Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/196

 as a port must be regarded as partly due to his unceasing exertions.

Vaughan was for many years a fellow of the Royal Society, a fellow of the Linnean Society, and a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. He was a member of the New England Corporation, and filled the office of governor till 1829. He was also a member of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, which was instrumental in 1815 in establishing the first savings bank in London, at Leicester Place, Westminster. Vaughan died in London on 5 May 1850, at his residence, 70 Fenchurch Street. He was a governor of Christ's Hospital and an honorary member of the Society of Civil Engineers. A bust of Vaughan was executed by Sir Francis Chantrey in 1811, and was reproduced from a drawing by the Rev. Daniel Alexander in Vaughan's ‘Tracts on Docks and Commerce,’ 1839.

He was the author of: 1. ‘On Wet Docks, Quays, and Warehouses for the Port of London,’ London, 1793, 8vo. 2. ‘Plan of the London Dock, with some Observations respecting the River,’ London, 1794, 8vo. 3. ‘Answers to Objections against the London Docks,’ London, 1796, 8vo. 4. ‘A Letter to a Friend on Commerce and Free Ports and London Docks,’ London, 1796, 8vo. 5. ‘Examination of William Vaughan in Committee of the House of Commons,’ London, 1796, 8vo. 6. ‘Reasons in favour of London Docks,’ London, 1797, 8vo. 7. ‘A Comparative Statement of the Advantages and Disadvantages of the Docks in Wapping and the Isle of Dogs,’ 2nd ed. London, 1799, 8vo. Nos. 1 to 6 were published collectively in 1797 under the title, ‘A Collection of Tracts on Wet Docks for the Port of London, with Hints on Trade and Commerce and on Free Ports.’ They were republished in 1839, with the addition of No. 7, and of several small pieces under the title, ‘Tracts on Docks and Commerce, printed between 1793 and 1800.’

[Memoir prefixed to Tracts on Docks and Commerce, 1839; Gent. Mag. 1850. i. 681; Pantheon of the Age, 1825.] 

VAUS or VASCUS, JOHN (1490?–1538?), latinist and the earliest Scottish writer on grammar, was born at Aberdeen about 1490. He appears to have studied at Paris (verses addressed by him to his fellow students in Materia Noticiarum, Paris, 1514), and to have returned to his native town in 1515 or 1516, when he was appointed humanist or professor of Latin in the college of St. Mary (afterwards King's College), succeeding in that post a namesake and probable relative, Alexander Vascus (, Episc. Aberd. Vitæ, ed. Moir, 1894, pp. 90, 96).

Boece, the principal of the college, describes him as ‘in hoc genere disciplinæ admodum eruditus, sermone elegans, sententiis venustus, labore invictus.’ By his pupil and colleague, Robert Gray, he is styled ‘clarissimus vir, optimis literis, amænissimo ingenio, suavissimis moribus, singulari probitate, gravitate, fide et constantia præditus’ (letter to Aberdeen students); and by Ferrerius, ‘vir cum literis tum moribus ornatissimus et de juventute Scotica bene meritus’ (Acad. Dissertat.)

In 1522 Vaus published, for the use of his students, a commentary on the first part of the ‘Doctrinale’ of Alexander de Villa Dei; combined with a more elementary original treatise ‘Rudimenta puerorum in artem grammaticalem’ (Sale Catalogue of D. Laing's library). He revisited Paris to superintend the printing of these books at the Ascensian press; and the former (of which the only known copy is in the University Library, Aberdeen) contains interesting letters to the Aberdeen students from Vaus and from his printer, Jodocus Badius, reprinted by M. L. Delisle in the ‘Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes’ (vol. lvii.) Of the ‘Rudimenta’ a second edition appeared in 1531; and a third, ‘Rudimenta artis grammaticalis,’ was issued posthumously in 1553, under the editorship of Theophilus Stewart, the successor of Vaus in the professorship of humanity. A fourth edition was printed at Edinburgh by Lekpreuik in 1566 ( and, Annals of Scottish Printing, p. 23). The work is valuable to the student of early Scots, a great part of the book being in that dialect, though devoted only to Latin grammar.

Vaus was in office in 1538 (Off. and Grad. of King's Coll. p. 45), but probably died in that year, as on 17 April 1539 Stewart had succeeded to his professorship.

[Spalding Club's publications, especially Miscellany, vol. v. pref. p. 43; Aberdeen and Banff Collections, p. 65; Fasti Aberdonenses, pref. p. xxi; Ruddiman's Bibliotheca Romana; Delisle's Josse Bade et Jean Vaus, Paris, 1896; Kellas Johnstone's Script. Aberd. Incunabula in Scottish Notes and Queries, vol. xii.] 

VAUTOR, THOMAS (fl. 1616), musician, was apparently a household musician in the family of Anthony Beaumont, of Glenfield, Leicestershire; and filled the same post to Sir George Villiers after his marriage with Anne Beaumont in 1592. On