Robert Morris, The Swansea Friend of John Wilkes by WYN JONES

The Morris family of Swansea was one which played an important part in the industrial history of Wales during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They rose from fairly obscure beginnings and within two generations created an industrial enterprise which made Swansea the copper centre of the world. The remains of this enterprise are ruins of stately homes and industrial works, letters and diaries in silent libraries, and the family name perpetuated in that area of the city known as Morriston.

They were an interesting family on several counts. Most of the individuals who took a leading part in the opening of industrial Wales came from the prosperous urban centres of England, bringing their drive and capital into an essentially rural Wales, but here was an example of a Welsh family successfully copying the English model. The member who established the foundations was Robert Morris (1700-1768), a native of the Mid-Wales border country. He married Margaret Jenkins from Machynlleth in 1725 and settled in Swansea, taking over the Llangyfelach copper works in 1726. He took over a bankrupt concern from Dr. John Lane, the Bristol chemist who had owned it previously, and prospered sufficiently to send his elder son to a leading English public school and to own a London house at which he died in 1768.

The second generation of the family married into the gentry class and their own roots, certainly on the maternal side, lie within that group. John Morris, Robert Morris' second son, claimed that his great-grandfather on his mother's side was a Parry of the ancient house of Noyadd in Carmarthenshire. They were related to the well-established Stepney family of Llanelli, and through marriage, therefore linked to Sir Watkin Lewes, a member of an old family with branches in Llys Newydd in Carmarthenshire and Llanfair and Llanllyr in Cardiganshire. Sir Watkin Lewes was the main promoter of the Swansea Canal Bill (1794) and was also instrumental in obtaining for Swansea its first Harbour Act three years previously. [t was the Canal Bill which enabled the industrialists and exporters of the Swansea area to cut a waterway through the developing Tawe valley to the port of Swansea. Sir Watkin, later to become lord mayor of London, married Rebecca Popkin, a granddaughter of Sir Thomas Stepney. Thomas Popkin, Lewes' father-in-law, was engaged in the iron industry and was also one of the most important coal exporters in South Wales in the middle years of the eighteenth century.

It is not possible in the face of these facts to see the gentry of South Wales at this time, as so many writers have done, as cast in the mould of Fielding's Squire Weston—backwoodsmen and interested only in the rents of a stagnant and uneconomic agriculture. They were a homogeneous group, often connected by ties of blood and marriage, and playing an active and prominent part in the industrialisation that was changing the face of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire in the closing decades of the eighteenth century. Their names are to be found among the members of the agricultural societies that were beginning to appear (Sir Watkin Lewes was the main inspiration behind the Carmarthenshire Society of 1772), among promoters of canals, harbours and turnpike trusts, and, like the Morris family, among the industrial magnates. The copper works established by the family prospered to such an extent that Swansea became the copper capital of the world ard dominated the industry for half a century. What is perhaps more surprising is that several of this group of South Wales industrialists and gentry were involved, in one capacity or another, in the political ferment which was stirring in London and the provinces even before the outbreak of the American War of Independence in 1775, and which became focused in the spectacular career of the London politician, John Wilkes. Two men who played a very prominent part in these events were Sir Watkin Lewes and Robert Morris' elder son, another Robert Morris.

Robert Morris junior was born in Swansea in 1743, the eldest in a family of five children. The other son was named John and there were three daughters, Margaret, Jane and Elizabeth. Robert was sent to Shrewsbury, the public school to which most of the Welsh gentry sent their sons in the eighteenth century. After graduating at Oriel College, Oxford. in 1764, he became a bencher at Lincoln's Inn. He was called to the Bar in 1767 and later practised on the South Wales Circuit of the Court of Great Sessions. It was doubtless as a bencher at Lincoln's that he first made the acquaintance of John Wilkes. Wilkes had been living in Westminster since 1750 and kept open house there for many young men about town, who as one biographer of Wilkes says, "had more wits than morals". Robert Morris fitted into this category, for he was a member of the Retribution Club which met at the Devil's Tavern in Temple Bar. He seems to have shared Wilkes' tastes and activities, for both were bon-viveurs, and his letters show him to have been as zealously dedicated as Wilkes in his pursuit of women. In a letter to Wilkes, written from Swansea soon after qualifying as a barrister, Morris mentions a gift of lamphreys which he is sending on to him at London; and in another letter written from the house of his friend John Hanbury, the M.P. for Monmouth, and member of the famous tin-manufacturing family of Pontypool, Morris makes it very evident that, if Wilke, could find his way clear to visit South Wales as his guest, he would be gratified by the feminine company available.

Robert Morris soon became deeply involved in Wilkes' political activities. The latter, who had been a Member of Parliament since 1757, had made a savage attack on George III and his government in the newspaper The North Briton. He was charged with libel and expelled from the House of Commons in 1764; later he was outlawed and fled to France where he lived until 1768. On his return to London he unsuccessfully contested the City of London seat but was elected as Memberfor Middlesex in March 1768. All this political activity, together with Wilkes' unashamed extravagance, landed him in financial difficuties. Wilkes was an extremely gregarious man and his good nature and rapier-like wit earned him many friends. To one patrician opponent who had told him that he would die of the pox or on the gallows Wilkes replied: "That will depend my noble lord whether I embrace your mistress or your principles." In order to pay his debts and to promote his cause of protecting the rights of the individual subject against the infringements carried out by the Government, several of his friends formed the Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights in February, 1769. One of its chief supporters was the Reverend Horne Tooke, a well-known radical, and among its leading members were Watkin Lewes and Robert Morris. This society, which had Robert Morris as its first secretary, paid off Wilkes' debts and settled an annuity of £150 per annum on "the friend of Liberty", as he became known. Watkin Lewes meanwhile had organised a petition supporting Wilkes' stand against the Government throughout the shires of Carmarthen, Pembroke and Cardigan and this was presented to Parliament in 1771, backed by such eminent London Welshmen as Dr. Richard Price and David Williams. The Society soon became divided by disagreements between Wilkes and Tooke. This enmity, however, did not at this juncture affect the relationship between Wilkes and Morris, for they worked in close co-operation over the clash which occurred between the Government and some radical London newspaper editors and printers. Wilkes and Morris gave these newspapermen wholehearted support, Morris being a close friend of one of them, William Woodfall. lt was William's brother Henry who, earlier in 1769 as editor of The Public Advertiser, had printed in his newspaper the writings wlich became celebrated as The letters of Junius. The identity of the writer was unknown and remains something of a mystery even today, but the results of these brilliant letters, "in which the celebrated Junius threw his firebrands about among so many combustibles", were devastating and made the Grafton ministry the laughing-stock of London. Henry Woodfall was brought before a London jury by the Government but acquitted of the libel charge brought against him.

A more important case involving Morris' friend William Woodfall and John Miller,the printer of the London Evening News, occurred in 1770 and had deeper implications. These two, backed by Wilkite supporters in the City of London, attempted to assert the ancient privileges of the City against the power and prerogatives of the equally ancient House of Commons by reporting the deliberations of the House. Such printing of parliamentary proceedings was considered at that time as a breach of parliamentary privilege. The Government therefore used its dominance of the House of Commons to attack such printing, especially as the opposition was using the reports of parliamentary debates in such a way as to belittle and ridicule the ministry. In a collusive action, thought up by Wilkes as a further attempt to disconcert the Government, Miller and some of the other London printers were encouraged to defy the Speaker's orders that they should apoear before the House of Commons. Robert Morris appeared as counsel for Miller and through the efforts of Wilkes and Watkin Lewes, both of whom were members, the Aldermanic Court of the City declared the summons issued to Miller illegal. Morris' involvement in this affair, whereby the privileges of the city of London were pitted against the power of the House of Commons, is revealed in a letter from Morris to John Wilkes:

I have been all this day upon the wing about the business of the printers and hitherto unable to call upon you, agreeable to my inclinations. I would not have the affair sleep for the universe. The ministry take care it shall not on their side; we must therefore be staunch on ours . . . There will be business new for all of us; and each have his share. Different games must be played. But if we can, we must take into our assistance some more of the aldermen; and I hope also we shall have the sherriffs. . . (G. Rude, Wilkes and liberty (1962), p.l57, note 2).

Although the honour of the House was eventually upheld Miller in fact was never apprehended and the important activity of reporting parliamentary proceedings continued with the House of Commons tacitly abandoning its claim to control the reporting of debates. William Woodfall has earned for himself an honourable and distinguished place in the development of parliamentary democracy by establishing in 1789 a daily paper called The Diary in which, for the first time, reports on parliamentary debates were published on the morning after they had taken place.

Robert Morris had taken a very prominent part in this confrontation of 1770 between the Government and the House of Commons on one side and the London printers on the other, and his legal efforts on their behalf were recognised by his being presented to the freedom of the City of London. It is possible that the savage in-fighting between the Horne Tooke dissidents and the Wilkite supporters which was tearing the Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights apart may have dampened Morris' political ardour and turned his thoughts in other directions. Whatever the reason Morris, in less than a year, took a step which removed him from London life and cut his connexion with the radical movement which was stirring London and beginning to spread into other parts of the country. In the spring of 1772 he took part in a run-away marriage with a girl named Frances Harford, a natural daughter of the wealthy Lord Baltimore. Morris scandalised London society and shocked and antagonised most of his friends by eloping with the fourteen-yearold Frances (his ward) to the Continent. With his bride-to-be he travelled from London to Calais and from there they made their way to Lille. At this point they were put under guard by the town commandant on the representations of two Englishmen who had followed them. If, as seems likely, they were legal officers of the English Chancery Court they were unsuccessful in restraining Morris and his bride who had already gone through a marriage ceremony at Ypres. They were allowed to go on their travels and made their way by boat to Holland, eventually reaching Hamburg via Rotterdam. At Hamburg they were married a second time in January, 1773, by special licence from the king of Denmark. There was a flourishing English community at this time in the Hamburg area and Morris very soon became an accepted member. He struck up a close friendship with a mysterious lady whom he invariably calls "Mrs. M.", and who was obviously wealthy and well-connected. Morris' affection for Frances had by this time cooled noticeably and he got her to stay on in the household as housekeeper and companion. He justified his attitude to the immature eloper, who had left England so blithely the previous year, by claiming that she had taken a Frenchman as her lover, although she had introduced this man into Mrs. M's menage as her cousin. Morris wrote callously at this time"I believe it is convenient for her to go in consequence of her amours. She seems rather rotund about the waist." Soon after writing this he was travelling around Brunswick visiting places of interest in the company of Mrs. M. These included a sulphur works at Coslar and a spa at Pyrmont which, according to Morris, was "to be compared to Tunbridge". His curiosity was indefatigable and omnivorous and even embraced religion, although there is little enough evidence of its influence in his life. During this series of visits they made Tell their base and his comments on a religious service he attended here are revealing: "French reforme whole service lasted one hour. Begins with a prayer, then psalms. Then sermon—prayer and psalms again to end. A sensible mode of worship—no mummery—edifying and not fatiguing.' Morris continued to satisfy his endless curiosity about new places after they had returned to Brunswick and there is an interesting record of a visit to a noble library at Wolfenbuttel where there was a collection of bibles in many languages, including two in Welsh. Frances in the meantime had left Hamburg and returned to London, where she appeared before the lord chancellor at Lincolns Inn Hall at the beginning of 1774. Morris too, after a stay of over a year, left Hamburg in May, 1773, together with Mrs. M. and they made their way southwards down the river Rhine. They were joined at Mannheim by his sister, Jane and her husband Edward King, who had come over to the Continent from Wales. They moved on to Strasburg, crossing the Rhine on a bridge of forty boats, and made for Geneva, where they stayed for a time. The first signs of disenchantment between Morris and his Hamburg friend became evident amid the scenic splendours of Switzerland when he complained that: "She has no taste for the beauties of nature therefore no pleasure in the prospect. Longs only for plays and balls—taste vitiated by wrong mode of life." The lady herself was beginning to find Morris' jealousy tiresome and he decided to remove himself temporarily in the hope that her affection might grow in his absence. He and his brother-in-law King left on horseback for a tour of northern Italy, making eventually for Genoa. The two stayed at a public house kept by an Englishman and his wife and were lodged and boarded for just over three shillings a day. They found Genoa an interesting city with such exotic sights as Turkish slaves chained together and selling slippers and night-caps as they moved about the streets. The groom, who had travelled with them from Geneva, was sent over the hills via Nice to Marseilles with the horses, where Morris and King, travelling direct by sea, were to meet him in a week's time. The reunited trio travelled on through Avignon to Paris and the lady who had been responsible for the Italian tour (in all probability the daughter of a wealthy Englishman, Lord Broughton) fades from the scene and is heard of no more.

Morris had a circle of acquaintances in Paris, for he had visited the city before in 1769. During this second visit in the winter of 1773 he called upon a gentleman named Mr. Rosenhagen who 'was a clergyman enjoying benefices in England. bred at Cambridge and once a great friend of Mr. Horne." This, of course, was the Reverend Horne Tooke, who was one of the outstanding radicals of the period. In his first journal Morris said that he had heard some people in Paris giving Rosenhagen the credit of having written the celebrated Letters of Junius and goes on to say that he does not think the imputation groundless. The authorship of these brilliant and biting attacks on the government of George III has perplexed historians ever since they were written over the period 1769-72, and although some recent historians claim that they were written by Sir Philip Francis, later the deadly enemy of Warren Hastings, there is no incontrovertible evidence to this effect.

Morris, who stayed at the luxurious Hotel de Dannemarc while in Paris, must have been running short of money by this time, for he had passed through many countries and cities since he and Frances had set out on their escapade in 1772. Before he left Paris for London in the spring of 1774 he rcceived "to our good relief a remittance of £100 from my brother". This was his younger brother John, who who was making a great success of running the copper business at Swansea. Unlike many of Robert's friends, John's affection for him did not change and his loyalty was unwavering in the many changes of fortune that accompanied Morris' wandering and erratic life. ln fact, when he landed at Harwich in April 1774, there was a letter from John arranging for a meeting in London. He noted very carefully the guinea which the journey cost him and his delight at meeting his "most dear and affectionate brother". In the course of their reunion at the King's Arms in Leadenhall Street he was told by John of his hopes of marriage to "a most amiable young lady, fortune sufficient and family most respectable and opulent." John's hopes were fulfilled and in the following month he married Henrietta Musgrave, daughter of Sir Philip Musgrave of Eden Hall, Cumberland.

Robert Morris' prospects, however, were not so promising, for Frances had in the hearing earlier in London been declared a ward of court, and he was due to face a Chancery Court action brought by the lord chancellor. As a temporary measure he put up at the chambers of a legal friend and during the short period that he was to remain in London he was visited by a number of friends. William Woodfall remained loyal and called to see him, but John Wilkes and his fellow alderman, Sir Watkin Lewes, made no move to contact him at all, although Morris had written to the former several times from the Continent asking for his assistance. One of the Glamorgan friends who turned up was John Edmondes, a member of an old Vale family who lived at Cowbridge, and who was, according to Morris, in financial difficulties. This seems to be borne out by the fact that a few years later in 1778 the furniture of Old Hall where he lived was put up for auction. Eventually, after protracted legal wrangling, Morris' marriage was annulled on the ground that it was contrary to the laws of both Holland and Denmark. Morris himself was condenmed to the Fleet prison for failing to produce Miss Harford when demanded by the legal authorities.

Information about Morris' activities between his return to England and the annulment of his marriage in 1784 is very sparse. His failure to appear before the Court of Delegates, which was trying his matrimonial case, occurred during the years 1775-83 when the Americans were fighting their War of Independence against the British, and one recorded fact would seem to link him with America. Morris in 1782 published a pamphlet vilifying the character of the treacherous American general Benedict Arnold and was challenged to a duel by a friend of the traitor. Eventually, however, a settlement was reached without recourse to violence, but the pamphlet and Morris' detailed knowledge of the facts of the case are circumstantial evidence suggesting that he had spent part of the war years in America.

Whatever his movements during the war years, he was back in Wales in 1785, for in that year he married Sarah Pritchard from a farm in Llangyfelach outside Swansea. There is from this point no suggestion of any work at the Bar nor of any contact with John Wilkes, who by this time had shed his early radicalism. Not so Morris, however, who threw himself with something of his former enthusiasm into Glamorgan politics. He spent his time attacking the Tory junta of peers and landed gentry like the duke of Beaufort, the Windsors and the Mansels. His main argument was that not one of the Tory group that he castigated lived in the county. The existing M.P. was Charles Edwin, the owner of the Llanmihangel and Dunraven estates, who had made up his mind to retire in the early summer of 1789, hoping his son-in-law Thomas Wyndham would be able to succeed him as the county member. Edwin's plans for enlisting the support of the Tory junta for this purpose were unsuccessful, for they brought out their own candidate, Thomas Windsor, brother to Lord Plymouth. Morris gave his wholehearted support to Thomas Wyndham, the independent candidate, and in the summer of 1789 published an anonymous pamphlet extolling his choice as a local man. Later in the same pamphlet he asserted that "the British spirit of the people of the Glamorgan hills would reject Plymouth's candidate and would not be seduced by bribery as had the burgesses of Cardiff." Morris concluded his appeal to the electors in the following terms: "The game is undoubtedly in your hands, play well your respective parts and show your skill and abilities by the most determined unanimity."

A meeting of county electors was held in July, 1789, at the Cowbridge Town Hall. The sheriff, John Llewellyn of Welsh St. Donats, esquire, was in the chair and a proposal of Robert Morris to censure Windsor for not attending the meeting was passed. It is difficult to know how much influence the windv rhetoric, so typical of his earlier wriling, had, but in any case Wyndham was returned and held the county seat from this by-election until his death in 1814.

Within two years of these events of 1789 Morris was once again on his travels. During the matrimonial hearing, in which his marriage to Frances Harford had been annulled, he had been excommunicated by the Court of Delegates, whose functions were in the nineteenth century taken over by the Privy Council. This excommunication meant in effect the end of Morris' career at the Bar and his decision to leave the country was in all probability connected with this fact. In 1791 he set sail for India, arriving in Calcutta in December with the intention of practising as a barrister in the Supreme Court of Bengal. He wrote to the judicial authorities requesting the right to act as an advocate in the courts, and a little later appeared at the court in full legal attire. He delivered a passionate and vituperative harangue at the authorities and, not surprisingly, his plea was turned down. Sir William Dunkin, one of the senior judges, declared him persona non grata and stated that he objected to his being admitted "from the notoriety and infamy of your character and from the vile abandoned and disgraceful life you have led for many years past". In face of this rebuff, Morris left Calcutta and travelled inland to a place called Uttar Pradesh. He elaed out some sort of existence here for two years but succumbed to a fever and died at the age of fifty.

In one of his journals, Morris recorded at one point a journey he had made on horse-back with a companion in southern France. As they were riding he had seen a road-sign pointing the way to Spain which stirred a romantic response: "Something new or something strange were enough to carry us anywhere; we could not hear Egypt or Arabia mentioned without wishing to be there." He had gone further than either place, but it was a sad end to one with so much enthusiasm and vitality. Morris could have, if he had not been side-tracked, taken his place among his celebrated compatriots in London like Richard Price and David Williams, and earned himself an honoured name among those who struggled for free speech and parliamentary democracy in eighteenth-century Britain. His lot was to end in a remote grave which, even his brother in a sad little epitaph recorded in his diary, placed in the wrong country: "my poor brother buried at Fattigar in East Indies, 29 Nov.,1793."

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The two journals written by Robert Morris and mentioned in the article span the years 1772-74, and, like the leather-bound diary kept by Sir John Morris are housed in the Library of University College, Swansea. The broadsheets and pamphlets relating to Glamorgan politics in the eighteenth century are part of the G. G. Francis Collection which is deposited in the Royal lnstitution of South Wales, Swansea. The writer wishes to acknowledge gratefully the help received from the Staff of both the University Library and the Royal Institution.

Two secondary works which were very useful in the preparation of this article were firstly an essay by P. D. G. Thomas—"John Wilkes and the freedom of the press (1771)", which appeared in the Bulletin of the Instifute ol Historical Research, 1960, and secondly, the unpublished M.A. thesis (University of Wales) by Ll. B. John— The parliameritary representation of Glmorgan, 1536-1832.