John Arnold of Monmouthshire dating history

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John Arnold, widely known as John Arnold of Monmouthshire (c.– 1702), was an English Protestant politician and Whig MP. He was one of the most prominent people in the Welsh county of Monmouthshire in the late 17th century. Arnold represented the constituencies around Monmouth (known as the Monmouth Boroughs) and Southwark in Parliament in the 1680s and 1690s. Arnold was also a notable priest hunter during the religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Wales. His strongly anti-Catholic and Whiggist beliefs and private war against underground local Catholic priests, such as St David Lewis, and Recusant laity made Arnold a particularly unpopular and controversial figure in his native Monmouthshire. In his later years, his behaviour became increasingly eccentric, and he was widely believed to have faked an attempt on his own life. Amongst his close associates, particularly during the anti-Catholic moral panic and witch hunt based on the conspiracy theory known as the Popish plot, were fellow Whigs Titus Oates and Lord Shaftesbury. More recently, Jan Morris dubbed Arnold, "the most ferocious... of all the persecutors of the Catholics in Wales".