Felix Vaughan Explained

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, 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.[4] [5] 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. Vaughan was in France and Geneva in 1790–1. He corresponded from the continent with John Richter[6] and William Frend.[7]

Opponent of the Pitt clampdown

Back in England, Vaughan was part of the London radical milieu including James Losh;[8] also one of the group dining with John Horne Tooke.[9] He was called to the bar in 1792. In spring of that year he was involved in drafting the constitution of the London Corresponding Society (LCS).[10] and consulted about with the Society for Constitutional Information.[11] He became a dedicated LCS member, much involved in legal matters.[12] [13]

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.[14] Advising James Watt junior, then abroad, Vaughan took the view that he was safe from prosecution.[15] He was counsel, with John Gurney, for Thomas Briellat, convicted in December 1793 for using seditious language.[16] [17] In making the defence case, Vaughan emphasised the ubiquity of the Association for Preserving Liberty and Property.[18]

In 1794 Vaughan visited Thomas Muir in his prison hulk, with Joseph Priestley.[19] In February, with Gurney, he successfully defended Daniel Isaac Eaton on a sedition charge, for publishing an allegory by John Thelwall.[20] The defence rested largely on freedom of the press, and the jury refused to find that Eaton had criminal intention.[21]

Vaughan took part as junior counsel in the defence of the reformer Thomas Walker on trial in Lancaster for seditious conspiracy, with Thomas Erskine.[22] [23] The trial began in April 1794, and Walker was acquitted, with the main prosecution witness discredited.[24]

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.[25] [26] [27] 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.[28] 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.[29] 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.[30] He was junior counsel also that month in the trial of Thomas Hardy,[31] and for the trial of Horne Tooke in November.[32] Pages were removed from the LCS minute book, and Vaughan has been considered likely to be the person who did that.[33] 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.[34]

In January 1795 Vaughan was unsuccessful in the defence of James Montgomery at Doncaster Assizes.[35] In 1797 he and Samuel Romilly defended John Gale Jones at Warwick Assizes; Jones was convicted but not sentenced.[36]

Thomas Banks made a series of plaster busts of the radicals around Horne Tooke, and Vaughan was included.[37]

Death

Vaughan died at his chambers in Lincoln's Inn, aged 32[38] or 33.[39] He left a legacy to Horne Tooke,[40] and property to Thomas Walker.[41] Samuel Parr composed a Latin inscription for him.[42]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Felix Vaughan, Lord Byron and His Times. 2 April 2015.
  2. Book: Thomas Banks. Annals of Thomas Banks. 1938. CUP Archive. 128. GGKEY:38ZS48NWC8R.
  3. Web site: Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Samuel Parr, 1829, Volume 1, Page 92. 2 April 2015.
  4. Book: Samuel Parr. John Johnstone. John Johnstone (physician). The Works of Samuel Parr ...: With Memoirs of His Life and Writings, and a Selection from His Correspondence. 1828. 1. Longman, Rees. 79.
  5. Book: Professor John Barrell. Living with the Royal Academy: Artistic Ideals and Experiences in England, 1768–1848. 16 December 2013. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. 978-1-4094-0318-0. 147.
  6. Book: Mary Thale. Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society 1792–1799. 4 August 1983. Cambridge University Press. 978-0-521-24363-6. 23–.
  7. Web site: Janus: William Frend: Correspondence. University of Cambridge. 2 April 2015.
  8. Web site: Losh, James (1763–1833), Romantic Circles. 2 April 2015. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20151125220549/http://www.rc.umd.edu/node/59981. 25 November 2015.
  9. Book: James Epstein. In Practice: Studies in the Language and Culture of Popular Politics in Modern Britain. 2003. Stanford University Press. 978-0-8047-4788-2. 91.
  10. Book: John Williams. Wordsworth: Romantic Poetry and Revolution Politics. 1 January 1989. Manchester University Press. 978-0-7190-3168-7. 522–.
  11. Book: Wharam, Alan. The Treason Trials, 1794. 1992. Leicester University Press. 0718514459. 23.
  12. 42297. London Corresponding Society. Michael T.. Davis.
  13. Book: Eugene Charlton Black. The Association: British Extraparliamentary Political Organization, 1769–1793. registration. 1963. Harvard University Press. 978-0-674-05000-6. 226.
  14. Book: Jenny Graham. 2000. The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789–1799. 2. 503–4. University Press of America. 0-7618-1484-1.
  15. Book: Jenny Graham. 2000. The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789-1799. 2. 602 note 210. University Press of America. 0-7618-1484-1.
  16. Book: Mary Thale. Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society 1792–1799. 4 August 1983. Cambridge University Press. 978-0-521-24363-6. 89.
  17. Book: Stephen Burley. Hazlitt the Dissenter: Religion, Philosophy, and Politics, 1766-1816. 1 October 2014. Palgrave Macmillan. 978-1-137-36443-2. 183 note 149.
  18. Book: Carl B. Cone. The English Jacobins, reformers in late 18th century England. 2010. Transaction Publishers. 978-1-4128-4362-1. 144–5.
  19. Web site: The theological and miscellaneous works of Joseph Priestley. 1817. I pt. 2. 221 note. John Towill Rutt. John Towill Rutt. Internet Archive. 2 April 2015.
  20. Book: Mary Thale. Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society 1792–1799. 4 August 1983. Cambridge University Press. 978-0-521-24363-6. 117.
  21. http://www.english.qmul.ac.uk/drwilliams/journal/issues/27%282011%29.pdf H. T, Dickinson, Thomas Paine and his British Critics (PDF)
  22. 63603. Walker, Thomas. Michael T.. Davis.
  23. Book: Wharam, Alan. The Treason Trials, 1794. 1992. Leicester University Press. 0718514459. 123.
  24. Book: Jenny Graham. 2000. The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789-1799. 2. 602. University Press of America. 0-7618-1484-1.
  25. Book: John Barrell. Imagining the King's Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide, 1793–1796. registration. 2000. Oxford University Press. 978-0-19-811292-1. 114.
  26. 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].
  27. Book: Andrew Kippis. William Godwin. The New Annual Register, Or General Repository of History, Politics, and Literature, for the Year .... 1795. G. Robinson, Pater-noster-Row. 1–.
  28. Book: Wharam, Alan. The Treason Trials, 1794. 1992. Leicester University Press. 0718514459. 93 and 127.
  29. Book: Jenny Graham. 2000. The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789–1799. 2. 615–6 and note 41. University Press of America. 0-7618-1484-1.
  30. Book: Wharam, Alan. The Treason Trials, 1794. 1992. Leicester University Press. 0718514459. 133.
  31. Book: Wharam, Alan. The Treason Trials, 1794. 1992. Leicester University Press. 0718514459. 142.
  32. Book: Wharam, Alan. The Treason Trials, 1794. 1992. Leicester University Press. 0718514459. 194.
  33. Book: Mary Thale. Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society 1792–1799. 4 August 1983. Cambridge University Press. 978-0-521-24363-6. 11 note 19.
  34. Book: John Adolphus. The history of England: from the accession to the decease of King George the Third. 1843. Printed for the author, and published by J. Lee. 47.
  35. Book: Jenny Graham. 2000. The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789–1799. 2. 654. University Press of America. 0-7618-1484-1.
  36. Book: Jenny Graham. 2000. The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789–1799. 2. 761 note 59. University Press of America. 0-7618-1484-1.
  37. Book: Rune Frederiksen. Eckart Marchand. Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present. 27 September 2010. Walter de Gruyter. 978-3-11-021687-5. 294.
  38. Book: John Nichols. The Gentleman's Magazine. 1799. E. Cave. 358.
  39. Book: The Monthly Magazine. 1799. 335.
  40. 27545. Horne Tooke, John. Michael T.. Davis.
  41. Book: Albert Goodwin. The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution. 365. 1979. Hutchinson of London. 978-0-09-134170-1.
  42. Book: Samuel Parr. John Johnstone. The Works of Samuel Parr, ...: With Memoirs of His Life and Writings, and a Selection from His Correspondence. 4. 1828. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. 572.

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