MORGAN, William II (c.1640-80), of Tredegar, Bassaleg, Mon.

Morgan was probably around 19 when he was returned for his county, which his father had represented in the Short and first Protectorate Parliaments. Thomas Morgan had unobtrusively drifted into support of a Stuart restoration, and this was evidently his son’s stance. He left no mark on the records of the House, but one of (Sir) Edward Hyde’s* correspondents, Alan Brodrick, reporting Henry Cary*, 4th Viscount Falkland, as the most active young man in the House on 10 April 1659, added ‘Jack How[e] [John Grobham Howe], Ralph Delaval, Sir Horace Towns[h]end, young Morgan, as forward but not so able’.1CCSP iv. 177. If this refers to participation in debate, it is not reflected in Thomas Burton’s* parliamentary diary in which the only Morgan speaking is specified as Sir Anthony, and he was probably also the ‘Colonel’ Morgan who on 5 March joined in requesting an hour’s adjournment.2Burton’s Diary, iv. 40. Even so Charles Stuart seems to have addressed to Morgan on 30 June a letter approving his conduct in guarded terms, possibly referring to a plan hatched in May whereby Morgan and his kinsman, ‘Robin’ [Robert] Thomas†, were to further royalist designs on Gloucester, Bristol, Chepstow and Worcester, and answer for the support of Bussy Mansell*.3CCSP iv. 209, 254. Hyde warned Brodrick that Thomas was not as reliable as his ‘uncle’ William Morgan (if this was Morgan of Machen, he was nearly 20 years older than his nephew). His prudence in composing factions was commended (1 July), and soon afterwards Morgan featured in their correspondence as an intermediary, though unavailingly, with Edward Massie*.4CCSP iv. 256, 270.

Early in 1660 Morgan was named as an assessment commissioner, then as a militia commissioner in Monmouthshire, which he was to represent in the House for the rest of his life. He was not prominent in the Convention of 1660, though he was named to the committee of privileges and elections, and made no recorded speeches. After the king’s return, Morgan was listed as a knight of the proposed but never realised order of the royal oak, doubtless in recognition of his efforts in 1659-60. He was said to be worth (presumably in expectancy) £4,000 a year.5P. Jenkins, ‘Wales and the Order of the Royal Oak’, NLWJ, xxiv. 347. In the Cavalier Parliament, he was named to 44 committees, none of them regarded as of particular political significance. His marriage to a wealthy heiress, his cousin and the daughter of William Morgan I*, in 1661, brought together extensive estates across two Welsh counties, and gave Morgan a political interest in Breconshire. In 1664, the year that marked his father’s death, he was noted as ‘the chief Morgan of Wales’, enjoying estates that included a park stocked with a thousand head of deer.6Bradney, Hist. Mon. v. 72. That year probably marked the beginning of the rebuilding of Tredegar House, which by the time of its completion in 1718, had become a residence ‘that could compare with any of the Baroque seats in Britain’.7J. Newman, ‘Buildings in the Landscape’, in Gwent County Hist. iii. ed. M. Gray, P. Morgan (Cardiff, 2009), 338-41. Morgan’s landed wealth, as well as his family’s history of willingness to conform to the Cromwellian protectorate, brought him into competition with Henry Somerset*, 3rd marquess of Worcester, and conflict erupted between them over common rights in Wentwood Forest, near Newport, in 1678 when Worcester began to encroach on the woodland. Morgan’s role in this episode earned him, in the later published account of it by Nathan Rogers*, the title ‘renown’d and noble patriot of his country’; he had tried ‘to rescue the injur’d and abus’d Gwentonians from the violence and oppression’ of the Somersets.8N. Rogers, Memoirs of Monmouth-shire (1708), 91-2, 106; M.McClain, ‘The Wentwood Forest Riot’, in Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England ed. S.D. Amussen, M. A. Kishlansky (Manchester, 1995), 117-18, 120-2.

Although Morgan’s profile in parliamentary politics in the later 1670s was modest, he was undoubtedly aligned with the whigs. His second marriage, to the widow of Sir Francis Dayrell, was clouded by the mental illness of his new wife.9NLW, Tredegar Estate 356-361. Morgan died of a fever on 28 April 1680, and was buried, as he wished, at Machen.10CSP Dom. 1679-80, p. 452; G. B. Morgan, Hist. and Gen. Mems. of Morgan Fam. ii. 191. He left his younger children £3,500 in legacies and £200 a year in allowances. He was succeeded by his eldest son, a minor when he inherited, who sat for Brecon in 1689, and then in three Parliaments for Monmouthshire. Portraits of both Morgan’s wives survive at Tredegar House, though not one of him.