the Earl of Essex in his Irish campaign in 1599, and on 30 July was knighted by Essex; but the honour was subsequently disallowed by Elizabeth. He entered at the Middle Temple November 1596, was M.P. for Carmarthenshire in 1601 and 1620–2, and was comptroller of the household to Charles I while Prince of Wales, in which capacity he accompanied him to Spain in 1623 (Sir R. Wynn's ‘Account of the Journey’ in Hearne's Vita Ricardi II; Epistolæ Hoelianæ, ed. Jacobs, p. 171). After the death of his first wife he married Jane, daughter of Sir Thomas Palmer [q. v.], the ‘Travailer,’ of Wingham, Kent, by whom he had no issue. He was created Baron Vaughan of Mullingar on 29 July 1621, and Earl of Carbery (both in the peerage of Ireland) on 5 Aug. 1628. James Howel styles him, presumably by mistake, as ‘my lord of Carlingford’ in a letter addressed to him on 1 March 1625 (op. cit. p. 225). He died 6 May 1634, and was buried at Llandeilo Fawr.
Richard Vaughan, his eldest and only surviving son, who succeeded him as second Earl of Carbery, must have been born about 1600. He seems to have travelled abroad, for James Howel says that he and young Vaughan were ‘comrades and bedfellows’ in Madrid ‘many months together,’ presumably in 1622 (op. cit. p. 171). He was knighted at the coronation of Charles I in February 1625–6, was M.P. for Carmarthenshire 1624–9, was admitted a member of Gray's Inn 15 Feb. 1637–8 (Foster, Register, p. 216), and was nominated by the commons in February 1641–2 to be lord lieutenant in command of the proposed militia in the counties of Carmarthen and Cardigan (Phillips, Civil War in Wales and the Marches, i. 96). On 25 Oct. 1643 he was created at Oxford an English peer as Baron Vaughan of Emlyn in Carmarthenshire, and was one of the royalist peers who at this time addressed a letter from Oxford to the council of Scotland dissuading that country from lending their support to the parliamentary party (Clarendon, Hist. ed. Macray, vii. 288).
On the outbreak of the civil war Carbery was appointed (before the end of 1642) lieutenant-general of the royal army in the counties of Carmarthen, Cardigan, and Pembroke (for his instructions, dated 25 March 1642–3, see Harl. MS. 6852; cf. Carte, Ormonde, v. 503), to which was added on 17 Nov. 1643 the governorship of Milford (Cal. State Papers, Dom. s. a. p. 499, cf. pp. 478, 488, 498). Being popular in Pembrokeshire as a grandson of Sir Gelly Meyrick, he easily secured the adherence of the whole of his district, excepting the town of Pembroke (Phillips, i. 173–6, ii. 82–5), but in March 1643–4 he was defeated and driven out of Pembrokeshire by Major-general Rowland Laugharne [q. v.] Being blamed for his defeat, which some attributed to ‘a suspected natural cowardize, others to a designe to be overcome’ (manuscript circa 1660, printed in Cambrian Register, i. 164), though, according to another account, it was his uncle, Sir Henry Vaughan [q. v.], who was guilty of cowardice, Carbery resigned his command, was replaced by Gerard, and ceased to take any active part on the royalist side (Phillips, ii. 157; cf. Webb, Civil War in Herefordshire, ii. 30–1).
Meanwhile the House of Commons had, on 19 April 1643, resolved on his impeachment. On 27 April 1644 he was ordered to pay 160l. to the committee for compounding (Cal. of Proceedings), and on 17 Nov. 1645 he was assessed as a delinquent at 4,500l. Laugharne had, however, given him a promise of pardon, and on 18 Nov. wrote on his behalf to the speaker. The parliamentary committee for Pembrokeshire, on the other hand, sent from Carmarthen on 29 Nov. to the committee for compounding a series of charges against Carbery, describing him as ‘a merciless oppressor of the commons’ in his district, and alleging that he had packed and intimidated the grand jury at Carmarthen so as to get 2,600l. of the country's money sequestered to himself, and had ‘cherished the troubles to make commoditie thereof’ (the letter and articles are printed in an abusive pamphlet called The Earle of Carberyes Pedegree, 1646). Carbery himself appears to have proceeded to London with the view of ‘making all the friends he could to get him off’ (ib.), and eventually the House of Commons agreed, on 16 Feb. 1645–6, to remit his delinquency, the formal ordinance to that effect being passed 26 Jan. 1646–7, and the discharge of his assessment being finally ordered on 9 April 1647. It is said that he alone of all the king's party in the western counties of South Wales escaped sequestration, and this exceptional treatment is explained by a contemporary (Cambrian Register, loc. cit.) as due to ‘the correspondence he kept with the then Earl of Essex, and manie great services done by him to the parliament during his generalship, which was then evidenced to the parliament by Sir John Meyrick,’ who was a cousin of Carbery's mother, ‘and by certificate from several of the parliament's generalls in his behalfe’ (cf. also Cal. of
