Robert Alfred Vaughan

Robert Alfred Vaughan (1795-1868) was a prominent Congregational minister, eminent scholar, and prolific writer. He was privately educated by William Thorpe in Bristol, after which he pastored churches in Worcester and Kensington (1819-1833) before becoming professor of modern history at University College, London, in 1834. He left in 1843 to assume the presidency of Lancashire Independent College, Manchester. In 1857 he returned to London, ministering for a time at Uxbridge before retiring. He was one of the founding editors of the British Quarterly Review (1845-1886), remaining with the journal for twenty years. Among his publications are Religious Parties in England: Their Principles, History, and Present Duty (1839); Congregationalism: or, The Polity of Independent Churches Viewed in Relation to the State and Tendencies of Modern Society (1842); The Modern Pulpit Viewed in Relation to Society (1842); and The Age of Great Cities; or, Modern Society Viewed in its Relation to Intelligence, Morals, and Religion (1843), which was reviewed in the Baptist Magazine 35 (1843), 302-306. His edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost was reprinted numerous times in the last half of the nineteenth century. See Albert Peel, The Congregational Two Hundred (London:  Independent Press, 1948), 149.