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: 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.