OWEN
,
ROBERT
(d.
1685
),
Quaker
,
grandson of
Robert
Owen
of
Dolserau
,
Dolgelley
, who was an
attorney
in the
Court of the Marches
at
Ludlow
and a son of
‘
baron
’
Lewis
Owen
(q.v.)
. In the
Civil War
he sided with
Parliament
. He sat on the
North Wales Composition Committee
in
Aug. 1649
, was a
militia commissioner
for
Merioneth
from
May 1651
, was appointed for his county (
Oct. 1653
) by
Barebone's Parliament
on the only county committee it set up, and acted in the same capacity under the
Protectorate
, for the
assessment of county taxes
(
June 1657
). The statement that
Owen
was a
Fifth Monarchy
man is not sufficiently attested. The restored ‘
Rump
’ put him (
July 1659
)
on the committee for ‘ordering’ the militia in North Wales
; he took an active part in suppressing the
Booth rebellion
, and was thanked by the
Council of State
in
Oct. 1659
; as late as
Jan. 1660
he was placed by the ‘
Rump
’
on the county committee for the assessment of taxes
.
American
Quaker
sources make him
governor
of
Beaumaris
immediately before the
Restoration
(adding that
John ap John
, q.v.
, was there with him). In
April 1660
,
Owen
, with some of his late fellow-commissioners, was arrested, and imprisoned in
Caernarvon gaol
. In the same year he joined the
Friends
(and
Dolserau
, on the testimony of
Rowland
Ellis
of
Bryn Mawr
, q.v.
, was regularly used for
Quaker
meetings); and in
1661
he and others were committed to
Dolgelley gaol
for refusing the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, but were released after fifteen months on making a declaration of fidelity. In
1674
(following the collapse of the
1672 Indulgence
),
Owen
was again imprisoned at
Dolgelley
, this time for five and a half years. He emigrated in
1684
to
Pennsylvania
, with his wife (and kinswoman)
Jane
, daughter of the
antiquary
Robert
Vaughan
(q.v.)
of
Hengwrt
, and all their children, except
Robert
, the eldest. They reached
Philadelphia
17 Sept. 1684
, but
Owen
and his wife d. in a few months (not, as is sometimes said, in
1697
); for their children and descendants, see
J. E.
Griffith
,
Pedigrees
, 201.
Robert
Owen
had been very closely associated with the
regicide
John
Jones
(
1597?
-
1660
, q.v.)
. A letter to
Morgan
Llwyd
from
John
Jones
in
1651
(
N.L.W. MS. 11,440D, folio 43
), partly printed in
Gweithiau Morgan Llwyd
, ii, 291-2, hints that
Owen
was lacking in ‘
discretion and Christian prudence
’, and that his severity was apt to drive people into hypocritical support of the regime — and further, that it would be well if he rendered his accounts of public money voluntarily, to counter rumours that it was ‘
sticking to his fingers
.’
Bibliography:
-
‘Public Record Office—State Papers’
28/251, Wales (Mer.),
24 May 1651
;
-
Firth and Rait
,
Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum,
1642–1660
, 1911
, ii, 267, 753, 1058, 1320, 1335;
-
Calendar of the Committee for Compounding
with Delinquents, etc., 1643–1660
. Record Publication
, i, 758;
-
Reports of the ‘Historical
Manuscripts Commission
, Leybourne-Popham, 162;
-
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic
Series
, Record Publication
1659-60
, 28;
-
Swarthmore College Pa. records of Radnor Meeting, testimony of John Humphrey to Robert Owen,
1683
;
-
N.L.W.
Llanfair and Brynodol MSS. at the National Library
of Wales, Aberystwyth
, bundle 94, militia minutes
25 April 1660
and warrant 28 April;
-
Besse
,
A collection of the sufferings of the people
called Quakers for the testimony of a good conscience from
the time of their being first distinguished by that name in
the year 1650 to the time of the act commonly called the
Act of toleration granted to Protestant dissenters in the
first year of the reign of King William the Third and Queen
Mary in the year 1689
, 1753
, i, 746;
-
Browning
,
Welsh settlement of Pennsylvania
,
Philadelphia, 1912
, 28;
-
A. H. Dodd
,
Studies in Stuart Wales
, Cardiff,
1952
, 113-4, 152, 160, 163, 174 — but correct the mis-statement (p. 114) that Owen was one of the Propagation Commissioners.
Author:
Emeritus Professor Arthur Herbert Dodd, M.A., (1891-1975), Bangor
