VAUGHAN, Thomas

In the final years of the reign of Edward IV few commoners occupied such an influential position about the King as Sir Thomas Vaughan. As treasurer of the royal chamber and privy to all his financial dealings, instrumental in the furtherance of his diplomatic relations with foreign rulers, above all entrusted with the care of his heir the prince of Wales (with whom Vaughan lived in a house he himself built close to the palace of Westminster), he out-shone his contemporaries. The historian might well assume that this prominent royal servant hailed from a family of distinction. Yet this was not the case. Claims that he was related to the Vaughans of Brecknockshire are not substantiated; nor did he belong to the Vaughans of Tretower and Bredwardine, a family which prospered in the Mortimer and Stafford lordships of the marches and rose alongside the Yorkist houses of Devereux and Herbert. Oxf. DNB, ‘Vaughan, Sir Thomas’; ‘Vaughan fam.’.

In fact, a ‘Walsehman boren’, Thomas came from Monmouth, as a transaction dating from late in his life (in 1478) makes clear. In this, by an agreement with the abbot of Westminster and the chapter of Llandaff, the prior of the Benedictine priory at Monmouth undertook to maintain a chaplain to celebrate there for the souls of Vaughan’s parents as well as for the welfare of Sir Thomas himself and his young charge the prince of Wales. Vaughan’s father is stated to have been an ‘esquire’, but no confirmation of his status among the gentry has been found. E.D. Jones, ‘The Parentage of Sir Thomas Vaughan’, Nat. Lib. of Wales Jnl. viii. 349 (citing E210/2694). How, as a young man of perhaps humble background, Vaughan first came to the attention of those close to Henry VI is now impossible to discover, yet by the autumn of 1440 he had become a member of the personal retinue of John Beaufort, earl and later duke of Somerset, under whom he served in France from July 1443, with his own contingent of three mounted men. E101/54/5, m. 1. There is a possibility that he also served with York in this period, for a Thomas Vaughan was among the men-at-arms listed in the duke’s muster roll of 26 Mar. 1441: E101/53/33. Furthermore, on the previous 30 Mar., shortly before the expedition set out, he had received letters of denization from the King, granted at the specific request of Somerset and Master Adam Moleyns, the clerk of the Council. PPC, v. 256. By the time the duke died, in the following year, Vaughan had entered the King’s own household, quickly rising to the rank of an esquire of the hall and chamber. E101/409/16; 410/1, f. 30v; 410/3, 6, 9. Henry VI thought so highly of him as to grant him in 1446 offices on the estates of his recently-deceased friend the duke of Warwick. CPR, 1441-6, p. 419. More important, in the summer of 1450, following the outbreak of Cade’s rebellion, Vaughan was entrusted with the highly responsible post of master of the ordnance. As such he purveyed ‘stuff’ (guns, powder and other weapons) which on 20 June was brought ‘into the feelde’ to arm the royal forces, and on 18 July he was formally appointed to the office for term of his life. The following month saw him busy making provision of ordnance for the defence of Carisbrooke castle on the Isle of Wight, then under serious threat of invasion from France. E404/66/181, 216; PPC, vi. 94; CPR, 1446-52, p. 332; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of the English ed. Stevenson, ii. 474-5; E403/781, m. 1; 791, m. 2. The absence of records makes it uncertain how long Vaughan remained master of the ordnance, but he may well have done so for over six years.

Rewards were forthcoming from his royal master. Towards the end of 1452 Vaughan briefly held an Exchequer lease of ‘Shelley’s tenement’ in the London parish of St. Mary Staining, CFR, xix. 18, 21-22. and on 1 Jan. 1453 he was awarded a life-annuity of 50 marks. However, this last award was only to take effect on the death of Sir Robert Shotesbrooke*, and in the event he never received it. CPR, 1452-61, p. 29. In March, by now numbered among the select few esquires for the King’s body, Vaughan was granted in fee-tail a messuage and other properties in the parish of St. Stephen Colman Street along with four gardens in that of St. Laurence, Old Jewry, in the capital, together with a substantial residence known as ‘Garlyk’ in Stepney. This house became a meeting-place of influential figures about the royal court, especially after the King’s half-brother Jasper, earl of Pembroke, came to share ‘Garlyk’ with him. The earl engaged Vaughan as a member of his council. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 83, 359; E403/791, m. 16. By this date too, Vaughan had also come to the attention of the Earl Marshal, John Mowbray, third duke of Norfolk, who granted him an annuity charged on the ducal estates in Sussex. L.E. Moye, ‘Estates and Finances of the Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 177, citing W. Suss. RO, Acc. 939/II/A/20.

Following Henry VI’s mental collapse, in the autumn of 1454 the size of the Household was reduced, and Vaughan was not named among the four esquires for the body assigned to continue waiting on the indisposed King. PPC, vi. 220-33. Nevertheless, it seems likely that he would have been at Henry’s side at the first battle of St. Albans in May 1455 – a place which his office as master of the ordnance must have required. Undoubtedly he owed his return for Marlborough to the Parliament summoned to assemble on the following 9 July to his links with the royal court, for the borough pertained to the queen as part of her dower. There is no indication that he was personally known to the burgesses; nor, as living in Stepney, did he fulfil the residential qualification for Members of the Commons. While Parliament was in session he took the opportunity to petition the King for exemption from the Act of Resumption with regard to his office as master of the ordnance and to his tenancy of the Colman Street properties and his Stepney house, on the ground that he received no remuneration for his services. The proviso was approved. SC8/145/7217; PROME, xii. 418.

Vaughan’s residence in Middlesex led to his appointment as a j.p. in the county in 1457, and it was also in that year that he first began to be employed as a diplomatic envoy, conveying messages from the King to rulers overseas, in this first instance to the duchess of Burgundy. His mission accomplished, he was paid as much as 100 marks as a reward. E404/71/2/33. Although a year earlier another man had been appointed master of the ordnance, this may have been only a temporary measure, for it was as once more occupying this position that on 1 May 1458 he received a royal pardon. C67/42, m. 25. Two weeks later he was again sent to Burgundy, this time as a member of a prestigious embassy headed by the earl of Warwick, Richard Beauchamp, bishop of Salisbury and Viscount Bourgchier, whose brief was to redress infractions of the truce. Foedera, v (2), 80.

It may have been this association with fellow ambassadors who already leaned towards the duke of York which prompted Vaughan to question his allegiance to the Lancastrian crown. Although there is nothing to suggest that a personal friendship developed between him and either Warwick or Bourgchier, even if it did with Beauchamp. He may have resented the loss of royal patronage indicated by Henry VI’s grant of the reversion of the Shotesbrooke annuity to his physician in August 1458, and perhaps felt excluded from the court established by the queen at Coventry. Suffice it to say that in the summer of 1459 he abruptly and dramatically threw in his lot with York. To all outward appearances in the spring he had still been a loyal retainer of King Henry: on 21 Apr. he stood surety for the earl of Pembroke at the Exchequer, and on 1 May he received assignments there on behalf of the keeper of the great wardrobe, for the expenses of the King’s chamber. CFR, xix. 231; E403/819, m. 2; CPR, 1452-61, p. 398. Yet he did not travel with the royal entourage to the Midlands, and it was to be later alleged that on 4 July he met York’s chamberlain Sir William Oldhall* in London, where the two men traitorously schemed and plotted the death of the King and ‘worked upon, abetted, instigated, prompted and provoked’ York and the earls of Warwick and Salisbury to commit treason by taking up arms. It has been speculated that Vaughan and Oldhall were responsible for sending news from London to the Yorkists at Calais about the proceedings of the great council held at Coventry at the end of June. Whatever prompted Vaughan to switch his loyalties in such a decisive fashion, it is clear that once taken his decision was whole-hearted and irrevocable. Accordingly, he was attainted in the Parliament which met at Coventry on 20 Nov. after the rout of the Yorkists at Ludford Bridge. PROME, xii. 461; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 817, 825, 847.

Vaughan fled the country, perhaps initially to join York in Ireland, but subsequently taking ship to Calais. In February 1460 his house, ‘Garlyk’, was granted to Earl Jasper in tail-male, and his other possessions were placed under the control of receivers. On 11 June orders went out from the government that no-one was to adhere to those traitors, including Vaughan, who had been attainted at Coventry, or assist them with provisions, men, or habiliments of war. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 541, 572, 597; CCR, 1454-61, p. 416. But by then the Yorkist earls were ready to invade from Calais, with Vaughan at their side. He marched with them to Northampton, where they decisively overcame the Lancastrian forces in battle on 10 July. The victors had absolute confidence in him: while still on the battlefield they installed him in his former place in the King’s household, not only as an esquire for the body to the now captive monarch but as promoted to the important office of keeper of the great wardrobe. E404/73/1/112. Furthermore, Vaughan also reclaimed his post as master of the ordnance, assuming full powers to conscript carpenters, stonemasons and smiths, and purvey artillery and other weapons. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 599, 612. It was then too that through the auspices of the triumphant Yorkist lords Vaughan received his greatest material rewards. The wealthy and influential (Sir) Thomas Brown, who had fallen foul of the duke of York, was executed on 29 July after a trial presided over by York’s friends, and his substantial estates were forfeited to the Crown. Vaughan hastened to seize the opportunity for personal advancement. On 18 Oct. (during the Parliament in which York laid claim to the throne), he joined Brown’s widow Eleanor in obtaining a grant in survivorship of all the goods and chattels forfeited by her late husband, in return for a payment of £1,000; and this concession was augmented on 9 Nov. by a grant of Brown’s lands. Very shortly afterwards the couple were married; at the end of the month they entered mutual recognizances with John Fogg† to accept arbitration with regard to ownership of manors in Kent of which Fogg claimed to have been dispossessed by Brown. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 629, 631; CCR, 1454-61, p. 480. Probably in his absence, he was admitted to the freedom of Canterbury on 23 Mar. 1461 as ‘alderman of Westgate’. Brown had acquired the aldermanry in the mid 1450s, but it had been forfeited to the Crown because of his treason: Canterbury Cath. Archs., Canterbury city recs. chamberlains’ accts. CCA-CC-F/A/2, ff. 63v, 70v.

Yet any assumption that the Yorkists had triumphed once and for all proved to be premature. York himself was killed at Wakefield at the close of the year, and Queen Margaret’s northern army swept on to further victory at St. Albans on 17 Feb. 1461. Vaughan, together with Philip Malpas* the London merchant, Master William Hatcliffe, the King’s physician, and ‘many other’, fearing the forces of the queen advancing towards London, boarded a ship from Antwerp intending to flee to Zeeland, only to be captured at sea by a French man-of-war and held to ransom. They had taken with them ‘great riches’, which in Vaughan’s case probably included some of the valuable contents of the great wardrobe, of which he was keeper. On seizing the throne at the beginning of March, Edward IV ordered the mayor and aldermen of London not to send more goods to France to ransom the captives, and demanded an inquiry to be held into what precisely Vaughan and the rest had taken with them. Margaret of Anjou was also keen to recover this treasure: she sent messages to Charles VII asking for Vaughan and his fellows be handed over to her, but these requests were fobbed off, as too were Margaret’s letters to Louis XI (after he succeeded his father in July). It was King Edward who eventually secured the prisoners’ release, probably in October, after promising Vaughan that he would pay as much as £200 towards his ransom. Chrons. London ed. Kingsford, 174; John Vale’s Bk. ed. Kekewich et al., 83, 160; Scofield, i. 161-2, 188, 210. As much as £100 was still due to Vaughan in Sept. 1462, when the King instructed that assignment for that sum should be made on the clerical tenths: E404/72/2/58; E403/827A, m. 1.

On his return to England, Vaughan was paid £50 for expenses incurred on an ‘embassy to France’ (perhaps for opening discussions with Louis XI on the new King’s behalf), and he found himself firmly in King Edward’s favour, with a place as one of the esquires for the body. On 15 Dec. he was rewarded for his good service to the King and his father York with a grant for life jointly with his wife of the very extensive estates of her late husband Sir Thomas Brown. This was followed three months later with a general pardon. E403/824, m. 3; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 88, 107. In September 1462 the King, recognizing Vaughan’s ability in conducting diplomatic negotiations, sent him with (Sir) John Wenlock*, newly created Lord Wenlock, to arrange a commercial treaty with Burgundy. Clearly satisfied with his performance, five months later Edward associated him with his chamberlain, Lord Hastings, in a grant of the presentation to the next vacant prebend within the college of St. George at Windsor. CPR, 1461-7, p. 222. In March 1463 Vaughan escorted the ambassadors of Duke Philip of Burgundy from London to Sandwich, and shortly afterwards in successful talks with Louis XI’s envoys at St. Omer he obtained compensation for the residents of Calais who had been robbed by Frenchmen. The arrival in the Low Countries of other English ambassadors was delayed until late August, but Vaughan seems to have remained there throughout the summer, and was present at the discussions lasting to mid October which lead to a truce between England and France and an extension of commercial agreements between England and Burgundy, of which he was a signatory. E403/827A, m. 17; E. Meek, ‘English Delegation to the Conference of St. Omer’, Ricardian, xii. 556-8. The pardon Vaughan took out on 9 Nov. 1464 referred to him as former keeper of the great wardrobe (to Henry VI), mainpernor for Jasper, late earl of Pembroke, and tenant of the estates of Sir Thomas Brown. CPR, 1461-7, p. 360. A similar pardon was dated Apr. 1468: CPR, 1467-77, p. 87. With regard to the last, provisos delivered on 28 Feb. and 22 Mar. 1465 to the Parliament then in session exempted him and his wife from the new Act of Resumption, which was in no way to prejudice their continued possession of Brown’s holdings. C49/64/68, 80; PROME, xiii. 171-2.

In the mid 1460s Vaughan became increasingly busy about the Court, for example being employed to receive money at the Exchequer for Queen Elizabeth’s expenses, and taking responsibility for jewelry purchased for the monarch from Florentine merchants. E405/41, rot. 1. Confirmation of his role came in June 1465, with formal appointment by letters patent under the great seal as treasurer of the King’s chamber and master of his jewels. This was the first time such a procedure had been followed for appointment to this office; it marked a profound change in the arrangements for the King’s financial affairs, with responsibility for much of the expenditure of crown income being henceforth diverted from the Exchequer to the chamber. This new chamber financial organization required a professional officer: Vaughan was the man chosen. No accounts rendered by him are known to have survived, but in reality he had only to satisfy the King himself, and Edward found no cause to question his probity. CPR, 1461-7, p. 459; B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne in English Hist. 175. Two months later Vaughan was rewarded with a handsome grant to him and his heirs, for service to the King and his father ‘in prosperity and adversity’, of the manors of Kingsnorth and Milton in Kent and Shapwick and Egle in Sussex; and the bulk of Brown’s estates were now granted to him and his wife and their issue. CPR, 1461-7, pp. 464-5, 547-9. No mention was made of Brown’s sons. In November Vaughan was again associated with the King’s chamberlain Hastings in another grant of the next vacant prebend within the college of St. George at Windsor. CPR, 1461-7, p. 469. A similar grant of Nov. 1469 was with Bp. Beauchamp of Salisbury: 1467-77, p. 179.

In addition to his commitments at the centre of government, in the 1460s Vaughan was also given a role in imposing law and order in the localities, with appointment first as a j.p. in Kent, Surrey and Sussex (where the Brown estates lay), and then as sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in November 1466. A gift of £40 made to him in consideration of anticipated losses and expenses in the shrievalty was probably given to encourage him to take up the post. It coincided with another of 100 marks, as recompense for his attendance on the King as an esquire for the body since the beginning of the reign, for which he had not received a fee. E404/73/2/34, 35; E403/837, m. 2. In fact, Vaughan was away from home for much of 1467, so he must have delegated his shrieval duties. After taking charge of the silver and enamelled bowls crafted for presentation to knights and esquires coming to England in the company of the Bastard of Burgundy, he himself spent from April to September in the Low Countries, busy with negotiations for the marriage of Edward IV’s sister Margaret to Duke Charles the Bold, and discussing a commercial treaty. He was again commissioned to treat with the duke that December and in January 1468. A warrant dated the following 2 Apr. noted that he had recently sailed to Burgundy four times, bearing his own costs and charges while ‘longe abyding’ there on the King’s business. He was allowed £50 for each trip. Having been so closely involved in the arrangements for the royal match, it is not surprising to find him in Burgundy in the following June, standing next to Bishop Beauchamp of Salisbury to greet Margaret when she arrived for her wedding. Meanwhile, Duke Charles had entrusted him to take the statutes of the Golden Fleece over to his new brother-in-law the King. E403/838, m. 4; C76/151, mm. 1, 5, 10, 18; Foedera, v (2), 149; Scofield, i. 412, 429-33, 442, 449, 455; E404/74/1/7. See L. Visser-Fuchs, ‘The Garters and the Garter Achievements of Charles the Bold’, Ricardian, xxiii. 1-19.

During Vaughan’s absence, Parliament had met on 3 June 1467, and set about passing another Act of Resumption. Vaughan promptly sent a petition for exemption from the Act with regard to any grants made to him alone or jointly with anyone else of any of the possessions of the late Sir Thomas Brown. Its wording is reflected in the King’s statement of the considerations that moved him to grant the proviso: first ‘the good hert, feethfull love and true service by him done’ to the King’s father, ‘with whom he was banysshed the lande and atteinte by auctorite of parliament ... and upon whom al that seasone he attended, forsaking al his fees, goodes and lifelode’; second, that he had steadfastly continued to abide with York and himself in their ‘trewe service’ without reward in lands save those of Brown, for which he stood in ‘grete trouble and coste’ in the law-courts defending his rights against the claims and titles that numerous people pretended to the same; furthermore, he had paid £1,000 for them, which would lead to his undoing if they should now be resumed. The queen’s chancellor delivered the proviso on the final day of the session, 1 July, to the clerk of the Parliament, who duly enrolled it. C49/54/67; PROME, xiii. 288-9.

To emphasize Vaughan’s pre-eminent place in charge of Edward IV’s finances, in January 1469 he was appointed for life as controller and keeper of the hanaper, receiving such fees as might be agreed in personal discussions between him and the King. CPR, 1467-77, pp. 124-5. That spring he was sent overseas for negotiations with the Hanse, Foedera, v (2), 170. and may therefore have been absent when the northern rebellion inspired by the earl of Warwick and duke of Clarence broke out in the summer. Significantly, perhaps, he was not specifically identified in the rebels’ manifesto as one of the ‘sedicious persones’ whose greed and influence over the King prompted the commons to rise up in arms. John Vale’s Bk. 212-15. Vaughan’s whereabouts when King Edward was taken prisoner and a number of his supporters and the queen’s relatives were killed are not known, although it may be presumed that he returned to the King’s side after his release in September. Continuing to be Edward’s principal envoy to the Burgundian court, early in 1470 he took the Garter, mantle and other things pertaining to the Order, over to Charles the Bold. E30/536. Although he had apparently already taken a gold garter over to Duke Charles the previous May: Visser-Fuchs, 6.

Vaughan does not appear to have taken any part in the further eruption of civil war in the spring of 1470, and is next recorded at meetings of the King’s Council held at Lambeth in July, while the King himself was dealing with armed risings in the north. C81/1547, no. 9; E28/90, no. 23. As he was granted letters of protection as going overseas on royal service on 10 Aug., he may already have crossed the Channel before Edward fled to Holland a few weeks later. C76/154, m. 4. Certainly, it looks as if he shared his master’s exile throughout the period of the Readeption, and returned with him to England in 1471. He was at Edward’s side when his forces entered London, fresh from their victory at the battle of Barnet on 14 Apr., and on the 29th he attended a meeting of the council held at the palace of Westminster. Two days later he was one of the four members of the Household who temporarily replaced the tellers of the Exchequer, enabling them to take firm control of the day-to-day flow of resources to the restored monarch. C81/1547, no. 10; H.W. Kleineke, Edw. IV, 124. Although Vaughan himself did not fight at the battle of Tewkesbury, as treasurer of the chamber he paid out compensation to loyal subjects wounded in the field. E403/844, mm. 2, 3.

Now, too, a new and vitally important role was also assigned to him. While the King had been overseas Queen Elizabeth had given birth to a son and heir. On 8 July baby Edward, the new prince of Wales, was formally assigned his own council and household. Headed by the queen, the King’s brothers and Cardinal Bourgchier, these ‘councillors’ included Vaughan, designated the prince’s chamberlain. They were to administer the principality of Wales, the duchy of Cornwall and the county of Chester until Prince Edward reached the age of 14. Vaughan was expected to be the lynchpin of this administration, often based at Ludlow, and to play a part in establishing the prince’s council in Wales and the marches. CPR, 1467-77, pp. 283, 366; M.A. Hicks, Edw. V, 93, 96; Bull. Bd. Celtic Studies, xxix. 556. The council was enlarged on 20 Feb. 1473. Although in August he was re-granted ‘Garlek’ in Stepney in fee-tail, CPR, 1467-77, p. 274. in the course of the next three years he built ‘at great cost’ a house within the precincts of Westminster Abbey where he and the prince could stay quietly when at court, ‘quit of all entertainment of magnates or of officers and ministers of prince or king’. It was noted that the little prince needed ‘to have about him a true, witty, expert, loving and diligent chamberlain, as well for the surety and safeguard of his person as for hourly attendance and assistance in counsel and other matters that concern his honour and profit’. Not only did Vaughan meet these stringent criteria, but the King was also sure of ‘the faith and love that he bore to us and our issue’. The relationship between prince and chamberlain must have been very close. CPR, 1467-77, pp. 414, 455; Hicks, 72-73. In 1477 he shared the disposition of the deanery of the King’s free chapel of St. Stephen within the palace of Westminster: CPR, 1476-85, p. 36.

At the time of the move to the house at Westminster the Parliament summoned to assemble on 6 Oct. 1472 was still in progress. Vaughan had been elected to the Commons as one of the knights of the shire for Cornwall, as might be expected given his position on the council of the duchy. At the opening of the Parliament the Speaker, William Allington†, reported the desire of the Commons to commend the queen’s behaviour while Edward IV had been overseas, and their joy at the birth of the prince; and at a special ceremony held to honour Louis of Bruges, lord of Gruthuyse (Edward’s host during his exile), with the earldom of Winchester, the prince, in his robes of estate, was borne in the procession next after the King, in the arms of Vaughan his chamberlain. They processed to the abbey, and up to the shrine of St. Edward, where they made offerings. Later on, when the new earl visited Windsor castle it was once again Vaughan who carried Prince Edward to welcome him. C.L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 383, 385, 386.

Besides Vaughan’s continued activities as treasurer of the King’s chamber and master of the jewels – positions he occupied for the rest of the reign – throughout the 1470s he continued to be heavily relied upon by the King as a diplomat. For instance, in September 1471 he had been one of just two envoys sent to treat with Louis XI regarding a final peace between their kingdoms. C76/155, m. 20. His attendance as a member of the King’s council when at home is not well documented, yet when in 1472 the archbishop of York, George Neville, was arrested for treason, ‘that he schuld helpe the erle of Oxford’, Vaughan headed the small force sent to Neville’s manor of Moor to seize his moveable goods and take possession of his lands. Three years later Neville released him from all legal actions. Death and Dissent: Two 15th Cent. Chrons. ed. Matheson, 121; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1510. In preparation for Edward IV’s invasion of France, in February 1475 Vaughan was commissioned with two clerks of the King’s jewels, to conscript goldsmiths and other craftsmen to accompany him across the Channel. He himself was to remain in England at the side of the four-year-old prince of Wales, who was formally designated ‘keeper of the realm’ during his father’s absence. The prince was ceremonially knighted on 18 Apr. at Westminster, along with his brother the duke of York, his stepbrothers and 20 others, notable among them being his chamberlain Vaughan. CPR, 1467-77, p. 496; Add. 6113, f. 107v. The latter was made a feoffee of royal estates, and represented the prince at meetings of the Council while the King was away. Furthermore, his presence was to be noted on a number of occasions following Edward’s return home. CP25(1)/294/76/102; Scofield, ii. 125; C81/1547, no. 13. For a reward of £50 as King’s councillor and treasurer of the chamber, July 1478: E404/76/4/27; E403/845, m. 6. For his standing as a councillor, see Gt. Red Bk. of Bristol, iv (Bristol Rec. Soc. xviii), 84-86.

Vaughan also assumed further responsibilities in royal estate management, as a central figure in the exploitation of estates that fell to the Crown in the 1470s. Since 1467 he had been a feoffee for the performance of the will of John, 4th duke of Norfolk. When the duke died in early 1476 Edward IV, intending that his younger son, Richard, should marry the heiress to the Mowbray estates, created him earl of Nottingham (in June) and duke of Norfolk in February 1477, meanwhile instructing Vaughan to work with the Mowbray auditors and local stewards to compile a valor of the inheritance. Even before his appointment as surveyor was formally enrolled he was paid £20 from the estates in Sussex. Moye, 177, 220-1, 448-9; Berkeley Castle muns. BCM/D/1/1/20; CPR, 1476-85, p. 10. Vaughan was elected to represent Cornwall for a second time in the Parliament summoned to meet on 16 Jan. 1478 for the purpose of arraigning the duke of Clarence for treason, and on 14 Feb. he was nominated by the King to examine the accounts of the auditors of the estates of the duke, who awaited execution. This was the greatest single accession of property received by Edward IV in his later years; and it was under Vaughan’s guidance that the lands were entrusted to a number of receivers, all made directly responsible to the King in his chamber. CPR, 1476-85, p. 64; Wolffe, 166-7.

While Vaughan’s service to the King was paramount, he was occasionally engaged as a feoffee for members of the nobility, acting as such for Ralph, Lord Sudeley, Richard West, Lord de la Warre (to guarantee the payment of a fine of 1,000 marks for his treason of 1471), and for Henry, duke of Buckingham. In 1481 Bishop Beauchamp of Salisbury, with whom he had first served on an embassy many years earlier, named him as an executor. CCR, 1468-76, nos. 198, 409, 807; CPR, 1476-85, pp. 256, 257; PCC 4 Logge (PROB11/7, f. 31). Late in the following year, Vaughan departed on his final voyage as the King’s emissary, this time for meetings with Maximilian, king of the Romans, but he may have returned home before Parliament met on 20 Jan. 1483, as during the brief session he was one of nine men exempted from the Act of Apparel. E405/71, rot. 5; Scofield, ii. 355; PROME, xiv. 459-60. On 4 Mar. he was pardoned as chamberlain to the prince of Wales. C67/50, m. 3.

When Edward IV died suddenly on 9 Apr. Vaughan was with the prince at Ludlow, and set out with him on the 24th to ride to Westminster for his coronation as Edward V. The story is well known. Their party was intercepted by the King’s uncle Richard, duke of Gloucester, and Vaughan was arrested at Grafton Regis on 30 Apr., accused of plotting against the duke. After being confined at Pontefract, he was executed on 25 June. Most sources state that he and the others condemned with him had no form of trial. Chrons. London, 190; Hicks, 142-3; C.D. Ross, Ric. III, 88. One of them was the queen’s brother, Anthony, Earl Rivers, who before he was beheaded drew up a will, on 23 June, in which he noted that he owed Vaughan 200 marks, ‘wherof I have paid 20 marks here in the north, and he hath to pledge my balys in colombyne with five perles’. Excerpta Historica, ed. Bentley, 247. Regarding Vaughan, one chronicler emphasized his seniority, referring to him as ‘senex miles’, and ‘senilis aetatis camerarius principis’, as if to draw attention to the wickedness of Gloucester’s action. Croyland Chron. ed. Pronay and Cox, 156, 160. At what stage Sir Thomas was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey is not known, but his tomb and a monumental brass in his memory were placed in the chapel dedicated to St. Paul. V. and A. Cat. of Brass Rubbings ed. Clayton, 43.

It seems unlikely that Vaughan was survived by any children. His wife Eleanor may already have been past child-bearing age when they married in 1460, and is not mentioned alive after 1466. In the Parliament of 1472-5 her eldest son, Sir George Brown†, successfully petitioned the King to ask for the judgements against his late father to be reversed, so that he and other of Sir Thomas Brown’s heirs might enter their inheritance, and that all letters patent by Henry VI or Edward IV regarding his lands should be cancelled. PROME, xiv. 44-46. It is hard to believe that this petition would have been granted without Vaughan’s tacit approval and willingness to relinquish the Brown estates to his stepsons. There is little record of his continued tenure of them, and he is known to have granted title of lands in Ludfield, Sussex, to Sir George, much to the annoyance of John Audley*, Lord Audley, who had agreed to pay him £100 for the evidences and title to the property and lost £60 of this sum as a consequence. C1/59/24.