Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/167

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apparently intended for J. H. Stone, and in consequence Vaughan was summoned before the privy council on 8 May 1794. Although the letter contained nothing that was in reality compromising, Vaughan, conscious probably that other and more dangerous documents might have fallen into the possession of the government, and aware that he had been introduced to William Jackson (1737?–1795) [q. v.], the Irish conspirator, left the country, and took refuge in France, where he arrived at the commencement of the reign of terror. War had been declared against England, and Vaughan was liable to be seized at any moment as a ‘moderate’ or as a ‘foreigner.’ He lived in hiding at Passy; Robespierre, at that time a member of the committee of public safety and at the height of his power, and Bishop Grégoire being among the few persons cognisant of the secret. In June his hiding-place was discovered, but he escaped with a month's imprisonment at the Carmelites, probably owing to the goodwill of Robespierre, and then left for Geneva. Thence he wrote a long letter to Robespierre, which actually arrived on 9 Thermidor (27 July) at the very moment of the fall of the dictator. It advised him to keep France within her natural limits, and to surround her with a fringe of free and allied states, a sort of anticipation of the Confederation of the Rhine (Journal de la Montagne, August 1794). This letter was alleged by Billaud-Varennes, in a speech on 28 July 1794, to be a proof that Vaughan was a spy of Pitt's. In 1796 he published a pamphlet at Strasburg in defence of the Directory, which he vaunted as a highly successful form of government, and one likely to be permanent. Subsequently he returned to Paris, and, though assured by Pitt, through his brother-in-law, William Manning, that he could safely return to England, he remained in France.

There are numerous allusions to Vaughan and Stone in the despatches of Barthélemy, the French minister in Switzerland, and in one of them Barthélemy describes Vaughan as a man ‘dont le patriotisme, la probité, et les lumières sont infiniment recommandables’ (Papiers de Barthélemy, iv. 593).

Vaughan preserved his good relations with Lord Lansdowne owing to the identity of their views in regard to France. About 1798 he went to America, probably despairing, like Priestley, of the political outlook in England. He joined his brothers and his relatives on the side of his mother at Hallowell, where he lived in a peaceful retirement. His political opinions are said to have adopted a very conservative hue in his later years. He died on 8 Dec. 1835, leaving three sons and four daughters. His descendants still live at Hallowell. In 1779 Vaughan issued the first collective edition of Franklin's works in London, under the title ‘Political, Philosophical, and Miscellaneous Pieces by Benjamin Franklin.’ He also superintended the ‘Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin,’ issued in 1806 (London, 8vo), with a memoir.

[The best account of Vaughan is to be found in Alger's Englishmen in the French Revolution. See also Lord E. Fitzmaurice's Life of Lord Shelburne, vol. iii.; Papiers de Barthélemy, ed. M. Jean Kaulek, Paris, 1889; Appleton's American Biography; Sheppard's Reminiscences of the Vaughan Family; Introductory Narrative to William Vaughan's Tracts on Docks and Commerce, 1835; Diplomatic and Revolutionary Correspondence, Washington, 1887; Archives Nationales, Paris, ii. 221; Doniol's Participation de la France à l'établissement des Etats-Unis, Paris, 1886–92, v. 100, 161.]

E. F.

VAUGHAN, CHARLES JOHN (1816–1897), headmaster of Harrow, master of the Temple, and dean of Llandaff, born in 1816, was second son of Edward Thomas Vaughan, vicar of St. Martin's, Leicester, by his wife Agnes, daughter of Thomas Pares, manufacturer and banker, of Leicester. Under the skilful tuition of his father, a man of ability and force of character, he early showed remarkable promise, and, after his father's untimely death in 1829, was sent to Rugby, then under the guidance of Dr. Arnold. Of the same year as Stanley, whose sister Catherine he married many years later (1850), and slightly senior to Clough, he belonged to the generation which, under Arnold, made the name of the school. After dividing with Stanley the honours of Rugby, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and was bracketed with Lord Lyttelton as senior classic and chancellor's medallist in 1838. He graduated B.A. in 1838 and M.A. in 1841, proceeding D.D. per regias literas in 1845. In 1839 he was elected fellow of his college, and proceeded to the study of the law. After a brief trial, however, he resolved to follow the calling of his father and elder brother. He was ordained in 1841, and almost immediately afterwards was appointed to the vicarage of St. Martin's, Leicester, formerly his father's parish, and subsequently that of both his eldest and youngest brothers. This charge he held, with great profit to his flock, till 1844.

In that year he was elected to the headmastership of Harrow. The school was then in low water. Its numbers had dropped to little over sixty, and its discipline was out of joint. Within two years Vaughan had