VAUGHAN, John II (c.1615-71), of Cefnbodig, Llanycil, Merion.

John Vaughan of Trawscoed, this Member’s father, was a minor gentleman who never appeared in the commission of the peace for Merioneth, despite the antiquity of the family in Llanuwchllyn and the Bala district more generally.10Dwnn, Vis. Wales, ii. 429-30. The more powerful branch of the family was seated at Llwydiarth, in Montgomeryshire. The age of John Vaughan, his eldest surviving son, can only be estimated from his age of admission to Gray’s Inn, and even that is based on the assumption that he was of the typical age of entry. John Vaughan senior died in 1639, by which time his son was pursuing his legal studies to completion, as he was called to the bar the following year.11PROB11/180/103. Vaughan married the daughter of a Merioneth justice of the peace and sheriff whose father, Griffith Nanney†, had represented the county in the 1593 Parliament.12HP Commons 1558-1603; E.D. Jones, ‘Fam. of Nannau’, Jnl. Merion. Hist. Soc. ii. 15. His opponent in the 1654 election would claim that Vaughan served as a commissioner of array for the king in the civil war, but there is no record of his name in William Dugdale’s lists of commissioners, and no indication of his conduct during the civil war. However, his nomination by the king to the commission of the peace in April 1643 suggests that the royalists at least considered him sympathetic to their cause, and his father-in-law was prominent in the commission of array from the first.13Northants. RO, FH133, unfol.

Vaughan emerged from the first civil war sufficiently untainted in parliamentary eyes to be named to the assessment commissions for Merioneth, initially as of Trawscoed and subsequently of Cefnbodig, though he is easily confused with a kinsman of the same name, settled at Caer-gai in Llanuwchllyn. This other John Vaughan was the son of a very active royalist, Rowland Vaughan,who was also a bard and a translator.14Mont. Collns. ix. 219; DWB, ‘Rowland Vaughan’. John Vaughan of Cefnbodig remained in the assessment commissions and even the commission of the peace until the time of his election in 1654. His appearance as a candidate in Merioneth was, according to his competitor, Rice Vaughan, merely as an instrument for his more powerful relative, Edward Vaughan*, who for 30 years had been pursuing a claim to the estate of Llwydiarth, Montgomeryshire. Edward Vaughan had been returned for Montgomeryshire in 1647 on the Presbyterian interest, before being excluded in the purge of December 1648. He had been regarded with hostility by the republican government, whose committees had tried to thwart his claim to Llwydiarth and to convict him of embezzlement. When John Vaughan of Cefnbodig came to make his own will in 1670 he sought to remind Edward Vaughan of Glan-y-llyn of the services, doubtless of a legal kind, he had performed for his uncle, Edward Vaughan of Llwydiarth.15NLW, SA/1671/145. The claim of Rice Vaughan that John Vaughan was an agent for his Montgomeryshire kinsman therefore seems more than plausible.

According to Rice Vaughan, the election in 1654 was held over three days, from 12 July, and was controlled by Edward Vaughan of Llwydiarth through his agent, Maurice Lewis, the sheriff.16SP18/74, f. 93. The allegation that John Vaughan was disqualified from standing because he was a former royalist failed to convince the protector’s council, however, and Vaughan took his seat. Once at Westminster, he was named to seven committees. Among these were the committee to embody in legislation the protector’s ordinance on scandalous ministers (25 Sept.), the committee on Irish affairs (29 Sept.), and for bills on relieving the burdens of sheriffs (4 Dec. 1654) and for the abolition of purveyance (22 Dec.).17CJ vii. 370a, 371b, 394b, 407b. Naturally enough for a barrister, Vaughan was included in the committee for regulating chancery (5 Oct.), and was added to the committee of privileges (26 Oct.).18CJ vii. 374a, 379a. This seems to have been the sum of Vaughan’s parliamentary career. By 1656, the political rehabilitation of John Jones I* was complete, and his standing with the government and the army ensured his return as knight of the shire for Merioneth: there is no evidence that Vaughan opposed him, or even that he ever stood again for Parliament.

It may have been a belated consequence of Rice Vaughan’s petition against him that John Vaughan was briefly removed from the commission of the peace during the period of the major-generals’ regime in 1655-6. But he was restored again in January 1658 and remained in the commission until his death. He experienced no difficulty in the transition to restored monarchy, and kept a modest place in local government during the 1660s. He drew up his will in May 1670, leaving his property to his eldest (unmarried) daughter, and his two younger daughters who had married minor gentry, one of the town of Denbigh, the other of Plas Tan-y-bwlch, Merioneth. His hope was that Edward Vaughan’s heir would acknowledge the help he had given his uncle in recovering Llwydiarth, and pay a debt outstanding of £500 owing to him.19NLW, SA/1671/145. Vaughan died in April 1671, and was buried at Llanycil. None of his descendants is known to have served in Parliament.