About: John Owen (Royalist)

Sir John Owen of Clenennau (1600–1666), was a Welsh landowner best known for his service as a Royalist officer during the English Civil War, during which he held a variety of commands in North Wales. The Earl of Clarendon, in his history of the war, noted that Owen described himself as "a plain gentleman of Wales, who had been always taught to obey the King"; by contrast Cromwell referred to Owen in passing as "a violent man, now got into trouble enough". Following the Second Civil War he was sentenced to death in 1649 for treason and the murder of a Parliamentarian official, William Lloyd, but was later reprieved. At the Restoration he was made Vice-Admiral of North Wales, dying in 1666.