[4] At the 1812 General Election, he successfully contested the Pembrokeshire county seat as well as the boroughs, in opposition to Frederick Campbell, the heir to Lord Cawdor, whose estate at Stackpole was only two miles from Orielton.

[5] The poll for the county election remained open for eleven days and proved so costly that Owen was obliged to raise a mortgage on part of his estate.

Writing to Sir James Graham many years later in 1841, Owen admitted that this contest marked the beginnings of the financial difficulties that overshadowed his later career.

[6] Following his electoral success, albeit with a heavy financial cost, Owen chose to sit for the county, and held that seat until 1841,[1] when he was returned to the House of Commons for Pembroke Boroughs until his death in 1861,[7] aged 84.

When the government fell shortly afterwards, Owen found that he would be opposed at the General Election by Robert Fulke Greville, who was supported by Lord Kensington.

[10] Opposition was growing, however, and Owen was criticised both for his lax attendance at the Commons and the considerable income that he derived from church patronage in Pembrokeshire.

Lawyers engaged by both candidates scrutinised the voting and in his account of the contest, David Williams states that the result was largely determined by the influence of the landed gentry.

[17] In 1836 Sir John Owen fought a duel at Gumfreston Hall near Tenby with William Richards, a former mayor of the town who was badly wounded in the event.

He opposed Derby's Reform Bill in 1859 and a few weeks before his death his son and heir contested the Pembrokeshire county seat as a Liberal candidate.

However, debts incurred from running for Parliament and losses caused by water inundation in one of his coal mines meant that he had to sell the house to avoid bankruptcy.

The inundation of Garden Pit on 14 February 1844 killed 40 miners, some of whom were probably female - despite the passage two years earlier of the Mines and Collieries Act, which forbad women and girls (and boys under ten) from working underground.