GRIFFITH (GRIFFYTHE), John I (1590/1-1643), of Cefnamwlch, Tudweiliog, Caern.

Griffith’s family had settled at Cefnamwlch on the Llŷn peninsula in west Caernarfonshire by the 1480s.25DWB, ‘Griffith of Cefnamwlch’. Griffith’s father has sometimes been confused with John Griffith of Plas Mawr, who was elected for Caernarvon Boroughs in 1571, 1572 and 1604.26HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘John Griffith I’. But in fact it was Griffith who became the first member of the Cefnamwlch family to sit in Parliament when he was returned for Caernarvonshire in 1621 as a champion of the Llŷn gentry in their resistance to the domineering Sir John Wynn† (the father of Sir Richard Wynn* and Henry Wynn*)† and the Gwydir interest. Returned for the county again in 1626, he showed himself a brazen careerist by speaking repeatedly in support of the beleaguered royal favourite, George Villiers, duke of Buckingham. Griffith would later claim that the duke had been a ‘gracious friend’ to him, although he gained little by their association beyond Buckingham’s agreement, as lord admiral, to accept the request of Griffith’s father-in-law Sir Richard Trevor to resign his office as vice admiral of north Wales to Griffith. In the 1628 session of Parliament he was conspicuous once again in support of the court interest, citing his personal experience of Buckingham’s Protestant zeal and of the king’s respect for the rule of law. With his hopes of preferment dashed by the duke’s assassination in August 1628, he made no recorded contribution to the 1629 session.27HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘John Griffith III’; C2/ChasI/M47/77; NLW, 9061E/1406; 9062E/1533; CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 419; L. Bowen, The Politics of the Principality: Wales, c.1603-42 (Cardiff, 2007), 126, 143.

Griffith busied himself during the 1630s in pursuing his (often protracted and futile) law suits and in his work as vice-admiral for north Wales.28HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘John Griffith III’. On his father’s death in 1638 he inherited the family estate at Cefnamwlch, worth an estimated £1,300 a year, and that same year he and three other gentlemen secured a lease from the crown of all the king’s mines in Denbighshire and Caernarfonshire.29C2/ChasI/G54/24; C66/2839/4; Coventry Docquets, 359. He does not seem to have contested the county seat in the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640. However, his appointment as recorder of Beaumaris – probably at some point during the summer or early autumn of 1640 – carried with it a strong electoral interest in the town, resulting in his return for the borough to the Long Parliament.30Supra, ‘Beaumaris’; Roberts, ‘The parl. hist. of Beaumaris’, 106. His influence in Caernarfonshire was this time sufficient to secure the return, in controversial circumstances, of his son John Griffith II as knight of the shire. And although the defeated candidate – Griffith’s former ally against the Gwydir interest, Thomas Glynne* – mounted a strong challenge at Westminster against the result, the Griffiths eventually prevailed and Griffith II was allowed to retain his seat.31Supra, ‘Caernarvonshire’; ‘Thomas Glynne’.

Because both father and son sat in the Commons and the clerk of the House apparently made little effort to distinguish between them – referring to both as ‘Mr John Griffith’ or as ‘Mr Griffith’ – it is impossible to form a precise picture of Griffith I’s parliamentary appointments.32CJ ii. 133b, 136b, 273a. Assuming that the majority of references to ‘Mr Griffith’ apply to Griffith I, he was named to approximately seven committees, all but one of them in the period between late January and early September 1641.33CJ ii. 75b, 87a, 99a, 200a, 239a, 279b, 479a. Of these committees, the most important were those to investigate military preparations against the Scots and their English allies by the Catholic magnate the 5th earl of Worcester (29 January 1641); to draft a bill for preventing the clergy from holding temporal office (8 March); and to bring in a bill for paying the arrears of the ‘brotherly assistance’ to the Scots (5 August).34CJ ii. 75b, 99a, 239a. It is likely that he was the ‘Mr Griffith’ who was appointed by the Commons on 19 March to obtain particulars from the earl of Warwick of the money that had passed through his hands for the relief of the northern counties.35CJ ii. 108a.

Given Griffith I’s experience in speaking on the floor of the House it is also probable that he was the ‘Mr Griffith’ who periodically contributed to Commons’ debates during 1641. In the great root and branch debate of 7-8 February, he moved to have ‘some parts’ of the London petition – presumably those relating to reforming episcopacy rather than abolishing it outright – referred to a committee: a suggestion supported by the courtiers Sir Henry Vane I and Sir Thomas Jermyn, but opposed by Denzil Holles.36Procs LP ii. 392. According to several sources, both Griffith and his son voted against the attainder of the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†), on 21 April.37Procs LP iv. 42; Verney, Notes, 58. John Rushworth*, on the other hand, noted only one ‘Mr Griffith’ among the Straffordians.38Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 248-9. Certainly both men took the Protestation early in May.39CJ ii. 133b, 136b. Griffith I’s remarks on 7 June in relation to the recently-introduced bill for abolishing episcopacy were a little too candid for the liking of the House. After making several ‘digressions into the disorders of the church and the present established government, and being often interrupted’, he observed that ‘it was distasteful to this House to speak for the government of the church’. Great exception was taken to this remark by some Members, and there were calls for him to be brought to the bar of the House, ‘but at length he desired to explain himself, which he did, and then it was laid aside’.40Procs LP v. 12, 14, 16; Verney, Notes, 83.

Griffith I affirmed his alignment with the nascent king’s party in the House even more clearly on 12 June 1641, when he stated that he could not consent to the disbanding of any of the king’s armies – that is, not only his troops in northern England, but also his Catholic-dominated army in Ireland – until a treaty had been signed with the Scots by which their forces would also be de-mobilised.41Procs LP v. 117. On 30 August he sought information as to how much of the Scottish army in northern England had been disbanded; and later that same day – after news had reached Westminster that the Scots intended to keep 5,000 men in the field until the entire English army had been disbanded and the garrisons at Berwick and Carlisle had been slighted – he successfully moved that the Commons ask the Lords to sit the following morning ‘in respect of the weighty affairs of the kingdom’, whereupon he was appointed a messenger to carry up this request to the peers.42Procs LP vi. 611, 616, 617; CJ ii. 277b; LJ iv. 387a. In the heated debates on 9 September – the last day of the opening session of the Long Parliament – concerning popish innovations in religion, he spoke strongly in favour of an order sent down from the Lords, enjoining that church services should be performed according to the Prayer Book. John Pym responded by urging that if the Lords did not revoke this order the Commons should formally protest the matter.43CJ ii. 286b; Procs LP vi. 719. Griffith’s words, like John Culpeper’s machinations in support of the Lords’ order, represented an affront to the pro-Scots party at Westminster, which was eager to send to a positive message to Edinburgh about progress on church reform before the Houses adjourned.44Supra, ‘Sir John Culpeper’.

Griffith I spent much of the last three months of 1641 in Caernarfonshire and made no recorded impact upon the Commons’ proceedings during these months.45Salop RO, 212/364/61; NLW, 9063E/1695, 1696, 1699. His last known speech in the Commons was on 17 January, in a committee of the whole House to consider the distempers of the kingdom and their remedy, when he claimed that the ‘preaching of mechanics is one cause of the present distractions’.46PJ i. 103. By the end of January he was at Beaumaris, performing his duties as vice-admiral of north Wales.47PJ i. 149, 319; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 270; HMC 5th Rep. 349. His last appointment in the Commons was to a committee set up on 15 March to consider the grievances of the Common Council of London.48CJ ii. 479a. Although in ill-health by mid-1642, Griffith was a dedicated member of the Caernarfonshire commission of array, and in that capacity he accompanied the king on his recruiting tour of the north Wales border during the autumn of 1642. His willingness to rise above the localist concerns of his Caernarfonshire neighbours – specifically, in obeying royal orders to send some of the county’s ordnance to where it might be more profitably employed in England – elicited allegations that he was selling arms to the king’s enemies. Indeed, his efforts to serve the king aroused such enmity among some of his fellow commissioners that he feared they intended ‘to seize upon my estate and upon my life’. In February 1643 he complained to one local royalist that ‘I have very ill luck when I obey the king to be used like a traitor by those that take upon them to do service to the king. But if I cannot defend myself under the king’s protection and his laws it is time to be patient’.49Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 51, 52, 53-4; A.H. Dodd, ‘Anglesey in the civil war’, Anglesey Antiq. Soc. Trans. (1952), 8-9; ‘Caern. in the civil war’, Caern. Hist. Soc. Trans. xiv. 8-9.

Having travelled to Oxford in the spring of 1643 for what he hoped would be a brief sojourn away from Caernarfonshire, Griffith I died in the city after succumbing to what may well have been camp fever. His cousin Robert Jones† arranged for one of Griffith’s servants ‘to continue with him in his sickness’ and to pay for his doctors’ bills and funeral expenses.50C2/ChasI/G27/45; C2/ChasI/G54/24; C2/ChasI/G5/12. Griffith was buried in St Mary the Virgin, Oxford on 11 July 1643.51St Mary the Virgin par. reg. He died intestate, with the administration of his estate being granted to his brother Edmund and later devolving upon his second son William, who sat in the Cavalier Parliament for Caernarvon Boroughs.52PROB6/21, f. 142; PROB6/25, f. 74v; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘William Griffith’.