>aTr- 
 
 6 
 
 3r 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ERAS OF NONCONFORMITY. 
 
 Edited by 
 Rev. C. SILVESTER HORNE, M.A. 
 
 A Series of 13 volumes, embracing the complete 
 history of the Free Churches of Britain. To be 
 published during 1904-5. Size foolscap Svo, 
 uniformly bound in cloth, gilt, price is. bd. each. 
 
 I. Our Lollard Ancestors. 'iReady. 
 
 By Rev. W. II. Summers. 
 
 n. The Story of the Anabaptists. ,, 
 
 By Rev. E. C. Pike, B.A. 
 
 IIL Baptist and Congregational Pioneers. [£'a;'/j/ 1905. 
 By Rev. J. H. Shake.speare, M.A. 
 
 rV. Nonconformity in "Wales. {^Ready. 
 
 By Rev. H. Elvet Lewis. 
 
 V. The Friends. [During 1904. 
 
 By T. Edmund Harvey, M.A. 
 
 VI. Commonwealth England. [Nov., 1904. 
 
 By Rev. John Brown, D.D., of Bedford. 
 
 VII. From the Restoration to the Revolution. [Ready. 
 By Rev. John Brown, D.D. , of Bedford, 
 
 VIII. Nonconformity in Scotland. [Oct., 1904. 
 
 By W. Grinton Berry, M.A. 
 
 IX. The Methodist Revival. [During 1904. 
 
 By Rev. Fred L. Wiseman, B.A. 
 
 X. Modem Developments in Methodism. [Early 1905. 
 
 XI. Nonconformity in the Nineteenth Century. [Dec. , 
 By Rev. C. Silvester Horne, M.A. [1904. 
 
 XJI. Foreign Missions. [Early 1905. 
 
 By Rev. G. CuRRiE Martin, M.A., B.D. 
 
 XIII. The Free Churches beyond the Seas. [Early 1905. 
 
 National Council of the Evangelical Free Churches, 
 London : Thomas Law, Memorial Hall, E.G.
 
 ERAS OF NONCONFORMITY 
 
 IV 
 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES
 
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 f(<r'^ 1 NOV. 1920
 
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 NONCONFORMITY 
 
 IN WALES 
 
 H. ELVET .LEWIS 
 
 NATIONAL COUNCIL OF EVANGELICAL FREE CHURCHES 
 
 London : Thomas Law, Memorial Hall, E.G. 
 
 MCMIV
 
 
 J 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 THE extent of years covered by this 
 volume has made it necessary to 
 deviate somewhat from the plan of the other 
 volumes in the series, covering, as they do, a 
 shorter period. It was deemed unadvisable 
 to multiply the names of places and persons : 
 typical instances have been for the most part 
 taken to represent the rest. 
 
 Much assistance in preparing it has been 
 obtained from Dr. Thomas Rees's history of 
 Welsh Nonconformity ; but we have ventured 
 to form our own conclusions on some of the 
 questions involved. Recent researches have 
 tended to modify some of his inferences ; and 
 we have made use of what has been published 
 on both sides. Into the inner controversy we 
 have not unnecessarily ventured. 
 
 We have endeavoured to go back in each 
 
 rs908{)2
 
 INTRODUCTOR Y 
 
 instance to original sources. Autobiographical 
 or contemporary witness has been advisedly 
 used and incorporated. We feel the bias of 
 "personal equation" in these testimonies: 
 but they are vivid ; and the prudent can 
 rightly value the equation. 
 
 We should have liked to give more space 
 to the story of Nonconformity in Wales 
 during the nineteenth century ; but we felt 
 that origins were more important for the 
 purpose of this series than organisation. 
 
 It will help the reader of this — and, indeed, 
 of any — history of Welsh religion, if he 
 keeps in mind that the term " Methodist," 
 standing by itself, always signifies " Cal- 
 vinistic " and not " Wesleyan." Calvinistic 
 Methodism is more akin to Presbyterianism 
 in its organisation than to Wesleyanism.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Death of a Martyr and Birth of a Book . i 
 
 II. 
 
 Independent and Baptist . . . .12 
 
 III. 
 Cromwell's Days . . . . -23 
 
 IV. 
 
 Through Persecution to Toleration . . 44 
 
 V. 
 
 Between Two Periods . . . -57 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Great Revival . . . . .68
 
 Xn CONTENTS 
 
 VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Welsh Calvinistic Methodism . . • 79 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Wesleyan Methodism . . . -93 
 
 IX. 
 
 Fusion of Forces . . . . -99 
 
 Index
 
 I 
 
 DEATH OF A MARTYR AND BIRTH 
 OF A BOOK 
 
 IN Wales it was a case of the " Reform- 
 ation tarrying." When the religious 
 houses, which had to the last afforded some 
 encouragement to native literature and some 
 shelter to national education and religion, 
 were by royal warrant rifled and dismantled, 
 the Principality was left bare. The abbot 
 who loved wine and books, went ; the bishop 
 who took his place plundered the diocese to 
 provide dowries for his daughters. The 
 priest of the old faith was silenced or 
 banished ; his successor, in most cases, either 
 could not preach at all or could only preach 
 in English. Henry VII., Welsh though he was 
 and conspicuously helped to the throne by 
 Welsh auxiliaries, had no mind for the indi- 
 vidual preferences and separate ideals of an 
 " old and haughty nation, proud in arms." 
 
 2 ^
 
 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 His son and his grandchildren held to the 
 same policy of mixing their favours to Wales 
 with a uniform idea of making the people 
 live under English laws, use English speech, 
 and practise the forms and accept the creed 
 of English religion. These enactments, 
 while they impoverished the people's faith, 
 broadened their general life in many direc- 
 tions. Young men of promise found open 
 doors to university and court ; and by the 
 time of Elizabeth there was scarcely a parent, 
 however poor — according to a contemporary's 
 witness — that did not somehow find means 
 to fit the choicest of his sons for high honours 
 in civil or ecclesiastical law, in the service of 
 the nobility, and prominent offices of State. 
 The glory of the world shone alluringly 
 before them ; but their soul was famished. 
 
 The people clung to the last shadows of 
 the passing faith — its images and relics. The 
 hunting and collecting of these became a 
 trade ; and the seizing of the chief of them, 
 the huge armoured image of Dervel Gadarn in 
 the valley of the Dee, gives Thomas Crom- 
 well's agent an opportunity of sending his 
 master a glowing report as of a closing 
 triumph. That very month of April, 
 1538, in which the monster was 
 captured — to be finally used in the fire
 
 DEATH OF A MARTYR — BIRTH OF A BOOK 3 
 
 which burnt a friar for denying the King's 
 supremacy over the Church — some five or six 
 hundred pilgrims Had come to pay homage 
 to it, " some with kine, others with oxen 
 or horses, and the rest with money." It was 
 believed by them that an offering might win 
 Dervel's favour and aid to deliver them, in 
 case of need, out of hell itself 
 
 The Marian persecution reveals how in- 
 effective, generally, the Protestant movement 
 
 had been in Wales. Only three won 
 1555 
 
 the honour of martyrdom; and of 
 
 the three — Bishop Ferrar at Carmarthen, 
 Rawlings White at Cardiff, and William 
 Nichol at Haverfordwest — it is doubtful if 
 one of them was Welsh by speech. Almost 
 the only sign of native sympathy is fur- 
 nished by a Welsh poem {cywydd) — con- 
 temporary, or nearly so — on the burning 
 of Ferrar ; the poet relating as a didactic 
 incident of the execution that a blacksmith 
 who had struck the bishop died himself of 
 the blow : precisely how, the poet does not 
 explain. Still earlier, a poet had written two 
 or three poems, interceding for the release 
 of two prisoners of conscience for their 
 Puritan faith, confined in Swansea Gaol. 
 But what perhaps is more suggestive is that 
 the localities where these men suffered and
 
 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 died became the birthplaces of Noncon- 
 formity. Carmarthen, Swansea, and Cardiff, 
 as we shall relate, seem to have kept alive 
 the solitary fires kindled by the martyrs' 
 courage till others came to make it glowingly 
 burn and widely spread. Persecution, then as 
 always, became the unwilling foster-mother of 
 its victims' faith. 
 
 Tudor Protestantism came to Wales in 
 foreign guise ; the old faith, corrupt as it 
 was, had at least a homely native tongue. 
 Some of the most devoted patriots of Wales 
 in Elizabethan days were banished priests. 
 Dr. Griffith Roberts, Rhosier Smith, Morris 
 Clynnog, and Hugh Owen knew how to 
 write exquisite Welsh ; and they found 
 printing-presses in Milan or Rouen to issue 
 their forlorn little volumes in defence of 
 the Catholic faith; while at home the new 
 faith was too much in the charge of English- 
 speaking bishops and non-preaching in- 
 cumbents. An Act passed in 1564 confesses 
 that Her Majesty's most loving and obedient 
 subjects in Wales remained " in the like, or 
 rather more, darkness and ignorance than 
 they were in the time of papistry." Twenty- 
 two years later it is reported of the county 
 of Brecknock : " The livings are nearly all 
 impropriate, with no preachers, but ignorant
 
 DEATH OF A MARTYR — BIRTH OF A BOOK 5 
 
 and unlearned ministers. Seldom or never 
 
 is there Evening Prayer." But while this 
 
 might be true of the outward aspect of things 
 
 in most parts of Wales, there had been 
 
 silent energies at work, between 1560 and 
 
 1580, which were now to bring about entire 
 
 change. Some of her own sons had learnt 
 
 to pity her desolation and listen to her cry of 
 
 need. 
 
 A young man, who had left his native hills 
 
 in Brecknockshire a child of the dying faith, 
 
 ,^„_ came in Cambridge under the new 
 158T 
 
 influences. He passed through 
 
 severe intellectual struggles, and came out of 
 them a whole-hearted patriot and something 
 more than an Elizabethan Protestant. In 
 1587 John Penry published his Treatise con- 
 taining the Aequity of an Humble Supplication, 
 in which he pleaded with Her Majesty and 
 her Parliament for some order to be taken for 
 the preaching of the Gospel in Wales. He 
 was only 28 years of age, and all the fire 
 of faith is in his awakened sorrow and 
 passionate pleading. " This I dare affirm," 
 he writes, " and stand to, that if a view of 
 all the registries in Wales be taken, the 
 name of that shire, that towne, or of that 
 parishe, cannot be found, where for the space 
 of six yeres together within these 29
 
 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 years, a godly and learned minister hath 
 executed the dutie of a faithful teacher, and 
 approved his ministry in any meane sort." 
 
 His "humble supplication " landed him in 
 prison, where he remained a month waiting 
 for his examination. When his declaration, 
 that no clergyman who did not preach could 
 be a true Christian minister, was pronounced 
 to be an intolerable heresy, Penry replied, " I 
 thank God that I ever knew such a heresy, as 
 I will, by the grace of God, sooner leave 
 my life than leave it." After a further 
 imprisonment he was set free. But perse- 
 cution had helped him to taste the joy of 
 a good conscience; and as soon as he was 
 free he gave himself anew to his country's 
 cause. In 1588 he published two tracts, 
 one addressed as before to Parliament, the 
 other directly to the people of Wales — the 
 latter an "Exhortation" to help themselves 
 by contributing of their own free will towards 
 the maintenance of a preaching ministry. As 
 happens always to a brave soul, his ideals 
 grew purer through suffering. He was nearer 
 being a Free Churchman when calling shame 
 to his countrymen unless they gave of their 
 own to have salvation made known unto 
 them, than when putting his trust in Parlia- 
 ment and its Queen.
 
 DEATH OF A MARTYR BIRTH OF A BOOK J 
 
 When, after many wanderings and narrow 
 escapes, he returned from Scotland to Lon- 
 don in 1592, he joined the Southwark com- 
 munity led by Barrowe and Greenwood, and 
 helped in their services, but refused office, on 
 the ground of his loyal purpose to employ 
 his " small talent," as he called it, " in my 
 poor country of Wales, where I know that 
 the poor people perish for want of know- 
 ledge." This purpose he was never permitted 
 even to initiate : he, the " first since the last 
 springing up of the Gospel in this latter age," 
 as he claimed, to ^^ labour to have the blessed 
 seed thereof sown in those barren moun- 
 tains," was robbed of his opportunity by his 
 early martyrdom. The good seed was in his 
 
 hand ; the " barren mountains " 
 1593 ' 
 
 were m sight, wmtry as yet, but 
 with faint signs of spring growing legible : 
 he was hurried to the gallows : the moun- 
 tains had to wait for other hands to sow the 
 seed. He was hanged May 29, 1593, the 
 warrant being signed by Archbishop Whit- 
 gift. But the glad dawning, in which his 
 soul had stood trembling with fearful joy, 
 did not fail ; slowly it grew into open day 
 over his dishonoured grave, and spread over 
 the mountains which had won and grieved 
 his heart.
 
 8 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 The Act of 1564, already referred to, 
 
 ordered a translation of the Bible to be made 
 
 into Welsh, and published under 
 
 ^±&B^ the supervision of the four Welsh 
 bishops, together with the Bishop 
 of Hereford, whose diocese was more dis- 
 tinctly Welsh then than it has come to be 
 since. It was to be ready and placed in the 
 churches by St. David's Day, 1566: or fail- 
 ing that, each of the five bishops would be 
 liable to a fine of £^0. The book did not 
 appear; but in 1567 the New Testament 
 only was published. The translation had 
 been done by a layman — William Salesbury, 
 assisted by Thomas Huet, Precentor, and 
 Richard Davies, Bishop, of St. David's. The 
 latter wrote a valuable preface, in which, 
 among other things, he sorrowfully contrasts 
 the secular prosperity of his country with its 
 religious desolation : " God will not again 
 drown the world with the water of the 
 Deluge ; but the desire of the world's good 
 things has to-day drowned Wales, and 
 brought decay on every particular faculty and 
 noble virtue." He appeals to the patriotic 
 sentiment of his countrymen, by quoting 
 ancient proverbs and bardic complaints 
 against Rome, to show that " the ancient faith 
 of the Britons had its root in the Word of
 
 DEATH OF A MARTYR — BIRTH OF A BOOK Q 
 
 God " before it was corrupted from Rome. 
 " Fall thou on thy knees," he cries, " and 
 give thanks to God, who hath this day in 
 mercy visited thee, and hath begun to raise 
 thee to thine ancient privilege and chief 
 honour of yore, making thee now partake of 
 His blessed Word, and sending thee the 
 Holy Testament. ... Go forward, therefore, 
 and read." 
 
 The translation, in many respects, was 
 only tentative ; in orthography and diction 
 it lacked much of the strength and charm of 
 a home-born version. It was not before 1588 
 that Wales received its complete Bible, done 
 by another and more exquisite hand. Dr. 
 William Morgan ministered to the parish of 
 Llanrhaiadr Mochnant, Montgomeryshire ; 
 and here, in the seclusion of the hills, he gave 
 himself to his life-work. There may be 
 some foundation for the tradition that he 
 had his early education from one of the 
 scholarly fugitives of the monasteries ; in 
 any case, he had somehow inherited their 
 patriotic regard for the language and national 
 sentiments of his countrymen. In his dedi- 
 catory epistle to Queen Elizabeth, with some 
 courage — bated, it is true, but still courage, 
 in view of the Tudor infirmity of a dream of 
 all-embracing uniformity — he answers those
 
 10 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 who think it would be better for " our nation 
 to learn English than translate the Scriptures 
 into our tongue," warning them lest they 
 should "expel religion in the very pursuit of 
 agreement." He concedes that it might be 
 desirable for the inhabitants of one island to 
 have one tongue ; but are the people of God 
 to be starved of His Word, while learning a 
 strange tongue? "Besides, religious concord 
 can undoubtedly do more towards peace 
 than lingual concord. And it is no pious act 
 to consider interest before religion and out- 
 ward agreement before the peace which the 
 Word of God establishes in the minds of 
 men." 
 
 In this spirit Dr. Morgan pursued his task, 
 assisted by Edmund Prys, Archdeacon of 
 Merioneth ; Dr. David Powell ; Dr. Richard 
 Vaughan, then of Lutterworth, later Bishop 
 of London. He revised, for his New Testa- 
 ment, Salesbury's version of 1 567 ; but the 
 stamp of his own remarkable genius is on 
 the whole work. Its strength and beauty of 
 diction, the coining of new words and 
 adaptation of old words, its accuracy, and, 
 at the same time, amplitude of translation, 
 combine to make it a remarkable achieve- 
 ment. It was revised by Bishop Parry, and 
 a new edition was published in 1620; and
 
 DEATH OF A MARTYR — BIRTH OF A BOOK II 
 
 this, strictly speaking, is the Authorised 
 Version in Wales. But the foundation, and 
 the best part of the whole, is Dr. Morgan's. 
 
 His work was not carried on without 
 difificulty. His parishioners made some 
 complaints, now undecipherable, against him. 
 This brought him to the presence of Arch- 
 bishop Whitgift, who was so favourably 
 impressed with his scholarship and his learn- 
 ing that he became his patron, and helped 
 him to publish his Bible. Let it not be 
 forgotten that the same powerful ecclesiastic 
 had a share in giving Wales the two greatest 
 gifts of the sixteenth century — its first Free 
 Church martyr and its first Welsh Bible, 
 so unconsciously avenging the death of the 
 man by the publication of the Book. For 
 both the gifts lie at the root of Noncon- 
 formity, and survive in all its best growth. 
 When the first Welsh Bible of 1588 reached 
 the Churches of Wales it had in it the seed 
 of all future reformation and Christian 
 liberties. Penry's prophecy was to be 
 abundantly fulfilled that the Bible was to 
 be the means " whereby the Lord hath 
 decreed to make cleare unto all men, in 
 Wales, what the fellowship is of the mysterie, 
 which from the beginning of the world hath 
 bin hid in God."
 
 II 
 
 INDEPENDENT AND BAPTIST 
 
 THE Anglican Church had its national 
 opportunity in Wales when the seven- 
 teenth century dawned. It had rich patrons, it 
 had great scholars ; it had its Welsh Bible and 
 Common Prayer; and in 1621 it received 
 another valuable auxiliary, Archdeacon Prys's 
 metrical version of the Psalms. But time 
 after time it has been the calamity of this 
 Church to move apart from the people's 
 inmost life. Now and again it has been smitten 
 with patriotic ideals — sometimes deeply, but 
 never lastingly. Occasionally a leader tries 
 courageously to keep step with the nation in 
 some onward movement ; but early or late 
 repentance overtakes him and leads him back 
 to his own alien ranks. Had there been a 
 succession of native bishops of the calibre 
 and of the temper of Richard Davies and 
 William Morgan — had the prophecy of the
 
 INDEPENDENT AND BAPTIST 1 3 
 
 latter in 1588 been fulfilled, that the new 
 book would increase the number and 
 efficiency of preachers — had the former's 
 impressive picture been realised of a pure and 
 undefiled religion flourishing through the 
 " diligent preaching of ordained ministers, the 
 active fidelity of spiritual watchmen and 
 incumbents in planting and sowing the law of 
 the Lord," — Wales would not have been so 
 disastrously lost to Anglicanism. But the 
 unredeemed alienism of the Church chilled, 
 and chills, the warmth of her patriot hours, 
 whenever they come upon her ; and she has 
 repeatedly forfeited her choicest opportunities. 
 The preaching host did not arrive ; the 
 diligent watchmen were too few. Penry's 
 " idol shepherds " were too secure in their 
 place. " The dumb priests and swollen 
 preachers," said Morgan Llwyd in 1653, 
 recalling the state of the Church in his early 
 days, " laid us waste. There was not to be 
 found a man of God in four hundred. . . . 
 The word through them was neither hammer 
 to break the stone, nor fire to consume the 
 flesh, nor wheat to feed the conscience, but as 
 chaff and dreams — namely, light vacant 
 sermons. Therefore art thou, O Wales, till 
 to-day unhealed ; and also because thou hast 
 made light of the few beams which appeared
 
 14 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 in some, and hast shut thine eyes from seeing 
 
 and acknowledging the dayspring." The few 
 
 exceptionsjof devout churchmen and preaching 
 
 priests, only made the general dearth more 
 
 acute. So the Reformation still tarried. But 
 
 the Book was in the land : not in the homes 
 
 and hands of the people as yet, it is true, still 
 
 it was growing more and more audible. Nor 
 
 was the spirit of Penry dead, though his name 
 
 and memory suffered long eclipse. Puritanism 
 
 had arrived, and was even touching the pulpit 
 
 — much to the concern of Laud, when he 
 
 became Bishop of St. David's in 162 1. Here 
 
 he found himself free to develop his 
 
 High Church ideas : he forced his clergy to 
 
 restore Roman rites and ornaments, long 
 
 disused : the communion-table became an 
 
 altar, to which the people had to bow ; 
 
 candles and robes, and piety in colours 
 
 became the command and the custom. 
 
 The testing time had come with some 
 
 sharpness in 16 16, when the Book of Sports 
 
 was ordered to be read in all the 
 1633 
 
 churches by the King, who five 
 
 years previously, had sanctioned the 
 
 Authorised Version of the Bible for their 
 
 use. In 1633, under the supervision of 
 
 Laud — now Archbishop — the order for the 
 
 reading of the Book of Sports was re-
 
 INDEPENDENT AND BAPTIST I 5 
 
 vived and vigorously pressed. This was 
 the beginning of the end. Consciences 
 already ill at ease, became more restive : 
 " inconformity " was growing to be some- 
 thing more than a pious opinion ; we are 
 now in sight of positive, constructive Non- 
 conformity. 
 
 Between the death of John Penry in 1587 
 and the formation of the first Welsh Free 
 Church there is a period of over fifty 
 years. But the "inconformity" 
 which had been marked in more than one 
 Welsh diocese during those years was grow- 
 ing assertive. " My lord of St. David's " 
 certifies Laud that he had in 1632 "suspended 
 a lecturer for his inconformity,"and promises to 
 " take great care hereafter to whom he gives 
 holy orders." He of Llandaff also certifies 
 that he has visited in person William Erbery, 
 vicar of St. Mary's, Cardiff, and has found 
 him and his curate, Walter Cradock, guilty 
 of " preaching very schismatically and 
 dangerously." He, too, has risen bravely to 
 his duty, admonishing the vicar, and suspend- 
 ing the " bold, ignorant, young fellow " of a 
 curate. All this testifies to the embarrassing 
 presence of a newer life. In 1636 Erbery 
 and Wroth are in the High Commission 
 Court for " schismatical proceedings." The
 
 1 6 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 " slow prosecution there against them " 
 grieves the soul of the Bishop of Llandaff. 
 
 Apparently, no distinct fellowship was 
 formed till 1639, when the Independent 
 Church at Llavaches, near Chepstow, was 
 established. Among those taking part in its 
 formation was Henry Jessey, pastor of the 
 Independent Church at Southwark, from 
 which Penry had gone forth to his martyrdom. 
 So the seed, as from the dead sower's hand, 
 is sown on his " barren mountains," to bear 
 fruit, even to hundredfold. 
 
 The name most prominently associated 
 with this mother of Free Churches in South 
 Wales is that of its first pastor, William 
 Wroth. He was a native of the county of 
 Monmouth, and a graduate of Oxford, and 
 had held the living, probably, from the 
 beginning of the century. The tradition is, 
 that at first he, too, was of the "idol shep- 
 herds," worldly and frivolous. But a friend 
 of his, having won a lawsuit in London, sent 
 home the news, and invited a goodly company 
 to his house for the evening of his arrival to 
 join in festal celebration of the victory. 
 Wroth himself had brought a new violin to 
 aid in the mirth. All were on the tiptoe of 
 merry expectation, when a messenger arrived 
 with the tragic news of his master's death
 
 INDEPENDENT AND BAPTIST 1 7 
 
 on the journey. In the consternation Wroth 
 threw his violin aside, and fell on his knees 
 praying for God's mercy. That day he heard 
 the " serious call," and obeyed. How long 
 this happened before 1639 we cannot say. 
 " For the powerfulness and efficaciousness of 
 his preaching," says the writer of the Broad- 
 mead Records, " with the exemplary holiness 
 of his life, he was called the Apostle of 
 Wales. ... By his ministry it pleased the 
 Lord to convert many, so that they left 
 their sinful courses in the world ; after which 
 he caused them to separate from the worship 
 of the world, and gathered them into the 
 Gospel order of Church government." Llan- 
 vaches became a centre of missionary in- 
 fluence : " like Antioch," to use the words 
 of Henry Jessey's biographer, "the mother 
 Church in that gentile countrey." 
 
 Of this and other early Independent 
 Churches Baptists were as prominent 
 members as Paedobaptists. In the case of 
 Llanvaches there was a Baptist co-pastor 
 with Wroth — viz., William Thomas. Gradu- 
 ally, however, the section of Baptists which 
 believed in close communion took separate 
 form. Their first leader of note was John 
 Myles, sent with Thomas Proud to form 
 the Church at Ilston, near Swansea, by the 
 3
 
 1 8 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 Church then meeting at the Glass House, 
 Broad Street, London, as Henry Jessey had 
 been sent to Llanvaches. This formative 
 relationship of English Nonconformity to 
 the origins of Nonconformity in Wales is 
 pleasant and interesting to note. But it is 
 also pleasant to add that the Anglican 
 mistake of forcing the development of Welsh 
 piety into English moulds was not com- 
 mitted. Their English brethren came to 
 advise, to encourage, and instruct, but not to 
 overrule. Independents and Baptists used 
 native speech, and followed the patriotic 
 ways of an older British faith, Down to 
 the present day many of their methods are 
 peculiar to themselves, and distinct from 
 those of the same two denominations in 
 England. The architects of a nation's faith 
 must be her own sons, breathing of her 
 inmost spirit ; others — strangers — may lay 
 the foundation : her own sons must build. 
 
 So far Nonconformity, as expressed in 
 terms of a Church, seems confined to South 
 Wales, and to a district in it, previously 
 touched by Lollardism, and lighted by the 
 Marian fires of martyrdom. But the 
 messages were winged ; for Erbery, writing 
 in his Apocrypha of 1652, says: "Let all 
 the English Counties about them testifie, and
 
 INDEPENDENT AND BAPTIST 1 9 
 
 they will tell how many saints from Somerset, 
 
 Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Radnor, and 
 
 Glamorganshire came in multitudes with 
 
 delight to Llanvaghes. What light and 
 
 labour in the Spirit was there ! — how 
 
 heavenly - minded ! — what holy language 
 
 among them ! — what watching ! — what 
 
 prayers night and day in the way they 
 
 went, in the work they did, at the plough ; 
 
 everywhere in private that Spirit of prayer 
 
 and pureness of heart appeared." 
 
 One by one Churches were formed in 
 
 other districts during the next ten years, 
 
 ..-.^ -^ some on the Llanvaches found- 
 1640-50 
 
 ation (z>.," Independents and Bap- 
 tist mixed, yet united in communion ") ; and 
 others on the Ilston foundation of close 
 communion. In Glamorganshire there are 
 Churches at Cardiff, Llantrisant, Merthyr, 
 Mynydd Bach, Swansea and Neath ; in 
 Carmarthenshire, at Carmarthen, Pentre Ty 
 Gwyn, Capel Isaac, Henllan, Llanedi, and 
 Pencader ; in Brecknockshire, at Hay, Troed 
 Rhiw Dalar and Olchon (on the borders) ; 
 in Radnorshire, at Llanigon ; in Monmouth- 
 shire, a.t Penmain, Abergavenny and New- 
 port. In North Wales nothing can be 
 definitely traced further back than 1646 — 
 though a " conventicle of mean persons " is
 
 20 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 reported in 1640 as being laid hold on 
 somewhere in the diocese of St. Asaph. The 
 Northern Churches of 1646 were Llan Bryn 
 Mair and Llanvyllin, in Montgomeryshire ; 
 and Wrexham. Pwllheli, in Carnarvonshire, 
 also dates from 1650. It should be under 
 stood, of course, in each case, that the date of 
 forming a Church reflects the light backwards, 
 suggesting rather than narrating the pre- 
 paratory missionary work — carried on, it 
 may be, for years — which made such a result 
 possible. The wide area from which the 
 congregations of Llanvaches were gathered 
 gives a prospect of far-spread influence and 
 immeasurable activity. The spirit of evan- 
 gelism had come not only on the ministers 
 but on the people also. But let it be re- 
 membered that in comparison with the mass 
 of the people Nonconformists were few and 
 scattered ; and their state was more experi- 
 mental than organic. 
 
 William Wroth died in the spring of 1642 : 
 the same year, in the month of August, the 
 
 1642 ^^^^^ ^^^ began. It found Wales 
 overwhelmingly Royalist — for 
 King and Church : nobleman and peasant, 
 scholar and poet. But before the death of 
 Cromwell a great change had taken place ; 
 Free Church ideals, as conceived by Inde-
 
 INDEPENDENT AND BAPTIST 21 
 
 pendent or Presbyterian, by Baptist or 
 Quaker, had touched and moved large 
 portions of the people. Walter Cradock, 
 who took up the work left by Wroth, and 
 who had to flee to England when the war 
 broke out, and became "preacher at Hallows 
 Great in London," in his sermon on Good 
 Newes to the Worst of Sinners (published in 
 1648,) declares — 
 
 " I use not to tell stories, but let me tell 
 you this one thing : since I have been from 
 you of late, I have observed, and seen, in 
 the Mountaines of Wales, the most glorious 
 that ever I saw in England, unlesse it were 
 in London ; the Gospel is run over the 
 Mountaines between Brecknockshire and 
 Monmouthshire, as the fire in the thatch ; 
 and who should doe this ? They have no 
 ministers : but some of the wisest say, there 
 are about eight hundred godly people, and 
 they goe from one to another. They have no 
 ministers, it is true ; if they had, they would 
 honour them and blesse God for them : and 
 shall we raile at such, and say they are Tub- 
 preachers, and they were never at the 
 University? Let us fall downe, and honour 
 God ; what if God will honour Himself that 
 way ? They were filled with good newes, 
 and they tell it to others ; and therefore vex
 
 22 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 not at them, and say, *0, what times are 
 these ! ' and, ' What will become of us ? ' 
 ' Why, what is the businesse ? ' ' O, such a 
 man he was never Master of Arts, he was 
 never at the University, and he takes upon 
 him to preach ; ' when it may be he hath 
 more of God in him than I, and a hundred 
 that have all this." 
 
 It is worthy of note that this fruitful 
 awakening should be so intimately associated 
 with Penry's native county — some fifty years 
 after his martyrdom. Who can tell how 
 much of it was the harvest of his tears, and 
 of the prayers which he taught his wife and 
 children to pray for his native land ?
 
 Ill 
 
 CROMWELL'S DAYS 
 
 JOHN MYLES remained to carry on his 
 evangelising work till he emigrated, after 
 the Restoration, to America. In a Welsh 
 poem, by a violent Royalist, attacking the 
 tenets of the Baptists, nineteen besides him 
 are deemed worthy of insulting mention as 
 leaders of this special class of " fanatics." 
 These included, however, several who favoured 
 open communion ; such as Jenkin Jones, 
 evangelist of Radnorshire, and the still more 
 famous Vavasor Powell. The attack testifies 
 to their growing success. Indeed, the success 
 of the Baptists in the country generally had 
 so alarmed the Government as early as 1642 
 that the King issued a special direction to 
 " stop the overhasty growth of Anabaptism." 
 In Monmouthshire their " present growth and 
 increase" was such by 1653 as to cause grave 
 concern to the " pious watchmen of the 
 23
 
 24 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 Church," says a controversial opponent. 
 We have already quoted Cradock's testimony 
 in 1648 to the remarkable v;ork done in that 
 county and Brecknockshire through the zeal 
 of " godly men " itinerating in the interests 
 of the Gospel, A song by Morgan Llvvyd, 
 dated the same year, characterises the state 
 of Wales religiously then as a " spring in 
 spring " — 
 
 " Our head is high, 
 Our summer nigh." 
 
 But before we tell the story from within, 
 it is well to estimate some contributary aids 
 from without. 
 
 In 1630 there appeared a translation of 
 Bishop Bayley's Practice of Piciy and of 
 Dent's Easy Pathway to Heaven, 
 and, in 1632, of Parsons's Christian 
 Resolutions — all of them done by devout 
 Churchmen, and in charmingly idiomatic 
 Welsh. The character of the first may be 
 judged from the fact that doubts have been 
 cast on its authorship, and the name of a 
 Puritan minister substituted for that of the 
 bishop. The author of the second was a 
 Presbyterian minister who suffered much for 
 his Nonconformity. The translator, Robert 
 Llwyd, vicar of Chirk, would have been
 
 CROMWELL S DAYS 2$ 
 
 suspected of " inconformity " in the diocese 
 of St. David's, judging from the tone of his 
 preface : " Leave the playground, and the 
 bowls, and the inns, and the foot-ball, and 
 the tennis, and thy business : do these 
 becomingly in thine own days, if there be 
 cause : but serve God on His own day : or 
 else He will be offended with thee, and 
 whither wilt thou flee from Him ? . . . Thou 
 findest it easy to pay the musician his wages 
 on Sundays and feast-days, to kill thy chil- 
 dren's souls ; and canst thou give nothing to 
 save them ... in purchasing a few small 
 books in thine own speech and within the 
 compass of thine understanding, which shall 
 comfort thy soul, when the whole world can 
 profit thee nothing ? " The author of the last 
 of the three was the well-known Jesuit, Robert 
 Parsons ; and Dr. John Davies, vicar of 
 Mallwyd, the Welsh translator, used a 
 strongly Protestantised edition for his purpose. 
 Also in 1630 there appeared a popular edition 
 of the Welsh Bible. The editions of 1588 
 and 1620 had been for use in churches only ; 
 but this octavo edition, published at the 
 expense of two Welsh citizens of London, 
 was meant more for the private reader, the 
 price corresponding. In 1647 an edition of 
 the New Testament was published under the
 
 26 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 care of Vavasor Powell and Walter Cradock. 
 All these contributed to the nature and 
 growth of the new life ; and, except the last 
 named, they came from the Anglican Church. 
 
 But from within that Church the greatest 
 force in aid of Nonconformity was imparted 
 by the puritan vicar of Llandovery — Rhys 
 Prichard, who died in 1644. If traditions 
 are trustworthy, it was some years after his 
 ordination at Witham, and his return to 
 Wales in 1602, that his real conversion and 
 consecration took place. His fervent preach- 
 ing soon spread his fame far and wide ; when 
 he visited the cathedral church of St. David's 
 as preacher, a movable pulpit had to be 
 improvised, from which he preached in the 
 churchyard to the vast congregations. No 
 note is made of his view of the Book of Sports, 
 in 1617 or 1633. 
 
 If he refused to read it — as his songs might 
 lead us to expect — it is surmised that the 
 protection of influential friends sheltered him 
 from episcopal frowns. But possibly he con- 
 sidered conformity, with all its moral incon- 
 veniences, preferable to the unknown risks of 
 " inconformity." At any rate, in the book 
 which has made his name famous and pre- 
 served his influence to the present day, he is 
 a whole-hearted puritan. The Wels/unen's
 
 Cromwell's days 27 
 
 Candle, as his book of moral and religious 
 songs has been called, throws candid light 
 on the indolent or immoral clergyman, on 
 the gambling, drunken squire, on the igno- 
 rance and ungodliness of the common people, 
 on all the formalism and ritualism in the 
 Church. He is, in these folk-songs, a staunch 
 upholder of the Sabbath and of an active 
 evangelism, a preacher of personal repentance 
 and clean church-life. He pleads the cause 
 of the poor against rapacious officers of civil 
 law, and the grabbing of the rich. His songs 
 are written in Carmarthenshire dialect, or 
 almost so : as poetry, they have little artistic 
 value ; but for more than two centuries their 
 moral influence has been incalculable. They 
 were collected after his death and published, 
 not by a member of his own Church — signifi- 
 cantly enough — but by a great Free Church 
 propagandist, Stephen Hughes, "the apostle 
 of Carmarthenshire." Time after time the 
 Anglican Church in Wales has left the 
 harvest, for which her own sons had laboured, 
 to be reaped by other, more patriotic hands. 
 Its most famous clergyman in the first half 
 of the seventeenth century became the un- 
 witting ally of free religion. 
 
 In 1645 Walter Cradock, with two others, 
 were voted ^^^300 annually " out of the lands
 
 28 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 of the bishops, deans, and chapters of Llan- 
 dafif and St. David," to help to maintain 
 them in preaching the Gospel "itinerantly" 
 in South Wales. This was extended a few 
 months later to North Wales. Among the 
 special provisions of the latter act was one 
 for "sending down ministers that may be 
 able to preach in the Welsh tongue." In 
 1649 an Act for the Better Pro- 
 pagation and Preaching of the 
 Gospel in Wales made still larger provisions, 
 and on a somewhat different basis. It came 
 into force March, 1650, and specifically lasted 
 till 1653. It was not renewed, but its pro- 
 visions for maintenance were not withdrawn. 
 At first there seems to have been no recoil 
 from this open form of State aid. The leaders, 
 both Baptist and Independent, accepted 
 livings, or " lecture " appointments, which 
 meant an equivalent. But as the principles 
 of Nonconformity, in the clash of controversy 
 within and without, became clearer and more 
 distinct, misgivings were born. Erbery, in a 
 tract of 1652, declaring that "not a Prelate or 
 Presbyter appeares with power in all South 
 Wales to preach or pray," and after a cryptic 
 reference to Morgan Lhvyd — "a man going 
 into the inward world, and walking up to the 
 Eternal Spirit, not in word and in thought.
 
 Cromwell's days 29 
 
 but in deed and in truth " — goes on to say, 
 " In South Wales also, the chiefest of the 
 Pastors there forsakes not only his Tithes 
 but his forms of Prayer before and after 
 Sermon." Vavasor Powell declares that he 
 and many of his brethren "took no salary 
 at all, nor any other maintenance" after 1653. 
 The Baptists — especially the Arminian section 
 — became pioneers of a purely voluntary 
 principle: and in 1655 their church at Llan- 
 wenarth ^ made public protest and 
 threatened to withdraw from any 
 of their ministers who continued to accept 
 " maintenance from the magistrates." But it 
 was as yet the day of lonely voices : as usual, 
 persecution had to bring home to the many 
 the prophetic messages of the few. 
 
 The workers who, from 1630 to 1660, laid 
 hold of these varied auxiliary forces, and 
 wisely and effectually diverted them to the 
 redemption of Wales, were men of many 
 types. When Walter Cradock, in 1633, re- 
 fused to read the Book of Sports at St. 
 Mary's, Cardiff, he was not only, as we have 
 seen, excommunicated from the Church, but 
 banished from his home as an unworthy 
 son. He, the outcast of the Cross, became 
 its devoted pilgrim, visiting various districts 
 ' Near Abergavenny,
 
 30 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 in Brecknock, Radnor, and Montgomery, 
 preaching in farm-house kitchen, or grey- 
 barn, or open mountain-side, wherever an 
 audience could be obtained. He reached 
 Wrexham, and there made a considerable 
 and fruitful stay ; he had to leave through 
 the hostility of a maltster, who traced the 
 decline in the sale of his malt to Cradock's 
 preaching. Among his disciples are reckoned 
 the intrepid evangelist, Vavasor Powell, and 
 the prince of Welsh mystics, Morgan Llwyd. 
 He returned south and became Wroth's co- 
 pastor and successor at Llanvaches, but had 
 to flee at the outbreak of the Civil War to 
 Bristol, which was then held for Parliament. 
 Here he continued to preach to his own 
 fugitive church and others till he removed to 
 London and became preacher at Great All- 
 hallows. He returned to Wales, by appoint- 
 ment of Parliament, in 1646 ; and next year 
 he published his useful edition of the New 
 Testament. He died at home at the close of 
 1659. The best testimony to his Noncon- 
 formist worth is derived from the accusations 
 brought by the author of GatigrcEna against 
 him of preaching (i) that there should be no 
 ordinances to punish men for holdingopinions ; 
 (2) that there should be no confessions of 
 faith ; and (3) that every one should have
 
 CROMWELL S DAYS 3 1 
 
 the liberty of their consciences. He is further 
 accused of having commented on Micah iv. 5, 
 that " in that day " — these " Gospel times " — 
 ** neither episcopacy nor presbytery, nor any 
 others should intermeddle or invade the 
 rights of the saints." 
 
 Vavasor Powell presents a more dramatic 
 character, and a much more chequered life. 
 He was born at Knucklas, in Radnorshire, 
 in the year 161 7. He led a careless youth, 
 fond of dance and song and sport. He was 
 first made ashamed of Sabbath sports by a 
 sober, mild question from a "godly, grave 
 professor of religion (one of those then called 
 Puritans) " ; and about a year later the im- 
 pression was deepened by a sermon of 
 William Wroth showing that those who 
 would go to heaven must do four sorts of 
 services — namely, " hard service, costly service, 
 decided service, and forlorn service." It was 
 the last thought, " the forlorn service," that 
 chiefly disquieted him. " It made me go into 
 private," he wrote in his autobiography, "where 
 in darkness I struggled, not knowing what to 
 do, and was ashamed to inquire, having never 
 yet read seriously any part of the Holy 
 Scriptures, nor any other godly book, nor 
 never prayed privately, except by book and 
 forms, and that formally without under-
 
 32 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 standing sense, faith, or the spirit of supph'ca- 
 tion." A " second wedge " clave his heart 
 somewhat more in a sermon by Walter 
 Cradock, whose disciple and fellow-worker he 
 became. He began his itinerant ministry 
 in 1640, and his unflinching courage soon 
 brought him into trouble. Once he was 
 seized while preaching in an open field, and 
 committed for trial. But those charged with 
 the execution of the warrant — to the number 
 of 16 or 17 — refused to act, except one, who 
 took him to his house overnight to conduct 
 him to prison the following morning. Powell 
 asked permission to conduct family worship ; 
 his prayer changed his custodian to be his 
 protector : the man would sooner forfeit his 
 own life than deliver him into prison. To 
 save the constable from harm, the conquering 
 prisoner bound himself to appear at the next 
 assizes. He did appear, and defended him- 
 self so ably as to clear himself of all charges. 
 He also won the goodwill of his judges, who 
 invited him to dine with them, and in the 
 simple act of returning thanks so impressed 
 one of them that he declared he had never 
 heard such grace before. When the war 
 broke out he fled from Royalist Wales, like 
 Cradock, to England, where he laboured till 
 1646 at Dartford. With Cradock he returned
 
 Cromwell's davs 33 
 
 to Wales, and helped his friend to bring out 
 the New Testament of 1647. He journeyed 
 and preached incessantly, and the record ot 
 his visit to Anglesey is specially interesting, 
 as that Island — "Mother of Wales"— stood 
 outside the sphere of early Nonconformity. 
 As late as 1647 it still held out for the 
 Royalist cause, and Powell himself became a 
 victim of the disturbances. He had dreamt, 
 a night or two before, that he would be 
 wounded and two of his fingers cut off — 
 which actually took place. " Yet," he adds, 
 "when I was in extream danger between 
 several enemies who fell upon me, receiving 
 that and some other wounds, there being no 
 likelihood to escape, I heard a voyce as I 
 apprehended speaking audibly to me, 'I have 
 chosen thee to preach the Gospel,' to which I 
 answered, ' O, Lord, then bring me off; ' and 
 immediately God guided my horse (though 
 he was very wild and not well commanded) to 
 go backward out of the barricado that I had 
 entered at, and so I was indeed miraculously 
 preserved, although a good man, a Captain, 
 who came to relieve me, was killed close to me." 
 From 1648 to 1660 he lived at Goitre 
 House, near Newtown, but his stormy days 
 had by no means ceased. The proclamation 
 of Cromwell as Protector, and his installation 
 4
 
 34 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 with great pomp, December i6, 1653, greatly 
 disturbed him, for it threatened, 
 among other things, his inter- 
 pretation of the course of events, and the 
 monarchy of Christ, as supposed to be 
 foretold in Daniel xi. Cromwell's accept- 
 ance of the Protectorate seemed to upset 
 all the prophetical calculations of the Fifth 
 Monarchy men. On the evening of that 
 day, at Blackfriars Church, Powell in his 
 sermon denounced the apostasy of the 
 army, and mentioned a "common proverb" 
 amongst them of the General " that in 
 the field he was the graciousest and most 
 gallant man in the world, but out of the field, 
 and when he came home again to govern- 
 ment, the worst." So perilous is it for any 
 man, however great, to upset, or even appear 
 to arrest, the fulfilment of private interpre- 
 tations of prophecy ! " Fuliginous-flaming 
 in the highest degree " Carlyle calls our 
 "Anabaptist leveller" (though he did not 
 change his views on baptism till a year or two 
 later) ; and fiery he was without a doubt, but 
 he was brave enough to pay for his own fire. 
 His denunciation then cost him a few days' 
 imprisonment. For fidelity to convictions he 
 saw, before he died, the inside of over thirteen 
 prisons.
 
 CROMWELL S DAYS 35 
 
 Morgan Llwyd (already named more than 
 once) was a native of Maentwrog, Merioneth- 
 shire — a district which provided the old 
 Catholic faith with a martyr of considerable 
 renown in Elizabeth's time. Like Vavasor 
 Powell, he came of a good family ; and he 
 refers, in an autobiographical poem, to his 
 early religious history, speaking, mystically, 
 of his birth on Olivet, his lodging in terror on 
 Sinai, his peaceful abode on Mount Zion, his 
 visit to Gilboa " in arms and wars," and, last 
 of all, his coming to Nebo, where he caught 
 a " glimpse of fair Canaan." Tradition gives 
 a striking impression of his evangelistic 
 labours in a picture of his visits to Pwllheli 
 on Fair days, when he used to go through the 
 market, with Bible in hand, " the people 
 retreating before him as if a chariot rushed 
 through the streets." He himself tells us how 
 he found Carnarvon awaking, Lleyn full of 
 cruel blind men, with some that sought the 
 right way; he prays for his beloved Merioneth 
 that no enmity to the truth should ever find 
 a rest there ! But to what exact period, 
 between 1640 and 1650, this refers we cannot 
 say. He was at Wrexham when Walter 
 ^Cradock ministered there, and becoming his 
 convert followed him into Monmouthshire. 
 Erbery, also, he calls his " once dear school-
 
 36 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 master." " Since I knew you, or tasted the 
 wine in you," he writes, in a letter dated 
 April 29, 1652, " I ever lodged respectful 
 thoughts of you : I fear neither truth nor its 
 enemies." He fled with Cradock and others 
 at the outbreak of the Civil War, and in 
 his songs he mentions Bristol, Portchester, 
 London, Bath, Winchester, Guildford, and 
 Derby, among the places where he exercised 
 a brief ministry during those stormy years. 
 He returned to Wrexham, and we have already 
 heard his welcome of a spiritual spring in 1648 
 — " some Welsh swallows chirpe and chime." 
 He became one of the " approvers " under 
 the Act of 1649. In 1650 he named his little 
 daughter " Peace," because — he tells us in a 
 couplet — " in soule, in family, and Wales and 
 England peace shall bee." Unhappily this 
 was not to be ; strife, among the people of 
 his charge, falsified for him, personally, his 
 prophecy. In 1652 he sings "A Song of 
 my Beloved concerning His Vineyard"; in 
 it he speaks of full fifteen years of showers 
 and dew from heaven, and of the springing 
 of " many flowers and saincts at Jesus' 
 feet." Then he passes to a heart-broken 
 lament over " the bryers and thorns and 
 thistles tall " which had wasted his vine ; 
 immorality, pride of life, covetous oppression,
 
 Cromwell's days 37 
 
 self and strife have entered into his vine- 
 yard, 
 
 "The boasting settled lofty mind 
 Is root of their disunions," 
 
 he exclaims, and calls upon Wales and 
 England to judge between him and his vine- 
 yard. In all the controversies within the 
 Nonconforming Churches of his day Morgan 
 Llwyd was an advanced teacher of toleration. 
 He would have " no honest soules kept out " : 
 
 " No new engagement, no new bonds 
 Do wee at all require " : 
 
 he would ever " wellcome saincts as saincts," 
 making all one — " our bound our Master's 
 word." Baptist, Independent, Presbyterian — 
 
 " Though sibboleth may cost us deare. 
 In Christ we are all one." 
 
 He will have all unite in one — "Bitterians" 
 alone being excluded : " woe to them ! " 
 Among his contemporaries and fellow- 
 workers in Wales he was pre-eminently the 
 prophet of private judgment and catholic 
 charity. His writings are full of the teaching 
 of the Inner Light ; and although he depre- 
 cated makinef it a doctrine of division, his 
 
 390«"'> 
 
 lUrtO'w
 
 38 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 advocacy of it, in many eloquent and memo- 
 rable passages, undoubtedly helped the 
 Friends' mission in Wales. 
 
 He was an avowed disciple of Jacob Behmen, 
 some of whose tracts he translated into Welsh. 
 His chief work, first published in 1653, and 
 frequently republished up to the present day, 
 is called the Book of the Three 
 Birds : the Eagle representing 
 Cromwell ; the Raven, Church Establishment 
 (not absolutely the Church) ; the Dove, 
 Nonconformity. No book in the language 
 so charmingly, so eloquently presents the 
 spiritual ideals of Nonconformity as this 
 literary classic. It is, of necessity, largely 
 controversial ; but it yields devotional fruit 
 free of any controversial taint. More than 
 all his fellow-workers he wrote t'n Welsh ; in 
 English he published only two short tracts. 
 He meant therefore, and continues to mean, 
 to the Welsh people something at once more 
 intimate and more dominant than any leader 
 of that age. Men of all creeds are his dis- 
 ciples. His death took place in 1659, at the 
 early age of 40. 
 
 The Quaker movement of the middle of the 
 seventeenth century in Wales is of absorbing 
 interest, though too often ignored. It pre- 
 sents a story of shameful persecution and of
 
 CROMWELL'S DAYS 39 
 
 undaunted, if at times, half quixotic courage. 
 The autobiography of Richard Davies, of 
 Welshpool, explains, incidentally, the source 
 and inner meaning of the movement, with 
 much simple charm. He was brought up in 
 the Church, and was twelve or thirteen years 
 old when, about 1648 — that historic year of 
 hope — he felt deep conviction of 
 sin. " I was inclined to leave the 
 Church, and go to hear sermons, and follow 
 the best sort of people, which seemed to me 
 to fear the Lord most. These, according to 
 my opinion at that time, were the Inde- 
 pendents, especially one Vavasor Powell, who 
 was very fervent in his day and time." For 
 a while he was happy with his new comrades 
 and in the new way ; but later they appeared 
 to him to grow " formal, and carnal, and cold "; 
 and he lost faith in himself and in so formal a 
 religion. Some time after this he heard one 
 of the most eminent of "our Independent 
 teachers " — " a great man in the Scriptures " — 
 possibly William Erbery, or still more pro- 
 bably Morgan Llwyd — declare in a sermon 
 " that a time would come when there would 
 be no necessity for the Scriptures, any more 
 than for some other book." This so arrested 
 the young man's attention that he stayed 
 to question the preacher as to when that
 
 40 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 time would come. He received as reply, 
 Jeremiah xxxi. 33, 34 — the promise of the 
 new covenant written in the heart : " And 
 they shall teach no more every man his neigh- 
 bour, and every man his brother, saying, 
 Know the Lord ; for they shall all know Me, 
 from the least of them unto the greatest of 
 them, saith the Lord." He went home much 
 exercised in mind, and when, in 1656, he 
 heard frequent warning references by preachers 
 to the " rise of some sort of people in the 
 North, called Quakers," he viewed them with 
 fear of being deceived by them, more than 
 with any other interest. But he did not come 
 into actual touch with one of them till the 
 next year, when " a poor man meanly clad " — 
 a Morgan Evan, from South Wales — called 
 at his master's house. This stranger had, on 
 his journeys, met the people called Quakers, 
 and been converted by them. Richard Davies 
 became his convert after much perplexity. 
 It was the doctrine of the Inner Light that 
 captivated him and subdued him to the 
 Friends' faith. 
 
 The earnestness of these new converts 
 carried them far and wide on their evangelistic 
 itinerancies ; no opposition chilled them ; no 
 sufferings daunted them. Their worth to 
 Welsh religion between 1650 and 1685 c^"
 
 CROMWELL S DAYS 4 1 
 
 never be told. From the day when John 
 ap John, in the parish church of Swansea, 
 interrupted the sermon to ask the preacher 
 if he thought he was a servant of Christ, and 
 was forthwith led to prison, — much to the 
 disappointment of the clergyman, who wished 
 to have the devil flogged out of him first, — 
 from that day a new force, irregular but 
 productive, entered the people's life. " By 
 the end of the year 1660 there was scarcely 
 a locality in any Welsh county, excepting 
 Carnarvon and Anglesey, without adherents 
 to their sect." 
 
 We can now pass from these pioneer 
 workers to the work achieved. We find 
 Welsh Nonconformity, on the eve of the 
 Restoration, in possession of rich assets of 
 partly-tried principles. Their faith in volun- 
 taryism had been encouraged, displacing their 
 trust in the State as dispenser of religion ; 
 the right of private judgment had been taught 
 and sealed with suffering and death ; the 
 doctrine of toleration was beginning to be 
 proclaimed, though not without misgiving ; 
 the Bible was on the way to become the 
 people's freehold ; the shining of the Holy 
 Spirit in the heart of each believer, and the 
 believer's right, in consequence, simply as 
 believer, to witness publicly for Christ, were
 
 42 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 accepted by hundreds as experimental truths ; 
 distinctive Nonconformity was speaking and 
 writing in the people's language. True, each 
 of these contributions was that of an individual 
 or at most a minority ; but they were cast 
 into the common stock, to become, by slow 
 degrees, the common property of the many. 
 Some of the principles were too new to be 
 efficiently handled at first ; but suffering for 
 the sake of them would produce better skill. 
 The divisions, too, were sharp and often 
 petty. In the introduction to The 
 Testimony of William Erbery (1658), 
 we find these remarks : " The whole Body of 
 Truth seems to be rent and torn in sunder, 
 and the several limbs of it in small iota's and 
 diminutive parcels are scattered up and down 
 (as it were) upon the face of the whole earth ; 
 each party and sect of professors grasping 
 at some small portion and seed of truth, and 
 covering it under various mixtures of their 
 own, which many times do steal away the 
 heart from the contemplation of truth itself ; 
 most people eying only the building, which 
 doth appear, and neglecting the foundation 
 which lyes under ground." 
 
 Erbery himself was a product of the clash 
 of great beginnings ; hermit and reformer, 
 eclectic and comprehensionist — " the truth of
 
 CROMWELL S DAYS 43 
 
 all professions he did own, and walked up 
 with them by the hand to their head and 
 spring ; the mixture and adherencies of flesh 
 and blood, which carnal spirits had introduced 
 on a fleshly design, pretendedly to beautifie 
 the Truth, he did disclaim and condemn, in 
 which attempt his flesh suffered, and under- 
 went many reproaches, by the litteral Pro- 
 fessors of the Formal Church " — we are told 
 in the same introduction. He was enamoured 
 of his mystic ideal of a purely spiritual 
 Church free from all ordinances. Only, as 
 often happens, the advocate of eclecticism 
 and comprehension would have all choose 
 out what he chose and comprehend only 
 what he deemed comprehensible. But not- 
 withstanding his idiosyncrasy, Erbery deserves 
 a kinder word and a more just appreciation 
 than he has hitherto received. In his own 
 way he, too, helped Welsh Nonconformity 
 in the making. Others would learn to handle 
 more deftly the instrument which he and 
 others had discovered.
 
 IV 
 
 THROUGH PERSECUTION TO 
 TOLERA TION 
 
 IF Cromwell's favour to some extent im- 
 perilled the wholesomeness and robust- 
 ness of Nonconformist conditions and pro- 
 gress, the Restoration made ample provision 
 for discipline. In the ejectment of 1662 no 
 one was found worthy of being deprived of 
 his living in the counties of Carnarvon, Angle- 
 sey, or Merioneth. Monmouth and Glamor- 
 gan stand significantly first with 10 and 
 16 respectively; Pembroke has 8 to its 
 credit ; Carmarthen and Montgomery, 7 ; 
 Cardigan, 6. The total for Wales has been 
 given at 125 ; but, naturally, the case of 
 several is somewhat dubious, and it includes 
 those who had as " lecturers " received State 
 aid under the Act of 1649. 
 
 In the persecution which soon followed, no 
 one bore his part more bravely, and at greater 
 44
 
 THROUGH PERSECUTION TO TOLERATION 45 
 
 cost, than Vavasor Powell. He was placed 
 in custody, July, 1660, as a "most 
 factious and dangerous minister, 
 countenancing unlawful assemblies and sedi- 
 tious persons ; " and, with the exception of a 
 few months, spent all the rest of his days 
 in prisons, dying October, 1670, at " Karoone 
 House, the then Fleet Prison, in Lambeth." 
 Some three years previously he had said 
 before his judges at Cardiff: "Gentlemen, I 
 have been near eight years a prisoner, and in 
 thirteen prisons." How it fared with his co- 
 religionists in May and June is told in his 
 own words: "Some poor and peaceable people 
 have been drag'd out of their Beds, and with- 
 out regard of Sex or Age, have been driven, 
 some twenty miles to Prison on their feet, 
 and forced (though in heat of Summer till 
 their feet were much blistered, and they ready 
 to fall with faintness) to run by the Troopers' 
 horses receiving many blows and beatings. 
 Others (as if they had been Bruite-beasts) 
 driven into Pitfolds, or Pounds, where they 
 were kept several hours, their enemies in the 
 interim drinking in an Ale-house, and forcing 
 the poor People to pay for it, though they 
 tasted not of the drink. . . . Others who 
 were quietly met together (after their usual 
 manner for many years, to worship God, and
 
 46 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 edifie one another), were cast into Prisons 
 without any Examination. . . ." 
 
 A disciple and friend of Vavasor Powell — 
 Henry Williams, of Ysgafell Farm, near New- 
 town, Montgomeryshire — lives in a 
 1685~ strange but beautiful tradition. 
 Time after time he was attacked in 
 his own house, and carried off to prison for 
 " unlawful assembling." On one occasion his 
 aged father, attempting to dissuade the 
 soldiers, was smitten dead by their halberts. 
 On another occasion his house was burnt 
 down, while he himself was suffering imprison- 
 ment : his wife, near her confinement, escaped 
 for her life, " grasping one child by the hand 
 and carrying another in her arms," and was 
 saved from the brutality of one of the soldiers 
 by the officer in charge. On still another occa- 
 sion they assaulted him and left him as dead 
 and then proceeded to lay waste his property. 
 All stock and crop that could be destroyed, 
 were done away with. They left nothing but a 
 field of wheat, newly sown. But that field, as 
 winter gave way to spring, became the wonder 
 and talk of the whole district. The stalks, in 
 many cases, produced as many as nine heads 
 of wheat ; and the yield of the whole field 
 was so rich as to recoup the owner for all his 
 previous autumn's losses. The field was called
 
 THROUGH PERSECUTION TO TOLERATION 4/ 
 
 the "Field of Blessing" {Cae'r Fendith), and 
 is still so known. Ears of the wheat are still 
 kept as heirlooms ; and though, even of late 
 years, some of the unshed grain was sown 
 and carefully watched, it never yielded more 
 than the customary single-eared stalk. As 
 interpreted by the people of the district, 
 that field's witness served to awe even the 
 menials of the Restoration into using less 
 violent hands. 
 
 In another sense, throughout considerable 
 portions of the Principality, the area of 
 suffering was becoming a " field of blessing." 
 In Carmarthenshire, Stephen Hughes, who 
 saved Vicar Pritchard's " Candle " from being 
 extinguished — or even from being melted 
 before it was lit — became the county's 
 apostle. His " Carmarthenshire Church " 
 was made up of Congregational 
 1688 branches in all parts of the county. 
 He spent his days itinerating from 
 one to the other ; and so faithfully and well 
 did he build, that his Churches are still 
 thriving, and have become the starting-places 
 of many more. One Easter Monday he 
 passed a throng of merrymakers, on his way 
 to a service in the " cave" (so called) of Cwm- 
 hwplin, near Pencader. He singled out the 
 ringleader and invited him to go with him
 
 48 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 across the hill for far better sport. The youth 
 felt curious to see what this could be and went 
 with him, till they passed up a little glen which 
 suddenly turned and ended, forming a kind 
 of roofless chapel. Here Stephen Hughes 
 preached, and so won the young man's heart 
 that he became a leader of religious faith and 
 service among his quondam merrymakers. In 
 another of these cave-churches in the same 
 county the father of the "sweet singer of 
 Wales " — Williams, the author of " Guide me, 
 O Thou great Jehovah " — was bearing his 
 testimony to the victory of conscience over 
 persecuting intolerance. 
 
 From another home in that county, and 
 under the influence of Stephen Hughes, 
 James Owen went forth to become 
 l^oV °'^^ °^ ^^^ pioneers of Noncon- 
 formity in North Wales and the 
 Borders. He was one of nine children who 
 grew up to be all Dissenters, though their 
 parents — his brother and biographer tells us 
 — "were inviolably firm to the Established 
 Church," as befitted near relatives of James 
 Howel, author of the Familiar Letters, and of 
 his brother, Bishop of Bristol. He was about 
 thirteen years old when he first heard a 
 Dissenting minister preach from Mai. iv. i ; 
 and this sermon had an unusual effect upon
 
 THROUGH PERSECUTION TO TOLERATION 49 
 
 his mind, producing at first "dismal commo- 
 tions in his afflicted soul." He dreaded 
 nothing more than " heart-deceit and abor- 
 tive convictions." This made him " spend 
 many days in fasting and prayer," and "exer- 
 cise the greatest severities upon himself." 
 At last a Divine calm succeeded the storm, 
 "and a strong resolution never to make a 
 forfeiture of so signal a blessing." He was 
 prepared for the Christian ministry at the 
 academy of Samuel Jones, Brynllwarch; and 
 then spent some time with his godfather, 
 Rev. James Howel, a minister of the Church 
 of England, " who took a great deal of pains 
 to reduce him to Conformity, but cou'd 
 not satisfie his Scruples." But although " the 
 Dissenting Protestants in that Country were 
 but inconsiderable for Number and Power, 
 and had no men of Figure to give 'em the 
 least Umbrage of Protection," and that they 
 had " no external attractives " to recommend 
 them, he decided, after mature deliberation, 
 to cling to them. " The only Thing," his 
 biographer adds, " which determin'd his 
 judgment was, their close Adherence to that 
 Way, which upon an impartial Disquisition, he 
 thought most agreeable to the Divine Will 
 reveal'd in the inspired Canon." He had the 
 honour of imprisonment at Caerwys, in Den- 
 5
 
 50 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 bighshire, and the honour of abiding service 
 at Oswestry and Shrewsbury, both as preacher 
 of the Gospel and as teacher of young men 
 for the ministry. He estabHshed " lectures " 
 at Ruthin, Denbigh, and Llanvyllin ; and his 
 Churches founded in these and other places 
 still remain, while the story of Noncon- 
 formity in and around Oswestry is a shining 
 monument to his worth. Among his dying 
 expressions was one of " entire satisfaction " 
 that "he lived and died in his Noncon- 
 formity." 
 
 His teacher, Samuel Jones, exercised his 
 
 ministry in Glamorganshire, but was a native 
 
 of Chirk, Denbighshire. At the 
 
 1696~ ^^^^ of his ejection he held the 
 living of Llangynwyd, in the 
 county of his adoption. Here he continued 
 to preach, and here he founded his celebrated 
 academy, mother of the modern theological 
 colleges of Carmarthen and Brecon. He 
 itinerated less than most of those mentioned 
 in this chapter, keeping himself closely to his 
 academic labours. But that did not serve to 
 save him from persecution, and he found him- 
 self in Cowbridge Gaol more than once for 
 conscience' sake. 
 
 A report having become current, towards 
 the end of his life, that he had renounced his
 
 THROUGH PERSECUTION TO TOLERATION 5 1 
 
 Nonconformity, made him declare " to all the 
 world, as in the words of a dying man " : 
 "Though I had then [in 1662] and have still 
 many and great sins to bewail before God, 
 yet I had not then and have not since the 
 least check from my own conscience for my 
 non-compliance and submission to those im- 
 positions, that were thus made the indispen- 
 sable terms of communion with the Church 
 of England." There were "such blocks," he 
 added, laid by the law at the Church door, 
 that he "could not, durst not then, and dare 
 not now leap over, though to save my credit 
 and livelihood, though to gain a dignity or 
 preferment, without odious hypocrisy, and the 
 overthrowing of my inward peace, which is 
 and ought to be dearer to me than my very 
 life." 
 
 Pembrokeshire had its suffering, effectual 
 witness in Peregrine Phillips, who, on his 
 
 ejection, retired to a farm near 
 1691 Haverfordwest ; and here he fitted 
 
 a room for preaching services and 
 formed a Church, which cost him several 
 imprisonments — with the added privilege of 
 preaching in prison to those who found 
 courage to attend. Here, in the town of 
 Haverfordwest, a place was obtained in 1687 
 for his congregation, and from this Church
 
 52 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 other Churches in the district came to be 
 formed. 
 
 TravelHng again northwards, in the foot- 
 steps of James Owen, we find in Merioneth- 
 shire Hugh Owen, of Bronclydwr — 
 1699 ^ nephew of Dr. John Owen, He 
 was preparing to take holy orders, 
 when the Act of Uniformity compelled 
 him to reconsider, and finally to change, his 
 plans. He returned to his native county to 
 do the work of a faithful evangelist, and bear 
 his cross nobly. Reminiscences of his good- 
 ness of heart and of his power in prayer 
 still flourish in beautiful and well-founded 
 traditions. It is related how, when the under- 
 sheriff of his county came to apprehend him, 
 he begged leave first to lead his family in 
 prayer : the officer himself was so affected 
 that he failed to carry out his commission. 
 During his confinement later at Powis Castle, 
 Welshpool, his prayers made Lord Powis, 
 though a Papist, say to his priest, " Surely, 
 this is a good Christian ! " And when he was 
 released, he had to give a promise to return 
 every Christmas for a visit to Powis Castle, 
 not as prisoner, but as guest. 
 
 In Flintshire the witness of Nonconformity 
 was Philip Henry — great father of a greater 
 son. When ejected from the living at
 
 THROUGH PERSECUTION TO TOLERATION 53 
 
 Worthenbury, he followed the plan of many 
 of his fellow-sufferers, and retired to his farm 
 at Broad Oak, and there held services ; attend- 
 ing Whitwell Chapel on Sunday mornings 
 and preaching frequently at home in the 
 evening to those who came — not, of course, 
 without fines and distraints in consequence. 
 After the Indulge?tce of 1672 he was prevailed 
 upon to " preach at publick time every Lord's 
 Day, which he continued to do while he lived, 
 much to his own satisfaction and the satis- 
 faction of his friends." And besides, "he 
 preached a great many lectures in the Country 
 about, some stated, some occasional, in supply- 
 ing of which he was very indefatigable. He 
 hath sometimes preached a Lecture, ridden 
 eight or nine miles, and preached another, and 
 the next day two more. To quicken himself 
 to diligence, he would often say our oppor- 
 tunities are passing away and we must work 
 while it is day, for the night cometh." His 
 Diaries and Letters reveal his piety and 
 charity, and show his character as " mild, 
 peaceable, and hospitable " — a man " whose 
 life was a constant sermon, setting forth 
 Christ by word and deed, and His law as a 
 pattern." All his mildness and restraint — 
 " principles of moderation," as the biographer 
 of James Owen calls them — did not save him
 
 54 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 in life from loss and imprisonment ; nor after 
 his death did it secure his grave from being 
 twice molested. His remains had actually 
 to be moved from their resting-place, and re- 
 buried in a secret place. 
 
 The name of Henry Maurice, while locally 
 and particularly associated with the neigh- 
 bourhood of Pwllheli, in Carnarvonshire, 
 belongs in a general sense to the whole of 
 Wales, A somewhat wild youth was followed 
 by years of earnest and far-reaching service. 
 He did not leave the Church at Broomfield 
 (near Ludlow) in 1662 ; he remained, and 
 was promoted to the living of Church Stretton. 
 But his conscience was ill at ease ; and the 
 ravages of a malignant fever in his parish 
 further disturbed him. When he confessed 
 his trouble to his wife, and how he feared for 
 her and her child, she told him to follow his 
 conscience, assuring him that she could com- 
 mit herself and her child to God's providence. 
 After taking the final step, he ministered to 
 the Nonconformist Churches at Abergavenny, 
 Llanigon, and Merthyr. But he had the 
 missionary pilgrim's heart, and so he took 
 his country for his parish. He made his home 
 in Brecknockshire, visiting, among many other 
 places, his native district, where his wife had 
 property, of which she was deprived till some
 
 THROUGH PERSECUTION TO TOLERATION 55 
 
 years after his death. In spite of all depriva- 
 tions and sufferings, he spent his brief life in 
 the service of the Gospel. Asked once how 
 and on what he lived, he replied, " I am 
 living on the sixth of Matthew." When 
 dissuaded from his strenuous labours, his 
 reply was that a man who had idled his 
 morning must double his diligence in the 
 afternoon. He died, about his forty-fifth year, 
 in 1682. His cousin, John Williams, pioneered 
 in Carnarvonshire also for the new faith ; but 
 he allowed the discouragements of his work 
 to interrupt his labours and silence his preach- 
 ing for years. 
 
 As mentioned in the preceding chapter, the 
 sufferings of the Quakers had commenced 
 before the Restoration ; but after that they 
 increased in area and violence. Their 
 almost total disappearance from modern 
 Welsh religious life has served to take out 
 of mind the immense value of their testimony 
 and suffering during those hostile years. The 
 
 death of their great leader, Richard 
 1708 
 
 Davies, in 1708, practically ended 
 
 their active evangelism. But their graveyards, 
 in sequestered nooks here and there through- 
 out the country, some of them unknown or 
 only locally known to-day, others surviving 
 in such a place-name as " Quakers' Yard " —
 
 5 6 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 these grass-grown homes of their dead bear 
 silent but effective record to their presence 
 and devotion in other far-off days. They 
 flourished at first, especially in Merioneth- 
 shire ; and when many of these left their 
 native land, in the footsteps of Penn, it was 
 to found another " Meirion " in the new land, 
 and transfer to it the continuance of a chapter 
 of noble witnessing. 
 
 Wales can never repay its debt to the 
 Nonconformist sufferers and evangelists of 
 the latter half of the seventeenth century. 
 Both they, and the thousands of disciples 
 they gathered around them, passed through 
 cleansing fires to a clearer conception of their 
 heritage and their opportunity : their worldly 
 losses and religious endeavours made them 
 better Nonconformists and more zealous 
 patriots. Most of them were men of pre- 
 eminent learning ; but with it they joined 
 unfailing enthusiasm for the preaching of the 
 Gospel. Several of them, to add to their 
 scanty living, were founders of academies for 
 the training of young men, which connect the 
 Wales of that day, educationally, with the 
 Wales of to-day and its nascent University. 
 Brynllwarch in Glamorganshire, Llwyn 
 Llwyd in Brecknockshire — to name no more 
 — were prophetic of more than their teachers 
 or disciples knew.
 
 V 
 
 BETWEEN TWO PERIODS 
 
 BETWEEN the great evangelistic efforts 
 following the Restoration and flowing 
 beyond the Declaration of Indulgence and 
 the great Revival of the eighteenth century, 
 there is a period of doubtful light. That it 
 did not grow as dark as sometimes painted 
 is now, through research and comparison, 
 made certain ; but it is probable also that too 
 bright a view must not be implicitly accepted. 
 First of all, it is to be noted that the 
 Church itself in the later years of the seven- 
 teenth century became more awake and more 
 provident. A study of Welsh bibliography 
 from, say, 1670 to 1720 reveals a steady 
 growth of interest and supply, in which 
 Churchmen were as prominent as 
 1720 Nonconformists. Bibles, books of 
 devotion (original and translated), 
 catechisms, sermons, and other religious 
 57
 
 58 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 volumes, were appearing with greater fre- 
 quency and in more numerous editions. No 
 outsider did more for Wales at that time in 
 this respect than Thomas Gouge, ejected 
 from the living of St. Sepulchre's, London, 
 in 1662, but remaining in the communion of 
 the Church still ; and although he was 
 excommunicated for preaching in Noncon- 
 formist places,his funeral sermon was preached 
 by the Archbishop of Canterbury. He be- 
 came devotedly attached to Wales ; and in 
 1674, with Dr. Tillotson and others, he formed 
 a society for distributing the Scriptures and 
 other good books, and for establishing schools 
 in Wales. He had, before his death, started 
 between three and four hundred schools, and 
 distributed many thousands of Bibles and 
 other books. That he found his noblest 
 assistant in a Nonconformist — Stephen 
 Hughes — is true ; but it is equally true 
 that he touched kindred spirits within 
 the Church. In 1698 the "Society for Pro- 
 moting Christian Knowledge " was founded ; 
 and from the very first its interest in Wales 
 was well informed and practical. Not only 
 did it supply large numbers of good books 
 in the vernacular, but it encouraged among 
 the clergy and devout laity of the Church 
 the formation of " societies," or conferences
 
 BETWEEN TWO PERIODS 59 
 
 for the culture of the devout Hfe, and for 
 the deepening of evangelistic zeal — on the 
 pattern of some of the pietistic movements 
 in Germany. In addition to this there are 
 individual contributions of note and worth 
 from within the Church. Such names as 
 Charles Edwards, Edward Samuel, Edward 
 and Hugh Morris, Theophilus Evans, and 
 Elis Wynne — author of the Welsh classic, 
 The Sleeping Bard (Y Bardd Cwsg) — shed 
 permanent lustre on this period, and prove 
 that the Church was neither without native 
 ability nor earnestness. 
 
 But a still more powerful voice from within 
 the Church was the reforming voice of 
 
 Griffith Jones,vicar of Llanddowror, 
 1761 Carmarthenshire. He was in the 
 
 succession of Vicar Pritchard ; 
 and his preaching, wherever he went, 
 attracted vast crowds. He was both evange- 
 list and educationist. With the aid of his 
 brother-in-law, Sir John Phillips, of Picton, 
 and other wealthy patrons, he was able to 
 institute and carry on his circulating day- 
 schools, so becoming the successor of Thomas 
 Gouge. He would send a schoolmaster — 
 Churchman by preference, but when such was 
 not available or incompetent, a Noncon- 
 formist, these forming a large majority — to
 
 6o NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 a district to teach those who came to read ; 
 when this was done, he would be sent on to 
 another district. In 1746 these schools 
 numbered 116, with 5,685 scholars. They 
 helped to make the common people com- 
 petent Bible-readers, to the number, it has 
 been estimated, of over 150,000 in twenty- 
 four years. 
 
 Had the Anglican Church been wise then 
 to make use of its restored opportunity, one 
 cannot say what might have happened. All 
 that has been here summarised of literary, 
 evangelistic, and educational motive from 
 within the Church accounts for the partial 
 and temporary check to the progress of our 
 experimental Nonconformity ; but it also 
 reveals the Church's disastrous inability to 
 use its golden chances. As before — and 
 after — it alienated itself now from what was 
 likeliest to win the heart of Wales. 
 
 There were, besides these, arresting forces 
 within the Nonconformist Churches them- 
 selves. These were partly born of the 
 exaggeration of the spirit of controversy, on 
 such questions as baptism, Church organisa- 
 tion, and more intricate questions of theology, 
 Presbyterian and Independent, Baptist and 
 Quaker, Arminian and Calvinist — all this 
 meant keen controversy, not peculiar to Wales
 
 BETWEEN TWO PERIODS 6 1 
 
 by any means, but representing a general 
 note of the age. That this spirit chilled the 
 effort to seek and save the lost is probably 
 too true ; but, at the worst, controversy is no 
 sign of inactivity. Dead Churches do not 
 quarrel so earnestly. 
 
 It is evident, also, from contemporary 
 testimony, that questions of discipline within 
 the Churches caused trouble. These affected 
 doctrine as well as conduct. Mathias 
 Maurice, born, like Griffith Jones, in 1685, 
 and brought up like him in Henllan Indepen- 
 dent Church, Carmarthenshire, gives, in his 
 Social Religion (published in 1759, in English) 
 reminiscent pictures of some of the difficulties 
 and divisions of his own early Church, in the 
 discovery of heresies and the maintenance of 
 discipline. He comes down heavily upon 
 Antinomianism, as on its opposite extreme — 
 Legalism ; and to those opposite but co- 
 operative heresies he assigns in part the 
 cooling of love. " Though they were like 
 Sampson's foxes, Tail to Tail, having 
 different views, they had Firebrands fix'd to 
 'em." " In all our contentions about Truth," 
 he makes one of his characters declare, " the 
 Spirit of Truth does not appear." 
 
 In this connection it is to be remembered 
 that Dr. Daniel Williams, the eminent anti-
 
 62 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 Calvinistic leader, was a native of Wrexham ; 
 and although ministering in London, he 
 exercised considerable influence in Wales 
 also, in Arian directions, up to his death in 
 1716. His generous benefactions have long 
 since passed into Unitarian hands, though 
 the Fund retains the old name of " Presby- 
 terian." They were, however, used, and con- 
 tinue to be so, in the interests of theological 
 and general education, and in aid of Noncon- 
 formist causes, free from denominational bias. 
 His well-known Library was another of his 
 gifts to Nonconformity. Whatever we may 
 think of the direction taken by the theological 
 movement he allied himself with, and of its 
 disintegrating effect on Nonconformist pro- 
 gress, his own place in it is worthy of all 
 honour, and his liberal kindness to Wales of 
 lasting gratitude. 
 
 What seems a still deeper truth, here as 
 elsewhere, is that a period of evangelistic 
 zeal must be followed by a period of inner 
 organisation. A revival, like a great tidal 
 wave, covers the beach with weed and treasure ; 
 and it takes time to divide and cast away the 
 weed, and rescue and apportion the treasure- 
 trove. The statistics collected by 
 Dr. John Evans in 171 5 give a 
 glimpse of churches consolidated through
 
 BETWEEN TWO PERIODS 63 
 
 patient effort and quietly thriving. His total 
 yields over 20,000 hearers ; but as he excludes 
 the Friends, and has omitted several churches, 
 the grand total, it has been calculated, would 
 exceed 30,000. Presbyterianism and Inde- 
 pendency had become practically one ; the 
 Baptists, following the lead of John Myles, 
 were forming an organic whole under the 
 protection of their Association (Cymanfa), 
 from 1700. And God sent the workers 
 which the time needed. In Montgomery- 
 shire, for instance, Lewis Rees was building 
 the churches from Llan Bryn Mair as centre ^ : 
 in Monmouthshire, Edmund Jones was work- 
 ing from Pontypool ; in Cardiganshire, Philip 
 Pugh was building to the same plan. 
 Similarly, amongst Baptists, we have such 
 builders as Enoch Francis, on the confines of 
 Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire ; and 
 Miles Harry in Monmouthshire. The number 
 of new Churches formed, and of chapels built, 
 in this period is sufficient proof of the 
 earnest, quiet work steadily going on. But 
 because of its quietness, because of its being 
 a strengthening of root rather than a 
 bourgeoning of leaf and blossom, it is easy 
 to underestimate its place and value in a 
 nation's spiritual progress. For we can 
 ' Later at Mynydd Bach, Swansea.
 
 64 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 easily see how such a period can run its very 
 virtue into a failing, and inward content 
 may be obtained at the loss of outward pro- 
 gress. That in many districts of Wales 
 evangelism was decaying, is clear ; that there 
 were other districts in a more vigilant mood 
 is also clear : let one illustration suffice. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting forward 
 movement of this period connects itself with 
 Anglesey — hitherto conspicuously absent, 
 except for the Vavasor Powell incident, from 
 our story. William Pritchard, a native of 
 Lleyn, Carnarvonshire, was converted by 
 the help of a lighted window one Sunday 
 evening. He had spent the day in sport and 
 carousing, and was returning home late at 
 night when he missed his way. Seeing a 
 distant light, he led himself to it, and 
 recognised it as the home of a humble and 
 devout member of the Independent Church 
 at Pwllheli. He knew his way now, and 
 started home, only to lose himself again. 
 Once more spying a light, he drew near, to 
 find himself at the same' house. The third 
 time he started for home, and for the third 
 time lost himself Looking again for some 
 guiding light, he made his way to it, and 
 found himself for the third time at the house 
 of Francis Evans — to his increasing surprise
 
 BETWEEN TWO PERIODS 6$ 
 
 and terror even. He drew near to the 
 window, and saw the little household gathered 
 for family prayer; he he. rd a portion of 
 Matthew xxv. read, and the prayer. He 
 started again, and had no difficulty in finding 
 his way : but the chapter and prayer followed 
 him and afflicted him till he joined the Church 
 at Pwllheli himself. His house soon became 
 the home of pilgrim-evangelists, and with the 
 help of Francis Evans he obtained a school- 
 master for the district. He asked the 
 incumbent for the loan of the church, but was 
 refused. " Well," he remarked, " if you have 
 power over the church, I have power over my 
 own kitchen ; he shall keep school there." 
 And school was held there, and many a 
 preaching service besides. They were 
 suspected of teaching heresy and treason, 
 and much annoyed. And when William 
 Pritchard remarked on a sermon of Chancellor 
 John Owen, of Bangor, that it was contrary 
 to Scripture, the suspicions seemed amply 
 verified. He was summoned to the ecclesi- 
 astical court at Bangor for contempt, but after 
 being harassed for two or three years won 
 his case. The Chancellor, however, found a 
 way of punishing him by inducing his land- 
 lord to turn him out of his farm — a custom 
 much honoured in Wales for political and eccle- 
 6
 
 66 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 siastical proselytism for two hundred years, 
 
 and still insidiously revived at need. He 
 
 was obliged to find a new home in Anglesey, 
 
 . ,« near Llangevni. And with him 
 1742 
 
 Nonconformity entered that island 
 
 home of the Druids, never again to retire or 
 grow slack till, with the approaching Revival, 
 it would be a stronghold of the new faith. 
 The coming of Pritchard was by no means 
 hailed with delight. His new neighbours 
 avoided him as though he were plague- 
 stricken ; they wasted his property, and 
 devised all manner of schemes for molesting 
 him. When he brought in his preaching 
 schoolmaster, and Lewis Rees, of Llan 
 Bryn Mair, they were still more enraged. 
 The persecution became more systematic ; 
 and one Sunday morning a mob of about 
 250 attacked his house, breaking windows, 
 and damaging the outhouses, and threaten- 
 ing to kill every one that hindered them. For 
 this they suffered justice ; and the terrors of 
 the law limited their churchly rage. But 
 one method was still available — to have him 
 driven out of his farm. This was done in 
 1745, and was again repeated some five years 
 later. He found refuge at last in a leased 
 farm on the Bulkeley estate, called Clwch- 
 dyrnog. Here he welcomed preachers of all
 
 BETWEEN TWO PERIODS 6y 
 
 denominations and of all degrees ; among 
 them being John Wesley. He himself 
 remained faithful to his Church at Pwllheli, 
 eighty miles away, attending its monthly 
 communion up to the time of his death in 
 1773. He lived to see Anglesey lit with the 
 dawning of a new and great day. 
 
 Any one who is acquainted to-day with 
 the state of each Welsh county, denomina- 
 tionally, can perceive where the older 
 Dissenters were doing their work faithfully, 
 and were able to hold their own possessions, 
 when the Great Revival came. He can also 
 perceive where they had partly or wholly 
 failed, by the hold which Methodism gained 
 in these districts. Broadly speaking, they 
 retained South Wales, whereas North Wales 
 was possessed by the fresh workers. To-day, 
 we can all of us thank God for both, and give 
 to each his due without grudging, belittling 
 neither old nor new.
 
 VI 
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL 
 
 WHILE Welsh and English Methodism 
 had each its origin in the same great 
 eighteenth century movement, their develop- 
 ment, after the first years, became quite 
 separate. The one became Arminian and 
 Wesleyan, the other Calvinistic and Presby- 
 terian. 
 
 Howell Harris was born at Trevecca, 
 
 Brecknockshire, in 17 14, and was destined 
 
 from his early years for the 
 
 1773 Church. When he was eighteen 
 
 years old his father died ; and his 
 
 plans had to be rearranged. He opened a 
 
 school in the neighbourhood, while still 
 
 hoping to prepare himself for ordination. 
 
 The year 1735 became to him a great year — 
 
 his spiritual birth-year. " Labouring and 
 
 heavy-laden, under the guilt and power of 
 
 his sins," he felt at the Whitsun sacrament 
 
 68
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL 69 
 
 the power of a new hope. Thoughts of 
 human applause and preferment vanished 
 from his mind : " I felt some insatiable 
 desire after the salvation of poor, lost sin- 
 ners." He felt so happy that he could not 
 help telling people, in going home from 
 church, that he ktiew his sins were forgiven 
 him. Soon after, he set up family worship 
 in his mother's house on Sunday mornings — 
 a custom " laid aside," he tells us, " except 
 among some of the Dissenters" — and on 
 Sunday evenings " exhorted the poor people," 
 who, more and more, flocked to hear him. 
 A brief stay at Oxford intervened, and then 
 he returned home, more fervent than ever in 
 his reforming zeal, but with no intention of 
 doing his work except within and under the 
 authority of the Church — as Whitfield and 
 Wesley also intended. His tremendous 
 preaching soon spread his fame and stirred 
 the opposition of the ungodly outside and 
 the negligent within the Church. He became 
 the trumpet of God's judgment on sin ; for at 
 first his preaching was almost entirely a 
 blast from Sinai — " in the thunder was his 
 dwelling-place." He travelled from county 
 to county, invited or uninvited. Invitations 
 mostly came from Nonconformists already in 
 possession, Independent and Baptist ; they
 
 yo NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 Stood by him and supported his work. But 
 he also took unbeaten paths, north and 
 south ; and frequently suffered violence from 
 unclean hands. At Newport — he tells us — 
 in 1740, the mob attacked him and his com- 
 panion, William Seward, with great fury, 
 tearing his clothes, taking away his peruke, 
 and leaving him in the rain unsheltered : 
 " But, oh ! it was sweet to stand bareheaded 
 under the reproach of Christ." Two years 
 later, at Hay, his companion was killed, 
 having been struck with a stone while 
 preaching. Harris himself, in 1741, had 
 scarcely escaped a violent death at Bala — 
 later to become the centre of Methodism. 
 "I thought," he tells us, "it would be my lot to 
 die like Stephen in the midst of them. While 
 speaking to and praying for my persecutors, 
 one of the people told me that I was tempting 
 the Lord by staying there. But no sooner 
 had I turned myself around to go away, than 
 I was somehow left to myself and sunk 
 under the waves. I was not afraid of death, 
 knowing it to be the entrance to eternal rest ; 
 I had no doubt of the favour of God through 
 the blood of Christ my Saviour ; yet I felt 
 unwilling to die by the hands of these men. 
 They ceased not inhumanly to beat me with 
 sticks, and to pelt me with stones, until I fell
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL 7 1 
 
 under their merciless feet, where they con- 
 tinued to beat me, until the Lord touched 
 the heart of one of them with pity, or fear of 
 being prosecuted for killing me." 
 
 In 1739, within a few months of each 
 other, Whitfield and Wesley paid their first 
 evangelistic visit to Wales, to be followed by 
 many apostolic journeys. Wesley's visits 
 averaged nearly once a year for the next 
 fifty years. Naturally, the barrier of lan- 
 guage limited the extent of their influence, 
 except in the more English parts. But in 
 Pembrokeshire and Glamorganshire, and 
 along the Marches northwards, from Chep- 
 stow, past Hay and Welshpool, to Wrexham, 
 and again in Anglesey, their footprints are 
 still traceable. Harris was intimately asso- 
 ciated with both in these tours. The theo- 
 logical controversy which divided them from 
 each other affected him too ; and for the 
 time taking Whitfield's side, he was estranged 
 from the Wesley s ; later, however, they drew 
 nearer again and worked together. 
 
 Among the earliest converts of Howell 
 
 Harris was William Williams of Pantycelyn. 
 
 His father was faithfully and 
 
 1791~ honourably connected with an 
 Independent Church near Llan- 
 dovery, which had found refuge during days
 
 72 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 of persecution in a cave at Castell Craig y 
 Wyddon. He was sent to a school at Llwyn- 
 llwyd, near Hay, kept by Vavasor Grififiths, 
 a Nonconformist minister. And it was when 
 returning home from school that he heard 
 Harris preach in Talgarth church- 
 yard, and found in him his 
 spiritual father, though but three years his 
 senior. His home and school associations 
 would naturally turn his mind towards Non- 
 conformity ; but the influence of Harris pre- 
 vailed ; and he took orders, being appointed 
 curate of Llanwrtyd and Abergwesyn. 
 However, his Puritan strain and his evan- 
 gelistic zeal made his stay in the Church 
 intolerable. He too became a pilgrim- 
 herald of the new day, in all parts of Wales. 
 But more than all his gifts of preaching was 
 his incomparable gift of sacred song. Known 
 to English readers mainly through his two 
 hymns — 
 
 "Guide mc, O Thou great Jehovah," 
 
 and — 
 
 " O'er the gloomy hills of darkness," 
 
 his contributions to Welsh hymnody number 
 several hundreds ; and of these a large per-
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL 73 
 
 centage have won national appreciation. 
 His dramatic poem Theomemphus, and his 
 epic on The Kingdom of Christ, translated 
 into permanent verse the trials, the hopes, the 
 sorrows, the joys of the spiritual renaissance 
 in which he took so noble a part. 
 
 At Llangeitho, in Cardiganshire, the fire 
 was kindled by another clergyman — Daniel 
 
 Rowlands. When appointed to 
 17^ the living he was, as he came 
 
 afterwards to view his state, an 
 unconverted man. A sermon of Griffith 
 Jones, about 1735, deeply affected him ; the 
 impression was deepened by conversation 
 with his Independent neighbour, Philip 
 Pugh, a man of marked piety : scholarly, 
 earnest, quietly effective in evangelising Car- 
 diganshire. At first, like Harris, his reformed 
 zeal flamed as from the tempestuous fire 
 of Sinai ; but, by advice of his neighbour, 
 he became more evangelical. His hour 
 came more fully as he was one Sunday 
 reading the liturgy ; and power, unfelt before, 
 came upon him and the congregation from 
 the Passion phrase, " By Thine agony and 
 bloody sweat." He travelled less than 
 Harris and Williams ; but as his fame spread, 
 the crowds flocked to hear him from all parts 
 of Wales. The Communion Sundays of
 
 74 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 Llangeitho have become one of the great 
 historic traditions of Welsh religion. 
 
 His heart's wish, as in the case of Williams 
 and Harris, was to continue his work from 
 within the Church of his fathers. These 
 pioneers of an immense movement took a 
 path whose end was hidden from them when 
 they adopted the Pietistic plan — already 
 not unfamiliar to Wales — of establishing 
 " societies " to promote and concentrate their 
 evangelistic labours. These were meant to 
 be indirect if not direct adjuncts to the 
 Anglican Church ; and the first trouble 
 between Harris and his Dissenting supporters 
 came from his wish and effort to keep them 
 in the shelter of the Church's porch, at least. 
 We may add here that the " society " or 
 " experience meeting " is characteristic of 
 every denomination in Wales to-day ; but 
 they continue unknown to the Church. 
 
 It is not quite certain whether the fire 
 
 burst into flame first at Llangeitho or at 
 
 Talrarth ; nor does it matter. 
 1742 
 
 From 1735 it spread and gathered 
 
 force month after month. By the year 1742 
 the work had so grown that the first associa- 
 tion was held at Watford. ^ Four of those 
 present were in episcopal orders, including 
 ' Near Caerphilly.
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL 75 
 
 Williams and Rowlands. A number of lay 
 " exhorters " was set apart, with Harris as 
 their superintendent. Among other things it 
 was decided " that the brethren who scruple 
 to receive the sacrament in the Church 
 because of the impiety of the administrators 
 and the usual communicants there, and 
 among the Dissenters because of their luke- 
 warmness, should continue to receive it in the 
 Church, until the Lord open a clear way to 
 separate from her Communion" — which 
 shows how the presentiment of the seer dis- 
 turbed the Churchman's loyalty. These 
 " Associations " have been held regularly 
 ever since that year. 
 
 This new movement estranged the older 
 Dissenters still more ; they felt aggrieved 
 because of the help they had at first given 
 and of the losses which they now suffered. 
 We can to-day, in a serener air, see how both 
 sides were partly to blame, and much more to 
 be sympathised with ; for they were paying 
 the cost of a reformation and a progress far 
 vaster than they could foresee or comprehend. 
 But a still more grievous variance happened 
 
 in 1 7 15 1, when, at the annual meet- 
 1751 / -" ' ' 
 
 ing of the Association, Harris was 
 
 attacked for his supposed Sabellianism in 
 
 speaking of God's humiliation and death in the
 
 76 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 person of Christ. In consequence of this, and 
 of ill-health, he withdrew, and spent the rest 
 of his life in clouded retirement — not without 
 a bright light in the clouds. At Trevecca he 
 formed a sort of religious colony, on a com- 
 munistic foundation. His " family " was 
 gathered from all parts of Wales, and 
 numbered at one time over a hundred. It 
 was a kind of Franciscan monastery, piously 
 and honourably conducted — but, alas, so 
 ineffective, when we think of what might have 
 been ! " Howell Harris's house," wrote John 
 Wesley in 1763, " is one of the most elegant 
 places which I have seen in Wales. . . . 
 About six score are now in the family, all 
 diligent, all constantly employed, all fearing 
 God and working righteousness." Three 
 years later Henry Venn bears his testimony : 
 " Of all the people I have ever seen, this 
 society seems to be most advanced in grace." 
 In 1759 he joined the county militia, on 
 condition of being permitted to preach. He 
 remained during the French War with his 
 troop, returning in 1763. In 1768 he rented 
 a part of Trevecca to Lady Hunt- 
 ingdon to found her college — since 
 removed to Cheshunt. It is evident that the 
 course and discipline of time had alleviated 
 old grievances : for Daniel Rowlands and
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL 'J'J 
 
 Williams joined with Harris and Fletcher, of 
 Madeley, in the preaching and communion 
 services at the opening of its college. And 
 Harris also joined with his old friends 
 occasionally in evangelistic labour. "Why 
 may not such concessions be made," he 
 wrote to Charles Wesley in 1761 — "and 
 such toleration of spirit be showed, that all 
 the evangelical friends of the church may be 
 invited to some union or nearness together ? " 
 Had he not learnt by suffering — even through 
 mistakes ? 
 
 It was not given to Harris to build abiding 
 causes. His " family " broke up soon after 
 his death in 1773 ; most of the societies he 
 instituted fell through. Rather was it given 
 to him to stir profoundly an entire nation, 
 and make it possible for others to construct 
 and consolidate. His fiery eloquence loosened 
 the stones in the quarry : other hands trimmed 
 them and took them for their own more 
 effectual building. 
 
 Whatever differences arose at first between 
 the older Nonconformists and these newer 
 Nonconformists — as yet afraid of the name, 
 though partaking of its spirit — the reflex 
 influences of the revival upon the former 
 was wholesome and lasting. All the existing 
 Churches were refreshed and strengthened ;
 
 78 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 nor has there been since that day, any serious 
 evidence of retrogression. 
 
 More than that, the revival directly or in- 
 directly affected the whole course of national 
 life, and exalted the national ideals. In 
 those years of genial fervency Wales found 
 its hymnody. Hitherto the metrical Psalter 
 of Edmund Prys had supplied its wants. But 
 now a new life demanded a fresh phrase. Dr. 
 Watts's psalms and hymns were charmingly 
 translated by David Jones, of Cayo, who from 
 unregenerate cattle-driver became a saint 
 and a singer. Morgan Rhys, his neighbour, 
 one of the itinerant schoolmasters, breathed 
 the air of " Nebo's height " ; David Williams 
 re-echoed " the joyful sound " of Zion's taber- 
 nacles. And, chief of them all, a farmstead in 
 the outgoings of the same Vale of Towy, 
 named Pantycelyn, has blended itself with the 
 history of Welsh piety for all time. For the 
 man who dwelt in Pantycelyn is more fre- 
 quently and more affectionately mentioned 
 by the name of his farm than by his proper 
 name of William Williams.
 
 VII 
 
 WELSH CAL VINISTIC METHODISM 
 
 IN the story of the Great Revival we have 
 given only the names of the first leaders. 
 Howell Harris never left the communion of 
 the Church of England ; Daniel Rowlands 
 was banished from it in 1763. Williams had 
 left earlier : the first, not an ordained clergy- 
 man, set apart to administer the sacraments 
 was Morgan John Lewis — in 1756. Who, 
 then, were the other workers worthy to be 
 ranked among the founders of Calvinistic 
 Methodism ? Humble names, in very truth, 
 but for God's direct gift of grace and power. 
 Many of the schoolmasters became evange- 
 lists ; those set apart as lay " exhorters " won 
 their right by their service. In 1783 Thomas 
 Charles speaks of between sixty and eighty 
 lay preachers being present at the Llangeitho 
 Association, and of that number as not all 
 that were in the connection; several of them 
 79
 
 8o NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 endowed with excellent gifts. Few of these 
 were men of scholarship ; but they were 
 deeply schooled in suffering contempt, and in 
 retiring from man's mockery to God's healing 
 presence. They penetrated into dark corners 
 of the land ; they prepared the way often in 
 the desert. And God sent, in due time, the 
 men who were to finish what they had begun. 
 Among the leaders of the Revival was one 
 man, less prominent for widespread evan- 
 gelism, but otherwise an unwearied worker — 
 Peter Williams. He was born at Laugharne, 
 1722, and as a child used to go with his 
 mother to hear Griffith Jones. She intended 
 him for the Church ; and although she died 
 when he was only twelve, her purpose con- 
 tinued to rule him. While at school at Car- 
 marthen he heard Whitfield preach one 
 morning in Lammas Street ; and this though 
 the pupils were warned by the master from 
 hearing him, "lest they should be affected 
 with Methodism," " ' for,' said he, ' I am told 
 he preaches original sin, that man must be 
 born again, and that we must be justified 
 before God, by faith, without works.' " How- 
 ever he and three others ventured among the 
 numerous crowd to hear the eloquent heretic 
 " and judge for themselves." He was 
 " wounded, but not overturned " with the
 
 WELSH CALVINISTIC METHODISM 8 1 
 
 sermon, till the preacher exclaimed vehe- 
 mently, " My dear friends, I had been for 
 some years as diligent as any of you ; I 
 prayed seven times a day, I fasted twice a 
 week, went to church every day, received the 
 sacrament every Sabbath, and all this while 
 I was no Christian." The effect of this sen- 
 tence on the young man was overpowering ; 
 and before the sermon concluded " the new 
 creature," he writes, " was formed within me, 
 and that in the space of that important hour." 
 His former companions forsook him, his inti- 
 mate friends did not know him : " they were 
 sorry to hear, they said, that I was turned a 
 fool ; that is, I had espoused the cause of 
 Methodism." After a year as schoolmaster 
 at Conwil Elvet, with " the honour of being a 
 minister of Christ," he presented himself for 
 orders, and he was admitted, "though sus- 
 pected of being a Methodist." His zeal for 
 reverent behaviour in church led him on 
 Sunday to rebuke a young couple for their 
 open misconduct. " When I came out," he 
 says, " I heard a whispering or murmur, and 
 the vicar's lady in the midst. * I suspected 
 he was a Methodist before,' said she, ' and to- 
 day he has thrown off the mask.' " She 
 wrote to her absent husband, and soon " Peter 
 Williams, curate of Eglwys Gymmun, stood 
 7
 
 82 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 charged with preaching original sin, justifica- 
 tion by faith, and the absolute necessity of 
 regeneration." " Sir," he naively replied to 
 his patron, " I am young ; perhaps I may 
 mistake ; I declare I always thought these 
 articles of faith were the fundamental doc- 
 trines of the Church of England." He was 
 dismissed. Two or three similar experiences 
 sufficed to make him resolve " to follow the 
 leading of Providence, and preach the Gospel 
 anywhere, whether in or out, in a field or on 
 a dunghill, if I could by any means win souls 
 to Christ." Soon afterwards he went to hear 
 an " eminent exhorter " in Pembrokeshire — 
 Howell Davies, probably ; and by him he 
 was taken to an " association of the Methodist 
 preachers." " I obtained a name amongst 
 them, and with them continued to associate 
 from the twenty-fourth of my age until I was 
 seventy and upwards." Unhappily, as in the 
 case of Howell Harris, and on the same 
 theological question, his association with 
 them was marred by his brethren excom- 
 municating him in 1792. To-day neither he 
 nor Harris would be deemed guilty of any- 
 thing worse than mysticism, in company with 
 Erbery and Morgan Llwyd. But, as sug- 
 gested, his evangelistic work was eclipsed by 
 his literary labours. His " Annotated Bible,"
 
 WELSH CALVINISTIC METHODISM 83 
 
 published in 1770 — an heroic risk — is still 
 pre-eminently the Welsh family Bible. In 
 his lifetime, even, it passed through several 
 editions. As if one risk were not enough, he 
 published in the year of his Bible the first 
 Welsh periodical, which reached fifteen fort- 
 nightly numbers, and then perished for want 
 of support. In 1790 he published an edition 
 of four thousand copies of " John Canne's 
 Bible," which led directly to his excommuni- 
 cation — both Rowlands and his great friend 
 Williams having died before 1792. His trials 
 and sorrows, we can perceive to-day, were 
 part of the price of the new life ; they were 
 the growing-pains of Nonconformity. 
 
 The man who, more than any other, re- 
 duced these glowing, clashing forces of revival 
 into order was Thomas Charles, of Bala. He 
 was born in 1755 at Pant-dwfn, a farmhouse 
 near St. Clears, and as a child breathed, like 
 Peter Williams, the air of Llanddowror. He 
 acknowledges specially his indebtedness to 
 an old disciple of Griffith Jones — "an aged, 
 holy, and pious man, by name Rees Pugh." 
 When about fourteen he entered the " Pres- 
 byterian " academy at Carmarthen, where he 
 soon joined a " society " of Methodists, where 
 he " met several very pious persons " ; but " all 
 had been well-nigh ruined by a set of care-
 
 84 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 less, high-spirited professors," with whom he 
 contracted too much intimacy. " But the 
 Lord graciously opened my eyes, and de- 
 livered me out of their snare." On January 
 30, 1773, he heard a sermon by Daniel Row- 
 lands at New Chapel on Heb. iv. 15, and 
 that day he ever kept afterwards as the 
 anniversary of his soul's birth. " Ever since 
 that happy day I have lived in a new heaven 
 and a new earth," Unexpectedly, and very 
 wonderfully, two years later Providence 
 opened his way to Oxford ; and Providence 
 again came as wonderfully to his rescue some 
 two years later still, when his supplies from 
 Wales were suddenly stopped. This same 
 year of 1777, he spent the summer vacation 
 with John Newton at Olney ; " the visit," he 
 writes in his diary, " proved very comfortable 
 and very profitable indeed." During that 
 visit, too, he had no small pleasure in listen- 
 ing to Mr. Romaine preach " two very excel- 
 lent sermons on Christ's glory in His person 
 and offices, and on His preciousness to a 
 ruined sinner." After hearing him he felt 
 that were he " master of all the branches of 
 human literature, yes, of all learning, both 
 sacred and profane," it would have been 
 much too little to make him a Gospel- 
 preacher.
 
 WELSH CALVINISTIC METHODISM 85 
 
 The following year he was ordained 
 deacon at Oxford, and during the summer 
 visited Bala and Llangeitho and home, and 
 had his last interview on earth with his " old 
 and very dear Christian friend, Rees Hugh." 
 He settled as curate first at Queen Camel, 
 and later at Milborne Port. But his engage- 
 ment to a daughter and an only child of pious 
 parents living at Bala made him anxious to 
 settle near. He applied in 1781 for a curacy 
 at Oswestry, " but the moment the vicar 
 heard that I was tinctured with what they 
 call Method istical principles he would have 
 nothing more to say to me." Lady Hunt- 
 ingdon invited him to take the care of her 
 chapel at Bath, but Providence, and his 
 heart, kept him for North Wales. He was 
 married in 1783, and settled at Bala, but his 
 hope of a living became fainter week by 
 week. He speaks of serving a church for 
 two Sundays, and then of a long letter " gen- 
 teely excusing " his attendance for the future. 
 He obtained temporary charge at Shawbury, 
 Salop ; and later of Llanymawddwy — four- 
 teen miles still from Bala, a rough, bleak 
 mountain road. It was while here he 
 started the custom of catechising the young 
 people on Sunday afternoon, which has 
 remained a feature of Welsh Sunday Schools,
 
 86 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 in rural parts at least, to the present day. 
 The common people rejoiced in his ministry, 
 but what he calls " the great folks about 
 Dinas" moved against him, and had him 
 once more dismissed. He was offered a 
 living in England, but his heart held him 
 fast. " I feel myself much inclined to take 
 Wales, as I did my wife, ' for better, for 
 worse, till death do us part.' " To save him- 
 self from sloth he began teaching and cate- 
 chising the young people at Bala on Sunday 
 evenings, and as his school grew he was 
 offered the use of the Calvinistic Methodist 
 chapel. And so, by many " windings of the 
 road," he was led, about the dawn of 1785, to 
 his great life-work. In him the centre of 
 Methodism was moved from south to north, 
 from Llangeitho to Bala. When 
 he attended the Association at 
 Llangeitho that summer, and preached there, 
 Rowlands remarked, "Charles is the Lord's 
 gift to North Wales." He was the only 
 ordained minister at that time among the 
 North Wales Methodists ; and he and his 
 brethren at the time, like the early Puritans 
 wished to be reckoned as simply still some- 
 how a branch of the Established Church. 
 They had not as yet risen to the honour of 
 Nonconformity.
 
 WELSH CALVINISTIC METHODISM 8/ 
 
 He became a devoted educationist, and 
 decided to revive the circulating school 
 system of Thomas Gouge and Griffith Jones. 
 Some of the first teachers he taught himself; 
 the sacrament money collected at Bala chapel 
 was added to the gifts he obtained from 
 friends far and near. " In many parts," he 
 relates, " not one person in twenty was 
 capable of reading the Scriptures ; " so his 
 circulating schools became mothers of Sun- 
 day Schools. By the year 1808 they had 
 sufficiently grown to have associations of the 
 different schools, meeting in central places to 
 be publicly catechised ; three meetings of the 
 kind were held in North, and three in South, 
 Wales. The system spread itself on every 
 hand, and still effectively prevails. " Feed 
 My lambs " was the call which helped Charles 
 to take his decisive step in 1785, and well did 
 he obey the call. 
 
 When the London Missionary Society was 
 formed in 1795 he cordially supported it, and 
 the Methodists generally gave joint support 
 to it and the Church Missionary Society till 
 John Elias, calling in question the consistency 
 of such dualism, induced them to devote 
 themselves to the one. Here we may add 
 that in 1840 the denomination formed a 
 society of their own, which has had the
 
 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 Khassian hills for its field of effort, and has 
 added a fruitful chapter to the story of 
 modern missions. 
 
 The effect of his schools was to produce 
 Bible-hunger, and it soon became his chief 
 difficulty to provide the poor with Bibles. 
 As early as 1787 he was in correspondence 
 with Thomas Scott on the subject. The 
 religious revivals of 179 1-3 added to the 
 need. In 1792 the Rev. Thomas Jones, of 
 Creaton, aided his fellow-countryman in 
 asking the Society for Promoting Christian 
 Knowledge to print an edition of 10,000 
 Bibles. A delay of years occurred, however. 
 When the edition came out in 1799 it was 
 sold as soon as published. " The 10,000 
 copies were not sufficient to supply one- 
 fourth part of the country." Mr. Charles, as 
 a member of the Religious Tract Society, 
 visited London in 1802, and "the idea of 
 having a Bible Society established in Lon- 
 don, on a similar basis to the Tract Society, 
 occurred to his mind," says his biographer 
 in 1828. He mentioned his plan at the 
 Society's committee, with results well known, 
 when Joseph Hughes took the provincial 
 germ and gave it worldwide atmosphere. 
 The New Testament came out in 1806. 
 " When the arrival of the cart was announced
 
 WELSH CALVINISTIC METHODISM 89 
 
 which carried the first load," writes an eye- 
 witness, " the Welsh peasants went out to 
 meet it, welcomed it as the Israelites did the 
 ark of old, drew it into the town, and eagerly 
 bore off every copy as rapidly as they could 
 be disposed. The young people were to be 
 seen consuming the whole night in reading 
 it. Labourers carried it with them to the 
 fields that they might enjoy it during the 
 intervals of their labour and lose no oppor- 
 tunity of becoming acquainted with its 
 sacred truths." 
 
 There had been among the Methodists a 
 growing feeling of impatience under the rule 
 of episcopal sentiments. None but those 
 who had been episcopally ordained were 
 allowed to administer the sacraments ; and 
 this, as the movement spread, constituted not 
 only a grievance, but a serious hindrance. 
 Charles was at first naturally under the sway 
 of early sentiments and convictions, but at an 
 Association in Bala in 1810 he 
 gave way to his brethren's wish 
 and formulated the connexional rules, which 
 had been practically in use since 1790. The 
 next year, in North and South Wales, the 
 first group of ministers was ordained ; with 
 the result that a few of the clergy, which had 
 hitherto associated themselves with the move-
 
 90 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 ment, left. In 1823 their confession of faith 
 and connexional rules were finally revised, 
 and legalised in 1826. 
 
 Hitherto there was no preparation for the 
 training of their ministers. It was in 1837 
 that Dr. Lewis Edwards, with the help of 
 David Charles, B.A., established the College 
 at Bala; and in 1842 Howell Harris' house 
 at Trevecca was fitted for a college to meet 
 the wants of South Wales, the latter becom- 
 ing its first principal, and his place at Bala 
 taken by Dr. John Parry. 
 
 We have now reached the period when the 
 older ecclesiastical sentiment was passing 
 away and a Nonconformist sentiment was 
 coming in. The efforts and writings of Dr. 
 Lewis Edwards and his compeers — from the 
 founding of the great Welsh review, the 
 Traethodydd (Essayist), in 1845 — 
 have helped to bring the denomi- 
 nation into line with the older Dissenters. 
 Common foes and common causes have con- 
 solidated the alliance, and to-day the only 
 rivalry is for the "primacy of honour" in 
 advancing Nonconformist ideals. 
 
 Dr. Edwards had a great part also in 
 modifying the inner organisation of the 
 denomination. At first the evangelistic 
 sentiment completely overruled the pastoral.
 
 WELSH CALVINISTIC METHODISM 9 1 
 
 An ordained minister belonged to the entire 
 denomination ; he had no particular church 
 under his charge. The pastoral office was a 
 growth, and is growing still. It was in many 
 cases strongly opposed. Writing in 1858, 
 Dr. Edwards pleaded that the work of the 
 pastoral office had been partly recognised by 
 Rowlands and Harris, Charles, and Ebenezer 
 Morris. " Where," he asked, " is there any 
 basis in Scripture or reason for deacons 
 without a minister, or a minister without 
 deacons ? " There being no pastoral charge, 
 the ministers preached at a fresh place almost 
 every Sunday in the year. The opponents 
 urged that the general introduction of the 
 pastoral office would injure the older itinerant 
 system. " But," he replied, " that system has 
 done its work : what is good in it can be still 
 maintained." And his ideas have very 
 generally prevailed : the number of Churches 
 without pastors grows steadily fewer ; but 
 these pastors preach to the Churches of their 
 charge only once a month, more or less 
 according to local requirements. 
 
 A little more than a hundred years ago 
 Thomas Charles found a company of 
 sincere but scantily educated preachers to 
 serve the cause of Calvinistic Methodism : 
 to-day no Welsh denomination has taken
 
 92 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 ministerial education so seriously. When 
 Dr. Thomas Charles Edwards returned in 
 1 89 1 from being the Principal of Aberstwyth 
 University College to his father's home and 
 chair at Bala, it was not so much an initia- 
 tion, as the public adoption by the son of 
 his father's conception. But to the younger 
 leader it had become a larger and more 
 national enterprise. Some day Wales may 
 rise to it, and have its one Nonconformist 
 Theological College.
 
 VIII 
 IVESLEYAN METHODISM 
 
 WE have, in the last chapter, referred to 
 the regular visits of John Wesley to 
 Wales, almost yearly for fifty years, and to 
 his intimate but interrupted association with 
 Howell Harris and the other revivalists ; but 
 as his preaching was in English only it is not 
 surprising perhaps that his "societies" should 
 have been founded in the English 
 districts only. Welsh Wesleyanism 
 dates its formal history from 1800. 
 
 Its actual founder was Edward Jones, who 
 was born in 1777 at Bathafarn, near Ruthin, 
 and went as a youth to Manchester, where 
 one Sunday evening, about the close of 179S, 
 he was converted in Oldham Street Chapel. 
 That same service marked the conversion of 
 Jabez Bunting and others, who became his 
 first companions in the new life. He had to 
 return home to Ruthin at the end of 1799; 
 93
 
 94 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 much to his grief, because of his being 
 deprived thereby of sympathetic Christian 
 fellowship. But while staying on the journey 
 at Chester he heard of a fellow-countryman 
 named John Bryan who was a Wesleyan 
 local preacher. As soon as he reached home 
 he made arrangements to have a service in 
 the town, January 3, 1800, in the large room 
 of a carrier's house. One of the Chester 
 ministers came to preach, but as the sermon 
 was in English only a slight impression was 
 made. However, the young pioneer was not 
 daunted, but went on holding the services, 
 sometimes reading one of Wesley's sermons, 
 sometimes venturing to give his own mes- 
 sage. One Sunday morning, in the following 
 month of February, he and as many young 
 men as he had already gathered to him 
 climbed to the top of Moel Fama to meet 
 John Bryan ; and there in the keen air of 
 winter, — within sight of several Welsh 
 counties, the Vale of Clwyd beneath them 
 scarcely touched with the promise of spring, 
 — there they sang a Welsh hymn of the 
 " good news which had come to their land " 
 {Newyddion braf a ddaetJi i'n brd). As they 
 re-entered the town they sang in English — 
 
 " Let heaven and earth agree," &c.
 
 WESLEY AN METHODISM 95 
 
 The town was moved, the carrier's large room 
 was crowded, and the ministry was with 
 power. By the time Bryan visited them, in 
 June, not only was there a promising cause 
 at Ruthin, but other towns had also been 
 touched. The work was there, ready to 
 hand ; but where could workers be found ? 
 He was greatly discouraged with the thought; 
 and one day in August of that year he 
 thought of ascending the Voel where the 
 hymn had rung in February's air, and " after 
 a regretful gaze in the direction of Man- 
 chester, he fully intended to ask the Lord to 
 take him from the earth to Himself as He 
 had taken Moses His servant from the 
 mountain's summit." He was, however, 
 hindered from making the ascent by a 
 servant's message that a letter waited for 
 him at home — and letters were no trifles at 
 that time and in that district. He returned 
 to find that the Conference, newly met at 
 City Road, London, had just added a new 
 circuit to its list — that of Ruthin. The 
 matter had been practically dropped for 
 that year, when Dr. Coke arrived — after 
 much delay in crossing from Ireland — and 
 so eloquently pleaded the cause of his native 
 land that Wesleyanism that year began its 
 native mission in Wales. So the letter gave
 
 96 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 to the discouraged young leader the gladder 
 keynote of the Moel Fama hymn. On 
 August 27th of that year Owen Davies and 
 John Hughes began circuit-work at Ruthin. 
 
 There can be no doubt that there was 
 preparation of mind in Welsh religious life — 
 as elsewhere — for the advent of Wesley's 
 messengers. The theology of Wales was 
 predominantly and strictly Calvinistic ; and 
 although the Arianism of the eighteenth 
 century had deeply affected small areas, and 
 had been effectively taught by a few able 
 leaders, Wales as a whole remained faithful 
 to Geneva. A rigid doctrine of election, and 
 of an atonement for the elect only, was 
 generally held by Independent and Metho- 
 dist ; so that the freer, more missionary note 
 of Wesley's theology came as a relief to many. 
 
 Owen Davies could not preach in Welsh, 
 though he made himself acquainted with it 
 colloquially. John Hughes was a native of 
 Brecon — Dr. Coke's native town. He was 
 ordained in 1796, and at first laboured in 
 English circuits in Wales. Probably he was 
 the only one available for Welsh work in 
 1 800 ; at any rate he served his country well 
 both in preaching and in literary productions. 
 John Bryan was set apart to the ministry in 
 1 80 1, at Leeds. His translations of Wesley's
 
 WESLEY AN METHODISM 97 
 
 hymns to Welsh were a great aid in those 
 early years, and are still much in use. The 
 first Welsh Wesleyan chapel was opened at 
 Denbigh in 1802. In 1803 ^ "^w circuit was 
 formed, that of Carnarvon ; and Edward 
 Jones, with his cousin, John Maurice, were 
 the appointed preachers. In 1816, conse- 
 quent upon Dr. Coke's death, the grant 
 hitherto made by Conference was with- 
 drawn ; and nearly all the Welsh ministers 
 that could preach in English were transferred 
 to English circuits, greatly to the arrest of 
 the work in Wales. The circuits were 
 reduced from twenty-one to twelve, and the 
 number of ministers from forty-eight to 
 thirty-five ; these were still further reduced 
 from different causes. But from about 1820 
 onward the work revived, and the lesson of 
 helping themselves had not been unprofitable. 
 In 1 828 Wales was divided into two districts — 
 North and South. At the reunion of the 
 two Mr. Hugh Price Hughes took part at 
 Machynlleth, six years ago. The movement 
 owed much to his patriotic zeal; and as it 
 involves some elements of denominational 
 " home rule " — such as the right of ordination, 
 apart from Conference — it may have far- 
 reaching effects on the future of Wesleyanism 
 in Wales.
 
 98 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 Wesleyan Methodism from the first gained 
 more ground in North than South Wales. 
 Perhaps something in the character of the 
 people accounts for this, the South being 
 more impatient of too formal an organisa- 
 tion. Or it may be that previous evange- 
 lisation had anticipated their efforts more 
 thoroughly in South Wales. The whole re- 
 ligious history of Wales proves that, while 
 good work may be initiated from without, its 
 development, to attain success, must come 
 largely under the formative genius of the 
 nation itself. Romanism suffered through 
 ignoring this, and so has Anglicanism. But 
 if Wesleyanism has suffered from that or 
 some other cause, and has not taken its 
 place with "the first three," its contributions 
 to Welsh religion have been, and are, of 
 living value. 
 
 Other sections of English Methodism are 
 represented in Wales. But as their work is 
 almost exclusively English, and has followed 
 mostly in the wake of English settlers in 
 populous centres, we have not referred to it 
 in a work dealing with Nonconformity from 
 a native and national standpoint.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 FUSION OF FORCES 
 
 THE older Dissenters, Independent and 
 Baptist, at first hailing the Methodist 
 fathers, then in some cases partly estranged 
 from them,received from the spirit of the move- 
 ment a great blessing. They regained their 
 missionary zeal. Churches, which had been 
 wasted by Arian influences, came under the 
 sway of evangelistic ideals, and learnt again 
 to believe. That the reaction from Arian ism 
 tended to narrow their theological views, 
 is true. Indeed, it is possible that some- 
 thing of Daniel Rowlands' over-anxious zeal 
 for orthodoxy arose from the sight of 
 the damage done to his neighbour, Philip 
 Pugh's churches in Cardiganshire, by Arian 
 controversies. This came to mean that in 
 the first decades of the nineteenth century the 
 battle for a more liberal interpretation of 
 Christian truth had to be fought from within. 
 The Wesleyan teachers had to suffer opposi- 
 tion, and great preachers among the Inde- 
 
 </3
 
 lOO NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 pendents — like Williams o'r Wern — had 
 pulpit doors closed against them because of 
 their advocacy of the " new system," which 
 was simply a milder Calvinism than had for 
 some fifty years prevailed. 
 
 A colonising movement, initiated during 
 the early years of the nineteenth century 
 among the older Dissenters, proved of abiding 
 value to their increase. Previously they had 
 clung too affectionately to central churches ; 
 but now, moved by a more practical senti- 
 ment, they added, one after another, a number 
 of " little Bethels," associated with their 
 historic " Jerusalems." What kind of men 
 took part in this work, and how a touch of 
 heroism redeemed many of these humble 
 beginnings, will best be seen from a concrete 
 instance, as told in a manuscript autobio- 
 graphy of the late Rev. Samuel Bowen, of 
 Macclesfield. When his parents, in Carmar- 
 thenshire, removed in 1800 from the neigh- 
 bourhood of Capel Evan to the parish of 
 Conwil Elvet, there was "hardly one Inde- 
 pendent professor of religion in the whole 
 neighbourhood for miles round." They 
 greatly missed their church associations, and 
 the constant ministrations of their pastor — 
 the Rev. Morgan Jones, of Trelech. Mr. 
 Bowen proceeds : —
 
 FUSION OF FORCES 101 
 
 " In course of that winter my father hired 
 an old barn at Blaenycoed (being a little 
 more than a mile from his house) for 20s. per 
 annum, for holding public meetings for re- 
 ligious worship — 'prayer meetings,' for the 
 most part, with an occasional sermon, Mr. 
 M. Jones, his minister, having engaged to 
 visit the place and preach on Sabbath after- 
 noons once in every two months, which in a 
 year or two was changed into monthly visits, 
 and which so continued to the day of his 
 death (I think in 1830). My father was an 
 excellent singer . . . and was remarkable, 
 almost extraordinary, for his gift in prayer. 
 Of these gifts he had at that time, for a 
 season, abundant occasion ; for at many a 
 ' social ' prayer-meeting he was the only one 
 to sing and pray, there being present to unite 
 and assist only some six or seven old women. 
 On those occasions he often read twice, and 
 sang and prayed thrice, more or less assisted 
 by the venerable matrons around him. They 
 had never had more than one candle, which 
 candle, rolled up in a piece of paper, he in- 
 variably took with him from his own house. 
 I well remember the old barn. In its latter 
 and better days it had been fitted up with 
 several forms with backs, a table, a pulpit, 
 and two or three large windows ! In the
 
 102 NONCONFORM/TY /.V WALES 
 
 following year a church was formed of some 
 twelve or fifteen members. 
 
 "One Sunday afternoon, in 1803 ^^ 1804, 
 as Mr. Jones was preaching, great interest 
 was excited, and one young man cried out, 
 ' What must I do to be saved ? ' It proved 
 the commencement of a revival, and several 
 were added to the church. 
 
 " Shortly after this my father, being now 
 full forty years of age, began to preach, and 
 continued to do so at Blaenycoed and other 
 places around, to the day of his death. The 
 church members at my father's death could 
 not be much, if any, under 200 ; and hardly 
 a house in the district round where there was 
 not family worship, morning and evening, 
 regularly conducted, and a Sunday School of 
 some 200 scholars." 
 
 This is a fair sample of how Baptists and 
 Independents immensely strengthened their 
 position some hundred years ago. God gave 
 for that age a remarkable number of gifted 
 ministers who permanently sowed national 
 religion by faithfully and carefully serving a 
 district. Among the Baptists — to mention 
 two characteristic instances only — the influ- 
 ence of Dr. Jenkins, of Hengoed, still prevails 
 in parts of Monmouthshire, and that of J. R. 
 Jones, of Ramoth, in the border district of
 
 FUSION OF FORCES IO3 
 
 Carnarvon and Merioneth. Similarly, among 
 Independents, the influence of Azariah Shad- 
 rach, in North Cardiganshire, and that of Dr. 
 Phillips, of Neuaddhvyd, in Mid-Cardigan, 
 are felt to this day. There are other names 
 as great, or even greater, associated with dis- 
 trict after district in North and South Wales, 
 whose most lasting monument is the churches 
 they helped to build. 
 
 Apart from this district work, the past 
 century had a succession of great preachers 
 of national fame among the four denomina- 
 tions. Three of these are united in indis- 
 soluble tradition : Christmas Evans, John 
 Elias, and Williams o'r Wern — Baptist, Cal- 
 vinistic, Methodist, and Independent respec- 
 tively. Twice have two brothers, equally 
 famous, been given to two different denomi- 
 nations : Henry Rees and Dr. Owen Thomas 
 to the Calvinistic Methodists, and Dr. William 
 Rees and Dr. John Thomas to the Indepen- 
 dents. There are thousands of hearts that 
 still beat warmly to the name of John Jones, 
 Tal y Sarn, and Dr. Thomas Rees, of Swan- 
 sea ; and the voices of John Evans (Eglwys- 
 bach), Roberts of Llwynhendy, and Dr. 
 Herber Evans linger like loved melodies in 
 the ears of multitudes ; while Dr. Thomas
 
 I04 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 Charles Edwards holds a place of honour in 
 and outside Wales. And around these stand 
 a great host, " honourable among the thirty," 
 though they may not have " attained to the 
 first three." 
 
 The literature of Wales, from the dawn of 
 the last century, has become overwhelmingly 
 Nonconformist. The first Welsh weekly 
 newspaper was started by Dr. William Rees, 
 in 1843, after some brave attempts at fort- 
 nightly or monthly newspapers, prominent 
 among which were the efforts of the Rev. 
 Roger Edwards, of Mold : and a succession 
 of ministers has largely sustained the verna- 
 cular press till to-day, with constant anxiety 
 and little or no payment. The bulk of the 
 published theology of Wales, in sermons, 
 commentaries, and essays, has been and is 
 Nonconformist. With one or, perhaps, two 
 exceptions, the greatest poetry of the past 
 century has been by Nonconformists. Church 
 music even has passed into the hands of 
 Nonconformist composers ; names like leuan 
 Gwyllt, Stephens of Tanymarian, J. D. Jones 
 of Ruthin, J. Ambrose Lloyd, and Dr. Joseph 
 Parry are the national names in church-song. 
 It can be safely said that, of the product of 
 the last fifty years, the book that is read in 
 the ingle-nook on a winter's evening, the
 
 FUSION OF FORCES IO5 
 
 melody singing in the heart among springing 
 daisies, the verse that haunts the shepherd's 
 mountain-ways, the passage of eloquence that 
 returns with healing benediction to the sick- 
 room, will be, in ninety-nine cases out of a 
 hundred, the gift of Nonconformity. The 
 only name that really counts in Welsh fiction 
 is that of Daniel Owen ; and the Methodist 
 chapel is the centre of his books, as it was 
 of his heart. 
 
 The battle of Dissent had to be fought, as 
 we have seen, for a considerable period by 
 Independents and Baptists. Indeed, the 
 colloquial name for Independents — not yet 
 obsolete — was " Dissenters," and by way of 
 ornament the epithet " dry " was added. 
 When a Baptist minister — Joseph Harris, of 
 Swansea — published the first number of his 
 famous periodical, Seren Gojner, in 1814. 
 Dissent found in literature a fervent and 
 eloquent voice. In 1821 the Independents 
 found their instrument in a monthly — still 
 published — called the Dysgedydd (Instructor), 
 and from the first its position also was 
 valiantly Nonconformist. The leaders of 
 both denominations, including such names 
 as Dr. Arthur Jones, Christmas Evans, Dr. 
 John Pritchard, the Roberts family of Llan 
 Bryn Mair, Titus Lewis, Jones of Velinvoel,
 
 I06 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 and David Rees of Llanelly, were foremost 
 in the struggle of early Victorian years either 
 by speech or pen, or both. Then as Metho- 
 dism became more pronouncedly Noncon- 
 formist, powerful allies were found in such 
 leaders as Ebenezer Richard (father of Henry 
 Richard, M.P.), Dr. Lewis Edwards, Roger 
 Edwards, and Thomas Gee. 
 
 The stupid attack made on Nonconformist 
 Wales through the Education Commission of 
 1 846 helped to make Methodist and Dissenter 
 one in repelling it. Henceforth the diffe- 
 rence wore away until it has all but totally 
 disappeared. We are " all Nonconformists 
 now." The election of 1868 gave Welsh 
 Nonconformity its first sense of political 
 power. Henry Richard became its prophet ; 
 ejected farmers, its martyrs. To-day, for the 
 first time, an absolutely united Wales, through 
 its newly-elected county councils, challenges 
 the assault of grabbing bishops unmoved. 
 How many voices have borne witness in 
 lonely valleys, how many appeals have been 
 penned in forgotten pages, how many hearts 
 have secretly bled, how may graves prema- 
 turely opened, to secure this assured triumph, 
 none can ever tell. 
 
 Dr. Thomas Rees gave the statistics which 
 he had personally collected, or obtained from
 
 FUSION OF FORCES 10/ 
 
 denominational publications, in 1861 as 
 follows : — 
 
 Communicants. 
 
 Independent 97.647 
 
 Calvinistic Methodist 90,560 
 
 Baptist 50)903 
 
 Weslej^an Methodist 24,395 
 
 Mr. Howard Evans has kindly supplied me 
 with the followinsf from the latest sources : — 
 
 WELSH NONCONFORMIST 
 
 STATISTICS. 
 
 
 Commu- 
 
 S. S. 
 
 S. 
 
 
 nicants. 
 
 Teachers. 
 
 Scholars. 
 
 Congregational 
 
 146,225 
 
 15.152 
 
 149.572 
 
 Calvinistic Methodist 
 
 144.523 
 
 25,684 
 
 171.254 
 
 Baptist 
 
 113.597 
 
 11.925 
 
 126,154 
 
 Wesleyan 
 
 47.515 
 
 7.589 
 
 62,590 
 
 Other Methodist bodies 
 
 10.157 
 
 2,349 
 
 20,341 
 
 Total 
 
 462,017 
 NOTES. 
 
 62,699 
 
 529,911 
 
 1. The Welsh congregations in England have 
 been deducted. 
 
 2. Junior members of Methodist classes are 
 counted where the figures are given — {a) because 
 they are entitled to receive the communion ; {b) 
 because the Church of England counts every boy 
 and girl that has been confirmed. 
 
 3. There are thirty-three Unitarian congregations 
 in Wales, but they publish no statistics.
 
 I08 NONCONFORMITY IN WALES 
 
 We have seen how this position has been 
 slowly but effectively gained. We have 
 watched the small beginnings ; we have 
 caught glimpses of heroic faces in dark 
 hours and lonely places ; we have marked 
 the approach of the Puritan, the Inde- 
 pendent, and the Methodist, each giving of 
 what God gave him. We have seen some- 
 thing of the interchange of thought and power 
 between older and newer, and the gradual 
 fusion which has made Wales what it is to- 
 day — a land of Nonconformists. Not that 
 the last battle is yet fought. There are local 
 rivalries that should be discouraged, and 
 power of majorities that should be subject to 
 the law of charity. Nor is Wales without its 
 evangelistic question. In many districts the 
 problem of two languages is growing more 
 and more difficult. The elders love their 
 native Welsh ; but the younger generation is 
 more familiar with English. Which shall be 
 the language of the chapel ? The question 
 is full of difficulties ; and each case has its 
 local complications. But this at least should 
 be understood, that no patriotic sentiment, 
 however admirable, should overrule the higher 
 interests of religion. Apart from this diffi- 
 culty, a kindred problem is that of the in- 
 creasing flow of English settlers into the
 
 FUSION OF FORCES IO9 
 
 mining valleys. The Methodist "Forward 
 Movement" is an attempt to supply the 
 growing need ; but the extent of the need is 
 serious enough to call for still larger effort. 
 
 Nonconformity in Wales has won many a 
 notable victory. At the present moment it 
 stands foremost in the struggle against eccle- 
 siastical reaction. The words of Philip 
 Henry in 1666 are as true in reference to 
 the struggles of to-day against an unjust Act 
 as then : " I know what is said for it, that it 
 is the command of my Superiors, to which I 
 oppose the command of my Supream, saying, 
 Bee not yee y^ Servants of men and call no 
 man Master ; which I then doe when I give 
 a blind Obedience to their Injunctions for the 
 Authority sake of the injoyndrs, rendring mee 
 no reason why or wherefore, but only sic volo, 
 sic jiibeo ; and to do this in the things of 
 God's worship I conceive to bee sinful." 
 
 Let the courage which has helped Noncon- 
 formist Wales to take this position carry it 
 still further in providing wisely for its own 
 children, and bringing the stranger within its 
 gates to partake of its own Christian freedom, 
 and to-morrow will affirm the patience of 
 yesterday and the hope of to-day.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abergavenny, 54 
 
 Act for the Better Propagation and Preaching of the 
 
 Gospel in Wales (1649), 28 
 Act of Indulgence, 53 
 Anglesey, 33, 41,64-7 
 Anglesey, John Wesley in, 67 
 
 Bala, 70, 85, 86, 89, 90, 92 
 
 Barrovve, 7 
 
 Bayley's Practice of Piety, translation of, 24 
 
 Bible, first Welsh, 8-11 ; editions of, 25, 33, 57-8, 83,89 
 
 Book of Sports, 14, 26, 29 
 
 Book of the Three Birds, 38 
 
 Broadmead Records, 17 
 
 Bryan, John, translator of Wesley's hymns, 97 
 
 Brecknockshire, 5, 21, 30 
 
 Brecknockshire, early Churches, 19 
 
 Brynllwarch, 49, 56 
 
 Caerwys Gaol, 49 
 
 Capel Isaac (near Llandilo), 19 
 
 Cardiff, 3, 15, 30, 45 
 
 Cardiganshire, 63, 99, 103 
 
 Carmarthen, 3, 4, 19, 47, 80, 83 
 
 Carmarthenshire, early churches, 19, 44, 59, 61 
 
 Carnarvonshire, 35, 41, 44, 97, 102
 
 I I 2 INDEX 
 
 Castell Craig y Wyddon (near Llandovery), 72 
 
 Charles, David, first principal of Trevecca, 90 
 
 Charles, Thomas, 79, 83-9, 91 
 
 Church Stretton, 54 
 
 Clwchdyrnog (Anglesey), 66 
 
 Clynnog, Morris, 4 
 
 Coke, Dr., 95, 97 
 
 " Conventicle of mean persons," 19 
 
 Conwil Elvet, 81, 100 
 
 Cowbridge Gaol, 50 
 
 Cradock, Walter, 15, 21, 27, 29, 32 
 
 Cromwell (Thomas), 2 
 
 Davies, Bishop, 8, 12 
 
 Davies, Howell, evangelist of Pembrokeshire, 82 
 
 Davies, Dr. John, 25 
 
 Davies, Owen, 96 
 
 Davies, Richard, Quaker, 39 
 
 Denbigh, " lecture " established at, 50 
 
 Denbigh, first Wesleyan chapel at, 97 
 
 Dent's Easy Paflncay to Heaven, translation of, 25 
 
 Dervel Gadarn (image of), 2 
 
 Edwards, Charles, 59 
 
 Edwards, Dr. Lewis, 90-1, 106 
 
 Edwards, Roger, of Mold, 104, 106 
 
 Edwards, Dr. Thomas Charles, 92, 104 
 
 Elias, John, 87 
 
 Erbery, William, 15, 19, 28, 42-3, 82 
 
 Evan, Morgan, Quaker, 40 
 
 Evans, Christmas, 103 
 
 Evans, Dr. Herbcr, 103 
 
 Evans, John (Eglwysbach), 103 
 
 Evans, Dr. John, statistics of, 1715, 63 
 
 Evans, Francis, effect of prayer of, 64 
 
 Evans, Theophilus, 59 
 
 '* Exhorters," 75, 79
 
 INDEX 113 
 
 Ferrar, Bishop, 3 
 
 " Field of blessing," 47 
 
 P'letcher of Madeley at Trevecca, 77 
 
 Flintshire, 52 
 
 Francis, Enoch, 63 
 
 Gee, Thomas, 106 
 
 Glamorganshire, early churches, 19, 44 
 
 Glass House (Broad Street), 18 
 
 Gouge, Thomas, 58, 87 
 
 Griffiths, Vavasor, 72 
 
 " Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah," author of, 48, 72 
 
 Harris, Howell, 68-71, 76, 82, 91 
 Harris, Joseph {Gomcr), 105 
 Harry, Myles, 63 
 Haverfordwest, 3, 51 
 Hay, 19 
 
 Henllan, early church at, 19, 61 
 Henry, PhiHp, 52-3, 109 
 Hereford, Bishop of, 8 
 Huet, Thomas, 8 
 Hughes, Hugh Price, 97 
 Hughes, John, first circuit of, 96 
 
 Hughes, Stephen, "apostle of Carmarthenshire," 27, 
 47-8 
 
 Ilston (near Swansea), early Baptist Church, ig 
 
 Jenkins, Dr., of Hengoed, 102 
 
 Jessey, Henry, 16, 17 
 
 John ap John, 41 
 
 Jones, Dr. Arthur, of Bangor, 105 
 
 Jones, Griffith, of Llanddowror, 59-60, 73, 87 
 
 Jones, David, hymn-writer, 78 
 
 Jones, Edmund, of Pontypool, 63 
 
 9
 
 114 INDEX 
 
 Jones, Edward, of Bathafarn, founder of Welsh Wes- 
 
 leyanism, 93-6 
 Jones, Jenkin, 23 
 Jones, John, of VeHnvoel, 105 
 Jones, John, of Talysarn, 103 
 Jones, J. R., of Ramoth, 102 
 Jones, Morgan, of Trelcch, lOl 
 Jones, Samuel, 50 
 Jones, Thomas, of Creaton, 88 
 
 Laud, 14-16 
 Laugharne, 80 
 Lewis, Morgan John, 79 
 Lollardism, districts touched by, 18 
 Llan Bryn Mair, 20, 66 
 Llandaff, Bishop of, 15, 16 
 Llandovery, Vicar of, 26 
 Llanedi, early Church, ig 
 Llangeitho, 74, 79, 85, 86 
 Llangevni, 66 
 Llanigon, 19 
 Llanrhaiadr, 9 
 
 Llantrisant, early church at, 19 
 Llanvaches, 16-19, 20 
 Llanvyllin, 20, 50 
 
 Llanwcnarth (near Abergavenny), 29 
 Llanwrtyd, 72 
 
 Llwynllwyd (near Hay), 56, 72 
 Llwyd, Morgan, 13, 24, 28, 35-8, 82 
 Lhvyd, Robert, translator of Easy Pathway to Heaven, 
 24 
 
 Machynlleth, Wesleyan " cymanfa " at, 97 
 Maurice, Henry, 54-5 
 Maurice, Mathias, 61 
 Merionethshire, 35, 44, 52, 56, 102
 
 INDEX I I 5 
 
 Monmouthshire, early Churches, 19, 21, 23, 44 
 
 Montgomery, 63 
 
 Morgan, Bishop, 9, 12 
 
 Morris, Edward, 59 
 
 Morris, Hugh, 59 
 
 Myles, John, 17, 23, 63 
 
 Mynydd Bach, 19, 63 
 
 Neath, early Church at, 19 
 
 Newport, 70 
 
 Newton, John, 84 
 
 Newtown, Vavasor Powell's house near, 33 
 
 Newtown, Ysgafell Farm near, 46 
 
 Nicholl, 3 
 
 Olchon, 19 
 
 Owen, Daniel, of Mold, 105 
 
 Owen, Hugh, of Bronclydwr, 52 
 
 Owen, Hugh, translator of Thomas a Kcmpis, 4 
 
 Owen, James, 48-50 
 
 Pantycelyn (near Llandovery), 78 
 
 Parry, Bishop, 10 
 
 Pembrokeshire, 44, 71, 82 
 
 Pencader (Carmarthenshire), 47 
 
 Penmain, early Church, 19 
 
 Penry,John, 5-7, II, 14, 15, 22 
 
 Phillips, Sir John, 59 
 
 Phillips, Peregrine, 51 
 
 Phillips, Dr. Thomas, 103 
 
 Pontypool, 63 
 
 Powell, Vavasor, 23, 29, 30-4, 39, 44-6 
 
 Presbyterian Fund, 62 
 
 Proud, Thomas, 17 
 
 Powis Castle, 52 
 
 Pritchard, Rhys, 26, 78 
 
 Pritchard, William, 64-7
 
 Il6 INDEX 
 
 Prys, Archdeacon, lo, 78 
 Pugh, Philip, 63, 73, 99 
 PwllheH, 54, 64, 67 
 
 Quakers, 38-41, 55-6 
 
 Radxorshirk, 30, 31 : early churches, 19, 23 
 Rees, David, of Llanelly, 105 
 Kees, Henry, 103 
 Rees, Dr. Thomas, 103 
 Rees, Dr. William, 103, 104 
 Rees, Lewis, 63, 66 
 Rhys, Morgan, hymn-writer, 78 
 Richard, Ebenezer, 104 
 Richard, Henry, M.P., 106 
 Roberts of Llan Bryn Mair, 105 
 Roberts of Llwynhendy, 103 
 Rowlands, Daniel, 73-4, 79, 84 
 
 Ruthin, " lecture " established at, 50 ; first Wesleyan 
 Church, 93-6 
 
 Sabelliaxism, 75 
 
 Salesbury, his New Testament in Welsh, 8 
 
 St. Clears, 83 
 
 Samuel, Edward, 59 
 
 Seward, William, killed at Hay, 71 
 
 Shadrach, Azariah, 103 
 
 Smith, Rhosier (Roger), 4 
 
 " Societies," 58, 74 
 
 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 58, 88 
 
 Southwark Church, 7, 16 
 
 Swansea, 3, 4, 19, 41 
 
 Talgarth, 72, 74 
 Thcoinciiiphiis, 73 
 Thomas, Dr. John, 103 
 Thomas, Dr. Owen, 103 
 Thomas, William, 17
 
 INDEX 117 
 
 Tillotson, Dr., 58 
 Trevecca, 68, 76 
 
 Vaughan, Dr. Richard, Bishop of London, 10 
 Venn, Henry, his opinion of Trevecca, 76 
 
 Watford (near Caerphilly), 74 
 
 ' Welshmen's Candle," 27, 47 
 
 Welshpool, 39, 52 
 
 Wesley, John in Wales, 67, 71, 78 
 
 Whitfield in Wales, 71, 80 
 
 Whitgift, 7, II 
 
 White, Rawlings, 3 
 
 Whitwell Chapel, 53 
 
 Williams, Dr. Daniel, 61-2 
 
 Williams, David, hymn-writer, 78 
 
 Williams, Henry, Ysgafell Farm, 46-7 
 
 Williams, John, 55 
 
 Williams, Peter, 80-3 
 
 Williams, William (" o'r Wern "), 100, 103 
 
 WiUiams, William, Pantycelyn, 48, 71-3 
 
 Worthenbury, 53 
 
 Wroth, William, 16-19, 3i 
 
 Wrexham, 20, 35, 62, 71 
 
 Wynne, Elis, 59 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, PRINTERS, WOKING AND LONDON.
 
 LITTLE BOOKS ON 
 THE DEVOUT LIFE. 
 
 Edited by 
 Rev. F. B. MEYER, B.A., 
 
 President 1904-5 of the National Council of Evangelical Free Churches 
 
 A Series of 13 uniform Volumes to be published monthly, 1904-5— 
 size extra foolscap 8vo (7 x 4J), 140 pp., daintily bound in cloth boards 
 gilt back and side, price 1, 6 each. 
 
 Special Volume (No. XI.) in the Series (238 pp., 2s. 6d. net). 
 
 The Open Secret: A Manual of Devotion, 
 
 By Kev. R. F. HORTOX, M.A., D.D. 
 
 I. The Possibilities of Obscure Lives. [Ready. 
 
 By Rev. ALFRED ROWLAND, B.A., LL,B., D.D. 
 
 II. Lessons from the Cross. \_Ready. 
 
 By Rev. CHARLES BROWN. 
 
 Ill, The Life of the Christian. [Oct., 1904. 
 
 By Rev. G. CAMPBELL MORGAN, D.D. 
 
 rV. As a King, ready to Battle. 
 
 By Rev. W. J. TOWNSEXD, D.D. 
 
 V. The Spirit of Prayer. 
 
 By Rev. CHARLES NEW. 
 
 VI. The Soul's Wrestle with Doubt. 
 
 By Rev. F. B. MEYER, B.A. 
 
 VII. The "Whole Armour of God. 
 
 By Rev. G. S. BARRETT, D.D. 
 
 VIII. Our Father's School. 
 
 By Rev. ]. GREGORY MANTLE. 
 
 IX. The Devotional Use of the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 By Rev. J. MONRO GIBSON, M.A., D.D. 
 
 X. The Guiding Hand of God. 
 
 By J. REXDEL HARRIS, M.A., Litt.D. 
 
 XI. The Open Secret: A Manual of Devotion. 
 
 [Ready. 
 Special volume, price 2, 6 net. 
 By Rev. R. F. HORTON, M.A., D.D. 
 
 XII. From Natural to Spiritual. 
 
 By Rev. J. B. MEHARRY, D.D. 
 
 Xin. A Chain of Graces. 
 
 By Rev. GEORGE HANSON, M.A., D.D. 
 
 National Council of the Evangelical Free Churches, 
 London : Thomas Law, Memorial Hall, E.G.
 
 National Free Church Council Publications. 
 
 John Clifford, 
 
 Free Church Leader 
 and Preacher. 
 
 The full official biography of Dr. Clifford, 
 specially written by Charles T. Bateman, 
 from information supplied by Dr. Clifford. 
 This volume contains the full details of Dr. 
 Clifford's career, the bulk of which has never 
 before been published. Extra crown 8vo, 
 400 pp., with photogravure frontispiece and 
 many illustrations, including seven cartoons by 
 by " F. C. G." 
 
 Forty-second Thousand. 
 
 Qipsy Smith: 
 
 HIS LIFE 
 AND WORK. 
 By Himself. 
 
 Editions, 2/6 net and 6/-. 
 
 The Art of Life. 
 
 By Rev. F. B. MEYER, B.A. 
 
 A series of seventeen essays in Mr. Meyer's 
 happiest style. An invaluable book for placing 
 in the hands of young people. Crown 8vo. 
 Daintily bound in cloth, gilt, price 2/- net. 
 
 National Free Church Council, 
 London: Thomas Law, Memorial Hall, E.C.
 
 iNational Free Church Council Publications. 
 
 Qipsy Smith's 
 Favourite Solos. 
 
 Edited and arranged by W. H. Jude. Medium 
 8vo. Prices (Old Notation), paper covers, 1/- 
 net. Limp cloth, boards, 1/6 net. Cloth gilt, 
 bevelled boards, gilt edges, superior paper, 
 2/6 net. 
 
 Yet Another Day. 
 
 A Short Prayer for every day of the year, 
 specially written by the Rev. J. PI. Jowett, 
 M.A. 32mo, daintily bound in cloth, 1/-. 
 Special edition, padded leather, round corners 
 and gilt edges, 1/6. Russia leather ditto, 
 very handsome, 3/-. 
 
 The Religious Basis 
 
 of the 
 
 Free Church Position. 
 
 By Rev. F. B. Meyer, B.A. Foolscap 8vo, 
 artistically produced, bound in paper vellum, 
 price 1/- net. 
 
 "A sword in a jewelled scabbArA."— Methodist Times. 
 "A valuable little book." — Presbyterian. 
 
 National Council of Evangelical P'ree Churches. 
 London : Thomas Law, Memorial Hall, E.C.
 
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