MORGAN, Lewis (c.1606-1635), of Rhiwperra Castle, Llanfihangel-y-fedw, Glam.

Heir to a family with estates in Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, Lewis Morgan attended the predominantly Welsh populated Jesus College, Oxford before moving to the Middle Temple. In May 1626 he was granted a passport and travelled to the Netherlands, where he attended Leiden University. APC, 1625-6, pp. 470-1. He may have been invited by his kinsman Sir Charles Morgan of Pencarn, then campaigning in the Low Countries, whose daughter, Ann, a Dutch native, he subsequently married. E.A. Beller, ‘The Military Expedition of Sir Charles Morgan to Germany, 1627-9’, EHR, xliii. 534-9.

Morgan was returned at the 1628 general election for Cardiff, where his family possessed a grand town house, and his father’s employer, the 3rd earl of Pembroke, was lord of the manor. Clark, 318; Glam. RO, B/C 2/1. He may have intended to secure the naturalization of his new bride by statute, but if so, the controversy over the Petition of Right ensured that no bill was tabled. She was finally naturalized in Feb. 1652: CJ, vi. 535. Alternatively, his connection with a senior military commander may have given him some interest in foreign policy, although he left no trace on the Commons’ debates. On 19 May 1628 Morgan secured a Privy Council warrant to ride post from London to Cardiff, but if he left the metropolis he did so without leave from the Commons. APC, 1627-8, p. 432. His father was granted leave from the Commons around the same time.

Shortly after the dissolution Morgan was knighted and journeyed to the Netherlands with the Welsh soldier Charles Price* of Pilleth. Ibid. 1628-9, p. 409. In 1630 he returned to the family’s recently built house at Rhiwperra, appearing on the Glamorganshire bench for the first time in 1631. His brief tenure in this office, however, suggests that he either left for London or travelled to the continent again. During his stay in South Wales he was involved in a dispute over ex-chantry lands in Newport, Monmouthshire, which his father had granted him in 1628. E112/223/8; E134/5Chas.I/Mich.31; NLW, Tredegar Park 56/110-11, 117-18; 62/28, 81; 124/624.

Morgan predeceased his father, and was buried at Hampstead, Middlesex on 3 July 1635. Administration of his estate was granted to a creditor, William Carne, a kinsman of his paternal grandmother. PROB 6/15, f. 154. The Rhiwperra estate descended to Morgan’s eldest son, Thomas, while his widow went on to marry Walter Strickland†, a recruiter Member of the Long Parliament and parliamentary agent in Holland. Clarendon, Hist. of the Rebellion ed. W.D. Macray, v. 3.