WOGAN, Thomas (c.1616-c.1670), of Wiston, Pemb.

Thomas Wogan’s identity and early history are obscure, but it has been convincingly shown that he was the third son of John Wogan and his wife, Jane, daughter of Sir Thomas Colclough of Tintern, co. Wexford.11Green, ‘Wogans’, 208. As John Wogan’s eldest son, John, was of marriageable age by 1635, it seems unlikely that Thomas Wogan could have been born much later than 1616.12Green, ‘Wogans’, 214. There were branches of the Wogan family at Picton, Wiston, Stone Hall, Llanstinan, Haverfordwest and other places in Pembrokeshire, and so whether Thomas Wogan, initiator of a case in the court of chivalry in May 1639 after having been subjected to abuse by a man who objected to a jury of freeholders setting bounds of lands of the bishop of St David’s, is Wogan of Wiston is unclear.13British History Online, Court of Chivalry website, 721.

He was undoubtedly an early supporter of Parliament in the civil war. He was said to have fought at Edgehill, but he appears in focus only from mid-October 1643 as a captain in the horse regiment of John Meldrum. As a unit of the main field army of Parliament, Meldrum’s regiment had been sent to relieve the city of Gloucester, and subsequently played a part in the first battle of Newbury (20 Sept. 1643), by which time presumably Wogan had been commissioned.14J. Benson, England in its Condition (1648), 13 (Wing B1904A); Spring, Waller’s Army, 101. After this, Meldrum’s regiment became a detachment in the brigade of Sir William Balfour, itself a formation of the Southern Association army of Sir William Waller*. Wogan is likely to have fought at the battle of Cheriton (29 Mar. 1644), where Meldrum was mortally wounded. After the death of its commander, the regiment then re-joined Essex’s army, but was reduced into the regiment of Col. James Sheffield. Wogan went into Cornwall with Essex and was involved in the debacle of Lostwithiel (Aug. 1644), at which point there were 10 officers and 53 soldiers in his company. Wogan remained in Sheffield’s regiment until April 1645, by which time other members of the Wogan family – Compton Wogan, his younger brother, and Lewis Wogan, probably of the branch of the family living at Boulston – had joined it as junior officers. Wogan was not marked for transfer into the New Model army of Sir Thomas Fairfax*, and probably resigned his commission or was discharged from the military at some point in 1645.15Spring, Waller’s Army, 101-3; Wanklyn, New Model Army, i. 150-1; Symonds, Diary, 73; Green, ‘Wogans’, 212. In 1644 he should not be confused with another Thomas Wogan of Pembrokeshire, turned out of the parliamentarian commissions there for adherence to the king.16LJ vi. 670a.

That Wogan was not selected for transfer to the New Model suggests that he harboured no sympathy for the Independent faction in politics. Indeed, he was probably a loyal Essexian, from a county where Essex himself had estates and a political interest. Wogan’s election at Cardigan on 24 August 1646 as ‘Thomas Woogan esquire’ suggests that by then he no longer considered himself a military man, and was not regarded so by the electors. He was evidently returned on a local interest: prominent among the signatories to Wogan’s election indenture was Hector Wogan, his uncle, and James Philipps*, his first cousin.17C219/43/6/5. Four months elapsed after his election before he was noticed in the Journal, when with nine other ‘recruiters’, a number of them Welshmen, he took the Covenant (30 Dec.).18CJ v. 33b. Early the following year he was active in advancing the interests of Cardigan, presenting a petition for a free school there (23 Jan. 1647).19HMC 6th Rep. 154. On 13 February his case was referred to the Committee of Accounts, which was presumably part of the process by which the finances of his army service, including any arrears of pay owing to him, were to be determined and settled.20CJ v. 86a. Nothing further is heard of Wogan until 4 August, when he signed the declaration of the Members (mostly Independents) who had taken refuge with the army following the Presbyterian-inspired intimidation of the Houses by the London crowd.21LJ ix. 385b. This represented a surprising change of political direction by Wogan, who as an Essexian officer seemingly overlooked for inclusion in Fairfax’s army, might have been expected to adhere to the Presbyterians. In the absence of further evidence, it is tempting to conclude that his dealings with the Presbyterian-controlled Accounts Committee might have alienated him from that faction.

Wogan was in the House again by 23 September, when he was included in a committee to consider the goods of an unnamed delinquent excepted from pardon. On 24 December he was included in a group of five Members, all of the others Presbyterians, to visit Wales to bring in assessments there. However, later the same day he was excused from going, which rather suggests some alienation, or at least a sense of difference, between himself and his colleagues.22CJ v. 314b, 402b, 404b. His self-alignment with the cause of the Independents was confirmed on 28 March 1648, when he was given leave to go to Wales to contribute to the pacification of the country following the renewed outbreak of war. Now described again as Captain Wogan, he was to take his orders from the Derby House Committee. He played a significant part in the battle of St Fagans (8 May 1648), where his principal adversary was Rowland Laugharne†, a fellow Pembrokeshire man and a kinsman by marriage. Wogan was reported to have ‘carried himself from the first to the last with great resolution, encouraging the soldiers and engaging himself in the head of the service’.23Phillips, Civil War in Wales, ii. 366. During this episode, Wogan was attached to the regiment of Colonel Thomas Horton, whose officers were subsequently ordered by the Commons to be rewarded. Wogan was to have his accounts ‘satisfied’, which must mean that his outstanding arrears of pay were to be settled on him. He reported to the Speaker from Bridgend on the battle (20 May), enclosing the names of officers who had deserted Laugharne for Parliament, but Bulstrode Whitelocke* evidently considered that Wogan himself was a former adherent of Laugharne.24CJ v. 557a, 566b, Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 316. Further rewards for Wogan were his appointment (20 June) as governor of Aberystwyth, one of the contributory boroughs of Cardiganshire, and the sum of £300 to be taken from individuals who had participated in the revolt. From this point onwards, he is described as Colonel Wogan, but his tenure at Aberystwyth must have been short-lived, as by July 1649 the government had decided it was a superfluous garrison and should be disbanded.25CJ v. 608b; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 230. In 1648 he should not be confused with Captain Edward Wogan, who deserted the service of Parliament for that of the king.26CJ v. 498b; Wanklyn, New Model Army, i. 81.

Wogan was excused at a call of the House on 26 September 1648, probably because he was attending his military duties in Aberystwyth. However, he accepted the nomination (6 Jan. 1649) as a commissioner at the trial of the king. He was in London by 18 January, having missed six commissioners’ meetings, but went on to attend five of them and was present on every day of the trial. He signed the death warrant on 29 January.27CJ vi. 34b; Muddiman, Trial, 76, 89, 96, 105, 205, 208, 224-6, 228. On 1 February he declared his dissent to the vote of the previous 5 December that negotiations should continue with the king.28W. Prynne, A Full Declaration (1660), 23 (E.1013.22); Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 390. A week later he was named to a committee on reviewing and augmenting the commission of the peace, and he himself joined the Pembrokeshire commission for the first time on 6 March.29CJ vi. 134a. On 5 March he secured a fresh order for the money still not paid him by the state, and on 27 November was included in a committee to consider how to impose the Engagement, the new republic’s affirmation of loyalty, on the public.30CJ vi. 156a, 326b. Given how few Welsh Members there were in the House by this time, it is striking that Wogan was not named to the commission for propagating the gospel in Wales (22 Feb. 1650). Nothing immediate is known of his religious views, but in July 1649 he was implicated in a case at Pembrokeshire great sessions when it was claimed that he had aided and abetted in the abduction and marriage of a young Haverfordwest girl by his younger brother and former fellow officer, Compton Wogan. It was alleged that the Book of Common Prayer had been used in a marriage ceremony.31Green, ‘Wogans’, 213. The outcome of the case is not known, but it is probably safe to assume that despite his demonstrable hostility to monarchy, or at least to Charles I, Thomas Wogan was not sympathetic to separatist strands of puritanism which the propagation commission represented. The case may have cost Wogan his place on the commission of the peace, since his name disappeared from the libri pacis in 1650.

On 25 June 1651 he was added to the commissioners on the high court of justice set up to try the rebels in Cardiganshire, but his activities at Westminster were limited.32CJ vi. 591b. He served on only one further committee in the Rump Parliament: the committee for bribery, when the case of Edward Howard*, Lord Howard of Escrick, came before it (18 Sept. 1650).33CJ vi. 469a. His own case, arising from his repeated petitioning for arrears of pay owing to him from his time in Essex’s army, came up on 30 April 1651 and a year later (13 Apr. 1652). On the first occasion it was acknowledged that his arrears should be met from the public purse, and in 1652 he secured an order for an award of confiscated lands in Ireland worth £300. Parliament’s commissioners in Ireland were instructed to execute the order, but it remains unclear whether Wogan was able to take possession of any land before the Rump was expelled. 34CJ vi. 568b, vii. 119a, 129b. In 1651 he held a brief lease of tithes in four Pembrokeshire parishes, but seems not to have taken advantage of opportunities in the fluid land market created by widespread land confiscations.

During the protectorate, Wogan retreated from public life and was probably out of sympathy with both the religious radicalism of the Nominated Assembly and the single ruler principle of the Cromwellian protectorate. However, when the Rump returned to power following the collapse of the protectorate, Wogan participated in it, to the extent of being named to a committee for empowering parliamentary commissioners in Ireland. His involvement was probably minimal, since on 30 September the House levied a fine on him for non-attendance.35CJ vii. 678b, 790a. There is no evidence that he returned to soldiering: the assertion that he took a commission under Colonel Robert Overton and served in north-east England rests on a confusion between Wogan and Lieutenant-colonel John Wiggan.36Williams, Parlty Hist. Wales, 38; Oxford DNB, ‘Thomas Wogan’; Wanklyn, New Model Army, ii. 125.

At the restoration of the monarchy, Wogan was inevitably a marked man. On 18 May 1660 he was ordered to be arrested with the other regicides, and his name appeared in the proclamation for arresting the regicides at large. In June his name was excepted from the act of oblivion, and he turned himself in on the 27th of that month. He was categorized as one whose case would depend on legislation subsequent to the act of oblivion. On 5 February 1662 he was among a number of regicides ordered to be brought before the House of Lords, but two days later the lieutenant of the Tower reported that Wogan had never been in his custody; presumably he had remained since June 1660 in the hands of the Commons’ serjeant-at-arms.37CJ viii. 75a, 139b, ; LJ xi. 32b, 52b, 101b, 102a, 378a, 381a. In August 1662 the first of a series of warrants was issued for the seizure of the Wiston estate, since Wogan had been attainted, but the government failed to appreciate that it belonged by this time not to Wogan but to his nephew.38CSP Dom. 1661-2, pp. 459, 489, 566; 1663-4, p. 157; Green, ‘Wogans’, 210-11, 215-6. In July 1664 Wogan escaped from Clifford’s Tower in York.39A Proclamation for Discovery and Apprehension (1664, Wing C3329); CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 652. By the summer of 1665 George Downing* was reporting that he was in Holland and the playwright and government agent, Aphra Behn, thought it possible that he was involved in hatching a plot.40CCSP v. 493, 495; CSP Dom. 1666-7, p. 156. He died in Rotterdam around 1670. Edmund Ludlowe II* captured a degree of ambivalence surrounding Wogan’s commitment to the ‘good old cause’:

Though in the generality he walked not so close and exact, in some men’s opinions, according to the rule as could have been wished; yet as to this great act he bore a constant and cheerful testimony, notwithstanding some signal temptations he had to the contrary.41Bodl. Eng. hist. c. 487, p. 1250.

Ludlowe’s report casts serious doubt over the story that a penitent Wogan spent his last days living anonymously in a Pembrokeshire church porch, although a woman was gaoled in 1669 for organizing a collection for his relief.42Green, ‘Wogans’, 211-12; F. Jones, ‘Disaffection and Dissent in Pemb.’, Trans. Hon. Soc. Cymmrodorion, 1946-7, p. 214. Wogan is unusual both in being an Essexian whose alignment with the Independents seems to have occurred within a few months during 1647; and also as a Welsh radical of the period who harboured no obvious commitment to separatist puritanism.