VAUGHAN, Henry (by 1586-1660/1), of Derwydd, Llandybïe, Carm.

Vaughan was the younger brother of John Vaughan, 1st earl of Carbery, and his entire political career depended on his relationship with the family at Golden Grove, the dominant gentry house in Carmarthenshire. His own wealth rested on lands brought to their marriage by his wife, Sage Rice, daughter of John Gwyn William, as he himself would later freely admit.28Oxford DNB, ‘Sir Henry Vaughan’, quoting Carm. RO, Cawdor Vaughan MS 22/658. He acquired a range of offices from the early years of the century, all of them focused on Carmarthenshire, although he acquired a charcoal patent from the government in 1620. He represented Carmarthen in five Parliaments to 1629, but made little or no impact in any of them.

He was elected to the Short and Long Parliaments as knight of the shire, doubtless a further acknowledgment of the influence of the Golden Grove interest. The contributions to committees and to debate made in both these Parliaments by ‘Mr Vaughan’ were probably by John Vaughan I, not Henry. He was certainly in the House on 3 May 1641 to take the Protestation.29CJ ii. 133a. One of the two Vaughans offered to donate £100 towards the war in Ireland (15 Feb. 1642), but Henry Vaughan was suspect in the eyes of those most intent on Protestant reformation.30PJ i. 388. On 7 April 1642, a Carmarthenshire gentleman, Hugh Grundy, complained to the Commons that Vaughan was an inappropriate choice as a commissioner for the bill against scandalous ministers, then proceeding through the House. Grundy queried the way in which Vaughan managed the six livings in Carmarthenshire he leased from Henry Percy* (brother of Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland), on condition that ministers were maintained in the livings, and sermons delivered. Grundy alleged that Vaughan countenanced only inadequate clergy, ‘some of them drunkards, others [who] hedge, ditch and hold the plough, and sell ale and beer, and engage in such like scandalous employments’. The only preacher in 12 years in the six churches was a ‘blind man’ rewarded with 2s 6d per sermon. Venturing into even more sensitive and dangerous territory in his attack on Vaughan, Grundy alleged that he offered support to Catholics in his county, naming two of the gentry supposedly protected by him.31HMC 6th Rep. 39; CJ ii. 516a. Perhaps to dispel questions over his religious allegiance, a month later Vaughan brought in information from Carmarthenshire which led to a Commons order that a Franciscan friar tried there should be executed.32PJ ii. 277.

Vaughan must have been among the earliest Members to leave Westminster to take up arms for the king in the civil war, and for that reason was probably the Mr Vaughan who was subject to a Commons order that he, with other Members, be brought to Westminster in custody at his own expense.33CJ ii. 845b. The order was never implemented. He was knighted at Oxford on 14 January 1643, and by that time, according to the antiquary, William Dugdale, had raised a foot regiment, of which he was full colonel.34Merevale Hall, Dugdale MSS, HT 2D/27. Another source for his knighthood describes him as lieutenant-colonel.35Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 215. If he was not yet colonel in January 1643, he was soon to attain that rank, and when he came to Oxford it was with his nephew, Richard Vaughan, 2nd earl of Carbery, the head of the Golden Grove family, and Carbery’s regiment.36Dugdale, Diary and Corresp. 46. In June 1643 he was active in refurbishing the muskets of his regiment, at this point in the king’s main field army; and in October, the king posted him to south Wales as sergeant-major-general to Carbery. By the end of January 1644 he had evidently returned to Wales, leaving correspondents of Henry Percy, Vaughan’s associate in Carmarthenshire, by this time general of the ordnance, with no news of his activities.37Royalist Ordnance Pprs. ed. Roy i. 103, 389. He was named to the Oxford Parliament when it assembled in January 1644, although he was excused attendance because of his service in the field.38The Names of the Lords and Commons (1646), 6; A Declaration of the Lords and Commons assembled at Oxford (Oxford, 1644), 25. His appearance in lists of Members summoned by the king was sufficient to provoke his inclusion among the Members disabled by the Commons at Westminster from sitting further among them (5 Feb. 1644).39CJ iii. 389b.

Vaughan had been detained from attending the Oxford Parliament by the task of fortifying Milford Haven with a range of ordnance, which fired on the ships of the approaching parliamentarian navy.40A True Relation (1644), 3-4 (E.42.13). According to the account sent on 1 April 1644 to Speaker Lenthall by Simon Thelwall*, Vaughan had been notorious as ‘the instrument of much mischief’ to the counties he occupied, but after Rowland Laugharne had unexpectedly taken the fort overlooking Milford Haven, Vaughan had prematurely abandoned Haverfordwest, allegedly mistaking night-time cattle movements for the sound of approaching soldiers.41A True Relation, 3, 5-6; J. Vicars, Gods Ark over-topping the World’s Waves (1645), 179 (E.312.3); Whitelocke, Mems. i. 252 He fell back on Carmarthen Castle, which soon capitulated. Thelwall held Vaughan personally responsible for the humiliating capture and detention of Sir Hugh Owen* and his wife during the royalists’ retreat.42A True Relation, 6. However, unlike Carbery, who retired from high command, Vaughan continued as an active soldier, as did his son, Henry Vaughan†. On 9 August 1644 he joined the senior commanders of the army to sign the letter to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex cautiously offering to discuss peace.43LJ vi. 671a, b. By 23 November that year, his name was listed among those that Parliament would not pardon in any peace treaty with the king.44Rushworth, Hist Collns. v. 827. He remained on active service, and was captured during a skirmish with the troops of Oliver Cromwell at Bampton, Oxfordshire, in late April 1645, when 230 of Vaughan’s men were taken with him.45J. Vicars, Magnalia Dei Anglicana (1646), 142 (E.348.1); Whitelocke, Mems. i. 428. He was in custody at Reading in mid-May.46Add. 18780, f. 20v. This makes it most unlikely, contrary to one authority, that he would have been at large again by 14 June to fight at Naseby. Certainly men of his regiment were captured in a battle that saw a major depletion of the king’s infantry, but Vaughan’s own name does not appear on the prisoner list.47Oxford DNB; Three Letters (1645), 8 (E.288.27).

Vaughan was sent to the Tower for high treason (18 June 1645), after a censure from the Speaker

He had falsified that trust his country had intrusted him with, for the good of religion and public liberty; and that by the infidelity and treachery of such as he, this unnatural war hath happened, and so much of his countrymen’s blood had been shed.48CJ iv. 178a.

Once again excepted from pardon under the terms of the Newcastle Propositions of July 1646, he remained in the Tower until 1 October 1647, when he was ordered to be moved to the Fleet prison.49Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 313, vii. 828. Yet another exclusion from pardon came in the aftermath of the second civil war (13 Oct. 1648), during negotiations over the treaty of Newport, though his name was omitted from one list of the egregious royalist offenders recorded in the Lords Journal entry for 17 October.50CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 304; LJ x. 548b-549a. During his early months in the Tower, he was assessed by the Committee for Advance of Money at £500, but was reported still unsequestered on 22 June 1646.51CCAM 588, 709. In an attempt to mitigate the impact of penal taxation on his estate, he submitted a list of his debts, which he claimed totalled over £3,000, and appealed, with no little hyperbole, for recognition of the needs of 9 children.52Jones, ‘Cadets’, 139. He wrote to his wife from the Fleet, informing her that two of their sons were prisoners for their adherence to the king

These are the usages of these times. I pity them that are our tormentors more than they do any of us whom they have thus oppressed; and I hope God will never suffer me, if I had any part of such power as they have over us, to be so unmerciful as they have been to either of us.53R. Harrison, Some Notices of the Stepney Fam. (1870), 12.

Even from the Fleet he was able to give directions about his estate, and in 1650 he was alleged while in the Tower to have colluded with a London speculator to retain his leases of the six Carmarthenshire livings of Henry Percy’s.54CCAM 829.

Vaughan’s prolonged period of imprisonment is on the face of it hard to explain, and it seems likely that he was incarcerated as a surrogate for the offences of the Golden Grove family as a whole. That certainly seems to have been the view of a parliamentarian commentator of 1646, who described him, in contrast to his nephew Carbery as a more energetic agent for the king: ‘Act-all, now prisoner in the Tower for all’.55The Earle of Carberyes Pedegree (1646), 1 (E.355.29). He was epitomised as the most uncompromising of royalists in a song of 1647

Old Harry is a right true blue,

As valiant as Pendragon,

And would be loyal to his king

Had King Charles ne’er a rag on.56Jones, ‘Cadets’, 140.

It remains unclear when he was released from confinement, but he was evidently at large by 1658, when he was included among the possible activists in the exiled king’s interest in south-west Wales.57Oxford DNB. He was much in evidence at the Carmarthen borough election for the 1659 Parliament, when despite his continued exclusion from the franchise as a royalist delinquent he intervened at the poll (initially successfully) in favour of Rowland Dawkins*.58The State of the Case Betwixt Major General Rowland Dawkins and David Morgan Esq. (1659, BL 1865 c.16(116)).

Although he lived to see the restoration of Charles II, he did not survive long enough to reap any reward he might have expected for his loyalty to the cause of the new king’s father. He drew up his will on 27 November 1660, and a post mortem inventory of his estate was compiled on 5 January 1661. His eldest son, John Vaughan, died before him, so his heir at his death was Henry Vaughan, who sat for Carmarthenshire after a by-election in 1668. As might have been expected, he supported the court, but seems to have made use of membership of Parliament only as a means of escaping his creditors.