It is a quaint picture we thus get of the famous ambassador's uncle (he was older than 'Dear Thom's' father)--a kind of Sir Toby Belch, taking the pleasures of the town with his nephew, and writing a satire which might make a young man blush to read. But in fact John Roe of Clapham was never Sir John, and he was dead twelve years before 1603, when these poems were written.[8] Sir John Roe the poet was the cousin, not the uncle, of the ambassador. He was the eldest son of William Rowe (or Roe) of Higham Hill, near Walthamstow, in the county of Essex.[9] William Roe was the third son of the first Lord Mayor of the name Roe.[10] He had two sons, John and William, the latter of whom is probably the person addressed in Jonson's _Epigrammes_, cxxviii. John was born, according to a statement in Morant's _History of Essex_ (1768), on the fifth of May, 1581. This harmonizes with the fact that when the elder William Roe died in 1596 John was still a minor and thereby a cause of anxiety to his father, who in his will, proved in 1596, begs his wife and executors to 'be suiters for his wardeshipp, that his utter spoyle (as much as in them is) maie be prevented'. This probably refers to the chance of a courtier being made ward and despoiling the lad. The following year he matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford.[11] How long he stayed there is not known, probably not long. The career he chose was that of a soldier, and his first service was in Ireland. If he went there with Essex in 1599 he is perhaps one of that general's many knights. But he may have gone thither later, for he evidently found a patron in Mountjoy. In 1605 that nobleman, then Earl of Devonshire, wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood, Ambassador to the United Provinces, first to recommend Roe to him as one wishing to follow the wars and therein to serve the States; and then to thank him for his readiness to befriend Sir John Roe. He adds that he will be ever ready to serve the States to requite any favour Roe shall receive.[12] By 1608 he was dead, for a list of captains discharged in Ireland since 1603 gives the following: 'Born in England and dead in 1608--Sir John Roe.'[13] Such in brief outline is the life of the man who in 1603, possibly between his Irish and Low Country campaigns, appears in London as one, with his more famous cousin Thomas, of the band of wits and poets whose leader was Jonson, whose most brilliant star was Donne. Jonson's epigrams and conversations enable us to fill in some of the colours wanting in the above outline. The most interesting of these shows Roe to have been in Russia as well as Ireland and the Low Countries, and tells us that he was, like 'Natta the new knight' in his _Satyre_, a duellist: XXXII. ON SIR IOHN ROE.