Felix Vaughan

Felix Vaughan (7 March 1766 – 22 April 1799) was an English barrister, known for his role as defence counsel in the treason trials of the 1790s.[1][2]

Early life

The son of Samuel Vaughan of Middlesex, a tradesman,[3] he was baptised at Westminster St James on 20 March 1766, and educated at Harrow School and Stanmore,[4] where he was briefly a pupil of Samuel Parr, who became a lifelong friend, as did Basil William Douglas, Lord Daer, a schoolfellow, son of Dunbar Douglas, 4th Earl of Selkirk.[5][6] He was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1785. He entered Jesus College, Cambridge as a fellow-commoner in 1786, graduating B.A. in 1790 and M.A. in 1794.[4]

Vaughan was in France and Geneva in 1790–1. He corresponded from the continent with John Richter[7] and William Frend.[8]

Opponent of the Pitt clampdown

Back in England, Vaughan was part of the London radical milieu including James Losh;[9] also one of the group dining with John Horne Tooke.[10] He was called to the bar in 1792.[4] In spring of that year he was involved in drafting the constitution of the London Corresponding Society (LCS).[11] and consulted about with the Society for Constitutional Information.[12] He became a dedicated LCS member, much involved in legal matters.[13][14]

From early in 1793, judicial measures, some questionable procedurally and some seen to be over-severe, were used to repress reforming views. In July Vaughan successfully defended a Knutsford bookseller who had stocked works of Tom Paine.[15] Advising James Watt junior, then abroad, Vaughan took the view that he was safe from prosecution.[16] He was counsel, with John Gurney, for Thomas Briellat, convicted in December 1793 for using seditious language.[17][18] In making the defence case, Vaughan emphasised the ubiquity of the Association for Preserving Liberty and Property.[19]

In 1794 Vaughan visited Thomas Muir in his prison hulk, with Joseph Priestley.[20] In February, with Gurney, he successfully defended Daniel Isaac Eaton on a sedition charge, for publishing an allegory by John Thelwall.[21] The defence rested largely on freedom of the press, and the jury refused to find that Eaton had criminal intention.[22]

Vaughan took part as junior counsel in the defence of the reformer Thomas Walker on trial in Lancaster for seditious conspiracy, with Thomas Erskine.[23][24] The trial began in April 1794, and Walker was acquitted, with the main prosecution witness discredited.[25]

Vaughan in May 1794 defended George Harley Vaughan, a schoolmaster who had circulated a handbill about the war and its effect on the poor, on a seditious libel charge in Leicester.[26][27][28] He was present with John Frost when John Horne Tooke's house was searched after his arrest in May, and visited him in the Tower of London.[29] Subsequently, however, he was examined by the Privy Council, where he fended off implications of misprison of treason. As a consequence he was denied access to Horne Tooke, for a period from June.[30] He has been considered the author of the pamphlet Cursory Strictures of 2 October 1794 on the handling of the treason trials by Sir James Eyre LCJ, as has William Godwin.[31] He was junior counsel also that month in the trial of Thomas Hardy,[32] and for the trial of Horne Tooke in November.[33] Pages were removed from the LCS minute book, and Vaughan has been considered likely to be the person who did that.[34] Of the group of defendants charged with Hardy and Tooke, Jeremiah Joyce chose Vaughan as counsel, rather than the team of Erskine and Vicary Gibbs.[35]

In January 1795 Vaughan was unsuccessful in the defence of James Montgomery at Doncaster Assizes.[36] In 1797 he and Samuel Romilly defended John Gale Jones at Warwick Assizes; Jones was convicted but not sentenced.[37]

Thomas Banks made a series of plaster busts of the radicals around Horne Tooke, and Vaughan was included.[38]

Death

Vaughan died at his chambers in Lincoln's Inn, aged 32[39] or 33.[40] He left a legacy to Horne Tooke,[41] and property to Thomas Walker.[42] Samuel Parr composed a Latin inscription for him.[43]

Notes
  1. "Felix Vaughan, Lord Byron and His Times". Retrieved 2 April 2015.
  2. Thomas Banks (1938). Annals of Thomas Banks. CUP Archive. p. 128. GGKEY:38ZS48NWC8R.
  3. "Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Samuel Parr, 1829, Volume 1, Page 92". Retrieved 2 April 2015.
  4. "Vaughan, Felix (VHN786F)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  5. Samuel Parr; John Johnstone (1828). The Works of Samuel Parr ...: With Memoirs of His Life and Writings, and a Selection from His Correspondence. 1. Longman, Rees. p. 79.
  6. Professor John Barrell (16 December 2013). Living with the Royal Academy: Artistic Ideals and Experiences in England, 1768–1848. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 147. ISBN 978-1-4094-0318-0.
  7. Mary Thale (4 August 1983). Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society 1792–1799. Cambridge University Press. pp. 23–. ISBN 978-0-521-24363-6.
  8. "Janus: William Frend: Correspondence". University of Cambridge. Retrieved 2 April 2015.
  9. "Losh, James (1763–1833), Romantic Circles". Archived from the original on 25 November 2015. Retrieved 2 April 2015.
  10. James Epstein (2003). In Practice: Studies in the Language and Culture of Popular Politics in Modern Britain. Stanford University Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-8047-4788-2.
  11. John Williams (1 January 1989). Wordsworth: Romantic Poetry and Revolution Politics. Manchester University Press. pp. 522–. ISBN 978-0-7190-3168-7.
  12. Wharam, Alan (1992). The Treason Trials, 1794. Leicester University Press. p. 23. ISBN 0718514459.
  13. Davis, Michael T. "London Corresponding Society". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/42297. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  14. Eugene Charlton Black (1963). The Association: British Extraparliamentary Political Organization, 1769–1793. Harvard University Press. p. 226. ISBN 978-0-674-05000-6.
  15. Jenny Graham (2000). The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789–1799. 2. University Press of America. pp. 503–4. ISBN 0-7618-1484-1.
  16. Jenny Graham (2000). The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789-1799. 2. University Press of America. p. 602 note 210. ISBN 0-7618-1484-1.
  17. Mary Thale (4 August 1983). Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society 1792–1799. Cambridge University Press. p. 89. ISBN 978-0-521-24363-6.
  18. Stephen Burley (1 October 2014). Hazlitt the Dissenter: Religion, Philosophy, and Politics, 1766-1816. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 183 note 149. ISBN 978-1-137-36443-2.
  19. Carl B. Cone (2010). The English Jacobins, reformers in late 18th century England. Transaction Publishers. pp. 144–5. ISBN 978-1-4128-4362-1.
  20. John Towill Rutt, ed. (1817). "The theological and miscellaneous works of Joseph Priestley". Internet Archive. p. 221 note. Retrieved 2 April 2015.
  21. Mary Thale (4 August 1983). Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society 1792–1799. Cambridge University Press. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-521-24363-6.
  22. H. T, Dickinson, Thomas Paine and his British Critics (PDF), pp.51–2, Enlightenment and Dissent No. 27, 2011
  23. Davis, Michael T. "Walker, Thomas". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/63603. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  24. Wharam, Alan (1992). The Treason Trials, 1794. Leicester University Press. p. 123. ISBN 0718514459.
  25. Jenny Graham (2000). The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789-1799. 2. University Press of America. p. 602. ISBN 0-7618-1484-1.
  26. John Barrell (2000). Imagining the King's Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide, 1793–1796. Oxford University Press. p. 114. ISBN 978-0-19-811292-1.
  27. The City of Leicester: Parliamentary history, 1660-1835, in A History of the County of Leicester: Volume 4, the City of Leicester, ed. R A McKinley (London, 1958), pp. 110-152 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/leics/vol4/pp110-152 [accessed 2 April 2015].
  28. Andrew Kippis; William Godwin (1795). The New Annual Register, Or General Repository of History, Politics, and Literature, for the Year ... G. Robinson, Pater-noster-Row. pp. 1–.
  29. Wharam, Alan (1992). The Treason Trials, 1794. Leicester University Press. pp. 93 and 127. ISBN 0718514459.
  30. Jenny Graham (2000). The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789–1799. 2. University Press of America. pp. 615–6 and note 41. ISBN 0-7618-1484-1.
  31. Wharam, Alan (1992). The Treason Trials, 1794. Leicester University Press. p. 133. ISBN 0718514459.
  32. Wharam, Alan (1992). The Treason Trials, 1794. Leicester University Press. p. 142. ISBN 0718514459.
  33. Wharam, Alan (1992). The Treason Trials, 1794. Leicester University Press. p. 194. ISBN 0718514459.
  34. Mary Thale (4 August 1983). Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society 1792–1799. Cambridge University Press. p. 11 note 19. ISBN 978-0-521-24363-6.
  35. John Adolphus (1843). The history of England: from the accession to the decease of King George the Third. Printed for the author, and published by J. Lee. p. 47.
  36. Jenny Graham (2000). The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789–1799. 2. University Press of America. p. 654. ISBN 0-7618-1484-1.
  37. Jenny Graham (2000). The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789–1799. 2. University Press of America. pp. 761 note 59. ISBN 0-7618-1484-1.
  38. Rune Frederiksen; Eckart Marchand (27 September 2010). Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present. Walter de Gruyter. p. 294. ISBN 978-3-11-021687-5.
  39. John Nichols (1799). The Gentleman's Magazine. E. Cave. p. 358.
  40. The Monthly Magazine. 1799. p. 335.
  41. Davis, Michael T. "Horne Tooke, John". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/27545. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  42. Albert Goodwin (1979). The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution. Hutchinson of London. p. 365. ISBN 978-0-09-134170-1.
  43. Samuel Parr; John Johnstone (1828). The Works of Samuel Parr, ...: With Memoirs of His Life and Writings, and a Selection from His Correspondence. 4. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. p. 572.
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