Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/205

 which, owing to ill-health, he resigned in October 1870. He was connected with the early development of the Oxford movement in London, and his rooms were a frequent place of meeting for the sub-committees connected with the London Church Union and the foreign chaplaincies. From 1871 to 1876 he was engaged in cataloguing the coins in the Bodleian Library. From 1846 he was a member of the Numismatic Society, and to his friendly care much of the success of that body is due. In 1852 he became one of the secretaries, and for some time assisted John Yonge Akerman [q. v.] in editing the first series of the ‘Numismatic Chronicle,’ in which he himself wrote twenty-five papers. In 1855 he was elected president, and remained in office until 1874. For many years the society met in his rooms in Gate Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. On 4 June 1868 he became a fellow of the Royal Society. From November 1875 to his death he was the secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, and for many years secretary to the Royal Society of Literature. He died at 102 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, on 21 June 1885, having married on 11 July 1861 Louisa, eldest daughter of Francis Rivington of Harley Street, London.

Vaux's knowledge was large and varied, more especially in all that related to oriental antiquities. His ‘Nineveh and Persepolis: an Historical Sketch of Ancient Assyria and Persia, with an Account of the recent Researches in those Countries’ (1850; 4th ed. 1855), did much to popularise the discoveries of Layard and other travellers. He also wrote: 1. ‘Handbook to the Antiquities in the British Museum: a Description of the Remains of Greek, Assyrian, Egyptian, and Etruscan Art,’ 1851. 2. ‘Ancient History from the Monuments; Persia from the earliest Period to the Arab Conquest,’ 1875: new edition by Prof. A. H. Sayce, 1893. 3. ‘Ancient History from the Monuments: Greek Cities and Islands of Asia Minor,’ 1877. In 1854 he edited for the Hakluyt Society ‘The World encompassed by Sir F. Drake.’

[Times, 24 June 1885; Proc. of Society of Antiquaries, 1885–7, xi. 145; Proc. of Numismatic Society, 15 Oct. 1885, pp. 18–19; Guardian, 24 June 1885.] 

VAVASOUR, JOHN (d. 1506?), judge, was eldest son of John Vavasour of Spaldington in Yorkshire, by his wife Isabell, daughter and coheir of Thomas de la Haye, lord of Spaldington (Misc. Gen. et Herald. i. 194;, Visitation of Yorkshire, ed. Foster, p. 116). He studied law at the Inner Temple. His first employment in court recorded in the year-books took place in Trinity term 1467. In Trinity term 1478 he was invested with the order of the coif; in June 1483, in the last fortnight of the reign of Edward V, he was nominated a king's serjeant, an appointment renewed by Richard III and Henry VII. On 23 Sept. 1485 he was appointed one of the justices of pleas within the duchy of Lancaster. In the first year of Henry's reign the post of recorder of York was contested by candidates nominated by the king and by the Earl of Northumberland, and the corporation took advantage of the rivalry to elect Vavasour. He ingratiated himself with the king during a royal visit to York in April 1486, and afterwards as the bearer of despatches in regard to the complicity of John de la Pole, earl of Lincoln [q. v.], in Simnel's rebellion. He was knighted, and on 10 April 1489 was appointed on the commission to make inquest in the city of York concerning the insurrection. On 14 Aug. 1490 he was appointed puisne justice of the common pleas. From a memorial dated 1505–6 it appears that he was concerned in Sir Richard Empson's lawsuit against Sir Robert Plumpton [see under ], and that he suffered himself to be influenced by Empson. Vavasour died without issue, probably soon after Michaelmas 1506. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Talboys, son of Sir William Talboys [q. v.]

[Foss's Judges of England, v. 78; Gent. Mag. 1851 i. 477–85, ii. 461; Dugdale's Origines, pp. 47, 215; Plumpton Correspondence (Camden Soc.), pp. lxxxix, cvii, 159, 161; Campbell's Materials for Reign of Henry VII (Rolls Ser.), i. 84, 559, ii. 443; Brewer's Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, i. 1097.] 

VEDDER, DAVID (1790–1854), Scottish poet, son of a small proprietor, was born in the parish of Deerness, near Kirkwall, Orkney, in 1790. Receiving little or no education, and being ‘pretty well grown before he could read or write’ (, Poet and Poetry of Scotland), he at length read extensively, and seems ultimately to have and seems ultimately to have mastered French, Italian, and German. Early left an orphan, he went to sea, and when twenty-two became captain of a Greenland whaler, which he commanded for several years. In 1815 he was appointed first officer of an armed cruiser, and in 1820 became a tide-surveyor, officiating successively at Montrose, Kirkcaldy, Dundee, and Leith. Retiring on a pension in 1852, he died at Newington, Edinburgh, on 11 Feb. 1854, and was buried in the Grange cemetery, Edinburgh. Vedder was survived by his widow, by a son in the royal navy, and by two daughters, one of whom was married to