Catalogue description Egerton Papers. (Described at item level).

There was a longstanding feud in progress between the families of Egerton of Talacre [in Llanasa, Flintshire] and Morgan of Goldgreave [Golden Grove in Llanasa, Flintshire].

In August 1608 Edward Morgan junior insulted Sir John Egerton. An incident also occurred when Edward Egerton's servants went to Goldgreave to recover a bird lost during hawking. An acrimonious correspondence took place between him and Edward Morgan junior, in which Egerton invited Morgan to retract certain statements he had made concerning Sir John Egerton. Morgan refused and invited Egerton to fight him. Nearly two years later the quarrel was resumed in London, when John Egerton, junior, brother of Edward, accidentally met Edward Morgan at Prince Henry's Court in Whitehall. A further correspondence resulted in a duel being arranged for 21 April 1610. During or after the duel Morgan was wounded and Egerton killed.

Egerton's family maintained he had been murdered - there were three wounds in his body which they claimed had been inflicted deliberately after the duel while Egerton was trapped in a hedge. A large number of statements were taken from Morgan and his brother William (his second), William Robinson (Egerton's second) and other witnesses, some of them contradictory or even self-contradictory. The Egerton family maintained that Morgan had friends in high places who were protecting him by delaying the trial, packing juries, labouring witnesses etc. Jane Raye, who was accused of suborning witnesses in the case.

According to Henry Taylor, in Historic Notices of the Borough and County-Town of Flint (London, 1883) p. 127 Edward Morgan died in 1611, so it is possible that the trial remained unfinished at his death.