Ralph Knevet, a member of the Norfolk gentry and client of the Knevet and Paston families, completed his three-book continuation of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene in 1635, on the eve of the English Civil War. Like Spenser's poem, Knevet's Supplement of the Faery Queene is a narrative and allegorical work, which weaves together a complex collection of tales and episodes, featuring knights, ladies, sorcerers, monsters, vertiginous fortresses and deadly battles - a chivalric romp in Spenser's cod medieval style. In his largely topical allegory, Knevet shadows recent English history, along...