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members of the old guard was merely to step into the shoes of the old elite, to resist the intrusion of newcomers, and to defend the integrity of the old county community. An important consequence, certainly in the case of William Jones of Clytha, was that this attempt to seize control of the richest prize, the Tredegar estates, proved to be a serious threat to its financial stability. Its rescue, in the early nineteenth century, was to depend on the involvement of the newcomer, Sir Charles Gould, in industrial development and urban expansion-factors which accelerated the fundamental changes which were eventually to break the grip of the gentry on political power and social hierarchy. The Morgans of Tredegar were considerable landowners in Monmouth- shire, Glamorgan and Breconshire by the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1680 the estimated value of their estate was £ 3,938 14s. 6d.3 By 1689 the figure had risen to £ 5,502 13s. 7d.4 The addition to the Tredegar inheritance which seems to have propelled the Morgans clearly into the elite, though, came in 1715 when John Morgan acquired the valuable Ruperra estates of his unmarried uncle and namesake, whose fortune had been made as a merchant in London. Immediately, the fabric of the Morgans' chief seat at Tredegar began to show signs of social pretension. As Lawrence and Jean Stone have pointed out, the country house was the outward manifestation of the status and ambitions of a landowner.5 John Morgan reconstructed the formal gardens at Tredegar, built an Orangery, and commissioned the magnificent gates made and erected by William and Simon Edney, gatesmiths of Bristol; the cost of these gates amounted to more than a thousand pounds.6 Political accolades accompanied this augmented wealth. The Morgans had provided members of Parliament for Monmouthshire since the sixteenth century, and they had recently established their influence over the county and borough seats in Breconshire.7 In 1715 John Morgan was appointed lieutenant of Breconshire and Monmouthshire.8 This was a sign of approval from the new Hanoverian regime. The Tory Beaufort interest, previously dominant in the area, carried the taint of Jacobitism. Moreover, its influence 'N.L.W., Tredegar Park 371. 4 N.L.W., Tredegar Park 373. 5 Lawrence Stone and Jean C. Fawtier Stone, An Open Elite? (Oxford, 1986 edn.), p. 199. 6 David Freeman. Tredegar House (Newport, 1989), p. 7. 7 Arnold J. James and John E. Thomas, Union to Reform: A History of the Parliamentary Representation of Wales, 1536-1832 (Llandysul, 1986), pp. 150, 160-63. 8 L C. Sainty. List of Lieutenants of the Counties of England and Wales, 1660-1974 (List & Index Society Special Series, Vol. 12, 1979), p. 26.