MYDDELTON, Thomas (1624-63), of Chirk Castle, Denb.

Young Myddelton’s designation as ‘one of the best matches in England that is to be had’ in 1639 was a connoisseur’s accolade coming from Eleanor, Lady Sussex, countess to three earls in turn. Aware of the mercantile wealth that lay behind the Chirk estate ‘on the edge of Wales’ she wanted him for the daughter of her novitiate marriage to a baronet, and noted that he had been ‘bred ... up at home, his mother being very tender of him; his father seems to be a good solid man, very hearty for the Parliament. The son is little, hath wit enough, I believe, a little refining would make him very passable’.1Verney Mems. i. 151. This was before he matriculated at Oxford, enrolling at Oriel despite his father’s friend Jonathan Edwards’s wish to take him under his wing at Jesus, of which Edwards was a fellow.2Chirk Castle Accts. 1605-66, p. 27n.

The civil wars progressively reduced Myddelton’s prospects as heir: his father paid the price of his evolving convictions by losing his home to the royalists for three years and overstraining his credit in a campaign to reduce north Wales for Parliament, and eventually risked his entire estate as one of the ringleaders of a royalist insurrection in 1659. The part played by Myddelton in his father’s proceedings is at first obscure, but doubtless subordinate. When Chirk Castle was recovered he became governor of it by order of Parliament (7 Mar. 1646), and in July, with his father, was appointed a deputy lieutenant in Denbighshire.3LJ vii. 406a; viii. 203a, 204ab. Recruited for Flint in December 1646, he was among 17 Members who took the Covenant on 1 February 1647. He was probably the ‘Mr Middleton’ added on 8 July to a committee reviewing the conduct of delinquent Welsh Members. Either he or the Sussex Member, Thomas Middleton, had leave (20 Jan. 1648), to go into the country, and on 24 April he was absent, excused, like his father, on a call of the House. On 2 October, with Sir Thomas, he was a commissioner for the capitulation of Anglesey. His name appears on one of the lists of those secluded at Pride’s Purge (6 Dec. 1648), but it seems more likely to have been the more combative Thomas Middleton* who was one of eight Members who wrote to the House the following day, ‘signifying their restraint from coming to the House to do their duty there, by some of the soldiers of the army’. Neither he nor his father figured in the Rump, and he was virtually excluded from local office, though his father was still a force to be reckoned with despite suspicions of his leaning towards royalism.4A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); CJ v. 69a, 439b, 543b; Phillips, Civil War in Wales, ii. 401.

Myddelton, whose wife’s family were so inclined, may well have played a significant role in nudging his father in a royalist direction: for instance, in March 1655 the report was that if the royalists managed an attack on Chirk Castle, the governor would let them in.5Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 147. In August 1659 he co-operated with his father in the rising of Sir George Boothe*, his part being to hold Chirk Castle. The episode ended with his capitulation to General John Lambert* (24 Aug. 1659), on terms which gave him two months to make his peace with the government. On 27 Aug. Parliament ordered the demolition of the castle and the sequestration of the family estates. His father being as yet in hiding, Myddelton petitioned the House for clemency for both of them, the petition being read on 5 October. Despite this they were in touch with the royalists in exile: Edward Hyde* learned through Dr John Barwick in December 1659 that the Myddeltons would either support their Scottish near-namesake, the royalist general and politician, the earl of Middleton, or act themselves on behalf of the cause in Wales, Sir Thomas being aged and infirm but ready to expedite his son at once on Charles Stuart’s orders. Even so, father and son did not always see eye to eye, for instance on the reliability of their regional associates in plotting a restoration: Sir Thomas did not share his son’s confidence in Robert Werden†.6CJ vii. 769b, 791b, 854a, 870a; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 170; CCSP iv. 394-5, 471, 496, 501, 524.

On 27 Feb. 1660 the House liberated the Myddeltons, both now eligible to resume their seats as purged Members, and suspended the sequestration proceedings.7CCC 3246. Both were appointed militia commissioners, on 10 March. Upon the Restoration Myddelton, who ousted Charles Lloyd* from the Montgomery boroughs seat for the Convention, obtained a baronetcy, which his father is thought to have declined. When listed as a prospective knight of the royal oak that year his income was estimated at a modest £600 a year (he had £3,000 worth of lands settled on him on his marriage) but the family resisted friendly pressures to accept public compensation for the losses, and accepted, it seems, a choice cabinet, supposed to be worth £10,000, in token from Charles II.8P. Jenkins, ‘Wales and the Order of the Royal Oak’, NLWJ, xxiv. 344; G. R. Thomas, ‘Sir Thomas Myddelton II, 1586-1666’ (Univ. of N. Wales MA thesis, 1968), 57. One of only four Welsh Members who graduated from the Convention to the Cavalier Parliament, Myddelton was not particularly active in either, and his return for Denbighshire in 1661 was not plain sailing.9Cal. Wynn Pprs. 361, 363, 364, 365. He died at his Fleet Street lodgings on 13 July 1663, and was buried at Chirk, three years before his father. His sons Thomas and Richard sat for Denbighshire in their turn.10Chirk Castle Accts. 162-3.