VAUGHAN, Richard I (c.1600-1686), of Golden Grove, Llanfihangel Aberbythych, Carm. and ?Fleet Street, St. Dunstan-in-the-West, London.

Richard Vaughan represented another generation of the dynasty which assumed a controlling interest in the politics of Stuart Carmarthenshire. Although he succeeded his father in 1634, it was only after the outbreak of Civil War that he achieved real prominence, becoming leader of the royalist forces in south-west Wales during the early stages of the conflict. He was probably born shortly after his parents married in 1598.32 Dwnn, Vis. Wales ed. S.R. Meyrick, i. 214. There is no record that he attended university, but he may have received a private education in the grammar school at Carmarthen. He travelled abroad in his early twenties, and anticipated his father’s trip to Spain, as in August 1623 James Howell* noted that he and Vaughan had been ‘comrades and bedfellows here [in Madrid] many months together.’33 J. Howell, Epistolae Ho-Elianae, i. 171, 190.

Vaughan succeeded his father as Member for Carmarthenshire in 1624, following a controversy in the previous session about Sir John’s status as an Irish peer. The election writ recorded that his uncles, Henry* and Walter, along with Rowland Gwyn, stood as sureties for his attendance at Parliament.34 C219/38/314d. This practice, common in the Middle Ages, was rare in the Stuart era, and seems to have been a local quirk. In the Commons, it is impossible to distinguish Vaughan from his uncle Henry Vaughan, who sat for Carmarthen Boroughs. However, his father’s position as comptroller to Prince Charles makes it likely that he was the man nominated to the committee to confirm duchy of Cornwall leases (9 March).35 CJ, i. 680a. Either Vaughan or his uncle was also ordered to help draft a message to the Lords asking them to take action to prevent the export of money by Jesuits (12 March). If the Member concerned was Vaughan, he may have been hoping to establish his anti-Catholic credentials in a Parliament in which war with Spain was high on the agenda.36 Ibid. 684a. The nomination to a committee to consider the drainage of marshes in eastern England (10 Apr.) defies easy association with either Vaughan or his uncle.37 Ibid. 762a.

Vaughan served as knight of the shire for the remainder of the decade. His indentures testify to the support he enjoyed from county figures such as his uncle Walter Vaughan of Llanelli, and Rice Rudd of Aberglasney.38 C219/39/269; 219/41B/12. His recorded activity was insignificant. Apart from his nomination to the conference at which William Herbert, 3rd earl of Pembroke and Archbishop Abbot urged the Commons to support the war with Spain (7 Mar. 1626), his only other mentions were two requests to absent himself from the House (5 Apr. 1626; 27 May 1628); on the latter occasion the pretext was his father’s sickness. However, in 1626 he was also noted to have delivered Sir Walter Rice* ‘an exact and perfect relation of all the passages of the last Parliament’.39 Carm. RO, Dynevor 279/4.

Vaughan was created a knight of the Bath at Charles’s coronation, perhaps in compensation for his father’s failure to secure a position at the Caroline Court. Vaughan’s appointment to the Cardiganshire bench in 1626 suggests that it was around this time that he married Bridget, daughter of Thomas Lloyd, who brought him an estate of 2,300 acres in Cardiganshire; he later became custos rotulorum of the shire.40 WARD 9/204, ff. 38v, 133; C142/329/19; JPs in Wales and Monm. 194. Vaughan succeeded his father as earl of Carbery in 1634, but faced legal challenges to some of his Welsh estates.41 DL4/87/33; 4/88/2; E112/272/33; E134/6&7Chas.I/Hil.3. In 1637 he took as his second wife a 16-year old Hertfordshire heiress, whose estates must have helped raise his profile outside the Principality.42 C142/466/51; 142/362/187; 142/402/134. This alliance also brought Vaughan into contact with Sir Francis Annesley*, whose son Arthur† married his sister-in-law shortly thereafter. The two families were subsequently involved in a dispute over jointure provisions.43 C8/105/61; C5/28/25; C108/188, pt. 1, ‘corresp. ii’; PROB 6/63, ff. 30-1v.

In February 1642 Parliament nominated Vaughan lord lieutenant of Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire, but in January 1643 he arrived at Oxford as commander of a royalist regiment.44 CJ, ii. 426b; Harl. 6851, ff. 61-3; Dugdale, Diary, 46. Three months later he was appointed lieutenant general of south-west Wales, and in the autumn he acquired an English peerage as Baron Vaughan of Emlyn.45 Docquets of Letters Patent, 25; CP. Following initial success negotiating with the parliamentarian garrisons of Pembrokeshire, he suffered military reverses at the hands of Rowland Laugharne† in 1644. Accused of cowardice and misconduct, he relinquished his command shortly afterwards.46 R. Hutton, Royalist War Effort, 68-74; Harl. 6802, ff. 129-32. Laugharne entreated Parliament to remit Vaughan’s delinquency in order to secure his support for Parliament’s authority there.47 HMC Portland, i. 312, 353; CJ, iv. 365b, 444b; C108/87, pt. 1; 108/189, pt. 1 ‘misc.’ In 1645 he was also discharged of punitive assessments for the fifth and twentieth part.48 CCAM, 637; CJ, iv. 444b, v. 64b; LJ, viii. 707b; Earl of Carbery’s Ped. (1646), p. 1. Vaughan refused to involve himself in the 1648 risings on behalf of the king, and spent the Interregnum at Golden Grove, although there were later claims that he was on familiar terms with local parliamentarian leaders, and had received gifts from Oliver Cromwell*.49 C108/189, pt. i. ‘misc.’

At the Restoration Vaughan re-entered political life as president of the Council in the Marches, but was accused of corruption.50 CSP Dom. 1668-9, p. 644; Addenda 1660-70, pp. 355-6; 1671, p. 63. The charge may have had some foundation, as Vaughan had pleaded poverty when faced with sequestration, and a mortgage of 1661 suggests that he was then in financial difficulty.51 H.F.J. Vaughan, ‘Pvte. Pprs. of Richard Vaughan’, Arch. Camb. (ser. 4. xii), 273-88. He was exonerated by the Privy Council, but fresh claims of maltreatment of tenants in Carmarthenshire led to his removal in 1672.52 C.A.J. Skeel, Council in the Marches, 174-5. He unsuccessfully pleaded with Charles II for mercy, on the pretext of his ‘constant loyalty to, and many great sufferings for, the Crown’.53 SP29/304/48. He subsequently persuaded the king to establish a ‘printer of the British language’.54 CSP Dom. 1675-6, pp. 575-6.

Vaughan died on 3 June 1686, and was interred at Llanfihangel Aberbythych 12 days later.55 PROB 11/391, ff. 93v-4v; Jones, 127; Cawdor (Vaughan) 22/657; N. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 379. His will, composed 47 years before his death, named his eldest son Francis† as his executor, but the latter was already dead, and the eventual heir was a younger brother, John†; Vaughan’s sister-in-law Elizabeth Annesley secured partial administration on 12 Apr. 1687, in order to recoup the money he had won from the Annesley family for her jointure. The family continue to dominate the Carmarthenshire seat after the Restoration. Three portraits of Vaughan survive; one, depicting him as lord president, now hangs in the Carmarthen Museum.56 R.A.G. Howard, Cat. Pictures at Golden Grove, 7; P. Gaunt, Nation Under Siege, 32.