David Thomas Gwynne- Vaughan. 
With Portrait. 
D AVID THOMAS GWYNNE-VAUGHAN 1 was born on March is, 
1871, at Royston House, Llandovery, his mother’s home. He was the 
eldest child of his parents, Henry Thomas Gwynne-Vaughan, of Cynghordy, 
and later of Erwood Hall, Breconshire, and Elizabeth, second daughter of 
David Thomas, of Royston House, Llandovery, who died in 1874. His 
father, who had two daughters and a son by a second wife, died in 1890. 
The Vaughans are an ancient Welsh family, descended from Sir 
Roger Vaughan, who was killed at Agincourt, and was one of the ‘three 
valiant Welshmen . . . who had rescued the King, and were knighted by 
him as they lay bleeding to death 
Going back to more mythical days the Vaughans trace their descent 
to Cradoc of the Strong Arm, one of the Knights of the Round Table, and 
further back still. In remote days the G Wynnes of Cynghordy and the 
Vaughans are said to have had a common ancestor in Aulach, great-grand- 
father of Cradoc, who again was the descendant of Gwarldeg, King of 
Garthmadryn (now Brecon) (a. d. 230 ?). 2 
That extraordinary person Thomas Vaughan, the Rosicrucian and 
alchemist (1621-65), belonged to another branch of the family. 
David Gwynne-Vaughan attended a preparatory school at Kington, 
Herefordshire, and later, the Monmouth Grammar School. 
In the October term of 1890 he entered Christ’s College, Cambridge, 
with an exhibition from his school, and in the following year obtained 
a scholarship in Science from the College. He was thus a member of Charles 
Darwin’s college, an association which, as it seems to me, had a special 
appropriateness. He took a First Class in Part I of the Natural Science 
Tripos in 1893. 
Gwynne-Vaughan did not go on to Part II of the Tripos, and thus had 
no opportunity at Cambridge of showing his real powers. During the year 
after he left Cambridge, he was engaged in teaching, as Science Master at 
a school. 
1 I am indebted to Mrs. H. C. I. Gwynne-Vaughan, D.Sc., F.L.S., for particulars of her 
husband’s life and family, and for much kind help in other ways. 
2 I understand that much more information about these old families is to be found in Jones’s 
History of Brecknockshire and Nicholas’s Annals and Antiquities of the Counties and County 
Families of Wales. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XXX. No. CXVII. January, 1916.] 
A* 
