Felix Vaughan (7 March 1766 – 22 April 1799) was an English barrister, known for his role as defence counsel in the treason trials of the 1790s.
[1][2] The son of Samuel Vaughan of Middlesex, a tradesman,[3] he was baptised at Westminster St James on 20 March 1766, and educated at Harrow School and Stanmore,[4] where he was briefly a pupil of Samuel Parr, who became a lifelong friend, as did Basil William Douglas, Lord Daer, a schoolfellow, son of Dunbar Douglas, 4th Earl of Selkirk.
[8] Back in England, Vaughan was part of the London radical milieu including James Losh;[9] also one of the group dining with John Horne Tooke.
[20] In February, with Gurney, he successfully defended Daniel Isaac Eaton on a sedition charge, for publishing an allegory by John Thelwall.
[21] The defence rested largely on freedom of the press, and the jury refused to find that Eaton had criminal intention.
[30] He has been considered the author of the pamphlet Cursory Strictures of 2 October 1794 on the handling of the treason trials by Sir James Eyre LCJ, as has William Godwin.
[34] Of the group of defendants charged with Hardy and Tooke, Jeremiah Joyce chose Vaughan as counsel, rather than the team of Erskine and Vicary Gibbs.