No polls are recorded in Caernarvonshire in this period, and the county gentry appear to have offered little resistance to the irruption of the Bulkeley interest from across the Menai Strait. The other notable feature of the period is the steady decline in the political weight carried by the knights of the shire. John Glynne, who represented the county in the Convention after holding high legal office in the Protectorate, was a national figure, loathed as much by London Royalists as in his native county. Lord Bulkeley intended to contest the general election of 1660, but withdrew to Anglesey, where there was less fear of the penalties imposed by the Long Parliament ordinance against the candidature of Cavaliers’ sons. Before the 1661 election there was a compact between Sir Richard Wynn of Gwydir, the head of one of the leading families in North Wales, and William Griffith to keep the Glynnes out of both seats. On Wynn’s death in November 1674 the bulk of his Caernarvonshire estate passed to his daughter, and Bulkeley took over the county seat, only to relinquish it for the next four Parliaments to his younger brother Thomas, who had married the heiress of Dinas. There was probably a contest in February 1679, when he was returned by ‘the greater part of the whole county’. He voted against exclusion, and his indentures in 1681 and 1685 claim ‘one unanimous assent and voice’. For the general election of 1689 he transferred to Anglesey, and Caernarvonshire was represented in the Convention by his niece’s husband, Sir William Williams of Vaenor, a young Tory baronet whose interests were chiefly nautical.

Cal. Wynn Pprs. 355, 361, 362, 364; CSP Dom. 1689-90, p. 34.