The smallest Welsh county, Flintshire had industrialized early and had an admirably diversified economy. The boundaries of four of its five hundreds (Coleshill, Mold, Prestatyn and Rhuddlan) were defined by the River Dee, which separated the county from Cheshire to the north-east and east. To the south lay the hundred of Maelor (Maelor Sais), a detached part of the county adjoining Denbighshire and Shropshire. There were five boroughs, the old shire town of Flint, Caergwrle, Caerwys, Overton and Rhuddlan; but coal, iron and textile production had made Hawarden, Holywell and Mold the chief towns, and Mold shared the assizes and functions of a county town with Flint.2 The representation had been dominated since the eighteenth century by the Mostyn family of Mostyn, but it was aspired to by resident members of the Conway family of Bodrhyddan, Eyton (formerly Wynne) of Leeswood, Glynne of Hawarden, Hanmer of Bettisfield, Kenyon of Gredington, Lloyd of Pengwern, Puleston of Emral and Whitley (later Lloyd) of Aston Hall. The cross-border influence of the Chester Grosvenors as landlords and lords lieutenant, the Smith Stanleys, earls of Derby, and the Williams Wynns of Wynnstay was considerable and the interests of the unfranchised town of Holywell (population 9,000), ‘first in the principality of Wales, both in a commercial and manufacturing point of view’, had to be accommodated.3 Holywell’s prosperity derived from Grosvenor, Mather and Mostyn investment in lead, coal and iron, John Wilkinson’s iron works, its cotton factory, and copper processing for the Anglesey mines, through which the banker and entrepreneur William Hughes* of Kinmel Park, Denbighshire, had made his fortune.4 The county had last been contested in 1796, and since 1799 had been represented by Sir Thomas Mostyn of Mostyn, a pro-emancipation Whig whose family had by careful coalition and manipulation of their interest in the Flint Boroughs constituency made the seat their own.5

The county met at Flint, 6 Mar. 1820, to proclaim George IV and adopt the customary addresses of condolence and congratulation. All the major families were represented, and the speakers included David Pennant of Downing, a crown appointee as constable of Flint Castle; Lord Kenyon of Gredington’s chaplain, the Rev. Whitehall Whitehall Davies, rector of Broughton; the Glynne family chaplain, George Neville Greville, rector of Hawarden; Sir Thomas Hanmer; Mostyn’s brother-in-law Sir Edward Pryce Lloyd of Pengwern, the Member for Flint Boroughs, and John Jones, the vicar of Holywell, a living in Mostyn’s gift. Minorities in the Conway, Glynne and Hanmer families, which inclined to Toryism, left little scope for a challenger to Mostyn at the 1820 general election, and his return was unopposed.6

Mostyn and Lloyd’s names headed the requisition for a county distress meeting at Mold, 1 Apr. 1820, which both attended. It considered a petition for action against agricultural distress, proposed by Frederick Richard Price of Bryn-y-Pys and seconded by Edward Morgan of Golden Grove; but the meeting was adjourned until 8 June, in the hope that less formal complaints by Mostyn and Lloyd would suffice. The Commons received a distress petition from the merchants and inhabitants of Holywell, 17 July 1820.7 Meetings were now held to appoint local steering committees for a second St. Asaph enclosure bill and legislation to improve the Wrexham to Chester road, which in 1823 led to the passage of the Pont Blyddyn roads bill, a great benefit to Mold.8 There was a strong Mostyn presence at the hunt and Agricultural Society dinner in October 1820, and their strongholds of Flint and Holywell were illuminated in November, when the prosecution of Queen Caroline was dropped.9 The loyal address adopted by the county at Mold, 4 Jan. 1821, in response to the ‘crisis of ferment and alarm when the public peace is supposed to be endangered by the arts of seditious men’, was proposed by the lord lieutenant, the 2nd Earl Grosvenor, with Lloyd seconding, and backed by the Rev. Charles Shipley, dean of St. Asaph, and Thomas Mostyn Edwards. It alleged that the proceedings against the queen had ‘endangered [the] safeguards of law and constitution ... by a form of trial so opposite to the spirit as it is contrary to the letter of the law’ and called for the restoration to the queen ‘of all her rights privileges and honours which have been usually enjoyed by her royal predecessors’. Resolutions expressing satisfaction with the parliamentary conduct of Mostyn, Lloyd and William Hughes as partisans of the queen were also carried, and as chairman the sheriff, James Knight of Rhual, signed the address and petition on the county’s behalf.10 However, in view of recent opposition to Grosvenor at the Chester meeting, some considered ‘the manner in which the county ... has been treated by the overbearing peer and his mob of miners insufferable’.11

Amid widespread concern at the extent of the economic downturn and in the wake of a similar Cheshire meeting attended by several Flintshire squires, a county meeting at Mold, 17 Apr. 1822, adopted a petition complaining of the ‘total inadequacy’ of the government’s relief proposals and of ‘prices below production costs’. Price, Mostyn Edwards and Lloyd were the principal speakers, and Mostyn presented the petition to the Commons, 24 Apr. 1822.12 Despite the local strength of Methodism and older Dissent, Holywell was the only Flintshire parish to petition in condemnation of the indictment in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith, 10 June 1824.13 Visiting Flintshire that August, the secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society Thomas Clarkson noted the prevalence of the ‘same ultra government feeling which seems to have characterized North Wales’. Even so, he expected the clergy and professional men whom he met at Holywell, 27 Aug. 1824, to succeed in establishing a committee to distribute literature and organize petitions from Flint, Hawarden, Holywell, Mold and St. Asaph. Holywell alone petitioned urging the abolition of colonial slavery, 20, 25 Apr. 1826.14 The Lords received petitions opposing Catholic relief from the parish of Hanmer, 15 Apr., and the hundred of Maelor, 25 Apr. 1825, and the grand jury petitioned against repeal of the usury laws, 17 Apr. 1826. The Lower Kingsferry road bill and Northup enclosure Act received royal assent before the dissolution of 1826.15 In June, during the general election campaign, Flintshire squires used the correspondence columns of the Chester papers to express their concerns and differing opinions on the Catholic question, repeal of the Test Acts, protection and corn law reform. Mostyn decided against troubling the freeholders ‘with any professions’ on politics when they returned him unopposed.16

During the winter of 1826-7 the local consensus among the landowners and occupiers moved decidedly against free trade and the liberal Toryism of Canning and Huskisson, and the hundred of Maelor, parish of St. Asaph, and Flintshire Agricultural Society petitioned accordingly in March and May 1827.17 Hanmer petitioned against Catholic relief, 2 Mar., and the county coroner for increased emoluments, 7 June 1827, when the Commons received petitions for repeal of the Test Acts from Flint, Holywell, and Newmarket.18 Dissenting congregations throughout the county petitioned both Houses before repeal was enacted in 1828.19 Depression in the lead and silk industries was attributed to tariff reform and brought petitions for protection from Halkin, Holywell, Mold, and Whitford in May and June 1828. Holywell, Mold, and the county also petitioned against restricting the circulation of one and two pound notes from April 1829, a cause championed by the Flint banker George Roskell.20 Lloyd and Mostyn had long advocated and voted for Catholic relief, and the Mostyns of Talacre were practising Catholics with a private chaplain. A Catholic chapel at Holywell served the many Irish migrants to the town. However, popular anti-Catholicism remained rife, the parish of Hawarden petitioned the Lords against concessions, 16 June 1828, and petitioning against conceding Catholic emancipation in 1829 became widespread. Encouraged by Lord Kenyon’s son Lloyd, the Ultra Member for Mitchell, the inhabitants of Mostyn met in November 1828 to petition both Houses, and meetings at St. Asaph, Hawarden, Holywell, Maelor, Mold, Northop and of the county followed early in 1829. Clergymen (notably Whitehall Whitehall Davies) were the principal organizers and speakers, and petitions followed a standard format stressing the threat to the Protestant establishment and the constitution of 1688. Initially, Mostyn was asked to present and support them, but as he dissented from their prayer, anti-Catholics outside the Hanmer and Kenyon stronghold of Maelor turned to his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Williames Vaughan, Member for Merioneth, and the bishop of St. Asaph for support.21 Mostyn, pleading pressure of business, had declined to attend the meetings, but regularly received hostile accounts of their proceedings. The Mold and Northop petitions were said to have ‘passed through two market days, one fair day and a Methodist meeting and consequently received a considerable number of signatures totally unconnected with the before named parishes’.22 The bells of Mold were rung to celebrate Peel’s defeat at Oxford University, and it was reported that Hope Wynne Eyton of Leeswood Hall and other Catholic sympathizers were burnt in effigy.23 Opinion in Holywell, where Welsh translations of the petitions were called for, was divided, and a pro-emancipation petition was forwarded to Lloyd and Lord Anglesey for presentation.24 Controversy also surrounded the Dee Ferry road bill, which Lloyd and Mostyn, who owned Mostyn quay, promoted, but was opposed by Chester interests. It became law, 22 May 1829, and established a route from Northop to Liverpool bypassing Chester.25

Flintshire’s testimony to the 1828 justice commission was supplied by Price, as chairman of the county bench, Hugh Roberts, the clerk of the peace, and Mostyn. All were said to favour abolition of the Welsh judicature and incorporation of the courts of great session into the English assize system.26 Even so, the commissioners’ additional recommendation that the Denbighshire and Flintshire assizes be combined and cases heard alternately at Ruthin and Mold, or Flintshire business dealt with in Chester provoked strong opposition, and when the proposal was included in the 1830 administration of justice bill, Flintshire, like its neighbours, petitioned both Houses for continuation of its assizes as before, 12 May. A late government amendment left the assize structure almost intact when the change was enacted in October 1830.27 Distress was severe in all sectors of the local economy by early 1830, and the county met at Mold, 8 Feb., to petition. Representatives of all the leading families, except Hanmer, had signed the requisition, and the gentry met at Eyton’s Leeswood Arms before proceeding to the town hall, where John Douglas of Gyrn and George Roskell each addressed the assembly and proposed a set of resolutions. Douglas attributed the universal distress of the country to a gradual rise in taxation to intolerable levels, deplored the ‘extreme indifference’ of the king’s speech, and called for cuts in public expenditure and the abolition of sinecures. He maintained that commutation of taxes would relieve one class at the expense of another, complained that the withdrawal of small notes had placed undue pressure on gold and called for an unrestricted paper currency convertible to gold. Roskell expressed alarm at the decline in production throughout the empire and argued that the return to gold had been too sudden and that property was passing too swiftly to fund holders. Like Douglas, he thought abolishing sinecures would, of itself, do little to remedy the situation, and he urged that steps be taken to reduce the national debt, end gold hoarding and export, repeal ‘oppressive’ taxes and make fundholders and absentees bear ‘a fair proportion of the tax burden’. A committee of six, chaired by Sir John Williams of Bodelwyddan, drew up resolutions incorporating their views, and Williams proposed their adoption. The resulting petition complained of unprecedented distress in agriculture, commerce, manufactures and mines, and the precipitate change to gold, ‘which has under the existing amount of taxation fallen with severe pressure on the agricultural and commercial interest of the country’. It maintained that the circulating coinage was ‘too limited and too costly for the multifarious transactions of the country’, complained that great capitalists had flourished while trade became unprofitable and agriculture decayed and that payment of taxes from capital, not profit, was intolerable. It deplored the continued high taxation and slow reduction of the national debt, called for cuts in government expenditure and ‘continued internal and external peace’ and expressed regret at the indifference of ministers. Price seconded and Lloyd Kenyon and Lloyd declared their support. The Chester merchant Joseph Dutton’s allegations that the petition was unfair to fundholders were ignored. A clause proposed by Madden, calling for an end to the East India Company’s monopoly, was ruled out as something ‘to be treated separately at the right time by the many present with East Indian interests’, and labour creation, to remedy the ‘havoc caused locally by free trade’, was hailed as the current priority.28 Local committees and bread and wage scales had already been established in Holywell, where unrest allied to distress was feared, and on 27 Feb. a parish meeting adopted a petition of complaint which called for ‘legislative remedies’, reductions in the army and navy, an end to the East India Company’s monopoly, repeal of the usury laws, revision of the game laws and investigation of the property and emoluments of the established church. The vicar, John Jones, his curate J. Blackwell, Richard John Mostyn of Calcot Hall, the attorney and land agent Copner Oldfield, and John Oldfield, the recorder of Flint, sent a petition of complaint to Mostyn, which they also published in the Chester Chronicle, claiming that the meeting had been irregularly convened and conducted and dominated by Joseph Mather and his Bagillt colliers and Richard Addison and his cotton workers. The Commons received the Holywell and county petitions, 15 Mar., after Peel ruled the Holywell disclaimer admissible, and they were presented to the Lords, 26 Mar.29 Flintshire also contributed to the 1830 petitioning campaigns against the duties on seaborne coal, 4 Apr., for protective duties on foreign lead, 26 May, 11 June, and an end to the East India Company’s monopoly, 9, 12 July.30 The Shrewsbury Chronicle noted that they were adopted at meetings numerously attended by gentry connected with mercantile manufacturing and mining establishments, but that the landed proprietors stayed away.31

Mostyn, who was suffering from gout, was returned unopposed with a great display of hospitality at the general election in August 1830, proposed by Price and seconded by Sir Edward Mostyn of Talacre. Sir Stephen Glynne* had come of age in 1828, and Sir John Hanmer† would be 21 in December, and, sensing the need to publicize his opinion on issues of local concern, Mostyn announced that he expected the East India question, slavery, and the Bank Charter Act to come before Parliament shortly, and declared his support for opening the East India trade and ending slavery. He expressed no opinion on the Bank, other than to state that government policy remained undecided. Of the abolition of the Welsh judicature, he noted: ‘If we have lost our local privileges, we have gained an important benefit in having judges appointed by the courts of Westminster to administer justice, and not barristers as before’. He ended with his customary call for lower taxes, rigid economy and retrenchment.32

Flintshire’s Wesleyan Methodist and Baptist congregations contributed petitions to the 1830-1 anti-slavery campaign.33 As the depression that winter persisted, trade union organizers from Lancashire infiltrated the coal mining districts. Rioting and strikes ensued, and in December 1830 troops were summoned from Chester, at Hawarden’s request, and the yeomanry and lieutenancy were augmented. Price was among the coal owners determined to break strikes by bringing in outside labour. Hanmer and Kenyon organized a watch system against incendiary attacks, and Hanmer, Sir Stephen Glynne, Mrs. Yonge of Bodrhyddan and others made well-publicized donations to the poor and contributed to work creation schemes.34 A reform meeting at Holywell, 5 Jan., coincided with and was less well attended than a trade union meeting in another part of the town, and a ratepayers’ meeting there, 20 Feb. 1831, only narrowly rejected (by 23-21) Mather’s resolutions for radical reform, including voting by ballot, in favour of Robert John Mostyn of Calcot’s moderate petition approving the principle of reform and seeking Holywell’s enfranchisement.35 When the Grey ministry’s reform bill proposed making Holywell and Mold contributories of Flint, Holywell petitioned for it and established a reform committee under the chairmanship of Isaac Taylor, 12 Mar. A meeting at St. Asaph, 14 Mar., chaired by Sir Henry Browne of Bronwylfa, petitioned for the bill and its own enfranchisement (which was conceded). As the petitioners claimed, the population of St. Asaph (2,755) exceeded that of the cathedral towns of St. Davids and Llandaff, whose enfranchisement the bill proposed.36 Mold met to petition, 16 Mar., and was also the venue for the county reform meeting on the 21st, which though hastily convened was respectably requisitioned. Glynne, who, being sheriff, was its chairman, spoke of the benefits the bill would bring to Flintshire. A resolution in favour of the principle of reform, proposed by Price and Mather, was unanimously adopted; but there was voluble opposition from Hanmer and Price, and only mixed support for resolutions carried by the Rev. George Strong, John Wynne Eyton, Lloyd’s son Edward Mostyn Lloyd, and Major Thomas Fletcher, which expressed support for the government’s bill and called for the return of reformers in the event of a dissolution. It was agreed to petition in Glynne’s name, to avoid delay, and Lloyd presented the petition to the Commons, 29 Mar., with those from Flint, Holywell, Mold and St. Asaph; they were received by the Lords, 21 Mar., 21 Apr.37 The bill, which Mostyn voted for at its second reading, 22 Mar., was defeated, precipitating a dissolution, 19 Apr. 1831, two days after Mostyn’s death from gout.

Hanmer, who had been foreman of the grand jury at the recent assizes, immediately declared his candidature, as an advocate of moderate reform, thus apparently putting an end to the old Flint reactionary Serjeant Jones’s aspirations; and by 20 Apr. he had canvassed Holywell with Sir John Williams with some success.38 Lloyd, as Mostyn’s executor and heir in trust, put forward Edward, who immediately adopted the name of Mostyn. The response to their circular of 20 Apr. was mixed. Most of the small landowners and professional men immediately declared for Lloyd Mostyn;39 but many squires, including Douglas of Gyrn, Eyton of Leeswood, the Fletchers of Gwernheuled and Maesgwaelod, Folly of Pistill, Hughes of Astrad, Morgan of Gwernheuled, Price of Bryn-y-Pys and the bishop of St. Asaph were as yet reluctant to make their intentions known, and expressed concern at the prospect of county and Boroughs being represented by father and son, particularly as the experienced Lloyd proposed retaining the less prestigious Boroughs seat.40 Glynne, who as sheriff was disqualified from standing, professed neutrality and declined to influence his tenants, but he apparently failed to discourage his agent James Boydell from doing so. Pennant responded similarly, but Kenyon and Joseph Lyon of Neston were decidedly hostile.41 Amid cries of ‘a lukewarm reformer won’t do’, an election committee was appointed at a meeting of Lloyd Mostyn’s friends and supporters at the Leeswood Arms, 23 Apr., when he declared himself as an uncompromising reformer and heir to ‘Sir Thomas’s principles and fortune’ and called for the immediate abolition of slavery. He drew heavily on the Mostyn name and his family’s bardic tradition, and his opponents’ attempts to capitalize on the pension awarded to his uncle by marriage, Viscount Anson, had little impact. Lloyd Mostyn was married with two children and Hanmer was lampooned as ‘an inexperienced and beardless youth, just escaped from the nursery’.42 By 27 Apr. Lloyd Mostyn had been promised the Bodrhyddan interest, and counted James Boydell, Richard Barlow Clough, William Shipley Conway, Philip Davies Cooke of Overton, Colonel Hughes’s agent James Murray and Roskell among his active supporters; and the Wynnstay agents, Pickering and Scott, offered to assist Lloyd should Glynne oppose him in the Boroughs.43 An efficient canvass of out-county voters brought further offers of support, and Charles Dundas, Member for Berkshire, was one of several absentees to direct their agents to assist Lloyd Mostyn. Committees in his interest were established in Chester, Denbigh and London.44 Noting the advantage to Lloyd Mostyn of the reform question and Glynne’s ineligibility, his Tory kinsman Edward Lloyd of Rhagatt, who, like Edward Lloyd of Cefn, now placed family before party, observed:

I should think Wynne Eyton almost pledged to be a reformer since the Mold meeting, and so I should conceive Price to be; but no man can feel quite sure of the latter till he actually has him. We know this by sad experience. It would give me pleasure notwithstanding to learn that he had declared in your favour.45

When Hanmer, who paid his retainers five guineas a day, announced his retirement, 28 Apr., Lloyd Mostyn was already secure in the erstwhile Tory strongholds of Hawarden and Overton, where ‘Price at last said he certainly would vote for you if it came to a poll against Sir John Hanmer’,46 and most of the county’s numerous Denbighshire out-voters canvassed by Lloyd of Rhagatt, Lloyd of Cefn, and the Denbigh attorneys John Vaughan Horne and John Copner Williams were supportive.47 Pledges from Douglas, Pennant and others followed, but many offers of support, like that of Robert Jones, who asked the candidates to patronize his son’s draper’s shop in St. Asaph, were mercenary, and it was resolved ‘not to abate in the slightest possible degree’. Lloyd’s election for the Boroughs on 4 May 1831 was accordingly turned into a display of Lloyd Mostyn’s strength, talents and largesse.48 A public breakfast preceded his election at Flint, where he was proposed by Price and seconded by Serjeant Jones, and the Rev. Charles Shipley and Thomas Mather junior also spoke in favour of his nomination. He dined 100 supporters at the Swan, and had all the inns in the town thrown open.49

Reform retained its popular appeal. Holywell and a county meeting on 28 Sept. petitioned the Lords urging the bill’s passage, 4, 5 Oct., and Holywell addressed the king, Lords and Lord Grey regretting its defeat in the Lords, 15 Oct. 1831.50 When the king’s overture to the duke of Wellington in May 1832 briefly hazarded the reform bill, a mass meeting at Holywell petitioned backing Grey and urging that supplies be withheld pending its enactment.51 There was a strong Mostyn presence at the June 1832 reform celebrations, which were financed by subscription and presided over by Sir Edward Mostyn of Talacre and Morgan of Golden Grove.52 Lloyd Mostyn, Lloyd (the coronation peer, Baron Mostyn, since September 1831) and Henry and Sir Stephen Glynne, his successors as Members for Flint Boroughs, had supported the bill in the Commons and negotiated with Lord Althorp* to ensure that Maelor was not lost to Shropshire under the Boundary Act.53 The ‘ultra Tories and sisants at Mold’ had exploited the intended change to rally opposition to expenditure on a new county gaol.54 The county expressed its concern at the use of molasses in brewing and distilling by meeting to petition, 8 Aug. 1831, and Roskell persisted in lobbying for the continued circulation of small notes and a new Bank charter.55 Meetings and petitions in May 1832 reflected strong local opposition to the government’s proposals for funding Catholic education in Ireland, ‘a Protestant not a party matter’, and concern about slavery.56 The ratepayers and textile workers of Holywell petitioned against the factories regulation bill, 13 Apr., 24 July 1832. 57

Before the general election in December 1832 a Holywell town meeting, 15 Dec., adopted a petition for the repeal of assessed taxes and resolved to use every constitutional means to bring it about.58 One-thousand-two-hundred-and-seventy-one electors had been registered at the new polling towns of Flint, Overton and Rhuddlan; but with Hanmer disqualified as sheriff (he was returned for Shrewsbury), Glynne committed to the Boroughs and Kenyon to Denbighshire, they remained unpolled when Lloyd Mostyn was returned as a Liberal.59 The county was contested five times, 1832-85, as resident squires vied for the representation. Glynne, standing as a Liberal Conservative, took the seat in 1837 and held it for the next decade, despite being outpolled in the close contest of 1841 by Lloyd Mostyn, who in 1847 recaptured the seat. The representation remained solidly Liberal and was vested from 1861-86, when he was raised to peerage as Baron Stalbridge, in the 2nd marquess of Westminster’s younger son Lord Richard Grosvenor (1837-1912).60