John Trevor MP (1596 - 1673)

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Biography

• John was born in 1596, the eldest son of Sir John Trevor, of Oatlands, Canon Row and Plas Teg, and Margaret, daughter of Sir Hugh Trevanion of Caerhayes, Cornwall.
• He was a Welsh politician and government official. He was educated at Queen's College, Cambridge in 1612 and entered parliament in 1621 as member for Denbighshire.
• He was responsible for the building of Plas Teg, considered to be one of the finest examples of Jacobean architecture in Wales, and the finest in North Wales
• On 3 Feb 1619 he married Anne, the daughter and co-heir of Edmund Hampden of Hartwell, Buckinghamshire. He sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1621 and 1672. Sir John Trevor died on 17 Jul 1673.[1]

His grandfather had been a servant of the Sackville family.

He was the eldest son of Sir John TREVOR, I (1563-1630), a Welshman who was Surveyor of the Queen's Ships under Elizabeth I.

Although his father held a substantial Flintshire estate, the family spent most of their time at their town house in & around London, England.

Sir John TREVOR (1596–1673) was a Puritan Welsh landowner & politician.

1617-1637 He was auditor for the duchy of Lancaster, south parts.

1619/07/07 He became a Knight of Trevellian.

1624-1625 He was elected MP for Flintshire in the Parliament & left very little trace on the session. With the plague raging in London, he & his father absented themselves until the Parliament adjourned to Oxford.

He subsequently sat for boroughs under Howard or Pembroke control.

1628 He was a member of the Committee for Privileges & promotion of a Welsh measure, where he made little mark.

1628-1629 He was elected MP for Great Bedwyn & sat until King Charles decided to rule without parliament for 11 years.

During the Personal Rule of Charles I, he was a member of several Royal Commissions & amassed a substantial income. He was high in court favour & held the keepership of several Royal forests, being at one period Surveyor of Windsor Great Park.

1630 From his father he inherited the Plas Têg country house in north Wales & a share in the duties levied on coal from Newcastle, said to bring in £1,500 a year.

1630s He played little part in public life.

1638 He inherited Trevalyn Hall on the death of his uncle Sir Richard TREVOR, who was one of the greatest landowners in the eastern half of Denbighshire.

1640/11 He was elected MP for Grampound in the Long Parliament, having connections with CORNWALL through his mother, a Trevanion.

1642–1651 During the English Civil War he supported the Parliamentarian cause, although this meant he lost control of his Welsh estates to the royalists for 4 years.

He was sufficiently supportive of the trial of the King to survive Pride's Purge & sit in the Rump. After the overthrow of the Monarchy, he was accepted as the spokesman for North Wales in many of the administrative committees that took over the country.

He was on local committees like these for militia & taxation in ...

1644-1660 Middlesex

1645-1660 Westminster

1647-1660 Denbighshire

1648-1660 Flintshire.

Against some opposition, he retained his farm of the coal tax & was believed to be one of the beneficiaries of the confiscated Raglan estate.

His joint purchase from that of the 7th Earl of Derby of the manors of Hope, Mold & Hawarden (1646/12/12 ) was nullified by the conveyance made by the 8th Earl, after his father's execution, to John Glynne & the post-Restoration judical verdict that Hope was inalienable.

From 1648/06/02 he served on the Committee of Both Kingdoms.

1649\50/02/22 He was on the Commission for the Propagation of the Gospel in Wales.

1651 From February to December he was on the Commonwealth Council of State.

1652/11 He was again on the Commonwealth Council of State.

1653/04/20 His second term ended abruptly by the ejection of the Rump when CROMWELL assumed the Protectorate,

1656 He sat in CROMWELL's second Parliament. supported the offer of the crown to him.

1656 He was elected MP for Arundel in the Second Protectorate Parliament & was one of those advocating the offer of the Crown to CROMWELL (to whom he was related by his son's marriage to John HAMPDEN daughter, Ruth).

1659 He was elected MP for Steyning in the Third Protectorate Parliament.

1659 Although he resumed his seat at Grampound in the restored Rump after Richard CROMWELL's fall, he was an early supporter of the Restoration of Charles II, which ensured that he suffered no penalties for his earlier political loyalties after the King returned.

1660/07/24 He was granted a royal pardon even though he had taken no part in the Restoration. However, he had invested much of his fortune during the Commonwealth in buying up lands confiscated from convicted Royalists & suffered considerable loss as a result.

1660 At Christmas the 1639 contract expired & he lost his share in the coal farm.

He lived mainly in London, England.

1661 His Plas Têg country house was refuge for his pensioner, the deprived Puritan minister of Denbigh, William JONES (d=1679).

1672/09/02 Under the Indulgence of 1672, he licensed his Plas Têg country house for a conventicle, while Trevalun Hall was occupied by successive estate agents till 1835.

His eldest son, also called Sir John TREVOR (1626–1672), was an MP with his father during the Commonwealth & after the Restoration rose to become Secretary of State in 1668, dying in office.

1673/07/17 Upon his death, his grandson John inherited the family estates.

On 7 Jun 1619 he was knighted at Windsor, England.

Sources

1. History of Parliament Online 1604-1629 by Simon Healy.

• NEHGS NEXUS: New England Across the United States, 1996, Vol. 13, p. 207, New England Historic Genealogical Society (Online Database).

• Wikipedia free encyclopedia online for John TREVOR (1596–1673).

• National Library of Wales for John TREVOR

• Dodd, A. H., (1959). TREVOR family, of Trevalun, Denbighshire, Plas Têg, Flintshire, and Glynde Sussex. Dictionary of Welsh Biography. Retrieved 14 Nov 2019, from https://biography.wales/article/s-TREV-TRE-1500

• 1762 Parliamentary History, xxi, 16.

• 1808 Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803 by Thomas Hansard.

• ‎1847 History & Antiquities of the County of Buckingham for Sir John TREVOR, Knight of Trevellian; Master of the Rolls & Speaker of the House of Commons 1659; ob. 17 July 1673 m=Anne (eldest daughter of Edmund HAMPDEN).

• 1930 Concise Dictionary of National Biography.

• 1954 "Members of the Long Parliament" by D. Brunton & D. H. Penningto & published by George Allen & Unwin.

• Visitation of the County of Cornwall in 1620: Trevanion Page 240

Venn Cambridge Alumni: John Trevor 1.* Oxford Dictionary of National Biography - Trevor, Sir John.

2. John Trevor (1626–1672) - Wikipedia