He frequently visited Antwerp, and was entrusted with commissions on behalf of Cromwell and of Henry VIII, and about 1530 became royal agent or king's factor in the Netherlands.
[4] John Hutton, governor of the Merchant Adventurers' Company, in 1529 instigated charges of heresy against Vaughan before William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Sir Thomas More.
The influence of Cromwell protected Vaughan, but More continued to seek evidence against him, and succeeded in turning George Constantine to use,[5] and the matter was raised again in 1532.
[6] Vaughan also interceded in Hugh Latimer's favour when he was cited before convocation in January 1532, and reacted by writing a protest against Henry's persecution of reformers.
[7] In 1538 he was sent with Thomas Wriothesley and Sir Edward Carne to negotiate respecting the intended marriage of Henry VIII with the Duchess-consort of Milan.
About the same time he became governor of the merchant adventurers of Bergen, and in 1541 he was sent with Carne to the regent of Flanders to procure the repeal of the restrictions on English commerce.
[9] Vaughan's sister Magdalen or Mawdlyn was married first to the citizen and Grocer William Pratt (stepson of Sir Christopher Askewe, Draper, Lord Mayor 1533–34), who died in 1539.
After Vaughan's death his widow remarried (c. 1550) to George Rolle, Esq., of Stevenstone, Devon (d. 1552),[22][23] and again (before 1556) to Sir Leonard Chamberlain of Woodstock, Oxfordshire.