The natural interpretation of this certainly is that Vaughan took no share in the disturbances of his time, except to grieve over them in retirement. Yet, in the first place, the lines may have been written before he took up arms in 1645, and, in the second, they may only mean that he had no share in bringing about the troubles of England, or in shedding innocent blood. Similarly when elsewhere, as in Abel's Blood (vol. i. p. 254), and in the prayer to be quoted below, he expresses horror of blood-guiltiness, this need not necessarily be taken as extending to the man who fights in a righteous cause.
Miss Morgan, I may add, suggests that Vaughan was at Rowton Heath, not as a combatant, but as a physician. The description which he gives of the battle reads like that of a man who saw it from some commanding point of view, but was not himself engaged. I think it not improbable that Vaughan was one of the garrison of Beeston Castle, which is described to me as "a sort of grand stand for the battle-field." Beeston Castle was invested by the Parliamentarians in the course of September 1645. On the approach of Charles the troops were drawn off on 19th September to Chester.[14] Charles no doubt took the opportunity to strengthen the garrison. After Rowton Heath Beeston Castle was again besieged, and on November 16th it surrendered. The garrison were allowed to march across the Dee to Denbigh. I think that this winter ride from the fallen fortress is the one described by Vaughan in the poem to Mr. Ridsley. It is the more probable that Vaughan took part in this campaign of 1645, in that Charles's force was largely recruited from Wales. After the battle of Naseby on June 14th, the King had marched through Wales, collecting such levies as he could. He was in Brecon on August 5th.[15] It is quite possible that Vaughan, whose kinsman Sir William Vaughan was in command of a brigade, volunteered on this occasion. From Brecon Charles marched through Radnorshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, and so to Oxford. In September he set out again, and after some delay at Hereford and Raglan, finally made for Chester.
It is just conceivable that it is to some occasion in this campaign that Vaughan refers when he calls Dr. Powell his "fellow-prisoner" (vol. ii., p. 178). The poet may even have been the Captain Vaughan whose name appears in the official list of prisoners taken at Rowton Heath.[16] Powell's name is not there, but then the list does not profess to be complete. But on the whole I think that Vaughan and Powell were only fellow-prisoners in the Platonic sense of imprisonment in the flesh, and even if a literal imprisonment is intended, it may have been due to some act of persecution which Vaughan had to suffer as a Royalist at a later date. There is in The Mount of Olives (1652) a Prayer in Adversity and Troubles occasioned by our Enemies (Grosart, vol. iii., p. 75), which, if it is to be taken—I think it is not—as autobiographical, seems to show that, at least for a time, he lost his estate. The prayer runs: "Thou seest, O God, how furious and implacable mine enemies are: they have not only robbed me of that portion and provision which Thou hast graciously given me, but they have also washed their hands in the blood of my friends, my dearest and nearest relations. I know, O God, and I am daily taught by that disciple whom Thou didst love, that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. Keep me, therefore, O my God, from the guilt of blood, and suffer me not to stain my soul with the thoughts of recompense and vengeance, which is a branch of Thy great prerogative, and belongs wholly unto Thee. Though they persecute me unto death, and pant after the very dust upon the heads of Thy poor, though they have taken the bread out of Thy children's mouth, and have made me a desolation; yet, Lord, give me Thy grace, and such a measure of charity as may fully forgive them."
It may have been during some such time of trouble, or imprisonment, if imprisonment there was, that Vaughan's wife lived with Thomas Vaughan, as will be seen below, in London.
(d) THOMAS VAUGHAN.
It has not been thought necessary to reprint in this edition of Henry Vaughan's poems the scanty English and Latin verses of his brother, Thomas Vaughan. They may be found, together with verses by Virgil and Campion ascribed to him, in vol. ii. of Dr. Grosart's Fuller Worthies edition. But some account of so curious a person will not be out of place.
As for his brother, our chief authority is Anthony à Wood (Ath. Oxon., iii. 722), who says that he was the son of Thomas Vaughan of Llansantffread,[17] that he was born in 1621, educated under Matthew Herbert and at Jesus College, Oxford, of which he became Fellow, took orders and received [in 1640] the living of Llansanffread from his kinsman, Sir George Vaughan [of Fallerstone, Wilts]. He lost his living in the unquiet times of the Civil War, retired to Oxford, and became an eminent chemist, afterwards moving to London, where he worked under the patronage of Sir Robert Murray. He was a great admirer of Cornelius Agrippa, "a great chymist, a noted son of the fire, an experimental philosopher, a zealous brother of the Rosicrucian fraternity ... neither papist nor sectary, but a true resolute protestant in the best sense of the Church of England." In the great plague he fled with Murray from London to Oxford, and thence went to the house of Samuel Kem at Albury, where he died on February 27, 1665/6, of mercury accidentally getting into his nose while he was operating. He was buried at Albury on March 1st. Writing in 1673, Anthony à Wood gives a list of his alchemical and mystical treatises published between 1650 and 1655. Of these he had received a list from Olor Iscanus (Henry Vaughan). They all bear the name of Eugenius Philalethes, except the Aula Lucis (1652), which was issued as by S. N., i.e. [Thoma]S [Vaugha]N. Some of these pamphlets contain Vaughan's share of a vigorous and scurrilous controversy with Henry More, the Platonist. Anthony à Wood distinguishes from Vaughan another Eugenius Philalethes, author of the Brief Natural History (1669), also one Eirenaeus Philalethes, author of Ripley Redivivus and other works, and Eirenaeus Philoponos Philalethes, author of The Marrow of Alchemy (1654-5).[18]
A few facts, from well-known sources, may be added to Anthony à Wood's account. The University Registers show that "Thos. Vaughan, son of Thomas of Llansanfraid, co. Brecon, pleb., matriculated from Jesus College on 14 Dec, 1638, aged 16." He took his B.A. on 18 Feb., 1641/2, but does not appear to have taken his M.A., though he became Fellow of his College (Foster, Alumni Oxon.). John Walker (Sufferings of the Clergy (1714), p. 389) states that he was ejected from his living on the charges of "drunkenness, immorality, and bearing arms for the King."[19] This must have been in 1649, under the Act for the Propagation of the Gospel in Wales. There exists a letter from Thomas Vaughan to a friend in London, dated from "Newtown, Ash Wednesday, 1653;"[20] and it appears from Jones' History of Brecknockshire (ii., 542), that at one time he lived with his brother Henry there. The allusions to Henry More, to Murray, and to the Isis and Thames seem to show that he is the Daphnis of his brother's Eclogue (vol. ii., p. 278). No trace of his death or burial can however be now found at Albury. Mr. Gordon Goodwin points out to me that Dr. Samuel Kem was a somewhat notorious character (Dict. Nat. Biog., s.v. Kem): perhaps this friendship, together with the personal confession quoted below, throws light on the charges which lost Vaughan his living. On the other hand Anthony à Wood speaks well of him, and the tone of his writings bears out this more kindly judgment, at any rate so far as his later years are concerned.
What has been said fairly well exhausted the available information on Thomas Vaughan until a few years ago, when Mr. A. E. Waite discovered in Sloane MS. 1741 a valuable manuscript of his, containing amongst other things a number of autobiographical memoranda. He printed some extracts from this in the preface to an edition of some of The Magical Writings of Thomas Vaughan (Redway, 1888), and has been kind enough to furnish me with a reference to the MS. itself, which I have carefully examined. It bears the title Aqua Vitae non Vitis, and the inscription "Ex libris Thomas et Rebecca Vaughan, 1651, Sept. 28. Quos Deus coniunxit quis separabit?" The contents are partly personal jottings and records of dreams, partly alchemical formulae. They appear to cover the period 1658-1662. We learn from them the following facts:—Vaughan was married on September 28, 1651, to a lady named Rebecca (f. 106 (b)). With her and his "Sister Vaughan" he lived and studied alchemy at the Pinner of Wakefield.[21] He had previously lodged at Mr. Coalman's in Holborn (f. 104 (b)). His wife died on Saturday, April 17, 1658, and was buried at Mappersall, in Bedfordshire (f. 106 (b)).[22] In 1658 his father and his brother W. were both dead, and he mentions the news of his father's death coming to his niece in a letter from the country (f. 89 (b)). On April 9, 1659, he saw his brother H. in a dream. On 16 July, 1658, he was living at Wapping (f. 103 (b)), and at an earlier period at Paddington. There is an inventory of his wife's goods left at Mrs. Highgate's, and mention of a Mr. Highgate and a Sir John Underhill (f. 107). He names his cousin, Mr. J. Walbeoffe, with whom he had some money transactions (f. 18), and speaks of "a certain person with whom I had in former times revelled away my years in drinking" (f. 103). Perhaps this also was John Walbeoffe, on whom see vol. ii., p. 189, note. The alchemical formulae and receipts are interesting. In one place (f. 12) Vaughan announces the discovery of the "Extract of Oil of Halcaly," which he had previously found in his wife's days and had lost again. This he calls "the greatest joy I can ever have in this world after her death." He seems to have regarded it as the key to an universal solvent. Nearly every receipt is followed by his and his wife's initials in the form T. R. V. or T. V. R., and by some expression of devotion to her or of religious piety.
I now come to the remarkable statements made with respect to Thomas Vaughan in the Mémoires d'une ex-Palladiste, now in course of publication by Miss Diana Vaughan. Miss Vaughan is a lady who has created a considerable sensation in Paris. Her own account of herself is that she was brought up as a worshipper of Lucifer, and was for some years a leading spirit amongst certain androgynous lodges of Freemasons, in which the worship of Lucifer is largely practised. She has now, owing to the direct interposition of Joan of Arc, become a Catholic, and has made it her mission to combat Luciferian Freemasonry in every way. Her Memoirs are partly a biography, partly an account of this cult.[23] Miss Vaughan claims to be a great-grand-daughter of Thomas Vaughan's. She declares him to have been a Luciferian, Grand-master of the Rosicrucian order, and the founder of modern Freemasonry; and gives an exhaustive account of his career on the authority of family archives. The following paragraphs contain the substance of her narrative, the "legend of Philalethes," as it was told to Miss Vaughan by her father and her uncle, who were intimate friends of Albert Pike.