VAUGHAN, Francis, of Salisbury, Wilts.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1572

Family and Education

?educ. Trinity Hall, Camb. 1549; G. Inn 1552.

Offices Held

?Servant of 1st and/or 2nd Earls of Pembroke; ?coroner, Wilts. 1567.

Biography

Vaughan was probably (except that no evidence of a marriage has been found) the father of the ‘Francis Vaughan of Sarum, gent.’ who was an overseer of the will, made in 1596, of Charles Vaughan, of Falstone, Wiltshire, who was himself in the service of the earls of Pembroke. If Francis Vaughan, the 1572 MP, was of Trinity Hall and Gray’s Inn (where he would have been a contemporary of Francis Walsingham, afterwards high steward of Salisbury), he was presumably born about 1535 and thus could have been of an age with Charles Vaughan. He was probably the man who bought property in Combe Bissett in 1561 and who, as ‘generosus’, was assessed for subsidy at £4 in Market ward, Salisbury, in 1576; and he may well have been the coroner who was officiating in Wiltshire in December 1566. On the same supposition, the Francis Vaughan of that county who entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1572 was perhaps the son. It was probably this younger Francis Vaughan who in 1593 was to incense the burgesses of Salisbury when, as the bishop’s deputy steward, he administered what they regarded as an illegal oath to the mayor-elect. Though the date of the father’s death has not been ascertained, on a balance of probability it was the son who made the will proved in February 1614, bequeathing the whole estate to a married daughter, Katherine Small.1

Francis Vaughan is specified only twice in the journals of the House of Commons, on 28 June 1572 and 17 Feb. 1581, and on both occasions he was granted leave of absence. The reason given, in the first case ‘for his great business’ and in the second ‘for his necessary business, the assizes’, may have been in connexion with the affairs of the 2nd Earl of Pembroke. Interestingly enough Charles Vaughan was given leave of absence from the 1572 session for a similar reason.2

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: S. T. Bindoff

Notes

  • 1. Wilts. N. and Q. iv. 455; Two Taxation Lists (Wilts. Arch. Soc. recs. br. x), 65; CPR, 1566-9, p. 13; HMC Var. iv. 231; PCC 15 Lawe.
  • 2. CJ, i. 103, 127.