Member for Flintshire. Junior Secretary of State to Charles II. Ambassador to France.

From Wikipedia

Sir John Trevor (1624 – 28 May 1672) was a Welsh politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1646 and 1672.

Trevor was a son of Sir John Trevor (d. 1673) of Trevalyn Hall, Denbighshire.[1] His father was a member of parliament under James I and Charles I, and sat also in the parliaments of Oliver and of Richard Cromwell, and was a member of the council of state during the Commonwealth.

In 1646, Trevor was elected Member of Parliament for Flintshire in the Long Parliament and sat until the Barebones Parliament of 1653. Thereafter he was re-elected MP for Flintshire in 1654 for the First Protectorate Parliament, in 1656 for the Second Protectorate Parliament and in 1659 for the Third Protectorate Parliament.[2]

After filling several public positions under the Commonwealth and Protectorate he was a member of the council of state appointed in February 1660 and under Charles II, he rose to a high position. Having purchased the office of (junior) secretary of state he was knighted and entered upon its duties towards the end of 1668, just after he had helped to arrange an important treaty between England and France.

Trevor predeceased his father by a year, dying on 28 May 1672.

Trevor married Ruth Hampden, daughter of John Hampden. One of Trevor's uncles was Sir Sackville Trevor (d. 1633), a naval officer, who was knighted in 1604; and another was Sir Thomas Trevor (1586–1656), the judge who decided in favor of the Crown in the famous case about the legality of ship-money, and was afterwards impeached and fined.


From ODNB

Trevor, Sir John (bap. 1624, d. 1672), politician and government official, was baptized on 23 August 1624 at St Margaret's, Westminster, the second but eldest surviving son of Sir John Trevor (1596–1673), politician, and Anne, the daughter of Sir Edmund Hampden. Sir John Trevor senior was the eldest son of John Trevor of Trefalun (1563–1630), navy official and politician, and Margaret, the daughter of Hugh Trevanion of Trevannion, Cornwall, and from his father inherited Plas Teg, Flintshire. He married Anne Hampden in 1619.

Trevor senior was knighted at Windsor on 7 June 1619 and sat as a member of parliament for Denbighshire in 1621 and Flintshire in the following parliaments. He then moved to Great Bedwyn in 1628 and Grampound in the Long Parliament. He initially made little mark in the parliaments, and was later named as one of those who had offered bribes to the lord chancellor in the parliament of 1621. A moderate presbyterian, he managed to gain the favour of the court and acquired the keepership of several royal forests and his father's farm of the coal tax, as well as the inheritance of Trefalun in 1638 from his uncle Sir Richard Trevor. He was involved in a number of royal commissions during the 1630s and was a member of the Long Parliament, being noted there as a spokesman for north Welsh affairs. He sat on the committee of both kingdoms from 2 June 1648 and the commission for the propagation of the gospel in Wales in 1650, as well as the republican council of state in 1651 and 1652–3. In addition he sat on local committees for militia and taxation in Middlesex, Westminster, Denbighshire, and Flint. Trevor sat in Cromwell's second parliament of 1656 and supported the offer of the crown to the lord protector. Trevor was a rising man in the 1650s, sensible enough not to be a regicide, and making the most of the financial opportunities of the period, including the purchase of royalists' and recusants' estates. He took no part in the Restoration, but was given a royal pardon on 24 July 1660 and subsequently lived in London, his estate at Plas Teg in Wales being given as a refuge to William Jones, a deprived churchman, as his pensioner. He may have married Margaret Griffith in 1672. He died in 1673 bequeathing some of his property to the establishment of two houses for poor men in Wales.

Sir John Trevor the younger was educated at Leiden in 1643 and entered parliament as a recruiter member for Flintshire on 2 December 1646. He faltered at the possibility of regicide however and was excluded, or retired, in 1648. About 1649 he married his cousin Ruth (1628–1687), fourth daughter of John Hampden, the puritan politician, and the couple had five sons and one daughter. Ruth remained a presbyterian following the Restoration and attended Thomas Manton's church in London. Trevor returned to public life in the Cromwellian parliaments of the 1650s. He also sat on several county committees from 1657. His politics in the 1650s were clearly moderate, based on ideas of legality and a dislike of innovations. He supported the offer of the crown to Cromwell, and welcomed the constitution of 1656, hoping for the peace of the people as the main basis for the legal settling of the nation. He was a supporter of Richard Cromwell, and on the latter's removal backed George Monck, sitting on the council of state in February 1660. He was rejected by Flintshire in the Convention of 1660 and instead sat for Arundel. In a pamphlet of 1660 Trevor further outlined his political views in that he was against the Rump and called for a broader based settlement than the Rump could ever provide. Significantly he also claimed that absolute uniformity of religion was not essential to any monarchy. With this Trevor made a successful transition into the Restoration.

Trevor was MP for Great Bedwyn from 18 February 1663 to his death in 1672 and was an advocate of leniency in the indemnity debates. He was named to the committee for restoring the dukedom of Norfolk to the Howard family and was concerned to make good relations with the royal regime. Chosen for a diplomatic mission to France in 1663, he had already become attached to the party of Sir Henry Bennet, the future earl of Arlington. The fall of Lord Chancellor Clarendon in 1667 opened up new opportunities to Trevor. With a continued credit among the dissenters and at court because of his attacks on Clarendon he was thought to be useful for a regime planning religious indulgence as part of its policy. Trevor was knighted in 1668 and sent on another mission to France. There he did not behave himself altogether well according to Charles II, who was ‘troubled that Trevor carried himself so like an ass’ to Henriette-Anne, the king's sister. Charles claimed that he had ‘sent him a chiding for it’ and put it down to his ‘want of good breeding’ (Bryant, 1963, 216). None the less with the retirement of William Morice on 29 September 1668 Trevor was allowed to purchase the junior secretary of state's place for the sum of £8000. Although initially the patent included the usual clause of giving the recipient £100 for life, this was changed—either because of jealousy from other courtiers or through retrenchment—to £100 during pleasure only and such was the limitation on Trevor's power that he did not challenge it.

Indeed, despite his post, Trevor was without any real influence or authority in the regime; it was Arlington, the senior secretary of state, who held the reins of power at this time. Trevor wavered between the clashing forces of Arlington and the duke of Buckingham in this period and some considered him as Buckingham's man as he secured the election of Buckingham as chancellor of the University of Cambridge in May 1671. He continued to support the relief of dissenters, speaking against the continuation of the Conventicles Act in November 1669, was unhappy at having to enforce it, and according to Joseph Williamson in 1671 ‘Secretary Trevor [was] theirs’, that is, wholly in with the dissenters (CSP dom., 1671, 569). He naturally supported the declaration of indulgence of 15 March 1672 and had some share in its administration. Trevor died suddenly of apoplexy and fever on 28 May 1672, allegedly brought on by drinking cold wine with ice when he was very hot. He was buried on 31 May at St Bartholomew-the-Less, Smithfield, in London. His wife died on 1 December 1687, and his second son, Thomas Trevor, was created Baron Trevor of Bromham.

Alan Marshall



From http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1660-1690/member/trevor-john-1624-72

Family and Education bap. 23 Aug. 1624, 1st s. of Sir John Trevor (d.1673) of Plas Teg and Trevalun, Denb. by Anne, da. of Edmund Hampden of Wendover, Bucks. educ. Leyden 1643. m. his cos. Ruth, da. of John Hampden of Great Hampden, Bucks., 5s. 3da. Kntd. by 6 Feb. 1668.2

Offices Held

Commr. for assessment, Denb. and Fints. 1647-8, Flints. 1657, Denb. and Flints. Aug. 1660-1, 1663-9, Mdx. and Westminster 1663-9, duchy of Lancaster 1663-4, North Wales assoc. 1648, militia, Denb. and Flints. 1648, Westminster and North Wales Mar. 1660.

Commr. for trade 1655-7, 1668-d., forest appeals 1657; keeper of briefs, common bench 1659-May 1660; Councillor of State 25 Feb.-1 May 1660; envoy extraordinary to France 1663, 1668; PC 29 Sept. 1668-d.; sec. of state (north) 1668-d.; commr. for inquiry into land settlement [I] 1671, prize appeals 1672.3

Biography The Trevors of Trevalun were a cadet branch of the Brynkinallt family, founded about 1500. Trevor’s four immediate ancestors married Englishwomen, as he was to do himself, and the first of the family to enter Parliament did so as Member for Bletchingley in 1597 on the Howard interest, with which they continued to be associated. Trevor’s father was a lavishly rewarded courtier before the Civil War, but became a Presbyterian and, after a period of abstention, an active Rumper. Making the best of both worlds, he retained his farm of the coal tax while adding to his Flintshire estates at the expense of the royalist Earl of Derby; though he lived till 1673, he took no part in public life after the Restoration. Trevor, a degree less pliant than his father, did not sit after Pride’s Purge, but became a warm partisan of the Protectorate, voting in favour of offering the crown to Cromwell, to whom he was related through his wife. When the secluded Members returned, he was appointed to the Council of State, and prepared to contest Flintshire again at the general election. But even before the sheriff’s death suspended proceedings, it was clear from the opposition of many old friends that neither Trevor nor his father could be elected, and he took refuge in Arundel, as his father had done in 1656. He was returned, no doubt on the Howard interest, at one of the earliest by-elections for the Convention, and no member of the Trevalun family sat for a Welsh constituency again. Trevor was a moderately active Member, with 21 committees and 17 recorded speeches. Two days after his election he was named to the joint committee preparing instructions for the messengers to the King, and on 10 May he was one of eight Members ordered to prepare directions for the army, navy and revenue commissioners. He was appointed to the joint committee to organize the reception of the King and took part in the examination of Secretary Thurloe.

He was prominent on the side of leniency in the indemnity debates. On 30 June he spoke against requiring the expensive formality of suing out a pardon under the great seal, such as his father had to obtain, and he urged that the regicides should be given another chance to surrender themselves. Catholic influence was strong in his constituency, and he spoke against enforcing the oaths on Papists under the bill. On 30 July he was appointed to the committee for the estate bill of Sir George Booth, and spoke in favour of giving him £10,000 as a reward. He was named to the committee on the bill for settling ecclesiastical livings, having asked the House to mix prudence with justice, and restore those that are truly deserving, but yet to consider those that are in who are deserving; and mov ed against the patrons pro hac vice. He spoke against the bill for an inquiry into embezzlement during the Interregnum, which might have affected his father, and acted as teller against the second reading.

He told the House that he could not see how they could agree with the Lords to except Lambert, Vane, Hesilrige and Axtell from the indemnity bill, and was added to the committee to draw up reasons for a conference, from which he reported on 24 Aug. He proposed that such of the King’s judges as were excepted against might be banished, never to return. If that was not yielded to, then to refer them to another Act for life, but spare them in this.

A week later he helped to manage a conference on the recess, but before Parliament adjourned he took the chair in the committee for draining the fens. On 21 Nov. he spoke in favour of excise, though nothing but the abolition of the court of wards would have moved him to it. He was appointed to the committee for restoring the dukedom of Norfolk to the Howard family, who had now recovered control of Arundel, and defended the bill in the House on 3 Dec., though the present head of the family was a hopeless lunatic, permanently resident abroad, and his heir a Papist. Four days later, he spoke against ‘too great a retrospect’ in the attainder bill, which would punish ‘innocent people, and not those who had offended’. But in the closing weeks of the Convention he was more concerned to improve his relations with the Royalists. He reversed his attitude on giving the corporation of London power to recover their expenses on the return of the King, and moved for a grant of £1,000 to Jane Lane, the heroine of Charles’s escape in 1651.4

Trevor put up a good fight to retain his seat at the general election, finishing only 15 votes behind Francis Aungier. His defeat encouraged Lord Derby to promote a private bill for the recovery of his Flintshire estates, which fell a victim to the royal veto. When Trevor returned to the House in 1663 it was again as Member for a constituency previously represented by his father, though as long ago as 1628. This family connexion with Great Bedwyn may have been less important than the friendship which Trevor had established at the outset of his parliamentary career with Sir Ralph Verney, who had contested the borough in 1660, and could command the Danvers interest through his friend Lady Rochester. Before taking his seat he was sent to France on a diplomatic mission arising out of the brawl between the French and Spanish ambassadors in the streets of London. He was described to the French secretary of state as brought up in the school of Cromwell, and had probably already attached himself to the rising star of Sir Henry Bennet, whose hostility to the Church he shared, though from a different angle. Trevor was moderately active during his eight sessions in the Cavalier Parliament, being appointed to 55 committees and making 30 recorded speeches. On 13 May 1664 he was added to the managers of the conference on the conventicles bill, and he felt sufficiently confident of his good standing at Court to re-open the question of Lord Derby’s estates, which had now been recovered by due process of law. Listed as a court dependant he took a leading part in the supply debate of 24 Nov. in supporting the grant of the whole £2,500,000 required by the Court, though with his Leyden education and his youngest brother a merchant at Dordrecht he can hardly have supported the Dutch war with much conviction. He was appointed to the committees for the preservation of prize goods in 1665 and for the impeachment of Lord Mordaunt in 1666.5

Trevor came into new prominence at the fall of Clarendon. He helped to draw up the address at the opening of Parliament on 10 Oct. 1667, and wished to thank the King for dismissing the lord chancellor. He was appointed to the committee for taking public accounts and considering restraints on juries. Impatient of legal niceties in prosecuting the impeachment of the fallen minister, he was appointed to the committee to draw up the heads of the charges, and acted as one of five managers of a conference on his letter. On 5 Dec. he advised the House to ‘consider whether the matter between you and the Lords is not well as it is. ... The world expects now what you will do, and that must be by concurring with the Lords’. He took part in another conference on the same subject, spoke in favour of inflicting the penalties of banishment and disablement from public life, acted as teller for the second reading of the bill to that effect, was appointed to the committee, and again acted as teller for the amendments on the third reading.6

During the next parliamentary session Trevor was again absent on a diplomatic mission to France, this time to conclude a peace. Known to be, like Sir William Temple, a partisan of the Triple Alliance, and described as of great reputation both in Parliament and at Court, he was coldly received. In the following year, he began to shift allegiance from Bennet (now Lord Arlington) to Buckingham, though when Parliament re-assembled he was included only in the list of officials, in which capacity he carried ten messages from the King to the Commons. Making no secret of his nonconformist sympathies, Trevor spoke against the bill for the continuance of the Conventicles Act on 10 Nov. 1669:

Thinks the business well already in the King’s hands, there being laws against it already. Moves to have it recommended to the King, who is engaged in his promise at Breda. Nevertheless he was appointed to the committee. An unfriendly pen about this time described Trevor as ‘once the great instrument of Cromwell, [who] has got by rebellion £1,500 out of the Lord Derby’s estate’, while to the Duke of York he was simply one ‘of the republican or Cromwellian stamp’. On 28 Mar. 1670 he spoke in favour of the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs:

The King has power in greater matters than this, as in felony, etc. Would not have you disarm him in this thing, less in the comparison, but very great in the consequence. He was also in favour of the Roos divorce bill, and was named to the committee for union with Scotland. With regard to the enforcement of the Conventicles Act, he wrote to Arlington: ‘I consider the matter appears very melancholy on both parts, and am more confirmed in my opinion that it was very unhappily and unnecessarily brought in’. Although he had ceased to bear any effective responsibility for foreign policy, he was a regular speaker for supply in 1670-1, and resisted the proposal to give the Coventry bill priority. ‘This deferring will be thought a jealousy, where he hopes there is none.’ But he was not against the bill in principal: ‘As Parliament men are now liable to greater hardships than formerly, so would have distinction. When prorogation comes, we are as other men, and lie under hardships for what we say here.’ He again appealed for moderation in the debate on conventicles on 5 Apr. 1671. In the following month he secured the election of Buckingham as chancellor of Cambridge University. No doubt he welcomed the Declaration of Indulgence, but he had little opportunity to carry it into effect, dying on 28 May 1672 of an apoplexy ‘caused by drinking cold drink when he was very hot, and wine with ice’. He was buried at St. Bartholomew the Less. His father, who had retired from politics at the Restoration, survived him, and the next member of the family to enter Parliament was his younger son Thomas, subsequently created Baron Trevor of Bromham, who was returned for Plympton in 1692.7

From National Library of Wales

Sir JOHN TREVOR III ( 1626 - 1672 ), secretary of state , was the second (but eldest surviving) son of Sir John Trevor II . He m. Ruth , daughter of John Hampden , related to his mother's family and second cousin to Oliver Cromwell , but best known for his condemnation over ship money by Trevor 's great-uncle Sir Thomas (above) and his fellow judges. She remained a Presbyterian after the Restoration and attended Thomas Manton 's church in London ( 1676 ) after her husband's death ( Hist. MSS. Comm., 11 th R. , vii, 15). Trevor entered Parliament as ‘recruiter’ member for Flintshire ( 2 Dec. 1646 ), but was expelled as an opponent of the king's trial in Dec. 1648 . He sat on Flintshire parliamentary committees and on that for the associated North Wales counties in 1647-8 , but (unlike his father) retired from public life on the king's execution, returning as member for Flintshire in the Protectorate Parliaments (where he spoke frequently and effectively in support of stable government and constitutional safeguards and supported the offer of the crown to Cromwell ), and on several county committees from 1657 . He supported Richard Cromwell , but on his abdication backed up Monck and sat on his Council of State ( 21 Feb. 1660 ); in the Convention elections, however, Flintshire turned him down (despite his father's efforts on his behalf) for an uncompromising royalist, and to ‘ avoid a contest with many great friends ’ he retired to one of Sir John 's old boroughs ( N.L.W. Rhual MS. 98 ).

The Earl of Pembroke supplied him with a borough seat in the Cavalier Parliament , where — although commonly ranked with the ‘court party’ — he contributed a ‘smart and severe’ speech to the Commons ’ attack of Oct. 1667 on Clarendon (who as Hyde had led the impeachment of Sir Thomas in 1641 ). In the reaction against Clarendon 's Anglican policy, Trevor 's continued credit with the Dissenters was useful to Charles II , who early next year knighted him and sent him with his namesake of Brynkynallt (see p. 979) on an embassy to France (where he did well), admitted him to the privy council , and on 22 Sept. made him junior secretary of state , though without influence on policy. In council he supported the Declaration of Indulgence of 15 Mar. 1672 , which he had some share in administering till his sudden death (in his father's lifetime) on 28 May