mation above.[1] To this, I may now add, that the principal authors may be reduced to three; Herbert Aston, his sister Gertrude, wife of Henry Thimelby, and his brother Edward Thimelby. The other authors of particular pieces I have pointed out in the notes.
Among the poets, their contemporaries, besides Drayton, they appear to have been intimate with Crashaw, Fanshaw, and Caryl; and I have reason to think that they were known to Sandys, Waller, and Davenant. Of their connexion with Cowley I have found no trace; but as he was the friend of Crashaw, and much engaged in the service of the royal family, during the civil war, and the usurpation of Cromwell, as were also the Astons, it is very likely that they were acquainted.
With the wits, and poets, at the court of the second Charles, it is not probable they would form a connexion. Ihe second Lord Aston, though an earnest suitor to his majesty, yet obtained no reward for his own services, or those of his family. Mrs Henry Thimelby was become a nun. Lady Persall, and Mrs Herbert Aston were dead. Edward Thimelby, in an elegy on the latter, says,
I've strowed, and stuck devoutly, on some herses,
But here I burn, and bury all my verses.
and he probably adhered to this resolution. He was, moreover, now fixed in his ecclesiastical state; and would look back, perhaps, on his poetical effusions, as juvenile amusements, in which it was no longer creditable to be engaged. Herbert Aston, and his beloved sister Constantia Fowler, were sufficiently engaged with the cares of a family.
