OWEN, Lewis (1622-92), of Peniarth, Llanegryn, Merion.

The numerous gentry houses of the Owen family of Merioneth were descended from Lewis ab Owen, Member for Merioneth in four Parliaments from 1547 and baron of the exchequer at Caernarfon. Judicial office lent him the name Baron Owen, by which he was known subsequently in north Wales.13HP Commons 1509-1558. Ab Owen was ambushed and murdered by vengeful brigands in 1555, but not before he had established a dynasty in Merioneth. Lewis Owen was descended from his fourth son, Griffith Owen.14DWB, ‘Lewis Owen, Baron Owen’. Owen’s father, who died when he was five, was a mere gentleman, but his maternal grandfather and namesake (d.1633) was the squire of Peniarth, acquired through the marriage to an heiress made by his father, Griffith Owen of Talybont, Llanegryn. By the time that Lewis Owen’s maternal grandfather made his will in January 1633, Margaret Owen (his daughter and this Member’s mother) had married for the second time, into the Herbert family. Lewis Owen’s step-father was Samuel Herbert (d. 1636) of Dolguog, near Dolgellau, Montgomeryshire.15PROB11/163, f. 185 (Lewis Owen); PROB11/326, f. 33v (Margaret Herbert); PROB11/229, f. 252v (Francis Herbert); Mont. Collns. vi. 198-9; Griffith, Peds. Anglesey and Caern. Fams. 323. Margaret was the elder of two sisters, and inherited Peniarth; her sister Susan acquired Bronclydwr, in Llangelynnin, married a kinsman, and was mother of Hugh Owen (1639-1700), the Independent preacher, ‘apostle of Merioneth’. Margaret and Susan were first cousins of John Owen*, the Independent divine.

Nothing is known of Owen’s early life beyond the bare facts of his higher education at Oxford and the Inner Temple. He was aged 20 when the civil war broke out, and took no active part in the conflict. Because of his mother’s remarriage into the Montgomeryshire Herberts, the most compelling political pressures on the Peniarth household, if any there were, would have been towards the king’s party, since Richard Herbert* was a cousin. The puritan sympathies of others in the Owen family were either shaped in exile from Wales or would emerge in the future. The allegiances of those at Peniarth were finally forced around 8 December 1645 when Lewis Owen and his cousin, Francis Herbert of Dolguog - staying at Peniarth it was said out of fear of marauding parliamentarians - were woken from their beds to be removed to Cardiganshire. This episode has been presented as a parliamentarian coup, but the young men’s captor, Col. John Jones of Nanteos, was one of the most staunch royalists of his county, and the suddenness of the intervention has the hallmarks of a pre-emptive raid, organized in the face of the military advance into north Wales by Sir Thomas Myddelton*, Thomas Mytton* and their busy subordinate, John Jones I*.16Cambrian Quarterly Magazine, i. 65; Phillips, Civil War in Wales, i. 355. If this show of force was intended to enclose the young heir of Peniarth into the royalist fold, it failed. On 3 December 1647, Parliament appointed Lewis Owen sheriff of Merioneth, an important appointment on the eve of ‘recruiter’ elections to the Commons, and also another political gesture, proclaiming the allegiance of one of the best-known Merioneth gentry families.17LJ viii. 589b. Owen duly played the part expected of him, returning Col. Roger Pope as knight of the shire for Merioneth on 27 April 1647, and on 27 October that year, after Pope’s untimely death, returning Col. John Jones I as his successor.18NLW, Peniarth CA60, Peniarth CA61. Jones, with influence of his own in Merioneth, is likely to have been behind the selection of Owen as sheriff. Jones himself was related to another branch of the Owens, descended from the fifth son of Baron Owen. Jones was doubtless personally responsible for the selection of his cousin Robert Owen of Dolserau, Dolgellau, as a tax commissioner and later a magistrate, though he felt compelled in December 1651 to subject Robert Owen, evidently something of a disappointment, to epistolary advice on the duties of the magistrate in a godly commonwealth.19‘Inedited Letters’ ed. Mayer, 194; NLW, Peniarth 233, pt. ii, pp. 7-10, 10-11.

Lewis Owen himself must have been a further cause of concern to John Jones I after his choice of marriage partner. His bride in 1653 was the daughter of (Sir) Richard Lloyd*, in the eyes of the republican government an incorrigible royalist. It is possible that the marriage of his daughter to Owen prompted Lloyd’s return from exile in Calais, with official consent, in 1653. If this were so, the match led to a diminution, not an improvement, in Owen’s own immediate political standing, since he was for a period dropped from the commission of the peace in north Wales. In fact, the marriage signalled no upsurge of interest in royalist plotting on Owen’s part, evidently, and he was restored to the commission after only a brief absence. His short-lived eclipse coincided with that of John Jones I, whose marriage to the sister of Oliver Cromwell* would dispel the suspicions of some in protectoral government circles towards him. By September 1658, Owen, like Jones, was wholeheartedly embraced by the protectorate. Along with Jones, the former major-generals James Berry* and Rowland Dawkins* and their deputy John Nicholas*, he was required to administer the oath to the Merioneth justices on the accession of Richard Cromwell* as head of state.20NLW, Peniarth CA77. Soon afterwards, Owen was elected as knight of the shire for Merioneth, doubtless with the sanction of Jones, who was by this time sitting in the Cromwellian Other House. Owen was completely inactive in the 1659 Parliament, however, with no record surviving of any utterance or committee appointment credited to his name.

In 1660 his family seniority in Merioneth and his (now fortunate) marriage saved Owen from any taint by association with the regicide Jones. He held on to all his local offices, and in January 1661 was advanced to become a deputy lieutenant. He was also included among the intended members of the abortive order of the royal oak, which generally marked out the most worthy of those who had suffered in the cause of Charles I.21Burke Commoners, i. 694. He joined William Price* in this distinction, but his estate was assessed to be only £600 a year, as against Price’s £1,500. Quite what Owen had done to deserve the honour is a mystery, and association with Sir Richard Lloyd may again have been of agency. Owen harboured no political ambitions beyond Merioneth. A surviving letter of his to Richard Herbert of Dolguog from 1674, arranging an exchange of lobsters for cider apple trees, probably captures his country squire identity and interests.22Mont. Collns. ix. 389. He remained respected in his county, an object of Welsh poetry of praise from local bards.23NLW, Maldwyn database of Welsh poetry. He was one of eight Merioneth magistrates who returned a joint reply to James II's circular questions in 1687 that they opposed the repeal of the Test Act, but respected liberty of conscience.24Penal Laws and Test Act ed. G. Duckett (2 vols. 1882-3), i. 291. He died on 22 January 1692, the date of his nuncupative will, aged 69.25PROB11/411, f. 77v. Neither his heir Richard nor his grandson Lewis entered Parliament, and the latter was last of the male line. Peniarth descended through his daughter to the Wynnes of Wern.