of a term not yet expired. In all probability he died in Massachusetts, but the exact time or place is not known. He may be identical with the Samuel Vassall of Bedale in Yorkshire, who was living in 1665 (will of his son John, P. C. C. 29 Hyde). But when letters of administration were granted in London to his son Francis on 24 Sept. 1667, it was stated that he died abroad.
[Unpublished pedigree by the late Rev. William Vassall; Hutchinson's Hist. of Massachusetts Bay, i. 10; Rushworth's Hist. Coll. pt. i. p. 641, pt. iii. vol. i. p. 246, pt. iv. vol. i. pp. 313, 619, pt. iv. vol. ii. p. 1099; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1629 to 1659, passim; Neill's Virginia Carolorum, pp. 75–6; Cal. State Papers Colonial, 1574–1660, passim; Official List of M.P.'s, i. 482, 491; Commons' Journals, vols. ii. iii. iv. v. vii. and viii.; Lords' Journals, vii. 224; Massachusetts Hist. Soc. Coll. 2nd ser. v. 121–2; manuscript notes by late Rev. W. Vassall, kindly supplied by Douglas Sladen, esq.]
VAUGHAN, BENJAMIN (1751–1835), politician and political economist, born in Jamaica on 19 April 1751, was eldest son of Samuel Vaughan, a West India merchant and planter, who settled in London, by his wife Sarah, daughter of Benjamin Hallowell of Boston. William Vaughan (1752–1830) [q. v.] was his younger brother. Benjamin was educated at Newcome's school in Hackney, at the nonconformist academy at Warrington, and at Cambridge University, but was prevented by the system of religious tests from graduating, being a unitarian. He apparently became acquainted with Lord Shelburne through Benjamin Horne, the elder brother of John Horne Tooke [q. v.], and soon gained the confidence of that statesman, by whom he was occasionally employed in confidential political business and as private secretary. He also studied law at the Temple and medicine in Edinburgh; it is said because William Manning, whose daughter Sarah he married on 30 June 1781, had at first refused his consent to the marriage on the ground that he had no profession (Vaughan's wife was aunt of Cardinal Manning). He subsequently returned to mercantile pursuits, and entered into a partnership with his brother-in-law, William Manning. He made acquaintance with Benjamin Franklin, with whom he afterwards contracted a warm friendship and continued to correspond after the outbreak of the war with the colonies. Like all the followers of Lord Shelburne, he sided with the colonists in their struggle with the mother country, and his political as well as his religious sympathies brought him into intimate relations with Price, Priestley, Paine, and Horne Tooke during the American war and the French revolution. In June 1782 he was sent to Paris to give private assurances to Franklin that the death of Lord Rockingham and the accession to power of Lord Shelburne had caused no change of policy in regard to the intention of recognising the independence of the United Colonies. In September of that year he took an active though unofficial part in the negotiations for peace at the secret request of Shelburne, who employed him on account of his intimate friendship with Franklin, and helped to persuade the English ministers to admit the independence of ‘the United States of America’ as a preliminary, and ‘not as depending upon the event of any other part of the treaty.’ He also urged that so great a divergence of views existed between the American and French negotiators in Paris as to give the British government an opportunity of concluding a separate peace with the colonies if this concession to their views were made. Vaughan's activity was resented by the English official negotiators, as appears by a letter of Richard Oswald [q. v.] to Lord Shelburne (Life of Shelburne, iii. 256, 321).
In 1790 Vaughan was in Paris with Lord Wycombe, the eldest son of Lord Shelburne (then Lord Lansdowne), and was in frequent communication with the leaders of the party opposed to the French court. At the ‘fête de la fédération’ of 14 July 1790 in the Champ de Mars he was almost the only stranger, except those belonging to the corps diplomatique, who obtained a place in the covered seats near the royal box. He describes Marie-Antoinette as looking ‘well, fat, and sulky’ (to Lord Lansdowne 15 July 1790). His French sympathies were not abated by the violent turn taken by subsequent events. In February 1792 he became member for Calne. He was very active at this time with his pen on commercial and economic subjects, as well as on politics. A ‘Treatise on International Trade,’ which was translated into French in 1789, and a series of letters to the ‘Morning Chronicle’ condemning the attack of the northern powers on Poland and France in 1792 and 1793, are his principal performances. There is a record of a speech by him in February 1794 on the subject of the negro population in the West Indies. But his active parliamentary career was now abruptly terminated, owing to the arrest of William Stone, brother of John Hurford Stone [q. v.], a well-known supporter of the French revolution and a notorious enemy to the policy of Pitt. J. H. Stone was at the time in Paris. On William Stone a letter from Vaughan was found,
