PRYSE, Lewis (?1683-1720), of Gogerddan, Card.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

10 Dec. 1701 - 1702
1708 - 1710
1715 - 23 Mar. 1716

Family and Education

b. ?1683, o.s. of Thomas Pryse of Glanfraed, Card. by Margaret, da. of Lewis Owen, M.P., of Peniarth, Merion. educ. Jesus, Oxf. 1 Apr. 1699, aged 15. m. Ann, da. and h. of John Lloyd of Aberllefenni, Merion., 2s. 4da. suc. cos. Sir Carbery Pryse, 4th Bt., M.P. Cardiganshire 1690, at Gogerddan 1694.

Offices Held

Biography

Pryse, whose family had represented Cardiganshire since the seventeenth century, was successful at the general election of 1715, but was expelled next year for refusing to take the oaths.1 The lord lieutenant of the county wrote to Paul Methuen, that he and William Powell (father of Thomas) were

the greatest incendiaries and most disaffected persons in the principality of Wales [and] ... the managers of the correspondence between the malcontents in North and South Wales [whose agents] so terrified the people in general, that neither the commissions issued out by me, nor even the orders of the Privy Council, could either in the time of the rebellion or since be put into execution, and had I gone down without the grant of some regular forces I had nothing to expect but to have been murdered.2

In 1717 at the time of the new Jacobite plot (see Caesar, Charles) Lord Mar, the Pretender’s secretary of state, wrote to Pryse, 7 Apr., asking him and his friends to prepare for a landing of the Duke of Ormonde in the west country.3 He died 11 Aug. 1720, lamented by the English Jacobites as a man ‘who ruled all his shire’.4

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

  • 1. CJ, xviii. 411.
  • 2. 4 Jan. 1717, SP Dom. 35/8, f. 68.
  • 3. NLW Nanteos mss ex inf. P.D.G. Thomas.
  • 4. Stuart mss 65/16.