Herbert Vaughan

Herbert Alfred Henry Joseph Thomas Vaughan (15 April 1832 – 19 June 1903) was an English prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Westminster from 1892 until his death in 1903, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1893. He was the founder in 1866 of St Joseph's Foreign Missionary Society, known best as the Mill Hill Missionaries. He also founded the Catholic Truth Society and St. Bede's College, Manchester. As Archbishop of Westminster, he led the capital campaign and construction of Westminster Cathedral. In 1871 Vaughan sent a group of Mill Hill priests to the United States to minister to freedmen. In 1893, the American branch of the society spun off, with Vaughan's permission, to form the Society of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, whose members are known as Josephites. Early life and education Herbert Vaughan was born at Gloucester, the eldest son of Lieutenant-Colonel John Francis Vaughan, of an old recusant (Catholic) family, the Vaughans of Courtfield, Herefordshire. His mother, Eliza Rolls from The Hendre, Monmouthshire, was a Catholic convert and intensely religious. All five of the Vaughan daughters became nuns, while six of the eight sons received Holy Orders and became priests. Two were later called as bishops in addition to Herbert: Roger became Archbishop of Sydney, Australia and John became titular bishop of Sebastopolis and auxiliary bishop in Salford, England. A nephew, Francis, became Bishop of Menevia, Wales. In 1841 Herbert, the eldest, went to study for six years at Stonyhurst College, then to the Jesuit school of Brugelette, Belgium (1846–1848), and then with the Benedictines at Downside Abbey, near Bath, England.