PRICE, Charles (c.1585-1645), of Pilleth, Rad.

A younger son of the junior branch of a family which dominated politics in early Stuart Radnorshire, Price, perhaps inspired by his father’s service in the Elizabethan wars, pursued a military career. CD 1628, iv. 42. Probably the man appointed muster-master for Shropshire by Lord President Gerard in 1617, Price sought payment of his arrears in 1619. HMC Westmorland, 367. In the same year, as ‘Captain’ Price, he acted as second for Robert Vaughan of Llwydiarth, Montgomeryshire, in a duel with Sir Edward Herbert*. The Life of Edward, Ld. Herbert of Cherbury ed. H. Walpole, 41-2. In 1624 Price was probably the ensign of the same name who served in the 3rd earl of Essex’s regiment in the Netherlands, as his will mentions a sword he had been given by Essex’s fellow colonel, the 17th earl of Oxford. PROB 11/196, f. 376.

The unfolding war on the Continent was probably important in persuading Price to seek election to Parliament towards the end of 1620. While his cousin James Price I* of Mynachdy was facing down a challenge for the county place, Charles appears to have experienced little difficulty in drawing on a long-established family network in securing his election for New Radnor, close to the ancestral home at Pilleth. He may have been assisted by William Herbert, 3rd earl of Pembroke, whom he served as deputy steward in the cantref (or lordship) of Maelienydd. The lordship included the constableship of Radnor Castle, so Price must have enjoyed considerable influence in the borough.

Parliamentary diarists and the clerk of the Commons often failed to distinguish Charles Price from his cousin James Price I; from William Price, Member for Glamorgan; or from Sir Richard Price of Cardiganshire. However, many of the speeches indiscriminately ascribed to a ‘Mr. Price’ in the records of the 1621 Parliament can be confidently attributed to the Radnor Boroughs Member, given that both James Price and Sir Richard Price had been silent in their five previous Parliaments, and that Charles Price went on play a prominent role in subsequent Parliaments. That said, it seems likely that the diarist Edward Nicholas was mistaken in attributing a speech of 25 May concerning the export of Welsh butter to this Member, as it seems more likely that the speaker was William Price, who sat for Glamorgan, a county in which dairy farming was an important industry. Nicholas, Procs. 1621, ii. 103; Cent. Kent. Stud., U269/1/OE126. It is not known which man delivered Sir William Aprice’s petition outlining the abuses of the warden of the Fleet on 17 Feb.; whoever it was, he spoke several times on the topic later in the Parliament. CJ, i. 526a, 622b; CD 1621, v. 510-11.

Charles Price made his first speech on 9 Feb. 1621, when he suggested that no Member should receive communion who had not taken the Oath of Allegiance. CJ, i. 514b. A week later, he crossed John Pym when the latter censured young Thomas Sheppard’s intemperate attack on the Sabbath bill, requesting moderation for those who erred in judgment. Ibid. 524a. On 1 May he called for the Catholic Edward Floyd, who had slighted Princess Elizabeth and her husband, the Elector Palatine, to be made to ride backwards on a horse while bearing on a paper the offensive words he had uttered; he also demanded that he be placed in the pillory and fined £200. Ibid. 601a; CD 1621, iii. 125. King James questioned the Commons’ assumption of jurisdiction in this case on the following morning, when Price admitted the House was ‘in a labyrinth’ over the issue. Contradicting his earlier calls for summary justice, he now concluded that here was ‘no way but the king’, and the final decision rested upon ‘his grace or power’. CJ, i. 604b. Finally, on 21 Mar. it was probably Charles Price who spoke during the debate on (Sir) Robert Lloyd’s* patent for engrossing wills and inventories. He supported the plea for clemency made by Sir William Herbert, but pedantically corrected the latter, who implied that Lloyd was sitting for Montgomeryshire whereas he actually sat for Minehead, in Somerset. CJ, i. 567a; R. Zaller, Parl. of 1621, pp. 66-7.

Price was returned again for New Radnor Boroughs in 1624, when he followed Pembroke in supporting the anti-Spanish policy promoted by Prince Charles and the duke of Buckingham. This became apparent in the subsidy debate of 19 Mar., when a vote was temporarily derailed by Sir John Savile’s call to know where the money would be spent. On the following morning Price joined in a concerted effort to secure a prompt vote, reminding Members of the undertaking of 4 June 1621 to assist the Palatine cause to the uttermost of their ‘persons and abilities’, and calling for a suitable response to the king’s call for six subsidies and 12 fifteenths. ‘Spring 1624’, p. 133; ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 96v; ‘Holland 1624’, i. f. 66; ‘Pym 1624’, f. 35. At the end of the session, Price was one of those who successfully intervened to urge Members to lay aside a proposal to cite the Crown’s Palatine Benevolence of 1622 as a grievance. ‘Spring 1624’, pp. 248-9.

One of the chief aims of Buckingham in this Parliament was to remove from office the hispanophiles at Court, most notably lord treasurer Middlesex (Sir Lionel Cranfield*). Among the more minor accusations against the treasurer was the charge that he had transferred £500 from the farmers of the petty customs to those of the great customs and then called in the petty farm accounts to cover his tracks. On 10 Apr., Price damningly observed that this showed that Middlesex was ‘not content to put out only the fire that might burn his fingers, but would have the smoke extinguished’. ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 140; Holles 1624, p. 75. Two days later, Price was nominated to the committee instructed to frame the grievances against Middlesex into formal charges. CJ, i. 764b. Another leading figure in Buckingham’s sights was lord keeper Williams, but in this case, charges of corruption proved impossible to substantiate, and on 7 May, after a report from the committee for the courts of justice, Price insisted that he saw neither ‘corruption, nor ill intention’ in Williams’ actions, although had he found any he ‘would be willing to make his countryman an example’. Rather, he saw the fault in the administration of Chancery, and called for the Commons to ‘limit that vast court’. Ibid. 700a, 785b; Holles 1624, p. 90; ‘Pym 1624’, f. 32v.

Price demonstrated an interest in legal issues on other occasions during the session. Named to a committee to consider a bill for preventing excess charges in bringing debt actions in London and Middlesex (22 Apr.), he was later nominated to another concerned with the speedier sealing of original writs (30 April). CJ, i. 772b, 695a. As a Welsh Member, he also attended a meeting of the committee to consider a decree in the Court of Requests about the estates of the Edwards family of Chirk, Denbighshire. C.R. Kyle, ‘Attendance Lists’, PPE 1604-48 ed. Kyle, 204. His other nominations included committees appointed to consider the abolition of trial by battle (22 Mar.), the naturalization of Philip Jacobson (15 Apr.) and the revival of a long-defunct coal duty at Newcastle (29 April). CJ, i. 746a, 767a, 694a.

Price also showed some interest in measures of concern to his constituents. He opposed the pretermitted customs on Welsh cloth, an important concern in Radnorshire, and on 13 Apr. called for a petition to be sent to the king on the issue, describing the duty as ‘a grievance to the whole kingdom’, and asking that it be ‘taken off’. ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 147v; ‘Pym 1624’, f. 63r-v. He was also named to the committee established to consider the repeal of the ‘Henry VIII’ clause in the 1536 Act of Union whereby the monarch was allowed to make law in Wales by Proclamation, and which had been the subject of concerted action by Welsh MPs. CJ, i. 730a; L. Bowen, Pols. of the Principality, 74-80. Along with 14 other Welsh MPs, Price signed a petition circulated during the session and directed to Prince Charles, which opposed the granting of a lease of the Welsh greenwax fines to (Sir) Richard Wynn*. NLW, 9059E/1217, 1228. On 27 Apr. it was Price, and not his brother the knight of the shire, who was called on to present the names of Radnorshire recusants holding local office; he averred that there were none. CJ, i. 776b. His other recorded speeches during this Parliament concerned the actions of the under-sheriff in the Cambridge election (16 Mar.), and patents condemned by the Commons. On 29 May he called for the latter to rest without any formal order against them, for he believed their censure meant ‘no man will dare to meddle or do anything in them’. Ibid. 687b; ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 239v.

The application of the 1624 subsidies to military preparations saw Price appointed captain of a company of Breconshire and Radnorshire men levied for service in Ireland. He conducted a total of 150 men to Bristol and thence to Waterford in February 1625. APC, 1623-5, pp. 441, 474; CSP Dom. 1623-4, pp. 478, 483. Price received nearly £500 for the upkeep of himself and his officers for the period 11 Apr.-28 Sept. 1625, but was elected (possibly in absentia) once more for New Radnor on 26 Apr. 1625, and attended the assembly at both Westminster and Oxford. AO1/291/1093. Price’s growing profile in Parliament after his contributions in 1624 saw him nominated to the committee for privileges at the opening of the session. CJ, i. 799b. His committee nominations reflected his continuing interest in legal matters, and included bills for the assignment of debts (23 June), petty larceny (25 June), the pleading of alienations (25 June), the granting of writs of habeas corpus (27 June) and the giving and receiving of bribes to secure judicial places (29 June). Procs. 1625, pp. 229, 245, 246, 253. His military post naturally disposed him to support continued funding for a war with Spain, and on 30 June, when the Commons resolved to vote two subsidies without fifteenths, he suggested that a grant of fifteenths should not be ruled out, a proposal which may have irritated the English Members in the House, as the Welsh shires were traditionally exempt from such payments. Ibid. 276. At the Oxford sitting on 10 Aug. Price supported a further vote of subsidies, which motion placed him firmly within the circle of Buckingham’s associates, who desired the fullest prosecution of the war. Ibid. 445.

In the aftermath of the 1625 Parliament Price presumably returned to Ireland, or became involved in the preparations for the Cadiz expedition, which sailed in October. After being re-elected for New Radnor in 1626, he was again nominated to the committee for privileges (9 February). Procs. 1626, ii. 7. During the session he found himself a Buckingham partisan in a House largely hostile to the duke. The latter’s failure, as lord admiral, to defend the coasts against Spanish privateers based at Dunkirk became the subject of complaint at the start of the session, but on 24 Feb. Price urged that this should not be allowed to distract from the key issue of an early grant of supply. Ibid. 120. Attacks on the duke initially focused on Buckingham’s seizure of a French ship, the St. Peter of Le Havre, which had provoked a trade embargo in France. On 23 Feb. it emerged that the duke had released the ship only to order a second detention on his own authority, whereupon Price urged that the privy councillors approach the king to speed the investigation of this potentially damning allegation, but the House rejected his plea. Ibid. 108. On 1 Mar. he attempted to spread the blame for the incident, pointing to the role of the French: ‘there is an enemy between us and the king of Spain and, if it be in the power of a third nation [France] to colour their goods, take heed lest we that way lose more by their friendship than by the other’s enmity’. Ibid. 170. Further investigation failed to confirm the duke’s culpability, and on 11 Mar., when it was debated whether to prosecute the matter any further, Price joined those who observed ‘that this is no grievance’, and called on Members to ‘fall to other businesses’. Ibid. 260.

The chief business the Crown had in mind was a large and swift grant of supply, and when the king sent a message to this effect on 20 Mar., Price urged that the discussion of grievances be laid aside: ‘let us like good merchants throw somewhat overboard to preserve our lives’. Ibid. 322. The investigation of Buckingham continued regardless, and on 4 Apr. the House discussed a draft Remonstrance in which the Commons justified its proceedings against the duke. In a rather pedantic intervention, Price asked that a passage thanking the king for describing Parliament as a ‘council’ - implying a legal right to free speech - might be omitted, which was so ordered. Ibid. 428. When formal charges were laid against Buckingham, Clement Coke* blurted out that it was ‘better to die by an enemy than to suffer at home’. Most Members were prepared to treat these words as a youthful indiscretion, but during a debate of 15 Mar. Price argued that Coke should apologize for any offence given and throw himself upon the king’s mercy. With a poor sense of timing, he insisted ‘they do ill that poison the king’s ear’, an argument which could as easily be deployed against the duke as Coke. Ibid. 282, 289, 292.

Given his support for Buckingham, it is hardly surprising that Price played no role in the formulation or promotion of the Commons’ impeachment charges against him, the business which dominated the latter part of the session. He was, however, active in other areas: he may have been the ‘Mr. Price’ who sued for parliamentary privilege to stay a lawsuit on 2 Mar., and was named to the committee for the bill regulating the export of Welsh butter (6 March). As a military man, he was appointed to the committee for considering abuses in the pressing of soldiers (9 May). Ibid. 175, 201; iii. 200.

Following the dissolution, on 22 Oct. 1626, the Privy Council ordered that Charles Price and ‘John Price, esq.’ - perhaps the son of James Price I* - be apprehended. The reason this warrant was issued is unclear, but it probably resulted from the mutiny of Charles Price’s company at Knockfergus (Carrickfergus) a week earlier, something which caused lord deputy Falkland (Sir Henry Carey I*) to complain that too many captains were not attending their men in Ireland. CSP Ire. 1625-32, p. 163. Price was not, as is often supposed, the ‘Captain Price’ who conducted 250 soldiers from Newcastle to augment Sir Charles Morgan’s forces near Bremen, since the individual concerned was actually Herbert Price. It seems more likely that Price himself was involved in Buckingham’s preparations for the assault on La Rochelle. APC, 1627, p. 421; SP16/73/44. Cf. DWB.

By the time he was returned to Parliament again in 1628, Price was a veteran Member. As in 1624 and 1626, he was nominated to the privileges committee (21 March). He remained a strong supporter of taxation for the war effort: on 4 Apr. he urged a grant of five subsidies and three fifteenths, the largest vote suggested by any speaker that day. A garbled account of his speech referred to the taxpayers of Wales, possibly with respect to their exemption from fifteenths. CD1628, ii. 29, 318; Procs. 1628, vi. 62. The passage of the subsidy bill was subsequently protracted pending satisfaction over the liberties of the subject. On 31 May the wording of the preamble was debated, whereupon the precedence of the university towns was discussed. Though acknowledging that he ‘was never of any university’, Price supported the claims of Oxford, the preferred destination of many Welsh students. He also alluded to the antiquity of Wales, which he declared to be ‘before England’, which suggests both a patriotic streak and a degree of learning. CD 1628, iv. 74. He was certainly conversant with Welsh history: on 1 Apr., when Sir Henry Whithed cited Henry III’s incarceration of Dafydd ap Llywelyn of Gwynedd as an instance of arbitrary imprisonment, Price observed that at the time mentioned the Welsh were not formally subject to the kings of England and that therefore the case was not relevant. Ibid. ii. 241.

Price also showed an interest in the debate over the exclusion of the four English border shires from the jurisdiction of the Council in the Marches of Wales, which was discussed on 19 May. The report of his speech is somewhat unclear, but he evidently hoped that the Council would ultimately be abolished altogether. Ibid. iii. 474. He returned to this theme in May 1641, when he was said to have provided financial assistance to the parliamentary campaign against the Council. HEHL, EL7537. The interests of the Radnorshire cloth and wool trade presumably explains Price’s appointment to the committee for the bill for abuses in winding wool, while his military service explains his nomination to the committee for the bill to regulate the lieutenancy and the impressment of soldiers (24 March). CD 1628, ii. 78; iii. 44.

As a Buckingham adherent, Price once again played little part in the debates over liberties of the subject which dominated the first two months of the 1628 session. On 11 May he spoke up in the case of Sir William Welby, a Lincolnshire deputy lieutenant who had imprisoned refusers of the Forced Loan, noting that Welby must have believed himself to have been acting lawfully, because he offered to bind the refusers over to appear at the assizes. Ibid. iii. 360. Two days later, when the deputy lieutenants of Cornwall were sent to the Tower for misconduct in attempting to frustrate the return of two of the earl of Pembroke’s nominees at the shire election, Price seems to have seconded Secretary Sir John Coke’s unsuccessful efforts to avert further punishment. When the Lords’ proposed amendments to the Petition of Right were debated later the same day, the privy councillor Sir Humphrey May attempted to justify the peers’ assertion that the Forced Loan had been demanded upon ‘pressing conditions of state’. Price, insisting ‘I care not whether the words be in or not’, suggested that the Lords had altered the text ‘for their own advantage’, to justify their role in the drafting process, an intervention which naturally upset some lawyers; the phrase was eventually dropped. Ibid. 394, 396.

Like many of the duke’s supporters, Price was spurred into action when the Commons began to turn against Buckingham. In the debate of 3 June, after the king’s first answer to the Petition of Right, which created uproar in the House, Price noted that the Parliament had proceeded thus far in a temperate fashion and needed to continue in a ‘moderate and humble way ... to declare the case we stand in’, and to ‘decline all personal things’ - a warning that Members should refrain from attacking Buckingham. Ibid. iv. 74. On 5 June, as the momentum for an attack on the favourite increased, Price warned the Commons to be careful how it proceeded, employing the rather feeble argument that however ‘unfortunate’ recent actions had been, the duke’s prowess was ‘famous in other parts of the world’. Ibid. 160. In the debates of 11 June on a Remonstrance against Buckingham, Price leaped to the defence of the duke after Edward Bysshe compared Buckingham to the unnamed rich man [‘Dives’] in the parable of dives and Lazarus in St. Luke’s gospel. By making this contrast Bysshe was evidently seeking to imply that the duke, like the rich man, was destined for damnation, but Price denied the comparison by repeating the popular, but unscriptural belief, that the rich man was not anonymous at all, but was named Dives. The exchange between Price and Bysshe later ended up in a squib on the Parliament. Ibid. 268; Procs. 1628, vi. 245. That same day witnessed Price’s most robust defence of Buckingham. The Commons, he argued, should not ‘heap up all these things and grievances and leap upon him [Buckingham] presently without any other preparation or proof’. He recalled Sir Henry Marten’s vigorous opposition to the naming of the duke on 7 June as well as the king’s warning not to attack his favourite. Price continued, ‘I cannot with my conscience and by an implicit faith condemn a man I know not guilty. And I shall clear him to see the contrary’. CD 1628, iv. 277. However, a majority of Price’s colleagues remained determined to pursue Buckingham, and framed a Remonstrance against him. When this document was debated on 14 June, Price maintained that its text differed from the one previously discussed in committee, and consequently declared that it would be ‘against order’ to consider it. Ibid. 320. However, he was ignored, and three days later the Remonstrance was presented to the king.

After the prorogation Price assisted Buckingham’s preparations for another expedition against the French. Indeed, he was at Portsmouth in August, when John Felton assassinated the duke, and it was he who first informed the king, then at prayer, of his favourite’s demise. J. Howell, Epistolae Ho-elianae (1650), pt. 2, p. 142. It is not known if Price joined the expedition which failed to relieve the garrison of La Rochelle in the autumn. With his patron dead, Price was comparatively inactive in the brief parliamentary session of 1629. On 21 Jan. he seconded Sir Dudley Digges’ advice to be cautious over the appointment of a committee to investigate alleged violations of the Petition of Right, warning that this would ‘subtract a Parliament out of a Parliament’. CD 1629, p. 59. In the case of Sheriff William Acton, who had prevaricated before a Commons’ committee of inquiry about his role in the seizure of John Rolle’s* goods by customs officials, Price moved that Acton be sent to the Tower, but shown mercy if he co-operated. Ibid. 189. He also drew attention to the falling attendance of the House on 11 Feb., with a procedural motion barring Members from taking leave of absence without permission; his suggestion was adopted, and Sir Edward Coke was specifically asked to explain his absence. Ibid. 190; CJ, i. 929a.

Price’s final speech of the session, on 23 Feb., came during a further debate about Rolle’s case. When Secretary Coke revealed that the king took personal responsibility for the actions of the customs officials, Sir Robert Phelips moved for a cessation of all other business until this violation of parliamentary privilege was resolved, while John Glanville suggested that the House adjourn for two days. Price was dismayed by the suggestion that the House should adjourn, and protested that the question in hand would not brook such a delay, for ‘not only the privilege of the House is in question, but ... the fate of the kingdom is also in the balance. We have good officers and humble to His Majesty, and a gracious king to his people, but [it is] as if we were charmed, we understand not one another’. Secretary Coke, doubtless stunned to find Price apparently lining up with the king’s critics, challenged Price to explain his comment on the perilous state of the kingdom, to which he responded: ‘we sit here as the body and the king is our head ... if any blow be given to the body the head will feel it, and if there be any violation of the privileges of the House it will concern the whole kingdom’. CD 1629, pp. 169, 238. As it is unlikely that he intended to undermine the Crown’s position, Price may have been trying to persuade the Commons to make the first move in seeking an accommodation with the Crown - a point made by Sir Humphrey May at the end of the debate. However, no compromise could be reached, and Sir John Eliot’s demonstration on 2 Mar. destroyed the session.

After the dissolution, Price accompanied his countryman (Sir) Lewis Morgan*, Sir Charles Morgan’s son-in-law, to The Hague, perhaps to join the campaigning efforts in the Low Countries. APC, 1628-9, p. 409. He had returned to England by March 1631, when he petitioned the Irish committee of the English Privy Council for payment of arrears of £1,400 due to him for his earlier service in Ireland; he agreed to take satisfaction from monies concealed by a tax collector in county Limerick, which was granted. CSP Ire. 1625-32, p. 601. By October 1632 he was in Ireland again, albeit preparing for a return to London to visit lord keeper Sir Thomas Coventry*. Ibid. 674. Not long afterwards he vigorously prosecuted the Crown’s interests in Radnorshire over the re-granting of the lordship of Maelienydd. In 1631 the king had leased this lordship and some other manors to a consortium, which had in turn passed its interest to Sir William Whitmore* and his brother. In 1633 a composition was agreed whereby the tenants would repurchase the lordship, return it to the king and have their privileges and liberties confirmed. Price’s heavy-handed organization of this composition, carried out in concert with his brother-in-law, Richard Jones*, was described in a revealing letter by Hugh Lloyd of Caerfagu, who noted their appointment of assessors and collectors, and the arbitrary rating of each parish, in a manner which foreshadowed Ship Money. If men refused to pay they were to be sent to London to answer for it and lose their common rights. Price and his assistants were described as ‘potent men’, and their oppressive tactics bore fruit, as £741 was raised and the lordship returned to royal hands with letters patent confirming the tenants’ rights issued on 8 Aug. 1633. HMC Var. viii. 34-5; J. Williams, Hist. Rad. 91-3; NLW, Harpton Ct. 1714-15.

In the same year, lord deputy Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth*) awarded Price a fresh commission in the Irish army, citing the necessity ‘for a better discipline of the companies there’. CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 113-14. Price quickly became a trusted associate, spending most of his time in Dublin and with his own garrison in Limerick. He was elected to the Irish Parliament of 1634-5 for the borough of Belfast, almost certainly through Wentworth’s patronage, and later recalled the opposition which recusants had voiced there ‘against our best laws’. H.F. Kearney, Strafford in Ire. 250; SCL, Strafford Pprs. 16/8. Between 1635 and 1637 Price shuttled between Dublin, Radnorshire and London, keeping Wentworth closely informed about Court manoeuvring and foreign affairs. Strafforde Letters (1739) ed. W. Knowler, i. 466, 494; SCL, Strafford Pprs. 15/285, 16/5, 8, 17/31. Lord keeper Coventry informed Wentworth in December 1635, possibly in relation to his dispute with Mountnorris (Sir Francis Annesley*), that ‘your servant Captain Price is now with us, and I assure you is not silent in any thing that concerns your honour, and in truth serves you freely with his tongue and protests he will not fail to do it with his sword’. Strafforde Letters, i. 503, 517; ii. 78; SCL, Strafford Pprs. 15/285. Price later made Coventry an overseer of his will, bequeathing him an emerald, three ‘sergeant’s rings’, a pistol and a sword inlaid with gold and silver, along with £5 for his wife to make a ring ‘for his sake that did honour her and her family’. Ibid. 466; PROB 11/196, f. 375; CSP Dom. 1637, p. 391; 1637-8, pp. 440-1. During these years Price was involved in a complex lawsuit over the Mynachdy estates in Radnorshire, protesting to the king that his position as a captain in Ireland meant he was ‘disabled to undertake a suit in ordinary course of law’. SP16/408/79; JAMES PRICE I*. A later lawsuit claimed that Price had unlawfully entered the Mynachdy estates and had, through ‘threats and terror’, compelled the tenants to pay him their rents for several years before the outbreak of the Civil War. E112/278/39.

Price was in England again in December 1638, when Wentworth wrote to him bewailing the Scottish troubles. SCL, Strafford Pprs. 15/285; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 152. He was apparently not the ‘Captain Price’ who was involved in the first skirmish of the Bishops’ Wars, as he was reportedly involved in conveying ammunition to Ireland in May 1639. CSP Dom. 1639, p. 274. Cf. M.C. Fissel, The Bishops’ Wars, 25. He apparently joined the forces in the north later on, however, as his will of September 1640 expressed the hope that God would ‘preserve me from the fury of war’. PROB 11/196, f. 375v. He was returned for Radnorshire to the Parliaments elected in 1640, in both of which he continued to back royal demands for supply. Unsurprisingly, he was one of the ‘Straffordians’ who opposed the attainder of Wentworth, now earl of Strafford, in May 1641. He was also a staunch supporter of episcopacy and a moderate Church of England, opposing the doctrines of the puritans in Wales. L. Bowen, ‘Wales and Religious Reform in the Long Parl.’, Trans. Hon. Soc. Cymmrodorion, n.s., xii. 52, 54-5.

Price was appointed custos of the Radnorshire bench in 1641, a reflection of his standing in local society. He became the first Welsh Member to be disabled from sitting in the Long Parliament on 4 Oct. 1642, having reportedly executed the commission of array in Radnorshire. CJ, ii. 793a. Captured and imprisoned shortly afterwards, being referred to by the 1st earl of Stamford as ‘the great prince of Radnorshire’, he was soon released and subsequently sat in the Oxford Parliament. LJ, v. 425b-26a, 448a; HMC Portland, i. 67; Historical Collections ed. J. Rushworth, v. 574. Price was killed in an affray with Capt. Robert Sandys at Presteigne on 17 Jan. 1645; the quarrel was caused, according to a report in the parliamentary press, by his complaint that ‘papists were received into greatest favour, and Protestants shut out of office’. Dugdale, 77; The Weekly Acct. (29 Jan.-5 Feb. 1645); E112/278/39; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 449. Claims that he was the ‘Major Price’ slain outside Bristol in Sept. 1645 are incorrect: Parker, Rad. 70.

In his will of 3 Sept. 1640, Price left his Welsh estates and 1,000 acres in Ireland granted to him by Strafford to his nephew James Price of Pilleth, a minor and son of James Price II*. Price endowed two annual sermons at Pilleth chapel, and ordered that a ‘decent monument’ be built there for his parents. He also left bequests to the poor of five Radnorshire parishes. His executors were his brother, James Price II*, the latter’s daughter-in-law Margaret Price, and his own brother-in-law Richard Jones. PROB 11/196, ff. 374v-6v. The will was proved in June 1646, and the following month Margaret sought to compound for his delinquency. The composition revealed that Charles Price had had considerable sums out on loan to borrowers who included Sir Robert Harley* (£1,000), one of his opponents in the struggle for control of Mynachdy, the Loftus family of Ireland (£2,200) and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper† (£500), who had married Coventry’s daughter. CCAM, 841; CCC, 1387. In April 1652 Price’s executors claimed that the fine for Price’s delinquency had been paid, but that Sir Adam Loftus had refused to discharge his debt. His great-nephew, Griffith Jones, sat for New Radnor in the first Exclusion Parliament.