Flintshire

Seventeenth-century Flintshire consisted of a relatively narrow strip of land stretching along the north-Wales coast between Denbighshire and Cheshire, and a detached enclave to the south east, the Maelor Saesneg (English Maelor), that was surrounded by Denbighshire, Cheshire and Shropshire. The county was described in the 1670s as ‘not over-mountainous as the other parts of Wales, and interlaced with fertile valleys both for corn and pasturage, feeding good store of small cattle from which they make plenty of butter and cheese’. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 285. The north-eastern corner of Flintshire bordering the Dee estuary was also noted for the mining and shipping (mainly to Chester) of coal. Several of the county’s leading parliamentary families had supplemented their landed income through coal-mining – notably, the Hanmers of Hanmer, the Mostyns of Mostyn and the Trevors of Plas Têg. Sir Roger Mostyn, who was returned for the county to the 1621 Parliament, valued his mines at £700 a year. A.D. Carr, ‘The Mostyns of Mostyn, 1540-1642 - pt. II’, Flints. Hist. Soc. Jnl. xxviii. 133; K.L. Gruffydd, ‘Coalmining in Flints. during the early modern period, 1509-1737’, Flints. Hist. Soc. Jnl. xxxviii. 21-2, 24-6, 58, 84. Flintshire’s population stood at about 20,000 by the 1670s, and the size of the electorate appears to have fluctuated around the 1,000 mark. L. Owen, ‘The population of Wales in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, Trans. Hon. Soc. Cymmrodorion (1959), 110; ‘Flintshire’, HP Commons 1690-1715. As many as 1,100 potential voters were reportedly on hand if the 1654 election had gone to a poll. Flints. RO, D/G/3276/98.

Rumours late in 1639 that a new Parliament would be called prompted consultations among Flintshire’s gentry leaders concerning the selection of candidates for both the county and Flint Boroughs seats. Writing to his kinsman Robert Davies on 1 December, Robert Ravenscroft† – who had sat for the county in 1614 – requested his support ‘for my cousin John Mostyn* [a younger son of Sir Roger] for knight [of the shire] and my cousin John Salusbury* for burgess of Flint [Boroughs]. I do earnestly desire we may not be divided, which I hope will settle love among us’. Flints. RO, D/GW/2119. The Davieses of Gwysaney were closely allied to many of the county’s leading gentry families and to its most influential patrons and power-brokers, the earls of Derby. S.L. Ward, ‘Royalism, Religion and Revolution: the Gentry of North-East Wales, 1640-88’ (Oxford Univ. DPhil. thesis, 2016), 139, 240, 242. Davies expressed his readiness to serve Ravenscroft ‘upon all other occasions’ but informed him of a prior engagement.

Before the receipt of your letter I received a letter from my uncle Captain [Thomas] Davies to wish my assistance with my friends ... for Sir Thomas Hanmer* for knight of the shire and for my brother[-in-law] Mr Kenrick Eyton for a burgess place. I do not doubt but you are written unto by uncle ... and the other gentlemen [i.e. Hanmer and Kenrick] for that purpose.

Davies made no further mention of Hanmer but requested that Ravenscroft and Mostyn use their influence to secure the return of Eyton for Flint Boroughs on the understanding, it seems, that Davies would then back Mostyn as knight of the shire. However, Davies made it clear that if Salusbury was not willing to stand aside, then he (Davies) would let the matter drop. Flints. RO, D/GW/2119. It was reported a few weeks later that Hanmer was soliciting for votes in Caergwrle – one of the out-boroughs that made up the Flint Boroughs constituency – ‘and by some exchange, he hopes of the knight’s place’. Flints. RO, D/G/3275/28. Ravenscroft had ‘command’ of 20 votes at Caergwrle, and he had engaged these for Eyton by late December, suggesting that the compromise suggested by Davies had found at least one taker (i.e. Ravenscroft). Flints. RO, D/G/3275/29.

In the event, the county and Flint Boroughs returned John Mostyn and Sir Thomas Hanmer respectively on 9 March 1640. There is no evidence of a contest – indeed, the results have the look of a compromise between Mostyn, Hanmer, Salusbury and their friends. Hanmer and Salusbury were among the parties named on the indenture returning Mostyn, and Salusbury was found a place across the border as MP for Denbigh Boroughs (he would be returned for Flint Boroughs in the elections to the Long Parliament). The returning parties on the county indenture were 20 or so named freeholders and ‘many others’, and it was signed by about 25 gentlemen, including Mostyn’s elder brother Sir Thomas and at least two other members of the Mostyn family. C219/42/2/113; NLW, Plymouth Estate Recs. no. 387. A London based lawyer, Mostyn owed his return to his father’s formidable interest as a deputy lieutenant, magistrate and custos rotulorum for the county and as the owner of an estate worth in excess of £3,000 a year. Infra, ‘John Mostyn’; Carr, ‘The Mostyns’, 132-9.

Mostyn was returned for Flintshire again in the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn. The indenture, dated 19 October 1640, followed the same layout and wording as its predecessor for the Short Parliament; the returning parties were a group of named freeholders and ‘many others’, and it was signed by about 20 gentlemen, including Sir Thomas Mostyn and Sir Thomas Salusbury* of Lleweni, Denbighshire. C219/43/3/189. Again, there is no sign that he faced competition for the seat.

John Mostyn sided with the king in the civil war and was disabled from sitting as an MP in February 1644. Infra, ‘John Mostyn’. The House left the Flintshire seat vacant while north Wales remained in royalist hands, and it was not until 11 September 1646 – a few weeks after the last royalist stronghold in the county (Flint) had fallen to Parliament – that the Commons ordered the issuing of a writ for a new election to replace Mostyn. CJ iv. 667b; A.H. Dodd, ‘Flints. politics in the seventeenth century’, Flints. Hist. Soc. Pubs. xiv. 37-8. The first gentleman to put himself forward as a candidate for the newly-vacant seat was John Trevor, the eldest son of the prominent Presbyterian MP Sir John Trevor of Plas Têg and Trefalun, Denbighshire. Although seated primarily in Denbighshire, the Trevors were one of Flintshire’s leading gentry families and, with the Myddeltons of Chirk Castle, the mainstay of the parliamentarian cause in the region. Infra, ‘Sir Thomas Myddelton’, ‘Sir John Trevor’; Flints. RO, D/G/3275/81, 84.

The Trevors’ steward at Trefalun, Samuel Wood, was canvassing for votes among the Flintshire gentry by early November 1646 and paying particular court to the prominent royalists Sir Evan Lloyd, John Eyton, George Hope and Roger Whitley. Flints. RO, D/G/3275/87; Ward, ‘Gentry of North-East Wales’, 162, 190, 249, 250. Within a few weeks, Lloyd and Eyton, too, had began soliciting support for Trevor, and they assured Wood that they had secured the backing of Lady Mostyn (Sir Roger Mostyn’s widow) and her family. Concerned that the Myddeltons had designs of their own on the county seat, Sir John Trevor offered to support the return of Sir Thomas Myddelton’s* son Thomas* for Flint Boroughs if Sir Thomas did the same for John Trevor as knight of the shire. Wood informed Sir John Trevor in mid-November that John Trevor and Thomas Myddelton had come to an agreement and did not mind which of them took which seat, but that Sir Thomas was insisting that his son have the shire seat on the grounds that he (Sir Thomas) had been Parliament’s commander-in-chief of north Wales during the civil war. Wood urged Sir John to confer with Sir Thomas to prevent a contest and recommended that John Trevor come down to Flintshire to canvass the freeholders in person. Flints. RO, D/G/3275/88. Uncertainty surrounding which candidate was standing for which seat ‘dissettled’ Sir John Trevor’s friends in the county, for the ‘ordinary report by every gentleman of the better sort’ by late November was that either Thomas Myddelton would be knight of the shire and John Trevor the Member for the Boroughs or that the matter would be left for the candidates and the voters to thrash out on election day. Lloyd, Eyton, Whitley and the Trevor’s other friends begun to ‘muster up their forces’ in anticipation of a contest. But the county sheriff settled the matter by announcing that Sir Thomas had accepted the Boroughs place for his son, leaving the county place free for John Trevor, ‘so that all your friends’, Wood reported to Sir John Trevor,

are all satisfied of the fair carriage of the business ... and therefore have almost resolved to labour little for bringing many freeholders for the knight’s election but to leave it to the gentlemen of quality and so save charges of entertainment at the election. But yet this is not fully resolved till they see Mr Trevor, who is earnestly looked for and [it is hoped] that he will be here this night or tomorrow; if not, they know not what the gentlemen may do for or against a man that will not appear at his election, though Mr Eyton thinks it no great matter if he be absent so that there be no underhand dealing for another to have the place, which he thinks is now cleared. Flints. RO, D/G/3275/89.

On election day at Flint on 7 December, John Trevor and Thomas Myddelton were returned for the county and Boroughs respectively. Infra, ‘Flint Boroughs’. The county election indenture, which was similar in form to its two predecessors, named 14 freeholders and ‘many others’ as the returning parties and was signed by about 50 of the freeholders. C219/43/3/191. Unlike his father, Trevor did not sit after Pride’s Purge in December 1648, leaving Flintshire without formal representation in the Rump. Infra, ‘John Trevor’.

Flintshire, like other Welsh counties, was assigned a second parliamentary seat under the Instrument of Government of 1653, and one gentleman, Andrew Ellis of Mold, acted very quickly to establish a claim on one of these places. Ellis, along with Sir John Trevor and Colonel George Twisleton*, had been one of the principal purchasers of the earl of Derby’s sequestered properties in north Wales, taking the manor of Mold as his share. Although his family had been seated near Wrexham, in eastern Denbighshire, since the thirteenth century, he was a gentleman of relatively small estate (reckoned to be worth £120 a year in 1650) and was almost certainly the first of his line to challenge for a parliamentary seat in the region. His interest was based largely upon the influence and connections associated with his appointment as steward of the earl’s estate in the county and his offices as a magistrate, sequestrations commissioner and militia captain. Infra, ‘Andrew Ellis’; Flints. RO, D/G/3276/10; Dodd, ‘Flints. politics’, 39. He was part of a network of godly officers and administrators in Denbighshire, known locally as ‘the Wrexham party’, that had links with Twisleton – the governor of Denbigh – General Thomas Harrison I* (who headed the commission for the propagation of the gospel in Wales), Harrison’s close ally Hugh Courtney*, and with the gathered church at Wrexham under the Independent divine Morgan Llwyd. This group had succeeded in July 1653 in having the Flintshire and Denbighshire commissions of peace remodelled, removing Sir John Trevor and his friends and adding Ellis, Twisleton and Ellis’s fellow militia captains Thomas Ball, Hugh Prichard and Roger Sontley. Infra, ‘Hugh Courtney’, Andrew Ellis’, ‘Thomas Harrison I’; Flints RO, D/G/3276/37-8, 45, 53, 63-4, 82-5, 90; Justices of the Peace ed. Phillips, 77, 112; A.N. Palmer, Hist. of the Older Nonconformity of Wrexham (Wrexham, c.1888), 4, 6-8; ‘Morgan Llwyd’, Oxford DNB; A.H. Dodd, ‘The civil war in east Denb.’, Trans. Denb. Hist. Soc. iii. 80-2. Trevor was warned by one of those thus purged, his man-of-business and tenant John Peck, as early as December 1653 that ‘Captain Ellis’ intended to stand for Flintshire ‘and thinks his being custos rotulorum will be a means to further his purpose’. Ellis’s interest would be ‘much lessened’, advised Peck, if means could be found to reverse the July remodelling of the county bench. Flints. RO, D/G/3276/87; Palmer, Older Nonconformity of Wrexham, 8.

Ellis and Peck and their respective supporters clashed at the Flintshire quarter sessions in January 1654, when Trevor’s friends attempted to have the old commission of peace revived and the new one laid aside. According to Peck, Ellis relied much on the favour of his wife’s kinsman, the Staffordshire protectoral councillor Sir Charles Wolseley*, ‘one, as he [Ellis] pretends, that directs him in all things’ (Ellis, like Wolseley, had married into the Fiennes family, viscounts Saye and Sele). Infra, ‘Andrew Ellis’, ‘Sir Charles Wolseley’; Flints RO, D/G/3276/88. Peck cautioned Trevor that Ellis

doth what he can to engage and interest in [sic] the country [i.e. county], and therefore it concerns you to appear as much as may be to your friends and endeavour to nip the other in the bud ... I perceive that Captain Ellis intends to procure, if he can, a new commission [of peace] for himself and friends and to leave out whom he pleaseth, unless you do look after it. Flints RO, D/G/3276/88.

By early February 1654, Peck was canvassing for John Trevor among the same circle of mostly royalist gentlemen that Wood had solicited on Trevor’s behalf in 1646 and was noting ruefully that ‘the cavaliers that hath been in arms here had most of their tenants in arms with them and therefore will be fearful to vote for fear of the Act in that case provided [recent legislation disenfranchising former royalists]’. Infra, ‘Andrew Ellis’; Flints RO, D/G/3276/90, 92-3; Palmer, Older Nonconformity of Wrexham, 30-1; Ward, ‘Gentry of North-East Wales’, 141-2. Sir John Trevor acknowledged Ellis’s emergence as a political force in Flintshire by writing to him to request that Wolseley have Peck and Trevors’ other friends restored to the magistracy – which Wolseley did. Nevertheless, Ellis’s boast to Peck late in February that he had ‘made all the upper part of the county sure’ to his interest was undoubtedly an exaggeration. Flints RO, D/G/3276/93; Justices of the Peace ed. Phillips, 112. Ellis’s influence would have been strongest in the Maelor and the parts of Flintshire closest to Wrexham, not in the north of the county.

The contest between Ellis and Trevor for the Flintshire county seats had become a struggle by July 1654 as to which of them would take the senior place. In an attempt to reach a pre-election compromise, Sir Thomas Hanmer, who was Ellis’s cousin, struck a tentative deal with Peck whereby Sir John Trevor’s ally Thomas Ravenscroft (a royalist turncoat during the civil war) and his friends would not appear against Ellis if the latter agreed to cede the senior seat to John Trevor. Infra, ‘Andrew Ellis’; Flints. RO, D/G/3276/97; Hanmer, Par. and Fam. of Hanmer, 87; Ward, ‘Gentry of North-East Wales’, 160. The election was held at Mold on 12 July and saw the return of Trevor and Ellis in that order. ‘There was not to my knowledge a gentleman in all the country but was for Mr Trevor’, Peck assured Sir John Trevor,

only the great labouring at first was to have the first nomination, the which before Mr Trevor should a lost [sic] I would a lost all I had. Never two men were more jealous one of another then than Captain Ellis and I were ... seeing he ... had taken up a house in Mold, where the election was, for himself without my privity, I took up another house over against him for your friends, the which when he heard of he then began to be doubtful.

Ellis sent Hanmer to talk with Peck, who promised to be ‘very ready to serve him and Captain Ellis provided that Mr Trevor might have the first place’. Hanmer and Ellis agreed to this proposal and also to splitting the cost of treating the freeholders, which came to £11 19s. 2d. apiece. The number of voters on hand to partake of the candidates’ hospitality was substantial – as Peck recounted to Sir John Trevor:

There were at the election at Mold I believe 800 people, whereof we dined 371 besides wine and beer. The rest of the people we only gave them beer, which came to £3 11s., so that all went away very well satisfied and Captain Ellis and I parted in outward show very good friends, with his promise that he would comply with you and Mr Trevor and therefore you must both of you seem to be very loving and kind unto him, although I do not advise you to trust either him or Colonel Twisleton. In case we had not beforehand agreed that Mr Trevor should a had the first voice, I had brought in at least 300 men more, the which I had something to do to keep back. Flints. RO, D/G/3276/98.

The 300 voters that Peck held in reserve included the friends and tenants of Ravenscroft, of the former royalists Evan Edwards†, John Eyton and George Hope, of the trimmer Richard Yonge (who had supported the Trevors in the 1646 ‘recruiter’ election), and of Thomas Lloyd of Halghton, whose father had sided with the king during the civil war. Flints. RO, D/G/3275/89; D/G/3276/98; CCC 1605, 1241, 1718, 1720; ‘Evan Edwards’, HP Commons 1604-29; Ward, ‘Gentry of North-East Wales’, 51, 140, 142, 168, 250; T. Richards, ‘Flints. and the puritan movement’, Flints. Hist. Soc. Jnl. xiii. 68. ‘All these gentlemen you were chiefly beholden unto, whom I made very much of’, Peck informed Sir John. ‘The election was in the churchyard, after which I advised Captain Ellis to give the people thanks and to tell them how ready Mr Trevor and he would be to serve them, the which he performed’. Flints. RO, D/G/3276/98. According to the indenture, Trevor and Ellis were chosen ‘freely and indifferently’. The returning parties were 26 named freeholders and ‘divers other persons qualified and capable to elect Members’, and these same 26 gentlemen signed the indenture. Among the signatories were members of the Hanmer, Mostyn and Salusbury families. C219/44/3/7.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Flintshire returned the Cromwellian grandee John Glynne and John Trevor. Glynne had worked with Trevor, Ellis and Twisleton in acquiring and parcelling out the earl of Derby’s forfeited lands in north Wales, grabbing the lordship of Hawarden, in Flintshire, for himself at a cost of £9,000. Infra, ‘John Glynne’. Returned for his native Caernarvonshire in 1656 as well as for Flintshire, he opted to sit for the latter. CJ vii. 431b. The indenture has not survived.

Flintshire was reduced to its traditional one Member in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, when this seat was taken by John Trevor, apparently without a contest. Again, the indenture has not survived. Flintshire’s strong royalist interest re-asserted itself after 1659, bringing an end to the electoral dominance of the Glynnes and Trevors. HP Commons 1660-90.