THELWALL, Simon (c.1618-55), of Plas-y-Ward, Llanynys, Denb.

The Thelwall family came from Cheshire, but had been settled at Plas-y-Ward since the late fourteenth century. The Thelwalls were noted Protestants, but also known as a family that valued Welsh language and culture. For that reason, Edward Herbert†, later 1st Baron Herbert of Chirbury, was sent to learn Welsh at Plas-y-Ward as a child. Herbert in fact learned little, owing to illness, but he was impressed by the command that his auto-didact host, Edward Thelwall, had acquired of five ancient and modern languages.17Dodd, Studies in Stuart Wales (2nd ed.), 113; Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury ed. S Lee (2nd ed., 1906), 20-1. The family provided Members of the Commons since 1553, the first being the father of Edward Thelwall the multi-linguist. It is thought probable, if not absolutely certain, that the Member for Denbighshire in 1614 was the Simon Thelwall said in earlier volumes of this series to have died in 1663, but who in fact died in 1661. He is judged to have made little impact on his locality before 1630, and still less on his first and only Parliament.18HP Commons, 1604-29; PROB20/2553; PROB11/312, f. 145. His grandson and namesake was the Simon Thelwall who sat in 1640. The suffix of ‘elder’ or ‘younger’ applied by contemporaries to the two Simons distinguishes grandfather and grandson. Edward Thelwall, the son of Simon the elder and the father of the Member elected in 1640, seems to have been even more reticent in public life. These two Simon Thelwalls need to be distinguished from a third, a lawyer and office-holder, who was probably the son of Richard Thelwall of Llanbedr.19A.H. Dodd, ‘Civil War in East Denb.’, Trans. Denb. Hist. Soc. iii. 87; Coventry Docquets, 176, 190, 468.

The first concrete evidence for the life of Simon Thelwall junior is his enrolment in 1638 at the Inner Temple, and his approximate birth date is given here on the assumption that he was around 20 years of age at that time, so that when he entered the Commons in November 1640 he was over age, albeit only by months or at most a year or so. His election for Denbigh Boroughs was evidently with the consent and support of the Salusbury family, as well as with the support and approval of his grandfather, who remained as an active paterfamilias at Plas-y-Ward.20C219/43/6/6; Cal. Salusbury Corresp. 108. Simon Thelwall’s earliest parliamentary activity lay not in committee work or speech-making, but in compiling newsletters which he sent back to Denbighshire for the edification of his grandfather and the Salusburys.21Cal. Salusbury Corresp. 110, 113, 114-5, 116. It seems impossible to discern what Thelwall’s political views were in these early months of the Parliament.

Thelwall first attracted the attention of the diarists when on 4 March 1641 he pledged £500 in cash towards the costs of disbanding the armies encamped in the north of England.22D’Ewes (N), 439. Nothing more is heard from him until 3 May, when he took the Protestation.23CJ ii. 133a. On 24 July he brought in a petition on behalf of Denbigh town, which itemized the oppressions of the council in the marches of Wales.24Procs LP vi. 77, 81. The following month (14 Aug.), he was named to his first committee, on changes among the tax commissioners and justices of the peace in Montgomeryshire. He was the driver in this business, which focused on infiltration by papists into the commissions, allegedly at the behest of Sir Percy Herbert†. Thelwall was among the small delegation sent to tell the lord keeper of what evidence they had, and it was he who brought in a motion against the custodian of the Montgomeryshire powder magazine (17 Aug.), which had been moved to Powis Castle on Herbert’s authority. He reported back from the visit to the lord keeper (21 Aug.), bringing news that changes in the commissions were with the approval of Lord Keeper Littleton (Edward Littleton II†).25CJ ii. 257b, 260b, Procs. LP vi. 457, 458; A.H. Dodd, ‘Wales in the Parliaments of Charles I’, Trans. Hon. Soc. Cymmrodorion (1946-7), 72-3. Apart from one further committee appointment (18 Aug.), that was the sum of Thelwall’s known parliamentary activity in 1641.

As the Commons’ nominations of deputy lieutenants in April 1642 included several serving Members, it was probably Thelwall himself rather than his grandfather that was intended in the appointment for Denbighshire on 18 March.26CJ ii. 485b. He was one of those sent to the Lords on 29 April on the question of the magazines at Monmouth and Welshpool, both of which were feared to be vulnerable to deployment by Catholics.27CJ ii. 584b. That same day, he brought in a certificate from the Pembrokeshire commissioners for identifying recusants in that county.28PJ ii. 243. It remains unclear exactly what linked Thelwall, from a county in north-east Wales, to one in the south west, but in the light of what would be his later involvement there, it may have been some association with the interest of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, who held lands in Pembrokeshire. A fear of insurgent Catholics is the theme in all his interventions in the Commons up to this point; thereafter his name disappears from the Journals until February 1644. Direct evidence of a commission is lacking, but it seems likely that after the outbreak of civil war, Thelwall served as an officer under Sir Thomas Myddelton*, whom he described in April 1644 as ‘my major-general’.29A True Relation (1644), 1 (E.42.13). In fact, so forgotten was Thelwall at Westminster by February 1644 that he was mistakenly (with the forename ‘Giles’) listed with those Members disabled from sitting further, as one who had defected to join the king at Oxford. Two days later (7 Feb.) the mistake was apparent, and his name was removed from the list.30CJ iii. 389b, 391a. Sir Simonds D’Ewes*, always on the look-out for a change of heart by the king’s most fierce enemies in the Commons, later took Thelwall’s restitution to be ‘a good precedent’.

The civil war loyalties of the Thelwalls of Plas-y-Ward were opaque enough even in June 1643 for Thelwall’s grandfather to have quibbled with the sheriff of Denbighshire, his kinsman, over the implementation of the royalist commission of array.31Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 191. Thelwall junior himself had been named to the commission, and the family may have fudged the question of allegiance until the appearance of Myddelton and his army in Shropshire in the autumn of 1643. In the face of inadequate resources and the appearance of Irish reinforcements in the service of the king, Myddelton was obliged to withdraw, and was back in London by mid-December. Thelwall’s account of his own itinerary after the retreat implies that it was virtually accidental that he ‘repaired … through some difficulties to the good town of Pembroke’.32A True Relation, 1 (E.42.13). In older accounts, this is construed as merely a flight, though more recent commentators have queried this as unlikely.33Phillips, Civil War in Wales, i. 186; A.L. Leach, Hist. Civil War (1642-1649) in Pembs. (1937), 60. The timing and destination of the journey suggest that this was a mission to encourage or invigorate the parliamentarian cause in Pembrokeshire. Thelwall attached himself to Rowland Laugharne†, who in the spring of 1644 emerged as the military champion of Parliament in south-west Wales. On 27 March, Thelwall took ship from Pembrokeshire to London, and wrote for the benefit of Parliament a vivid account of Laugharne’s exploits and achievements. His letter was read in the Commons on 11 April, and was ordered to be published.34Harl. 166, f. 48; CJ iii. 457b; A True Relation. As the party at Westminster of the earl of Essex, a landed proprietor in Pembrokeshire, was at that time itself undergoing re-invigoration, Thelwall’s likely sponsor was someone working in that interest. It was Essex who on 8 April 1644 reported the favourable developments in Pembrokeshire, three days before Thelwall’s letter from the county was read in the Commons.35CJ iii. 453b.

Thelwall himself came back to the House on 18 April 1644, was thanked by the Speaker and was given responsibility for co-ordinating the parliamentary strategy in south-west Wales.36CJ iii. 464a. Funds from the Committee for Advance of Money and elsewhere were funnelled towards the war effort in Pembrokeshire through the Essexian parliamentary committee for Gloucester garrison, to which Thelwall was added for the purpose (27 Apr.).37CJ iii. 471b; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 136, 477. His return to Parliament attracted contemporary comment from north Wales. Archbishop John Williams, who had retired to that region to set himself up as a power-broker there, had made an enemy of Sir John Owen of Clenennau, the royalist governor of Conwy. Owen drafted what he called articles of treason against Williams, among which he listed Williams’ alleged subversion of the royalist commissions of array and of the peace by means of inserting parliamentarians or neutrals into them. Owen claimed to know that ‘when Simon Thelwall the younger esquire lurked in his neighbourhood after he became a traitor, [Williams] did not only forbear to use means for his apprehension, but had meeting [sic] with him, and was the cause of his return to vote in Parliament against his majesty’.38F. M. Bulkeley-Owen, Hist. Selattyn Parish (Oswestry, ?1928), 67. Owen’s allegation probably attributed too much influence to Williams, but it may suggest something of Thelwall’s wavering allegiance in 1643.

Thelwall took the Covenant on 26 June 1644.39CJ iii. 543a. After his return to Westminster, Thelwall was named to some 11 committees during what remained of 1644. Most of these were connected with the war effort in Wales. He continued to be influential in the oversight of military activity in the south west of the principality. He and John White II, a native of south Pembrokeshire, were instructed to confer with the Committee of Navy and Customs on resourcing a sea-borne invasion in support of Laugharne (14 Aug.), and he was the intermediary by which fines on royalist delinquents were channelled in that direction.40CJ iii. 590a, 620a. Joined by John Glynne* and White, he was responsible for identifying funds to pay for horses for Laugharne (30 Sept.), and it was Thelwall who drafted the Speaker’s letter of thanks to Laugharne and Richard Swanley, Laugharne’s supporting naval commander (14 Jan. 1645).41CJ iii. 644b, iv. 19b. He was active in support of Myddelton’s second attempt to raise an army to secure mid and north Wales for Parliament, being included in the committee for an ordinance to raise money for Shropshire, the bridge into Wales (6 May); and five months later, in another to set out Myddelton’s new brigade (5 Oct.). Thelwall was instructed to prepare two letters of thanks, or of support, to Myddelton in this period.42CJ iii. 482a, 589a, 654b, 658b. He was one of the four Members who with the prominent ministers Stephen Marshall, a Presbyterian, and Joseph Caryl, a moderate Independent, were asked to seek out Welsh-speaking clergy to be despatched with Myddelton’s force into north Wales. They later wrote apologetically to Myddelton to explain that they could only identify two, albeit that these two were among the most celebrated Welsh puritan preachers of the day, Ambrose Mostyn and Morgan Llwyd.43CJ iii. 565b; NLW, MS 11439D, f. 23. On the war effort more widely, Thelwall was supportive of the earl of Denbigh’s west midlands association, and was named to a committee investigating rivalries on the Isle of Wight, in which Thelwall was probably sympathetic to the interests of the group loyal to Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke.44CJ iii. 602a, 635b.

These suggestions of loyalties to Essexian peers tend to locate Thelwall among the Presbyterians at Westminster. On 20 November 1644, he was a teller in a series of divisions on the alleged misdemeanours of the earl of Denbigh in his relations with the committees of Coventry and Shropshire. Partnered with Sir Philip Stapilton against the uncompromising William Strode I and Sir Peter Wentworth, Thelwall took the side of Denbigh’s supporters, though the outcome was a resolution of confidence in the earl as a messenger to the king but not as a military commander.45CJ iii. 700b. When in the new year (17 Feb. 1645) he was named with other Essexians such as Stapilton and Sir John Meyrick to a committee on how best to recruit to the New Model, he is unlikely to have been an enthusiast for it, instead continuing to be one of a small group of members working to ensure Laugharne received an adequate supply of financial support on the credit of the excise.46CJ iv. 71b, 88b, 151b. In May, Thelwall was added to the Committee of Navy and Customs specifically as part of his role as the leading Commons-man acting in support of Laugharne in Pembrokeshire.47CJ iv. 154b. Although the expressed wishes and needs of the parliamentarian gentry in that county were sometimes referred to a wider group in committee, which would include Presbyterians such as Sir Robert Harley, John Glynne and their sympathizers including Myddelton, through 1645 it continued to be Thelwall who was the most prominent in efforts to secure funds from the excise and the leading figure in managing relations between the Commons and Rowland Laugharne, whose authority by this time extended across the whole of south Wales.48CJ iv. 197a, 228a, 320b, 321a. By November, authority at Westminster for the conduct of the war in south Wales rested heavily with the committee for Gloucester, and Thelwall was among the additions to that committee. Many joining with him were prominent Presbyterians, among them John Glynne, Denzil Holles and John Maynard.49CJ iv. 351b.

Thelwall married Lady Margaret Sheffield, daughter of Edmund Sheffield, 1st earl of Mulgrave, in June 1645 at Kensington, Mulgrave’s London residence. The marriage took place less than a week after Thelwall had been awarded £4 a week by the House, a grant normally made to Members whose estates had been plundered by the royalists.50CJ iv. 161a. A supporter of Parliament, Thelwall’s father-in-law was not active politically, though before his death in October 1646 he had given his proxy to the earl of Essex, thereby giving the Presbyterians a majority in the Lords.51Gardiner, Hist. Civil War, iii. 105. The marriage probably contributed to a modest raising of Thelwall’s prominence in public life. He was involved early in 1646 in managing preparations for the trial of David Jenkins, the south Walian judge outspoken in the interest of the king (7 Jan.); and he also reported on south Wales affairs to the House (9 Feb.).52CJ iv. 434a. The most controversial and provocative aspect of Laugharne’s conduct in his home territory of west Wales was his rapprochement with the royalist earl of Carbery, and his recommendation to Parliament that Carbery should be exempted from the usual penalties of penal taxation that would be visited upon such a prominent defeated royalist officer. It was Thelwall’s committee that agreed to the proposal for Carbery’s fines to be lifted (16 Feb.). Any hope that this irregular démarche, which was bound to be regarded askance by the Independents in Parliament and the New Model army, would settle affairs in south Wales was quickly dispelled by the rising at Cardiff of a ‘peaceable army’ which had to be quelled by Laugharne.53CJ iv. 444b, 501b. Thelwall’s own military commission came to an end by the terms of the Self-Denying Ordinance (3 Apr. 1645), but he played a minor part in the Commons’ oversight of military matters beyond south Wales. He was named to committees in support of Major-general Thomas Mytton*, who had assumed command of Myddelton’s campaign in north Wales, and to the small committee which formulated the replies of the Speaker to letters from the parliamentary commissioners embedded with the Scots army in England (18 Aug.). The committee to which he was named on 4 February 1646, on how to bring under parliamentary control the castles of north Wales, was in essence one on the whole conduct of the war in a region that bristled with formidable fortresses.54CJ iv. 230b, 245b, 429a.

On 28 March 1646, Thelwall was identified as one of the Members asked to go to north Wales to secure a political and military settlement there, with the support of the Committee of Both Kingdoms. Named to a committee in mid-April on an ordinance on the city government of Chester, and on 3 June to another on regulating membership of the projected Presbyterian national church, Thelwall was on that day given leave of absence from the House.55CJ iv. 493b, 512a, 562b, 563b. There is no mention of him at Westminster between 17 April and 3 June, so it is possible though far from certain that it was his name, rather than his grandfather’s, that headed the so-called ‘bumpkins’ petition’ of 8 May 1646 by the inhabitants of Denbigh and district to the governor and officers of the royalist garrison there, urging them not to defend the castle and thus expose the petitioners’ property to the depredations of soldiers. The petition drew a stiff and unyielding response from the governor, Col. William Salusbury, kinsman of the Thelwalls. 56Cal. Salusbury Corresp. 165-6. It was certainly the grandfather who was appointed deputy lieutenant in July 1646, but who was rejected by the Commons as an additional member of the Denbighshire committee in November, an indication probably of how the Thelwalls, with their strong associations with the earl of Essex, were now on the losing side of factional politics at Westminster.57CJ iv. 598b, 726b. Thelwall’s committee appointments dwindled to only four in 1647, doubtless reflecting the same trend. The most significant of these were those of 22 March on keeping royalist clergy away from their livings, and of 2 April on managing the London militia, a highly factionalized issue.58CJ v. 42a, 90a, 119b, 132b. On 14 September, Thelwall was given leave to go into the country, and was absent at a call of the House on 9 October.59CJ v. 300a, 330b. On 23 December, he was required to go to Wales to bring in the assessments, but he may well have been there already. He was absent during two further calls of the House in 1648.60CJ v. 400b, 543b, vi. 34b. In August 1648, the Derby House Committee appointed Thelwall, Myddelton and John Jones I* to negotiate the surrender of Anglesey after the revolt of the second civil war.61CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 251.

Thelwall was appointed to one further committee, to decide which garrisons to maintain and which to close, on 25 November 1648.62CJ vi. 87a. If he was named while present in the House, it was certainly the last appointment of his parliamentary career. He appears on one of the lists of Members secluded from the House by Thomas Pride* on 6 December 1648. As an Essexian, and as a former conspicuously active supporter of Rowland Laugharne, who had been a principal figure in south Wales during the second civil war, he was a very obvious target of the New Model army and its Independent supporters.63A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62). He was not sympathetic to the new commonwealth, and made no effort to re-enter national politics. He retained his place on Denbighshire tax commissions after the regicide, however, and re-appeared in the commission of the peace in 1652. The protectorate of Oliver Cromwell was evidently more acceptable to him. He was returned for Denbighshire in 1654 to the first protectorate Parliament. Thelwall was named to the privileges committee and to a further nine committees in this Parliament. A number of these drew on his previous parliamentary experience. Among them were committees reviewing the ordinance of the lord protector’s council on ejecting scandalous ministers (25 Sept. 1654), and the body of legislation of the Nominated Assembly of 1653 (10 Oct.).64CJ vii. 366b, 370a, 375b. Other committees to claim his attention were on abuses in printing (22 Sept.), on the supply of whale oil (12 Oct.), and on public accounts and forged debentures (22 Nov.). His last appointment came on 18 January 1655, when he was named to a committee on public revenue and its commitments to the army and navy.65CJ vii. 369b, 375b, 387b, 419b.

In January 1655, Thelwall petitioned the lord protector’s council for pay arrears owed to him as an army officer, attributing his failure to claim these earlier to his own ‘modesty and tenderness to be troublesome’.66SP18/94, f. 71. He claimed £800 in the hands of someone known to him but rather delicately not named in the petition. It became apparent that this was in fact Col. George Twisleton*. The council ordered that money held by Twisleton, intended for reimbursing the populace of north Wales after soldiers had been billeted on the region, should be used to satisfy Thelwall, and this satisfied 124 of the leading inhabitants, who hoped their sacrifice would be judged ‘an acceptable service’.67SP25/76, f. 149; SP18/96/64II. Thelwall was considered sufficiently loyal to the Cromwellian government to be considered suitable for a commission in the Denbighshire militia during the emergency of 1655-6, though whether this was ever offered to him remains unclear.68TSP, iii. 298. He died before any further commissions could be issued to him, and was buried at Ruthin on 10 September 1655.69Ruthin par. reg. Government appointments to his grandfather and namesake continued to be made after Thelwall’s death. Evidently dissatisfied with the financial relations between himself and the late Thelwall, Twisleton pursued his widow in the courts.70E134/1657/East 7; E134/1657/Mich 19. Her management of Thelwall’s estate attracted a degree of alarm and resentment at Plas-y-Ward and in the Thelwall family.71Cal. Wynn Pprs. 357, 358, 364. Thelwall’s granddaughter Jane married Sir William Williams†, 2nd bt., of Glascoed (who sat for Denbigh Boroughs in 1708) and Plas-y-Ward was thus destined to become part of the Wynnstay estate of the Williams Wynns.