Welsh Journals

decide the Parliamentary representation by consultation rather than conflict.1 During the seventeenth century increasing competition had thinned the ranks of Welsh families with Parliamentary ambitions. By 1700 only two or three contended for the honour in most of the shires, and some counties had fallen under the control of a single family. It might well have seemed to the contemporary observer that this latter development had occurred in Glamorgan, and that the political domination of both constituencies had passed to the great house of Mansel, seated at Margam, with a junior branch at Briton Ferry. For the Mansel family had monopolised the county seat since 1670 and the borough repre- sentation from 1689. That the Mansels were the most influential family in Glamorgan there can be no doubt. Their vast estates gave them direct control of over two hundred county voters, about one-sixth of the electorate, and the Margam branch also ruled the Parliamentary borough of Kenfig. The head of the family, Sir Edward Mansel of Margam, had retired from Parlia- ment in 1688 his son Thomas was already the leading political figure in Glamorgan, and the county member from 1701. His brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Stradling of St. Donats, had repre- sented the borough from 1698 to 1701, when the seat was taken by his namesake, Thomas Mansel of Briton Ferry. Thomas Mansel of Margam was a close friend and associate of Robert Harley, M.P. for Radnor Boroughs, the moderate Tory leader. Soon after the beginning of Queen Anne's reign, in 1702, Harley realised the need for co-operation with the rival Whig party in a vigorous prosecution of the War of the Spanish Succession; and by 1704 the ministry comprised a coalition of Whigs and Harleyites, opposed by a few Jacobites and by the High Tories, zealous to enforce and increase the civil disabilities of Protestant 1 Llewelyn B. John. The Parliamentary Representation of Glamorgan, 1536 to 1832. (M.A. Thesis. University of Wales, 1934), pp. 17-95. Much general information has been obtained for this article from the above thesis, as also from W. R. Williams, The Parliamentary History of Wales (Brecon, 1895), and G. T. Clark, Limbus Patrum Morgania et Glamorganiae (London, 1886).