Henry Vaughan (Member of the Long Parliament)

Sir Henry Vaughan the elder (1587?-1659?), of Derwydd in Carmarthenshire, was a Welsh Member of Parliament (MP) and a Royalist leader during the English Civil War.

Vaughan was a younger brother of John Vaughan, 1st Earl of Carbery. He was High Sheriff of Carmarthenshire in 1620, MP for Carmarthen from 1621 to 1629, and for Carmarthenshire in the Short and Long Parliaments, until being disabled from sitting for his Royalist activities in February 1644.

From November 1642, Vaughan began raising a regiment in Carmarthenshire to fight for the Royalist cause under his nephew, the Earl of Carbery. He was knighted by the King at Oxford on 14 January 1643, and was Major-General of the Royalist forces in Pembrokeshire from 1643 to 1644, when he was driven out by the Parliamentary leader, Rowland Laugharne. He was captured at the Battle of Naseby, and sent to the Tower of London; he spent the rest of his life as a prisoner. His fellow prisoner, Sir Francis Wortley, in his "Loyall Song of the Royall Feast kept by the Prisoners in the Towre" (1647), described Vaughan:::"Sir Harry Vaughan looks as grave As any beard can make him, Those [who] came poore prisoners to see Do for our Patriarke take him, Old Harry is a right true blue, As valiant as Pendraggon, And would be loyal to his king Had King Charles ne'er a rag on.

His son, Sir Henry Vaughan the younger, was MP for Carmarthenshire for some years after the Restoration.

External links

* [http://www.a40infobahn.co.uk/VaughanSK/Sir%20Henry%20Vaughan.htm Sir Henry Vaughan's Company of the Sealed Knot]

References

* Concise Dictionary of National Biography (1930)
*D Brunton & D H Pennington, "Members of the Long Parliament" (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954)
*"Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803" (London: Thomas Hansard, 1808) [http://www2.odl.ox.ac.uk/gsdl/cgi-bin/library?e=p-000-00---0modhis06--00-0-0-0prompt-10---4------0-1l--1-en-50---20-about---00001-001-1-1isoZz-8859Zz-1-0&a=d&cl=CL1]
* [http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk British Civil Wars and Commonwealth website]
* [http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-VAUG-GEL-1500.html Welsh Biography Online]