MORGAN, George Gould (1794-1845), of Tredegar, Mon.

Morgan, an anti-Catholic Tory, had been brought in for Brecon by his father in 1818, when his elder brother Charles stood unsuccessfully for Breconshire. He had supported Lord Liverpool’s administration with Sir Charles, but spoke against the proposed equalization of the coal duties that threatened their vested interests in the Monmouthshire borough of Newport. His brother choosing to remain out of Parliament, he came in again for Brecon in 1820 at a cost of £388 9s. HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 633; Bristol Mercury, 21, 28 Feb., 13 Mar. 1820; NLW, Tredegar mss 45/1704, 1705-26. Toeing the family line, he divided with ministers against censuring their treatment of Queen Caroline, 6 Feb. 1821, and voted against Catholic relief, 28 Feb. 1821, 30 Apr. 1822, 1 Mar, 21 Apr., 10 May 1825, and parliamentary reform, 20 Feb. 1823. He paired against the malt duty repeal bill, 3 Apr. 1821, divided with government on distress and taxation, 11, 21 Feb. 1822, 20 Feb., 18 Mar. 1823, and against condemning the trial in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith, 11 June 1824. His marriage the following month, against which his father received an anonymous letter of protest, followed closely on the passage of their private estate bill, and the Clarke family’s Brickendonbury property, inherited by his grandmother Jane Morgan in 1792, was thus settled on him and his bride. R.D. Rees, ‘Parl. Rep. S. Wales, 1790-1830’ (Reading Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1962), 415; Tredegar mss 20/34; 57/48-53, 451. They accompanied Sir Charles to county and borough functions in Brecon in 1825, and Morgan was re-elected with great ceremony in June 1826, returning in September for the assizes and corporation dinner, and to patronize the eisteddfod and races. Cambrian, 1, 8 Oct. 1825, 3, 17 June, 30 Sept.; Hereford Jnl. 3, 21 June; Bristol Mercury, 9 Oct. 1826. He divided against Catholic relief, 7 Mar. 1827, 12 May 1828, and with the duke of Wellington’s ministry against repealing the Test Acts, 26 Feb., and ordnance reductions, 4 July 1828. Opposing the concession of Catholic emancipation with his father in 1829, he presented and endorsed a hostile petition from Brecon, 3 Mar., and voted or paired against the relief bill, 6, 18, 23, 27, 30 Mar. Cambrian, 21, 28 Feb. 1829. He divided against Lord Blandford’s reform proposals, 18 Feb., and Jewish emancipation, 17 May 1830. Calling for the committal of the administration of justice bill, by which Wales’s separate judicature and courts of great sessions were abolished, 18 June 1830, he declared that he would support any measure he considered ‘favourable to the interests’ of the Principality. At the dissolution the following month he stood down to make way for his brother.

Morgan did not stand for Parliament again. In August 1845 he died intestate at Brickendonbury, where he had planted a magnificent avenue of trees known as ‘Morgan’s Walk’. He was buried in the Clarke family vault at All Saints, Hertford. Administration of his personal estate, sworn under £5,000, was granted to his widow, who in 1855 married Captain Claridge, the promoter of hydrotherapy. His nephew the 2nd Baron Tredegar sold Brickendonbury in lots between 1878 and 1883. Hertford Mercury, 30 Aug., 6 Sept. 1845; VCH Herts. iii. 409; PROB 6/222.