William Vaughan (writer)

[1] He was the son of Walter Vaughan (died 1598) and was born at Golden Grove (Gelli Aur), Llanfihangel Aberbythych, Carmarthenshire, Wales—the estate of his father, through whom he was descended from an ancient prince of Powys.

He supplicated for the law degree of BCL on 3 December 1600, but before taking its examination he went abroad, travelled in France and Italy, and visited Vienna, where he proceeded LlD, being incorporated at Oxford on 23 June 1605.

The location of his grave in the churchyard is unknown, but in a service held in Llangyndeyrn church on 31 October 1987 a memorial tablet to Vaughan was unveiled by George Noakes, Archbishop of Wales at the time.

His chief work is The Golden Fleece (1600), under the pseudonym "Orpheus Junior", "a general guide to morals, politics and literature, in which the manners of the time are severely criticized, plays being denounced as folly and wickedness".

[2] A long and fantastic prose allegory, it demonstrates "the Errours of Religion, the Vices and Decayes of the Kingdome, and lastly the wayes to get wealth, and to restore Trading" through the colonization of Newfoundland.