House Vaughan
“Ex Principio, Aeternum”
From the Beginning, Eternal
No family is more closely bound to the origins of the Commonwealth than the House of Vaughan. Tradition holds that Aldric Vaughan set the first foundation stone of the Citadel of Elpson on the Feast of Saint Aurelius in 1142, and that the charter of the city was witnessed beneath the Vaughan banner.
For more than eight centuries the family has supplied the Commonwealth with chancellors, ambassadors and presidents of the Crown Council. Its archives — held at Vaughan Palace and partially deposited with the National Archive in 1931 — remain the single most important private collection of Elpsonian constitutional history.
The house is known for restraint. Vaughans rarely speak publicly, and it is often observed in the capital that when a Vaughan does speak, the Council listens.
Chronicle of the House
- 1142Aldric Vaughan witnesses the Charter of Foundation.
- 1189Edmund Vaughan presides over the first sitting of the Crown Council.
- 1260Recognised as First among the Seven Founding Houses by the Concord of Saint Aurelius.
- 1611Lady Isolde Vaughan negotiates the Treaty of the Three Harbours.
- 1848Lord Castor Vaughan drafts the Liberal Amendments, extending the franchise.
- 1853Benedict Vaughan, younger son of Castor, sails for Norfolk, founding the Virginia branch.
- 1882The Virginia Vaughans settle at Roanoke as the railway town rises.
- 1951The Roanoke fortune is spent on the Blue Ridge Trust and the Vaughan Wards.
- 1931Deposit of the Vaughan Papers with the National Archive.
- 2026The house hosts the Winter Assembly at the Palace of Saint Aurelius.
Notable Figures
The Virginia Vaughans
By the 1840s the First House had more sons than seats. Under the Statute of Precedence only the eldest line could sit in the Council of Houses, and younger sons were customarily sent abroad to carry the name and the family's interests. One branch crossed the Atlantic — and for a century the history of the Vaughans became bound up with the history of Virginia.
Arrival at Norfolk
Benedict Vaughan, second son of Lord Castor Vaughan, landed at Norfolk aboard the Elpsonian merchantman Santa Isolde with letters of credit drawn on the Banco d’Aurelian. He traded in tobacco and timber along the James River, and in 1856 married Margaret Lyle of Lynchburg, joining the family to an old Virginia line.
The War Years
Elpson's doctrine of neutrality bound Benedict as an Elpsonian subject; his warehouses at Richmond were requisitioned and burned in April 1865. The family retreated west into the Blue Ridge with little more than the Vaughan papers and the signet ring of the First House, both still held by the Virginia branch.
Roanoke
When the little settlement of Big Lick became Roanoke and the railways converged on it, Benedict's son Edmund Lyle Vaughan staked what remained of the family capital on land and lending in the new town. The Vaughan & Lyle Bank opened on Jefferson Street in 1889 and grew with the iron furnaces and rail yards that made Roanoke the 'Magic City'.
The Magic City Years
Three generations of Roanoke Vaughans kept the old customs: Elpsonian Latin at grace, the Feast of Saint Aurelius each December, and letters exchanged with Vaughan Palace every Christmas. The family house on Mill Mountain's slopes, known locally as 'Aldric House', received visiting Elpsonian diplomats more than once.
The Spending of the Fortune
After the war, Colonel Thomas Aldric Vaughan, decorated in Italy in 1944, made the decision that defines the Virginia branch. Rather than preserve the fortune, he spent nearly all of it. He founded the Blue Ridge Trust, which bought and protected thousands of acres of mountain land around Roanoke, and endowed the Vaughan Wards, which treated children during the polio epidemics of 1950–1953 free of charge. When the Colonel died in 1958 the bank had been sold and the money was gone. Asked why, he is said to have replied with the family motto: Ex Principio, Aeternum — what you begin well endures.
The Line Continues
The descendants of the Virginia Vaughans remain in the Roanoke Valley. Under the reforms of 1971 the American line was formally re-recognised by the Council of Houses, and its members are entitled to sit at the Winter Assembly.
Relations with the Houses
Historically allied with House Bellacourt by marriage; a long, courteous rivalry with House Vassiliev over precedence in foreign affairs.