Rowland Dawkins

Rowland Dawkins was kin of Griffith Lloyd, and probably, through his marriage to Mary Bowen, also kin of Philip Jones. Dawkins, like Jones, was born in Glamorgan, and similarly on the fringes of gentry status. Dawkins, with Jones, was seen as one of a clique who effectively ran South Wales. Dawkins, with Cromwell’s institution of the rule of the Major-Generals, was appointed as one of the deputies to Cromwell’s Major-General of Wales, James Berry. Dawkins, like Lloyd and Jones, used his increasing influence, and wealth, to extend his land holding. Like others who had profited during the 1650s, the Restoration changed Dawkins’s fortunes and he also, in Chancery, faced proceedings, some alongside Jones that illustrate their shared personal interests, that saw some embittered from the 1650s seek redress against him. While he was arrested at least once after the Restoration, Dawkins remained a committed open non-conformist and was able to navigate the changed political circumstances as a relatively prosperous member of the Puritan Pennard community in his native Glamorgan, a community which Cromwell had supported in Parliament in 1642.