Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II
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[24] (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[xlii] their father's death, by their uncle, Robert Vaughan the antiquary,[25] 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).[26] 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[xliii] 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.[27] He now became exceedingly active, going and coming upon the face of the earth. When[xliv] 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 
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