Welsh Journals

a poignant letter to Bussy, her heir, urging him to show care for his 'poor servants and friends', and to read her death-bed letter every Monday for the next seven years to guide his way through life[4]. Bussy was only a minor when the civil wars began in 1642. Nothing is known of his education nor of the formative influences upon him, though it was perhaps natural that Bussy should support the royalist cause as his step-father and several close relations were actively involved on behalf of Charles I. Sir Anthony Mansell, nominated a royalist commissioner of array for Glamorgan[5], was one of the very first to join Charles I at Nottingham in August 1642. He was appointed Governor of Cardiff in 1642 and held the post for about a year before he was killed at the first battle of Newbury in September 1643. As a result of Sir Anthony's death Bussy became a ward of the Crown until he attained his majority[6]. Wales, one of the 'dark corners of the land', was one of the few areas where the royalists were in the ascendant during the First Civil War and in Glamorgan it was possible for royalist organ- isation to operate effectively through a royalist county committee. It was the task of the committee to secure the county for the royalist cause and to provide financial support for the local militia, raised principally for the defence of the county. Finance derived mainly from taxation of the county's inhabitants and by sequest- ration of the estates of known and suspected parliamentary sympathisers. Though too young to be nominated a commissioner of array by Charles I, Bussy was soon active on behalf of the Glamorgan commissioners and very quickly established himself as one of the leading figures on the royalist committee. His principal sphere of influence was initially in the three western hundreds of the county Swansea, Neath, Llangyfelach but it was not long before he was prominent throughout Glamorgan. In the summer of 1643 Bussy and his brother-in-law William Thomas (who had married Bussy's sister Katherine) along with William's father, Walter, were ordered to supply from the three western hundreds of the county 120 able-bodied men and bring them to Cardiff to stiffen the royalist militia in Glamorgan. Bussy and the two Thomases were hard put to find the men demanded of them and could produce only 60 able-bodied from an area which had already supplied its share of men towards the county militia