MORGAN, Sir CHARLES (1575? - 1643?), soldier

was the fourth son of Edward Morgan (1530 - 1585) of Pen-carn, Monmouth, and of Frances Leigh of London. His family, a younger branch of the Morgan family of Tredegar, had acquired Pencarn through the marriage of his great-grand-father. Following the military bent of his uncle, Sir Thomas Morgan ' the Warrior ' (died 1595), and his elder brother Sir MATTHEW MORGAN (knighted by Essex at Rouen, 1591, Member of Parliament for Brecon, 1593), he served in Flanders, then as captain in Essex's Cadiz expedition of 1596 (where Sir Matthew was lieutenant-colonel), and at Ostend again in 1601. The widespread disaffection and recusancy among his connections (including his mother, an uncle, brother, and brother-in-law and many 'allies and tenants') fostered hopes that he would lead an armed rising against the accession of James I, but he refused and was rewarded with a knighthood (23 July 1603). He then went back to Ostend till its capitulation to Spinola (20 September 1604), when he came home and was made a justice of the peace. After the outbreak (May 1605) of 'popish' riots in Herefordshire and South Wales (in which his brother-in-law, Rice ap Price, was reputed a ringleader) he was imprisoned in the Fleet for ' neglecting his place ' by decamping to London ' in a time of such disorder,' but afterwards helped to 'clean up' the area. When the Dutch truce ended in 1620 he went out with the volunteer force of Sir Horace Vere (an old comrade in arms), commanded the British contingent at Bergen till 1622 and helped in the defence of Breda, 1625. Next year, with money advanced by Sir Thomas Myddelton and others, he led a British force to the aid of the king of Denmark on the lower Elbe, but despite naval aid from Sir Sackville Trevor and feats of energy and improvization in holding together a force starved of supplies, he had to yield Staden to Tilly in 1628. By 1629 he was back in Holland, for some years, in constant fear of arrest by creditors who had supplied his forces in the Staden campaign. He helped in the siege of Breda (August 1637) and ended like his uncle ' the Warrior ' as governor of Bergen-op-Zoom. As late as 1642 he was asking leave at home to recruit for the depleted company of one of his Welsh captains; soon afterwards ' this honest and brave captain ' (as Essex called him) died, and was buried at Delft. While abroad he had married Elizabeth, daughter of the Belgian nobleman Philip de Marnix de Ste. Aldegonde (died 1598), William the Silent's coadjutor in the Netherlands Revolt. Their only child, ANN MORGAN (died 1687), came home and married (1) Sir Lewis Morgan of Rhiwpera, Monmouth (Member of Parliament for Cardiff, 1628, knighted 1629, died 1635), and (2) Walter Strickland, who became a Member of Cromwell's Council of State and ' Other House,' and (3) John Milborne of Wonaston, Monmouth. She obtained naturalization on 18 February 1651, acquired lands in Monmouthshire and married her daughters into local families, but on her death at Chelsea in 1687 she asked to be buried at Delft.

Author

• Emeritus Professor Arthur Herbert Dodd, (1891 - 1975)

Sources

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, xxxix, 13-14, and sources therein cited
• G. T. Clark, Limbus Patrum Morganiae et Glamorganiae (1886), 310, 319-20, 326-7
• Reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, 5th R., 75,
• Reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, vi, 165, 205, 361, xi, 291, xvi, 207, xvii, 235,
• Cowper, i, 309, 311, 340, 378, 391, 448, ii, 28, 34-5
• The Journals of the House of Lords, v, 7
• Acts of the Privy Council of England, 1626 (483), 1627 (229-30, 421)
• Rushworth, Historical Collections of Private Passages of State (1721), i, 421, 637
• Bradney, A History of Monmouthshire, i, 381, ii, 123
• The Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1937 (213, 222), 1945 (17, 35-6)

Further Reading

• Wikipedia Article: Charles Morgan

Additional Links

• Wikidata: Q18730079

Published date: 1959

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