Merioneth

Such was the primacy of the ancient family of Vaughan of Corsygedol that they held the county seat for 85 years of the 18th century.P. D.G. Thomas, Merion. Hist. Soc. Jnl. (1957), 129. Prestige, based on continuous residence and respectable alliances, gave them this hold, for in point of property Sir Watkin Williams Wynn was the leading landowner; and his family ‘always looked to a seat for that county’, according to the Marquess of Buckingham, 2 Aug. 1789, but their interest was not decisive enough to enable them to supply the vacancy caused by the death of the last Vaughan of Corsygedol in 1791.HMC Fortescue, i. 487; Oldfield, Boroughs, ii. 410. He was succeeded by his young kinsman Robert Williames Vaughan, who held the seat unopposed as long as he chose—for 44 years. His succession had been judiciously prepared by his father’s shift of residence from Hengwrt to Nannau, the connecting link between his family and that of Corsygedol and the focal point of Merioneth politics since 1695; as also by a guarantee of his loyalty to Pitt’s administration from his father’s friend Lord Bulkeley, who even implied that Vaughan’s father, as a committed supporter of Pitt, was prepared to oppose his kinsman of Corsygedol in the county in 1790. Writing to Pitt, 27 Nov. [1791], Bulkeley had alleged, having heard of Vaughan’s imminent death, ‘Had he lived a few years longer ... Lady Williams and Sir Watkin would have set up Mr Charles Williams [Wynn] and the contest would probably have been a sharp one’.PRO 30/3/117, ff. 185, 200.