Welsh Journals

This county, o Premier, may now, as in former times, be harassed, and in a great measure weakened and destroyed by your and other powers, but its Liberalism can never be totally subdued through the wrath of men, unless the wrath of God shall concur. 1 Few by-elections in British political history have been fought with greater intensity and personal bitterness than the Cardiganshire contest of February 1921.2 In the New Year's honours list of that year the long serving Liberal MP for the county Matthew Lewis Vaughan Davies, squire of Tan-y- bwlch mansion near Aberystwyth, was elevated to the peerage as Baron Ystwyth. Speculation that this was likely to happen had been rife in the coun- ty and at Westminster since at least 1917. Lloyd George as Prime Minister of the post-war coalition government was at once accused of 'recklessly throw[ing] Cardiganshire into the turmoil and expense of an election'.3 It was indeed contended from the outset that a keenly observed by-election lay in prospect, and it was soon realised that Vaughan Davies's elevation was pri- marily a device engineered by the Prime Minister to bring into parliament his own private secretary Captain Ernest Evans, himself a native of Aberystwyth, a Welsh speaker, a barrister by profession and an erudite pub- lic speaker with extensive local connections. It was noted, too, that Wee Free support was substantial within the county. Indeed Asquith had himself been considered a possible Liberal candidate for Cardiganshire only a short time earlier before his return for Paisley in 1920. Local passions ran high against the notion that Lloyd George should consider the county Liberal Association the mere 'hand-maiden' of an administration comprising mainly Unionist MPs whose good name had been tainted beyond hope of recovery by the atrocities of the Black and Tans in Ireland.4 Resentment increased as it became ever more apparent that the course of events had long been manipulated by the Prime Minister. When his wife Mrs Margaret Lloyd George had visited the county in 1919 she had been accompanied, pointedly, by Captain Ernest Evans. Evans had already avidly sought the Liberal nomination for the University of Wales constituency back in 1918, but had been persuaded to withdraw his name (probably due to pres- sure from Lloyd George) in favour of veteran Welsh Liberal, Sir John Herbert Lewis, a close political associate of the Prime Minister's for fully thirty years. The favour now needed to be re-paid. Evans had already addressed several political meetings in the county during the spring and sum-