Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker | Page 6

Quarterly Meeting held at Tyddyn y Garreg. I have this singular
document. In it is said of him and of his wife, Ellin ("for whom it may
concern"), that "they are faithfull and beloved Friends, well known to
be serviceable unto Friends and brethren, since they have become
convinced; of a blameless and savory conversation. Also are P'sons
Dearly beloved of all Souls. His testimony sweet and tender, reaching
to the quicking seed of life; we cannot alsoe but bemoan the want of his
company, for that in difficult occasion he was sted-fast--nor was one to
be turned aside. He is now seasonable in intention for the Plantations,
in order into finding his way clear, and freedom in the truth according
to the measure manifested unto him," etc. And so the strong-minded
man is commended to Friends across the seas. In the records of the
meetings for sufferings in England are certain of his letters from the jail.
How his character descended to my sterner parent, and, through another
generation, to me, and how the coming in of my mother's gentler blood
helped in after-days, and amid stir of war, to modify in me, this present
writer, the ruder qualities of my race, I may hope to set forth.
William died suddenly in 1679 without children, and was succeeded by
the third brother, Owen. This gentleman lived the life of his time, and,
dying in 1700 of much beer and many strong waters, left one son,
Owen, a minor. What with executors and other evils, the estate now
went from ill to worse. Owen Wynne 2d was in no haste, and thus
married as late as somewhere about 1740, and had issue, William, and
later, in 1744, a second son, Arthur, and perhaps others; but of all this I
heard naught until many years after, as I have already said.
It may seem a weak and careless thing for a man thus to cast away his
father's lands as my ancestor did; but what he gave up was a poor estate,

embarrassed with mortgages and lessened by fines, until the income
was, I suspect, but small. Certain it is that the freedom to worship God
as he pleased was more to him than wealth, and assuredly not to be set
against a so meagre estate, where he must have lived among enmities,
or must have diced, drunk, and hunted with the rest of his kinsmen and
neighbours.
I have a faint memory of my aunt, Gainor Wynne, as being fond of
discussing the matter, and of how angry this used to make my father.
She had a notion that my father knew more than he was willing to say,
and that there had been something further agreed between the brothers,
although what this was she knew not, nor ever did for many a day. She
was given, however, to filling my young fancy with tales about the
greatness of these Wynnes, and of how the old homestead, rebuilded in
James I.'s reign, had been the nest of Wynnes past the memory of man.
Be all this as it may, we had lost Wyncote for the love of a freer air,
although all this did not much concern me in the days of which I now
write.
Under the mild and just rule of the proprietary, my grandfather Hugh
prospered, and in turn his son John, my father, to a far greater extent.
Their old home in Wales became to them, as time went on, less and less
important. Their acres here in Merion and Bucks were more numerous
and more fertile. I may add that the possession of many slaves in
Maryland, and a few in Pennsylvania, gave them the feeling of
authority and position, which the colonial was apt to lose in the
presence of his English rulers, who, being in those days principally
gentlemen of the army, were given to assuming airs of superiority.
In a word, my grandfather, a man of excellent wits and of much
importance, was of the council of William Penn, and, as one of his
chosen advisers, much engaged in his difficulties with the Lord
Baltimore as to the boundaries of the lands held of the crown. Finally,
when, as Penn says, "I could not prevail with my wife to stay, and still
less with Tishe," which was short for Laetitia, his daughter, an
obstinate wench, it was to men like Logan and my grandfather that he
gave his full confidence and delegated his authority; so that Hugh
Wynne had become, long before his death, a person of so much greater
condition than the small squires to whom he had given up his estate,
that he was like Joseph in this new land. What with the indifference

come of large means, and disgust for a