ABSTRACT
Of all the regions under study, south-west Wales is the most destitute of Civil War records. Not a single relevant family collection survives, and for information on local Royalism the historian depends entirely upon scanty and ambiguous corporation documents and reports made to the rival High Commands. Thus Richard Vaughan, 2nd Earl of Carbery in the peerage of Ireland, must remain the most shadowy of the three Lieutenant-Generals. He was the greatest resident magnate of the south-west, seated at Golden Grove in Carmarthenshire, and must therefore have played a considerable role in early Royalist activity in that region. Yet so impoverished are the records that his name does not feature in connection with the Civil War until 10 January 1643, when a regiment raised by him appeared at Oxford with Hertford.1 * Even then he does not appear to have accompanied his soldiers in person, because his brother, Henry Vaughan, was given a knighthood upon the regiment’s arrival,2 presumably for leading it to the King. Thereafter it was certainly designated ‘Vaughan’s’.
