Henry Vaux

Henry Vaux (c. 1559 – 19 November 1587) was an English recusant, priest smuggler, and poet during the reign of Elizabeth I. He was the eldest child of William Vaux, 3rd Baron Vaux of Harrowden. His first wife, Elizabeth Beaumont, was the daughter of John Beaumont of Grace Dieu, Leicester. Both of Vaux's parents came from traditionally Catholic families. Family life After Henry's birth, William Vaux had three more children with 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 ‘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 with 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 mainland Europe 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: From the day your Father first asked me to see you and to superintend your education I have become amazingly attached to you. For I marveled and was almost perplexed when I saw a boy who had not yet completed his ninth year, scion of a notable family, of such pleasant demeanour and refinement; who wrote and spoke Latin so well; who was equally good at prose and verse, accurate and quick at figures, devoted to the study of letters, diligent in application, able to sketch out and arrange his whole course of study. If circumstances had permitted it I should have desired nothing better than to give my enthusiastic help to that celebrated man, your Father, and to you, a boy of such great promise. But since some unknown fate, yours and mine, has deprived you of me and me of you, your Father (by whom I am dearly loved, and whom I particularly revere) has easily persuaded me that my voice and advice should come to you. ... Oxford, 28 July 1570.