Family and Education

b. by 1521, 1st s. of John Games alias ap Morgan* of Newton and Brecon by 1st w. Margaret, da. of Thomas Gwalter ap Jenkin Havard; bro. of Meredydd. m. c.1538, Elizabeth, da. of Sir William Vaughan of Porthaml, wid. of John ap Lewis Havard (d.1537), 7s. 5da. suc. fa. ?1561.5

Offices Held

J.p. Brec. 1543-?d.; commr. subsidy 1544, relief 1550, goods of churches and fraternities 1553; recorder, Brecon in 1557; sheriff, Brec. 1559-60.6

Biography

Edward Games is first heard of in connexion with his marriage. His father’s failure to carry out the terms of the settlement then made provoked his wife’s father Sir William Vaughan to sue John Games in Chancery in 1547. According to Vaughan, the elder Games had agreed to settle on the couple lands worth 20 marks a year and goods worth £100 and further to create for his son a ‘sufficient and indefeasible estate in the law’. To this end various gentlemen had been bound as sureties, but their interest notwithstanding Games had recently been persuaded ‘by evil counsel without good ground or just occasion’ to break his promise by disinheriting his son. Whether it was Games’s second marriage which had led him to take this step does not appear and its sequel is likewise hidden, but as another 15 years were to pass before his son succeeded to the patrimony, to enjoy it for only two years, the practical consequences may not have been great.7

Edward Games was certainly not inhibited in his career at Westminster, in Breconshire or in the borough of Brecon. The first Member to be returned for Brecon Boroughs in 1542, he enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the seat until April 1554 but then, somewhat surprisingly, missed the five further Parliaments called during his lifetime. Both his father and his brother-in-law Sir Roger Vaughan represented the shire and his place as Member for Brecon Boroughs was taken by his brother Meredydd. In 1543 he was named to the first recorded commission of the peace in the new county and in 1546, 1547 and 1548 he was nominated for the shrievalty but was not pricked. With his father he was largely instrumental in gaining for Brecon its new charter in 1557 and became the borough’s first recorder.8

Apart from the dispute over his marriage settlement little has been discovered about Games’s private affairs. His wardship of William Havard, the son of Elizabeth Games’s first husband John ap Lewis Havard, had brought him into Chancery as plaintiff between 1538 and 1544 after the theft of a silver cup from among the ward’s goods which Games had stored with a widow in Brecon. In May 1548 he acquired the capital messuage of Spytty, otherwise the chapel of Wentworth in the suburbs of Brecon, and this he probably made his town house: when he sued out a general pardon on the accession of Elizabeth he was described as of Brecon and Peyton. According to the family pedigree he died in 1564, a statement which is borne out by the absence of his name from documents of later date.9

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: P. S. Edwards

Notes

• 1. C219/18B/119; OR gives Edwardus Gane.
• 2. Hatfield 207.
• 3. Only the christian name survives on the damaged indenture, C219/20/177.
• 4. Bodl. e Museo 17.
• 5. Presumed to be of age at election. Jones, Brec. ii. 175; iv. 32-33; G.T. Clark, Limbus Patrum Morganniae, 195-6; C1/1185/49.
• 6. C193/12/1; NLW ms Wales 17/5; SP11/5/6; E179/219/29; CPR, 1553, pp. 364, 419; Jones, iv. 308.
• 7. C1/1185/49.
• 8. LP Hen. VIII, xxi; CPR, 1553, pp. 317, 328; Jones, iv. 308.
• 9. C1/991/2; NLW Penpont mss 15; CPR, 1558-60, p. 209.