Herbert Vaughan

His Eminence Herbert Vaughan
Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster
Cardinal Vaughan
Archdiocese	Westminster
Province	Westminster
Appointed	8 April 1892
Term ended	19 June 1903
Predecessor	Henry Edward Manning
Successor	Francis Bourne
Other posts	Cardinal-Priest of Santi Andrea e Gregorio al Monte Celio
Orders
Ordination	28 October 1854 by Giulio Arrigoni
Consecration	28 October 1872 by Henry Edward Manning
Created Cardinal	16 January 1893
Rank	Cardinal-Priest
Personal details
Birth name	Herbert Alfred Vaughan
Born	(1832-04-15)15 April 1832 Gloucester, Glos., England
Died	Mill Hill, Middlesex, England
Buried	Westminster Cathedral
Nationality	British
Denomination	Roman Catholic Church
Parents	John F. and Eliza (née Rolls) Vaughan
Previous post	Bishop of Salford 1872-1892

Herbert Alfred Vaughan (1832–1903) was an English prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Westminster from 1892 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1893. He was the founder in 1866 of St Joseph's Foreign Missionary College, known as Mill Hill Missionaries. He also founded the Catholic Truth Society. In 1871 Vaughan led a group of priests to the United States to form a mission society whose purpose was to minister to freedmen. In 1893 the society reorganized to form the US-based St. Joseph Society of the Sacred Heart, known as the Josephite Fathers. Vaughan also founded St. Bede's College, Manchester. As Archbishop of Westminster, he led the capital campaign and construction of Westminster Cathedral.

Early life and education

Herbert Vaughan was born at Gloucester, the eldest son of Lieutenant-Colonel John Francis Vaughan, of an old recusant (Roman Catholic) family, the Vaughans of Courtfield, Herefordshire. His mother, Eliza Rolls from The Hendre, Monmouthshire, was a Catholic convert and intensely religious. All five of the Vaughan daughters became nuns, while six of the eight sons received Holy Orders and became priests. Three were later called as bishops in addition to Herbert: Roger became Archbishop of Sydney, Australia; Francis became Bishop of Menevia, Wales; John became titular bishop of Sebastopolis and auxiliary bishop in Salford, England.

Herbert Vaughan studied for six years at Stonyhurst College, then with the Benedictines at Downside Abbey, near Bath, England; and finally at the Jesuit school of Brugelette, Belgium. The latter was later relocated to Paris, France.

In 1851 Vaughan went to Rome, in the Papal States of Italy. He had two years of study at the Accademia dei nobili ecclesiastici, where he became a friend and disciple of Henry Edward Manning. Manning, a Catholic convert, became the second Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster following the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in Great Britain in 1850.

Career

Vaughan received Holy Orders at Lucca in 1854. On his return to England, he became Vice-President of St Edmund's College, at that time the chief seminary in the south of England for candidates for the priesthood. Since childhood, Vaughan had been filled with zeal for foreign missions. He decided to found a great English missionary college to fit young priests for the work of evangelizing non-Christians abroad. With this goal, he made a fund-raising trip to America in 1863, from which he returned with £11,000.

He succeeded in opening St Joseph's Foreign Missionary College, Mill Hill Park, London, in 1869. Vaughan also became proprietor of The Tablet, and used its columns to proclaim his message. In 1871 after the American Civil War, Vaughan led a group of priests to the US to establish a mission society to minister to freedmen in the South. In 1893 the society, based in Baltimore, Maryland, reorganized as an American institution. Among its founders was the first African-American Catholic priest trained and ordained in the US, Charles Uncles.

In 1872 Vaughan was consecrated as the second Bishop of Salford; during his tenure he established St Bede's College. Vaughan chose to live at Hampton Grange, on the St. Bede's College campus, with his own Bishop's residence on Chapel Street in Salford being given over to a Seminary. In 1892 Vaughan succeeded Manning as Archbishop of Westminster, receiving the cardinal's hat in 1893 as Cardinal-Priest of Santi Andrea e Gregorio al Monte Celio

In 1879, as the most eminent local Roman Catholic, Vaughan was chosen by the then Home Secretary, R.A. Cross, 1st Viscount Cross, to be one of the trustees of the £1,000 compensation paid to a Whalley Range farm labourer, William Habron, pardoned for the murder of PC Nicholas Cock.

Vaughan was a man of different type from his predecessor; he had none of the ultramontane Manning's intellectual finesse or his ardor for social reform. Vaughan was an ecclesiastic of remarkably fine presence and aristocratic leanings, intransigent in theological policy, and in personal character simply devout.

It was due to this theological "purity" that Vaughan assisted in scuttling an opportunity for rapprochement between Rome and the Church of England that was put into motion by a high-church Anglican, Charles Wood, 2nd Viscount Halifax and a French priest, Ferdinand Portal. Through the efforts of Vaughan and Archbishop of Canterbury Edward White Benson, this early form of ecumenism was put down. It culminated with the condemnation of Anglican Orders by Pope Leo XIII in his bull, Apostolicae curae.

Cardinal Vaughan's tomb

It was Vaughan's most cherished ambition to see an adequate Westminster Cathedral. He worked untiringly to secure subscriptions for a capital campaign, with the result that the foundation stone for the cathedral was laid in 1895. When Vaughan died in 1903 at the age of 71, the building was so far complete that a Requiem Mass was said there. His body was interred at the cemetery of St. Joseph's College, the headquarters of the Mill Hill Missionaries in North London but it was later moved to the Cathedral.

Honours and legacy

• St. Joseph Foreign Missionary College, London, United Kingdom
• St Bede's College
• St. Joseph Society of the Sacred Heart, Baltimore, MD
• Westminster Cathedral
• In 1914, the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School was founded in his memory in Holland Park, London.

See also

• List of notable cardinals
• Catholic Church in Great Britain
• Stonyhurst College
• Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School
• Bernard Vaughan, his brother
• Roger Vaughan, his brother
• John Stephen Vaughan, his brother
• Alice Ingham

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 
• Life of Cardinal Vaughan, JG Snead Cox (2 vols., London: 1910).

External links

• Herbert Vaughan, Catholic Hierarchy website

Catholic Church titles
Preceded by William Turner	Bishop of Salford 1872–1892	Succeeded by John Bilsborrow
Preceded by Henry Edward Manning	Archbishop of Westminster 1892–1903	Succeeded by Francis Bourne
Preceded by Henry Edward Manning	Cardinal Priest of Ss. Andrea e Gregorio al Monte 1893–1903	Succeeded by Alessandro Lualdi