He was commissioned ensign and lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards on 21 November 1777, and promoted to lieutenant and captain on 22 March 1781. He was taken prisoner in the capitulation at Yorktown on 19 October. He was promoted captain and lieutenant-colonel on 14 May 1790, retiring from the Army on 4 December 1792.[4]
He became an MP for Brecon (1787–1796) and later for the County of Monmouth (1796–1831),[5] supporting the government of Lord Liverpool. He adopted the name of Morgan in 1792, at the same time as his father, and inherited the Tredegar estate of his Uncle John from his mother in 1797.[1]
Landowner and industrialist
In 1806, he succeeded to the baronetcy.[6] He also succeeded his father as a Bailiff on the board of the Bedford Level Corporation from 1807 to 1827,[7] and was Recorder for Newport from 1807 to 1835.[1] He was considered a good landlord, and held annual cattle shows on his Tredegar Park estate.[6]
His political opponent, John Frost, referred to him as "a handsome little man ... possessed of great power". By 1820, he had amassed an income of about £40,000 a year from his estates and investments.[1]
Morgan (then still Gould) married Mary Margaret (or Mary Magdalen)[6] Stoney, daughter of Capt. George Stoney R.N., in 1791, and they had eight children, four sons and four daughters.[8][2] He did not remarry after her death in 1807.[9]
^Leslie Gilbert Pine (1972). The New Extinct Peerage, 1884–1971: Containing Extinct, Abeyant, Dormant & Suspended Peerages with Genealogies and Arms. Heraldry Today. p. 272. ISBN978-0-900455-23-0.
^Burke, Bernard (1903). Ashworth P. Burke (ed.). A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage, the Privy Council, Knightage and Companionage (65th ed.). London: Harrison and Sons. p. 1503.