WILLIAMS WYNN, Sir Watkin, 5th bt. (1772-1840), of Wynnstay, Ruabon, Denb. and St. James’s Square, Mdx.

The Grenville connection, succession to Wynnstay, whose estates and influence ranged over seven counties in North Wales and the Marches, and the excesses of his youth had made Williams Wynn ‘a person of great weight in every sense of the word’. Called ‘the prince of Wales’, he presided over the Society of Ancient Britons, chaired the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion on its revival in 1820, patronized London’s Welsh charity school and eisteddfodau, and was expected, like his grandfather, to make his town house in St. James’s Square the focus of the Welsh elite in London, as Wynnstay remained in North Wales. His marriage alliance with the Clives of Powis Castle, who supported Lord Liverpool’s administration, worked to his financial and electoral advantage, and has been noted as a step towards the subsequent Grenvillite rapprochement with government. Denb. RO DD/WY/6580; Chester Chron. 28 July 1820; J.J. Sack, Grenvillites, 183. Williams Wynn had joined Brooks’s and entered Parliament at the first available opportunity, but, in contrast to his brother Charles, his Member for Montgomeryshire, who led the Grenvillite third party in the Commons, Sir Watkin ‘stood outside the political whirligig’. HP Commons, 1790-1820, v. 594-6; Williams Wynn Corresp. 260. An erratic attender committed to supporting Catholic relief, he had rarely voted against his brother, but only occasionally with him and had latterly confined his votes and remarks to agricultural and militia matters. On these, being an improving landlord, fond of country sports and military exercises, he was well able to comment, though hampered by the much-lampooned impediment of an overlarge tongue. T. Pritchard, ‘Wynnstay’, Trans. Denb. Hist. Soc. xxx (1981), 23-43. Fearing unrest and radical reform after Peterloo, he had summoned the Denbighshire lieutenancy and donated £300 to augment the yeomanry. Chester Chron. 29 Oct., 19 Nov., 24 Dec. 1819; Cambrian, 6 Nov. 1819, 22 Jan. 1820. He officiated at the proclamation of George IV in Montgomeryshire and Denbighshire, where his canvassing addresses and speeches made no mention of politics and his return at the 1820 general election cost him £1,171 11s. 10d. Shrewsbury Chron. 10 Feb., 24 Mar.; Chester Chron. 3 Mar.; Salopian Jnl. 8 Mar; N. Wales Gazette, 23 Mar. 1820; NLW, Wynnstay mss L/1323. He proposed the unsuccessful candidate, his kinsman by marriage Paul Beilby Lawley (afterwards Thompson*), at Wenlock. Salop Archives, Weld-Forester mss 1224, box 337, Procs. at Wenlock election.

In the House, where he sat under the gallery, Williams Wynn divided against government on the appointment of an additional Scottish exchequer baron, 15 May, and the barrack bill, 17 July 1820. He was named to the select committee on agricultural distress, 31 May, and informed it, as a witness, that the Wrexham corn returns were unreliable because most corn was sold by sample, 26 June. CJ, lxxv. 331; PP (1820), ii. 160-1. As a member of the 1817 select committee, he had been in favour of abolishing the Welsh courts of great sessions and barring Welsh judges from sitting in Parliament and practising as barristers, and he was appointed to the 1820 and 1821 select committees which considered their report. A swollen knee kept him away from the yeomanry training in October 1820, but he recovered to entertain the home office under-secretary Henry Clive* at Wynnstay, where there was great rejoining in November at the baptism of his heir. He marked the occasion by renouncing claims to rent arrears from his poorer tenants. NLW, Coedymaen mss 592; NLW ms 2793 D, Lady Williams Wynn to H. Williams Wynn, 9 Oct.; Chester Chron. 3 Nov.; Cambrian, 4, 18 Nov. 1820. Charles Williams Wynn’s misgivings about the queen’s case were well known, and Sir Watkin’s apparent failure to vote on the matter or arrange a loyal address from Denbighshire caused comment. NLW ms 2793 D, C. to H. Williams Wynn, 31 Aug.; N. Wales Gazette, 7 Dec. 1820. He divided for Catholic relief, 28 Feb. 1821, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May 1825. He divided with opposition for repeal of the additional malt duty, 21 Mar., 3 Apr. 1821, and was expected to support Curwen’s motion for repeal of the agricultural horse tax, 5 Apr., when his expressed regret that it was brought forward before the agriculture committee (to which he had been added, 9 Mar.) could report, caused the motion to be withdrawn. When it was reintroduced, 14 June, he decided to vote for it as a means ‘of relieving the landed interest’, but The Times reporter could barely catch what he said. The Times, 6 Apr., 15 June 1821; NLW ms 2793 D, H. Williams Wynn to wife, 21 May 1821. He voted to make forgery a non-capital offence, 23 May 1821. His friends were ‘very glad’ to see him refurbishing Wynnstay in anticipation of a royal visit in late 1821; but according to Thomas Creevey*, he decided against receiving the royal party, when they returned prematurely from Ireland in September following the queen’s death, because his wife disapproved of the king’s ‘ladies’. NLW ms 2793 D, C. to H. Williams Wynn [12 June 1821]; Heber Letters, 288. Negotiations prior to the Grenvillite accession to administration in January 1822 brought the usual rumours that Sir Watkin would be made a peer. Charles became president of the India board with a seat in the cabinet and their brother Henry accepted diplomatic missions to Berne and Stuttgart. Chester Chron. 6 July 1821.

Sir Watkin’s request that his wife be privileged to ride in her carriage through Hyde Park before and after her confinement in April 1822 was immediately granted. Add. 40245, ff. 209-11. He divided with government against abolition of one of the joint-postmasterships, 13 Mar. Slow to grasp that the inquiry that opposition sought into the duties of India board commissioners was intended as an attack on the Grenvillites for defecting to government, he entertained colleagues with cries of ‘Hear, Hear’ when his father was referred to, 14 Mar. Bucks. RO, Fremantle mss D/FR/46/10/20. According to Sir James Mackintosh’s* diary, ‘Sir W. Wynn seemed for a moment to be mad. His explosion was perfect frenzy. But he soon subsided into his natural state and nodded for an hour in spite of the splendour of Canning’s speech’ in defence of Charles. Add. 52445, f. 66. As a member (since 27 Feb.) of the select committee, he spoke authoritatively on agriculture and distress, favouring reductions in interest rates, a mortgage transfer tax, 1 Apr., and protective duties on grain, 6, 8, 13 May. He also confirmed on 13 May his opposition to taxes on salt, soap, candles and hides, whose repeal Charles still sought but voted against because of the constraints of office. The Times, 7 May 1822. He forwarded detailed reports to Henry of the opposition motions criticizing the cost of his diplomatic post, 15, 16 May. NLW ms 2794 D, Sir W. to H. Williams Wynn, 14 May 1822. He divided with government against inquiring into the lord advocate’s treatment of the Scottish press, 25 June, but said he would vote against spending government money on a public monument to commemorate the king’s visit to Scotland, 15 July 1822. The Times, 16 July 1822.

Liverpool’s new Welsh church and the Denbigh dispensary benefited from Wynnstay’s generosity and there was a ‘grand christening for Herbert Watkin on Saturday [8 June 1822] and the house [Wynnstay] was as much admired as in its first days’. Chester Courant, 14 May; NLW ms 2794 D, Lady Williams Wynn to H. Williams Wynn, 11 June 1822. However, Sir Watkin had serious financial problems and there was trouble at Wenlock, where he had negotiated a new arrangement with his co-patron, Lord Forester, with a view to returning Beilby Thompson at the next election. J.D. Nichol, ‘Wynnstay, Willey and Wenlock’, Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. lviii (1965-8), 220-34. He decided to take his family abroad to cut costs, but his mother complained: ‘He has no intention of stopping up any one of his ruinous drains of stables, garden or farm. At least not one of the blood suckers who belong to each of those departments are I believe to be parted with’. NLW ms 2794 D, Lady Williams Wynn to H. Williams Wynn, 18 June, Sir W. to same, 28 June 1822. The Williams Wynns spent August on the Rhine, reached Milan and Verona in November, celebrated Christmas and new year in Rome, and planned a spring tour to Switzerland unless ‘the Catholic question or any other may oblige me to be in town directly after Easter’. Ibid., Lady Williams Wynn to H. Williams Wynn, 13 Aug., Sir W. to same, 7, 25 Nov., 24 Dec. 1822, 12 Jan. 1823. His next reported vote was against inquiry into chancery delays, 5 June 1823. CJ, lxxviii. 152, 334. Finding that Forester had ‘endeavoured to fly off from the engagement’, he went to Wenlock for the corporation elections that Michaelmas, accompanied by Charles and his brothers-in-law, the Clives, the guarantors of the agreement, and was ‘conceded every material point’. NLW ms 2794 D, Sir W. to H. Williams Wynn, 1 Oct. 1823; Weld-Forester mss, box 337, ‘Wenlock Borough, 1822-3’. He wintered on the continent, returning ‘to make a very quiet London season’. NLW ms 2794 D, Mrs. H. to H. Williams Wynn, 18 May 1824. He divided against producing papers on Catholic office-holders, 21 Feb. 1824. He presented Denbighshire petitions against the beer bill, 13 May, and the treatment in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith, 10 June 1824. Chester Chron. 7 May; The Times, 14 May, 11 June 1824. Speculation, fuelled by his absences, had encouraged rival interests in Denbighshire, and to counter them he made his birthday that October a great occasion, with dinner for 104 at Wynnstay, despite his continued need to economize. His mother still hoped he would ‘give up the very uncreditable and still more unprofitable farce of sending horses all round the country to be beaten by every hack’ and noted that he preferred to ‘cut the 1st of March [St. David’s Day celebrations in London] (malgré Charles’s earnest remonstrances)’ and to remain at Wynnstay ‘until Easter, which certainly on many accounts I cannot help thinking far more eligible for him than opening his London and Boodle’s campaign’. NLW ms 2794 D, Lady Williams Wynn to H. Williams Wynn, 9, 27 Oct., 19 Dec., R. Smith to same, 15 Nov. 1824. He divided for the Irish unlawful societies bill, 25 Feb. 1825. Presenting Wrexham’s anti-Catholic petition, 26 Apr., he dissented from its prayer and called for the issue to be settled quickly ‘lest ... the country ... be placed in the painful and dangerous situation of finding the sovereign directly opposed to the two Houses of Parliament on one of the most important questions that could agitate the public mind’. He chaired the Cymmrodorion’s May eisteddfod, attended to enclosure, estate and public business in Denbighshire, Merioneth and Montgomeryshire, and, possibly encouraged by Charles, who had virtually destroyed what remained of their party by refusing to resign over his failure to have their cousin the duke of Buckingham, the leader of their party in the Lords, sent to India as governor-general, he oversaw the refurbishment of his London mansion, where in April 1826 a ‘grand assembly’ was held for over 300 ‘haut de ton’. The Times, 23 May; Chester Chron. 25 Nov. 1825; Coedymaen mss 949, 965; N. Wales Gazette, 12 Jan., 23 Feb., 20 Apr. 1826. He divided with administration against condemning the Jamaican slave trials, 2 Mar. 1826. He welcomed the proposal to release bonded corn, 5 May, and though initially opposed to the corn importation bill, he recognized its merits as a means of alleviating distress and decided to reserve his criticism until its committee stage, 11 May. His comments on the proposed resolutions governing consideration of private bills could not be reported, 20 Apr. The Times, 20 Apr. 1826. Interest focused on the bitter and costly contest for Denbigh Boroughs at the general election in June 1826, when the county returned him unopposed at a cost of £134 1s. 2d. Chester Chron. 9, 16, 23 June 1826; Wynnstay mss L/868. He regained a seat at Wenlock for Wynnstay, but was threatened with firecrackers in Chester, where he voted for the Grosvenors. See CHESTER and WENLOCK.

Williams Wynn suffered severely from erysipelas and hearing problems in the winter of 1826-7. NLW ms 2795 D, F. to H. Williams Wynn, 3 Jan., Lady Delamere to same, 25 May 1827. He divided for Catholic relief, 6 Mar. During the ministerial uncertainty that followed Lord Liverpool’s stroke, he declared for Canning’s corn resolutions, 2 Apr., and, stressing that he ‘belonged to neither party’, he refuted the anti-Catholic protectionist Gooch’s allegations that the corn bill had been ‘proposed by ministers and carried by their friends aided by the votes of opposition’. During the short-lived Canning and Goderich ministries, which Charles adhered to, he made a ‘few remarks’ on church briefs, 7 June, and presented petitions from North Wales for repeal of the Test Acts, 15, 21 June 1827. The Times, 8, 16, 22 June 1827. He did so again, 25 Feb., and voted for their repeal, 26 Feb. 1828, although the duke of Wellington’s new administration then opposed it. Of this and the ministry, from which Charles had been excluded, he wrote to Henry, 18 Mar.:

I believe the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts will pass; but that a declaration that nothing shall be done to the detriment of the established church will be substituted for the sacramental test upon entering into corporations. The government jog on quietly and I believe will stand. People like a prime minister instead of a government of departments which has been more or less the case ever since Lord Grenville. NLW ms 2796 D, Sir W. to H. Williams Wynn, 18 Mar. 1828.

He had predicted and regretted ministerial differences over free trade, and expected government to encounter ‘a good deal of trouble ... on the corn question’ following publication of Huskisson’s letter to his Liverpool constituents. He wrote: ‘As I dread the Lords upon the Catholic question, I have full confidence in their protection on corn’. Ibid. Sir W. to H. Williams Wynn, 28 Jan. 1828. Charles being out of office, Sir Watkin was prevailed on to preside over St. David’s Day celebrations, of which he wrote:

I may meet a parcel of Welsh shopkeepers in London on the 1st, but it is three or four years since I have attended and Charles makes such bother about it, I suppose partly from the hope of getting a stray vote upon an important question in the ... Commons, where certainly the attendance is very slack at that time of year. In such case ... I think I must go up. Shrewsbury Chron. 7 Mar.; NLW ms 2796 D, Sir W. to H. Williams Wynn, 16 Jan. 1828.

He presented a petition for repeal of the malt duties from Wrexham, 5 Mar., but was ill with ‘a slight attack of erysipelas’ when the corn resolutions were announced. NLW ms 2796 D, F. to H. Williams Wynn, 25 Mar. 1828. From newspaper reports, he concluded that

there is little change from the proposal of last year excepting that when corn is below 60s. the duty will not be so high as was formerly proposed and that when it is above that point it will be higher. I do not see any reason for this change, but do not think that it will be a sufficient cause for opposing the bill. Ibid. Sir W. to H. Williams Wynn, 1 Apr. 1828.

He cast a minority vote to lower the corn pivot price from 64s. to 60s., 22 Apr., went afterwards to Audley End and Newmarket for the racing and returned to vote for Catholic relief, 12 May, on his way to ‘Chester races and to fix the place for my lodge’ at Wynnstay. Ibid. same to same, 25 Apr. 1828. By 27 May he was back in London, whence, at Charles’s request, he wrote to inform Henry of Forester’s death, Lord Chandos’s* denunciation of Canning and ministerial changes following the Huskissonite exodus. Ibid. same to same, 27 May 1828. He voted against the indefinite appointment of a registrar to the archbishop of Canterbury, 16 June. Before dividing against the additional churches bill, 30 June 1828, he explained that he did so because it had been introduced too late in the session, and that he would not necessarily take the same line in future. In August, when floods caused severe damage to the grounds at Wynnstay, he was at Glanllyn, his Merionethshire mansion on the shore of Bala Lake. Ibid. same to same, 10 Aug., Lady Williams Wynn to same, 17 Aug. 1828. There was great concern about his health in the winter of 1828-9, following a feverish bilious complaint. Coedymaen mss 207.

Now rarely acting independently of Charles in the Commons, he divided for Catholic emancipation, 6, 30 Mar., as ministers had predicted, voting also to permit Daniel O’Connell to sit without swearing the oath of supremacy, 18 May, and against additional expenditure on the marble arch, 27 May. He endorsed his corps’s petition against recent militia cuts, 23 Feb., and they continued to serve without government funding. He presided over the London eisteddfod in the Argyll Rooms, 6 Mar. Chester Courant, 13 Jan., 3 Feb.; Chester Chron. 13 Feb.; Shrewsbury Chron. 6 Mar. 1829; Denb. RO DD/WY/6705; D.J.V. Jones, Before Rebecca, 183. On 16 May 1829 he hosted a London meeting of Members and peers with Welsh interests that organized opposition to the law commissioners’ controversial proposals to partition and amalgamate counties and reorganize assize districts when the Welsh judicature and courts of great sessions were abolished. NLW, Glansevern mss 905; TNA HO43/37, pp. 258-9. Their pro-forma petition, approving assimilation into the English assize system, but opposing county divisions and joining English and Welsh counties, was rejected when he proposed it to the Denbighshire grand jury in July; and he and Charles failed to carry it at a county meeting, 15 Sept. Chester Courant, 22 Sept.; Shrewsbury Chron. 25 Sept. 1829. He stayed away when Denbighshire adopted a petition against the administration of justice bill through which the proposals were enacted, 15 Apr. 1830. Presenting it, with another from Pembrokeshire, 27 Apr., he dissented from their prayer. Chester Courant, 20 Apr.; Salopian Jnl. 21 Apr.; Shrewsbury Chron. 14 May 1830. He declined attendance at the Denbighshire distress meeting of 2 Mar., and his comments on presenting their petition, 25 Mar., were not reported. Coedymaen mss 213; N. Wales Chron. 11 Mar.; Cambrian, 12 Mar. 1830. A ‘Society for reducing the expenses attending the office of sheriff of Flint, Denbigh and Montgomery’ was subsequently formed. Shrewsbury Chron. 26 Feb. 1831. He voted to enfranchise Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., and to transfer East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 5 Mar. He cast a critical vote with the revived Whig opposition on the Terceira affair, 28 Apr., and divided for Jewish emancipation, 17 May, to abolish capital punishment for forgery offences, 24 May, 20 July, and to reform the divorce laws, 3 June 1830. William IV, on his accession, appointed him his militia aide-de-camp in Wales. He hurried to counter opposition in Wenlock at the ensuing general election. NLW ms 2797 D, Lady Williams Wynn to H. Williams Wynn, 13 July 1830. At his own return in Wrexham, he spoke of the ‘welcome’ slight improvement in the local economy, his support for repeal of the Test Acts, and Catholic relief, whose benefits he had witnessed during his visit to the marquess of Anglesey in Ireland in October 1829, and admitted that the administration of justice bill he had recently supported had been ‘completed in a slovenly manner’. Chester Chron. 16 July, 13 Aug.; NLW ms 2797 D, Lady Williams Wynn to H. Williams Wynn, 17 Aug.; Salopian Jnl. 18 Aug. 1830.

Ministers listed Sir Watkin, who remained on friendly terms with Buckingham, among their ‘foes’, and he divided against them when they were brought down on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830, and welcomed Charles’s appointment as secretary at war in the Grey ministry. NLW ms 2797 D, Sir W. to H. Williams Wynn, 5 Nov. 1830. He presented Ruabon’s petition against truck shops, 2 Dec., and slept through most of the proceedings the following week. Hopetoun mss 167, f. 206. Little was reported of what he said publicly when he accompanied Charles to Machynlleth for his re-election and addressed the reformers in Welshpool, 13 Dec., but he convinced them that he was a defender of rotten boroughs and they encouraged the Denbighshire reformers to campaign against him. Shrewsbury Chron. 17 Dec. 1830; NLW, Garn mss (1956), W. Owen to J.W. Griffith, 1 Jan. 1831. When disturbances broke out in the North Wales coalfield later that month, he mobilized the yeomanry, sheltered agents targeted by the mob at Wynnstay, and negotiated an agreement between the employers and colliers, the ‘more orderly’ of whom he enlisted as special constables to apprehend the agitators. Jones, 118-20, 183; Salopian Jnl. 5, 12 Jan.; Shrewsbury Chron. 7, 14, 21 Jan.; NLW ms 2797 D, Lady Delamere to H. Williams Wynn [23 Jan.], Lady Harriet to F. Williams Wynn, 1 Feb., C. Williams Wynn to Grenville, 21 Feb.; Chester Courant, 15 Mar. 1831; Coedymaen mss 763. Charles resigned over the reform bill, and Sir Watkin, who now stayed away from reform meetings, presented a favourable petition from Wrexham, whose enfranchisement he welcomed, 18 Mar., but neglected to present the Denbighshire petition. His vote for the bill at its second reading, 22 Mar., caused surprise. Coedymaen mss 764-9; Chester Chron. 25 Mar., 8, 22 Apr., 6, 13 May 1831. He had become ‘nearly totally deaf’ and, according to his sister Fanny, ‘so beautifully patient under the heavy visitation that he is quite an example to all around him’. Medical advice and cures sought in London and Brighton had little immediate effect, and at the general election in May he attributed his failure to realize that his vote on 19 Apr. for Gascoyne’s amendment might wreck the bill to deafness. NLW ms 2797 D, F. to H. Williams Wynn, 19 Mar., Sir W. to same, 11 Apr. 1831. Privately he wrote:

The government plan of reform goes in my opinion too far, but it has been so received all over the country that I doubt its being possible were it expedient to resist it. Add to which those who like myself are for moderate reform are so disjointed and separated that I fear no moderate plan will be brought forward. Ibid. Sir W. to H. Williams Wynn, 11 Apr. 1831.

Opponents stressed his failure to present the Denbighshire reform petition, and at Ruthin he was burnt in an effigy bearing the caption ‘I am opposed to reform, to the king, and the people; I am a friend to borough mongers and a snug place for my brother Charles’. He had to canvass in person, and narrowly avoided a poll against John Madocks of Glan-y-wern by promising to pay greater heed to his constituents’ wishes on reform. Chester Courant, 22, 29 Mar., 4 Apr., 3, 10 May; Chester Chron. 25 Mar., 29 Apr., 6, 13 May; Shrewsbury Chron. 29 Apr., 6, 13 May; Spectator, 30 Apr., 7 May; Morning Chron. 3, 5 May; Salopian Jnl. 4 May; Caernarvon Herald, 7 May; The Times, 10 May; Garn mss (1956), J. Madocks to J.W. Griffith, 4, 7, 9 May; NLW ms 2797 D, F. to H. Williams Wynn, 9 May 1831; Wynnstay mss L/932-3; Y Gwyliedydd, viii (1831), 190-1. Thomas Gladstone* observed: ‘Sir Watkin has pledged himself to support the bill as the price of his seat! Poor man! He must indeed value being in Parliament. His brother will act very differently’. St. Deiniol’s Lib. Glynne Gladstone mss 198, T. to J. Gladstone, 8 May 1831. His hearing had improved, and before dining his supporters at Ruthin, 14 May 1831, he accompanied Charles to Montgomeryshire, where he defeated the reformer Joseph Hayes Lyon of Vaynor Park. Salopian Jnl. 18 May; Shrewsbury Chron. 19 May; N. Wales Chron. 24 May; NLW ms 2797 D, Lady Delamere to H. Williams Wynn, 20 May 1831.

Presenting the Denbighshire reform petition, 22 June, he categorically denied that he was pledged to support the reintroduced reform bill, but to the king’s surprise, and possibly heeding constituency interests, the Williams Wynns divided for its second reading, 6 July 1831. Grey mss, Sir H. Taylor to Grey, 7 July 1831; Coedymaen mss 772. In committee, and generally with Charles, he voted to make the 1831 census the criterion for English borough disfranchisements, 19 July, against taking both seats from Appleby, 19 July, Downton, 21 July, and St. Germans, 26 July, and one from Chippenham, 27 July, and Sudbury, 2 Aug. Despite Waithman’s objections, ministers accepted his advice that Wrexham’s franchise should be confined to the townships of Wrexham Abbot and Wrexham Regis, 10 Aug. He voted against preserving freemen’s voting rights, 30 Aug., after pairing off for a week from the 17th. Coedymaen mss 217. He divided against the bill’s passage, 21 Sept. On 3 Oct. he was granted a month’s leave ‘on the public service’, during which he oversaw militia training, was installed as mayor of Oswestry, and celebrated his birthday with a grand dinner and ball at Wynnstay, 26 Oct. Chester Courant, 11 Oct.; Salopian Jnl. 26 Oct. 1831; Coedymaen mss 221, 256. Denbighshire had belatedly been promised a second county Member, Robert Myddelton Biddulph* had declared his candidature and Wynnstay’s May election bills remained unpaid. Wynnstay mss L/934-6; Caernarvon Herald, 27 Sept. 1831. Williams Wynn presided with Charles at post-election dinners and balls in Montgomeryshire in November; but family celebrations at Wynnstay that Christmas were marred by Lady Harriet’s illness, and Charles observed: ‘His deafness is particularly unfortunate as nothing can be worse for her than any attempt to exert her voice so as to be heard by him’. Chester Courant, 2, 9, 30 Nov.; Salopian Jnl. 6 Dec. 1831; Coedymaen mss 222, 225. They had deliberately avoided voting on the revised reform bill at its second reading, 17 Dec., of which he wrote to Henry:

You will see the amendments in the reform bill of which as far as they go I approve. I had paired with Lord Grosvenor but have withdrawn it, not wishing to be treated as being opposed to the second reading of the bill though I may vote for amendments in the committee, which I fear will call me to town early in January, and I may perhaps vote against the third reading, though I fear that it is now too late, and that the wisest plan will be to submit quietly and hope and endeavour to stop it here and not to let it be a stepping stone for further changes or reformations as they may be called. I was surprised at Chandos’s speech, which is much more temperate and sensible than I should have expected from him. NLW ms 2797 D, Sir W. to H. Williams Wynn, 18 Dec. 1831.

He voted against enfranchising Tower Hamlets, 28 Feb., and the third reading, 22 Mar. 1832. He paired against government on the Russian-Dutch loan, 12 July 1832. He thought the reform bill had brought Charles politically closer to Buckingham. Glynne-Gladstone mss GG37, S. to Mary Glynne 4 Apr.; NLW ms 2797 D, Sir W. to H. Williams Wynn, 18 May 1832.

At the general election in December 1832, he gave his interest at Wenlock to Charles’s son-in-law John Milnes Gaskell†, was annoyed by his co-patron Lord Clive’s tardy announcement of a candidate for Montgomery Boroughs, and was sorry to see the Conservatives John Cotes† and William Ormsby Gore* contesting Shropshire North. He refused to endorse the Liberal Myddelton Biddulph or the Conservative Lloyd Kenyon* of Gredington for Denbighshire’s second seat and topped the poll there, supported by all except ‘a few who are either violent reformers or violent for the immediate abolition of slavery’. NLW ms 2797D, same to same, 15 Jan., 10 July, 7, 21 Nov.; Coedymaen mss 231, 234; bdle. 28, C.W. Williams Wynn to Phillimore, 28 Nov., Dec. 1832; Wynnstay mss L/889, 936-45, 957, 965-70, 975, 1040; Chester Chron. 17 Aug., 26 Oct., 28 Dec.; Salopian Jnl. 7 Nov. 5, 26 Dec. 1832. At subsequent elections he endorsed Conservative candidates. UCNW, Mostyn of Mostyn mss 7882; Caernarvon Herald, 3 Jan. 1835; F. Price Jones, ‘Politics in 19th Cent. Denb.’ Trans. Denb. Hist. Soc. x (1961), 183-90. Though in declining health, his death at Wynnstay in January 1840, a few days after presiding at the quarter sessions, was unexpected; his heir Sir Watkin (1820-85), the 6th baronet, was still a minor. Add. 40404, f. 62; Broughton, Recollections, v. 118; Chester Chron. 10 Jan. 1840. His will gave his medical attendants ‘full liberty to make any dissection and any preparation from my remains that they may wish’, and was proved under £80,000 (adjusted to £41,489 9s.), and administered by Charles, whose £500 annuity was continued for life. His request for a private family funeral was overruled to safeguard Wynnstay’s political interest at the ensuing by-election, when Denbighshire returned his Conservative nephew, Hugh Cholmondeley (1811-97), and his burial at Ruabon, 15 Jan. 1840, became a public pageant for the Wynnstay tenantry and inhabitants of the surrounding villages. PROB 11/1926/297; IR26/1566/220; Denb. RO DD/WY/6662; Chester Chron. 17 Jan.; The Times, 27 Jan. 1840; Ann. Reg. (1840), Chron. p. 149.