Miss Morgan thinks that the "friend" of this poem, whose name is shown by the first line to have been James, may perhaps be identified with the James Howell of the Epistolae Ho-Elianae. Howell had Vaughans amongst his cousins and correspondents, but these appear to have been of the Golden Grove family.
P. [73]. To his retired Friend—an Invitation to Brecknock.
her foul, polluted walls. Miss Morgan quotes a statement from Grose's Antiquities to the effect that the walls of Brecknock were pulled down by the inhabitants during the Civil War in order to avoid having to support a garrison or stand a siege.
the Greek, i.e. Hercules when in love with Omphale.
Domitian-like: Cf. Suetonius, Vita Domitiani, 3: "Inter initia principatus cotidie secretum sibi horarum sumere solebat, nec quicquam amplius quam muscas captare ac stilo praeacuto configere."
Since Charles his reign. This poem must date from after the execution of Charles I., on January 30, 1648/9. It would appear therefore that Vaughan was living in Brecknock and not at Newton about the time that the Olor Iscanus was published.
P. [77]. Monsieur Gombauld.
The writer referred to is John Ogier de Gombauld (1567-1666). His prose tale of Endymion was translated by Richard Hurst in 1637. Ismena and Diophania who was metamorphosed into a myrtle, are characters in the story. Periardes is a hill in Armenia whence the Euphrates takes its course.
P. [79]. An Elegy on the Death of Mr. R. W., slain in the late unfortunate differences at Routon Heath, near Chester.
The battle of Routon, or Rowton, Heath took place on September 24, 1645. The Royalist forces, under Charles I. and Sir Marmaduke Langdale, advancing to raise the siege of Chester, were met and routed by the Parliamentarians under Poyntz. The contemporary pamphlets give a long list of the prisoners taken at Routon Heath, but name hardly any of those slain. It is therefore difficult to say who R. W., evidently a dear friend of Vaughan's, may have been. He appears to have been missing for a year before he was finally given up. From lines 25-27 we learn that he was a young man of only twenty. The most likely suggestion for his identification seems to me that of Mr. C. H. Firth, who points out to me that the name of one Roger Wood occurs in the list of Catholics who fell in the King's service as having been slain at Chester. Miss Southall (Songs of Siluria, 1890, p. 124) suggests that he may have been either Richard Williams, a nephew of Sir Henry Williams, of Gwernyfed, who died unmarried, or else a son of Richard Winter, of Llangoed. He might also, I think, have been one of Vaughan's wife's family, the Wises, and possibly also a Walbeoffe. A reference to the Walbeoffe pedigree in the note to p. 189 will show that there was a Robert Walbeoffe, brother of C. W. Miss Morgan thinks that he is a generation too old, and that the unnamed son of C. W., who, according to his tombstone, did not survive him, may have been a Robert, and the R. W. in question. On the question whether Vaughan was himself present at Routon Heath, see the Biographical Note (vol. ii., p. xxviii).