Family and Education

Offices Held

Burgess, Carmarthen by 1563.1

Biography

There were several Morgan families in Carmarthenshire from which this MP may have come, but his name does not occur at the appropriate time in any of their pedigrees. The 1563 election return shows that he was a burgess of Carmarthen.

One, and one only, source for names of Members of the 1571 Parliament has a John Morgan sitting for Carmarthen Boroughs. This is the list Browne Willis printed from a manuscript formerly in the collection of Le Neve;2 the name does not appear on his ms list (Bodl. Willis 9) nor on the other list for the 1571 Parliament (the de Tabley ms), both of which fail to name the Member for this constituency. Browne Willis gives John Vaughan as the county MP, whereas it seems conclusive that this must have been Sir Henry Jones. If Browne Willis supplied the name of the county man by the guesswork for which he is notorious, it is possible that he also guessed at the name of the borough man. A better guess might be John Vaughan II, whom Willis gives for the county. In any case it is unlikely that the 1563 Carmarthen Boroughs man was reelected in 1571, if he was the ‘John Morgan of Carmarthen’ sent with two vessels to cruise off Ireland and Spain to report on any hostile preparations, because this man did not report on his mission until a week after Parliament opened.3

The indications are that the John Morgan who sat for Carmarthen in 1563 was not the sewer of the Queen’s chamber who began to acquire land in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire from 1586.4

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: A.H.D.

Notes

• 1. C219/27/54.
• 2. See Interim Report, 25.
• 3. CSP Dom. 1547-80, pp. 408-9.
• 4. G. Owen, ‘Desc. Wales’, Desc. Pemb. ed. H. Owen, ii. 390. See under MORGAN, John I.