Cardinal Herbert Vaughan papers

Identity Statement

Reference code(s)	: GB 2254 HCV
Held at	: Mill Hill Missionaries   Click here to find out how to view this collection at http://www.millhillmissionaries.co.uk/ ›
Full title	: Cardinal Herbert Vaughan papers
Date(s)	: 1832-c1966
Level of description	: Sub-fonds
Extent	: c31 boxes of papers, 12 boxes of newspaper cuttings, 6 boxes of books, some artefacts.
Name of creator(s)	: Vaughan, Herbert Alfred (1832-1903) Hanmer, Caroline (1868-1903) Vaughan family

Context

Administrative/Biographical history:

: Herbert Alfred Vaughan was born in Gloucester on the 15th April 1832, the eldest son of Colonel John Vaughan and Eliza Vaughan, née Rolls. The Vaughans were a large landed family of English Roman Catholic recusant stock, whose estate was situated at Courtfield, near the English-Welsh border. Vaughan was educated at the Jesuit colleges of Stoneyhurst (1841-1846), and Brugelette, Belgium (1846-1848), and thence at the Benedictine Downside Abbey (1849-1951). Rather than following the his father's path as a country gentlemen, he decided to enter the priesthood, setting an example for his siblings (five of his seven brothers also became priests, and all of his five sisters became nuns). In 1852, therefore, Vaughan commenced theological studies in Rome, leading to his ordination on 28th October 1854, at Lucca in Italy, at the age of only 22. His first post after ordination was that of Vice-Rector at the seminary of St Edmund's, Ware, in Hertfordshire, the main seminary of the South of England.

Soon after, however, he determined to devote himself to missionary work. Not strong enough himself for the vigours of overseas work, he aimed to achieve this via the establishment of a missionary training college; he was encouraged in his plans by his friend Father (later Cardinal) Henry Edward Manning (1808-1892) and by Cardinal Nicholas Patrick Stephen Wiseman (1802-1865).

To this end, Vaughan embarked on a fundraising tour in the Caribbean and South America, with the result that a year after his return to England in 1865, he was able to rent a house in Mill Hill in north London. Under conditions of some poverty, the house operated as the new missionary training school, that of St Joseph's Society of the Sacred Heart for Foreign Missions. Following further fundraising initiated by Archbishop Manning in 1868, the building of a new college on a freehold site nearby was completed in 1871; at the time it served a community of 34 students.

Later that year, the first missionary endeavour of St Joseph's was realised. Rome assigned the evangelization of the recently freed black population of the southern states of the USA. To this end, Vaughan himself travelled to America with his first four missionary priests. This led to the successful establishment of a mission in Baltimore, Maryland, out of which developed, by 1892, a separate society, that of the Josephite Fathers.

Upon his return to England, following the death of the Bishop of Salford, William Turner, Vaughan was appointed as Turner's successor. Although this meant that he had to relinquish his role as the local superior of St Joseph's College, he remained until his death the head of the Missionary Society. His new role in Salford brought him into contact with a group of women organized by a Lancashire woman, Alice Ingham, attached to the Franciscan monastery at Gorton. Turner had imposed a period of probation on Ingham's group which had not expired upon his death; in 1878 Vaughan therefore invited the community, by way of an alternative probation, to take over the management of St Joseph's college. Ingham's women therefore moved to London and in 1883 took vows as Sisters of St Joseph's Society of the Sacred Heart of the Third Order Regular of St Francis. As associates of Mill Hill, as St Joseph's came to be known, the Sisters not only not only provided local support for the priesthood, but established their own mission territories, for example, in Brunei and later in Kenya, thus helping to further realise Vaughan's missionary vision.

Vaughan's other endeavours included the establishment of the Rescue and Protection Society, a philanthropic organization working with Catholic children in the north of England, the purchase and editorship of the Catholic paper The Tablet, and, following his ordination as Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster in 1892, the foundation of Westminster Cathedral. However, despite these other occupations, he was still able to witness the expansion of missionary activity from Mill Hill (this included the establishment of additional training colleges in the Netherlands and the Tyrol, and, during Vaughan's own lifetime, missions including those to South India, West Pakistan, Brunei, New Zealand and Uganda). Vaughan returned to Mill Hill at the end of his life, where he died and was buried in 1903.

See also: John George Snead Cox, The life of Cardinal Vaughan (London: Herbert & Daniel, 1910); Letters of Herbert Cardinal Vaughan to Lady Herbert of Lea, 1867-1903 ed. by Shane Leslie (London: Burns & Oates, 1942); Francis M. Dreves, Remembered in blessing: the Courtfield story (Glasgow: Sands & Co, 1955); Christopher Cook, A century of charity: the story of the Mill Hill Missionaries (London: Incorporated Catholic Truth Society, 1965); Arthur MacCormack, Cardinal Vaughan: the life of the third Archbishop of Westminster (London: Burns & Oates, 1966); Reverend William Mol, 'The archives of the Mill Hill Missionaries', Catholic Archives, II (1982), 20-27; Robert O'Neil, Cardinal Herbert Vaughan (Burns & Oates, 1995); Mary Vaughan, Courtfield and the Vaughans: an English Catholic inheritance (London: Quiller Press, 1989); Robert J. O'Neil, Cardinal Herbert Vaughan: Archbishop of Westminster, Bishop of Salford, founder of the Mill Hill Missionaries (Tunbridge Wells: Burns & Oates, 1995); Sister Germaine Henry, 'The archives of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of St Joseph', Catholic Archives, XVI (1996), 12-20; Reverend William Mol, 'The archives of the Mill Hill Missionaries since 1982', Catholic Archives, XVI (1996), 12-20.

Content

Scope and content/abstract:

The collection comprises material and memorabilia of Cardinal Herbert Vaughan, including:
Papers from 1832 to 1903, including pastoral letters and correspondence relating to his acquisition of The Tablet and his notebooks and sermon notes.
Material relating to Vaughan and his family including books by, relating to and about Vaughan, books by and about the Vaughan family, biographical material, books of cuttings from local and national newspapers, collected by Vaughan's Mill Hill neighbour Caroline Hanmer and relating to Vaughan and his work, and other newspaper cuttings.
Artefacts and personal effects such as Vaughan's bishop's hat.
Other material such as material relating to the 1966 centenary of the founding of St Joseph's Society of the Sacred Heart for Foreign Missions, and miscellaneous material such as publications on Westminster Cathedral, and information on 18th and 19th century English Catholics.

Publications include bound volumes of mission magazines left by Vaughan, such as: Annals of the Propagation of the Faith (1838-1902) and Illustrated Catholic Missions (a monthly publication that Vaughan helped to found in 1885; incomplete).

Access & Use

Language/scripts of material:
English.

System of arrangement:

The collection is a subfonds of the St Joseph's Society for Foreign Missions archive, and is subdivided into boxes as follows:
Box 1: Papers 1832-1852; Box 2: Papers 1852-1863; Box 3: Papers 1863-1865; Box 4: Accounts 1860-1865; Box 5: Papers 1864-1871, including the acquisition of The Tablet; Box 6: Papers 1871-1875; Box 7: Papers 1876-1880; Box 8: Papers 1881-1885; Box 9: Papers 1886-1890; Box 10: Papers 1891-1895; Box 11: Papers 1896-1900; Box 12: Papers 1901-1903; Boxes 13-18: Sermon notes; Box 19: Notebooks 1878-1897; Box 20: Pastoral letters 1872-1895; Box 21: Books written by Cardinal Vaughan; Box 22: Books relating to Cardinal Vaughan; Box 23: Books written by members of the Vaughan family; Box 24: Books written on members of the Vaughan family; Boxes 25-26: Studies on the life of Cardinal Vaughan; Box 27: Background information on the lives and times of Catholics in 18th and 19th century England; Box 28: Biographical articles; Boxes 29-30: Biographies; Boxes 31-40: Books containing cuttings from the local and national press (1868-1903), collected by Caroline Hanmer and relating to Cardinal Vaughan and his work; Box 41: Liturgical books left by Cardinal Vaughan; Boxes 42-43: Personal effects left by Cardinal Vaughan; Boxes 44-45 Miscellaneous material, including publications about Westminster Cathedral; Box 46: Material relating to the Vaughan family; Box 47: Transcribed letters; Box 48: Material relating to preparations for the centenary year (1966) of the founding of St Joseph's Missionary Society; Boxes 49-50: newspaper cuttings.

The collection also includes bound volumes of mission magazines as detailed in the Scope and content section.

Conditions governing access:

Some restrictions may apply. Refer to the Archivist in the first instance, Mill Hill Missionaries Archives, St Joseph's College, Lawrence St, Mill Hill, London NW7 4JX.

Conditions governing reproduction:

No publication without written permission. Apply to the Archivist in the first instance.

Finding aids:

The collection is uncatalogued.

Archival Information

Archival history:

Immediate source of acquisition:

The collection has been in the continuous possession of St Joseph's College, with the exception of newspaper cuttings collected and donated by Caroline Hanmer, a local resident of Mill Hill and documenter of Vaughan and his work.

Allied Materials

Related material:

The Mill Hill Missionary Library of St Joseph's College holds material relating to Cardinal Vaughan and the Mill Hill Missionaries.

Mill Hill Missionaries Archives also includes the St Joseph's Society for Foreign Missions archive, of which the Cardinal Herbert Vaughan papers are a subfonds.

National Register of Archives: Click here to view NRA record

Publication note:

Reverend William Mol, 'The archives of the Mill Hill Missionaries', Catholic Archives, II (1982), 20-27; Reverend William Mol, 'The archives of the Mill Hill Missionaries since 1982', Catholic Archives, XVI (1996), 12-20.

Description Notes

Archivist's note:
Compiled using:
Biographical dictionary of Christian missions, ed. by Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1998); New Advent Catholic Encyclopaedia: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15311b.htm (16th April 2002); Christopher Cook, A century of charity: the story of the Mill Hill Missionaries (London: Incorporated Catholic Truth Society, 1965); Sister Germaine Henry, 'The archives of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of St Joseph', Catholic Archives, XVI (1996), 12-20; Reverend William Mol, 'The archives of the Mill Hill Missionaries', Catholic Archives, II (1982), 20-27; Reverend William Mol, 'The archives of the Mill Hill Missionaries since 1982', Catholic Archives, XVI (1996), 12-20.
This description was prepared by the RSLP Mundus project. Used by London Signpost Archive Project with permission, Nov 2003.

Rules or conventions:

Date(s) of descriptions:
18th April 2002