Part 7

Anthony à Wood's statement as to Vaughan's residence at Jesus College, Oxford, has been generally accepted, but I venture to doubt it on the following grounds:--

(1) Vaughan's name does not occur in the University Matriculation Register, although his brother Thomas Vaughan is duly entered as matriculating from Jesus on 14th December, 1638. The only College records which help us are the Battel-books for 1638 and 1640. That for 1639 is unfortunately missing. The Rev. Llewellyn Thomas kindly informs me that he can only trace one undergraduate Vaughan in the two books in question. The Christian name is not given, but I think that we must assume it to be Thomas.

(2) Vaughan does not describe himself on any title-page as of Jesus College; nor does he ever speak of himself as an Oxford man. This omission is the more noticeable as he would naturally have done so in the lines Ad Posteros (vol. ii., p. 51), and might well have done so in those On Sir Thomas Bodley's Library, the Author being then in Oxford (vol. ii., p. 197).

(3) Anthony à Wood cannot be depended on. He describes Thomas Carew, for instance, as of C.C.C., whereas he was a most certainly of Merton. And there was another Henry Vaughan of Jesus, who may have been confused with the poet. This Henry Vaughan, a son of John Vaughan of Cathlin, Merionethshire, matriculated at Oriel on July 4, 1634. He afterwards became a Scholar and Fellow of Jesus, taking his B.A. in 1637 and his M.A. in 1639. In 1643 he became vicar of Penteg, co. Monmouth, and died at Abergavenny in 1661. (Wood, Ath. Oxon., iii. 531; Foster, Alumni Oxon.)

(4) The only confirmation of Anthony à Wood's statement is the poem (vol. ii., p. 289) taken by Dr. Grosart from the Eucharistica Oxoniensia (1641), and signed "H. Vaughan, Jes. Col." If I am right, this may be by Vaughan's namesake. He has indeed another poem in that volume signed "Hen. Vaugh., Jes. Soc." but that is in Latin, and it is not unexampled for one man to contribute more than one poem, especially in different tongues, to such collections. Or it may be by Herbert Vaughan, who was a Gentleman-commoner of the College in 1641, and has, with Henry Vaughan the Fellow, verses in the [Greek: proteleia] Anglo Batava of the same year.

(c) VAUGHAN IN THE CIVIL WAR.

There are several passages which make it probable that Vaughan, like his brother Thomas, bore arms on the King's side in the Civil War. The most important is in the poem To Mr. Ridsley (vol. ii., p. 83), where he speaks of the time

"when this juggling fate Of soldiery first seiz'd me."

In the same poem he mentions

"that day, when we Left craggy Biston and the fatal Dee."

"Craggy Biston" is clearly Beeston Castle, one of the outlying defences of Chester, situated on a steep rock not very far east of the Dee. This castle was besieged on several occasions during the Civil War, especially during the campaign of 1645, when Chester was also besieged by the Parliamentarians. Between Beeston and the Dee was fought, on September 24, 1645, the battle of Rowton Heath, after which Charles the First, who had hoped to raise the siege of Chester, was obliged to retreat to Denbigh. The following lines from Vaughan's Elegy on Mr. R. W. (vol. ii., p. 79), who fell in that battle, seem to have been written by an eye-witness:

"O that day When like the fathers in the fire and cloud I miss'd thy face! I might in ev'ry crowd See arms like thine, and men advance, but none So near to lightning mov'd, nor so fell on. Have you observ'd how soon the nimble eye Brings th' object to conceit, and doth so vie Performance with the soul, that you would swear The act and apprehension both lodg'd there? Just so mov'd he: like shot his active hand Drew blood, ere well the foe could understand. But here I lost him."

This appears to me pretty conclusive evidence; against it, however, must be set the passage on the Civil War in the autobiographical poem Ad Posteros (vol. ii., p. 51).

Vixi, divisos cum fregerat haeresis Anglos Inter Tysiphonas presbyteri et populi. His primum miseris per amoena furentibus arva Prostravit sanctam vilis avena rosam. Turbarunt fontes, et fusis pax perit undis, Moestaque coelestes obruit umbra dies. Duret ut integritas tamen, et pia gloria, partem Me nullam in tanta strage fuisse, scias; Credidimus nempe insonti vocem esse cruori, Et vires quae post funera flere docent. Hinc castae, fidaeque pati me more parentis Commonui, et lachrimis fata levare meis; Hinc nusquam horrendis violavi sacra procellis, Nec mihi mens unquam, nec manus atra fuit.

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. 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. 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. 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, 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).

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." 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;" 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. 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)). 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. 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.

The traditional accounts of Thomas Vaughan, says Miss Vaughan, contain serious errors. The dates of his birth and of his death, and the pseudonym under which he wrote are all incorrectly stated (p. 110). He was born in Monmouth in 1612, being two years the elder of his brother Henry. The two boys were brought up at Oxford, after their father's death, by their uncle, Robert Vaughan the antiquary, and entered at Jesus College (p. 114). In 1636, at the age of 24, Thomas Vaughan went to London, and became the disciple of Robert Fludd, who was a Rosicrucian (p. 148). The real nature of the Rosicrucians has hitherto been a mystery. They were in reality Luciferians, and carried on in secret during the seventeenth century that warfare against Adonai, the god of the Catholics, out of which had already sprung Wiclif, Luther, and the Reformation, and out of which was some day to spring, more deadly and more dangerous still, Freemasonry. The Fraternity of Rosie-Cross was founded by Faustus Socinus in 1597. He was succeeded as head of it by Caesar Cremonini (1604-1617), Michael Maier (1617-1622), Valentin Andreae (1622-1654), and Thomas Vaughan (1654-1678). When Thomas Vaughan first came to London in 1636, Valentin Andreae was Summus Magister of the Fraternity, and amongst its leading members were Robert Fludd and Amos Komenski, or Comenius (pp. 129-148). Robert Fludd initiated Thomas Vaughan into the lower degrees of the Golden Cross (p. 148), and sent him to Andreae at Calw, near Stuttgart, with a letter in which he prophesied for him a miraculous future (p. 163). After this visit to Germany, Vaughan returned to London, and after Fludd's death, in 1637, undertook in 1638 his first visit to America. In many of his writings he speaks as a Christian minister, and at this time he probably passed as a Nonconformist (p. 164). He was back in London early in June, 1639 (p. 165), and in the same year visited Denmark, and made a report to Komenski on the mysterious golden horn found at Tondern in that country (p. 166). In 1640 Vaughan received from Komenski the first initiation of the Rosie Cross, and chose the pseudonym of Eirenaeus Philalethes. He now became exceedingly active, going and coming upon the face of the earth. When in England, he divided his time between Oxford and London (p. 167). Between 1640 and 1644 he visited Hamburg, the Netherlands, Italy and Sweden (pp. 171-174). It was at this period that he conceived the design of obtaining a far wider circulation than they had yet met with for the ideas of Faustus Socinus. Some of the Rosicrucians were already "accepted masons." Vaughan determined to capture the vast organization of craft masonry by permeating the lodges with Luciferianism. His associate in this task was Elias Ashmole, with whose aid, a few years later, he composed the degrees of Apprentice (1646), Companion (1648), and Master (1649) (pp. 142, 169-175, 197-206). The Civil War had now approached. Oliver Cromwell was a freemason, a Rosicrucian, and a friend of Vaughan's (p. 176). With the execution of Laud came the crisis of Vaughan's life, his initiation into the highest degree of Rosie Cross by the hands of Lucifer himself. It took place in this wise. At the last moment Vaughan was substituted for the intended executioner of Laud. He had prepared a sacramental cloth which he soaked in the martyr's blood, and on the same night he sacrificed the relic to Lucifer. The divinity appeared, consecrated Vaughan as Magus, named him as the next Summus Magister of the Fraternity, and signed a pact, granting him thirty-three years more life, at the end of which he should be borne away from earth without death (p. 177). In 1645 Vaughan wrote, but did not yet publish, his most important treatise, the Introitus Apertus ad Occlusum Regis Palatium. In 1645, still following the direct command of Lucifer, he departed for America. Here he met the apothecary George Starkey, and in his presence performed the alchemical feat of making gold (p. 179). Here, too, he lived amongst the Lenni-Lennaps, where he was united to the demon Venus-Astarte in the form of a beautiful woman, who after eleven days bore him a daughter. This girl was brought up among the Lenni-Lennaps under the name of Diana Wulisso-Waghan, and became Miss Diana Vaughan's great-great-grandmother (p. 181). In 1648 Vaughan returned to England, and after composing the masonic degree of Master in 1649 (p. 197), he began the publication of a series of alchemical and, in reality, Luciferian writings. In 1650 appeared the Anthroposophia Theomagica and the Magia Adamica, in 1651 the Lumen de Lumine; in 1652 the Aula Lucis (p. 211). In 1654 Valentin Andreae died, and Vaughan succeeded him as Summus Magister of the Rosie Cross, the event being announced to him by the homage of three demons, Leviathan, Cerberus, and Belphegor (p. 214). In 1655 he published his Euphrates, and in 1656 made his head-quarters at Amsterdam or Eirenaeopolis. In 1659 came his Fraternity of R. C.; in 1664 his Medulla Alchymiae. In 1666 he exhibited the philosopher's stone to Helvetius at La Haye and converted him to occultism: in 1667 he at last resolved to publish his Opus Magnum, the Introitus Apertus, already written in 1645 (p. 215). In 1668 this was followed by the Experimenta de Praeparatione Mercurii Sophici and the Tractatus Tres (p. 236). The time was now approaching when Vaughan, in fulfilment of the pact of 1644, must disappear from earth. He named Charles Blount as his successor (p. 237), and was granted a magical vision of his grandson, the child of Diana Wulisso-Waghan and a Lenni-Lennap (p. 239). He finished his Memoirs, published the Ripley Revised and the Enarratio Methodica trium Gebri Medicinarum, left his poems to his brother Henry, who published them in the next year as the Thalia Rediviva, and on March 25, 1678, disappeared in the company of Lucifer Dieu-Bon himself (p. 240). This event is vouched for, not only by a written statement of Henry Vaughan (p. 114), but also by the existence in a masonic triangle at Valetta of a magical talisman into which, when properly evoked, the spirit of Philalethes enters and records his glorious end for the edification of the Luciferians present (p. 243).

I fear that I have taken Miss Vaughan with undue seriousness. Her account of Thomas Vaughan is not only unsupported by direct evidence, but much of it is of a character which we should not be justified in accepting, even were direct evidence forthcoming. And it is all discordant with the little that we do happen to know of Thomas Vaughan from other sources. The whole thing is, in fact, a pretty obvious romance of very modern fabrication. It appears to have been compiled from such information as to the alchemical and mystical writers of the seventeenth century as was within the reach of Albert Pike and the brothers Vaughan about the year 1870. It is always better to explain than to refute an error; and the nature of the Luciferian tradition of Thomas Vaughan is pretty clearly shown by the fact that it is not corroborated in a single particular by any of the new facts about him that have come to light since this probable date of its composition. The fabricator put Thomas Vaughan's birth-place in Monmouth instead of Brecon, because he had never seen Dr. Grosart's Fuller Worthies Edition of Henry Vaughan. He makes no mention of any of the facts contained in Sloane MS. 1741, because that MS. was still unknown. And, most fatal of all, he puts Thomas Vaughan's birth in 1612 instead of 1621-2, because Foster's Alumni Oxonienses being yet unpublished, he was ignorant of the record of that date preserved in the University Registers. But we can go a step further. We can confute him, not only by pointing to the books he did not use, but by pointing to those he did. It has already been shown that the ascription to Vaughan of the English translation of Maier's Themis Aurea is due to a misunderstanding of a phrase used by Anthony à Wood. The Athenae Oxonienses then was one source of the compilation. Another was the Histoire de la Philosophie Hermétique, written by Lenglet-Dufresnoy in 1742. Here is the proof. Miss Vaughan supports her statement as to the birth-date in 1612 by a quotation from the Introitus Apertus, in which the writer states it to have been composed "en l'an 1645 de notre salut, et le trente-troisième de mon age." This she professes to translate from the editio princeps published by Jean Lange in 1667. As a matter of fact it is taken from the version given in Lenglet-Dufresnoy's book. And Lenglet-Dufresnoy followed, not the edition of 1667, but the later edition published by J. M. Faust at Frankfort in 1706. In this the words are "trigesimo tertio," whereas in the editio princeps they are "vicesimo tertio," and in W. Cooper's English translation of 1669, "in the 23rd year of my age," thus bringing the date of the birth of Eirenaeus Philalethes not to 1612, but to 1622. The "legend of Philalethes" need detain us no longer. Miss Vaughan's narrative is a very insufficient basis for regarding the pious minister and mystic which Thomas Vaughan appears to have been as a secret enemy of Christianity and a worshipper of Lucifer.

But when the legend is set aside, there still remain certain questions suggested by it which may be considered without much reference to the statements of Miss Vaughan. Was Thomas Vaughan a Rosicrucian? And was he, admittedly the author of a series of tracts under the name of Eugenius Philalethes, also the author of those which bear the name of Eirenaeus Philalethes? The first question is, I am afraid, insoluble, until it has been decided whether the Fraternity of R. C. ever had an actual existence. Anthony à Wood states that Thomas Vaughan was a zealous Rosicrucian, but probably Anthony à Wood took the term in the general sense of mystic and alchemist. On the other hand Vaughan himself, in his preface to the English translation of the Rosicrucian manifestoes, seems to disavow any personal acquaintance with the members of the fraternity. Even this is not conclusive, for the Rosicrucian rule, as given in the Laws of the Brotherhood, published by Sincerus Renatus in 1710, obliges the members to deny their membership.

There is more material for the discussion of the second question, but I do not know that it is more possible to come to a definite conclusion. The personality of the anonymous adept who took the name of Eirenaeus Philalethes was shrouded in mystery even to his contemporaries. The fullest account given of him on any of his title-pages is on that of the Experimenta de Praeparatione Mercurii Sophici (1668), which is said to be "ex manuscripto Philosophi Americani alias Eyrenaei Philalethis, natu Angli, habitatione Cosmopolitae." We have also the description given by George Starkey, or whoever it was, in the Marrow of Alchemy (1654-5), p. 25. Starkey says:--