In 1734, George Frederic Handel's opera L'Oreste (based on Giangualberto Barlocci’s Roman libretto of 1723), was premiered in London's Covent Garden.
During the next sixteen years (1700–16) much correspondence passed between the lovers, Mrs. Thomas writing as 'Corinna,' Gwinnett as 'Pylades.'
His work is also represented in the United States by works including the Orestes and Pylades Fountain, as well as the Burd Family Memorial of the Angel of the Resurrection, commissioned 1849, both in Philadelphia.
In 1854, he served in the Baltic campaign under Sir Charles Napier as captain of the gunboat HMS Desperate, and returned to that theatre in 1855 under Rear-Admiral Richard Saunders Dundas, as captain of the steam frigate HMS Pylades.
Their letters were subsequently published in two volumes entitled 'Pylades and Corinna; or memoirs of the lives, amours, and writings of R. G. and Mrs. E. Thomas, jun.… containing the letters and other miscellaneous pieces in prose and verse, which passed between them during a Courtship of above sixteen years … Published from their original manuscripts (by Philalethes) … To which is prefixed the life of Corinna, written by herself.'
In August 1799, during the Napoleonic Wars, a small Royal Navy squadron under Captain Adam Mackenzie of HMS Pylades attacked and captured the former Royal Navy gun-brig Crash, moored between Schiermonnikoog and Groningen.
He was Pylades to William Charles Macready's Orestes in Ambrose Philips's Distressed Mother when Macready made his first appearance at that theatre (1816).