THOMAS, William (d. 1654), of Aber, nr. Bangor, and Coed Helen, nr. Caernarfon, Caern.

Thomas was descended from a Carmarthenshire gentry family that had settled in Caernarfonshire in the mid-sixteenth century, establishing its main residence at Aber, to the west of Bangor.21Griffith, Peds. Anglesey and Caern. Fams. 202; DWB, ‘Thomas fam. of Coed Helen and Aber’. Both his grandfathers had represented Caernarvonshire during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and his father, Sir William Thomas, had emerged during James I’s reign as one of the county’s leading governors and allies of Sir John Wynn† of Gwydir (the father of Sir Richard Wynn* and Henry Wynn*).22Cal. Wynn Pprs. 202, 229; HP Commons, 1558-1603, ‘William Thomas I’; HP Commons, 1604-29, ‘Sir William Maurice’; DWB, ‘Thomas fam. of Coed Helen and Aber’; L. Bowen, The Politics of the Principality: Wales, c.1603-42 (Cardiff, 2007), 94-5, 115-16, 118. For reasons that are now unclear, Sir William disinherited his eldest son, John, in 1618 and entailed most of his estate upon his second son, the future MP.23C142/534/112; DWB, ‘Thomas fam. of Coed Helen and Aber’. William Thomas junior apparently made little impression upon Caernarfonshire’s affairs until 1637-8, when, as high sheriff, he supervised the collection of approximately 90 per cent of the county’s quota for Ship Money.24Bowen, Politics of the Principality, 183-4, 197-8, 204. His shrievalty added to the burden of debt he had inherited from his father – or so he claimed when seeking to excuse himself (which he succeeded in doing) from appointment as sheriff of Anglesey in the autumn of 1639.25HEHL, EL 7275.

In the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, Thomas stood for Caernarvon Boroughs against the MP for the county in the Short Parliament, Thomas Glynne of Glynllifon. It is likely that William Thomas’s standing and property in and around the borough had gained him a healthy interest among the freemen. But probably more important in securing him victory in the poll on election day was the backing of his father’s former political adversary John Griffith I*. As constable of Caernarfon Castle, Griffith was ex officio mayor of the town – although some of the freemen evidently regarded the place of deputy-mayor as the most senior and authoritative municipal office. Glynne petitioned the Commons against Thomas’s return; but although the committee that investigated the election voted that it should be declared void, it never made its report to the House – or if it did, no action was taken upon it – and Thomas retained his seat accordingly.26Supra, ‘Caernarvon Boroughs’; ‘John Griffith I’; Cal. Wynn Pprs. 167, 172; M. Gray, ‘Castles and patronage in sixteenth-century Wales’, WHR xv. 491; A.H. Dodd, ‘Caern. elections to the Long Parliament’, BBCS xii. 44-6.

Although Thomas does not appear to have received any committee appointments in the Long Parliament, he was attending the Commons with sufficient regularity by the spring of 1641 that he was present to take the Protestation on the day of its introduction, 3 May.27CJ ii. 133b. In a speech that he purportedly made to the House that same month and which was subsequently published, he rehearsed arguments in favour of removing the bishops from the House of Lords. He began by reminding MPs that he

had formerly spoken of the present church government by archbishops, bishops etc., declaring the corruption and unsoundness thereof and how far degenerate [from], if not contrary to, the pure, primitive apostolical institution. Also, I have touched a little of [sic] the other parts, as how unlawful it was for them to intermeddle in temporal affairs, to use civil power or to sit as judges in any court, much less the court of Parliament.28A Speech of William Thomas Esquire in Parliament in May, 1641 (1641), sig. A2.

He then expatiated at length, citing legal and historical evidence, on the ills of prelacy and how the bishops had frustrated ‘reformation’ under Elizabeth and had been responsible during James’s reign for the introduction of ‘schisms, heresies and idolatry, of popery and Arminianism and ... mischief and danger to the king and prejudice to the people and kingdom’.29Speech of William Thomas Esquire, sigs. C3v-D. Thomas was reportedly seconded on this occasion by the godly MP John White II ‘and divers others who declared the like opinion’.30Ath. Ox. iii. 105. Evidently Thomas’s marriage to a bishop’s daughter had not turned him into an admirer of the episcopate.

In a meeting of the committee of the whole House on a bill for abolishing episcopacy, on 15 June 1641, Thomas launched another attack upon prelacy – and this, too, was later published. The substance of his speech on this occasion was in support of the case for abolishing the office of dean, which he insisted ‘doth neither tend or conduce (as some have alleged) to the honour of God, the propagation of piety, the advancement of learning, or benefit of the commonwealth’.31CJ ii. 176b; Master William Thomas Esquire his Speech in Parliament, Iune 1641 (1641, E.198.26); Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 285-8; Whitelocke, Mems. i. 135; Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, i. 87-8. The William Thomas who wrote the next day from London to a kinsman in Wales, making clear his dislike of Presbyterian church government, was not the MP – as one authority has stated – but his cousin.32Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 48-9; A.H. Dodd, ‘Caern. in the civil war’, Caern. Hist. Soc. Trans. xiv. 5.

Thomas’s third published speech, which he purportedly delivered in January 1642, was again in support of the campaign for removing the bishops from the Lords. The bishops’ right to sit in Parliament was ‘mere usurpation and a possession unduly gained and wrongfully held’, he argued, and a ‘venom’ that ‘hath well near poisoned and destroyed’ episcopacy. Yet he was keen to avoid the suggestion that he favoured root and branch church reform.

Am I become an enemy to episcopacy because I speak the truth? Do I not rather declare myself a well-wisher, if not a firm friend, to episcopacy, desiring only the cure and preservation thereof? ... I am not for eradicating or demolishing, but my wish is ... to repair the breaches of Sion...33A Speech of William Thomas Esquire (1642, E.200.1).

The House showed its trust in Thomas that spring by recommending him (successfully) for appointment as a deputy lieutenant for Caernarfonshire and Anglesey.34CJ ii. 485b, 587b, 621a; LJ v. 84b. He reciprocated by joining the godly MP and future regicide John Moore in investing £600 as Irish Adventurers in the spring of 1642, although there is no record that they were ever allocated any land in Ireland.35The Names of Such Members of the Commons House of Parliament as Have Already Subscribed (1642, 669 f.5.3); Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 565. Thomas had probably become acquainted with Moore – whom he supplied with information for his parliamentary diary – through the latter’s fellow MP for Liverpool, Sir Richard Wynn.36PJ ii. 82, 211.

Having pledged to supply a horse upon the propositions in mid-June 1642 for the defence of Parliament, Thomas was given leave by the Commons to ‘go into the country’ – apparently on the understanding that he would help to execute the Militia Ordinance in Caernarfonshire and Anglesey, ‘he being a deputy lieutenant of two counties’.37PJ iii. 474; CJ ii. 621a; Dodd, ‘Caern. in the civil war’, 5-6. But if the House had anticipated that he would support the parliamentary interest in north Wales it would be disappointed, for he seems to have figured very little in the region’s affairs until the autumn of 1643, when he was commissioned to raise a regiment of foot for the king.38Tucker, Royalist Officers, 59 His decision to accept this commission seems to have been prompted, at least in part, by a desire to preserve his estate and local supporters from interference by Caernarfonshire’s royalist authorities.39R. Hutton, The Royalist War Effort 1642-6 (Harlow, 1982), 136. His commitment to the king’s cause was sufficient to prompt his attendance at the Oxford Parliament early in 1644 and his signing of its letter to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, on 27 January, urging him to compose a peace. Duly notified of Thomas’s adherence to the king, his former colleagues at Westminster disabled him from sitting.40Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 574; CJ iii. 389b. His loyalty was rewarded by the queen in mid-February with appointment as one of her grooms of the chamber in ordinary, at a salary of 2 shillings a day.41CSP Dom. 1644, p. 14.

Thomas was created a baronet at some point in the mid-1640s and would remain active in the royalist cause in north Wales until at least February 1646.42SP23/222, p. 258; NLW, Clenennau 592, 597; Cal. Wynn Pprs. 289; CCAM 434; Tucker, Royalist Officers, 59. He was evidently in royalist quarters on Anglesey when the island was yielded to Parliament in June 1646, for he would later claim the benefit of the Anglesey articles of surrender.43CCC 2740. His rents and goods were sequestered in 1647 by order of the Committee for Advance of Money* for failure to pay his assessment of £800, and – as he complained in 1649 to the commissioners for relief upon articles of war – he subsequently suffered the sequestration of his entire estate.44SP23/222, p. 263; CCAM 434. Writing to a friend in 1650, he refuted reports that he had allowed his scruples to stand in the way of regaining his estate, insisting that his sufferings at the hands of both royalists and parliamentarians and his ‘want of necessaries’ were such that he could not afford such willfulnes.45Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 99. Nevertheless, it was not until February 1651 that he petitioned to compound (on the Anglesey articles). He claimed in his petition that he was ‘guilty of no other crime’ than that of failing to return to the House after he had left Westminster in the summer of 1642 because of ill-health and ‘urgent occasions at home’. Thereafter, having received no summons from the Commons to return, he had remained at home, ‘unless he were sometimes driven from thence by the late king’s party, being always faithful and doing good services for the Parliament’.46SP23/222, p. 258. His fine was set at a third of his estate – that is, £780 – and reduced, on petition, to £646. By dint of borrowing money and selling property in Caernarfonshire and Anglesey worth £60 a year he managed to pay his fine, only to discover that his estate had been let for six years by the north Wales parliamentary committee. His predicament, as he complained to Goldsmiths’ Hall, was now worse than if he had never compounded, for the money he had borrowed to free his estate from sequestration could have been better employed in maintaining him directly. As it was, he had been forced to go into hiding to avoid his creditors while still being deprived of his property and rents.47CCC 2740.

Thomas died in March 1654 encumbered with debts of about £2,000. His place of burial is not known. According to a deposition by Thomas Madrin* made in a 1656 chancery case concerning Thomas’s estate, the deceased had made a will a few weeks before his death in which he had left his estate to his eldest son Richard on condition that the latter pay his debts. In the event that Richard failed to do so, deposed Madrin, Thomas had devised that William Foxwist*, Madrin and four other gentlemen should hold his estate in trust until his debts had been satisfied.48C6/133/215. However, there is no evidence that this will was entered in probate. Thomas was the last of his line to sit in Parliament.