Thomas Vaughan (died 1483) to the Duke of Burgundy in 1468. In 1475, on the same day that Edward's eldest son, the future Edward V, was invested as Prince of Wales, Vaughan was knighted, having acted for some years as Chamberlain to the young prince. In 1478, he was elected to parliament as knight of the shire for Cornwall. After Edward IV died in 1483, Vaughan was accompanying Edward V from Ludlow to London when the party was intercepted by the future King Richard III, then Duke of Gloucester. Richard had Vaughan arrested and executed along with Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers and tutor
Elizabeth Woodville to the throne with any degree of validity. To strengthen his claim and unite the two feuding noble houses, Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort agreed that the latter's son should marry the former's eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, who upon the death of her brothers became the heiress of the House of York. Henry Tudor agreed to this plan and in December 1483 publicly swore an oath to that effect in the cathedral in Rennes, France. A month earlier, an uprising in his favour, led by Buckingham, had been crushed. Richard III's first Parliament of January 1484 stripped Elizabeth of