Phillips had preached at Milford on board the ships that bore Oliver's expedition to Ireland, he had begun to consolidate his prosperous Independent church of Llangwin. Peregrine is said to have preached in almost every church in the county of Pembroke, and to be equally at home in Welsh and English.' The Rhydwilym gospel spread not only over many of the districts associated with him, but also over the western area of Stephen Hughes' potent influence, an influence never more potent than in this year 1676, just four years after the appearance of his new Welsh translation of the New Testament and just before the issue of a new Welsh edition of the whole Bible. And there were the activities of the Independent William Lloyd, a blind man stubbornly groping his way to strengthen his Carmarthenshire co-religionists in the days of persecution, and of David Jones, before the Restoration vicar of Llandisilio Nevet (a parish situated on the borders of Carmarthen and Pembroke), reported in 1675 to be equally busy with the blind man. In the light of these considerations, let us examine the situation at Lampeter Velvrey. It is known that two persons from that parish, David Richard and Catherine Rees, were among the new race of Baptists; two was the total number of Nonconformists attested there in 1676:3 were these the two, and were they the only two? The Baptist creed had made a serious impression upon the border parish of Llangolman-George John was baptised on 5th April, 1668, and eight others on 5th September. Only 12 Nonconformists altogether figured in the census of that parish. Is 3 (12-9) a sufficient margin to allow for the Independents of the district and for the thrustful Quakers whom the "Sufferings" of their historian Besse testify to have made a lodgement astride this Pembroke-Carmarthen boundary? According to the testimony of the census, there was not a single Puritan surviving in Mydrim (once so closely associated with Stephen Hughes) and only two and only two in Peregrine's birthplace at Amroth by the south coast Amroth, where his Puritan father had suffered for not observing the Book

1 Noncon. Mem. (ed. 1777), ii, 629–630; 1803 ed., iii, 505–507.

2 Broadmead Records, ed. Underhill, Addenda B, p. 512 (letter of Henry Maurice to Bristol).

3 Salt MS., f. 387.

4 Ibid., f. 385.

5 Ibid., ff. 386, 387.

of Sports and had ministered there as vicar well into the Puritan interregnum.' A Rhydwilym Baptist named Jane Harry, with her home at Amroth, had been baptised in 1667; and a Gaynor Harry was baptised in 1673, most probably from the same district and from the same stock. Could the Puritanism of Amroth show nothing but Anabaptists in 1676? To give the figures for Llangolman, Lampeter Velvrey and Amroth only, suffice it to say that they are very difficult to digest. They may be accepted by the credulous, and by them alone.

The next count in the indictment is drawn from the letter to a Broadmead elder" written in 1675 by Henry Maurice, that native of furthermost Lleyn who at the end of 1672 came down to Brecknock to reorganise the scattered sectaries of that area. The letter was a "Catalogue of all the congregated churches in the several counties of Wales, together with the names of their pastors and other church officers". It is from that catalogue we get the reference to the "blind man" of Carmarthenshire; in the same document, as part of a summary of the varied Dissenting activities of that county, occurs the following words: "there is also another church, consisting of baptists for the most part, but for free communion, who meet at Llanfair y Bryn, near Llanddyfri . . . they were scattered and lay desolate for a time, yet now of late they are much revived, and have rallied together again. . . It is well known that such "gathered" churches drew their members from farflung distances; but it does not run with common sense that the Llanfair centre was a mere geographical convenience, and boasted not a single a single free-communion Baptist within its own bounds. That, however, is the verdict of the local clergyman in forwarding his return to the Archdeacon of Carmarthen-Conformists 147, Nonconformists 0. Moreover, in face of Maurice's double reference to Llangyfelach in his Glamorgan reports and the varied facts collected by the Rev. W. R. Watkin about the presence of Nonconformists in this extensive

993

1 Instituted in 1621 (Lib. Inst., St. David's, f. 8); Lamb. MS. 915, ff. 105-106 (1650).

His name was Edward Terrill. This prominent Bristol church was a community of "free" Baptists.

3 Broadmead Recs., ed. Underhill, Add. B, pp. 512–513.

4 Salt MS., f. 389.

5 Broadmead Recs., p. 514.

parish, the 18 of the Salt MS. seems hopelessly inadequate to represent their number in 1676.' It is to behoped that Bishop William Lucy, not having been a Professor of Mathematics, would add up the lists sent to Brecon with greater correctness than Dr. Seth Ward of Salisbury. That these lists, before they came into his hands, did but Sheldonian justice to the Puritan forces, there is no room for doubt in many instances.

The laconic answer given by Bishop Robert Morgan of Bangor that in 1669 there was not a single conventicle in the whole diocese does not enhance the reputation of a very worthy son of the Church of England. In 1676, it is pleasant to record, his successor and the Carnarvonshire clergy come out of the Llangybi test with much greater credit. On 23 April in that year, in close proximity of time to the compiling of the census, a conventicle was "surprised" at the house of Ellis Owen in Llangybi, attended by sectaries from Lleyn and Eifionydd-to wit, from Llangybi itself, from Llanarmon, Clynnog, Abererch and Pwllheli (Dineio)." On appeal to the Salt MS., Nonconformists are entered opposite each of these parishes. Whether the numbers are adequate in each case is a different problem, and one not very susceptible of solution. In examining this group of parishes, the eye is at once arrested by the 27 Puritans who were reported from the deanery of Lleyn. To those who have read the stirring tale of the Lleyn Puritans soon after the Restoration as chronicled in the [former] Mostyn MS. 237-simple people of Llangwnad daring to criticise Monck, cases of pistols discovered all over the peninsula, the careful watch kept over old Parliament men at Rhydolion, Madryn, Nanhoron-this sad shrinkage to 27 requires much explaining away. Less than four years before the census Henry Maurice had immensely heartened his old friends during his visit in the September of 1672;7 and before the Easter of 1676 another Mostyn MS. (238)"

] Cp. Trans. Welsh Bapt. Hist. Soc. (1916-1919), pp. 54-56, with Salt MS., f. 389.

2 Lamb. MS. 639, f. 140.

4 Salt MS., ff. 400, 401, 408.

3 Mostyn MS. 238, 10.

5 Ibid., f. 400.

6 At present catalogued as N.L. W. Addit. MS. 3071 E.

7 Extracts from his "little diary" in Dr. Thos. Rees: Hist. Prot. Noncon. (1883), pp. 213–218.

8 Now known as N.L. W, Addit. MS, 3072 E.

proves that a young South-Walian named James Owen had come up to Lleyn and Eifionydd to carry on the good work of Maurice. He was the preacher at the Llangybi conventicle on April 23. The 27 of Lleyn is even less likely than the 18 of Llangyfelach.

Only 5 Puritans appear in Anglesey.* Were they maliciously underestimated? Keeping in mind what he has said elsewhere about the invertebrate character of Anglesey Puritanism," the present writer has no heart to answer the question in the affirmative. And the census estimate received striking confirmation from the chronicler of the Duke of Beaufort's "progress" through Wales in 1684: "there are said not to be three sectaries in the whole isle ". For the edification of those modern natives of the island who might feel astonished at this melancholy picture, and who are disposed to read the strength of latter-day Methodism into the annals of 250 years ago, the whereabouts of the five Puritans are supplied :

They are welcome to add to their numbers from the documents of the period. On the way they might possibly alight upon a doubly interesting discovery-the adherence of a Tudor of Penmynydd to the Puritan cause when all "indulgence" was over and nothing but dark days in store. It is already known that Richard Owen Tudor of Penmynydd was in 1647 and 1649 placed on a panel of Parliamentary commissioners to raise money for the upkeep of Puritan armies.*

Before quitting this problem of underestimation, it is natural to look at the Nonconformist numbers from another point of view. If the ratio of Nonconformists to Conformists throughout the Province was worked out for Sheldon as 1 to 22, and if the former therefore had (as Bishop Sherlock remarked of all Dissenters) no natural strength to hurt the constitution, it was certainly unnecessary for Anglican jurists to trouble about confounding Non

1 Salt. MS., ff. 402-405 (deaneries of Anglesey).

2 Religious Developments in Wales (1923), p. 158.

3 Thos. Dineley: The Account of the Official Progress

simile ed. of 1888, p. lxxxvi (orig. pag., 128).

A Religious Developments in Wales (1923), pp. 74-75,

fac

conformity with sedition and treason. Cromwell is supposed once to have told the elder Calamy that one man armed with a sword could deal with nine without;' but it would strain the sinews of any military dictatorship for one swordsman to keep 22 at bay. The actual truth was that the Militia Acts of the Restoration had long since put all the swords in the hands of the 22, and very effectively (as the Puritans of Lleyn could testify) disarmed the poor man in the minority. The Archbishop_ought to have been satisfied with this military reserve. But the memory of his forcible ejection from the Wardenship of All Souls' would never allow him to forget the might of the sleeping Oliver. Within a year of his death the suppression of Puritans was to him a work of necessity. Let Buckingham (who had married a daughter of Fairfax), and Stillingfleet (who had taken his degree at Oxford during the interregnum), and Tillotson (who had been brought up a Puritan), flirt with the idea of Presbyterian accommodation at their peril-probably they were "the unwary persons abused by the designs of our adversaries" referred to in his letter of 1676. "Ecclesiae stator" to a great extent he was; but to a more effective degree was he, to apply to Sheldon the words graved as the epitaph of a Welsh bishop who died just one month before him, "schismatis et Hæresium averruncator strenuus "

(b) THE PURITAN TORCH.

It is not proposed to elaborate any further the proofs of underestimation except to say that Archdeacon Parker of Canterbury adds to his return as an observation (No. 2) that the rumour of a coming census had driven many people to attend church. He does not say whether these were worldly trimmers who were quite pleased to join the majority as a matter of expediency; nor do we know for certain whether some of the 2,407 Conformists found in Cardiff conformed in type to those rude fellows, indifferent about coming to church or not coming there at all, who

1

Calamy: Contin. of the Account (1727), i, 8.

2 Vernon Staley: Life of Gilbert Sheldon, pp. 49–55.

3 From Bishop Lucy's epitaph at Brecon. The words as given in the text will be found in Theophilus Jones: Hist. Breck., II, pt. ii (1809), p. 749. 4 Lamb, MS. 639, f. 168b.