BODVELL, John (1617-63), of Caerfryn, Llaneugrad, Anglesey and Bodvel, Llannor, Caern.

John Bodvell’s family was anciently settled in north-west Wales, and traced its pedigree back to Collwyn ap Tangno, a tenth-century lord of Ardudwy and Eifionydd.13Griffith, Peds. Anglesey and Caern. Fams. 171. Bodvell’s great-grandfather Huw Gwyn Bodfel (Hugh Gwyn alias Bodvel), first of his family to adopt the surname from the name of his residence, sat for Caernarvonshire in Elizabeth’s reign, as did his more eminent maternal grandfather, John Wyn ap Huw (Hugh).14HP Commons 1558-1603, ii. 233; iii. 667. Bodvell seems to have signed his surname thus.15NLW, Llanfair Brynodol 158. His father’s marriage to ‘Bess’ Wynn of Gwydir was a passport to local honours and a knighthood. The only son, Bodvell had to wait ten years to come into his estate under the terms of his father’s will, which provided primarily for his mother and two sisters. A legacy from Sir John Wynn†, his grandfather, was likewise delayed.16A.H. Dodd, ‘The Tragedy of Col. John Bodvel’, Trans. Caern. Hist. Soc. vi. 2. He proceeded to the Inner Temple, with his uncle Sir Richard Wynn*, treasurer to the queen, as his guardian. On coming of age he married a sister of his fellow student Francis Russell*. His only known venture into public life before 1640 was in a dispute in 1638 over common lands in Caernarfon, in which he successfully appealed to the council of the prince of Wales.17Cal. Wynn Pprs. 255. Within months of his marriage he was returned for Anglesey to the Short Parliament, doubtless elected on his own interest there. He made no mark on that assembly, but was re-elected on 15 October to the second Parliament of the year.

Bodvell kept a diary of the first fortnight of the Parliament, which was incorporated in his parliamentary journal by Sir Simonds D’Ewes.18Procs. LP, i. 5n. He again stood in for D’Ewes as a diarist for D’Ewes in December 1641.19D’Ewes (C), 220n. His diary, which appears not to survive, was still in progress in July 1642 and was partly compiled from regular consultations of the official Journal after the days’ sittings.20PJ ii. 53, iii. 158. He was surety, like his uncle, Sir Richard Wynn, for raising money towards the pacification of the Scots, pledging £1,000, on 21 November 1640.21Procs. LP, i. 231. Between 9 December 1640 and August 1642 he was named in person to 29 committees, and added to eight others, the first being the committee on ecclesiastical canons.22CJ ii. 48a. He was added to the committee on the American planters’ petition (6 Jan. 1641) and on 29 January to the committee on the military commissions granted to the recusant 5th earl of Worcester, Henry Somerset. In a speech that day he dwelt on how these commissions, issued to the earl as blanks to be filled in, coincided with recruitment for the first bishops’ war.23CJ ii. 64a, 75b; Procs. LP, ii. 309-10. Reports of this speech reached his Caernarfonshire relatives, and were played down by his uncle Maurice Wynn.24Cal. Wynn Pprs. 272. He was of the committees on the court of wards, (16 Feb. 1641), on disabling the clergy from lay offices (8 Mar.), on tonnage and poundage (18 Mar.) on popish recusants (25 Mar.), and on electoral reform (30 Mar.).25CJ ii. 87a, 99a, 107a, 113b, 114a. On 8 April he obtained leave for an Anglesey deputy lieutenant, Sir Thomas Holland, against whom a complaint had been made, to be represented by counsel rather than in person, on grounds of advanced age.26Procs. LP, iii. 467. Bodvell made a long speech (17 Apr.), seconding a motion for a public fast, which in the event was not held until the following September.27Procs. LP, iii. 608.

Following his uncle Sir Richard Wynn* in moderate opposition to the Court, Bodvell went further than he in voting with the majority for the attainder of Sir Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford, having as Member for Anglesey joined the committee on Strafford’s conduct, specifically on its wider remit of the recusant threat.28CJ ii. 75a. He took the Protestation on 3 May 1641 and on 2 June moved that Archbishop Laud be deprived of office before he did any further harm to Anglo-Scots relations or by Arminian appointments.29CJ ii. 133a, Harl. 477, f. 11v. On 3 June he spoke in favour of the root and branch legislation: ‘we could not expect any fruit of our endeavour except we first cleanse the House of God’. He was unique among Welsh Members in his strong support of this bill.30Procs. LP, iv. 695; Bowen, Politics of the Principality, 239. He was also an enthusiast for the measure to abolish the court of star chamber, writing to his uncle in Gwydir of how he expected the passing of these bills through the Houses to stimulate the payment of the recently-settled poll tax.31Cal. Wynn Pprs. 273.

He was named to eight committees in July: on billet money, poll money collection, the council in the marches, sheriffs’ exactions, stopping allowances to Secretary Sir Francis Windebanke*, Dexter the printer’s breach of privilege, Sir James Thynne*, gunpowder importation and printed books.32CJ ii. 196a, 197b, 198b, 200a, 201a, 205b, 217a, 219b, 222b. He himself had successfully moved that no further emoluments be bestowed on Windebanke (5 and 7 July), and on 24 July and 12 August contributed to the debate on the army plotters. He spoke on the provenance of a letter of Henry Percy*, a principal plotter, and was hostile towards Percy himself, with Harbert Morley* arguing that Percy was trying only ‘to save himself’ and not to serve the Commons.33Procs. LP, v. 494, 534, vi. 83, 386. He took an unsympathetic view of disbanded army officers, and was a teller (5 Aug.) for the noes against making payments to them.34CJ ii. 237b. In August his committees were on convict recusants and arrears due to Scotland (5 Aug.) on the abolition of the jurisdiction of the council in the marches (13 Aug.), to which he was one of the two Welsh Members specifically named, though all were entitled to membership, and next day on exclusion from commissions of the peace and local tax collection with particular reference to Montgomeryshire; and on the state of the navy (25 Aug.).35CJ 238b, 239a, 243b, 257b, 271b. On 27 Aug. he asked that the question be put again whether the House should alter its date of recess at the Lords’ request, as the division was so close, but was overruled after an intervention by William Strode I*.36Harl. 164, f. 70v.

On 1 September, a week before the recess, Bodvell was named to the committee on Irish petitions, and Irish affairs continued to occupy him in the new session, after news reached London of the rebellion in Ireland. He was on the committees on soldiers for Ireland (4 Nov.) and on the state of Munster (27 Dec.), and on the latter date reported a letter he had received from the mayor of Beaumaris reporting the arrest of Richard Nugent, Lord Delvin [I], son of an earl thought to be a principal rebel, whom the House then sent for.37CJ ii. 279b, 305b, 357b, 358b; D’Ewes (C), 355. Four months later, it was Bodvell who took the initiative in determining the removal from Anglesey of the Irish nobleman.38PJ ii. 210. He was of the national defence committees (12 and 17 Jan. 1642) and on 28 January was granted privilege of Parliament in a lawsuit over Laugharne Castle, Carmarthenshire.39CJ ii. 372a, 383b, 400b. On 1 February he was ordered to write to the mayor of Beaumaris about five detainees, and a week later was named to the committee of ten headed by John Pym to consider the king’s message about Irish Catholics coming over by royal authority. On 22 February he supplied news from Wales about the movements of ships from France conveying supplies to the Irish rebels. After sitting on three further committees, he was deputed (22 Mar.), as a response to a petition from Anglesey, to consult the lord admiral (Algernon Percy, 4th earl of Northumberland) on the defence of the island against Irish invasion, in conjunction with the lord lieutenant of Caernarfonshire.40CJ ii. 408b, 420a, 461a, 463a, 481a, PJ i. 207, 441.

On 5 April Bodvell was chosen for the committee on tumults and seditious pamphlets, and on 18 April for that on the postal service.41CJ ii. 512b, 533b. On 27 May, Bodvell was included in the 24 men from the Commons deputed to join with the Lords in a joint committee on the safety of the kingdom, a stage on the road towards the creation of the Committee of Safety*. He and John Glynne were the only representatives of Welsh constituencies on this body. The following day, Bodvell was among a small group of Members given leave to send arms and ammunition for the defence of their homes.42CJ ii. 589a, 590b; PJ ii. 382. He was of the committee on oppressions by soldiers in Anglesey (28 May) and kept its work going (31 May), while also named to that on the news received of royalist military preparations from York (6 June). On 14 June he was ordered to write to Sir Thomas Myddelton* to secure the execution of the Militia Ordinance in Denbighshire, after he himself had moved the order. On 2 August the arms granted him for the defence of his Welsh residence were listed: enough for 20 men.43CJ ii. 591a, 596a, 609b, 623b, 701a; PJ ii. 394, iii. 76. Perhaps he did not leave London at once to take up his duties as deputy lieutenant of Caernarfonshire as he was named to the committee on English Protestant refugees from Ireland, (10 Aug.), but it is clear that most of his activity in the House in the first half of 1642 was directed at preserving the security of his constituency.44CJ ii. 713a.

Bodvell, who had been one of the three Welsh Members most hostile to the Court, was not seen in the House again as a Member. It is not clear what he did when war broke out, but he did not act as a deputy lieutenant for Parliament as intended when he was appointed in March 1642. Anglesey was under the control of the Bulkeley and Cheadle families, who both obeyed the summons of the king. After a period of judicious inactivity on Bodvell’s part, he declared himself for the royalists, and in August 1643 was appointed custos rotulorum for Anglesey. To have been entrusted with such an important task, Bodvell must for some time before this have been regarded by the king’s advisers as reliably loyal. At the same time, he was given a commission as a colonel of 1,200 foot and dragoons. The following month he was appointed constable of Caernarfon Castle. In January 1644 he was one of the 14 Welsh Members who joined the king at the Oxford Parliament. He subscribed the letter to the 3rd earl of Essex (Robert Devereux) calling for peace.45The Names of the Lords and Commons (1646), 3; A Copy of a Letter (1644), 8 (E.32.3). This precipitated his ‘disablement’, with 34 others, from sitting at Westminster (5 Feb. 1644).46CJ iii. 389b. He remained at Oxford long enough to collect an honorary degree.

In July, Prince Rupert summoned Bodvell to the royalist meeting at Chester about the defence of north Wales, evidently, and in error, believing him to be knight for Caernarvonshire.47NLW, Wynn of Gwydir 1738; Dodd, ‘Tragedy’, 6. He was subsequently criticized for enlisting friends and tenants without reference to array requirements, and with an eye to minimising the demands on them.48Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 62. He was one of the gentry in the three north-western counties of Wales who in June 1645, on the eve of Naseby, agreed to raise £1,600 for the king in the hope that they would be freed from free quarter and other exactions.49J. Williams, Ancient and Modern Denbigh (Denbigh, 1836), 200-1. A Welsh poem in traditional verse form, a cywydd, by Watcyn Clywedog, thought to have been written in 1644, lavished praise on Bodvell as ‘defender’ and ‘oak’ of both Anglesey and Caernarfonshire. In the cywydd, he is credited with making Caernarfon Castle secure.50Blodeugerdd Barddas o’r Ail Ganrif ar Bymtheg, Cyfrol 1 ed. N. Lloyd (Llandybïe, 1993, 303-6. The poem celebrates Bodvell’s return to live at Caerfryn, with its wine cellar, fair hall and three galleries, but its owner’s future was fated to be far removed from the idyll anticipated by the bard.

In March 1646, Bodvell survived Lord Byron’s purge of royalist army commissions in north Wales, but by May he was in discussions with Thomas Mytton*, and was evidently in favour of an accommodation with the parliamentarian general. Bodvell signed the letter of 12 June on behalf of the royalist Anglesey gentry, which called on their military leaders to surrender castles and garrisons.51Cal. Wynn Pprs. 284, 290, 294, 297, 299, 300; NLW, Wynn of Gwydir 1780; Dodd, ‘Tragedy’, 7-9. He had been assessed in July 1644 at £2,500 by the Committee for Advance of Money, and in September of that year he was listed by the Westminster Parliament as among those who ‘shall expect no pardon’.52CJ iii. 639a. As what became known as the Newcastle Propositions proceeded through the Houses, attempts were made in the Lords to remove Bodvell’s name from this list, but the Commons initially adhered to their position (10 Mar. 1646), before capitulating to the peers; Bodvell’s name was removed on 1 June 1646. Instead, however, he was on the same day identified among ‘such delinquents as were Members of either House of Parliament, that have deserted the Parliament, or adhered to the enemy’.53CJ iii. 639a, iv. 356b, 471a, 559b. In October, the Committee for Advance of Money revised its estimate of his wealth, computing his estate to be worth £1,800 a year.54CCAM 434.

Two months later, Bodvell attended the Committee for Compounding, pleading articles he had signed with Mytton in May. On 8 December 1646 a new writ was moved for Anglesey, and on 9 January 1647 the House voted that his fines should be among those applied to help redundant parliamentarian army officers, which was piquant, as in 1641 Bodvell had been a teller against financial relief for similar supplicants.55CCC 1599; CJ v. 4b, 47b. On 10 February it was proposed to devote Bodvell’s fines to refunding a loan from Colonel William Barton towards the reduction of north Wales, but the Commons rescinded this next day on discovering their previous allocation.56CJ v. 83a, 85a. With the threat of sequestration already over him, and a long period of trying to call in debts to pre-empt the heavy penalties he was expecting, Bodvell may have felt a personal sense of desperation when he threw in his lot with Thomas, 1st Viscount Bulkeley and the rejuvenated Anglesey royalists on their declaration for the king in July 1648.57NLW, Carreglwyd, 545, 553, 588, 602; Phillips, Civil War in Wales, ii. 399-400. His correspondence suggests that he was aware of the dangers, however.58Cal. Wynn Pprs. 309. In any event, he stood with Bulkeley and signed the royalist capitulation of Beaumaris Castle, and found £270 for his contribution to the fines imposed on the royalists in Anglesey and Caernarfon.59Phillips, Civil War in Wales, 401; Dodd, ‘Tragedy’, 11. Even though there is nothing to suggest that Bodvell played an active military part in the second civil war, his avowed involvement for the king ensured that he was excluded, as a delinquent former Member, from the act of general composition for north Wales royalists in 1649.60A. and O. ii. 209.

In a cruel contradiction of Watcyn Clywedog’s paean, Bodvell’s private life after 1646 became just as much a disaster as his public life. Ann Bodvell, like her brother Francis Russell*, was a staunch parliamentarian. By mid-October 1646, writing from London, Bodvell was complaining that his wife had left him, and was taking steps to ensure she did not have custody of their children. For her part, Ann quickly petitioned the Lords on her husband’s ‘evil’ ways in trying to separate her from her children, asking that they should be placed in the custody of a party well-affected to Parliament. The Lords were unsympathetic towards one who was facing sequestration, and ordered the children to be cared for by their grandfather, Russell.61Dodd, ‘Tragedy’, 10; LJ viii. 565a, 568a, 571a, 575b. By April 1647, however, they were back in Caernarfonshire with Bodvell.62Cal. Wynn Pprs. 300. At some point after May 1648, Bodvell travelled to the Isle of Man, allegedly to escape further writs from his estranged wife, and thence to Holland, temporary home of the exiled royal court: a choice of destination which suggests that the motivation for his travels was no longer simply personal, but political. He had returned to England by August 1649. According to Thomas Wynn, a cousin of Bodvell’s who had insinuated himself into his closest counsels, he returned to avoid being categorized as one who had taken arms against Parliament and had fled overseas, and thus exempt from the provisions of the act of composition, but he remained exempt in any case, as a Member who had deserted his trust.63Case of Griffith Wynn, 1.

Ann Bodvell petitioned Parliament in May 1649 in order to secure some provision from her husband’s estate, and her case was dealt with inconclusively until 12 June 1650, when she was awarded a fifth of the estate. On the same day, Bodvell’s property was included in the bill of sale of delinquents’ estates. Henry Marten* was evidently sympathetic to his plight, but in the event a motion (17 July 1650) to rescind the order of sale was unsuccessful. A further proviso to protect Ann Bodvell’s interests was rejected in June 1651.64CJ vi. 232b, 234a, 423a, 442a, 571b, 586a. Bodvell could secure no redress, and in May 1652 John Wildman* put in his bid for the Anglesey estate, while Henry Parker offered to purchase the Caernarvonshire one. Ann Bodvell, who had failed to secure parliamentary exemption for her jointure (10 June 1651), nevertheless obtained an award for alimony from chancery of £500 a year.65CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 354; Case of Griffith Wynn, 1. Her family links with Oliver Cromwell* doubtless operated in her estranged husband’s favour, for in 1653 the lord general was reported to be reviewing the case, and Bodvell managed to secure a stay of the sale of his estates.66Cal. Wynn Pprs. 332; CCC 1600. Thomas Madrin* and John Carter* vexed him with accusations of delinquency, but he was conditionally discharged by the committee for compounding in August 1653, and allowed to collect his rents on security of £5,000 at Goldsmiths’ Hall. His case dragged on until he was fully discharged in April 1655.67CCC 1602. His enemies then turned on his mother at Bodvel, but she eluded them by marrying again.68Cal. Wynn Pprs. 344, 345, 347. The lord protector’s council professed astonishment in January 1656 that such a ‘great delinquent’ as Bodvell should have emerged from these vicissitudes apparently unscathed, and in November he was once again facing penal taxation as a victim of decimation.69Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 105.

Bodvell’s wife experienced the interregnum very differently. Ann Bodvell remained close to the Cromwellian establishment, being friendly with Henry Cromwell*, who had married her niece; and with Bulstrode Whitelocke* and Frances Fiennes, 2nd wife of Nathaniel Fiennes I*.70Henry Cromwell Corresp. 475-6; Whitelocke, Diary, 248. In 1657, she was actively pursuing marriage alliances for her daughters. One was thought certain to marry the widowed Philip Sidney, Viscount Lisle*, but the match evidently came to nought; a marriage was successfully concluded in December that year, however, between Sarah Bodvell and Robert Robartes, son of John, 2nd Baron Robartes, but without her beleaguered father’s consent.71Henry Cromwell Corresp. 253, 288; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 101; Case of Griffith Wynn, 1-2; Case of John Cresset, 1.

Bodvell naturally welcomed the restoration of the monarchy, and signed the petition from the north Wales gentry of June 1660, which demanded condign punishment of the regicides.72Mercurius Publicus no. 24 (7-14 June 1660), 371 (E.186.3). Despite his financial sufferings, he remained among the most substantial of the Caernarfonshire squires.73Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 18. The marriage alliance with the Robartes family was now less difficult politically, since Lord Robartes had been active among the Presbyterian peers promoting the king’s return. Bodvell’s unmarried daughter died either in 1661 or more probably in July 1662, shortly after he had been arrested for not paying alimony to his wife.74Case of John Cresset, 1; Case of Griffith Wynn, 1-2. It was soon after this that his mental health seems to have broken down, and he lived incognito in London, subjects to episodes of delusion, and on one occasion crying out, ‘Devil do thy worst, God do thy worst. I defy the God, I defy the Devil’.75Dodd, ‘Tragedy’, 16-17. In the last months of his life, Bodvell made a will in favour of his kinsman and adviser, Thomas Wynn, disinheriting his grandson, Charles Bodvell Robartes (‘Boddy’), in favour of Wynn’s son, Griffith Wynn. Bodvell died on 28 March 1663, and there followed a protracted period of litigation (at least 8 cases in a number of courts) which culminated in the annulment by act of Parliament (1667) of Bodvell’s will in favour of the Wynns. It seems that ‘Boddy’, who became 2nd earl of Radnor in 1685, had little regard for his Welsh inheritance.76Dodd, ‘Tragedy’, 18-20; Case of John Cresset, 1; Case of Griffith Wynn, 2-3; Cal. Wynn Pprs. 374, 387; 18 Car. II, c.4.