[1] Walton confuses this Edward Herbert with a namesake entered at Queen’s College; and he follows the erring dates of the _Autobiography of Lord Herbert of Cherbury_. The boy’s age is correctly given as fourteen in the college registers. [2] Donne had been in residence at both Universities, but took no degree at either, as he had scruples against accepting the conditions imposed. He was at that time, and until about 1593, like his parents, a Catholic. His father was of Welsh descent: a fact which may have borne its share in attracting him towards the Herberts. [3] Anne Donne, it may be remarked, was also the name of Cowper’s mother. [4] Sir Richard Baker’s _Chronicle_, 1684, mentions Dr. Donne as one of his “heroic Grecians,” and adds, in the same breath, that he was “a great visitor of ladies.” [5] Dr. Donne’s conceit about the ages of his friends is better handled in the young Cartwright’s “Chloe, why wish you that your years,” a little later. It is not impossible that Cartwright, an Oxonian and an observer, may have drawn upon Donne’s report of this very wedding for his charming and ingenious lyric. [6] This august personage was one of the Spencers of Althorp. At this time she had been for six years the wife of her second husband, the Lord Keeper Egerton, although retaining the magnificent title of her widowhood. At their estate of Harefield in Middlesex, Milton’s _Arcades_ was afterwards given, and it will be remembered what fine compliments to the then aged countess-dowager figure in its opening verses. Spenser’s _Teares of the Muses_ had been dedicated to her, in her prime, and she was the Amaryllis “highest in degree” of his _Colin Clout’s Come Home Again_. [7] Sir James Sandelyn, Sandalo, or Sandilands (who cuts his finest figure as Jacobus Sandilandius in _The Muses’ Welcome_) was appointed Maistre d’Hostel to the beloved and beautiful Princess Elizabeth on her marriage to Frederic, Count Palatine of the Rhine, afterwards King of Bohemia, in 1612. As Sir James’s name is down on the lists of the Exchequer for a gift in 1615, and as his little son Richard was baptized in Deptford Church two months after the date of Lady Danvers’s letter, we may conclude that he came back to England just when the “ambassatore” expected him. [8] Edward Herbert served as a volunteer in the campaign of 1614-15 in the Netherlands, under the Prince of Orange. Richard Herbert, here mentioned, was his eldest son, a future Cavalier and captain of a troop of horse in the Civil Wars; Edward was the baby, and “Bettye” the child Beatrice, destined, like her sister, to a short life. [9] This 1614-15 was an eccentric and un-English year throughout. The winter signalized itself by the Great Snow; “_frigus intensum_,” as Camden says, “_et nix copiosissima_.”