TWISLETON, George (1618-67), of Denbigh Castle, Denb. and Lleuar, Clynnog, Caern.

George Twisleton came of a Yorkshire gentry family which contributed notable military talent to the parliamentarian forces in the first civil war, being the youngest of three brothers who reached the rank of colonel. John and (Sir) Philip were more prominent in the field than George, but he found some success in north Wales as the conflict drew to a close. In 1645 he was sent to assist the siege of Chester with a party of Yorkshire horse, and in January 1646 he was a lieutenant-colonel in command of a company of Thomas Mytton’s* regiment sent to block the road to Chester from Harwarden.20N. Tucker, Denbighshire Officers in the Civil War (Denbigh, 1961), 145; HMC Portland i. 337. Shortly afterwards he joined John Carter* in undertaking the siege of Denbigh, and was present when it capitulated on 14 October.21CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 412; Phillips, Civil War in Wales i. 360; ii. 306. He remained in the region in 1647, accompanying a Colonel Jones, more probably John Jones I* than Philip Jones*, to ‘a general meeting of the committees of north Wales’ at Wrexham in February.22HMC Egmont i. 361. In January 1648 Twisleton became governor of Denbigh Castle.23Williams, Recs. of Denbigh, 133; CCC 703. During the second civil war he surprised and took captive a royalist troop from south Wales at Barmouth, and was ordered to direct operations throughout Denbighshire and Flintshire.24Phillips, Civil War in Wales i. 409; ii. 370. Twisleton and Carter were also sent to relieve Mytton at Caernarfon, routing the royalist commander, Sir John Owen, at Y Dalar Hir on 5 June.25Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 329; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1146; Phillips, Civil War in Wales ii. 380. On 3 July Twisleton discovered and thwarted an enemy bid to rescue Owen from captivity in Denbigh Castle, thanks to a ‘special piece of Providence’.26HMC Portland i. 478-80; J.F. Rees, Studies in Welsh Hist. (Cardiff, 1947), 107, 114. Twisleton was thanked for his service and awarded £1,000 for expenses and arrears by Parliament on 4 August, and the Anglesey capitulation fine of £7,000 was awarded to Twisleton’s men on 2 October.27LJ x. 419a, 420a; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 231; Phillips, Civil War in Wales ii. 401.

During the later 1640s Twisleton reinforced his standing in north Wales. He was admitted to the corporation of Denbigh in 1648 and soon became a dominant figure in the town where he pursued the reform of charity abuses and encouraged the development of a ‘manufactory’.28Arch. Cambr. (1850), 137. From August 1648 he represented three counties in the north Wales Association.29A. and O.; LJ x. 448a. In the same year he married a Caernarfonshire heiress, Mary Glynne of Lleuar.30DWB. Twisleton became a staunch supporter of the commonwealth regime. He was named to the assessment committees for the north Welsh counties from April 1649 and their magistrates’ benches shortly afterwards, and from August 1649 he became an active sequestrator in the region, his own reward for his earlier military service being derived, at his suggestion, from confiscations of royalist property.31HMC Portland i. 477; CCC 131, 173; C231/6, pp. 198, 231, 265. In the same period he was involved in the recruitment of Welshmen to serve in Oliver Cromwell’s* army in Ireland, a venture he strongly supported because it would stamp out any remaining royalist hopes in Britain.32CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 407; 1650, pp. 589-93; 1651, p. 210; 1651-2, p. 26. As he told the secretary to the army, William Clarke, in April 1649, ‘it is high time we were up and doing both at home and abroad, [for] there is much fire under the ashes and much tinder everywhere: a little blast will bring them together, and then such a flame as has not yet been in England’.33HMC Leyborne-Popham, 14.

Twisleton’s support for the commonwealth was motivated partly by idealism and partly by vested interest. In 1650 he bought lands in Anglesey, and in the same year joined John Jones I* in purchasing three manors near Denbigh for £3,797.34Cal. Wynn Pprs., 330; Williams, Recs. of Denbigh, 133. He was one of the most active of the commissioners for the propagation of the gospel in north Wales from February 1650, and the confidence reposed in him as military governor was reflected in a commission of 18 August 1651 to raise a troop of horse during the crisis that attended the march of the Scots south to Worcester.35A. and O.; T. Richards, Hist. Puritan Movement in Wales (1920), 99; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 338, 401. In September he joined Mytton and others on a court martial in Chester to deal with the 7th earl of Derby and other supporters of Charles Stuart in north Wales and north-west England.36Stanley Pprs. ed. Raines, p. cccxxxvi. With Sir John Trevor* and his relative by marriage, Andrew Ellis*, he purchased Mold and other Flintshire manors confiscated from the earl of Derby; the dowager countess subsequently accused Twisleton of being among her husband’s ‘executioners’.37CCC 1116; HMC 7th Rep., 95. Twisleton was also summoned to the Committee for Compounding in January 1654 to answer for his treatment of John Bodvell*, and to deliver a bond for money owed to Edward Vaughan*; and in the following August, under threat of sequestration, he was forced to restore with interest £700 he had wrested from the Denbighshire receiver-general, Watkin Kiffin three years before.38CCC 696-7, 1601, 1628; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 191. Such investigations and penalties further complicated Twisleton’s already tortuous financial position. By the spring of 1653 he was said to owe £1,000 with interest to Colonel John Mason, and in September 1654 he petitioned the protector, protesting against his treatment in the Kiffin case and complaining that nearly £1,260 of arrears, not including his pay as governor of Denbigh, had been withheld by the Army Committee. 39Inedited Letters ed Mayer, 227-8; CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 187, 191, 196. These sums were eventually granted to him in April 1656.40CCC 703-4; CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 117, 290.

Twisleton was returned for Anglesey in all three protectoral parliaments. In the 1654 Parliament he was named to seven committees in the first two months of the session, including those on the ordinance against scandalous ministers (25 Sept.), and to consider the army and navy (26 Sept.).41CJ vii. 370a, 370b. On 26 October he was added to the committee of privileges, and on 22 November he was chosen for the public accounts committee.42CJ vii. 379a, 387b. He played no known role in the final weeks of the Parliament, and was not involved in the debates surrounding the new Government Bill. In the 1656 Parliament Twisleton took a more prominent part. He was named to the committee of privileges on 18 September, and soon afterwards was appointed to a committee to attend the protector with a fast declaration (22 Sept.) and to the committee for Irish affairs (23 Sept.).43CJ vii. 424a, 426b, 427a. In October he was named to three committees that may have reflected his financial and religious concerns: those for taking the accounts of the trustees for the sale of royal and church lands (17 Oct.), to consider the fate of papists’ estates (22 Oct.) and for the maintenance of ministers in England and Wales (31 Oct.).44CJ vii. 440b, 444a, 448b. In November and December he was appointed to a number of minor committees, and by mid-December he had become the chairman of the committee for the sale of the property of those indicted of treason, sitting at Drury House.45CJ vii. 456a, 460b, 469a, 470b, 472b, 473a. It was in this capacity that he made his only recorded speech to the Commons, on 16 December, the day after one James Noble offered ‘a very foul affront’ to the committee, in which he denounced six of its members, including Major-general Edward Whalley*, as ‘knaves’. As Twisleton told the House:

I never heard such language in all my life. I have known this fellow a long time. He was in Wales, and approved himself a very vile person. He showed himself so in Scotland, where he was in arms. I have observed him all along very prying at committees. We, as a committee of Parliament, presumed to commit him to the serjeant-at-arms.46Burton’s Diary i. 148.

Noble, brought to the bar of the House on his knees, was committed to Bridewell. On 12 January 1657 Twisleton was still chairing the Drury House committee ‘in the middle room’, with Whalley and his fellow major-general, William Goffe*, ‘constant attendants’.47Burton’s Diary i. 344.

Twisleton’s activities in the Commons during the early weeks of 1657 were pedestrian. On 27 January he was appointed to the committee adjudicating the dispute between Sir Sackville Crow and the Levant Company, on 12 February he was teller in favour of allowing a report from the Drury House committee, and on 18 February he was named to the committee on a bill for the better observation of the Lord’s Day.48CJ vii. 482b, 490a, 493b. Despite his earlier enthusiasm for the commonwealth and his association with leading major-generals, Twisleton supported the offer of the crown to Cromwell, and was listed among those who voted for the first article of the Humble Petition and Advice on 25 March.49Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 23 (E.935.5). On 3 April he appointed to the committee to attend the protector concerning the new constitution.50CJ vii. 519b. Thereafter, his involvement in the affairs of the House seems to have decreased. His next committee appointment, on 29 May, concerning the postage bill, and the next day he was one of those ordered to inspect the treasuries to decide how to fund the revenues stipulated by the Humble Petition.51CJ vii. 542a, 543a. He was named to two more committees in June, including that to consider the claims of his old comrade, Colonel John Carter*, on 2 June, and he was added to the committee for the public revenue on 26 June.52CJ vii. 543a, 545b, 576a.

In Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, Twisleton involvement was again somewhat patchy. He was appointed to the Welsh and northern committees to investigate the supply of ministers on 5 February 1659, but thereafter he was not engaged in any business until the beginning of April.53CJ vii. 600b. He was named to the Irish and Scottish affairs committees on 1 April and to the committee to examine the petition from the disbanded forces of Lancashire on13 April.54CJ vii. 623a, 623b, 638a. Twisleton was initially treated with understandable reserve by the restored Rump, and in June 1659 he was replaced as governor of Denbigh, but he was soon rehabilitated. He regained his position as a militia commissioner in north Wales in July, in August he was ordered by the council of state to ‘hasten after Lord Lambert (John Lambert*)’, to assist in putting down the rising led by George Boothe*, and he had been nominated to command the regiment of foot formerly under Colonel John Miller by October.55CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 96; Add. 4197, f. 235. Twisleton was named to the north Welsh assessment commissions in January 1660 and served as a militia commissioner there in the spring.56A. and O. In February 1660 his commission as colonel was confirmed by George Monck*, with Parliament ordering that the other officers of the regiment would be commissioned and the soldiers paid a month’s wages before leaving London.57CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 570, 592; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 345-6; CJ vii. 830b, 836b, 840a.

The return of Charles II left Twisleton in a difficult position. His regiment was disbanded, he lost his local offices and in June 1660 his rents from the earl of Derby’s Flintshire manors were stopped while the heir sought to recover from their purchasers. The dowager countess failed to make good her claim that Twisleton been involved in her husband’s execution, but the questionable means by which the manors changed hands were exposed, and the dispossession of the estates was averted in May 1662 only by the refusal of royal assent. In January 1663 he was obliged to defend himself before exchequer commissioners meeting at Caernarfon, and admitted to having bought episcopal properties and a fee farm rent of the crown in Caernarfonshire.58LJ xi. 91b, 91b, 310a, 471a; E112/566/693. Twisleton retired to Lleuar, which had come into his possession on the death of his father-in-law in 1660, and he died there on 12 May 1667, aged 48. He was buried in Clynnog Fawr church, where his monument survives.59Arch. Cambr. (1877), 333. In his will of May 1666 Twisleton admitted his failings, ‘being truly penitent and sorry from the bottom of my heart for all my sins past, most humbly desiring forgiveness for the same’, but remained confident, as a good Calvinist, of being counted among ‘the elect and chosen’. He referred to a post-nuptial settlement of 10 July 1649, which had awarded his younger children £100 a year for their maintenance, and conceded that the extent of his debts meant that new arrangements would have to be made for marriage portions for his daughters. Likewise, the estate inherited by his eldest son depended on what was left when lands were sold to pay off the creditors.60PROB11/325/141. Twisleton’s son and heir, George, married the niece of John Griffith II* of Cefnamlwch, but the Lleuar line ended with their grandchild Mary.61DWB.