The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Vaughan, Most Reverend Roger William Bede
Vaughan, Most Reverend Roger William Bede, D.D., Archbishop of Sydney, N.S.W., came of one of the oldest country families in England, and was the second son of Colonel Vaughan of Courtfield, Herefordshire, where he was born on Jan. 9th, 1834. He was educated by private tutors until 1851, when he was sent to St. Gregory's Roman Catholic College at Downside, near Bath. In 1853 he entered on his novitiate, was professed in the following year, and went to Rome in 1856 to complete his study of divinity. He was ordained priest in 1859 by Cardinal Patrick in the Church of St. John Lateran. Returning to Downside in 1861, he engaged in parish work, and was made Professor of Philosophy in the Benedictine Institution at St. Michael's, near Hereford, and in the next year was elected to the Cathedral priorship, which he held until his appointment as coadjutor to the late Archbishop Polding of Sydney in 1873. He arrived in New South Wales in December, and on the death of the archbishop was nominated his successor in March 1877, being consecrated in Sydney. After a brilliant archiepiscopate of six years, Dr. Vaughan left Sydney on a visit to the old country, and died suddenly of heart disease two days after his arrival in England, when staying at Ince Blundell Hall, the Lancashire seat of his uncle, Mr. Thomas Weld Blundell, on August 17th, 1883. The archbishop's remains were temporarily interred in the chapel there, but in Feb. 1887 were removed to their final resting-place at St. Michael's Priory, Hereford, negotiations with his successor, Cardinal Moran, for their removal to St. Mary's Cathedral, Sydney, having proved fruitless.