MORGAN, Thomas (?1588-1664), of Machen and Tredegar, Bassaleg, Mon.

Descended from the princes of Dyfed, the Morgans of Tredegar had by judicious marriages and fortunate allegiance during the Wars of the Roses established themselves as the leading gentry family in mid-Tudor Monmouthshire. They represented the county in Parliaments from 1559. The marriage of Sir William Morgan, Thomas Morgan’s father, to a daughter of the Wynters of Lydney brought together two families with a comparable record of parliamentary service, and gave the Morgans a standing in the Forest of Dean district of Gloucestershire, east of the Wye from the extensive Morgan estates around Newport. The longevity of Sir William Morgan is acknowledged amply in his portrait, hand in close proximity to the memento mori of a skull.21Gwent County Hist. iii. ed. M. Gray, P. Morgan (Cardiff, 2009), 23. One effect of his long life was to delay the accession of Thomas Morgan to the estates and to the full range of local office. In effect Thomas deputized for his father in the county militia, and his status as an heir made him a natural target for the burdensome office of sheriff during the Ship Money years. His time as sheriff passed without incident, it seems, and apart from some foot-dragging in the town of Newport, the Ship Money levy was paid.22CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 160, 287, 451.

Morgan’s first marriage, to the sister of (Sir) Ralph Hopton*, brought him the house of Cefnmabli, home of his wife’s first husband, where he continued to live after her death. His subsequent marriage, to a daughter of another Somerset gentry family, saw him return to live at Machen, one of the houses of the Morgans. This remained Morgan’s address for most of his life, though sometimes he was described as Morgan of Tredegar. His election to the first Parliament of 1640 was as a surrogate for his father, who had been knight of the shire in 1624 and 1625. He made no known impression on this assembly, and when elections took place for the second Parliament to meet in 1640, he was not returned again. Both county seats for Monmouthshire went to allies of the earls of Pembroke, however, so he was not displaced in any political coup. William Herbert II was the younger son of the 4th earl, while Sir Charles Williams* was Thomas Morgan’s brother-in-law. Both Morgan and his father were in the recusancy commission of August 1641 which aligned the Protestant gentry of the county against the popery of Raglan Castle (though Morgan's maternal uncle Sir Edward Wynter had married into the Raglan family, the Somerset earls of Worcester). The Morgan family responded to the Commons order of 29 March 1642 to move the Monmouthshire powder magazine away from Raglan influence at Monmouth to Newport. Those of the family who were magistrates, Sir William and probably Thomas, reported opposition to the plan, however (28 Apr. 1642).23CJ ii. 545a; PJ ii. 236.

Despite this initial token of support for parliamentary initiatives, at the outbreak of civil war, Morgan was named to the king’s commission of array. He was then omitted it seems, before being re-instated, a pattern which adumbrated the family’s uncertain and evasive conduct in the conflict itself.24Northants. RO, FH133, unfol. In late September 1642, Sir William Morgan, and also perhaps Thomas, if wrongly recorded by the Commons as ‘Sir’ Thomas, were sent for as delinquents by the House for executing the commission of array. However, Morgan was far from being a compliant royalist. He refused to serve in arms under Edward Somerset, Lord Herbert, the heir to the earl of Worcester and the regional commander for the king, a snub which must presumably have reflected Morgan’s prevailing loyalty to the house of Pembroke.25Bodl. Clarendon 21, f. 202. This ambivalence persisted down to 1645. The Morgan family was then identified as among the principal supporters of the royalist cause, and the king himself slept at Tredegar on 17 July 1645, but by September the Morgans were disparaged by a royalist partisan with other ‘chief hinderers’ in Monmouthshire and Glamorgan of efforts to break the parliamentarians’ siege of Hereford.26Symonds, Diary, 205, 210, 238. Following the garrisoning of Chepstow for Parliament in October 1645, Thomas Morgan evidently reconsidered his position, and by late January 1646 was in Cardiff, along with a core of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire parliamentarians including Bussy Mansell*, Evan Seys*, William Morgan I* and Philip Jones*. Morgan was doubtless among the more influential Monmouthshire gentry who now leant towards Parliament since they feared a ‘new considerable power to the disturbance of the kingdom’, the resurgence of royalism centred on Raglan castle.27Bodl. Nalson V, f. 231.

In the event, there was no immediate renewal of the king’s cause, and Raglan castle fell to Parliament in August 1646. Morgan continued to be named to local parliamentary committees, although he is not known to have been active. He must be distinguished from Thomas Morgan of Hurst, a manor in Lydney, Forest of Dean, who was obliged to answer to the Committee for Compounding (29 Nov. 1645) for acting in the commission of array. Although Morgan of Machen was, like Morgan of Hurst, a cousin of Sir John Wynter of Lydney, the Morgan family of Hurst was long settled in the Forest and had no obvious active links with the Monmouthshire gentry of the same name.28CCC 1026-7, 2143; CCAM 660; VCH Glos. v. 67. Thomas Morgan of Machen seems to have remained studiously neutral during the second civil war in south Wales, which tempted a number of leading gentry, notably Morgan’s kinsmen, Sir Nicholas Kemeys† and Sir Trevor Williams†, to lead the revolt against Parliament. Morgan’s father was subsequently the subject of hostile information to the Committee for Advance of Money, but Morgan himself emerged unscathed, and was trusted enough to be named to the south Wales committee for sequestrations after the trial and execution of the king. This may have arisen from an over-optimistic assessment of Morgan’s loyalties, however. In 1650 his name disappeared from the commission of the peace, and while he continued to be nominated to tax commissions, he seems to have maintained his by now practised art of staying largely aloof from public service.

During the early 1650s, family matters seem to have fallen to Morgan to manage, during the declining years of his father. He was the principal figure charged with repulsing the claim by Sibylla Wayte and her son to the estate of Morgan’s late brother-in-law, William Morgan I*.29NLW, Tredegar Park 138/3,4. He was also offered advice by Sir Trevor Williams on the marriage that was contracted in 1651 between Morgan’s daughter and Charles Van of Llanwern.30NLW, Tredegar Park 112/57, 60, 61, 62. The death of Sir William Morgan, which had occurred by 29 May 1652, gave Thomas Morgan an enhanced authority as head of the Tredegar and Machen families. At the by-election for Monmouthshire in 1654, caused by Richard Cromwell and Philip Jones choosing to sit for Hampshire and Glamorgan respectively, Morgan was returned the substitute and as the patriarch of a family with extensive parliamentary experience. As in 1640, however, Morgan failed to make any impression on the records of the Parliament, and seems to have been named to no committees. It seems most unlikely that this was because of any principled political position on his part. During the emergency of 1655-6 and the regime of the major-generals, no fewer than 11 Monmouthshire men named Morgan were listed in the compilation of government suspects, but his name was not among them.31Add. 34013. However, he may well have been rounded up, along with Sir Trevor Williams, by John Nicholas* in March 1655, and imprisoned briefly in Chepstow castle. In this case, suspicion would have been attached to him by contagion, as his kinsman Williams had gained notoriety for betraying Chepstow to the royalists in 1648.32TSP iii. 242-3, 252. He may have been the ‘Mr Morgan’ of whom the royalists held out hopes in 1657, and the government certainly dropped him from the assessment commission that year; but more typical of his own generally passive conduct was his failure to pay the rent of tithes which he leased, and the consequent summons for arrears by the lord protector’s commissioners.33CCSP iii. 315; Tredegar Park 67/101, 102.

Ill-health may at least in part account for Morgan’s reluctance to involve himself actively in public life. He first drew up his will in November 1659 and wrote another one two years later.34Tredegar Park 79/17, 20. At the Restoration he was doubtless glad to seize upon the free pardon offered him by the king at Bath in June 1660.35Tredegar Park 59/13. He was re-admitted to the commission of the peace after a decade out of it, but the new monarchical regime was evidently cool in its assessment of his virtues, probably mindful of his refusal to serve under Herbert in 1642. He was conspicuously omitted from the deputy lieutenancy of Monmouthshire, and his selection for the burdensome and expensive office of sheriff was a left-handed compliment, especially since he had already served in the office 25 years previously.36SP29/11, f. 214. Under his final will, dated 4 November 1661, he left £160 to his four daughters for diamond rings and £1,000 to five younger sons, one of whom also received £600 in annual instalments.37PROB11/315, f. 254v. Under his son, William Morgan II, the family returned fully to political engagement, the new house at Tredegar Park symbolizing the challenge the Morgans presented to the hegemony of the Somerset family, which after 1660 had migrated to Badminton, Gloucestershire.