_A. V[uestra] Merced_, "to your worship," is the common Spanish form of
address. The allusion to the plague enables us to assign the letter to
1608, and this date in connection with the references to "My Lady"
[Bedford] and to "Twicknam" suggest that Donne's correspondent was Sir
Henry Goodyer, in the service of the Earl of Bedford. "Mistress Herbert"
is Mrs. Magdalen Herbert, the mother of the saintly George Herbert and his
unsaintly brother Edward. Of Mrs. Herbert, after she had become Lady
Danvers, Donne speaks in what is perhaps the best remembered of his poems,
the lines beginning:
"No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face,"
and the best remembered of his sermons, except _Death's Duel_, is that in
commemoration of her death.
"M{ris} Meauly" according to Dr. Jessopp (quoted by Mr. Gosse) is Mistress
Meautys, one of the members of Lady Bedford's household, and, if so,
possibly a connection of Bacon's faithful follower.