PRICE, Richard (c.1618-75), of Gunley, Forden, Mont.

The Price family of Gunley were settled there for six generations, and considered themselves gentlemen, in spite of Lewys Dwnn’s pedigree of them, which might have encouraged a claim to be accounted esquires. It was as a mere gentleman that Richard Price (spelt thus) was married in 1640, and when Edward Price, his father, drew up his will in February 1643, he described himself in similar terms.20Mont. Collns. xxx. 281 (sig.); Glos. Parish Registers: Marriages II, 79; PROB11/200, f. 155v. Richard Price was the eldest of at least eight children, and his father’s property seems to have been confined to Forden and its immediate district. There is no obvious suggestion of puritanism in Edward Price’s will, but by February 1643 he was the lessee of the Forden tithes which Sir Thomas Myddelton† and his fourth wife, Lady Anne, intended to bestow on the Grocers’ Company. By this means, if by no other, Richard Price was drawn into the godly north Wales network that included not only Myddelton’s heir, Sir Thomas Myddelton*, but also his man-of-business, John Jones I*.21PROB11/200, f. 155v; E. S. Mostyn Price, ‘Forden tithes’, Mont. Collns. xxx. 260-81. In 1640, shortly after his marriage, Price was on the threshold of public service in his county, as he was named to the commission of the peace in December. It should be noted, however, that it was (Sir) Richard Pryse* of Cardiganshire, of a family that then held Aberbechan near Newtown, that was named sheriff of Montgomeryshire that year.

While the links with the Myddeltons and with Jones do not necessarily explain Price’s decision to fight for Parliament in the civil war, they do account for his service in Sir Thomas Myddelton’s* army, rather than any other military unit. The assertion that he was the Richard Price serving as a lieutenant in Reading in September 1645 seems unwarranted.22CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 156; ?? Without doubt he was serving in Myddelton’s force, with the higher rank of captain, by May 1644, when he was reimbursed for a horse he had procured for army service. He was given a further sum the following March.23SP28/346, pts. 1 and 2, unfol. After Myddelton was obliged to surrender his commission under the self-denying ordinance in 1645, Price continued to serve under his successor, Thomas Mytton*. In April 1646, he was camped a few miles from Ruthin, and was able by responding promptly to reports of royalist troop movements to frustrate an attempt by the king’s soldiers on the town. Price’s alertness won him a mention in Mytton’s account of the incident to Speaker Lenthall.24A Letter to the Honorable William Lenthal (1646), 3-4 (E.333.9). By late May, Price had become an important figure in directing military operations in north Wales, serving alongside Thomas Mason and George Twisleton*. On 28 May, Price, Mytton and John Jones I took the initiative in the name of Parliament to set about gathering in the tithes of the bishop of St Asaph, establishing themselves as a committee at Denbigh, where the parliamentarians had settled down to a long siege of the castle, still held for the king.25An Exact Relation (1646), 7 (E.340.1); Cal. Wynn Pprs. 291. By 11 June, Price was at Powis castle (Redcastle) as one of the Montgomeryshire county committee, complaining to the House of Lords about the conduct of their colleagues of the accounts committee. They reported that the standing committee’s efforts to implement an order of the Committee of the Lords and Commons for Sequestrations were being challenged and frustrated by the local accounts committee, led by Edward Vaughan*.26SP16/514/1, f. 36. Another figure active in the accounts committee was Samuel More*, an associate of Sir Robert Harley*.27SP16/514/1, ff. 97, 99. By November, antagonisms between the two Montgomeryshire committees had deepened, and reached a nadir when Edward Vaughan and his colleagues ordered the arrest of a sequestration official for refusing to make up his accounts.28SP28/251/1, unfol.

It is clear that with the soldiers John Jones I, Roger Pope, George Twisleton and Price active in the standing committee, and the civilians Vaughan and More prominent in the accounts committee, Montgomeryshire rivalries had taken on a Westminster hue. The military men identified the accounts committee as obstructive and corrupt.29SP16/514/2, f. 35. The accounts committee, with links through Samuel More to Harley, were Presbyterians in their political inclination, while the officers were natural allies of the Independents. It was against this background that Price and John Williams* soon after August 1646 took on the mission of bringing back to Wales the fiery Congregationalist minister, Vavasor Powell, from Kent.30Vavasoris Examen et Purgamen (1654), 12 (E.732.12). Williams travelled to Dartford as an elder of the gathered churches of Radnorshire, and had been associated with Powell since 1642 if not earlier. It has been suggested that Price represented the Committee for Plundered Ministers or a sub-committee of it in north Wales, as he had been an agent of it in the border parish of Hyssington; but it seems just as likely that as a serving soldier he was there to provide a military escort.31Bodl. 326, f. 210; R. T. Jones, Vavasor Powell (Swansea, 1971), 38. Whatever the original rationale for yoking together Price and Powell on the journey from Dartford to Montgomeryshire, the bond between them was to prove an enduring one. At some point, Price acquired an order from the Committee of Plundered Ministers to pay Powell and a fellow minister, Ambrose Mostyn. Neither man knew of Price’s initiative, but Powell in any case declined the offer of state support.32Vavasoris Examen, 12.

As a staunch member of the military and committee establishment in north Wales, Price stayed loyal to Parliament during the disturbances of the second civil war. In May 1648 he was in Shropshire, writing from Shrewsbury in comradely fashion to John Jones I to give him news of the campaign.33Mont. Collns. xviii. 115. He was involved in administering the sequestration order against Richard Herbert*, Lord Herbert, and in lifting it when Herbert had paid his delinquency fine.34Herbert Corresp. 131. The trial and execution of the king did not check Price’s ardour for the godly cause. In May 1649, he, together with John Jones I and Thomas Mytton, informed against Dr Michael Roberts, the former principal of Jesus College, Oxford, and the following month Jones instructed Price and other local agents of the new commonwealth on the process of demolishing Montgomery castle.35Richards, The Puritan Visitation of Jesus College, Oxford (1924), 23; Herbert Corresp. 133. The changed political climate afforded him an advantage over his enemies on the former county accounts committee, including over Edward Vaughan.36CCAM 996. Moreover, by this time, Price had come to the attention of no less a figure than Oliver Cromwell*, who was embarking on the punitive expedition to Ireland with the titles of commander-in-chief and lord lieutenant. In his characteristic way of lobbying for those he considered deserving cases, he wrote to Speaker of the Rump Parliament, William Lenthall to urge payment to Price for his losses in Parliament’s cause. Price, Cromwell asserted, was in Montgomeryshire ‘the only man … proclaimed rebel by the late king’, and should be compensated either by delinquency fines or sequestrations.37Letters and Speeches ed. Carlyle, Lomas, iii. 408-9. Even with this powerful support, however, Price remained unpaid a year later, and had to petition on his own behalf. On 27 November 1650 his case, and that of his colleague Thomas Mason, were referred to officials of the Committee for Compounding.38CCC 3261.

In October 1650, Price’s position as one of the most reliable servants in north Wales of the commonwealth was reinforced with his appointment as sequestration agent and regional treasurer to the newly reorganized commissioners for compounding, based at Goldsmith’s Hall.39CCC 173, 341. Although he had given up his commission in the standing army by this time, his military experience was put to good use when he was called up to become captain of the north Wales militia horse (13 Aug. 1650). It was as much his centrality to the regional republican administrative effort as it was his piety that made him an obvious choice for appointment to the commission for propagating the gospel in Wales (22 Feb. 1650). In fact he was not among the most active of the commissioners, doubtless because of his many military and civilian duties across north Wales, not least among them his year as sheriff of Montgomeryshire, 1650-1. He is recorded as having attended a meeting of 12 of the north Wales commissioners to appoint a master of the grammar school at Wrexham, but otherwise his contribution remains obscure.40LPL, Comm. VIII/1. The basis of the commission’s activities was the pooling of sequestered tithes, and Price seems to have had no principled objection to the practice of tithing, as in 1651 he took a new lease of the Forden tithes, which were owned by the London Grocers’ Company and which had previously been leased by his father.41NLW, Wynnstay Estate Recs. W1/5.

From 1650, one of his name began to acquire confiscated crown properties, and built up a portfolio that included the manor of Bewdley, Worcestershire, and Duchy House in the Strand. There seems no doubt that it was Richard Price rather than the young and callow Sir Richard Pryse, the second baronet and son of Sir Richard Pryse*, who was the speculator in these purchases, despite what is implied by some authorities.42VCH Worcs. iv. 309; Gentles, ‘Debentures Market‘, 324. Price’s access to this property market was surely facilitated by friendship with Sir Richard Saltonstall, who from July 1649 was a contractor for the sale of crown lands and in March 1650 was appointed a trustee for the sale of the crown fee farm rents.43A. and O. ii. 176, 359. By late 1651 Price had married for the second time, and had become Saltonstall’s son-in-law.44Bolton, The Founders … III, 809-11; Herbert Corresp. 138. Saltonstall was a Yorkshireman who had emigrated to New England in 1630 but had soon returned, landless, to live for a period at Brymbo, near Wrexham. There, he and his daughter, Rosamund, would have encountered Price, the three sharing a puritan outlook of a similar radical bent. Saltonstall was an uncle of Sir Thomas Myddelton*, and this kinship afforded another means by which Price might first have encountered the returning emigrants.45A. H. Dodd, ‘New England Influences in Early Welsh Puritanism’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, xvi. 31-2. At some point before 1650, Price acquired Aberbechan Hall, formerly a property of Sir Richard Pryse* and an address which figures on certificates of his purchases of crown lands.46E121/5/4.

As part of a syndicate including Thomas Pride*, Slingisby Bethell* and John Upton II*, Price became a navy victualler in November 1650. By then he was described as a London Citizen, suggesting the freedom of a livery company had been bestowed on him.47CJ vi. 500b. The syndicate had secured commissioners to provide ‘good, sweet, wholesome and serviceable provisions’ to the fleet. They were to victual it at sea and in harbour at the ports of London, Dover, Harwich, Portsmouth, Plymouth and Liverpool, as well as Leith (Scotland) and Kinsale (Ireland).48Bodl. Rawl. A.216, pp. 261-2; CJ vi, 500b; Add 18986, ff. 128-9v.; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 450, 503. Price was thus selected for service in the Nominated Assembly of 1653 as a friend of John Jones I and Vavasor Powell, someone of whom Major-general Thomas Harrison I* approved on the basis of his godly zeal, but also as a seasoned government contractor.49‘Inedited Letters’, 221-3, 226-7. By this time, the radical group of ‘saints’ in north Wales had parted company both in politics and religious aspiration from Sir Thomas Myddelton, in whose circle of influence both Jones and Price had earlier flourished. With other Welsh Members, Price was granted vacant lodgings at Westminster on 15 June 1653. On 20 July he was named to the House’s committee for prisons and prisoners, and on the 26th was added to the Army Committee, but there is no further record of his parliamentary activity. With others sympathetic to Harrison’s brand of millenarian opinion he may have withdrawn from the House some time before the dissolution.50CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 412; CJ vii. 287b, 289b. After 1653, he continued to be a stalwart of local government in north Wales, and was custos of Montgomeryshire during the period when the fledging protectorate was most alive to threats to its security. He continued to oversee management of the former crown estates, requesting in March 1655 that tenants be found for three manors.51CCC 2199.

In the light of Price’s apparent willingness to serve the state, it must have been particularly disappointing to Oliver Cromwell that it was Price, whose case he had championed in 1650, who personally delivered Vavasor Powell’s denunciation of the protectorate, A Word for God, to the lord protector. Price was himself a signatory.52A True Catalogue (1659), 10 (E.999.12); A Word for God (1655), 6 (E.861.5). An immediate consequence of this public expression of hostility to the new government was the arrest of Vavasor Powell during a fast day at Aberbechan.53TSP iv. 384. No retribution seems to have been visited on Price, however, apart from a restriction imposed on his local government commissions, from this time onwards confined to his home county only. Price enjoyed a more expansive role again after the fall of the protectorate. To meet the emergency of the rebellion by Sir George Boothe* against the restored commonwealth in the summer of 1659, Price was promoted to be colonel of the north Wales militia, after the council of state had been impressed by his diligence as a captain.54CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 93, 96, 99, 565. On 12 September he reported to John Bradshawe* on the prisoners captured during the revolt, and a week later he was commended by the London commissioners for sequestrations on their diligence in opening fresh cases in the wake of the disturbances.55CCSP iv. 368; CCC 747, 751.

As a republican uncompromised by closeness to the Cromwellian protectorate, Price was evidently greatly heartened by the return of the Rump, and he, Hugh Courtney* and Vavasor Powell signed An Essay Toward Settlement, which on 19 September 1659 urged against the continuation in public life of any persons tainted by association with either Oliver or Richard Cromwell*. The signatories urged that ‘a certain number of men qualified and limited according to [God’s] word ought to be set apart to the office of chief rule and government over these nations, as part of Christ’s universal kingdom’. This was an attempt to re-float the idea of a nominated assembly, based on selection of the godly, presumably by the army, and on complete religious toleration.56An Essay toward Settlement (1659, 669.f.21.73). The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 must have been anathema to him, and by the spring of that year he had lost all his military and civilian commissions, and forfeited his crown land purchases. On 18 July, acting on information from the royalist sheriff of Montgomeryshire, the privy council ordered Price, Powell and Saltonstall to be taken into custody for their encouragement of ‘unlawful assemblies and seditious persons’.57CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 123. In 1665, he was again facing harassment by the government.58Mont. Collns. xviii. 116. He remained faithful in his loyalty to Powell, and with John Williams* was named a supervisor of the minister’s will, proved in August 1671.59PROB11/337, f. 35v. The following year, on 28 October 1672, Price was licensed as a ‘teacher’ of a congregation at his own house, but his death was reported as having occurred in 1674 when he was ‘elder and pillar’ of the only gathered church in Montgomeryshire.60T. Richards, Wales under the Penal Code (1925), 126; Records of a Church in Broadmead, 517. His will, dated 25 Jan. 1672 with a codicil of 20 Feb. 1675 indicates that he had property in Shropshire, but admits the liability of a mortgage on his estate. The will, contested by his brother John, was proved in February 1676, over two years after his death, and contained bequests of over £275. Price left no issue, and after his wife's life interest Gunley was inherited by the family of his brother, Edward.