Montgomeryshire

Montgomeryshire was devoid of magnates almost from the outset of this period. The Herberts of Powis Castle, who had previously been hampered by their recusancy, were devastated by the outlawry in 1689 of the 1st Marquess of Powis, a Jacobite exile. His forfeited estate, valued at over £10,000 p.a., was granted by King William in 1696 to Dutch favourites, the bulk of the property going to the Earl of Rochford, who, however, failed to develop any electoral influence in the county. The Protestant branch of the Herberts, at Montgomery Castle, had exercised some interest prior to 1690, but they suffered a dynastic rather than a political disaster in 1691 with the death of the 4th Lord Herbert of Chirbury, which brought their line to an end. This left the ‘independent’ interest of the Tory Edward Vaughan of Llwydiarth unchallenged in county elections. Vaughan, who had won his first Montgomeryshire election in February 1679, had been re-elected unopposed as knight of the shire in 1690, with Herbert’s blessing. He was to hold the seat without a contest until his death in 1718. Besides his personal pre-eminence, he owed his impregnable position to the strength of Toryism within the county. Not even the removal of the Tory custos, Hon. Andrew Newport* (uncle of Herbert’s widow), and an extensive purge of the commission of the peace in the aftermath of the Association in 1696 could dent the Tory ascendancy. The office of custos had to be left vacant for a time for lack of a suitable Whig candidate, and when Newport’s Whig nephew, Lord Newport (Hon. Richard II*), was eventually appointed in Anne’s reign this made no impact on elections. A mildly Whiggish address of congratulation on Queen Anne’s accession, presented by the Whig circuit judge Sir Joseph Jekyll*, possibly indicates the presence of some Whiggish sympathies within the county community, but by 1704 Montgomeryshire was addressing to thank the Queen for her zeal for the Established Church, and in 1712 the county address on the peace was impeccably Tory, applauding the achievement of terms ‘such that none but they who delight in war and mischief can object to’.1 Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 349; iii. 470, 472; Arch. Camb. ser. 3, v. 269–86; Cal. Herbert Corresp. ed. W. J. Smith (Univ. of Wales Bd. of Celtic Studies, Hist. and Law ser. xxi), 355; L. K. J. Glassey, Appt. JPs, 119–20, 138; London Gazette, 30 Apr.–4 May 1702, 12–16 Oct. 1704, 7–11 Oct. 1712.