VAUGHAN, Charles (by 1529-74 or later), of Hergest, Herefs.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Oct. 1553

Family and Education

b. by 1529, 1st s. of James Vaughan of Hergest by Elizabeth, da. of Sir Edward Croft of Croft Castle. m. (1) by 1550, Elizabeth, da. of Sir James Baskerville of Eardisley, 1s. 1da.; (2) by 1552, Margaret, da. of Sir William Vaughan of Porthaml, Brec., wid. of Roger Vaughan of Clyro, Rad., 5s. 4da. suc. fa. 1550 or later.1

Offices Held

Commr. subsidy, Rad. 1558; j.p. Herefs. 1558/59-73/74, Rad. 1558/59-64.2

Biography

Like its namesake of Porthaml, the Vaughan family of Hergest, near Kington, was descended from Roger Vaughan of Bredwardine, Herefordshire, who fell at Agincourt. Charles Vaughan had already married, as his second wife, one of his cousins of Porthaml when in 1552 the pair appeared at the Radnorshire great sessions. His election in the next year to the first Marian Parliament may have followed the death of his father, an active local official last met with as a relief commissioner in December 1550. Vaughan’s return for Radnorshire is explained both by geography—Hergest lies on the border of that county and his wife’s former home at Clyro within it—and by the resulting connexions: his brother-in-law Richard Blike was returned for the shire in 1547 and for its Boroughs in 1555. More striking is the fact that, alone among occupants of Welsh seats, Vaughan was noted as having ‘stood for the true religion’, that is, as having opposed the restoration of Catholicism. Whence he had derived his nonconformity can only be guessed at, but it may be recalled that his first cousin (Sir) James Croft was to be implicated in Wyatt’s rebellion. Although there is nothing to suggest that Vaughan would have joined Croft’s projected rising in Herefordshire, he had doubtless incurred enough disfavour to forfeit the chance of re-election or of local advancement. Not until Elizabeth’s accession was he to be made a justice of the peace.3

In 1564 Vaughan obtained part of the lordship of Ismynydd in Radnorshire and four years later he applied for a lease of Colwyn forest in the same county. The last reference found to him is his reappointment to the Herefordshire bench in 1573/74. The Charles Vaughan who was elected to the Parliament of 1572 for Shaftesbury was his distant cousin of the Bredwardine line, a servant of the earls of Pembroke who settled in Dorset and died in 1597.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: P. S. Edwards

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from first marriage. Dwnn. Vis. Wales, i. 258; Vis. Herefs. ed. Weaver, 5, 21, 97; Hist. Kington (anon.), 223.
  • 2. E179/224/568; CPR, 1560-3, pp. 438, 445; 1563-6, pp. 23, 29; 1569-72, p. 225.
  • 3. Hist. Kington, 216-17; DWB (Vaughan fam. of Hergest); CPR, 1547-8, p. 84; 1553, p. 364; NLW ms Wales 26/8, m. 10v; Bodl. e Museo 17.
  • 4. Augmentations (Univ. Wales Bd. of Celtic Studies, Hist. and Law ser. xiii), 523, 525.