VAGHAN (VAUGHAN), Charles (d. by 1667), of Ottery St Mary and Treasurer’s Beare, Clyst Honiton, Devon.

Although the family of Charles Vaghan had lived in Devon since the 1570s, when Charles’s father came to the county as the steward to Francis Russell, 2nd earl of Bedford, their roots were Welsh. Charles’s great-grandfather was Sir Hugh Vaughan, a follower of Henry Tudor who immediately after Bosworth was granted forests in the Cydweli district of Carmarthenshire, which may have been his place of origin, although Manorbier in Pembrokeshire, somewhat further west, seems just as likely as the Vaughans’ ancestral area. Sir Hugh’s rewards from Henry VII included the offices of gentleman usher and esquire of the body to the king, lieutenant of the Tower, captain of the king’s guard, bailiff of Westminster and captain of Jersey. He also became a privy councillor.11G. Matthew, Medieval Westminster, 1200-1540, 329, 333-4; W. Campbell, Materials ... Henry VII (2 vols. 1873), i. 555; Somerville, Hist… Duchy of Lancaster (2 vols., 1953-70), i. 643. The Vaughans bought the manor of Littleton, Middlesex around 1563, but did not settle there for long.12VCH Mdx. ii. 403, 405. Sir Hugh’s grandson, Hugh Vaughan†, entered the service of the Russells, earls of Bedford, and by so doing removed the family to the west country. Hugh Vaughan sat in four Parliaments for boroughs in Dorset and Devon between 1572 and 1593 and from 1596 was clerk of the peace for Devon as well as steward of the Russells’ Devon properties. He was assessed on goods valued at £8 in the 1602 subsidy. Hugh’s funeral procession in Exeter set out from Bedford House, the earl’s headquarters in the city, and the inscription on his tomb in St. Lawrence church memorialized his fidelity to the Russells.13HP Commons 1558-1603; Exeter in the Seventeenth Century, 1; Devon and Cornw. N. and Q. x. 98; Cresswell, Exeter Churches, 76.

Hugh Vaughan’s tomb also recorded his large number of children as worthy of note. In the will he drew up in December 1606, he mentioned eight sons and five daughters, the eldest of whom was Charles. All his children had been born to his only wife, Elizabeth Hals of Sherford, in the South Hams. Hugh had invested in property there, in the Tavistock area and in Cornwall.14PROB11/109/228; C142/295/39. Charles, who seems consistently to have spelt his name Vaghan, was educated at the Inner Temple, where one of his sureties was Thomas Gewen*.15SP28/227; I Temple database. Gewen was many years later described as Vaghan’s ‘brother-in-law’.16Answer of Philip Francis, sig. B3. Charles was left Morwell Barton and other property in Tavistock, on 80-year leases, by his father, but he also acquired the clerkship of the peace of Devon in 1612 on what was in effect a hereditary basis, being given the post four years after being admitted to the Inner Temple, and five years after his father’s death. The post attracted a salary fixed in 1388 of two shillings a day, but carried the much more valuable potential for fee-taking on the various writs and legal instruments which passed under the clerk’s hand. Despite a negative assessment of his abilities by a Victorian commentator, Vaghan seems to have been reasonably energetic and conscientious in the role of clerk of the peace, in 1616 listing the county rates made by his masters on the bench of magistrates in earlier years, in 1628 reporting the fees he took to Charles I’s commission on the subject, and generally complying with the demands made of him.17Stephens, Clerks of the Counties, 6; Som. RO, DD/WO/53/5/10; C215/1102; A.H.A. Hamilton, Quarter Sessions from Queen Elizabeth to Queen Anne (1878), 51.

In 1617 Vaghan married the daughter of Sir Thomas Reynell, an important figure in the part of Devon sheltered by the eastern slopes of Dartmoor. Vaghan acquired property around Bovey Tracy through this family connection, putting up the cash when Richard Reynell mortgaged lands in four parishes in 1621. By 1628 Vaghan was steward of North Bovey, a post he acquired probably through the Reynells. rather than through the Russell family. He introduced his deputy, Giles Inglett, to the tasks associated with the stewardship; his own position was probably nominal.18Devon RO, 4625M-O/T/14/1; 4625M-O/L/2/1; C215/1428. By virtue of his office, his contacts and his closeness to the major Devon gentry familes, Vaghan was wealthy and dependable enough to be able to lend £1,000 in 1631 to a Devon gentleman against the security of a farm at Haddington, near Plymouth.19The Case of Hugh Vaughan and John Vaughan (1676). He evidently enjoyed the support of the Devon magistrates, who defended him to the privy council in 1630 against allegations by an injured soldier that Vaghan was defrauding him of his pension.20CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 179. There were signs, too, by the early 1630s, that Devon county office was descending to the next generation of Vaghan’s family, His son, Nicholas, was made muster-master of the trained bands in 1631 and a decade later was county treasurer.21Devon and Cornw. N. and Q. x. 99; Devon RO, QS order bk. 1/8. Vaghan himself had acquired a house at Ottery St. Mary, in the east of the county between Exeter and Homiton, by 1635.22S.W. Cornish, Short Notes on the Church and Parish of Ottery St. Mary (Exeter, 1869), 46.

Vaghan’s father had been noted for his piety, and Vaghan himself seems to have espoused views on the church that could be called puritan. In 1640, he and Edmund Prideaux I*, another east Devon gentleman, found themselves before the court of high commission, waiting fruitlessly for their case to come before the commissioners.23CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 397, 404, 413, 419, 424, 429; 1640-1, p. 384. But notwithstanding his capacity to provoke the government, Vaghan retained a vested interest in one of the symbols of prerogative rule: the stannary courts. Probably by virtue of his links with Francis Russell, 4th earl of Bedford, by 1640 Vaghan was steward of the stannary courts of Devon, apparently jointly with Peter Sainthill*.24Answer of Philip Francis, sig. B3. One of his civil war colleagues on the parliamentarian side, the Plymouth mayor and committeeman, Philip Francis, who became a bitter enemy of Vaghan, described how in that office he ‘grounded the faces and fortunes of so many poor souls that have fallen into his hands by forfeitures’.25Answer of Philip Francis, sig. B3. While William Strode I* and other radicals in the Long Parliament were busy attacking the stannaries, Vaghan was a prominent defender of the courts, petitioning to have them protected for the useful work they did in controlling entry to the tin industry and regulating disputes between tinners.26PA, Main Pprs. 16 July 1641. Around this time, Vaghan’s fortunes took a downward turn. He lost the clerkship of the peace, probably because of the death of the 4th earl of Bedford on 9 May 1641. Although the Devon justices had apparently exhibited confidence in Vaghan until then, it was not the case that his merits were such that he could command loyalty that overrode the loss of the patronage that had impelled him into office. He was succeeded as clerk by Thomas Shapcote, an Exeter attorney, and Vaghan’s ejection should probably be read as collateral damage in the side-taking that marked the Devon gentry in the year before civil war broke out.27Stephens, Clerks of the Counties, 77; Devon RO, QS order bk. 1/8.

As a puritan-inclined attorney who had lost an office that he had held for a long time, and as a client of the Bedford interest, Vaghan was perhaps a natural supporter of Parliament during the civil war. Before war broke out he invested heavily in the Adventure to subdue the rebellion in Ireland. On 19 July 1642, in Ottery St Mary, he gave the largest sum towards the war effort, £100 on the Propositions, of any of the 17 contributors from that town, the next largest amount half his donation in size.28Antony House, Carew-Pole PC/G4/9/21. A few days later, he paid in £1,000 at Dartmouth.29CSP Ire. Adv. p. 116. His zeal and enthusiasm for the cause were noted in the House of Commons.30CJ ii. 432b, 662b. In Ottery, he was responsible for the dismissal of the parish clerk and organist, and in so doing was noted as an enemy of ‘the discipline of the Church of England’.31PRO30/5/6, p. 343. After the outbreak of war, his experience as the senior legal officer to the Devon gentry in their capacity as magistrates was put to good use when he was made treasurer of the Devon committee for Parliament, and de facto head accountant of the parliamentarian war effort in the county, a position he kept until at least early in 1647.32CJ ii. 932a, 950a; SP28/128, pt. 17, f. 69v. By January 1643 his assistant as a manor steward, Giles Inglett, had joined him.33SP28/128 pt. 27. From 1642 until 1646, Vaghan remained county treasurer and the focal point for the accounts of army officers in Devon.34SP28/153, f. 23. It was only a few months into the war when Vaghan paid a huge price for his family’s involvement in the conflict. On 11 December 1642, his son Nicholas, the county treasurer and muster-master, was shot dead from a window in the village of Dunsford, on Dartmoor’s edge.35Devon RO, Devon QS order bk. 1/8; M. Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality (Exeter, 1994), 63-5.

Vaghan’s successor as clerk of the peace adhered to the royalists at the outbreak of the war, and Parliament re-appointed Vaghan to his old job in January 1643, regardless of the views of the Devon bench.36CJ ii. 926a. In March, Vaghan was one of the group of Devon and Cornwall committeemen, also including Thomas Gewen* and Thomas Boone* who opposed the cessation with the Cornish royalists as unnecessary and allowing the enemy contact with colleagues in neighbouring counties. They also condemned the treaty as making no mention of the privileges of Parliament, the ‘desire of reformation’ or the ‘solemn Protestation’ of Parliament of May 1641.37Bodl. Nalson II, f. 332. Vaghan remained close to the leaders of the parliamentarian side in Devon. He was in Exeter when Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford arrived to invigorate the roundhead presence there, but accompanied the earl when he left the city on 11 May 1643. Within a week Stamford had been routed at Stratton in north Cornwall, and it must have been around then that Vaghan was robbed by the royalist soldiers of everything he had.38C. Vaghan, The Most True and Unanswerable Answer (1645), 5 (E.258.29). Subsequently, he must have made his way to Plymouth, the safe haven for the parliamentary cause. Since April he had added the title of treasurer of sequestrations to his title, although there must have been little to do in that capacity since most of Devon lay in royalist hands.

While based at Plymouth, Vaghan came into conflict with Philip Francis, mayor of the town, over their respective roles in the attempted betrayal of Plymouth in 1643 by Sir Alexander Carew*. Carew had been a supporter of the treaty that Vaghan had anathematized earlier in the year, and Vaghan arrived at Plymouth not long before Carew’s discussions with other half-hearted parliamentarians culminated in his arrest in August. Vaghan’s quarrel with Francis was fought out in a series of pamphlets during 1644 and early 1645 which each had published in London to justify themselves: presumably in an effort to establish the dominant narrative in the minds of a readership at Westminster.39The Most True and Unanswerable Answer (1645, E.258.29); Answer of Philip Francis; The Misdemeanours of a Traytor (1644, E.258.13); Some of Mr Philip Francis Misdemeanours (E.257.10). Vaghan alleged that Francis had sympathised with Carew, which the other of course hotly denied, while the burden of Francis’s attack on Vaghan was that he had abused his position of trust as treasurer to detain a pearl which had been confiscated from the royalist, James Ley, 3rd earl of Marlborough. It was Francis’s information to the Committee for Advance of Money, a body dominated by William Strode I*, that led to Vaghan’s being required by Parliament in September 1644 to surrender the pearl in London and to a brief period of imprisonment for him there for his slowness to obey.40CCAM 490; Answer of Philip Francis, no pag.; CJ iii. 624a, 646a. This detention was viewed by Francis as the perfect revenge for the period of imprisonment he himself had suffered on the orders of Vaghan’s ally, Thomas Gewen, and others, for keeping the pearl earlier in 1644. Stripped of the entangling detail of their narratives, these pamphlet exchanges can be read simply as rivalry between the Plymouth mayor and committeeman and the critical outsider whose authority and security lay in a separate jurisdiction.

At the time of Vaghan’s election for Honiton on 25 June 1646, a process overseen by the sheriff, Sir Francis Drake*, he was a stalwart of the county committee and its long-serving treasurer. He seems to have been in no hurry to take his seat. His trusted deputy later recalled that on 16 November, Vaghan added the managing of sequestration business to Inglett’s duties before he set off for London, and the first notice of him in the House by the clerks came on 30 December, when he took the Covenant.41E113/6, answer of G. Inglett; CJ v. 33b. In 1647, Vaghan was named to six committees. He was called to the committee for the ordinance on restraining malignant ministers from their livings (22 Mar.) and one for the relief of injured or wounded soldiers (28 May).42CJ v. 119b, 190b. On 22 June he, with his kinsman Thomas Gewen, was set to work on an ordinance from the Lords on making a seal for the south Wales courts, and on 24 June, again with Gewen, was named to a committee on providing recreation days for scholars and apprentices.43CJ v. 220b, 222a.

On 15 July 1647, Vaghan acted for the only time in his parliamentary career as a teller in a division, on whether Members who responded by sending in statements to the House to its votes on debarring individuals from sitting, should incur no further penalties. Vaghan and his co-teller, John D’Oyly, opposed the known Independents Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire, and mustered 17 votes to 77.44CJ v. 244b. The implication that Vaghan was allied with the Presbyterians was confirmed on 19 July when he was given leave of absence. He may well have returned to Devon at this point, to help with the disbanding of garrisons at Barnstaple and Ilfracombe; he certainly signed receipts relating to this task between March 1647 and April 1648.45CJ v. 250a; SP28/128, pt. 17, f. 76v. He is therefore likely to have been away from the Houses when they were forced and when the Independents fled to the army. Perhaps he had only just returned when he was named to the committee charged with investigating the tumult (2 Aug.), but it proved to be his last involvement in parliamentary business for five months. He was absent at a call of the House on 9 October, and not until 4 January 1648 was he named again by the clerks: on that occasion to a committee on the people’s grievances, including in trade and the law.46CJ v. 250a, 265a, 330a, 417a.

Vaghan was active at Westminster during two short episodes in 1648. He was added to a committee on army accounts (1 June) and was included in another on payments to officers and soldiers (14 June). A further period of leave was granted on 20 June, and Vaghan evidently returned to his native county to become a prime mover in the re-organization of the militia and the committees there. He was an active militia commissioner in Devon in August, and was appointed to the first of the three new committees, with Sir John Bampfylde*, Sir John Northcote*, Sir John Yonge*, Christopher Martin* and Edmund Fowell*.47Add. 44058, ff. 26v-27, 35. But he had returned to Westminster by 25 November, when he was called to a committee on an individual accused of forging an act of Parliament.48CJ vi. 87a. He was thus present when Colonel Thomas Pride* imposed the will of the army on the Houses. Vaghan was the only Devon Member to be imprisoned during this episode; his associate Thomas Gewen was one of the many Devon and Cornwall Members to be secluded.49A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); The Parliament under the Power of the Sword (1648, 669.f.13.52); W. Prynne, A True and Perfect Relation (1648), 11 (E.476.14).

Pride’s Purge marked the end, not only of Vaghan’s parliamentary career, but also of his wider life in public affairs. In January 1649, Nicholas Rowe – a son-in-law of Thomas Gewen and thus not unrelated to Vaghan and his family – claimed the clerkship of the peace under a grant of March 1647 by Edmund Prideaux I* as custos. Vaghan showed the Devon bench the House of Commons order of January 1643 appointing him clerk until further order. It seemed that a letter to the Speaker requesting clarification had never been read in the House, and Vaghan seems on hearing this to have given up his campaign to recover his post. Rowe was present in the court of quarter sessions in January 1649 to hear the order appointing him, with Vaghan’s old assistant, Giles Inglett, as his deputy.50Devon RO, QS order bk. 1/8, Jan. 1649. After the Restoration, Vaghan proved an acceptable tenant to the dean and chapter of Exeter for a park and mills at Stoke Canon. He was probably the ‘Charles Vaughan’ who petitioned the king for the profits of some ecclesiastical livings in Ireland in September 1660, but when he drew up his will in 1661 he complained of how his estate was ‘accompanied with many suits and great losses, whereby it is much decayed’, attributing these losses to the ‘late unhappy wars’.51Add. 5759, f. 31; PROB11/320/500. The family continued to be associated with the Exeter law courts, however. Vaghan’s son John was an attorney in Exeter in 1660, and Hugh Vaughan, presumably his grandson, revived the family’s political fortunes in 1688, harassing dissenters under James II under cover of the clerkship of the peace, by then restored to them and retained by them until 1694. A Giles Inglett, probably the son of Charles Vaghan’s deputy, continued to deputise.52ASSI24/1, recognizances 1660; M. Goldie, ‘James II and the Dissenters’ Revenge: the Commission of Enquiry of 1688’, BIHR lxvi. 73-4. Vaghan’s will was proved in July 1666, and his death is therefore taken to have occurred earlier in that year. He is not known to have had any descendants that sat in Parliament.