Welsh Journals

A PORTRAIT OF THOMAS MAKEIG OF PENLAN-FAWR, 1721­1766 There is mourning like a shroud, and tears at Llandygwydd,' for Thomas Makeig II, self-described mercer and yeoman, lay dead at his home at Penlan in the parish of Llandygwydd, in the county of Cardi- gan. He had travelled a long road from the day when, as tradition has it, his family, then bearing the name of Mackay, had fled from Scotland as-in all probability-outlawed Jacobites. There were rumours of a close and mysterious connection with Lord Reay of the Clan Mackay, a flight from the north, leaving lands and possessions behind and, the tale runs, the coining of the name of Makeig for the family on the start of a new life in West Wales. Born in 1721 into the age of Hanoverian George, of Swift and Gulliver's Travels, of Handel, of Hogarth, and of Dr. Johnson, he died at 45, a comparatively young man, on 4 April 1766. Though little is known of him during the first half of his life, it is evident that by mid-century he had achieved much, for he had a happy home and family, was widely travelled as a merchant, respected by his friends and neighbours, and with some success as an agriculturalist. Taken ill early in the spring of 1766, Thomas Makeig planned well for his dearly beloved wife Margaret' and his children, for on 25 March, with the aid of his lawyer, he drew up a long and carefully devised will, while sick in body but of sound mind, memory and understanding'. Some eight days later he was dead, very much lamented by his friends and acquaintances'. The cause of his death is not known, but year after year in the county pestilential fevers and winter coughs raged, cutting down young and old alike, as we are made well aware when we read the letters of Lewis Morris (1728- 1765). In writing to his brother Richard in January 1762 he had commented that the bloody flux is very rife between Penbryn and Cardigan along the water side, a most dreadful distemper. This is a very open wet winter and will destroy half this country.' A month or two later his brother William, writing to him, said It is attended with most violent gripings and strangury, and generally kills in 5, 6 and 7 days some have lived in misery under it for a fortnight or three weeks and then drop'd.' In 1763 Lewis again wrote We have a terrible fever here, it kills in four or five days, some in three days, and it is my opinion that it is as fatal as the plague was in London in 1666. It is purely pleuritic, and I am afraid epidemic. God prepare us all Here could be an explanation of Thomas's brief illness. His wife, his seven children (two sons and five daughters), his reputed daughter Ann (we see in the parish register of the church at Llandygwydd the entry, dated 1747: Ann, daughter of Thos.