Welsh Journals

Breconshire, together with extensive lands in Pembrokeshire and the Abemantbychan estate in south Cardiganshire.1 In consequence, when Lewis Pryse came into the Gogerddan inheritance he sup- plemented it by three further Welsh estates. His enjoyment of these estates was to last only four years until his death in 1779, when he was succeeded by his daughter Margaret, wife of Edward Lovedon Lovedon of Buscot Park in Berkshire.2 Margaret had married the cantankerous and gout-stricken Lovedon in 1773 and during the eleven remaining years of her life bore him six children, of whom three survived infancy. Her son and heir, Pryse Lovedon, was merely ten years old in January 1784 when his mother died, having given birth to a child the previous June.3 Of Pryse Lovedon's early days, little seems to be known save that he graduated from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1792 and some six years afterwards, having achieved his majority, assumed by royal licence the name and arms of Pryse.4 During Pryse's minority, the Gogerddan estate and its satellites had been run in absentia by Edward Lovedon who, unlike his son, appears to have had little liking for Wales in general or Cardiganshire in particular. Even so, he was less than willing to hand over the management of the estate to his son when the latter married in 1798, and was only persuaded to do so by the threat of litigation.5 This quite unjustified behaviour on the part of Lovedon considerably soured the already rather cool relationship with his son. Pryse was particularly incensed by his father's persistent attempts throughout the early years of the century to persuade him to sell off parts of the non-entailed Welsh properties and to use the revenue realised to purchase estates in England within reasonable distance of Buscot. In Lovedon's view there was little advantage in keeping the outlying Welsh estates and considerable benefit to be gained by concentrating the family holdings in close proximity to the principal residence in Berkshire. Indeed, after a 1 See D. Jenkins, 'The Pryse Family of Gogerddan, II', National Library of Wales Journal, VIII (1953-54), 87, and D. Huws, 'The Lewes Family of Abernantbychan', Ceredigion, VI (1969), 150-67. George Lewis Langton was the son of an Irishman, John Langton, by his wife Catherine, daughter of John Lewis of Coedmore and his wife Elizabeth, heiress of the Llan-gors estate. Following the death of her first husband, Elizabeth married Walter Pryse of Painswick and Woodstock (N.L.W., Brigstocke MS. 94). Langton, who graduated from Magdalene College in 1731, is registered in the Lincoln's Inn list of 1731 as being resident at Abernantbychan in Cardiganshire. In his will, which was proven on 27 February 1738, he devised all his real estate to 'his dearest friend', Walter Pryse. Lewis Pryse's eldest son, Lewis, died without issue in September 1776. Edward Lovedon Lovedon was to re-marry twice before his death in 1822. An article dealing with his 1811 divorce is being prepared by the present author in collaboration with J. W. Williams and will appear in a future volume of the New Law Journal. Alumni Oxoniensis, 1715-1886 (Oxford, 1888), p. 1160. In 1798 Pryse married Harriet, daughter of the 2nd Viscount Ashbrook and widow of the Rev. Ellis Agar. She died on 14 January 1813. This article is based upon correspondence in the unscheduled Gogerddan and T. G. G. Herbert archives in the National Library of Wales.