Author: VAUGHAN, Arthur
Biography:
VAUGHAN, Arthur (1724-1792: Chambers)
Born on 14 Feb. 1724 the son of Maurice Vaughan of London and his wife, Jane Power, the poet entered Douay College on 12 July 1739. Having been ordained priest in the Roman Catholic church on 30 Apr. 1749, on 11 Aug. 1750 he was sent to England to assist the Rev. James Postlethwaite at Standon Lordship school, a Douay foundation. In 1752 he was appointed missioner at Harvington Hall, Worcestershire. There he established a library and a boarding school under a Miss Ainsworth. In his 840-line poem Triumphs of the Cross, in what he calls a “dull and insipid preface,” he praises English law for permitting Roman Catholics to publish; fears that he may be executed for his religion; laments that in England “every mine of novelty and pleasure” has been exhausted; and, employing the “pleasing drapery” of poetry, hopes to “inculcate [in youths] the necessary practice of Virtue and Morality”. His only other known publication is The Ghost of Sansom-fields, on occasion of Mr. Wharton’s abandoning his flock at Worcester (1782). The poet died at Harvington Hall on 25 July 1792. He was interred three days later at Chaddesley Corbett. (J. Chambers, Biographical Illustrations of Worcestershire [1820], 470; Publications of the Catholic Record Society 17 [1915], 368; E. H. Burton, E. Nolan, eds, The Douay College Diaries [1928], xxi, 222, 265; Isle of Wight Registers 59 [1968], 39; C. Archer-Parré et al, eds, John Baskerville [2017], 193) JC