The Owens of Orielton represented Pembrokeshire from 1660 to 1710 with one short interval. In the Convention and Cavalier Parliaments the seat was held by the cadet branch of New Moat. Arthur Owen I was a Presbyterian Royalist, and his son John, a stop-gap for the last weeks of 1678, may have been regarded as a member of the country party, though the election was held at Slebech, the domain of the Roman Catholic Barlow baronets. He was replaced for the first and second Exclusion Parliaments by the head of the family whose political views were similar. There may have been opposition in the second election of 1679, the return running in the name of ‘the major part of the county’, and in 1681 Sir Hugh Owen stood down in favour of a moderate court supporter, William Wogan, who was returned without a contest. In 1685 a younger son of the Barlow family was returned on the high tide of Toryism. In May 1688 he offered himself as a candidate for Haverfordwest at the abortive elections; the court nomination for the county has not been preserved. Sir Hugh Owen regained his seat in 1689 ‘with the general consent of the freeholders’.

Pemb. Life (Pemb. Rec. Ser. i) 52; Prot. Dom. Intell. 18 Mar. 1681.