Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

< TUNING THE WELSH BENCH, 1680 The end of 1678 saw also the end of Charles IPs first and longest parliament, which had opened in a fury against Presbyterians and Cromwellians and ended in a fury against Catholics and courtiers. Shaftesbury's electioneering skill had ensured the dominance of the Country Party at the elections that followed in the new year,1 and in the resultant parliament, not content with reviving the attacks on Danby and blowing anew on the embers of the Popish Plot, he provoked a speedy dissolution by trying to exclude the Catholic Duke of York from succession to the throne and cultivating the bastard but Protestant Duke of Monmouth. A second general election in July revealed no substantial change in public feeling, and by seven successive prorogations the King postponed meeting the new House till the October of 1680. The temper of the country revealed itself even in Cavalier Wales by the phenomenal number of contested elections, some at least the result of political cleavages that cut across the older clan rivalries in Brecknockshire and Radnorshire, in Glamorgan and Cardiff, and very nearly in Brecon, sturdy loyalists of 1660 gave place to members of very dubious political antecedents. Meanwhile the Privy Council set about draw- ing the teeth of local opposition by removing its potential leaders from county benches and militias. The work was completed by the middle of 1680, but so widespread a purge among gentlemen of good condition raised an inevitable storm when parlia- ment met in October within three weeks the Lords set up a fact-finding committee, and from its minutes can be extracted a list of the changes made.2 The object of this paper is to examine the Welsh lists as some sort of index to the extent and char- acter of opposition in the Welsh counties. The proscriptions must have been based on information from the lords lieu- tenant. For Wales this meant the Marquess of Worcester, President of Wales and a Privy Councillor since 1672, whose services as an opponent of Exclusion were to be rewarded in 1682 with the dukedom of Beaufort and the eulogies of Dryden in Absolom and Achitophel, where he appears in the character of Bezaliel The Kenites' rocky province his command, A barren limb of Canaan's fertile land Which for its generous natives yet could be Held worthy such a president as he! To aid the crown and state his greatest zeal, His second care that service to conceal.3 His family had held a leading position in south-east Wales since the Act of Union; and although their continued loyalty to Rome had brought them under grave sus- picion in the days of the Bishops' Wars and the Irish Rebellion, and correspondingly enhanced the prestige of their Protestant vis a vis the Earls of Pembroke, yet when Civil War broke out it was to the loyal house of Raglan that the country rallied rather than to its erratic, opportunist and absentee rivals. Worcester's grandfather the fifth Earl (and first Marquess) had largely financed the mobilisation of the royal army and held Raglan for the King after every other fortress in the land had yielded