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(the addition of the name 'Vaughan' came from Edward's
mother), born in Bayswater in 1797. He was educated at Winchester and
Westminster before winning a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge
in 1816, where, like his father before him, he studied law. After
establishing himself as a lawyer he brought out a new edition of his
father's book, 'Notes on Saunders Reports', which he followed with a

treatise called 'On the Law of Executors and Administration', which was
published in 1832 and reprinted many times during Edward's lifetime. In
the year he became a judge,1847, he was also knighted and went on to
become one of the most respected judges on the circuit.

Sir Edward Vaughan Williams married in 1828, and like his father had three sons and three daughters, with the earlier mentioned, Arthur Charles Vaughan Williams (RVW's father), born in London in 1834. He was educated at Westminster and later at Christ Church, Oxford, where he obtained his BA in 1857.

With a house already full of lawyers Arthur decided on a career in the church, and in 1860 was ordained deacon and sent to Bemerton, near Salisbury, where he served as a curate before becoming a fully-fledged vicar in 1865. He married the aforementioned Margaret Susan Wedgwood (who was also a niece of Charles Darwin) in February 1868, which takes us right back to the birth of RVW in 1872 and perhaps a larger understanding of the origins of his music - music that can clearly be traced back to the Age of Enlightenment, and the more caring and more tolerant - humanistic if you like - attitudes that his lawyer grandfather and great-grandfather brought to an almost moribund legal profession. Mix all of this together with the revolutionary theories of Charles Darwin (theories that must surely have permeated every corner of Leith Hill Place), plus the hugely influential creations of the Wedgwood family - and their own liberal attitudes to their workers - and you have an anvil of creativity, and
not least care for your fellow human beings, which comes shining through
every piece of music RVW wrote.

I remember as a child taking part in a country dancing competition put on by a handful of Warwickshire schools as part of the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations in Stratford in the 1950s, a competition judged by Vaughan Williams, who I remember as a large elderly man slumped in a chair on
the Bancroft Gardens outside the Memorial Theatre. I also remember that
he tapped his walking stick in time to the music being played by a motley

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