GLYNNE, William (1638-1690), of Ambrosden, Oxon., and Hawarden, Flint

Glynne was returned for Caernarvonshire, on his father’s interest, to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament in 1659. His election was contested at Westminster by Thomas Madrin*, however, who petitioned the Commons, complaining that Glynne had prevailed by means of ‘a letter from a great person (almost certainly a reference to Glynne’s father), by combination of malignants, and that ... the poll was denied and great disorder at the election’. Madrin also claimed that Glynne was ‘an infant, under age’, which technically speaking was true, although he was only a few weeks short of attaining his majority when he was elected.14Burton’s Diary, iv. 224. This reference to Glynne’s age establishes that it was he who was returned for the county in 1659 and not William Glynne of Lleuar (c.1613-60) as several authorities have stated.15Williams, Parlty. Hist. Wales, 61; Dodd, Studies in Stuart Wales (2nd edn.), 161. When Madrin’s petition was debated in the Commons on 22 March, Sir John Carter and other Members ‘excepted against it, as being full of lies’; and, in regard that the petition lacked signatures or subscribers, the House laid it aside.16CJ vii. 618b. Glynne received three appointments in this Parliament – to the committee of privileges (28 January); to settle a learned and pious ministry in Wales (5 February); and to consider a petition from Lincolnshire (2 March).17CJ vii. 595b, 600b, 609a. He made no recorded contribution to debate. Nevertheless, his letters to Richard Wynn* of Gwydir that spring reveal that he kept track of proceedings in the Commons.18Cal. Wynn Pprs. 351, 352. His reports were neutral in tone until the restoration of the Rump in mid-May 1659, when he observed that ‘when a kingdom must be tossed in a blanket, happy are they who are out of it; that England is so, I will not say it, but I could wish it were not so, our commonweal is turned into a commonwealth’.19NLW, MS 9065E/2188.

In the elections to the 1660 Convention, in which his father replaced him as Member for the county, Glynne stepped into the shoes of his brother-in-law, Robert Williams, as MP for Caernarvon Boroughs. Both Glynne and his father were listed by Philip, 4th Baron Wharton as likely supporters of a Presbyterian church settlement.20G.F.T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 347. The Glynnes’ clean sweep of the shire and borough seats in 1660 prompted an agreement among the leading county gentry that would see both men replaced in the elections to the Cavalier Parliament in 1661.21HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Caernarvonshire’. There is no evidence that Glynne ever sought to resume his parliamentary career, or that he continued to play any significant part in the affairs of Caernarfonshire. He augmented the estate that his father had acquired in Oxfordshire in the 1650s with the purchase in 1673 of Ambrosden, near Bicester, which he rebuilt as his principal residence.22VCH Oxon. v. 18, 25.

Glynne died on or about September 1690 and was probably buried at Ambrosden (very little of the parish register for the years 1682-95 survives).23CB. No will is recorded. His son, the second baronet, was returned for Oxford University in 1698 and for New Woodstock in 1702.24HP Commons 1690-1715, ‘Sir William Glynne’.