He was the son of Walter Vaughan and was born at Golden Grove (Gelli Aur), Llanfihangel Aberbythych, Carmarthenshire, Wales – the estate of his father, through whom he was descended from an ancient prince of Powys. He was brother to John Vaughan, 1st Earl of Carbery and Henry Vaughan (1587−1659), a well-known Royalist leader in the English Civil War.
William was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, and took the degree of LL. D.
In 1616 he bought a grant of land in the south coast of Newfoundland, to which he sent two batches of settlers. In 1622 he visited the settlement, which he called Cambriol, and returned to England in 1625. Vaughan apparently paid another visit to his colony, but his plans for its prosperity were foiled by the severe winters. He died at his house of Torcoed, Carmarthenshire, in August 1641. His chief work is The Golden Grove (1600), a general guide to morals, politics and literature, in which the manners of the time are severely criticized, plays being denounced as folly and wickedness. The section in praise of poetry borrows much from earlier writers on the subject.
He married Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of David ap Robert of Llangyndeyrn. By her he had one son, Francis, who appears to have died young. Vaughan married, for his second wife, Anne, only child of John Christmas of Colchester. He married Jemima, daughter of Nicholas Bacon of Shrubland Hall, near Ipswich.
