Welsh County

Sir Rowland Gwynne* of Llanelwedd had in 1689 re-established the dominant interest his family had long enjoyed in Radnorshire, and which had only been interrupted by his flight at the time of the Rye House Plot. He and his ally Richard Williams of Cabalfa had taken both the county and the Boroughs seats in the Convention, Gwynne being returned unopposed as knight of the shire. Nor was there any opposition at first in 1690.

The Owens of Orielton, who led the Whig interest in Pembrokeshire, held the county seat throughout the period 1660–1727 with two Tory intervals, the first in the 1680s and the second between 1710 and 1715, when the trial of Dr Sacheverell and subsequent Tory resurgence enabled their main rivals, the Barlows of Slebech, to effect an overthrow. Prior to 1701 the Barlow family, formerly recusants and Church papists, had been hamstrung by their Jacobite associations.

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.

A mountainous county, with many more sheep than people, Merioneth was blessed with comparatively few large estates. Reputedly only one gentleman paid the 1692 poll tax, and the lieutenancy commission of 1701 comprised six. No contested elections are recorded in this period, though it may be that the veteran Tory Sir John Wynn, 5th Bt., was pushed into retirement in 1695 by his successor Hugh Nanney, whose family had been traditional enemies of the Wynns and whose own political allegiance seems to have been to the opposite party.