Colonel Philip Jones, Oliver Cromwell and the British Revolutions in South Wales
This volume centres on Colonel Philip Jones but touches on others – most notably, Griffith Lloyd and Rowland Dawkins – who were part of his political network. These three men, all from Glamorgan and linked as kin, emerged from lives on the fringes of Welsh gentry status to imprint themselves on the wider world and historical record as part of the military struggle against Charles I and then as agents in Cromwell’s British state.
Their roles in the civil wars and the regimes that followed add to our picture of Cromwell, deepening our understanding of the conception and construction of his Welsh identity and the functioning of his Protectorate state and household in which Jones was a central figure. In the New Model and Cromwell’s state, these three Welshmen became part of the Anglo-Puritan London regime’s management of South Wales. This study illustrates how their Welsh identity and diverse geographical interests required them to cultivate multiple, overlapping personas—personal, factional, regional, and national—as they adapted to their evolving roles in revolutionary politics. Their careers provide essential insights into the complexities and limits of the British Revolutions in South Wales, offering a unique perspective on what it meant to be Welsh in Cromwell's revolutionary British state.
Drawing from new archival research, this accessible study will appeal to specialists, students and general readers of early modern British history, Cromwell and the English Civil War.
David Farr is Deputy Head Academic of Norwich School. He is author of full-length studies of the Cromwellian military-religious figures, John Lambert (2003), Henry Ireton (2006), Thomas Harrison (2014), Hezekiah Haynes (2020) and the 2022 Brokerage and Networks in London’s Global World: Kinship, Commerce and Communities through the experience of John Blackwell. Farr’s Oliver Cromwell’s kin, 1643-1726: The private and public worlds of the English Revolution and Restoration was published in 2024.