MORGAN, John (1742-1792), of Dderw, Brec. and Tredegar, Mon.

Morgan, who continued to sit for Monmouthshire where he had inherited the family estates in 1787, was on two counts a disappointed man. First, he had not succeeded his brother Charles to the lord lieutenancy of Brecon, which had been awarded to the Duke of Beaufort in addition to the lieutenancy of Monmouthshire. Out of pique, Morgan joined opposition to Pitt during the Regency crisis and was said to have remained in opposition until his death, though he was listed among opponents of the repeal of the Test Act in Scotland in April 1791, and no minority votes are recorded after 1790. By January 1792 he was ‘greatly indisposed.’ Secondly, he married in 1788

a lady considerably younger than himself, with the hope of an heir, in which he was more than once disappointed, and she has, since his death, experienced her usual ill-fortune, so that the heirs of this opulent and ancient home are the sons of Sir Charles Gould judge-advocate, and of the late Mr Van of Llanwern, married to the sisters of Mr Morgan.

Morgan died 27 June 1792 and ‘was, in the south of Wales, pretty much what Sir Watkin Williams Wynn is in the north’. To the Goulds went an estate of ‘nearly £30,000 per annum’ (surely an exaggeration) and the electoral patronage of both Brecon seats as well as the Morgan interest in Monmouthshire.1R. D. Rees, ‘Parl Rep. S. Wales 1790-1830’ (Reading Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1962), ii. 401, 417; Wraxall Mems. ed. Wheatley, v. 328-30; PRO 30/8/142, f. 45; Morning Post, 10 Jan. 1792; Gent. Mag. (1792), ii. 673.