Newtown Hall
One of the most colourful characters in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography is Sir John Pryce, the 5th Baronet of Newtown Hall, Montgomeryshire.
The son of Sir Vaughan and Anne Pryce, he was born c.1698, and married three times. His first wife was his cousin Elizabeth of Broadway, Carmarthenshire, “a Lady of Singular Piety, Goodness & Charity” who died in 1731.
His second wife, Mary, was a local farmer’s daughter. He kept the marriage a secret, and it was assumed that she was his concubine, and she possibly died of shame. After her death, he wrote to the curate of Newtown, who was on his deathbed, asking him to deliver messages of affection to both his wives in Heaven. In her elegy he affirmed that with his last breath he would “lisp Maria’s name.”
Before long, however, he was courting Eleanor Jones of Buckland, Breconshire. Sir John, always referred to as an eccentric, had embalmed the bodies of his first two wives and kept them in his bedroom, one on each side of his bed. Eleanor refused to marry him until the bodies were removed and buried. After her death he invited Bridget Bostock, the ‘Cheshire Pythoness,’ a well-known faith-healer to bring her back to life. He seems to have full confidence in her, as shown in his letter: ‘I cannot but look uppon such operations to be miraculous … why may not an infinitely good & gracious God enable you to raise the Dead as well as to heal the Sick? … I intreat you … to raise up my dear wife … for my heart is ready to break with grief’. She ‘exerted all her miracle working powers’, but was unsuccessful.
He died in straitened circumstances on the 28th of October, 1761, and was buried at Haverfordwest.