Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/360

 VAUGHAN

312

VAUGHAN

Recusants Convict". When "Prince Charlie" in 1745 raided south to Derby, two of the Vaughans rode back with him to Scotland and fought by his side at Culloden. Driven into exile, both took service under the Spanish king, and the younger rose to the rank of field-marshal. The son of the elder brother, the great-great-grandfather of the cardinal, was allowed to come back to England and to resume possession of the family estates at Courtfield, in Herefordshire. Colonel John Vaughan, the cardinal's father, married, in 18.30, Eliza, daughterof Mr. John Rolls, of the Hendre, Monmouthshire, and an aunt of the first Lord Llangattock. Mrs. Vaughan became a convert to the Cathohc Faith shortly before her marriage and was, in many ways, a remarkable woman. It was her habit to spend an hour every day in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, begging of God that He would call her children to serve Him in the choir or in the sanctuary. In the e\ent all her five daughters entered convents, and of her eight sons six became priests, three of them bishops. Her- bert, the eldest born, went to the Jesuit College at Stonyhurst in the spring of 1841, and remained until the summer of 1847. From Stonyhiu-st he went to the Jesuit College at Brugelette, in Belgium, for three years. From an early age his thoughts had been turned to the priesthood. His mother, writing when he was only fourteen, said she was confident that he would be a" priest. His father's dearest wish was to see him win distinction as an English .soldier, but when he was only sixteen lie had made up his mind to give himself to the Clnnch. On leaving Brugelette he went to the Benedictines at Downside Abbey for twelve months as an ecclesiastical student. In the autumn of 1851 he arrived in Rome to attend the lectures at the Collegio Romano, and there for a time he shared lodgings with the poet, .\ubrey de Vere. The student years in Rome were a time of trial and diffi- culty. Wretched and incapacitating health made the labour of study a constant strain. At length Vau- ghan's friends, fearing that he would not live to reach the canonical age for the priesthood, sought and obtained from the Holy See permission for him to be ordained before the usual time. But with this deli- cacy of health went something of the energy which was so characteristic of his after career. In the inti- mate diary which he kept at this time he constantly reproaches himself for his excessive impetuosity in speech and action. He was ordained, at the age of twenty-two, on 28 October, 1854, at Lucca, and said his fir.st Mass in Florence at the Church of the Annun- ziata on the following day.

During all his student j'ears he had hoped to be a missionei- in Wales, but at Cardinal WLseman's call he now .accei)li'd the position of vice-president at St. Edmund's College, Ware, the principal ecclesiasti- cal seminary for the south of England. He went there in tlie autumn of 1855, after spending some months in a voyage of discovery among the seminaries of Italy, France, and Germany. Though not yet at the canonical age for the priesthood, and younger than some of the students, he was already vice-president at St. Edmutid's. Tlic position, a difficult one in any case, was made imjiossihle when it beeunie known that he had recently become an Olilate of St. Charles and therefore was a disci])l(' of Maiming. At once he was involved in the controversy between Wiseman and his chapter which darkened and embittered the last years of the cardinal's life. Wiseman was the friend and protector of Maiming, and Vaughan was regarded as the representative of a man .suspected of a wi.sh to bring all the ecclesiastical education of Southern England under the control of the Oblates. Litiga- tion followed in Rome, and the Oblates eventually withdrew from St. Edmund's. Vaughan looked back upon his work at St. Edmund's with a sad .sense of frustration. The disappointment worked in two

ways. He began to look for external work in the immediate present and, for the future, he dreamed dreams. He collected money and built a church in the county town, Hertford, and founded a mission at Enfield. But he wanted to do something great for God. Since he was a boy his constant prayer had been that whatever else was withheld he might hve an intense life. He resolved to consecrate himself to the service of the Foreign Missions. Blessed Peter Claver was his ideal hero and saint, and his first pur- pose was to go himself to Africa or Japan.

But, gradually, after many months of indecision, he came to want something which should be more permanent than anything dependent on the life of an individual. A great college which should send out an unending stream of missioners to all the heathen lands seemed a worthier object of effort. He had no money but he had a sublime faith, a perfect courage, and he determined to go abroad and beg, and to begin with the Americas. With the approval of Wiseman and the blessing of the pope he set sail for the Caribbean Sea in December, 1863. Landing at Colon, he crossed the Isthmus of Panama, then part of New Granada. The Government was at war with the Church, and the clergy were forbidden to say Mass or to administer the sacraments until they had taken an oath to accept the Constitution, which required what was regarded as an acknowledgment of the supremacy of the civil power in spiritual matters. The churches were all closed and, though hundreds of people were dying of small-pox, they were left to die without the help of a priest. That was enough for Vaughan. He threw himself into the work, said Mass, heard confessions, and gave extreme unction without the least regard for the government prohibi- tion. He was summoned before the president and told to desist. He had promised to say Mass the next morning in the house of a dying woman and to give her Viaticum. He kept his promise, but was taken before the prefect of the town. His offence being admitted he was required to give bail, and instructions were given that he should not be allowed to leave the port. It was clear that he could do no more good in Panama, so, forfeiting his bail, he at once went on board a United States steamer and sailed for San Francisco. Here, in spite of the limitations put to his appeals for money, during a stay of fi%e months he succeeded in collecting $25,000. From California he went back to Panama, intending to beg his way through Peru and Chili, then ride across the Andes into Brazil and thence to sail for home or for Australia. In Peru he collected .$15,000, and nearly twice as much in Chili. In March, 1865, he left the cities of the Pacific but, instead of crossing the Cordil- leras, he sailed round the Horn in "H. M. S. Charyb- dis". In Rio he had an interview with the emperor and money came in fast. In June his campaign was brought to an abrupt close by a letter of recall from Manning, who had just been appointed Archbishop of Westminster, and Vaughan sailed for England in June, 1865.

In the following March the College for Foreign Mis- sions was started in a hired house at Mill Hill, some eight miles from London. It began in a very humble way. Vaughan determined to keej) t he money he had collected in .\merica ;us a permanent endowment for the college, ;us a fund for the maintenance of the students; and when the gi-owing numbers of the students made it necessary to huilil there was nothing for it but to beg again. Haiiiiily friends came to his aid, as they did in a wonderful way all his life, and in March, 1871, a new college, built, on a freehold site, was opened with a community of thirty-four. In the autumn of the same year St. Joseph's Missionary Society had a.s- signed to it its first sjilicre of work among the coloured population of the I'niteil States. To make himself familiar with the conditions of the problem on the spot