Henry Vaux

Family life

After Henry’s birth, William Vaux had three more children by his first wife: Eleanore (later to become the well-known priest-smuggler and recusant, Mrs Brooksby), Elizabeth (who became a Franciscan nun in Rouen) and Anne (who assisted Eleanore’s recusant work under the pseudonym of ‘Mrs Perkins’). After his first wife’s death, Lord Vaux married Mary Tresham in 1563. The new Lady Vaux was the sister of Sir Thomas Tresham who was to become a leading recusant spokesman in the Elizabethan age. The Tresham and Vaux families had been cordial neighbours for generations and had often intermarried. William Vaux had five more children by this second marriage: George, Edward, Ambrose, Muriel, and Catherine.

Edmund Campion

Lord Vaux’s eldest two children, Henry and Eleanore, proved to be prodigious learners and in 1568 their father hired Edmund Campion of Oxford University (a future Jesuit martyr), to tutor them for several months. Later, on the eve of his departure to the Continent to study for Catholic orders, Campion wrote a letter of encouragement to Henry Vaux, his young former pupil, in Latin. Here is a brief (translated) extract:

Changing circumstances

In 1571, William Vaux moved with his family to the grander family seat at Harrowden with the second Lady Vaux. The children of his first marriage were entrusted to the care of their maternal grandmother for the next ten years. She was provided with ₤20 annually for Henry and ₤10 for each of his three sisters. Lord Vaux formed an agreement with Sir Thomas Tresham whereby the knight would receive ₤100 per annum for a period of fifteen years and provide a dowry of ₤500 each for Eleanore, Elizabeth, and Anne.

It was probably at his grandmother’s residence that Henry Vaux wrote those poems of his which have survived. Some (“No trust in Fortune”, “Beautie is brittle”, and “Meditatio de Passione Christi”) are dated as having been written when he was thirteen (c. 1572) and others (the Agamemnon poems) when he was seventeen (c.1576), but the similarity in style and subject in the remaining undated poems suggests that they were also written during his teenage years. Incidentally, Henry Vaux’s cousins, Francis and John Beaumont, the playwright and the poet, came from the same home.

Priest smuggling

In 1580, Edmund Campion and Robert Persons, another leading Jesuit, were sent to England by Cardinal Allen and the Jesuit Father General. The pair reached England in June 1580, and on their arrival in London were met by George Gilbert, the organiser of an association of young Catholic gentlemen whose task it was to assist and provide for the missionary priests. Henry Vaux was one of the chief members of this group, as was his brother-in-law Edward Brooksby. From 1580 until his arrest in 1586, Henry Vaux was continually involved in sheltering priests.

Refusal to marry

In an attempt to secure the family’s financial situation, Lord Vaux decided to arrange a profitable marriage for Henry. Henry refused, however, as he had decided to lead a contemplative life. In 1585 Henry Vaux reluctantly signed an agreement whereby his half-brother George would inherit the interests of the barony while he would receive a modest annuity for himself. After Henry Vaux’s death the title would pass to George or his heir, thus reuniting the barony with the family fortune.

Unwanted attention

In August 1584 Henry Vaux was mentioned in a report to Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s spymaster, and from this time onwards his name appeared regularly in confessions and the reports of spies. (Henry Vaux unwittingly had two apostate priests in his employ). By May 1585, the government knew that Henry Vaux was serving as treasurer for the priest-smuggling network. At around that time he attended a large meeting of Jesuits, recusants, and secular clergy in Hoxton which established a fund for the support of the Catholic clergy and to which he promised one hundred marks.

In May 1585 Anthony Babington visited Lord Vaux in Hackney about purchasing land from him in Nottinghamshire. While seemingly innocent enough, the Vaux family’s subsequent association with Babington aroused the suspicions of Walsingham’s spy network. Henry Vaux’s house was closely watched once Walsingham became aware of the plot and in August 1586 Henry Vaux was named in a list of Babington’s regular associates. Not only was he by now the de facto leader of the priest smuggling network, but he had been associated in the past with other conspirators such as Francis Throckmorton, a distant cousin, who had been executed in 1584 for conspiring to assassinate the Queen in 1583. Lord Vaux and Sir Thomas Tresham were suspected of being willing to aid the Babington Plot but were both in prison at the time.

Southwell, Garnett and Arrest

Robert Southwell and Henry Garnett (two future martyrs) arrived in England on 23 July 1586. Garnett was housed by Eleanore Brooksby and her sister Anne at Shoby while Robert Southwell took up residence at Henry Vaux’s home in Hackney. From 1586-1587 Robert Southwell had the use of the Vaux house in Hackney. On 4 November 1586, the chief magistrate of London, Richard Young, led a search of the Vaux house but could not find Southwell. They did, however, arrest Henry Vaux, who was brought before the Privy Council and committed to the Marshalsea Prison.

Leave and death

On 22 May 1587 Henry Vaux was granted three months’ sick-leave from the Marshalsea. He had contracted consumption (modern-day pulmonary tuberculosis) and went to recuperate in Leicestershire where he was cared for by his sisters, Anne and Eleanore. He died unexpectedly on 19 November 1587. and was buried in the local parish. Father Henry Garnett later claimed that Henry Vaux uttered the simple vows of a Jesuit priest on his deathbed. However, Robert Persons makes no mention of Henry Vaux desiring to become a Jesuit, but rather indicates that he desired to lead a contemplative and celibate life. Persons makes the following tribute to Henry Vaux: