The population of Pembrokeshire in 1670 has been estimated at around 32,000, making it the fifth largest of the Welsh counties by that measure. By size, however, it was small, its county leaders asserting in 1626 that it was at no point more than 18 miles wide. L. Owen, ‘The Population of Wales in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Trans. Hon. Soc. Cymmrodorion, 1959, 113; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Pembrokeshire’. Culturally, it was marked by a linguistic divide established in the eleventh century when the region was subject to Anglo-Norman colonization. The general sobriquet of ‘little England beyond Wales’, often applied to the county as a whole, was a more telling description of south Pembrokeshire, where the English language flourished, and the use of Welsh was less commonly encountered. The Landsker, or dividing line between English and Welsh in the county, was more than a linguistic one; as the Elizabethan antiquary, George Owen, insisted, it extended to ‘manners, diet, buildings, and tilling of the land’. Irish immigrants, settled in numbers in Pembrokeshire, and generally speaking English, provided another element in the cultural admixture. G. H. Jenkins, R. Suggett, E.M. White, ‘The Welsh Language in Early Modern Wales’, in The Welsh Language before the Industrial Revolution ed. G.H. Jenkins (Cardiff, 1997), 54-5; G. Owen, The Description of Penbrokshire ed. H. Owen (4 vols. 1892-1936), i. 39-40, 47-8. However, modern historians have advised against a too ready acceptance of George Owen’s stark delineation, suggesting a more fluid rural economy. In general terms, the county was a region of mixed farming, though in the lowland, English parts of the county arable farming predominated; the Welsh-speaking uplands were sustained more by animal husbandry. Pembrokeshire butter and cheese supplied neighbouring counties, Bristol and the garrisons of Ireland. B. E. Howells, ‘Pemb. Farming, circa 1580-1620’, NLWJ ix. 239, 244. By this period there was a coal industry that had developed an export dimension, mostly via the coastal shipping trade, which also distributed the fish caught by mariners operating from numerous creeks and harbours; but none of this compensated for the century-long decline of the trade in woollen cloth. The basis of the county’s wealth lay emphatically in land, an individual’s prosperity in it measured by the size, number and quality of freehold land holdings. Pemb. Co. Hist. iii. 87-91.
It appears that the small freeholders of the county were plentiful in the north, as were the larger ones in the south, although according to Owen the numbers of them overall were in sharp decline in comparison with neighbouring Carmarthenshire: ‘scarce 400 freeholders in the whole shire to serve at the great sessions, quarter sessions and all other trials and services’. Howells, ‘Pemb. Farming’, 413-4; G. Owen, The Taylor’s Cussion ed. E.M. Pritchard (1906), ii. f. 50v. Haverfordwest, apparently in the mid-sixteenth century the third largest town in south Wales and a county in itself with its own parliamentary representation, was the seat of justice in Pembrokeshire. By comparison, the two other towns of note, Pembroke and Tenby, were in decline; the former, though the county town and therefore with a claim to be the venue for shire elections to Parliament, was regularly passed over in favour of Haverfordwest or a neighbouring settlement. Pemb. Co. Hist. iii. 83-8; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Pemb.’. However, the election for the first Parliament to be held in 1640 did take place in Pembroke. John Wogan was returned as knight of the shire for the sixth time, and there is no evidence of any contest. At least 15 freeholders signed the indenture, though apart from representatives of Wogan’s own family, the names are not those of leading Pembrokeshire gentry houses. C219/42/2/6. Wogan was again returned on 20 October for what was to become the Long Parliament. The election on that occasion was held at Prendergast, a parish adjacent to Haverfordwest, and the names of a similar number of electors as in March were identified on the indenture as having contracted with the sheriff. The return explicitly recorded that there was no-one opposed. C219/43/6/7.
Wogan took the side of Parliament when civil war broke out, and in January 1643 was requesting reinforcements to defend Pembrokeshire against royalist incursions. He was dead before June 1644, however, and no attempt was made to fill the vacancy in the Commons until 5 December 1645, when writs were moved for this election and two other Welsh seats (the writ for Pembrokeshire was issued on 15 January 1646). The same day (5 Dec.), the Commons appointed six high sheriffs, including William Phillips for Pembrokeshire. CJ iv. 366a; C231/6, p. 35. The seat was at this point in the gift of Major-general Rowland Laugharne†, who was the unchallenged commander of the parliamentarian force in south-west Wales. In the autumn of 1645, Laugharne had commended his cousin, Arthur Owen, to the Speaker as one who had ‘merited our trust to agitate for us to the state’, by reason of his ‘constant integrity and resolution for the public’. HMC Portland, i. 270, 338. Owen was a younger brother of Sir Hugh Owen*, whose own allegiance to Parliament was doubtful. Little is known of the election, though Owen faced a challenge from Herbert Perrot*, an ally of a faction led by Roger Lort of Stackpole. It was alleged that the sheriff moved the county court to a place where it had never been held before, in order to engineer Perrot’s success in the parliamentary election; if this was indeed the case, the tactic was unsuccessful, as Arthur Owen was returned to Westminster. LPL, Ms 679, pp. 155-6; L. Bowen, John Poyer, the Civil Wars in Pemb. and the British Revolutions (Cardiff, 2020), 66, 95. It was doubtless through Laugharne’s patronage that Arthur Owen was elected,, and the same patronage probably protected Sir Hugh against expulsion from the House. No record of the election survives, but Arthur Owen was in the Commons by 25 March 1646, when he took the Covenant. CJ iv. 489a. Apparently, the faction that had promoted Perrot in his candidacy continued to lobby against Owen’s election, persuading Francis Annesley†, Viscount Valentia (the father of Arthur Annesley*), to petition the committee of privileges in the name of the freeholders, alleging the ‘undueness of the election’, but Arthur Owen’s seat remained secure until late 1648. LPL, Ms 679, pp. 156-7. That year, in line with his adherence to his cousin’s interest, he came under suspicion during the insurrection against Parliament in south Wales, and was among those purged in December.
Under the terms of the Instrument of Government, Pembrokeshire claimed two county seats, Haverfordwest retained its single seat, and Pembroke Boroughs disappeared as a constituency. The election for the first protectorate Parliament took place on 12 July 1654 and like that of October 1640 was held at Prendergast. Sir Hugh Owen, as sheriff, was returning officer, and at least 48 electors attended the meeting. The place of residence of most of them was recorded on the indenture, and they represented a spread of locations across the county, including the far north. Among the first-named freeholders on the indenture were James Philipps* and Herbert Perrot*. C219/44/3. There is no evidence of a contest. The first seat was taken by Erasmus Philipps. James Philipps had already sat in the Nominated Assembly of 1653, one of six members for Wales, undifferentiated by allocation to counties. His first wife had been Sir Erasmus's late sister, and he himself was elected for neighbouring Cardiganshire: James evidently came to Prendergast in support of his kinsman by marriage. Continuity was represented by Arthur Owen, who took the second seat.
Sir Erasmus Philipps stood aside in the general election of 1656, as he was serving sheriff. This allowed James Philipps to claim the first seat. He was also successful in Cardiganshire, where he lived. The Pembrokeshire return for 1656 has not survived, but his partner at the election was John Clerke II, a former soldier and an accomplished administrator. Clerke was unfailingly loyal to the Cromwellian interest, and had no prior connections with Pembrokeshire. He probably owed his election there to the patronage of both James Philipps and Colonel Philip Jones*, another Cromwellian dependable. Philipps chose Pembrokeshire, and the vacancy created in Cardiganshire was obligingly filled by Clerke, doubtless at the behest of Philipps. The by-election for Pembrokeshire took place, once again at Prendergast, and the only candidate was the young protectoral courtier, Edward Lawrence, son of Henry Lawrence I*, president of the lord protector’s council. Over 50 electors signed the return, from a wide geographical range of parishes. C219/45. Just over a year after his election to his only Parliament, to which he made little contribution, Lawrence died in London of smallpox.
Pembrokeshire reverted to being a single seat constituency under the dispensation for the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament. His term as sheriff behind him, Sir Erasmus Philipps of Picton Castle was available for the seat, which he doubtless took without challenge. Arthur Owen appears not to have travelled to Westminster in February 1660 to appear with the other members of the Long Parliament who had been secluded in December 1648, but he was elected as knight of the shire to the Convention in 1660 and again in 1661, without any known opposition. Owen held the seat until his death, lauded as ‘the credit and benefit of his country’ by a contemporary observer of the Pembrokeshire political scene, and admired for his political flexibility. E.D. Jones, ‘The gentry of south west Wales in the civil war’, NLWJ xi. 143.
