The indentures for Haverfordwest are extremely full and informative: they give names and occupations of the electors, and indicate the importance of the leather trade in the town. There were many contested elections, probably due in part to internal divisions, but also to attempts to impose court candidates. The two great county families, Owen of Orielton and Philipps of Picton, seem to have avoided open contests; but plainly exerted an influence in the borough.
The Owens of Orielton represented Pembrokeshire from 1660 to 1710 with one short interval. In the Convention and Cavalier Parliaments the seat was held by the cadet branch of New Moat. Arthur Owen I was a Presbyterian Royalist, and his son John, a stop-gap for the last weeks of 1678, may have been regarded as a member of the country party, though the election was held at Slebech, the domain of the Roman Catholic Barlow baronets. He was replaced for the first and second Exclusion Parliaments by the head of the family whose political views were similar.
Unlike the county, political activity was strong in Montgomery Boroughs and marked by contested elections. Only in 1689 was a candidate apparently returned without opposition. The period saw a determined effort by the Herberts of Chirbury, who controlled Montgomery, to disfranchise the out-boroughs. Of these, Welshpool and Llanfyllin were under the influence of their Roman Catholic cousins of Powis Castle, while the Lloyds of Berthllwyd were lords of the manor of Llanidloes.
The recusancy of the Herberts of Powis led to the primacy of their cousins of Chirbury in Montgomeryshire throughout this period. The chief independent interest was exercised by the Vaughans of Llwydiarth. Shortly before the 1660 election, Edward Vaughan was arrested as a Royalist, and both interests may have agreed to select his nephew John Purcell, of a minor gentry family that had avoided recent political commitment.
Members for Merioneth were usually nominated at preliminary meetings of the gentry, and no contests are definitely known during the period, despite the lack of a borough seat. In 1660, in order to exclude Edward Vaughan I and another outsider from Montgomeryshire, it was agreed that only a resident would be elected. Several local gentlemen refused to stand, but Edmund Meyricke was ultimately ‘persuaded’ to accept the seat. In 1661, he was replaced by the courtier, Henry Wynn, who had married a Merioneth heiress.
Although the earls of Pembroke are said to have controlled most of the Glamorgan boroughs, there is no evidence of a Herbert candidate in any of the elections. In 1660 there was a double return of the Cavalier Herbert Evans, an ambitious young man of royalist sympathies who enjoyed the dominant interest in Neath, and Bussy Mansel, who had been one of the leading figures in South Wales during the Commonwealth.
During this period the representation of Glamorgan became firmly established in the Mansel family, and no electoral contests are known to have occurred. The head of the elder branch, which had not been involved in the Civil War, was elected in 1660, but in the following year gave way to the Earl of Pembroke’s heir. This was the last occasion on which the county returned one of the Herbert family, most of whose estates in South Wales were soon to be alienated.
The indentures do not always specify the names of the boroughs, but it would appear that the bailiffs and burgesses of Overton seldom attended elections in this period. The success of the Whitley interest from 1660 to 1681 is remarkable for more than one reason. The family was only recently established among the county gentry, and Roger Whitley was a younger son, who never resided in Flintshire during this period. Doubtless, as a prominent Cavalier conspirator, he would not even have been considered if the general election of 1660 had been held at the proper time.
The death of the sheriff, to whom the writs had been sent, probably prevented a contest in Flintshire in 1660. The Presbyterian John Trevor of Plas Teg found that so many of his friends receded from their former engagements to him, even before the Restoration, that he did not stand. A new writ was ordered on 31 July, but not issued until after the recess. With the monarchy now firmly re-established the county chose Kenrick Eyton, a lawyer from an old Denbighshire family with a good record in the Civil War.
It seems that only Denbigh and Holt voted in the earlier elections in this period. John Carter, one of the tyrants of North Wales during the Interregnum, may have retrieved his reputation with the electors in March 1660 by superintending the slighting of Denbigh Castle, which had ‘long burdened the neighbouring gentry’, and was returned to the Restoration Convention in the following month. But the traditional territorial interests soon reasserted themselves.
