Welsh Journals

A WELSH POLITICAL STORM: THE TREASURY WARRANT OF 1778 CONCERNING CROWN LANDS IN WALES A great clamour has been attempted to be raised, concerning the proposed enquiry into the Revenue of the Principality of Wales. When this matter comes to be thoroughly canvassed, it will be found that the conduct of the Board of Treasury, instead of meriting the public censure, is highly laudable and praiseworthy. THE opening paragraph in the St James's Chronicle of 9 January 1779, a vain attempt to stem the rising tide of protest, was presumably part of a newspaper campaign by supporters of Lord North's ministry. The plan to investigate the Crown revenue in Wales was launched against a nation-wide background of increasing concern over the apparent growth of royal influence, a groundswell of public opinion and political complaint that culminated in the great parliamentary battle of 1780 over 'Economical Reform', the campaign to reduce royal patronage. The Treasury Warrant of 1778 fitted neatly into an opposition scenario of dubious expedients by the king's government. That this particular move concerned only Wales afforded critics of the scheme the opportunity of portraying it as both unfair to, and an insult to, the principality as well as a threat to 'Property', along with 'Liberty' one of the twin gods of Georgian Britain. The Welsh political storm of 1778-79 had its origin two years earlier in a cloud no bigger than a man's hand. On 3 July 1776 the Treasury Board received a memorial from the auditor of the Land Revenue in Wales, Sir Thomas Wynn of Glynllifon. Wynn was evidently valued as a parliamentary supporter of the North ministry, for he was to receive an Irish peerage as Lord Newborough later that month, and had been given a government seat for St Ives in 1775 after his defeat in Caernarfonshire at the general election of 1774. The memorial concerned frauds in the accounts of Prestatyn lead mines, and