Welsh Journals

THE GLAMORGAN GENTRY IN 1677 IN 1677, Sir Edward Mansell of Margam wrote a detailed account of the personalities and political outlook of the leading figures in the Glamorgan of his day. The list-which was sent to the Secretary of State, Sir Joseph Williamson-contains a great deal of information useful for the social, political and economic history of a wealthy and important community.1 Moreover, the fact of compiling such a document is interesting in itself, as it shows one of the means in which government could acquire political intelligence about local affairs in a time of growing unrest, when it lacked a police apparatus on the French model. The document illustrates the politics of south Wales on the eve of the profound national crisis in which this region would play a major part. But much of the usefulness of the material derives not from its location in a specific series of political events. It is valuable as a cross-sectional account of a landed elite at a particular moment of its existence, described by an observer in a uniquely well-placed position to provide an accurate portrait. Mansell in 1677 was forty years old, possessor of the county's greatest estate, and widely connected by kinship or friendship to the whole community he describes. The document, therefore, helps us to understand the social world of the Restoration gentry of Wales. In summary, this list is not merely a 'snapshot' of the upper ranks of a county society, but it can be used to provide a detailed picture of this community. The Context In 1677, the government of Charles II was facing an increasing range of perils and imminent crises, chiefly stemming from the long drawn-out war between France and the United Provinces. French subsidies had helped prevent the calling of a Parliament since 1675, but fears about the growing influence of Louis XIV were causing intense discontent among Country and opposition circles in Britain. This foreign context helps to explain the deep anti-Catholicism of the decade, especially when the King's heir the Duke of York, was himself a Catholic; and there were already rumblings of Catholic conspiracies on the lines of those that would come near to overthrowing the dynasty in the next few years.2 The politics of the mid-1670s were (in Kenyon's words) among 'the most complex in English history'; but what was not in doubt was that the country would shortly be experiencing a constitutional and religious crisis on a scale