MYTTON, Thomas (c.1597-1656), of Halston, Whittington, Salop.

The family of Mytton could be traced back to Wiltshire origins, but there had been property-holding Myttons in Shrewsbury at least since 1413. Six generations before Thomas Mytton, an ancestor had served as bailiff of Shrewsbury ten times between 1464 and 1500, and more recently Richard Mytton, Thomas’s great-great-grandfather, had held that office on six occasions. The ten-times bailiff had married an heiress who brought to the Myttons the Merioneth estate of Dinas Mawddwy, a link with Wales which was to be significant in Thomas Mytton’s military career. More recently, Mytton’s grandfather married into the leading Shropshire family of Corbett or Corbet, while Richard Mytton, Thomas’s father, secured the hand of Margaret Owen, daughter of a judge of common pleas and a member of the council in the marches at Ludlow.31Vis. Salop 1623, ii. 361-3. Her family could trace its pedigree back at least ten generations. Although his estate was at Halston, near Oswestry, Richard Mytton spent much of his time at Shrewsbury, and paid taxes there.32E115/260/138. He was a justice of the peace and a subsidy commissioner, and seems to have demonstrated no opposition to the government of Charles I. Thomas Mytton enjoyed an education typical for the eldest son of a county gentry family, and in 1629 married the daughter of Sir Robert Napier* of Luton. Magdalen Napier’s sister was the wife of Sir Thomas Myddelton*, a significant member of the London Welsh puritan community.

Thomas Mytton and his father did not get on well. In September 1640 articles of agreement were drawn up between Mytton father and son, in an attempt to reconcile their differences. Sir Sampson Eure* was called upon to arbitrate. It was later claimed that Richard Mytton was mentally incapable before his death, which must have occurred soon after the articles of agreement were signed, and that his mind was poisoned against Thomas by a Shrewsbury baker and his wife, the latter having served Richard Mytton as a servant for many years.33C6/111/79. In March 1640, Sir John Corbet* leant on Mytton to ask the high sheriff of Shropshire to detain the writ for the forthcoming Shrewsbury election until after the county election, and Mytton’s annotation of Corbet’s letter indicates that Mytton complied.34Belvoir Castle, letters 1.23. Towards the end of that year, Mytton came into his inherited estate, and began to be named to the commission of the peace, in his father’s place, in August 1641.35C231/5 p. 476.

Mytton shared the alarm of many in positions of public authority in the Welsh marcher counties at what they perceived as the threat of popery, and in January 1642 signed a petition against Catholic-inclined soldiers, in the employ of Catholic gentry and peers, marching to Ireland. Mytton and his fellow-petitioners called for co-operation between the counties in a strengthened militia: virtually a call for a national army.36LJ iv. 531a, b. In general, however, Mytton seems to have been more relaxed about the tenor of public life than were the puritan activists in Shrewsbury in the summer of 1642. By July of that year, he was in London on legal business, and sent his cousin’s husband a book by John Taylor, the ‘water poet’, An Apology for Private Preaching. The book was a biting attack on religious separatists, but it seems to have amused Mytton more than it scandalised him.37NLW, Clenennau 528; J. Taylor, An Apology for Private Preaching (1642, E.153.12).

On the outbreak of civil war, Mytton sided with Parliament, but his stay in London at precisely the time when men such as Humphrey Mackworth I* were engaged in a showdown with the king’s supporters in Shrewsbury suggests that it was his closeness to the metropolitan-based Myddelton family rather than his Shrewsbury background which motivated his allegiance. However, Mytton attended the meeting in Worcester on 8 October 1642 which saw the founding of a military association between Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire.38Add. 70004, f. 68. From February 1643 he began to be named among the commissioners for Parliament in Shropshire, and was targeted by the royalists of the county, who authorised the seizure of his property at Halston.39Mont. Colls. vii. 359. When the parliamentarian military association for the west midlands counties of Shropshire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire was formed in April, Mytton was named a commissioner and briefly the colonel for Shropshire, but was soon advanced to the more substantive post of colonel-general when Sir John Corbet*, his kinsman, was ordered to abandon military activity and return to parliamentary duties. Mytton also held a command under his brother-in-law, Myddelton, who had on 12 June been made major-general for north Wales. Mytton was initially able to exercise some influence with the Anglesey gentry, approving the appointment of Thomas Madrin* as a sheriff, but as the royalist hold over north Wales strengthened, he saw his contacts ally themselves with the king.40Mont. Colls. vii. 364.

In the summer of 1643, Myddelton and Mytton raised a force to try to recover Shropshire from the royalists, and by September Mytton was working with Humphrey Mackworth I in a campaign to create a parliamentarian foothold in the county, a plan to which Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh, general of the west midlands association, seemed to them curiously and persistently indifferent.41HMC 4th Rep. 262; HMC Portland, i. 158; PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/156. Mytton played the leading part in securing Wem, which was garrisoned by a committee led by himself, Mackworth and Thomas Hunt* despite the evident unwillingness of ‘rotten’ Shropshire to come in numbers to their aid when they were attacked at Wem on 17 October.42HMC Portland, i. 143. Mytton and Mackworth soon began to write to the lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, or Parliament itself instead of to the earl of Denbigh for the military support they needed, and Mytton did nothing to help Denbigh in his complaints against the Coventry committeemen led by William Purefoy I*.43HMC Portland, i. 161; LJ vi. 325b-326b; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 26.

Early in January 1644, Mytton led a successful raid on John, 1st Baron Byron’s garrison at Ellesmere, eight miles from Wem. Through the year, he was occupied in placing garrisons beyond Wem, gaining a reputation for being an ‘active and stout man’ in Parliament’s service.44HMC 12th Rep. ix. 41. Doubtless to take Shrewsbury – his ‘goddess’, as one of his colleagues put it – was his eventual military target.45Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 3, ix. 293-4. The successes he enjoyed seemed to bring him little satisfaction. In March, from Wem, Mytton wrote to his wife in London, frankly regretting his commission with Myddelton and complaining of problems of authority over his men. He wished instead that he had been a captain in Essex’s army, with the authority to advance from Wem into north Wales. To be an MP would also be preferable to his current situation: ‘Concerning my being a Parliament man, if it please any to make choice of me, I shall be willing to do the best service I am able’.46Mont. Colls. vii. 362. In letters to his wife, Mytton passed on good wishes to William Pierrepont*, probably his most exalted political contact in the Commons and a member of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, but the fact that Mytton was unable to identify anyone who would help him to a seat speaks volumes about his marginal political position in 1644.47Mont. Colls. vii. 367, 369.

In April, Mytton visited London, taking with him another urgent request to Denbigh to provide more troops for the struggle for Shropshire, and to warn of the presence of Irish rebel soldiers in the county.48CSP Dom. 1644, p. 128; Perfect Diurnall no. 36 (1-8 Apr. 1644), 247 (E.249.23). By June, difficulties were apparent in his relations with the Shropshire committee, a pattern which seemed analogous to Denbigh’s problems with the Warwickshire committee. At first, Mytton seemed complacently to believe that the committee accepted that it had made mistakes in its relationship with him, but it soon became evident that what he regarded as the obstructiveness of the committeemen was deep-seated. In the summer of 1644, Mytton was closer to the earl of Denbigh than he had previously been, and voluble against the committee.49Mont. Colls. vii. 367-8; HMC 4th Rep. 268. He spearheaded a drive to recover north Wales from the king, and successfully took Oswestry and Welshpool. Montgomery fell to him in September.50Mont. Colls. vii. 369-70; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 354, 405; HMC 4th Rep. 269. For all his difficulties with the county committee, Samuel More*, for one, regretted Mytton’s willingness to weaken his own authority in Shropshire by moving on.51Mont. Colls. vii. 371-2. However bold and energetic his campaign, Mytton was unable to push far into north Wales, but at least was able to secure Shrewsbury on 22 February 1645. But even this important victory, which brought a regional capital under parliamentary control, was marred by conflicting reports as to whether it was Mytton or the committee’s favoured officer, Colonel William Reinking, who deserved credit for it.52Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. xlvii. 40-7.

Both Mytton and Reinking were senior officers in command at the taking of Shrewsbury, and there was a rivalry between them that was apparent as early as August 1644.53Mont. Colls. vii. 371. On the eve of the action against Shrewsbury, the committee commissioned Reinking to take command, with Mytton, Robert Clive*, Andrew Lloyd* and Thomas Hunt* ordered to ‘go along’ with the party of horse and foot.54Mont. Colls. vii. 374. Mytton later claimed that his own seniority invalidated Reinking’s claim to command. The governorship of Shrewsbury was not immediately determined by Parliament. The Shropshire committee controlled the town through 1645, which allowed rivalry for the post of governor to continue. Sir William Brereton* told Sir Henry Vane II* and Oliver St John*, members of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, that Reinking deserved the honours at Shrewsbury, but it was Mytton who was at Westminster to be thanked on 29 March in person by the Commons for his efforts in the capture of the town. A London newspaper noted how Mytton expected to be made governor.55Brereton Letter Bks. i. 51-3; The Weekly Account no. 14 (26 Mar.-2 Apr. 1645), n.p. (E.277.9); Perfect Diurnall no. 87 (24-31 Mar. 1645), 694 (E.260.5). The Shropshire committee had the ear of Brereton, and construed Mytton’s visit to London as an effort to disparage Brereton’s military conduct in and around Shropshire. Mytton’s bid for the governorship provoked Reinking, doubtless backed by the committee, into publishing an account of the taking of Shrewsbury which gave pride of place to his own efforts. Mytton responded in kind with a corrective of his own.56Brereton Letter Bks. i. 189, 222; A More Exact and Particular Relation of the taking of Shrewsbury (1645, E.282.15); Colonell Mittons Reply (1645, E.284.10).

The day after Mytton’s counter-blast appeared in London, the Shropshire committee gaoled Thomas Edwardes of Cilhendre, ignoring Mytton’s offer to stand bail. Edwardes was receiver-general of the Shropshire rents of James Howard, 3rd earl of Suffolk, and stood accused by the committee of being a royalist agent and a fomenter of the trouble between Mytton and themselves.57LJ vii. 376a, 412b, 413b-414b. Edwardes and Mytton were kinsmen and close associates; when Mytton’s daughter drew up her will in 1646 Edwardes was remembered with a bequest.58Salop Archives, 2171/95, 143; XD 3614/5/4. Furthermore, the recriminations over Shrewsbury and the wider war in the west midlands threatened to spread. Colonel Michael Jones told Sir Robert King* of disparaging remarks by John Jones I* about Brereton’s conduct of affairs around Chester. It was alleged that Mytton used his visit to London in March to lobby for a new commission, but when Mytton took over from Myddelton in May 1645 as major-general in the continuing campaign to secure north Wales, there was at last potential for these quarrels to abate.59Brereton Letter Bks. i. 313-5. Brereton for one saw the possibility of a fresh start.60Brereton Letter Bks. ii. 119.

Mytton took up his command with the support of important MPs with north Wales interests, such as John Glynne.61Brereton Letter Bks. ii. 247, 380. In late October, 700 men of Mytton’s army were committed to the siege of Chester, but this only provided another cause for complaint by the Shropshire committeemen, who deplored the way in which Mytton had drawn off some of their own officers.62Brereton Letter Bks. ii. 179-80, 369. In February 1646, complaints from the committee against Mytton reached a crescendo, at the same time as he was rewarded by Parliament for his outlay in the cause, and saw his army augmented to comprise a north Wales force, a regiment of reformadoes, 500 horse and 1000 foot from Lancashire, and 400 Cheshire cavalry.63LJ vii. 634a, 636b; viii. 164a, 168a, b, 223b; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 341. The affair was no longer confined to the west midlands, as both Mytton and the committee lobbied the Committee of Both Kingdoms and Parliament. In answer to the committee’s complaints that Mytton had libelled them and undermined them by drawing away Shropshire soldiers towards north Wales, Mytton responded with a full catalogue of the Shropshire men’s misbehaviour, going back to May 1644.64Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. xlviii. 55-7.

From the spring of 1646 Mytton was fully occupied with the conquest of north Wales, having secured a foothold in the region by taking Ruthin town in January. The castles and garrisons of Ruthin, Holt, Flint and Caernarfon fell successively between April and June, and from early May Mytton was calling upon the gentry of Anglesey to surrender.65Phillips, Civil War in Wales, i. 360-7; HMC 5th Rep. 421. His approach in dealing with the royalist gentry was markedly eirenic. The report of a fall of a castle was often accompanied by his request that a special deal be cut for the defenders. Mytton’s offers to mediate with Parliament on behalf of royalists sometimes provoked the Committee of Both Kingdoms into disapproval of his leniency.66CJ iv. 527b, 567a, 686a; v. 24a, 59b; HMC 4th Rep. 343; HMC 5th Rep. 421; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 413. Some of Mytton’s deals came to the attention of the Commons while they were in progress. On 20 October, the House heard how the surrender of Denbigh Castle was attended by behind-the-scenes messages between a minister of religion and the king, to which Mytton was privy. Characteristically, Charles I signed a warrant for the castle to surrender immediately, but verbally ordered the governor to hold out for another month. The castle was surrendered on 26 October.67Harington’s Diary, 45. Mytton’s instinct for protecting royalists from the full rigours of penal taxation persisted after the castles had fallen. In April 1647, Thomas Edwardes made it clear to John Bodville* that only Mytton’s intervention had prevented Maurice Wynn of Gwydir from being declared a royalist delinquent, and Bodville left Wynn in no doubt that Mytton could help him more than either the Commons or the Committee of Both Kingdoms.68NLW, MS 9063, John Bodville to Maurice Wynn, 27 Apr. 1647. Mytton’s standing in north Wales was helped significantly by his patrimonial estate in Dinas Mawddwy, which enabled him to talk to a royalist as something like one Welsh gentleman to another. By July 1646, Mytton had forged a working relationship with a most unlikely adviser, John Williams, archbishop of York. By virtue of his north Wales origins and his undoubted subtlety as a politician, Williams had taken on the role of mediator between the royalists and those elements of the parliamentary army more susceptible to compromise, of which Mytton was the most eminent member. In his despatches to Parliament, Mytton singled Williams out as the ‘one person especially’ who had helped him. 69LJ viii. 407b, 582a.

In contrast to his willingness to compromise with Parliament’s enemies in north Wales, Mytton was driven by a vengeful zeal in his dealings with Parliament’s friends in Shropshire. In December 1645, rather oddly in the light of his military service in north Wales, Mytton had been appointed sheriff of the county. Sheriffs were supposed to remain in their shires, and the only logic discernible in the appointment is that it was a means by which Mytton could strike back at the county committee. His opportunity came in August 1646, when he left his son-in-law (Roger Pope*), John Jones I and Thomas Edwardes as commissioners in north Wales, to preside over the Shropshire recruiter election. There, Mytton’s conduct was by any standards highly irregular, as he struggled to keep out Colonel Andrew Lloyd*, one of his leading critics on the committee. The victorious candidate was Humphrey Edwardes*, cousin of Mytton’s close associate, Thomas Edwardes.70NLW, Aston Hall Deeds, 2462. Humphrey Edwardes and Mytton had taken the oath as JPs on the same day the previous year.71C202/28/2. It is difficult to relate Mytton’s determination to block Lloyd’s election and to return Edwardes to the wider political climate. Once elected, Edwardes became an Independent at Westminster, but there is little to suggest that Mytton inclined that way.

Despite the expressed wish of the Anglesey gentry to be allowed to continue using the Book of Common Prayer, Mytton did not deviate from the plan of Parliament to dismantle the church hierarchy and abolish the liturgy.72Cal. Wynn Pprs. 294-5. In May 1646, Mytton called in the lay tithe farmers of livings without ministers in the diocese of St Asaph, to bring them under the control of the state.73Cal. Wynn Pprs. 291. In 1647, he was named as an elder in the 2nd Presbyterian classis of Shropshire, and was probably genuinely in broad sympathy with the Erastian variety of Presbyterianism. Furthermore, he can be identified with the Presbyterians in politics. When in February 1647 Mytton wrote to the Montgomeryshire committee to approve the implementation of an ordinance to raise taxes for the support of the English and Scots armies in Ireland, he saw their efforts as directed to ‘the furtherance of so pious and necessary a service for the church of God and the honour and safety of this kingdom and the dominion of Wales’.74HMC Egmont, i. 361. Troops of Mytton’s own army were earmarked for service in Ireland, and by April 600 of them had enlisted, without a murmur from Mytton.75CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 479, 522, 530.

On 8 April 1647, a series of Commons votes confirmed Mytton as major-general for north Wales, and Rowland Laugharne† in a parallel appointment in the south of the principality.76CJ v. 137a. The votes were observed by Thomas Edwardes, who was at this point acting in Westminster as Mytton’s man-of-business. The office of custos rotulorum in Merioneth was an honour which might have fallen to Mytton, Edwardes believed, had he been in London a little sooner. Mytton had hoped to command in the north-west midlands, but was beaten to the commission by Colonel John Needham. The major-generalships were associated with a move to reduce the powers of county committees: the remaining Members for north Wales restricted the circumstances in which sequestration could be applied to estates. Edwardes reported to Mytton on plans to hear complaints against his conduct of the Shropshire election, repeating a rumour that no fewer than 5,000 people had petitioned against him. In these circumstances, Mytton should acquire a seat for himself: ‘All that love you desire you neglect not to be a Member of the House; no men will be valued but they, I need say no more’.77Mont. Colls. viii. 156-7.

In September, Mytton did apparently stand for Parliament. The single seat for Merioneth was occupied briefly by Roger Pope, Mytton’s son-in-law, and upon Pope’s death Mytton must have considered himself to have had a claim to succeed him. In late September 1647, however, it was reported that Mytton faced a challenge from the Merioneth-born John Jones I, a fellow officer and a commissioner in his army.78NLW, Chirk Castle 628. During the election campaign, Jones was denounced by the agile Archbishop Williams as ‘universally hated’, while Mytton, he asserted, was ‘well-beloved’.79Cal. Wynn Pprs. 302-3. The tide at Westminster had turned against Presbyterians; among the Eleven Members was John Glynne, and there was a back-wash even in north-west Wales. Williams could speak disparagingly to Sir John Trevor* of the Shropshire committee, Mytton’s old enemies, as ‘busy and active Presbyterians’.80Cal. Wynn Pprs. 302-3. Even though Williams thought Mytton’s military seniority would help him, it was Jones who was elected for Merioneth on 12 October 1647.81NLW, Peniarth Estate, CA61.

Mytton’s failure to be elected for Merioneth represented no loss of confidence in him at Westminster. In January 1648 he was appointed vice-admiral of north Wales, and in March the council of army officers demonstrated their approval of him when they nominated him to negotiate commissions for officers going to Ireland.82CJ v. 442a; Clarke Pprs. ii. 208. When the second civil war broke out, Mytton’s methods and alliances in north Wales were put to the test. He was ordered to arrest Archbishop Williams if he joined the rebellion, but was effective in quelling the revolt, managing to demonstrate his usual solicitude for the welfare even of the leader of the north Wales rising, Sir John Owen.83CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 62; N. Tucker, North Wales and Chester in the Civil War (Ashbourne, 2003), 98. In the aftermath, Mytton was allowed to look for royalists’ estates that might provide him with the full amount of £5,000 awarded him on 19 April as part of Parliament’s thanks.84CJ v. 537b, 593a, 613a, 667a, 670b; Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 3, ix. 295-7. He saw no contradiction in pursuing these possibilities while continuing to help royalist families such as the Herberts of Chirbury, whose internal disputes over estate revenues he tried to settle.85NLW, Powis Castle Deeds 16211. After suppressing another revolt on Anglesey, and receiving further thanks and rewards from Parliament, Mytton resumed the preparations for despatching parts of forces under his command to Ireland.86CJ v. 656a; vi. 41a, 43b, 44a, 57a, 58a; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 298. Whatever his politics, he retained his commissions as commander-in-chief and governor of garrisons in north Wales during the trial and execution of the king. On the day of the king’s execution, Mytton was in London.87Mont. Colls. viii. 171.

Mytton managed to maintain a working relationship with John Jones I, by this time the leader of the radical, millenarian politicians in north Wales, at the same time as he continued to act as protector towards Archbishop Williams.88Cal. Wynn Pprs. 313. Mytton was notionally Jones’s military superior in Anglesey, but in June 1649 acknowledged that he was to help Jones in the rest of north Wales.89Mont. Colls. viii. 299-300. Given his recent successes in north Wales, Mytton could not easily be dismissed, but he must have had scant sympathy for the Fifth Monarchist associates of Thomas Harrison I* and the millenarian ministers Vavasor Powell and Morgan Llwyd who in the early 1650s were in the ascendant in north Wales. One of these, Hugh Courtney, was made deputy governor of Anglesey in August 1650 and then took full governor’s pay.90CSP Dom. 1650, p. 312; 1651-2, p. 226. The millenarians’ greatest legislative achievement during the Rump Parliament, the act for the propagation of the gospel in Wales (Feb. 1650) could find no commissioners’ place for Mytton. Nevertheless, he kept his local offices, and served as a commissioner for the high-profile high court of justice after the revolt in south Wales in 1651, and for the court martial in the wake of the failed invasion by Charles Stuart later that year.

Mytton was essentially a conservative in politics and religion, and would have had little sympathy with the Nominated Assembly in 1653, for which his some of his former army colleagues in north Wales entertained such high hopes. The protectorate must have been a little more to his liking, although he was by no means restored to his former eminence. After the death of his first wife, Mytton remarried, to the widow of Sir Philip Stapilton, a Presbyterian and one of the Eleven Members of 1647. His election to the first protectorate Parliament came after two earlier associations of his name with a place in the Commons, in 1644 and 1647. When he was finally elected for his native county as knight of the shire, he evidently had no inclination to take the seat. His name appears nowhere in the record of the Parliament of 1654, and it is possible that he may never have been present in the House. He may have been ill. In October 1654, he settled his lands, with the help of the staunch Thomas Edwardes and his royalist brother-in-law Edward Acton*. In his last years he lived in partly in Shrewsbury, partly in London. His last public appointment was in Shropshire in 1655 as a commissioner for the peace of the commonwealth under Major-general James Berry*.91Mont. Colls. viii. 307; NLW, Clenennau 676. Mytton died in London in November 1656, but was taken back to Shrewsbury for burial. Thomas Edwardes was remembered in his will. Leaving property in nine counties, he bequeathed £1500. He was succeeded by his son, Richard, and one of his daughters married Thomas Mackworth*. His grandson, Richard Mytton†, represented Shrewsbury from 1690, and his descendants included the notorious ‘Mad Jack’ Mytton (John Mytton†), who also sat for the town in 1819-20.92HP Commons 1690-1715; HP Commons 1790-1820.