GWYNNE, George (c.1623-73), of Llanelwedd, Rad.

George Gwynne was descended from the ancient family of Gwynne of Glanbrân near Llandovery in Carmarthenshire.16DWB sub Gwynne of Llanelwedd. During the first civil war Gwynne was involved in the royalist war effort in the same county. His father served as a royalist officer in that county and he himself subscribed to the royalist gentry’s terms of agreement with the parliamentary commander Rowland Laugharne† in 1645.17Phillips, Civil War in Wales, ii. 154, 275-8. After his marriage to another member of his extended family in the late 1640s, Gwynne settled in Radnorshire and was appointed as a militia commissioner for the county in December 1648.18A. and O. During the commonwealth, Gwynne played a minor role in Welsh affairs. In the autumn of 1650 he was made sheriff of Carmarthenshire.19List of Sheriffs, 169. He was appointed as an assessment commissioner for Carmarthenshire in December 1652 and added to the commissions of the peace for Breconshire and Carmarthenshire in January 1653.20A. and O.; C231/6, p. 249. In August 1654 Gwynne became a commissioner for the propagation accounts in south Wales, and in due course one of the four commissioners willing to accept them as duly rendered.21A. and O.; T. Richards, Religious Developments in Wales, 323.

Gwynne was elected as MP for Radnorshire in August 1654. He was named to the privileges committee on 5 October.22CJ vii. 373b. Other committee appointments suggest that he continued to be interested in religious affairs and local government: he was named to committees on a bill concerning the ejection of scandalous ministers (25 Sept.) and to consider maintenance for godly ministers (7 Dec.); the public accounts committee (22 Nov.) and the committee on sheriffs (4 Dec.).23CJ vii. 370a, 388a, 394b, 397b. Gwynne may also have had a bit-part in the debates on the constitution, as on 12 January 1655 he was named to a committee on a clause preventing alterations to the new government bill without the consent of the protector.24CJ vii. 415a. After the dissolution of the first protectorate Parliament, Gwynne appears to have been a loyal supporter of the regime. He was the recipient, as a leading Radnorshire JP, of the protector’s letter enjoining magistrates to be vigilant against royalist conspiracy, dated 24 March 1655.25CSP Dom. 1655, p. 94. He was re-elected in August 1656, and in November was named as a commissioner for the security of the protector, but on a call of the House on 31 December he was excused, having ‘kept his chamber six months’.26Burton’s Diary, i. 288. His activities in the later 1650s are obscure, although he continued to be appointed to local assessment and militia commissions, and he was not returned for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in 1659.27A. and O.

Gwynne was returned for Radnorshire in the Convention in April 1660, and after the restoration he was nominated for the order of the Royal Oak, with an estimated income of £1,500 a year. In 1661 he stood down in favour of Carbery’s nominee, Sir Richard Lloyd†, and plotted to keep Edward Harley* out of the borough seat.28CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 67; HP Commons 1660-1690. Thereafter Gwynne was active as a deputy lieutenant in Breconshire and Radnorshire, where he suppressed dissenting conventicles, and he was made receiver-general of Monmouthshire in 1664.29CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 573; CJ viii. 541a. His will, written in July 1672 with a codicil dated the following December, suggests that he was in financial difficulties in the final years of his life. He assigned most of his Monmouthshire property to the repayment of his debts and the raising of portions for his daughters.30PROB11/342/713. Gwynne had died by November 1673. His son and heir, Rowland Gwynne†, was elected for the county in 1679.