A mountainous county, with many more sheep than people, Merioneth was blessed with comparatively few large estates. Reputedly only one gentleman paid the 1692 poll tax, and the lieutenancy commission of 1701 comprised six. No contested elections are recorded in this period, though it may be that the veteran Tory Sir John Wynn, 5th Bt., was pushed into retirement in 1695 by his successor Hugh Nanney, whose family had been traditional enemies of the Wynns and whose own political allegiance seems to have been to the opposite party. Wynn lost his office as custos subsequently, probably for refusing the Association, but even after regaining it in 1700 did not challenge for his old seat, having found a convenient constituency elsewhere. Nanney’s interest passed on his death to his cousin and brother-in-law Richard Vaughan II of Cors-y-Gedol, a Tory, who thus became dominant in the constituency, being returned unopposed at every general election for the rest of his life. Little evidence survives of any political activity in Merioneth in Anne’s reign: the commission of the peace, for example, remained largely intact during party purges in 1705–6 and 1710–12. However, the presentation of a county address in October 1706 by the bishop of Bangor and the Whig Serjeant John Hooke of the North Wales circuit, applauding the triumph of the Duke of Marlborough (John Churchill†) at Oudenarde, may indicate the presence of a body of Whig opinion in the county unsympathetic to the politics of the sitting Member.1