In the once-remote hills, to the south and west of Wrexham itself, lies the village of Rhosllanerchrugog – more usually just known as Rhos. It is unique in many ways, not least for the fact that, in the local slang, its inhabitants are still known as “Jackos.” The legend behind the name is that, in the early 1700s, the lands upon which Rhos stood, and its coal mines, were the property of a local landowner with strongly Jacobite sympathies – sympathies shared equally by the villagers themselves.
The landowner in question was Sir Watkin Williams – who would later, through an inheritance, become Sir Watkin Williams Wynn. And Sir Watkin – Wrexham, too – would play their own not insignificant parts in the story of the ’45.
Sir Watkin was born in 1692, but by 1716 he had become the Member of Parliament for Denbighshire, a position he would hold almost continuously until his death in 1749. But even earlier, at the age of 18, on 10th June 1710, he had organised an inaugural meeting for a new local society or club – at the inn the called The George. It would later be renamed The Eagles and, later still, as it remains today, facing the length Wrexham’s High Street, as the Wynnstay Arms Hotel.
He called this new club The Cycle of the White Rose – the white rose being a recognised symbol among Jacobite supporters, and “cycle” because the gatherings tended to rotate between the grand houses of those involved. The society’s badge was, naturally, a white rose surrounded by the word CYCLE. But, most commonly, the gatherings took place at the Wynnstay, and would continue to do so until the 1860s.
Wynnstay Arms Hotel, Wrexham, as it stands today
The history of The Cycle – and of Wrexham’s Jacobitism – was studied at length by our eminent late-19th century historian, Alfred Neobard Palmer, in his History of the Older Nonconformity of Wrexham and its Neighbourhood; then, in the 1930s, by Nest Lloyd and Susan Mainwaring in The Cycle of the White Rose (National Library of Wales); and, more recently, in one or two very good university theses, like Siobhan Beatson’s 2019 The White Rose and the Red Dragon: An Analysis of the Jacobite Support in Wales 1688-1746.
From their various primary sources, we know that Sir Watkin was vehemently High Church Anglican and a bitter opponent of Dissenters in general and Methodists in particular. His sympathies for the Jacobite cause were inherited from his father. And, in 1715, at the time of Hanoverian King George the First’s coronation, he was heavily involved in a series of riots by groups of Jacobite supporters (many of them his Rhos miners) on the one hand, and Tory supporters on the other – almost an epilogue to the 1710 Sacheverell riots. An eye-witness from 1715 in Wrexham, Methodist Minister Mr Kenrick, has left us diary entries.
August 1: Being the Kings ascension to the throne was not at all observed at Wrexham except by the Dissenters, who had a sermon preached that day and their shops shut. But there was no Bell ringing, no Bonfire, nor Illumination.
October 20: The Kings Coronation Day. The Bells rung out but at night great riots and disorders committed. The Dissenters bonfires put out, their windows broken, the Meeting Houses Threatened, and the mob beat at the door. Treasonable songs were sung about the town, and great disorders allowed.
November 14 No ringing of bells, no illumination, no bonfire except at a dissenter’s House, tho’ there was an abundant demonstration of Joy on account of the successes of the rebels at Preston.
November 22 The Great news of the victory over the rebels in Scotland, but no public demonstration of joy at Wrexham.
Significant Jacobite support in Wrexham during 1715, therefore, and in 1721 agents for the Jacobites compiled lists of potential and known supporters in Wales. The list includes the names of 49 prominent Welsh gentry, MPs and Lords. Out of the 49 names there are two names from the House of Lords, Lord Hereford and Lord Bulkeley, and 16 current or past Members of Parliament. It is a decisive piece of evidence in many ways to back up the claim that the Jacobite support is Wales was significantly higher than believed (Appendix included in Siobhan Beatson’s thesis).
By 1723 we have the list of those prominent members of The Cycle who signed its articles of association. Besides Sir Watkin himself, the Pulestons (significant in Wrexham’s history since the 13th century), the Eytons, Egertons and many more.
Apart from the members of the Cycle and its wider supporters, there was one more hugely prominent Jacobite resident of Wrexham. London-based Lady Anne Primrose – sometimes listed as Primerose or Primarose – was widowed in 1741, at the age of 32, but still spent a large part of each year at her fine house at Berse, near Broughton, just outside Wrexham itself.
The Drelincourt house at Berse (Caego), Wrexham
The house was built, around 1715, by Pierre Delincourt, Bishop of Armagh. Hence it was – and still remains – the Berse Drelincourt house. Lady Anne eventually died in 1775 and is buried with her husband in Wrexham’s Parish Church of St. Giles. But those intervening years were important to our story. The family, for example, ran a charity school and there have always been tales (though no primary resources to substantiate them) that Lady Anne used the school for the education of Jacobite orphans in the wake of the ’45.
Lady Anne Primrose, painted c. 1750, by a follower of Allan Ramsay
There is, however, considerable evidence that when Flora McDonald was released from custody in London during 1747, she stayed at Lady Anne’s house at Essex Street. Lady Anne would later provide Flora with a small fortune for her dowry and, when Flora returned to Scotland, it was in Lady Anne’s private carriage.
Later, when Charles Edward Stuart made his clandestine return to London in September 1750 – in the hope of raising support for another rising – Lady Anne hosted a reception for him at her Essex Street house. The Prince may also have lodged there.
By marriage, of course, Lady Anne would have been distantly related to Sir Archibald Primrose of Dunipace, who had been executed in the aftermath of Carlisle.
But let’s go back to Sir Watkin and events in Wrexham itself.
Murray Pittock’s research for his 1998 book, Jacobitism, suggests that The Cycle was little more that just another gentlemen’s club, though with a fondness for celebrating their affiliation through popular songs, poems and ballads – like their favourite, Robin John Clark, though this seems more a drinking song than having any huge political substance. Hence, Pittock concludes, the Welsh Jacobites were happier to toast the absent “King Over The Water” than to more actively support the cause.
But this certainly wasn’t true for Welshmen like Pen-y-Graig lawyer David Morgan, or the Herefordshire Catholics, William Vaughan and Richard Vaughan. Morgan, of course, would eventually be hanged, drawn and quartered on Kennington Green on 30th July 1746 alongside Francis Towneley and others, with whom he’d seen active service with the Jacobite army. So, too, did the Vaughans. In the way of such things, however, we only have the names these prominent figures, since history was unlikely to ever record the names of whatever retainers may have ridden with them.
The question of active Jacobite support from North Wales is even more unclear. While writing The Jacobites’ Apprentice, I came across Side Lights on Welsh Jacobitism, written by J. Arthur Price in 1900. It was the first time I’d seen details of the archived letter, written by Charles Edward Stuart to his father, in which he bemoans the fact that Sir Watkin, and Lord Barrymore, had sent an envoy to combine the Welsh forces with the main army, yet they arrived two days after the retreat from Derby and missed the opportunity. This is the extract from the letter:
Mr. Barry arrived at Derby two days after I parted. He had been sent by Sir Watkin Wynn and Lord Barrymore to assure me, in the name of my friends, that they were ready to join me in whatever manner I pleased, either in the capital or everyone to rise in his own country.
Welsh forces? There seems to be no hard evidence for what these might have been. We see occasional tantalising hints. For example, in the writings of antiquarian W. Bell Jones, and his work on Hawarden Parish Church, about the Jacobite sympathies of the Rector, Richard Williams, and the Flintshire MP, Sir John Glynne, along with other landowner members of the The Cycle. Did Sir Watkin, in truth, lead this group of chevaliers to Derby, only to find the main army already retreated northwards?
Earlier in the campaign, he had certainly been active in London, sending regular reports to the Jacobite commanders about dissatisfaction in the capital with “the Elector of Hanover and his ministries”, and insisting that the citizens of London were “well-disposed as to treat with the Prince” and that they were “ready to receive him.” English Whigs certainly viewed Sir Watkin as “one of the most dangerous men south of the Tweed”.
Yet, whatever these Welsh forces may have been, there is no record of any attempt to follow the Jacobite army to Carlisle and, ultimately, to Culloden. In the aftermath, Murray of Broughton’s evidence implicated Sir Watkin as a major seditionist, though he was never brought to trial. And, by 1747, he was helping to organise further pro-Jacobite demonstrations, at the Lichfield Races and elsewhere. In December that year, he wrote to the prince, assuring him that his Welsh supporters wished “for nothing more than another happy opportunity wherein they may exert themselves more in deeds than in words, in the support of your Royal Highness’s dignity and interest and the cause of liberty.”
In March 1748, Sir Watkin’s wife, Anne, died at their home in Ruabon. By July, he’d married again, to his god-daughter, Frances Shackerley. The marriage wasn’t destined to last long, however, since he died in a hunting accident in September 1749. Interestingly, before he was even buried, Frances had burned every single piece of his personal papers. To protect his reputation? To protect the lives of his many associates who could so easily have been accused of treason? We’ll never know.
He left behind some interesting artefacts, including various Jacobite toasting glasses with direct links to the Williams-Wynn family.
A very rare glass, previously in the possession of the Williams Wynn family, dated 1745. Engraved around the rim, “Success to the Friends of Sr, Want. Wlms. Wynne”. Recently sold at auction for £7,887.00.
I walk past the Wynnstay in Wrexham on most days of the week – past the window of the very room in which The Cycle of the White Rose met for so many years. At least a few times each month, I drive south on the Wrexham by-pass, the A483, where the Berse Drelincourt proudly house survives intact among the trees, away to my right. And, quite regularly, I head up to Rhos for a coffee with some of my favourite “Jackos”. They don’t talk much, of course, about plans to put the current Bavarian heir to the Royal House of Stuart back on the British throne, but they’re a feisty bunch, passionate about Wrexham and its history, including those heady days when the town played its own part in the Bonnie Prince Charlie story.
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