In defeating the rebellion of the Percys at the battle of Shrewsbury, Henry IV overcame an existential threat to the infant Lancastrian regime. It was a threat that came upon him suddenly and undeservedly. The rebellion had but one cause, the overweening ambition of the Percys, and no justification, or at least no meaningful one. The best the Percys could offer was Henry’s alleged duplicity in the deposition of Richard II in 1399: they claimed that they had supported him because he had sworn to claim only his great Lancastrian patrimony and not the Crown.  Given their readiness to accept the rewards the new King bestowed upon them (and their belief that even these were not enough), this justification must have been widely perceived as hollow as it was. 

It was these rewards that made the rising so dangerous to Henry IV. Not only did they give the Percys a virtual monopoly of the local exercise of royal authority in their northern heartland, the east march towards Scotland, but also in north Wales, where the earl of Northumberland’s son, Henry Hotspur, was made justiciar.  Hotspur, a renowned soldier with a military career extending back to the late 1370s, repaid the King’s trust by fighting against Glyn Dŵr in the early stages of the Welsh rebellion, and, much more significantly, by defeating an invading Scottish force at Homildon Hill on 14 September 1402.  This victory, however, was to drive a wedge between the Percys and the King, or, perhaps to put it more accurately, to give the aggressively acquisitive Percys expectations of reward beyond anything a prudent monarch could give. The Scottish commander, Archibald Douglas, earl of Douglas, was among those captured, and the King exercised his legitimate right to deny the Percys permission to ransom a soldier whose reputation was almost as elevated as Hotspur’s.  This rebuff was added to another unjustified grievance over a ransom. At the battle of Pilleth on the previous 22 June Hotspur’s brother-in-law, Sir Edmund Mortimer, had been captured by Glyn Dŵr, and the King refused to assent to his ransom, taking the view, correctly as it transpired, that Mortimer (who subsequently married one of the Welsh rebel’s daughters) was a traitor. 

This was the immediate background of a rising that took the King entirely by surprise.  On 9 July Hotspur raised rebellion in Cheshire, as the King, with a small force, was advancing north from London, ironically with the aim of supporting the Percys against the Scots on the northern border, ‘to the last unaware of the yawning danger that was opening at his very feet’ (as the great Victorian scholar, James Hamilton Wylie, elegantly put it).  He was at Nottingham when, on 12 July, he heard that Hotspur had rebelled. Perhaps acting on the advice of the experienced Scottish soldier, George Dunbar, earl of Dunbar, whose feud with the earl of Douglas had brought him into Henry’s ranks, he determined to risk the hazard of an immediate battle rather than return to London.  Here he had one advantage. The great Lancastrian retinue was particularly strong in the Midlands, and many of its leading gentry rallied to his cause, as they had done in 1399.

The King was also aided by what appears to have been a miscalculation of the rebel side.  No one could dispute Hotspur’s choice of Cheshire as the locus of rebellion, for not only had it been a Ricardian stronghold but its geographical position offered the prospect of joining the Welsh rising with his own.  If, however, the location of the rising was logical, its timing was not.  Hotspur’s plan appears to have been to seize Shrewsbury, the headquarters of the heir to the throne, Henry, prince of Wales, who, despite his youth, had been appointed royal lieutenant in Wales in the previous March, and there to await reinforcements from his father in the north and from the Welsh rebel leader.  This plan, however, was thwarted by the King’s swift and decisive action.  Had Hotspur delayed making plain his intentions until the King had reached the north, he would have had time to seize Shrewsbury and the prince. The King would then have been faced a long march back to intercept Hotspur, who would probably have made for London. The timing of the rebellion was also unfortunate in another sense, although one that was not apparent at its beginning. On 12 July Glyn Dŵr was defeated near Carmarthen by the Pembrokeshire levies, headed by Sir Thomas Carew, constable of Narberth, so diminishing any aid he might have been able to offer Hotspur in a future campaign. Carew, something of an unsung hero of the campaign, was later fittingly rewarded by a grant of Sir Edmund Mortimer’s forfeited estates.

These considerations aside, the rapid approach of the royal army forced Hotspur to abandon his plan of taking Shrewsbury, and draw up in battle array on its outskirts.  None the less, although much had run in the King’s favour in the lead up to the battle, when that battle was joined, it was still a close-run thing.  Although it appears to have lasted no more than two hours, it was, in the words of the later Gregory’s Chronicle, ‘one of the wyrste bataylys that ever came to Inglonde,, and unkyndyst’.  The casualty rate was very high, a product of the intense exchange of longbow fire with which it began, with, according to the St. Albans chronicler, Thomas Walsingham, men falling ‘as fast as leaves … in autumn’.  These casualties were heaviest on the royalist side, certainly in respect of the leading men (the most notable casualty on his side was the young Edmund, earl of Stafford), and it is probably fair to say that, if Hotspur had not fallen on the field, the result of the battle, if not that of the rebellion, might have been different. Indeed, if the accidents of battle had brought death to the King rather than to Hotspur, the civil war, the ‘Lancastrian’ title against the ‘Yorkist’, (represented in 1403 by the young Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, nephew of Hotspur’s wife) would have begun in 1403 rather than 1459.

SJP

Further reading

J.M.W. Bean, ‘Henry IV and the Percies’, History xliv (1959), pp. 212-27.

P. McNiven, ‘The Scottish Policy of the Percies and the Strategy of the Rebellion of 1403’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library lxii (1979-80), pp. 498-530.  

For biographies of some of the casualties on the royalist side: The Commons, 1386-1421, ed. Clark, Rawcliffe and Roskell, ii. 262-5 (Sir Walter Blount of Barton Blount, Derbyshire), 467-9 (Sir John Calverley of Stapleford, Leicestershire), 593-4 (Sir John Clifton of Clifton, Nottinghamshire); iv. 364-6  (Sir Hugh Shirley of Shirley, Derbyshire), 607-9 (Sir Thomas Wensley of Wensley, Derbyshire). For a probable casualty on the rebel side see ii. 384-6 (Sir Hugh Browe).

The seminar takes place on 3 June 2025, between 5:30 and 6.30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

The commanding Recording Angel memorial in St Stephen’s Porch, Westminster Hall, is dedicated to peers, MPs, officers, and their sons who lost their lives in the First World War. Designed by the Australian sculptor, Sir Bertram Mackennal, and unveiled in November 1922, the Recording Angel memorial includes three English-born sons of Welsh MPs – Iorwerth Glyndwr John (1894-1916), William Pugh Hinds (1897-1916), and William Glynne Charles Gladstone (1885-1915), himself an MP.

Through naming, it demonstrates the ways in which the Houses of Parliament captured expressions of English Welsh dualities within its political iconography in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. The memorial also provides a useful vehicle through which to examine the performance of English Welsh dual identities during the war itself and the fluidity of identity formation back and forwards across the borders of England and Wales in the first decades of the twentieth century.

One of the ninety-four sons recorded on the memorial was Iorwerth Glyndwr John, son of the MP for East Denbighshire, Edward Thomas (E. T.) John. The Pontypridd-born MP, a keen advocate of home rule for Wales, had been an iron ore merchant in Middlesbrough before entering parliament. His son Iorwerth, born in Middlesbrough in 1894, was educated at New College, Harrogate and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read jurisprudence. Serving with the South Wales Borderers, he was killed near Loos in February 1916.

On Iorweth’s death, his alma mater recalled:

While at Oxford he showed keen interest in Welsh music and in the political and national life of Wales generally… Doubtless, if he had lived, he would have played a prominent part in the public life of Wales.

For Iorwerth’s epitaph, E. T. John chose an inscription which was drenched in Welsh symbolism, using lines adapted from the bard Hedd Wyn’s wartime poem, Nid â’n Ango ([It] Will Not Be Forgotten):

Un O Feibion Hoffusaf Cymru |  Ei Aberth nid el heibio | a’i enw annwyl nid a’n ango (One of Wales’s favourite sons | His sacrifice will not be passed over | And his dear name will not be forgotten)

This commemorative act signifies a clear desire by the bereaved father to emphasise the deceased’s links to Wales and the Welsh language, and to maintain linguistic communion with his son beyond death, despite Iorwerth’s ostensibly English upbringing.

William Pugh Hinds, who died from wounds in February 1916, was the only son of the Blackheath draper and MP for West Carmarthenshire, John Hinds. Born and educated in Blackheath, Hinds was studying engineering at the Electrical Standardising, Testing, and Training Institution, London before he enlisted in November 1914. He served as an officer in France with the 15^th (1^st London Welsh) Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers (RWF), a unit deliberately set up to accommodate Londoners of Welsh heritage and enthusiastically sponsored by his father.

Within months of volunteering, Hinds was severely wounded by a sniper’s bullet. Just days before his death, he was visited in an emergency field hospital by the then Minister for Munitions, David Lloyd George. This encounter had such an impact on the politician that when he returned to London, he confided to his mistress, Frances Stevenson, ‘The horror of what I have seen has burnt into my soul, and has almost unnerved me for my work.’

Hinds’s death continued to haunt Lloyd George. When he returned to France in late 1916, he made a pilgrimage to Hinds’s grave at Merville Communal Cemetery, subsequently receiving a note of gratitude from Hinds MP that he ‘found time to visit our dear lad’s grave.’ As with E. T. John, Hinds selected a Welsh inscription for his offspring’s headstone: Yn Anghof Ni Chant Fod (They Will Not Be Forgotten), from the poem ‘Dyffryn Clwyd’, so that even in death he embraced his Londoner son in a Welsh martial identity.

The final MP’s son listed on the Recording Angel was William Glynne Charles Gladstone (William), also an MP in his own right. He was killed in 1915 whilst serving as an officer with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers (RWF) in France. William was born at 41 Berkeley Square, London in 1885, the son of William Henry Gladstone MP, and grandson of the former Liberal Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone.

Like his grandfather, William embodied an attachment to both England and Wales, inheriting the family estate at Hawarden Castle, Flintshire when he was twenty-one. As the Squire of Hawarden, William encouraged those in the district to join up and military service in the RWF further deepened his ties with Wales. In April 1915, for example, William and his mother exchanged correspondence on an orphanage at Hawarden which was being used for RWF convalescent soldiers, the former writing, ‘Please let the Orphanage soldiers know that they can wander over the Park Woods and Old Castle in case they don’t do it.’

William maintained a connection with his Welsh home through discussion of his family’s patronage, on both military and domestic fronts, of RWF soldiers. Following his death, William was often characterised in obituaries as ‘a border hero’ whose life criss-crossed the boundaries between England and Wales; the Liverpool Post noting, ‘the border counties lost a true and devoted son in the late W G C Gladstone, of Hawarden.’

Notably, John, Hinds and Gladstone all served with Welsh regiments: the South Wales Borderers, the 15^th (London Welsh), and the Royal Welsh Fusiliers respectively. This suggests that within Welsh diasporic families in England, those of military age were often prompted by patrilineal ties to approach their military enlistment through the lens of Welshness, seeking to serve in a Welsh regiment.

Ultimately, the Recording Angel memorial is important in acknowledging the existence of English Welsh dualities within wartime memorialisation which, in turn, acts to shore up a sense of shared Britishness. The memorial also highlights the functioning of a form of militarized Welsh patriotism amongst the male diasporic elite, some of whom were MPs, which occasionally demanded the sacrifice of their own sons.

WU

Wendy’s seminar takes place on 3 June 2025, between 5:30 and 6.30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

The 2024 general election saw the Green Party of England and Wales enjoy a historic breakthrough, winning four seats and 1.8 million votes. The election was also the end of an era, with Caroline Lucas standing down after fourteen years as the party’s sole representative in the Commons. Yet while Lucas is commonly described as the Green Party’s first Member of Parliament, one other former MP could plausibly claim this historic title: Cynog Dafis, Plaid Cymru MP for Ceredigion and North Pembrokeshire from 1992 to 2000. The reasons why reveal a unique, and largely forgotten moment in Welsh and British, political history.

A veteran of the Welsh nationalist movement, Dafis had played a leading role in the direct-action group Cymdeithas yr laith (the Welsh Language Society) in the 1960s and had stood as the Plaid Cymru candidate for the west Wales constituency of Ceredigion and North Pembrokeshire in 1983 and 1987. Yet alongside his Welsh nationalism Dafis was also an ardent environmentalist, having been inspired by the influential green manifesto Blueprint for Survival (1971). While Plaid Cymru had championed environmental issues in its activism in mostly rural, Welsh-speaking parts of North Wales, and other nationalist or regionalist parties in Europe had already worked closely with Greens, Dafis’s demonstrated a unique degree of political commitment. He enthusiastically followed the rise of Green politics across Western Europe, and had come to identify a clear coalescence between environmentalism’s belief in ‘the decentralisation of power… to relatively self-sufficient communities’ and Plaid Cymru’s emphasis on ‘the small nation, the local community and the safeguarding of cultural and linguistic diversity’ [Dafis, 2005, p.1]. As a result, Dafis was able to act as an ‘ideological bridge’ [Fowler & Jones, 2006, p.320] between environmentalism and Welsh nationalism, which by the 1980s was taking on wider relevance.

In an effort to revive Plaid’s fortunes after the defeat of the 1979 devolution referendum, party leader Dafydd Elis Thomas had pursued a strategy known as the ‘politics of alliance’ [Lynch, 1995, p.202], based on forming connections with both trade unions, particularly the miners during the 1984-5 strike, as well as a variety of new social movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), the feminist movement, and green politics. While based largely in the realm of extra-parliamentary campaigning, by the end of the 1980s this strategy had taken on a particular electoral relevance. The 1989 European Parliament elections in Britain had seen the Green Party win an astonishing 15 per cent of the vote (nearly 2.3 million votes), at that time the best performance by any Green Party anywhere in Europe. While the Greens were not able to win any seats, the result appeared to reveal the growing salience of environmental concerns to British voters, prompting all three of the major parties to release policy statements on the issue in the following years.

In Wales, the results appeared both an opportunity, and a threat to Plaid Cymru, with the Greens coming within a percentage point of supplanting them in terms of vote share. To the leaderships of both parties, the result revealed how ‘each party was standing in the way of the other’ [Lynch, 1995, p.204] and sparked a series of negotiations to formulate a Plaid-Green electoral alliance. Green members were invited to Plaid’s 1989 conference and by 1990, Plaid had pledged its commitment to creating a ‘sustainable economy’ [Dafis, 2005, p.2], demonstrating a clear shift toward a more environmentalist outlook. By 1991, both party’s annual conferences had endorsed a formal alliance, but due to the Greens’ decentralised internal structure, this was left largely to the initiative of local parties and activists. In the constituency of Ceredigion and North Pembrokeshire, where Dafis was preparing to stand for parliament for a third time, a uniquely strong political and electoral alliance was established between the local Green and Plaid Cymru parties, later known as ‘Llandysul Accord’. Both parties were to work together in the election campaign, such as organising an event attended by 600 people and addressed by prominent Green politician Jonathon Porritt, while Dafis was to fight the seat on a Plaid-Green joint ticket.

The alliance’s high point came with Dafis’ election victory, rising from fourth place at the last election to beating the incumbent Liberal Democrat Geraint Howels on a ‘massive swing’ of 13.3 per cent [Carter, 1992, p.446]. When Dafis took his seat in the commons, he reportedly ‘took every opportunity to announce the fact of the election of the UK’s first Green Party MP’ [Fowler & Jones, 2006, p.319]. His maiden speech reflected the unique combination of environmentalism and nationalism that made up his political outlook, mentioning both devolution proposals for Wales and the Rio summit on the environment. In parliament, Dafis would employ an influential Green Party member, Victor Anderson, as his researcher, and would support a number of private members bills concerned with classic green issues, such as household energy conservation. Perhaps his most influential legislative contribution was a Road Traffic Reduction bill in March 1996 which, while being unsuccessful, significantly informed a Liberal Democrat bill that became law the next year. 

Ultimately, however, the alliance proved short-lived. While 1992 had finally arrested Plaid Cymru’s electoral decline since the 1970s, and grew its parliamentary representation to four seats, the election had been a bitter disappointment for the Green Party, sparking a new wave of internal conflict which both further sapped its effectiveness, and led to the resignation of several leading figures. Amid this internal division, the influence of Green activists opposed to an alliance with Plaid, and to the ideology of nationalism altogether, grew. Activist opposition, plus the recognition of some major policy differences between the two parties, eventually led to the end of the alliance in April 1995, which was announced with ‘deep regret’ [Fowler & Jones, 2006, p.327] by Ceredigion Green and Plaid Cymru members in a joint press conference. While maintaining good relations with some sections of the Green Party, Dafis would fight the 1997 election as a solely Plaid Cymru candidate, before stepping down from parliament in 2000 to take a seat in the newly formed Welsh Assembly. By that point, Plaid’s new leader Dafydd Wigley had sought to ‘disentangle the party’s political identity’ from the Greens, and to ‘project a more direct, nationalist image’ [Lynch, 1995, p.209].

After enjoying its first taste of election victory in 1992, the Green Party would be forced to wait until 2010, with Caroline Lucas’s dramatic victory in Brighton Pavilion, before it could boast another Member of Parliament, this time on a purely Green ticket. When asked about his historic status while attending the Greens’ 2011 conference, Dafis would describe himself as a ‘hybrid’ MP, and as such ‘didn’t really count’ as Britain’s first Green MP. Graciously, he would grant that title to Lucas [BBC News, 28 February 2011]. Nevertheless, as the Green Party enters a new era as a small, yet significant presence in the Commons, recovering Dafis’ unique political career, and the forgotten Plaid-Green alliance, may help historians place this otherwise novel political situation in the broader context of contemporary British history, an era in which constitutional reform, and ‘post-material’ issues such as climate change and the environment have taken on greater significance.

A.S.

Further reading

John Burchell, ‘Here come the Greens (again): The Green Party in Britain during the 1990s’ Environmental Politics 9:3 (2000), pp.145-150.

Neil Carter, ‘Whatever happened to the environment? The British general election of 1992’, Environmental Politics 1:3 (1992), pp.442-448.

Cynog Dafis, ‘Plaid Cymru and the Greens: A Flash in the Pan or a Lesson for the Future?’, 19^th Annual Lecture of the Welsh Political Archive, National Library of Wales, 4 November 2005 [translated].

Gavin Evans, ‘Hard times for the British Green Party’, Environmental Politics 2:2 (1993), pp.327-333.

Carwyn Fowler and Rhys Jones, ‘Can environmentalism and nationalism be reconciled? The Plaid Cymru/Green Party alliance 1991-95’, Regional & Federal Studies 16:3 (2006), pp.315-331.

Peter Lynch, ‘From red to green: The political strategy of Plaid Cymru in the 1980s and 1990s’, Regional & Federal Studies 5:2 (1995), pp.197-210.

The History of Parliament’s 2023 Undergraduate Dissertation Competition is open for entries until 29 September. Find all the details here.

“Britain is now at the full strength of an Imperial tide, and whilst the tide will still get higher, it will never submerge the joy of the little nation in its past, in its present, and in the future which it conceives for itself.”

David Lloyd George, Cardiff, October 1916.

Wales has been described by many as England’s first colony, yet it also played a formative role in British imperialism, creating a nuanced, almost paradoxical national identity that is crucial in understanding Wales today.

At the turn of the 20^th century Wales was experiencing cultural, economic and political transformation, re-emerging as a distinct nation after centuries of English dominion. This national rebirth intersected with the high-water mark of British imperialism, too, as the Empire approached its territorial and cultural extent.

In the two most significant wars during this period, the 1899-1902 Boer War and the 1914-1918 First World War, the Welsh nation compared itself to fellow small nations facing colonial expansionism and defined itself against imperial aggression.

David Lloyd George, the first and only Welsh prime minister, was a particular exponent of this ‘small nations’ narrative, personifying it as one of the strongest critics of the Boer War, and one of the strongest supporters of fighting the First World War to the bitter end.

He was a Welsh speaker, who, early in his political career, campaigned for home rule through the Cymru Fydd movement. By the end of it, however, he was at the very top of British politics as the Empire became the biggest in history. He was a complicated man whose split (or more accurately concentric) personal and political identities mirrored those of Wales – Welsh, but also British. Colonised, but also a coloniser. 

The Boer War was a popular one in Wales as it was in the rest of Britain. But there was a key contingent of Welsh Liberal Members of Parliament – the so-called pro-Boers – who opposed it using the small nations narrative, and there were many more who could certainly be classed as sympathetic to the anti-war camp while not explicit pacifists.

They held diverse views, seeing Britain’s war against the two small Boer republics as a variety of things: a greedy landgrab; a vengeful punitive campaign; a needlessly brutal colonial expedition; or even a fundamentally just war, but incompetently prosecuted.

Lloyd George led these Welsh pro-Boers, and it was on this issue he made his name, giving impassioned speeches against the war in constituency meetings in Wales and in the House of Commons alike, earning him a reputation as a firebrand backbencher.

Lloyd George’s political metamorphosis, even maturation, from anti-war activist to ‘knock-out blow’ wartime leader is a fascinating one. His rapid rise from rural constituency MP to prime minister, via ministerial posts as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Minister of Munitions and Secretary of State for War, brought with it a greater burden of responsibility and understanding of the realities of statecraft, as he sat in the seat of power of the world’s largest empire. His 1911 Mansion House speech, where he warned a sabre-rattling Germany over the Agadir Crisis, was a key point in this journey.

While his private correspondence shows that he desperately sought to maintain peace in Europe on the eve of the First World War, he became increasingly convinced of the inevitability of war and the necessity of intervening in the event of a violation of Belgian neutrality.

Here the small nations narrative returns, as his decision to support declaring war on Germany and Austria-Hungary for invading the small nations of Belgium, Serbia and Montenegro was crucial in ensuring that the Cabinet remained united. He invoked the narrative in speeches throughout the war, frequently and explicitly making connections between his Welshness and his belief that the war was a just one, a war to defend fellow small nations.

Speaking to the Welsh community in his birthplace of Manchester in September 1918, Lloyd George noticed a Welsh flag hung before the platform. Pointing to the ddraig goch (red dragon), he made a call to Welsh martial tradition to deliver the final blow to Germany that was the ongoing Hundred Days Offensive:

“I like to see that its tail is well up, with a curl. But it is rather shocking that its tongue is well out too. And its claws are out too. And I do not want them sheathed until the greatest foe of human progress has been crushed.”

This war was another popular one, especially at the outset. The small nations narrative was now used, contrastingly, as a casus belli for ‘gallant little Wales’ to support, and indeed send its sons to fight and die in, a war to defend small nations rather than to conquer them. The Empire, once criticised for trampling on the right to self-determination, was now lauded for defending it.

Present but not necessarily popular in the Boer War, this narrative framing could now be found across all of Wales, from recruitment meetings and fundraising drives for Belgian refugees, to school assemblies and local newspaper reports, to even the national Eisteddfod, the beating heart of Welsh culture.

Wales in the early 20^th century was a proud nation with a distinct culture, language, religion and identity. It cannot be said, however, that it was not broadly supportive of Empire, if more critical of it than English or Scottish counterparts. The Empire was a popular project across the United Kingdom, and Wales was no exception. It had a seemingly contradictory national-imperial identity, that can be clearly seen through the contrasting uses of the small nations narrative.

In the early 20^th century, Wales conceptualised itself as a ‘small nation’ with a history of fierce independence, using this self-image to argue for a moral and responsible British Empire as a defender of self-determination, without challenging its underlying principles. David Lloyd George personified this and did much to popularise this view.

The seemingly paradoxical relationship that Wales had with the Empire shows us that history seldom fits into neat boxes. There are always nuances, contradictions, and exceptions. Yet it is all the richer for it.

RC

Robert Crosby graduated with a degree in International Relations and History from the London School of Economics in 2022, and is now completing a master’s degree in Strategic Communications at King’s College London, where he is researching the intersection of devolved politics and norm entrepreneurship in the context of the Welsh Government. He is pursuing a career in communications and currently works for a legal public relations agency.

Further reading

John W. Auld,. “The Liberal Pro-Boers”, Journal Of British Studies (1975), 14 (2): 78- 101

John S. Ellis, ““The Methods Of Barbarism” And The “Rights Of Small Nations”: War Propaganda And British Pluralism”, Albion (1998), 30 (1): 49-75

Bentley B. Gilbert, “Pacifist To Interventionist: David Lloyd George In 1911 And 1914. Was Belgium An Issue?”, The Historical Journal (1985), 28 (4): 863-885

Kenneth O. Morgan, “Peace Movements In Wales 1899-1945”,Welsh History Review (1980), 10: 398-430.

In the context of contemporary British government, the office of lord privy seal – more correctly lord keeper of the privy seal – is a non-job, a sinecure which in recent decades has been used to provide the leader of the House of Lords or House of Commons with a salary and a seat in cabinet. The privy seal as an instrument of government was effectively abolished in 1884. However, a few centuries ago, it was a key feature of the crown’s executive power. Royal orders issued under the sign manual (the monarch’s signature) or the signet (the monarch’s personal seal) were almost always transmitted to the Privy Seal Office, where warrants were prepared, authorizing action by the Exchequer or Chancery, the latter department being the home of the great seal – literally the final seal of approval of government decisions. In addition to this pivotal role in the crown’s bureaucracy, the privy seal was sometimes used to approve payments by the monarch or, conversely, to confirm royal requests to individuals for financial assistance, in the shape of ‘privy seal loans’.

In 1625 the lord privy seal was Edward Somerset, 4th earl of Worcester. The last of Elizabeth I’s courtiers to retain a senior government role under the Stuarts, he was now aged around 73, and his reappointment that year by Charles I was probably a reward for his decades of loyal service to the crown. In practice the Privy Seal Office was run by its clerks, who could operate without Worcester’s direct supervision, but the steady flow of warrants generated substantial fees, a proportion of which found their way into the earl’s pockets. Nevertheless, he took his responsibilities seriously, and does seem normally to have retained custody of the privy seal itself. For example, in 1624 he entrusted the seal to George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, before leaving London for a summer break at his country seat, Raglan Castle in Monmouthshire.

Charles I’s reign began badly. A military campaign against the Habsburgs on the continent had stalled, and the king wanted to try a naval attack on Spain instead, but for this he needed extra tax revenues. When he summoned Parliament, MPs voiced concerns that taxes voted in 1624 for the war had been squandered, and declined to grant fresh ones on the scale that Charles needed. To complicate matters further, a serious plague outbreak had recently hit London, and it became clear that a long session at Westminster was out of the question. Accordingly, Parliament was adjourned to Oxford, where the king intended to appeal for a supplementary tax grant. And because no one knew how long these discussions would last, most key government personnel went too, no doubt relieved to get away from the capital. Among them was the earl of Worcester, bringing with him the privy seal.

In the event, the 1625 Parliament’s second phase proved even more acrimonious than the first, and lasted less than a fortnight, before an angry Charles dissolved the session on 12 August without securing any more financial assistance. Two days later, the government decided to press on regardless with the naval strategy, resolving to address the tax revenue shortfall by means of privy seal loan requests. Meanwhile, as the plague was still raging in London, government ministers scattered in all directions, rather than returning to Whitehall. The king went hunting in Hampshire, while a much-depleted privy council met at Southampton.  Worcester himself was excused from his official duties, and retired to Raglan for the remainder of the summer. And for reasons that have never been explained, he took the privy seal with him. Presumably in the confused exodus from Oxford he failed to find anyone else to whom he could hand the seal, and decided that the safest option was to keep it himself. At any rate, it seems highly unlikely that he packed it by accident.

Given the general disruption to the government’s operations, some days passed before anyone noticed that the seal was missing, and then no doubt inquiries were made to establish where it had gone. In the meantime, the usual flow of official warrants ground to a halt, and the new policy of privy seal loans also had to be paused. Finally, on 30 August the lord treasurer, James Ley, Lord Ley, informed the privy council ‘that the lord privy seal was gone to his house in Wales, far remote from this place, and had taken the seal with him’ [Acts of the Privy Council, 1625-1626 ed. J.V. Lyle, 148]. As an emergency measure, the council agreed that warrants under the privy signet should temporarily be treated as equivalent to those under the privy seal, so that the normal business of the Exchequer might resume. However, the king’s approval was needed for this change of practice, and that seems to have taken another few days to secure. Not until 7 September did Charles write to Worcester, explaining with remarkable restraint: ‘We find that the want of our privy seal is prejudicial to our service, by the stop it gives to many things of importance, that may not suffer delay’ [TNA, SP16/6/26]. The earl was instructed to return the seal to the king without delay, though ‘by some person of trust’, rather than in person.

Remarkably, Worcester seems never to have been formally reprimanded over this episode. The privy council, resuming discussion of the privy seal loans on 7 September, speculated that the earl would shortly be relieved of his office, but this assumption proved to be misplaced. In the short term the privy seal was entrusted to the comptroller of the royal household, Sir John Suckling, but once Worcester returned to London in October he resumed his duties, and played a major part in managing the loan requests over the next nine months. He was still in post when he died in 1628, and it’s clear from official records that he’d retained custody of the seal. Charles had evidently decided that the episode of the missing seal was a temporary aberration by an old, loyal and trusted servant. And as the king would demonstrate many times subsequently, loyalty was a quality that he prized more highly than efficiency.

PMH

Further reading:

R.P. Cust, The forced loan and English politics: 1626-1628 (1987)

G.E. Aylmer, The king’s servants: the civil service of Charles I (1961)

Biographies or further biographies of Edward Somerset, 4th earl of Worcester, George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, James Ley, Lord Ley (later 1st earl of Marlborough), and Charles I (as prince of Wales) may be found in the History of Parliament’s recent volumes on The House of Lords 1604-29 ed. Andrew Thrush (2021).

Yn y blog yma mae Stephen Roberts, Cyfarwyddwr Emeritws, Hanes y Senedd, Llundain, yn archwilio’r  berthynas rhwng y Senedd a’r Iaith Gymraeg o’r unfed ganrif ar bymtheg hyd at yr ugeinfed ganrif…

Ym 1536, nodwyd mewn rhaglith i statud seneddol, fod y Cymry ‘wedi ac yn defnyddio iaith heb fod yn debyg nac yn gytseiniol â’r famiaith a ddefnyddir o fewn y deyrnas hon’ a hawliodd i resynu yn erbyn ceisiadau gan ‘bobol anghwrtais ac anwybodus’ i wneud ‘gwahaniaeth ac amrywiaeth’ rhwng Saesneg y brenin a’r deiliaid Cymreig, fel bo ‘anghydfod, amrywiant, dadl, cynnen, murmuriadau a thrychineb’ wedi tyfu rhyngddynt. Cafodd Harri’r V111fed (a feddodd wrth gwrs, dad Cymreig) ei ysgogi yn y penderfyniad, yn ôl geiriau’r statud, gan ‘sêl arbennig, gan gariad a ffafr’ a oedd yn dwyn tuag at y Cymry, i osod arnynt drwy drefn y Senedd ‘perffaith drefn hysbysiad a gwybodaeth’ o’r deddfau Saesneg ac i ‘ddileu’ pob defnydd o’r Gymraeg a’i harferion a oedd yn wahanol i’r Saesneg. Aeth y ddeddf newydd yn ei flaen i egluro’n fanwl y goblygiadau: cyfeddiannaeth Cymru i Loegr; gorfodaeth cyfraith Loegr a deiliadaeth Saeson ar eiddo; disodli arglwyddiaethau’r Gororau a’r siroedd Cymreig gyda threfn o siroedd newydd a threfi sirol; sefydlu trefn lle bo pob sir Cymreig yn dychwelyd Aelod Seneddol a phob tref sirol, Aelod arall. Gorfodwyd yn arbennig, Saesneg fel iaith y llysoedd a gwaharddwyd defnydd y Gymraeg ynddynt, yn mynegi’n anghyfreithlon i Gymro uniaith ddal swydd gyhoeddus.

Roedd darpariaethau’r statud yn bellgyrhaeddol a pharhaus.  Newidiwyd yr etholiaethau Cymreig yn dameidiog, ac hynny ond oddiar 1832 a pharhaodd y siroedd Cymreig newydd hyd at 1974. Er i statud 1536 wahardd y defnydd o’r Gymraeg yn y llysoedd, nid oedd cyfarwyddiadau ynddo i wahardd yr iaith ymysg y werin bobol ac ni cheisiodd i ‘ddileu’ y Gymraeg fel y cyfryw fel y mai rhai yn honni. Yn ymarferol, er mai Saesneg a Lladin oedd dwy iaith swyddogol y llysoedd a gweithredoedd cyhoeddus, profwyd yn amhosib i gadw’r Gymraeg allan o’r llysoedd am fod angenrhaid i sicrhau mynediad i hawliau cyfreithlon i Gymry uniaith. Roedd cyfieithwyr, pa mor answyddogol, amatur, aflednais a rhagfarnllyd i gyfiawnder cyfreithlon eu hymdrechion, yn rhan annatod o achosion cyfreithlon Cymru. Ni gychwynodd y Senedd chwaith ar unrhyw ymgyrch i ddileu’r Gymraeg.

Gellir disgrifio agwedd Seneddau’r Tuduriaid a’r Stiwardiaid tuag at y Gymraeg yn un o esgeulustod diniwed neu o ddiddordeb ysgafn ac anwadal. Ond ym myd crefydd gyhoeddus, cafwyd bygythiad yn ystod oes Elizabeth 1af i  duedd  Deddf Undeb Harri i danseilio statws ac ansawdd y Gymraeg. Wedi’i sbarduno gan ddyneiddwyr dysgedig y dadenni, cafwyd ymgyrch lwyddiannus i argraffu’r Testament Newydd yn y Gymraeg (1567) a’r Beibl cyfan (1588) ac fe ddaethant yn sail i ffurf, strwythur a safon yr iaith am genedlaethau i ddod. Roedd cenadwri dygn y Protestanwyr a adnabyddir fel y Piwritaniaid yn ystod un cyfnod ac Anghydfurfwyr yn y nesaf, yn gweithio gyda graen iaith y werin yn hytrach nag yn ei erbyn. Byrhoedlog oedd  Deddf Lluosogi’r Efengyl yng Nghymru (1650) ond ni chafwyd gair ynddo am y Gymraeg, ond wedi’u gyrru gan ddymuniad diffuant i ymgysylltu a’r werin bobol cafwyd ymdrech deg i sicrhau darpariad o bregethwyr ac athrawon yn rhugl yn y Gymraeg. Serch hynny roedd sawl un yn ategu geiriau gweinidog Cymreig yn 1641: ‘Os yw’n gofal yn nwylo ein marchogion seneddol a’n bwrdeiswyr Cymreig, hedodd ein gobaith’.

Cymro, a oedd yn aelod dros Gofentri, oedd a chyfrifoldeb Seneddol dros gychwyn yr ymgyrch swyddogol ddiarhebol yn erbyn y Gymraeg yn y bedwaredd ganrif ar bymtheg. Datgelodd y Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales (1847) y maint yr oedd strwythurau addysgol a chyfreithiol y wlad, y cwbwl wedi’u seilio ar y defnydd o Saesneg, wedi gwyro oddi wrth iaith a diwylliant y werin. Er bod yr Adroddiadau wedi’u seilio ar ymchwil ddiwyd, roeddent yn adlewyrchu rhagfarn a rhagdybiaethau dosbarth llywodraethol y dydd, gan greu darlun truenus o addysg yng Nghymru, gan honni fod y sefyllfa wedi’i waethygu gan barhad y Gymraeg. Modd bynnag, erbyn hyn bu dadeni ar farn gyhoeddus Cymru a gafodd lais drwy’r wasg a’r pulpud ac yn gyflym iawn daeth ‘brad y Llyfrau Gleision’ yn ddiarhebol am gynrychioli rhagfarn anwybodus y Saeson a daeth yr ymsyniad yma yn gonglfaen i elfennau anghydffurfiol poblogaidd a diwylliant Rhydfrydiaeth yng Nghymru yn oes Victoria.

Mae hanes diweddar y berthynas rhwng y Gymraeg a’r Senedd yn creu darlun o’r gwirionedd hanfodol fod y Senedd  yn bodoli mewn perthynas gymleth ac aml-gyfeiriadol gyda’r gymdeithas mae’n gwasanaethu. Gwelwyd ffyniant yn sefydliadau diwylliannol Cymreig yn ystod anterth Rhyddfrydiaeth Victoraidd ac Edwardaidd Cymru ond ar ol 1891, datgelodd dilyniaeth o gyfrifiadau brawf ystadegol o’r dirywiad yn y nifer o Gymry Cymraeg ac yn yr ugeinfed ganrif rhoesant awch i’r ymdrechion i arbed yr iaith, rhag y dirywiad didostur yma. O’r 1890s ymlaen, lluniwyd addysg gyhoeddus yng Nghymru gan swyddogion blaengar a gweledigaethol, gan gychwyn ar y llwybr o gydnabod dilysrwydd y Gymraeg a rhoi lle i’r iaith a’i llenyddiaeth mewn ysgolion cynradd, uwchradd a thrydyddol. Erbyn y 1960s, ac wedi amryw engraifft o anufudd-dod sifil gyhoeddus, daeth symudiad cymdeithasol i’r amlwg a oedd yn benderfynnol o roi terfyn ar ddirywiad yr iaith ac yn bennaf yn adlewyrchu agweddau o wleidyddaeth cenedlaetholgar Cymreig. Crewyd cyfrwng newydd i roi llais i’r pwnc gan ddarlledu sector gyhoeddus, yn uniongyrchol gyda’r defnydd o raglenni Cymraeg ac yn ail drwy drafodaethau ar y radio a’r teledu. Daeth cyfarwyddwyr darlledu i’r amlwg fel eiriolwyr dros yr iaith, i gymryd lle y gweinidogion a’r athrawon.

Crewyd hinsawdd o wasgedd anorchfygol gan ddycnwch elfennau o’r dosbarth proffesiynol ac aml ymgyrch ddewr gan weithredwyr uniongyrchol, yn galw am ymateb deddfwriaethol. Yn ystod cyfnod llywodraethol y Blaid Lafur 1964-7, a oedd yn meddu cefnogaeth bleidiol y mwyafrif o aelodau seneddol Cymreig, sefydlwyd gweinidogaeth newydd i ymdrin â materion Cymreig, sef y Swyddfa Gymreig. Llwyddodd y Welsh Language Act 1967 , ‘ddileu’, (chwedl y deddfwrwyr Tuduraidd), i raddau helaeth,  ‘cymal iaith’ drwg-enwog Deddf 1536. O hyn allan cafwyd dilysrwydd cyfartal i’r Gymraeg a’r Saesneg yn y llysoedd er nad oedd gorfodaeth i gyrff cyhoeddus hybu’r egwyddor o gyfartaledd. Ym 1993, o dan lywodraeth Ceidwadol, disodlwyd y geiriau ‘sail cyfartaledd’ gan ‘ddilysrwydd gyfartal’ yn Neddf yr Iaith yn yr un flwyddyn. Sefydlwyd Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg gan Ddeddf 1993 gyda’r dasc o hybu’r iaith Gymraeg fel iaith a dilysrwydd gyfartal a’r Saesneg. Fe all mai dyma’r statud olaf o San Steffan i ymdrin a’r iaith: yn 2012 diddymwyd Bwrdd yr Iaith a throsglwyddwyd ei phwerau i Gomisiynydd yr Iaith Gymraeg, sy’n atebol i Lywodraeth ddatganoledig Cymru a’r Senedd yng Nghaerdydd.

Bu’r berthynas rhwng y Senedd a’r iaith Gymraeg yn un amryliw ac weithiau’n llai na gogoneddus. Datgelodd allu a gafael y statud yn ogystal a’r modd y cafodd bwriad y deddwyr ei rwystro. Ymgorfforwyd, yn eu ffyrdd eu hun, gan ddeddfau 1536 a 1993, ysbryd yr oes a’u creodd, gan ymgorfforu uchelgais y wladwriaeth Tuduriaidd yn y cyntaf ac yn yr ail, egwyddor cyfartaledd deddfwriaethol diwedd yr ugeinfed ganrif. Yn y pen draw, er gwell er gwaeth, mae’r Senedd yn hawlio rôl, pa mor droellog neu amwys, i sicrhau dyfodol yr iaith Gymraeg, bu ei goroesiad fel cyfrwng bywiog ar lafar ac mewn llên, dim llai na gwyrth diwylliant Ewropeaidd.

S.R

Translated by Elinor Talfan

By the 20^th century the historic county of Glamorgan included several parliamentary constituencies, ranging from the Gower and Swansea, up to the mining valleys, across to Cardiff beyond what is now the Vale of Glamorgan. Several MPs interviewed for our oral history project were either born in the region or represented it in Parliament. Their memories reveal a strong Welsh political culture.

Many of our interviewees’ first memories were from the 1930s, and given the industrial nature of much of Glamorgan at that time it is unsurprising that many remembered economic hardships. Geoffrey Howe, later Conservative cabinet minister, told us he was ‘aware above all of the long queue outside the Labour exchange, the dole queue’ in his native Port Talbot. Partly because of this, Howe and other Welsh-born Conservatives in our archive, such as Michael Heseltine, grew up in an area that was politically dominated by the Labour party. Several later MPs told us that growing up in this area meant it was ‘natural’ that their views were left-wing. Ted Rowlands, MP for Cardiff North (1966-70) and Merthyr Tydfil (1972-2001), told us ‘I wasn’t conscious of it in my very early years but it was the natural political environment I was brought up in. I was a socialist by birth and background, whether I liked it or not.’ As for Llin Golding, later MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme (1986-2001) who grew up in the Rhymney valley:

This atmosphere was also felt by those whose family circumstances were more middle class. Ivor Richard (Labour MP for Barons Court, 1964-74), who grew up just outside Swansea but later went to school in England and University in Oxford, remembered flirting with the Conservatives at university:

The Welsh Conservatives we interviewed may have ‘cut their teeth’ by standing for election early in their career in Welsh safe Labour constituencies, but they made their careers in England. The Labour members who went on to represent South Wales constituencies often had similar backgrounds. Donald Anderson, MP for Monmouth (1966-70) and Swansea East (1974-2005), remembers how the profile of Welsh MPs changed:

Certainly the Welsh MPs interviewed for our archive had very strong ties to the local area. Win Griffiths, MP for Bridgend (1987-2005), told us that he would probably have turned down a seat in another part of the country. These MPs often knew each other well and some developed close friendships: Ted Rowlands and Allan Rogers (MP for Rhondda 1983-2001) shared a flat in Pimlico when Rogers was first elected, for example. Many we interviewed had known Neil Kinnock, Labour’s leader between 1983 and 1992, for many years – Allan Rogers’ daughters babysat for the Kinnocks, and Win Griffiths met him and his wife Glenys at university. Several were given positions on Labour’s front bench during Kinnock’s leadership.

That is not to say that all was harmonious: there were also rivalries, some of which went back years in local politics. Whilst most were grouped on the centre-left of the Labour party, significant disagreements emerged over Welsh devolution. The 1979 referendum on a Welsh Assembly – rejected by a margin of 4:1 – saw MPs such as Donald Anderson vote against his own party’s proposals: ‘Neil [Kinnock] and I were part of the so-called ‘gang of six’, Labour MPs who were pretty critical of devolution proposals’. When Labour returned to power in 1997 and re-introduced the issue some still had ‘grave doubts’, in the words of Allan Rogers. Win Griffiths, in the Welsh office at the time and part of the campaign for the Welsh Assembly, told us that ‘machinations’ within Welsh Labour led to the Assembly’s powers initially being limited. He would ‘have preferred [the bill] to be stronger’ but as others said it was ‘a process and not an event’. The Welsh Assembly was established after a marginal victory in September 1997 and increased its powers after a significant victory in a further referendum in 2011, adding a new dimension to Welsh political life from then on.

EP

To learn more about the political lives of postwar British MPs check out Emma Peplow and Priscila Pivatto’s new book based on our oral history project.

Emma and Priscila will be in conversation with Rob Perks, lead curator of oral history at the British Library, live on Zoom on 27 October. Click here for details and to register for this free event.

Find our previous local history blogs discussing Glamorgan and the surrounding areas here.

Described in 1841 as ‘the Lancashire of Wales’, Glamorgan was Wales’s wealthiest and most industrialised county. Coal mining employed almost one fifth of its male workforce in 1851, compared with one seventh in agriculture. Iron working was another key industry, centred on Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare, and copper smelting, using ore from Cornwall and overseas, was expanding at Swansea. The county was also home to the world’s largest tin-plate factory at Ystalyfera.

In contrast with this rapid industrial development, Glamorgan’s political representation during this period had one unchanging feature. For almost sixty years, Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot was the local MP. First elected in 1830, he sat until his death in 1890, by when he was ‘Father of the House’. From 1885, when Glamorgan was divided into five constituencies, he held the Mid Glamorgan seat. Only one nineteenth-century MP, Charles Villiers, surpassed Talbot’s record for continuous Commons service.

As Glamorgan’s largest landowner and a descendant of the Mansel family, which had long provided county MPs, Talbot appears at first glance to be a traditional representative of the landed elite. However, he also had significant industrial and commercial interests, which included the development of Port Talbot and investments in the railways worth an estimated £3 million by 1890, contributing to his reputed position as the wealthiest commoner in Britain. Although he spoke only once in debate during six decades in the Commons, Talbot’s strong local position entrenched him in his Glamorgan seat. Even his divergence from the majority of the Liberal party on two key issues – repeal of the corn laws in the 1840s and Irish Home Rule in the 1880s – did not threaten his electoral prospects.

With Talbot secure, Glamorgan’s elections became a battle for the second seat which the county had been given by the 1832 Reform Act. As with other constituencies, the low number of contests – between 1832 and 1868 Glamorgan’s electors only went to the polls twice – did not necessarily indicate a lack of political interest. The 1832 election was a case in point. Although Talbot was returned without opposition alongside his fellow Whig Lewis Weston Dillwyn, at least ten other individuals had been mentioned as possible candidates. Talbot and Dillwyn’s election was aided by the fact that the influential Marquess of Bute decided not to field a Conservative opponent. Although he was a lifelong Liberal, who had voted for the Grey ministry’s reform bill, Talbot assured Bute privately that he held ‘conservative’ views. The lack of opposition did not, however, mean a cheap election, as the returning officer charged the candidates for various expenses of dubious legality, including £20 for silver coins thrown to the crowd and £210 for tavern bills.

The political alliance between Talbot and Dillwyn was cemented by the marriage of Dillwyn’s eldest son to Talbot’s sister in 1833, and they were re-elected without opposition in 1835. Despite the offer of a baronetcy from the Melbourne ministry, Dillwyn could not, however, be persuaded to stand again in 1837, when there was a major shift in the county’s representation. For the first time, a Conservative candidate was nominated: Viscount Adare, heir to the Irish earldom of Dunraven and, through his mother, to extensive estates in the Vale of Glamorgan. His maternal grandfather had been a long-serving MP for the county and Adare’s supporters emphasised these family connections during the contest, while his opponents mocked his youth – he was 25 years old – and lack of political experience.

The third candidate in 1837 was the Liberal industrialist (Josiah) John Guest, whose iron company at Dowlais was the world’s largest producer of iron. He was also standing again for Merthyr Tydfil, where he had been MP since 1832, but declared that he would sit for Glamorgan if elected there. The diaries of his wife, Lady Charlotte, provide a colourful account of the contest. She recorded that when Adare went to canvass in his opponent’s heartland at Dowlais, he was met by 700 of Guest’s workmen, chanting ‘Guest for ever’, whereupon ‘the Little Lord was so frightened that he did not canvass a single vote, and got the Constables to escort him safely back again’. She was equally scathing about Adare’s performance on the hustings, where he ‘read the whole of his speech … chiefly about his grandfather’. Her low opinion was echoed by the Morning Chronicle, which reported that Adare’s poor showing ‘was pitied by all – his ignorance on political matters is frightful’.

This did not, however, prevent Adare from topping the poll, aided by the influence exercised by Dunraven and Bute. Lady Charlotte claimed that ‘the Tory landlords brought their Tenants up themselves like flocks of sheep, and made them break their pledge-words. They absolutely dragged them to the Poll, threatening to turn them out of their farms unless they voted plumpers for Lord Adare’. Talbot, who had been unenthusiastic about Guest’s candidature, preferring to share the representation without a contest, kept his seat, with Guest in third place. Guest remained in Parliament, however, having easily seen off a Conservative opponent at Merthyr.

Talbot and Adare – who both opposed the repeal of the corn laws – were re-elected in 1841 and 1847, but by 1850 Adare’s support was dwindling and he spent most of the parliamentary session at Lucerne. As an Irish peer, he could have stayed in the Commons after succeeding in August 1850 as the third Earl of Dunraven, but he took the Chiltern Hundreds in December to devote more time to his newly inherited responsibilities. Keeping their powder dry for the next general election, the Liberals did not put forward a candidate at the ensuing by-election in February 1851, leaving the Conservative Sir George Tyler, a naval officer and local landowner who was committed to agricultural protection, to be returned in Adare’s place. The proposed Liberal candidate, Henry Hussey Vivian, a Swansea copper smelter, did not stand after all at the 1852 general election, as analysis of the electoral register suggested that his chances were poor. There was also concern that Liberal opposition to Tyler in the county might prompt Conservative opposition to Guest at Merthyr. A Peelite supporter of free trade, John Nicholl, offered at the last minute after losing his seat at Cardiff, but withdrew as the show of hands was being taken at the nomination. Having previously promised Tyler that he would not oppose him, he felt it would be dishonourable to continue his candidature.

After having two Whig MPs from 1832 until 1837, and shared representation from 1837 onwards, Glamorgan’s electoral politics entered a third phase in 1857 when Vivian finally decided to offer. With agricultural protection having receded as a political issue, Talbot joined forces with him, and together they saw off opposition from a new Conservative candidate, Nash Vaughan Edwards Vaughan, who polled almost 1,000 votes behind Vivian. Talbot and Vivian represented Glamorgan together until the constituency was divided in 1885, and only faced a Conservative opponent in 1874.

K.R.

For details on how to access Glamorgan and other draft constituency articles through our preview site, see here.

In his 1776 tour of Wales, Arthur Young thought the area around Monmouth had a rather ‘sombre air’ with ‘much furze and shabby wood; the soil wet and heavy’. He found the road to Monmouth itself ‘villainous’ and besides noting ‘here and there a patch of turnips’ concluded that Carmarthen was more pleasing. Writing just a few years before, William Gilpin was more complimentary, thinking Monmouth ‘a pleasant town, and neatly built’, but he could not help but observe the irony that Monmouth Castle, once a royal residence, was ‘now converted into a yard for fatting ducks’. Continuing into neighbouring Glamorgan, Gilpin arrived at Cardiff, which he found ‘not unpleasantly seated on the land side among woody hills.’ On closer inspection, he found it ‘appeared with more of the furniture of antiquity about it than any town we had seen in Wales; but on the spot the picturesque eye finds it too entire to be in full perfection’.

Neither author said much of the burgeoning industrial area around Newport, William Gilpin merely noting of the place ‘a few slight alterations would make it picturesque’. Their descriptions also perhaps missed some of the more colourful tales associated with the landscape of Monmouthshire and Glamorgan, a place rich in legend, and none more so than Margam Abbey, the seat of the Mansell family, and where at the turn of the eighteenth century Sir Edward Mansell, formerly MP for Glamorgan, still held sway, playing host to bards and recounting tales of miraculous local salmon. [Jenkins, Glamorgan Gentry, xvi] Crammed with gentry families, many of them able to assert considerable political and social sway, throughout the eighteenth century a handful of peerage and greater gentry families commanded most of the influence in the area’s parliamentary constituencies: Cardiff Boroughs, Monmouth Boroughs and the county seats of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire.

By the late seventeenth century, the Somerset dukes of Beaufort were chief among these, having overtaken their old rivals, the Herbert earls of Pembroke, as the most vigorous noble influence in the area. The 1st duke acquired the offices of President of the Council of Wales, as well as holding all of the relevant lord lieutenancies and thus ‘his role was virtually that of a viceroy’ [PDG Thomas]. The Beauforts’ principal rivals were the Morgans of Tredegar, a rivalry that acquired a party dimension with the Beauforts heading the local Tories, while the Morgans were uncompromisingly Whig.

For much of the first half of the eighteenth century the parliamentary rivalry between the Beauforts and Morgans in Monmouthshire was largely controlled by an uneasy settlement, whereby Beaufort controlled the single-member seat of Monmouth Boroughs, which from 1680 comprised the town and two out-boroughs, Newport and Usk, leaving to Morgan the two county seats. The arrangement was the more awkward as the Beauforts in the first half of the century were closely associated with Jacobitism. Every so often, they attempted to interfere with the county poll and in 1713 the 2nd duke of Beaufort attempted to persuade John Morgan to stand with his nominee, Sir Charles Kemys, but Morgan was having none of it. Nevertheless, Beaufort prevailed and the county returned Kemys along with Morgan, pushing Morgan’s preferred partner into third place.

If the seats in Monmouth were normally parcelled out between the rival parties, Glamorgan proved more challenging and during the early decades of the century the (single) county seat rocked to and fro between Whig and Tory representatives. 1745 might be best remembered for the Jacobite rebellion launched in Scotland by Charles Edward Stuart, but the early months of the year also witnessed an important political battle played out in parts of Wales between the Tories, led by Beaufort, and the Whigs, represented by the Morgans and Talbots, the latter originally a Worcestershire family, who had acquired land in Glamorgan by marriage. In January, the succession to the peerage of the current member, Bussy Mansell, triggered a by-election. Beaufort promoted Sir Charles Kemys Tynte, while the Whigs set up a local naval man, Admiral Thomas Mathews, referred to dismissively by John Campbell, MP for Pembrokeshire, as someone ‘who has not the happiest manner to gain upon people’s affections’. Mathews had had a somewhat chequered career, but was warmly promoted by Lord Talbot. To add to the political rivalry there was a bitter personal dimension as Talbot and Beaufort had only recently been involved in a much-publicized divorce action prompted by Talbot’s affair with Beaufort’s wife, during which Beaufort had been forced to prove that he was not impotent.

Despite this, the Tories seemed confident of success in the election, with Beaufort himself at one point declaring ‘If there is not exceeding foul play, I should imagine Sir Charles would carry it’. [Jenkins, 171]. In December Kemys Tynte posted a series of advertisements in the London Evening Post addressed to the Gentlemen, Clergy and Freemen of Glamorgan seeking their support having been ‘encouraged by a great number of my countrymen’ to put his name forward. And yet, in spite of Beaufort’s success in rallying a number of important Tory gentry as well as independent electors to Kemys Tynte’s cause, he was unsuccessful and Mathews secured the seat.

A month after this unsettling defeat Beaufort died and was succeeded as duke by his even less compromising Jacobite brother, Charles Noel Somerset, former MP for Monmouth, and someone known by the ministry to have been in close correspondence with the Jacobite court in exile around the time of the 45 Rebellion. His succession to the peerage left a vacancy in the borough and enabled him to make up for Sir Charles’s loss in January by presenting him with the vacant seat at Monmouth. Kemys Tynte went on to hold it for just two years, before relocating to Somerset, forcing Beaufort to look for someone else to represent the family borough.

By the end of the eighteenth century the situation in the area had changed significantly, and politics in parts of Wales was characterized as a struggle between various absentee aristocrats. This was exemplified in the bitter 1789 by-election which saw the 5th duke of Beaufort supporting Captain Thomas Windsor, only to be the recipient of a pamphlet signed by ‘A Friend to the Independence of Glamorgan’ protesting at Beaufort’s efforts to foist a Foxite on the county. If now criticized for his support for the Foxites, relations between Beaufort and the Morgans had improved. In 1820 the Morgans chose not to challenge in Monmouth Boroughs and in March the 6th duke of Beaufort wrote to Sir Charles Morgan (later Baron Tredegar) thanking him for canvassing support in Newport in favour of Beaufort’s heir, the flamboyant dandy Henry marquess of Worcester, who faced a challenge in Monmouth from a radical candidate. Worcester was returned as expected, and in an effort to heal divisions promised that he would use his position to represent ‘the opposite side… however we may differ in any political opinions’.

RDEE

Further Reading:

William Gilpin, Observations of the River Wye, and several parts of South Wales

Philip Jenkins, The Making of a Ruling Class: the Glamorgan Gentry 1640-1790

Arthur Young, Tours in England and Wales visionofbritain.org

For more blogs in our local history series, click here. Keep up to date with the research of our Lords 1715-1790 project through the Georgian Lords section of our blog and by following @GeorgianLords on twitter.

The topography of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire had much in common. For centuries before industrialization in both counties a prosperous coastal plain supported an agrarian economy based on animal husbandry and arable farming. Small ports, such as Chepstow in Monmouthshire and Cardiff in Glamorgan, exported the butter, grain, wool and finished wool and leather products mostly by means of the coastal shipping trade. They were counties that sustained small, unremarkable market towns.  

The minerals that would transform the region from the second half of the eighteenth century played no significant part in 1640. An embryonic, late Tudor iron industry, supervised by Ironmasters from south-east England, had petered out; and coal was dug mostly for local domestic and industrial use. Some South Wales coal (tiny quantities by the standards of later centuries) went overseas, but more was shipped from Carmarthenshire than from Glamorgan and Monmouthshire. In both these counties, an inhospitable, brooding land mass rose up behind the fertile coastal plains: in the hill country nestled ‘the South Wales valleys’, with an identity of their own in later ages, but in this period this was a pastoral region of very large parishes, thinly spread population and very little wealth.

The annexation of Wales by the Tudors had produced a representative structure that treated Glamorgan and Monmouthshire differently. Glamorgan was a typical Welsh county, under the terms of Tudor legislation. Unlike English counties, which sent two MPs to the House of Commons, Glamorgan sent only one, the dispensation imposed on every other Welsh shire. Monmouthshire, however, was regarded as not a Welsh county at all, at least as far as county representation in Parliament went: enjoying the same privilege as English counties, it sent two Members to Westminster.

When it came to the boroughs and their representation, the Tudor political settlement of Wales imposed a peculiar amalgamation of boroughs for voting purposes. In Glamorgan, the ancient boroughs of Cardiff, Swansea, Cowbridge, Kenfig, Neath, Loughor, Llantrisant  and Aberafan were together entitled to send a single Member to Parliament: the composite constituency was known as ‘Cardiff Boroughs’. Monmouthshire, privileged in its county representation, was afforded the same meagre allocation for its seven boroughs: Monmouth, Abergavenny, Caerleon, Chepstow, Newport, Trelleck and Usk comprised ‘Monmouth Boroughs’ with only one Member for all of them.  

In Glamorgan in 1640, there may have been 800 freeholders entitled to vote in the election for the county seat. Most shire elections were held in Bridgend, which for travelling electors was conveniently located in the middle of the county; and in most shire elections the Herbert family, earls of Pembroke, whose principal residence was at Wilton, Wiltshire, were a dominating influence. In every election since 1605 a member of the county gentry with links to the earls of Pembroke had secured the Glamorgan seat, and for the Long Parliament, which met in November 1640 it went to Pembroke’s eldest son, Philip Herbert, known by his courtesy title of Lord Herbert of Cardiff. Despite the vicissitudes of civil war from 1642, Herbert kept his seat, which may have been his greatest achievement in a lacklustre career.

Another Herbert client held Cardiff Boroughs, but was killed fighting for the king at Edgehill in 1642. In Monmouthshire, Pembroke hegemony was challenged over a long period by the Somerset family, earls of Worcester, a hugely wealthy dynasty seated at Raglan Castle. Pembroke influence eclipsed that of Worcester as the seventeenth century drew on, and in the Long Parliament elections, Monmouthshire returned two clients of the earl of Pembroke. There is ample evidence of confusion at the election for Monmouth Boroughs in 1640, with no candidate considered properly elected. The civil war led to the obliteration of the political aspirations of the royalist Somerset family and of Raglan Castle as a family home.

By theory and in practice, Parliaments were the king’s, for him to summon, prorogue or dissolve. Among the many departures from convention and common law during and after the civil war came a change in electoral practice by which a Parliament depleted by expulsions and withdrawals of Members, recruited to itself, in defiance of the king, who had established his own rival Parliament at Oxford. The very principle of a self-perpetuating Parliament was an affront to many in Parliament, let alone to royalists. The so-called ‘recruiter elections’ came later to Wales than to many places in England, because Parliament would only countenance them in settled circumstances in which Parliament’s writ prevailed. In the case of Monmouthshire, the new recruits were two more clients of the earl of Pembroke, but the old pattern was disrupted in Glamorgan.

A precondition for an election was a reliable high sheriff, the returning officer. In the case of Cardiff Boroughs, for which an election was planned in December 1645, confidence in the sheriff, Edward Carne of Ewenni, was misplaced, as he led a short-lived local revolt against parliamentary rule, crushed in February 1646. Not until July that year was an election finally held, and then it was not a client of the earl of Pembroke or a member of the local gentry who took the seat in what was probably an uncontested election. The new member was Algernon Sydney, of Penshurst in Kent. He held extensive lands in Glamorgan, but owed his victory entirely to faction struggle in Parliament, and specifically to the New Model army and its political wing, the Independent interest at Westminster. In late November 1646, an election was held for Monmouth Boroughs, and it was seen by local commentators as an explicit contest between Presbyterian and Independent factions: the seat went to another Independent, Thomas Pury of Gloucester, whose MP father already played an active part in supporting the New Model army.

By the end of 1646, therefore, the New Model army interest in Parliament had cemented a political presence in south-east Wales by capturing two parliamentary seats. This paved the way for the regional dominance in the interregnum (1649-1660) of Colonel Philip Jones, garrison commander in Cardiff and Swansea but also trusted adviser and agent of Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was awarded extensive estates in Monmouthshire, by a grateful Parliament, and, remarkably, looked benignly on the heir of the Somerset family, from whom these lands had been confiscated. At the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, this patronage contributed to the rapid recovery of the Somerset family as a political force in Monmouthshire, directed no longer from ruined Raglan, but from Badminton, Gloucestershire. In Glamorgan, by contrast, the Herberts, earls of Pembroke, who had ridden the political storms of the 1640s and 50s very successfully, willingly loosened their grip on political power in South Wales, ceding the electoral territory to the powerful county gentry families such as that of Mansel of Margam.

S R

Further reading

Madeleine Gray, Prys Morgan (eds.), Gwent County History Vol. III: Gwent c. 1530-1780 (2009)

Glanmor Williams (ed.), Glamorgan County History Vol. IV: Early Modern Glamorgan (1974)

P Jenkins, The Making of a Ruling Class: The Glamorgan Gentry, 1640-1790 (1983)

G. H. Jenkins, The Foundations of Modern Wales: Wales 1642-1780 (1987)

Keep an eye out for more Welsh history blogs posted on our page throughout September, and find blogs discussing other constituency in the ‘local history‘ tab.

The biographies of many MPs mentioned, including members of the Herbert family, feature in our upcoming Commons 1640-1660 volumes, which are currently being researched. Follow the Civil Wars project via the James I to Restoration section of our blog.