VAUGHAN, Richard (c.1553-1607)

The bishop’s family was well connected in North Wales, being a cadet branch of the Vaughans of Talhenbont, Caernarvonshire, who claimed descent from Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, eleventh century prince of Powys.24 Griffith, 179, 243, 264. The area had strong links with St John’s College, Cambridge, where Vaughan matriculated as a sizar in 1569. Shortly after proceeding MA in 1577, he was ordained by John Aylmer^†, bishop of London, who appointed him as one of his chaplains, possibly around 1581, when he married a niece of the bishop’s wife. Vaughan secured his first living at Chipping Ongar, Essex in 1577, where the patron was James Morice^‡, attorney of the court of Wards; the rector, Morice’s brother, resigned in Vaughan’s favour shortly thereafter. Although he held a string of Essex benefices, Vaughan presumably spent much of his time serving Aylmer in London, as a canon of St. Paul’s cathedral from 1583, and archdeacon of Middlesex from 1588.25 Al. Cant.; Oxford DNB, lvi. 192-3; Fasti, i. 11, 37.

In January 1596 Vaughan was consecrated as bishop of Bangor, with the consent of Lord Treasurer Burghley (William Cecil^†), having also been considered for St Asaph. He was presumably recommended by Lord Keeper Sir John Puckering^†, whom he served as examiner of candidates for the crown’s patronage to ecclesiastical benefices. It was en route to Bangor that Vaughan first encountered his protégé John Williams^*, then a pupil at Ruthin grammar school, for whom he later secured a place at St John’s College.26 Harington, 29-30; Hacket, i. 7, 24; B. Usher, Ld. Burghley and Episcopacy, 1577-1603, pp. 134-5, 139. Vaughan’s ambitions extended well beyond his native diocese, and in October 1596, when the bishopric of Salisbury was vacated by the death of John Coldwell^† (another Johnian), he approached Robert Devereux^†, 2nd earl of Essex for a nomination. Nothing came of this overture, as the diocese was kept vacant, but Vaughan removed to Chester in the following summer, which, with the rectory of Bangor-is-y-coed, granted in commendam, was worth around £800 a year, perhaps four times his income at Bangor. He was also given the generous allowance of five years to pay off his first fruits.27 LPL, ms 660, f. 4; C58/3; Usher, Burghley and Episcopacy, 145, 160. For the revenues of Chester, see JOHN BRIDGEMAN.

Vaughan was reputed a tireless preacher,28 K. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, 86-7, 272. but his administrative workload at Chester focussed on the suppression of recusancy, an issue which dominated his visitations in 1598 and 1601. In the final years of Elizabeth’s reign his officials encountered considerable resistance in Lancashire: he had little success in detaining Catholics who had refused to contribute to the cost of horsemen for the Irish army; but persuaded the Exchequer to assign £200 a year from recusancy fines to maintain four preachers in Lancashire.29 CSP Dom. 1598-1601, pp. 7-8, 14-15, 33, 148, 153, 170-1, 389-90, 466, 482; K.R. Wark, Elizabethan Recusancy in Cheshire, 117-27. In March 1603, learning of the queen’s death from Sir Henry Danvers^* (later earl of Danby), he proclaimed King James at Chester on his own authority, even before receiving instructions to do so from the Privy Council; he then investigated rumours that local Catholics were arming themselves.30 HMC Hatfield, xv. 1-2, 88, 92-3. In January 1604 it was not Vaughan, but his dean, William Barlow^* (later bishop of Lincoln), who attended the Hampton Court Conference on ecclesiastical policy. On the final day of the meeting, the king agreed to instruct Vaughan ‘not to proceed over-hastily and roughly’ against the puritan ministers of Lancashire for their scruples in conforming to the Prayer Book and ceremonies enjoined therein. While Vaughan had pressed eight ministers to wear the surplice following his 1601 visitation, none was ultimately deprived, and if anything, he had a reputation for conciliating nonconformists.31 J. Strype, Life of Whitgift, iii. 405; W. Barlow, The Summe and Substance of the Conference (1604), 99-100; Oxford DNB, lvi, 193; Fincham, 230, 283.

Vaughan attended almost every sitting of the 1604 session of Parliament, and was included on numerous committees. He was ordered to attend two conferences about the Commons’ proposals to compound for wardship duties, and two others at which King James laid out his initial proposals for Union with Scotland.32 LJ, ii. 266b, 277b, 284a, 303b. He was also named to committees for bills to ban exchanges of episcopal estates for crown property, to prevent the import and distribution of ‘popish, vain and lascivious books’ and the recusancy bill.33 Ibid. 279a, 290a, 302a, 313b, 324b. In May, there were tensions as the Commons attempted to seize the initiative over ecclesiastical reform, even as Richard Bancroft^*, bishop of London, tabled a fresh set of Canons in Convocation. Vaughan was one of those named to attend a conference on this issue on 19 May, but its repeated postponement caused friction, particularly when MPs complained about a tract by John Thornborough^*, bishop of Bristol, which criticized the Commons’ obstruction of James’s plan to bring about a statutory union of England and Scotland. Vaughan was included on the committee that was ordered to confer with representatives of the lower House about this document, following which meeting Thornborough made a grudging apology.34 Ibid. 302a, 309a; C.C.G. Tite, Impeachment and Parlty. Judicature, 57-9. Meanwhile, Convocation passed a resolution declaring that interference with the Canons would infringe clerical privileges: on 28 June, Vaughan was included on the delegation ordered to attend a conference with the Commons about this ‘inhibition’; when it met two days later, Bancroft simply refused to discuss the matter.35 LJ, ii. 332b; CJ, i. 251b; S.B. Babbage, Puritanism and Richard Bancroft, 240-1; RICHARD BANCROFT.

In December 1604, Vaughan was translated to the bishopric of London, vacated by Bancroft’s promotion to Canterbury. Valued at just over £1,000 a year, London was worth considerably more than Chester, and Vaughan was naturally required to surrender his sinecure rectory of Bangor-is-y-coed; but once again, he was given the generous term of five years to pay off his first fruits.36 E334/14, f. 33v. Bancroft’s removal signalled the king’s resolve for a crackdown on nonconformity, but his replacement by Vaughan suggested that James did not wish to pick a fight with London’s godly ministers. In the early months of 1605, Vaughan suspended around 30 ministers, but he only proceeded as far as deprivation in the case of one incumbent, Robert Smith of St Nicholas Acon, London, and his even-handedness was acknowledged by both puritans and the king:

though our new bishop of London proceed but slowly, yet at last he hath deprived, silenced or suspended all that continue disobedient, in which course he hath won himself great commendation of gravity, wisdom, learning, mildness and temperance, even among that faction, and indeed is held every way the most sufficient man of that coat.37 HMC Hatfield, xvii. 38, 72, 80; Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 203; Fincham, 216-17, 324.

While prepared to enforce conformity to the 1604 Canons, depriving two more ministers in 1606, Vaughan was perhaps more enthusiastic about other aspects of his role. As bishop of London, he supervised the City’s printing trade; he promoted Bancroft’s inquiry into clerical pluralism, designed to rebut puritan criticisms of the state of the ministry; he seized books and other Catholic paraphernalia which were ultimately claimed by the Spanish Ambassador; he circulated Bancroft’s instructions for the commemoration of the anniversaries of the Gowrie Plot and the Gunpowder Plot; and he vouched for the conformity of at least some of the Lancashire relatives of Anthony Rudd^*, bishop of St Davids.38 HMC Hatfield, xvii. 25, 216, 350, 363; xviii. 23; Recs. of the Old Archdeaconry of St Albans ed. H.R. Wilton Hall (St Albans and Herts. Architectural and Arch. Soc. 1908), 127-8; Lincs. AO, DIOC/Cor/B/2, f. 21.

Vaughan was present for two-thirds of the sittings of the 1605-6 parliamentary session, when he shared the proxy for his successor at Chester, George Lloyd^*, with Henry Rowlands^*, bishop of Bangor. However, he was less active than might have been expected, due to health problems said to have been caused by increasing corpulence; he missed much of the latter part of the session.39 LJ, ii. 355a, 406a, 409a; Harington, p. 31. He was named to the committee for the bill attainting the Gunpowder plotters, another to consider fresh laws against recusants, and ordered to attend the conference where the Lords agreed to adopt recusancy legislation drafted by the Commons. Again appointed to the committee for the bill preventing the import of ‘vain, popish and lascivious books’, he was also named to committees for the bill against swearing and the Sabbath bill.40 LJ, ii. 360b, 367a-b, 380b, 381b, 384a, 401a. Other committees on which he was included concerned local and private bills: the endowment of St Bees’ grammar school by the recently deceased Matthew Hutton^*, archbishop of York; the endowment of two divinity lectureships at Cambridge University; restrictions on building in London; and a measure to repeal a clause of the 1604 act regarding London watermen.41 Ibid. 374a, 386b, 389a, 396b. On 25 Mar., Vaughan and John Petre^*, 1st Lord Petre, committee members for the Rogers v. Taylor bill, reported some success in reconciling the parties, and tabled a revised draft of the bill, which was committed on 31 March.42 Ibid. 380b, 400a, 404b. During his absence in April, Vaughan was named to the committee for the bill to reform purveyance, and to prepare for and attend a conference about ecclesiastical affairs, but he presumably failed to attend any of these. The only ecclesiastical bill with which he was involved was that drafted by Bancroft to restrict the use of excommunication in church courts, which passed, only to be rejected by the Commons.43 Ibid. 407b, 409a, 411a, 437a; CJ, i. 311b.

In the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, Vaughan was active in the search for suspects: he reported a plan to assassinate King James while hunting at Thetford, Norfolk; a resident of Chester diocese wrote to him implicating Sir Wilfrid Lawson^‡ in the Plot; he forwarded a warning about English staff at the Spanish Embassy; he reported seditious talk by a Suffolk minister; and he dispatched pursuivants to search for Catholic priests in the Midlands.44 HMC Hatfield, xvii. 531-2; xviii. 23, 280-1; xix. 66; CSP Dom. 1603-10, pp. 268, 310. However, he also detained a minister under house arrest for preaching a sermon in favour of deprived nonconformists.45 Carleton to Chamberlain ed. M. Lee, 85. On his return to Parliament in November 1606 he held the proxy for Bishop Rowlands, and a share in the proxy of William James^*, bishop of Durham. He attended every day during the first month of the session, when he was one of the large delegation that attended a conference at which the question of the Union was first broached. He was also included on committees for bills to restrict new building in London, to allow free trade with France, Spain and Portugal, and to confirm a land transaction by All Souls’ College, Oxford.46 LJ, ii. 449a, 453a, 460b, 464b, 468a. However, the most important business for Vaughan was a private bill confirming an exchange of two clerical livings between Robert Cecil^*, 1st earl of Salisbury and the bishopric of London, first read in the Lords on 2 December. Vaughan informed the Commons’ committee that his income was slightly improved by the transaction, and it passed both Houses before Christmas.47 Ibid. 457b-9a, 464b, 466b; CJ, i. 330a.

Vaughan’s health failed after New Year 1607, and as a result he attended only a handful of the Lords’ sittings, and was named to a single committee, for a bill confirming the title of various London livery companies to properties which had been targeted by concealment hunters.48 LJ, ii. 479a. He died of apoplexy on 30 Mar., and was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral. He left no will, but his wife discovered a declaration of his assets dated 19 Oct. 1601, shortly before the Parliament of that year, which the court accepted as a testament. At that time he had £900 in cash, £750 in debts and rents due, which he divided equally between his wife and his children. His widow was granted probate on 15 April 1607, by which time Salisbury was already being lobbied for the preferments vacated by his death. His successor at London was Thomas Ravis^*, a more authoritarian figure.49 Harington, 31; Godwin, 205; PROB 11/109, f. 246v; HMC Hatfield, xix. 87.