Family and Education

1st s. of Howel Vaughan of Glan-y-Llyn by Elizabeth, da. of Humphrey Jones of Ddol, Ysceifiog, Flints. m. settlement 24 Aug. 1672, Mary (d. 8 Dec. 1727), da. and coh. of John Purcell of Nantcribba, Mont., 1s. d.v.p. 2da. suc. fa. 1669.1

Offices Held

J.p. Mont. 1670-Apr. 1688, Denb. 1672-Apr. 1688 Merion. 1678-Apr. 1688, Denb., Mont. and Merion, Oct. 1688-?d.; commr. for assessment, Mont. and Merion. 1763-80, Denb. 1677-80, Mont., Merion. and Denb. 1689-90; dep. lt. Mont. and Merion. 1674-Feb. 1688, Merion. 1689-?96, Mont. 1701-?d.; sheriff, Mont. Jan.-Nov. 1688; custos rot. Merion. 1711-?14.

Biography

Vaughan’s ancestor acquired Glan-y-Llyn in 1504. A parvenu in county politics in 1647, his father served on a number of local commissions until the Restoration, and succeeded to Llwydiarth in 1661. Vaughan’s property was estimated at between £2,000 and £3,000 p.a. in 1675. He first stood for Montgomery Boroughs in 1678 when the Hon. Henry Herbert succeeded to the peerage, and had obtained a comfortable lead in the outboroughs when the poll was abandoned owing to the dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament. A month later he was elected for the county, and held the seat for the rest of his life, though no committee work or speeches can be positively ascribed to him in the Exclusion Parliaments. Shaftesbury first marked him ‘base’, but altered his assessment to ‘honest’, a mistake, for he voted against the first exclusion bill. In James II’s Parliament he was probably appointed to the committee on the bill for rebuilding Lord Powys’s town house. He was one of the Welsh sheriffs pricked in January 1688 to preclude them from standing for the abortive Parliament. To the lord president he declared his opposition to the repeal of the Test Act, but as for the Penal Laws he would be ‘content with what alteration [shall be] thought fit by his Majesty and Parliament’. Though he also expressed himself ‘willing to live peaceably with all men’, he was removed from his other county offices. According to Ailesbury’s list, he voted to agree with the Lords in 1689 that the throne was not vacant; but his only certain committee in the Convention was to consider a petition from creditors of the army. With regard to the court of the marches he gave evidence before the Upper House on behalf of the Welsh Members that ‘we have it all in charge from the country to get this court taken away as a great grievance’. He signed the Association in 1696, but voted steadily as a Tory under William III and Anne. He died on 5 Dec. 1718, and was buried at Llangedwyn, the only member of this family to sit in Parliament.2

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Authors: Leonard Naylor / Geoffrey Jaggar

Notes

• 1. Mont. Colls. v. 410; xxvii. 203; J. E. Griffith, Peds. Anglesey and Caern. Fams. 253.
• 2. A. H. Dodd, Studies in Stuart Wales, 191; SP29/375/20; Trans. Cymmrod. Soc. (1938), 161; HMC Downshire, i. 286; HMC Lords, ii. 106.