Montgomeryshire had the lowest incidence of middle ranking estates in Wales.2 Its nine hundreds (47 parishes) lay chiefly in the diocese of St. Asaph, but there were also substantial areas in the dioceses of Bangor, Hereford and St. Davids. The corn-growing eastern hundreds and a flannel district extending some 21 miles by 19 from Dolobran in the north-east to Llanidloes in the south-west were served by the Montgomeryshire and Shropshire canal, which by 1820 was open from Llanymynech to Newtown.3 The Powis Castle interest of the lord lieutenant, Edward Clive†, 1st earl of Powis, predominated in the county town and borough of Montgomery, and there were six unfranchised market towns: Llanfair Caereinion, Llanfyllin and Welshpool in the eastern hundreds of Llanfair, Mathrafal and Pool; centrally situated Newtown, which by 1830 was the principal flannel manufactory in Wales; Llanidloes in the south-east on the River Severn (Hafren), and Machynlleth in the south-west on the River Dovey (Dyfi), bordering on the Wynnstay manor of Cyfeiliog.4 Parliamentary elections were held at Machynlleth or Montgomery, depending on the location of the last assizes.5 The electoral rivalry which had erupted at the last contest in 1774 between the two largest landowners, the Williams Wynns of Wynnstay, near Ruabon, who were Grenvillite Whigs, and the Tory Clive (later Herbert) family of Powis Castle, near Welshpool, had all but ceased.6 Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, the sitting Member since 1799, led the Grenvillite third party in the Commons, where he challenged unsuccessfully for the Speakership in 1817, the year his elder brother Sir Watkin Williams Wynn* married Powis’s daughter. There were rumblings of discontent from other families who had previously shared in the representation: Corbett of Leighton, Lord Hereford as proprietor of Nantcribba, the Lloyds of Bodfach and Pengwern, Mostyn of Mostyn, and Mostyn Owen of Woodhouse. However, opposition to the coalition was stronger among the more radically inclined middle ranking squires, local gentry and professional men, who prospered through involvement in Severn Valley banking, transport and woollen enterprises and could command popular support: Thomas Browne of Mellington, John Edwards of Plas Machynlleth, Erskine and Samuel Humphreys of Bodheilyn, Edward and Arthur Johnes of Garthmyl and Dolforwyn, Arthur Jones of Court, Wythen Jones of Rhiwport, Lyon Winder of Vaynor Park, William Owen, the commissioner of bankrupts who succeeded his brother to Glansevern in 1821, Richard Pryce Jones of Cyfronnydd, and William Pugh of Brynllywarch, a director of the Newtown bank.7

When George III died in January 1820, the most contentious issues were the Montgomeryshire bridges bill, petitioned for at a county meeting in August 1819, and acute distress in agriculture and the woollen trade, which speakers at a meeting at Welshpool, 4 Feb. 1820, attributed to the corn laws, the warehousing system, and the conflicting interests of commerce and agriculture.8 Fear of unrest after Peterloo had led to the establishment of six troops of yeomanry with ‘six captains, each above six feet high’, which, according to Charles Williams Wynn, vindicated them ‘against all scandal on Welsh runts’. They were in attendance at Welshpool, 10 Feb., when Clive, accompanied by the Williams Wynns, proclaimed the new king and the usual loyal addresses were adopted.9 Williams Wynn’s notices at the subsequent general election contained no statement of policy and his return was the usual formality.10 Montgomery and Pool agriculturists petitioned for government action against distress, 30 May, and Williams Wynn and Clive took charge of the Montgomeryshire bridges bill, which was amended before it received royal assent, 22 June. The Pool and Oswestry roads bill was enacted, and Lord Clive’s estate bill, which facilitated post-enclosure land sales in Montgomeryshire and Shropshire and made enclosure of Caereinion Iscoed possible, became law, 8 July 1820.11 Militia training that October was pursued with vigour, and little was done to mark the withdrawal of proceedings against Queen Caroline, which had caused Williams Wynn much unease.12 An Act of 23 June 1821 brought Montgomery, Newtown and Welshpool into the Ellesmere canal network, and canal and turnpike investments and service on attendant boards remained popular throughout the decade despite occasional delays in dividend payment.13

As part of the Grenvillite rapprochement of December 1821, Williams Wynn became president of the India board in Lord Liverpool’s administration, leaving the county, according to a correspondent to the Shrewsbury Chronicle, ‘entirely in the hands of placemen’. At the subsequent by-election in Montgomery, Williams Wynn asserted that his political opinions were unchanged and argued that sufficient progress had been made on retrenchment and the currency to justify his supporting government. He rebutted arguments for parliamentary reform ‘by principle and application’ and said it was ‘idle’ to think that immediate tax reductions were possible. The Catholic question, on which Powis Castle and Wynnstay had long differed, remained undiscussed. (Securing permission, against the prevailing cabinet opinion, to promote concessions had been a precondition of Williams Wynn’s accepting office.) His proposers, Archdeacon Corbett and Richard Mytton of Garth, praised his talents and hailed careful selection of Members as the ‘most effectual’ means of reforming Parliament. They also expressed the hope that the administration of which he was now part would secure the abolition of slavery. Glasses were raised at the dinner to Lord Clive* and John Edwards† as heads of the eastern and western militia, and to Sir Watkin for not forfeiting his independence.14 Despite the economic downturn, Montgomeryshire, unlike its neighbours, did not petition for government intervention or tax reductions in 1822.15

William Owen was an alderman of Llanidloes and chairman of the county bench by 1823, when divisions among the magistracy over the provision and siting of a new gaol became apparent. Clive’s friends defeated Owen’s by 19-17 and, pleading poverty, Montgomeryshire petitioned for exemption from the county gaols bill, 26 Mar. 1824. The coroner, Dr. Edward Johnes of Garthmyl, attributed continuing differences on the matter to ‘the little Viscount [Clive] not subscribing his money and influence to support races in the county’.16 Proposed amendments to the Montgomery and Pool poor bill again exposed local differences, but provided they attended quarter sessions and county meetings, the Clives and the Williams Wynns could still ensure that petitions reflected their preferences. The Montgomery and Pool house of industry bill received royal assent, 10 June 1825; and a strong Wynnstay and Powis Castle presence at the ‘eisteddfod of the Welsh bards’ at Pool in September and the October assizes facilitated the appointment of a partisan local committee and the adoption at a county meeting, 5 Nov. 1825, of a petition for the Llanymynech bridge bill.17 Clergymen of the established church, Independent Academy and Baptist chapels at Newtown responded favourably in August 1824 to the secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society Thomas Clarkson’s call for a committee to distribute literature and instigate pro-abolition petitions from Newtown, Montgomery, Llanidloes, and Llanfair Caereinion. The Corbetts of Leighton promised Clarkson favourable petitions from Llanfyllin and Welshpool, where Panton Corbett* was the Clives’ steward, but the Clives’ kinsman, the Rev. William Clive, ‘did not see the necessity of a committee at Welshpool’ and said he would only organize a petition ‘if it was necessary to support government against the refractory colonial legislatures’. Clarkson therefore deemed it

advisable to leave Pool in the way mentioned, in the hands of William Clive, and also Llanfyllin under the hands of the Rev. David Hughes, the rector and magistrate of the town, this being the only town in the county not taken. Mr. Panton Corbett is to be applied to to write to both when anything is wanted in these two places.18

The county’s only anti-slavery petitions to the 1820 Parliament came from Llanidloes (6 Mar.), where Wythen Jones, William Owen and Sir Edward Pryce Lloyd* prevailed; and from Machynlleth (10 Apr. 1826), where the interest of John Edwards, who had recently inherited Garth and married Mrs. Herbert of Dolforgan, was in the ascendant.19

Williams Wynn’s unopposed return at the 1826 general election was celebrated with the usual dinner and ball for the gentry and freeholders.20 The county’s landowners and occupiers petitioned the Lords for agricultural protection, 29 Mar. 1827.21 Llanfair Caereinion, Machynlleth, Newtown and the county petitioned for repeal of the Test Acts in June 1827, as did the Protestant Dissenters of Llanbrynmair, who encountered local criticism for doing so. The Williams Wynns voted for repeal, 26 Feb., and a further three Montgomeryshire congregations petitioned for it the spring of 1828.22 Williams Wynn had been summarily dismissed by the duke of Wellington in January, and he presented Montgomeryshire petitions against the 1827 Malt Act and for protective tariffs on wool, 29 Apr., dissenting publicly only from the freeholders’ petition for repeal of the Small Notes Act which he brought up, 17 June 1828.23 That December he was presented with a gift of plate in recognition of his service to the yeomanry, which had recently been disbanded in accordance with government policy.24 Montgomeryshire itself had no Brunswick Clubs, but anti-Catholic petitions had been adopted by the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists of Llanidloes in 1827, and there was support for the club established across the Shropshire border at Oswestry, in the teeth of opposition from pro-emancipation Wynnstay.25 Williams Wynn refused to endorse the county petition against emancipation, 4 Mar. 1829, but admitted that it was genuine and respectably signed. The Commons received hostile petitions from Cemmaes and Darowen, Llanblodwel, Llansilin, Llanymawddwy, and Mallwyd (parishes influenced by the Ultra, William Ormsby Gore*), 16 Mar. The same parishes petitioned the Lords, 10 Mar., as did Pennant, 9 Mar., and the hundred of Deuddwr, 26 Mar. 1829. The Clives now condoned emancipation.26

The Clives, Williams Wynns and William Owen had favoured abolition of the Welsh judicature and courts of great sessions since at least 1817, and Montgomeryshire’s testimony to the justice commission that recommended it in April 1829 was supplied by the Oswestry attorneys Marshall and Sabine, acting for the Clives, and by Owen. He, in consultation with his kinsman Sir Edward Owen*, and at the request of the commissioner Sir John Bosanquet, submitted a detailed response advocating abolition, the creation of larger assize districts and their assimilation into the English circuit system. He suggested adding Montgomeryshire’s western hundreds to Merioneth, and the eastern to Shropshire, which was essentially what the commissioners recommended. They proposed hearing cases from western Montgomeryshire, north Cardiganshire and Merioneth in Dolgellau, and from the eastern hundreds in Shrewsbury.27 Dismemberment and assimilation of counties was unpopular, and the Montgomeryshire grand jury joined in the hostile petitioning against consolidation of counties and ‘any legislation which would abolish concessit solvere’ (an effective means of recovering small debts). The petitioners also requested the appointment of judges on the same terms as in the English circuits.28 This petition (and memorial) suited neither William Owen nor the Williams Wynns, who had already been defied on the issue by the magistrates of Denbighshire, and Owen, backed by George Mears of Dol-llys, Richard Pryce of Cyfronnydd, David Pugh of Llanerchudol and William Pugh, persuaded the sheriff, Henry Adolphus Proctor of Aberhavesp, to convene a county meeting on 27 Apr., with a view to petitioning favourably.29 Williams Wynn declined attendance at the meeting, pleading parliamentary business.30 Those present, who do not seem to have included Pryce and David Pugh, were asked to choose between two petitions. That proposed by Owen expressed alarm at the proposed dismemberment of the county, maintained that the courts of great session had become ‘a court of exclusive jurisdiction in violation of the articles of Union’, advocated the introduction of English judges, and hoped provision for the trial of minor offences at magistrates courts would be continued. Colonel Davies of Nantcribba proposed the adoption of the grand jury’s petition. Owen prevailed through a general reluctance to challenge his legal expertise, and by convincing the meeting that ministers had already decided to abandon the proposed division of counties, although it remained unannounced. The petition was signed by the sheriff on the meeting’s behalf and presented and endorsed in the Commons by Williams Wynn, 4 May. Both he and John Frederick Campbell* (as earl of Cawdor) thanked Owen for his action. The bill was hurried through Parliament immediately before the dissolution following George IV’s death, having been amended by government so that the existing assize structure remained almost intact. Welshpool, already the chosen venue for county meetings, became an assize town.31 Owen, as chairman of the quarter sessions, had petitioned both Houses in May asking to be relieved of the incumbent task of discharging insolvency debtors.32 Lord Clive had succeeded Powis as lord lieutenant in April, after the latter suffered a stroke, and Williams Wynn’s unopposed return at Montgomery, 10 Aug. 1830, was proposed by William Pugh and the Rev. G.A. Evors of Newtown. The freeholders were dined at the Dragon and the company adjourned to Welshpool for the ball.33

The county’s Wesleyan Methodists and other congregations led a vigorous petitioning campaign for the abolition of colonial slavery, 1830-1.34 Williams Wynn’s appointment as secretary at war in Lord Grey’s administration in November 1830, following the Wellington ministry’s defeat, brought another by-election. To coincide with it, at Owen’s instigation, a county meeting was convened at Welshpool, 13 Dec., to ensure Williams Wynn’s attendance and ascertain his views on reform. Popular unrest, linked to depressions in agriculture and the wool trade, was rife, and it had been decided to re-establish the yeomanry. Williams Wynn’s confidence that ‘the sober majority of the county will be as desirous as I could wish to dash the resolutions plentifully with milk and water to avoid entering into any details’ proved misplaced. The requisition had been numerously and respectably signed and the resolutions in support of reform and retrenchment proposed by Owen and Browne were moderate in tone, having been carefully drafted by William Pugh and Joseph Hayes Lyon of Ashfield Hall, Cheshire, a brother of John Lyon Winder of Vaynor Park. Clive, Corbett, Colonel Davies, the Rev. Henry Luxmore, Pryce of Gunley and the Williams Wynns urged caution and sought an amendment to delay petitioning until the details of the government’s plan of reform were known. Thus far they were supported by seven eminent Dissenting clergymen, later mocked in the local press as reformers who had preferred to give the Ultras their support. Williams Wynn, having decided to ‘take care to say nothing in the best words I can’, expressed support for the enfranchisement of new industrial towns and for the retention of the franchise in small boroughs as a means ‘by which extraordinary men could reach Parliament’. This William Pugh and Hayes Lyon countered amid cries that Montgomeryshire should cease to be the pocket borough of Wynnstay, and the original resolutions were carried by a large majority.35

Williams Wynn’s re-election at Machynlleth, 15 Dec. 1830, was proposed by John Edwards and seconded by Corbett, and passed without incident. However, Owen and Hayes Lyon now instigated a search for a reform candidate to oppose him ‘next time’, and Owen wrote to encourage the Denbighshire reformers to follow Montgomeryshire’s example. William Pugh, ‘the proper person [to stand] ... would not permit it on account of his large and young family, all unhappily dependent upon him as their only parent’.36 The January 1831 disturbances at Glansevern, Montgomery and Newtown, which Williams Wynn attributed to the December reform meeting, revealed Owen’s shortcomings and the high regard in which William Pugh and Arthur and Edward Johnes were held by the populace.37 Williams Wynn presented the petition, which had been signed countywide, 26 Feb. He surprised many by voting for the second reading of the reform bill, 22 Mar., after resigning from the government, 5 Mar., because he felt unable to support it.38 Edward Johnes commented, 26 Mar.:

I see our Member has drawn in his horns. He has done wisely. He would otherwise have had an opposition at the next election. His transfiguration will probably save him.39

It was evident from Williams Wynn’s widely reported Commons speech, 24 Mar., that he intended opposing the mass disfranchisements proposed in the first clause of the bill, and he was ‘distinctly told’ by the Montgomeryshire reformers that if he contributed to the bill’s defeat he was certain of opposition at the next election.40 William Pugh, who wrote to him, 14 Apr., detailing arguments for awarding Welsh counties a second Member, added:

To prevent the possibility of any mistake I beg distinctly to report what I mentioned in my correspondence with Mr. Tracy and also previously stated to you at Montgomery on Thursday last. That should you unfortunately feel yourself called upon to vote against the schedules A and B, and should be in a majority which would occasion the defeat of the reform bill and a dissolution should follow, I neither can or will give you my humble vote; and as a contest will most certainly in that event take place in this county I shall give my vote to that candidate who will engage to support the bill generally and particularly the schedules A and B.41

Confident he could not be ousted, Williams Wynn’s draft reply of 19 Apr. made no concessions.42 He incorporated Pugh’s data on Welsh representation in a widely circulated speech before voting for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment that day. Much had been made in debate of his differences with his constituents, who had unsuccessfully requisitioned the Irish secretary Smith Stanley to stand against him.43 When the dissolution was announced on the 23rd, Charles Hanbury Tracy* of Gregynog, a veteran reformer who had signed the December 1830 requisition, wrote to Williams Wynn:

Your opponents are fully prepared to try their strength, and even had you not spoken in the question on Tuesday (a circumstance I much regret), I think a contest was nearly inevitable ... I hardly know how I could enter the field as your champion, and apprehend that my appearance in Montgomeryshire, whilst it would be embarrassing to myself, would do anything but benefit to your cause.44

Knowing also of a requisition to Sir Edward Pryce Lloyd, Williams Wynn capitalized on the reformers’ recourse to strangers both in his canvassing address of 25 Apr. and during the ensuing election campaign. Hayes Lyon, the ‘son of a Cheshire barrister’, declared against him, 28 Apr., ‘after many unsuccessful attempts to procure some eminent public man’.45 Lyon Winder had apologized to Williams Wynn for his absence from their London meeting with David Pugh, 26 Apr., and he confirmed his intention of supporting his brother, 1 May 1831.46

Hayes Lyon’s approval of the ‘whole bill’ and the Montgomeryshire petition was contrasted with Williams Wynn’s abhorrence of disfranchisement.47 According to Edward Johnes, a member with Pugh, Wythen Jones and Owen of Hayes Lyon’s committee, they had the support of Colonel Edwards, Browne, Pryce Jones, Hunter Morris of the Marsh, Oakley of Oakley and Morris of Panternant, and were promised 400 votes from the Newtown area on the first full day of Hayes Lyon’s canvass.48 Fanny Williams Wynn commented: ‘Nothing in the shape of gentlemen supports him but Colonel Edwards and the Winder family’.49 Clive, Sir Watkin, Ormsby Gore, Corbett, Hanbury Tracy, and possibly also Sir Edward Pryce Lloyd, all essentially absentee landlords, backed Williams Wynn. His committee chairman was David Pugh, the nephew and heir of his namesake of Llanerchudol, and son of Charles Pugh of Sydenham, Powis’s successor as recorder of Welshpool.50 Without strong popular support from the reformers of Machynlleth, Newtown and Llanidloes, which, together with the Wynnstay-Powis Castle strongholds of Llanfyllin and Welshpool were to become contributories of Montgomery under the reform bill, the reformers realized that it would be impossible to ‘shake’ Williams Wynn. Llanfyllin and Welshpool naturally endorsed his candidature and the election town was Montgomery.51 Time was not on the reformers’ side and, as they later admitted, they lacked the electioneering skills of Wynnstay and Powis Castle, who swiftly commandeered transport and the best inns in Montgomery and kept campaigning time to a minimum by having the writ issued early and refusing to grant a delay between nomination and polling.52 Montgomery was full of Newtown weavers sporting blue for the nomination, 5 May 1831, and Hayes Lyon, proposed by William Owen and seconded by William Pugh, won the show of hands. Nominating Williams Wynn, Clive praised him as a man above party and an expert on the constitution, and criticized the bill for doing nothing to increase Montgomeryshire’s representation. David Pugh seconded. Williams Wynn refuted claims made by William Pugh and Hayes Lyon that the contest was for or against reform and stressed that he sought more Members for Wales and the adoption of its contributory borough system elsewhere. He also maintained that he had voted against the bill merely to improve it. Owen responded that Williams Wynn had already had 32 years in Parliament to work for reform and that the type of reform he sanctioned would take two or three hundred years to achieve.53 When polling commenced, a mob, bearing staves to give them the appearance of constables and sporting green and red cockades, marched into the town, causing a tumult which dispersed the reformers. Some time elapsed before the ‘blackguards’ were disbanded and special constables appointed by Bonner Maurice, the sheriff, ‘restored some degree of confidence’. Despite the reformers’ objections, polling proceeded uninterrupted.54 Hayes Lyon, who personally spent over £1,800, conceded defeat on the fifth day. Williams Wynn, having topped the poll throughout, openly criticized the reform party for deliberately keeping the polls open without cause to exhaust his finances, so provoking bitter exchanges with Lyon Winder and Wythen Jones, and thereby extending their quarrel to militia matters.55 William Pugh, whose bank faced problems after the election, rejoiced in the government’s success in the country and promised Williams Wynn his future support in the county despite their differences on reform.56 Consoling and cautioning the reformers, Erskine Humphreys noted:

The Clive interest is still, however, I presume very potent, and we may not I think reasonably calculate on a repetition of the intense enthusiasm which prevailed throughout the country when boroughmongers were to be directly confronted and put down.57

Wynnstay postponed the election dinners and ball until after militia training in October, and it was observed that the company in Llanfyllin, Machynlleth and Welshpool was restricted to Wynnstay retainers and out-county guests, and the Clives, Corbett, David Pugh and Davies of Nantcribba.58 The Lords received a petition from the Protestant Dissenters of Machynlleth for the ‘utter extinction’ of colonial slavery, 18 Aug. 1831.59

Williams Wynn divided for the second reading, but often after prior consultation with Clive, he subsequently opposed the reintroduced and revised reform bills.60 In December 1831 he informed his uncle Thomas Grenville†: ‘So far as Montgomeryshire is concerned, I have gone too far ever to conciliate the reformers and the only course which can prevent them from showing their hostility upon every occasion is their weakness’.61 He persisted in praising the Welsh contributory boroughs system and claimed that Montgomeryshire merited additional representation; but its population, 51,187, was well below that at which Carmarthenshire and Denbighshire were belatedly granted second Members. The reformers remained active, held dinners in Machynlleth and Newtown, where a branch of the Political Union was formed, petitioned the Lords in October 1831 when the bill was defeated, and publicized instances of harsh treatment and forced votes at the May election.62 In January 1832, when Edwards declared his candidature, interest turned from the county to the new boroughs constituency, where the parties were evenly matched and the designation of returning officers, the boundaries and burgess rights under the 1832 Act were all hotly disputed before and after the hard-fought contest of December 1832, when Pugh defeated Edwards in the boroughs, only to be unseated on petition.63 Before the first post-reform election, 2,523 voters were registered in the county polling towns of Llanfair Caereinion, Llanfyllin, Llanidloes, Machynlleth and Montgomery, doubling the electorate.64 Nothing came of rumours that Hanbury Tracy or the new Lord Mostyn would openly oppose Williams Wynn, and though requisitions to Hayes Lyon and Samuel Humphreys were also suggested, he was returned unopposed at Machynlleth as a Conservative in December 1832 and represented the county unchallenged for life.65 Wynnstay and the Conservatives retained Montgomeryshire through Sir Watkin’s son Henry Watkin Williams Wynn, 1850-62, and Charles Williams Wynn’s namesake son, who outpolled Hanbury Tracy in 1862, but in 1880 he was defeated by the 2nd Baron Sudeley’s son, the Liberal Stuart Rendel, whose party retained the seat for the next century.66