives
>Which took the Sun before six hundred lives
>>From his sham'd foes; He midst his work dealt Laws;
>And oft was his Plow stopt to hear a Cause.
>Nor did great Gid'eon his old Flail disdain,
>After won Fields, sackt Towns, and Princes slain.
>His Scepter that, and Ophras Threshing Floore
>The Seat and Embleme of his Justice bore.
>
>In Cowley's version, the flail is so similar to the arm of a balance that
>Gideon can convert it from a military weapon to an instrument of justice
>(if I read it right, the idea is that he mounts the flail on top of his
>scepter, thus creating a balance--a pithy emblem of justice founded on
>force). In any case, I wonder if Spenser was influenced by this formal
>symmetry between flails and balances in his choice of weapon for Talus.
>I'd be very interested to hear if anyone has seen references to 'flail' in
>its rarer use as 'hinged arm' belonging to some instrument or machine. Or
>is a flail ever incorporated, in the visual emblem tradition, within a
>balance?
>
>Just thoughts.
>
>andrew