Introduction

The three men central in this study, all from Glamorgan, Philip Jones, Griffith Lloyd and Rowland Dawkins, linked as kin, emerge from lives on the fringes of Welsh gentry status to imprint themselves on the wider world and historical record by being part of the military struggle against Charles I and then being agents, to different degrees, in Cromwell’s British state. Their roles in the civil wars and the regimes that followed adds to our picture of Cromwell, particularly his and others conception and construction of his Welsh identity but also the functioning of his Protectorate state and household in which Jones was a central figure. In the New Model and Cromwell’s state, in different roles, these three Welshmen were part of an Anglo-Puritan London regime’s management of South Wales. This study touches upon not just the different roles Jones, Lloyd and Dawkins played but also how their Welsh identity and diverse geographical interests reinforced that they needed multiple identities in terms of how they perceived and projected themselves and how they were seen by others. Their lives reinforce the overlapping interactions between the personal, factional, regional and national in how individuals experienced the British Revolutions. Their careers help illustrate the complexities of the experience and limits of the British Revolutions in South Wales and being Welsh in Cromwell’s British state.