MOSTYN, Peter (by 1518-80), of Talacre, Flints.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1518, 3rd s. of Richard ap Hywel ap Ieuan of Mostyn, Flints. and Gloddaeth, Caern., by Catherine, da. of Thomas Salusbury of Lleweni, Denb. m. Ellen, da. of Thomas Gruffydd of Pant-y-Llongddu, Flints., 7s. 6da.1

Offices Held

J.p. Flints. 1543, 1555, q. 1558/59-64; escheator 1545-6; sheriff 1552-3; commr. subsidy 1546, relief 1550, lunacy c.1565, Caerwys eisteddfod 1568.2

Biography

Of ancient Welsh descent, the Mostyn family acquired its home and its name by marriage in the early 15th century. Its long association with the House of Lancaster was maintained by Peter Mostyn’s father, a distant cousin of Henry Tudor, who came in secret to Mostyn while preparing his invasion of England. After Bosworth, to which Richard ap Hywel brought a force of 1,600 colliers, the new King gave him the sword and belt worn in the battle. Henry VII was a frequent visitor to Mostyn Hall, but when he asked Richard ap Hywel to come to court he received the reply, ‘I dwell among my own people’.3

Peter ap Richard ap Hywel, as he was generally known until later life, did not share in the Mostyn inheritance but he did have some (unknown) lands settled on him by his father in 1539, probably when he married, which may have formed the nucleus of the estate at Talacre. A dispute with his eldest brother Thomas over the performance of their father’s will was settled by arbitration in March 1540. In the previous August he had received lands in the town of Flint by charter from a burgess there; in 1541 he acquired lands at Holywell and elsewhere, formerly of the dissolved abbey of Basingwerk; and in 1544 he received a grant of the manor of Penbedw, Denbighshire, for £73. He was assessed for subsidy in 1545 at £33 6s.8d. on lands, a figure which put him among the wealthier men of the shire.4

Mostyn’s first election to Parliament, soon after his appointment to the Flintshire bench, was followed by a year as escheator and by two successive nominations as sheriff. In the political rivalries of the following reign he appears to have had links with both leaders: it was as a servant of the Duke of Somerset that in March 1551 he acquired woodland in the lordship of Holywell, but in 1549 he had had a grant of lands, from the Earl of Warwick, and his choice as sheriff in 1552 must have been with the approval of Warwick, by then Duke of Northumberland. No trace has been found of his action in that capacity during the succession crisis of 1553, but under Mary he sued out a general pardon, in his names of Powell alias Mostyn alias ap Richard ap Hywel, and was retained on the bench. He did not, however, sit in Parliament again until 1558, and then no longer as knight of the shire but as Member for the Flint Boroughs; he was rejoined in the House by his kinsman Robert Gruffydd, with whom he had sat in 1545. Nothing has come down of his part in the proceedings of either Parliament, but his name is one of those omitted from a copy of the list of Members of the second: the significance of this is unknown.5

On Elizabeth’s accession Mostyn was reappointed to the commission of the peace and made a member of the quorum, but after 1564 his name disappears, whether because of his Catholicism or on some other ground is not known. It may have been at about the same time that he was the defendant in a Star Chamber action brought by a boy of four, Peter Mutton, his son-in-law’s child by a second marriage, whom he was accused of tricking out of his lands by ignoring a condition of an agreement with the boy’s father. Little is heard of Mostyn after the making of his will on 24 Aug. 1570; it was witnessed by his two sons Peter and William. He left all his goods to his wife Ellen during her widowhood; if she married again she was to keep half of them and all the children were to share equally in the remainder. Mostyn died on 2 Feb. 1580 and the will was proved ten days later, when his widow renounced executorship and administration was granted to his son John.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: P. S. Edwards

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference. DWB; Dwnn, Vis. Wales, ii. 308-9; L. N. V. Lloyd-Mostyn and T. A. Glenn, Mostyns of Mostyn, 193; L. N. V. Lloyd-Mostyn, ‘Piers Mostyn, the first, of Talacre’, Flints. Hist. Soc. Pub. xi. 45-48.
  • 2. CPR, 1549-51, p. 66; 1553, p. 363; 1560-3, p. 446; E179/221/209; HMC Welsh. i. 291; Salusbury Corresp. (Univ. Wales Bd. of Celtic Studies Hist. and Law ser. xiv), 24.
  • 3. Lloyd-Mostyn and Glenn, pp. i-iv; H. Taylor, Flint, 102.
  • 4. Lloyd-Mostyn and Glenn, 191; LP Hen. VIII, xix-xxi; E179/221/209.
  • 5. CPR, 1549-51, p. 58; 1553-4, pp. 110, 433; 1560-3, p. 227; Augmentations (Univ. Wales Bd. of Celtic Studies Hist. and Law ser. xiii), 396; Wm. Salt. Lib. SMS 264.
  • 6. St.Ch.5/M56/5; R. Flenley, Cal. Reg. Council, Marches of Wales, 75; SP12/99/55; PCC 5 Arundell; NRA 14045, pp. 5, 79; Flints. Hist. Soc. Pub. xi. 48.