WYNN, Richard (c.1625-74), of Caermelwr and Gwydir, Llanrwst, Caern.

Unlike his illustrious grandfather Sir John Wynn† and his uncles Sir Richard* and Henry Wynn*, Richard Wynn was no courtier. His father Owen, a younger son who did not succeed to the baronetcy until 1649, had in the year of Richard’s birth seen his expectations crumble when his wife’s uncle, Lord Keeper John Williams, lost his office on Charles I’s accession. Williams would regain royal favour, but his relations with Owen Wynn, who badgered him for the financial provision due to his wife, deteriorated. Owen, resident at Gwydir in his elder brother’s absence, renounced public life and pursued studies in alchemy.15Cal. Wynn Pprs. 355. Barely of majority age at the time of his first election to Parliament, Richard Wynn did not figure even in the family’s voluminous surviving private correspondence during the 1640s. His candidacy ended a long period during which the Wynns could not prevail in the county seat, following the success of the gentry of western Caernarfonshire, led by John Griffith I*, in the election for the 1621 Parliament. During the civil war, John Griffith I was a royalist, while his son, John Griffith II, had been expelled from the House for gross moral turpitude. With the royalist cause in retreat, and the time ripe for a recruiter election to replace John Griffith II, the regional parliamentarians evidently identified the Wynn family as a supplier of a credible candidate for the seat. It is possible, though not likely, that Richard Wynn had been an obscure royalist captain in Flint during the civil war, but even if this were true it would have been considered no serious obstacle to candidacy in a region where loyalties were mostly fickle.16Cal. Wynn Pprs. 300; N. Tucker, Royalist Officers of N. Wales (1961), 67.

There seems little doubt that Wynn’s election in January 1647, without a contest, owed much if not all to the Glynne family. The name of Thomas Glynne*, brother of the leading Presbyterian John Glynne*, was first on the list written in the indenture, followed by that of Thomas Madrin*, who had recently negotiated his own transition from royalist activism to support for Parliament, and John Bodurda, another political weather-vane.17C219/43/3/181. Wynn’s election was not in itself enough to place the Wynns beyond political danger from the ascendant local parliamentarians. Maurice Wynn, Richard’s uncle, was advised to secure a certificate from Thomas Mytton* to show that Gwydir had been the first house to offer hospitality to the general when he subdued north-west Wales, and Mytton duly obliged.18Cal. Wynn Pprs. 299, 300. Wynn’s contribution to the Long Parliament was negligible. He was in the House by 24 February 1647, when he took the Covenant. He was named to the committee on a bill to clarify earlier legislation for the sale of episcopal lands (27 Feb.), and to the large committee on excluding royalist clergy from the ministry (22 Mar.). On 21 August, with 18 other Members, he was given leave of absence.19CJ v. 97a, 99b, 119b, 281a. There seems no evidence that Wynne ever returned to Westminster during this Parliament. The ‘Mr Wynne’ whose appointment as sheriff-elect for Denbighshire was cancelled by the House in November 1648 was of another family.20CJ vi. 87a; List of Sheriffs (List and Index ix), 251. Even so, Richard Wynn’s name appears on the two lists made soon after Pride’s Purge of those secluded by the army in December 1648.21A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); A Vindication (1649), 28 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5).

From August 1651, Wynn was the focus of efforts by Sir Owen Wynn to secure an alliance with the Myddeltons of Chirk Castle. These culminated in the marriage of Richard Wynn and Sarah Myddelton in August 1654, but only after a number of attempts by Sir Owen to propose terms of the settlement were rebuffed by Sir Thomas Myddelton.22Cal. Wynn Pprs. 324, 328, 330, 331, 333, 336, 337, 338. During the clamp-down on former royalists during 1655-6, Sir Owen was obliged to defend himself against questions over his former political associations. No doubt from motives of prudence, as well as from possible deeper loyalties, Sir Owen was a supporter of John Glynne* during the 1656 election, and despite his protests he was appointed sheriff of Denbighshire.23Cal. Wynn Pprs. 343-4, 345, 346. Richard Wynn, living for much of his time at Chirk, was untroubled by these developments, and his name re-appeared in the assessment commission in June 1657. In 1657-8 he was obliged to serve as sheriff himself, for his native county, despite an offer by William Griffith of Cefnamwlch, of the family that proved Wynns’ nemesis in the 1620s, to take the office himself instead.24Cal. Wynn Pprs. 348, 349. He was still in office in January 1659, when he presided over the Caernarvonshire elections for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament. He made an affidavit on his part in the violent proceedings, recording how his efforts to keep the peace were met with drawn swords.25Cal. Wynn Pprs. 351.

In the summer of 1659, his membership of the Myddelton family caused him difficulties. There is no direct evidence that he followed his father-in-law into the rising of Sir George Boothe* (the ‘Cheshire rise’), but it seems unlikely that he managed to remain completely aloof from it. Certainly he lost horses during the rising, was sought by parliamentarian soldiers after it, and was soon arrested.26N. Tucker, ‘Richard Wynne and the Booth Rebellion’, Trans. Caern. Hist. Soc. xx. 48, 55, 59.

By September, Wynn was dependent on the goodwill of Thomas Madrin, who expected ‘to be courted’. Down to February 1660 Madrin renewed passes to Wynn, so that he was able to leave detention in Caernarfon on parole.27Cal. Wynn Pprs. 353, 354, 355. The secluded Members of the Long Parliament returned to the House on 21 February, but it seems clear that Wynn was not among them.28NLW, Wynn (Gwydir), 2222.

His close association with the Myddeltons ensured that he was quickly recognized as a supporter of restored monarchy, though he did not stand for the Convention. In June 1660 he returned to the assessment commission, and his first appearance in the commission of the peace probably followed on from his inheritance of the baronetcy from his father, who died in August. He put his name to the petition to the king demanding condign punishment for the regicides.29NLW, Wynn (Gwydir), 2272. That summer he told his mother he intended to stand for Parliament at the next election, after receiving encouragement from a neighbour.30Cal. Wynn Pprs. 356, 358. A pact with his family’s old enemy of Cefnamwlch secured his object, though he was named to only eight committees in the 13 years he was a Member of the Cavalier Parliament. His only daughter and heiress, Mary, who was 13 when her father died (30 Oct. 1674), married Robert Bertie†, who was at the time of their marriage styled Lord Willoughby de Eresby. He was still heir to the earldom of Lindsey when she died in 1689, but the marriage carried the Gwydir estate worth £6,000 a year to that family. The baronetcy reverted to Wynn’s cousin John†, son of Henry Wynn*, and he extinguished it.