Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/204

  ‘Miscellany’—fifteen pieces in all—are included in Dr. Grosart's ‘Fuller Worthies' Library Miscellanies,’ 1872, vol. iv.

Vaux's son and heir,, third (1542?–1595), distinguished himself by his devotion to the catholic faith, and by his zeal in protecting priests and jesuits. He married twice: first, Elizabeth, daughter of John Beaumont of Grace Dieu, Leicestershire; and, secondly Mary, daughter of John Tresham of Rushton, Northamptonshire, and sister of Sir Thomas Tresham. Both his wives (especially his second wife, Mary Tresham) were, with his sons and daughters, as enthusiastically devoted as himself to the cause of the Roman catholic faith. In the summer of 1580 he offered the jesuit Campion an asylum in his houses at Hackney and Harrowden. There Vaux devised means for secretly observing all Roman catholic rites which were imitated in many catholic households. The fact became known to the government, and Vaux and his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Tresham, were summoned before the Star-chamber on 18 Aug. 1581. On refusing to answer the questions put to them they were straightway committed to the Fleet prison. They were put on their trial on 28 Nov. 1581 for contempt of court, and were recommitted to prison (Harl. MS. 859;, Campion, p. 247; , Records, iii. 657 seq.). Subsequently Vaux confessed that the accusation of harbouring Campion was justified, and flung himself on the queen's mercy (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1581–90, passim;, Annals, i. 180–1). He was set at liberty on paying a heavy fine. On 12 June 1591 a government spy reported that Vaux and his friends, ‘Sir Thomas Tresham, Mr. Talbot, Mr. Owen, and Mr. Townsley, are accounted very good subjects, and great adversaries of the Spanish practices; these are the most markable catholics’ (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1591–4, p. 56). But while Vaux held aloof from Spanish conspiracies, he continued to spend his fortune in the cause of his religion. Writing to Lord Burghley on 18 Feb. 1591–2, he begged to be excused from attendance in parliament on the ground that he had pawned his parliament robes and was suffering the extremes of poverty (, Original Letters, 3rd ser. iv. 108–10). He died on 20 Aug. 1595 (cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1595–7, p. 154). Henry, his son by his first wife, died in his lifetime without issue. George, his son by his second wife, married in 1590 Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Roper (afterwards Lord Teynham), but died in 1594 (in his father's lifetime), leaving his widow to be guardian of their infant son Edward, who succeeded his grandfather as fourth Baron Vaux.

, fourth (1591–1661), was brought up as a devoted catholic by his mother and her sisters-in-law, Anne Vaux [q. v.], and Eleanor, wife of Edward Brooksby (cf., Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, ed. Morris, passim; , Records, v. 960). When he was a boy of fourteen suspicion fell on his mother and aunts of encouraging the gunpowder plot, and they were examined by the council. Although he was regularly summoned to the House of Lords during the reign of Charles I, the fourth lord spent much of his time on the continent. He married, in 1632, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Howard, earl of Suffolk [q. v.], and widow of William Knollys, earl of Banbury [q. v.] He was believed to have lived with the lady in her first husband's lifetime, and to be the father of the latter's reputed children. Vaux died without lawful issue on 8 Sept. 1661, being buried at Dorking. He settled in 1646 on his wife's son, Nicholas Knollys, called third earl of Banbury, his lands at Harrowden. His title passed to his only surviving brother, Henry, on whose death without issue on 25 Sept. 1662 it fell into abeyance. It was revived on 12 March 1838 in the person of George Charles Mostyn of Kiddington, who traced his descent to Mary Vaux, wife of Sir George Symeon of Britwell, Oxfordshire, and a daughter of George, son of William, third lord Vaux of Harrowden. The House of Lords decided in favour of Mostyn's claim to the title, in preference to that of Edward Bourchier Hartopp, who sought to trace his descent to Katherine Vaux, wife of Henry Neville, lord Abergavenny, another daughter of George, son of the third lord Vaux of Harrowden.

[Dugdale's Baronage, ii. 304–5; Burke's Peerage; Warton's Hist. of English Poetry; Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica, 1802; Bridges's Northamptonshire, ii. 103; House of Lords Report on the Vaux of Harrowden Peerage Case, 1838. A collection of documents dealing with peerage litigation is preserved in the British Museum (press-mark Banks, 3. i. 3.]  VAUX, WILLIAM SANDYS WRIGHT (1818–1885), antiquary, only son of William Vaux (d. 1844), prebendary of Winchester and vicar of Wanborough, Wiltshire, was born on 28 Feb. 1818. He was educated at Westminster school from 1831 to 1836, and matriculated from Balliol College, Oxford, on 18 March 1836, graduating B.A. 1840 and M.A. 1842. In 1841 he entered the department of antiquities of the British Museum, and in January 1861 became the keeper of the department of coins and medals, a post