tenaciously held by the 60 sectaries of 1676. The lists of the census are an eloquent tribute to the old Puritan leaders and furnish a map of the geographical orbits within which they moved.

Between 1670 and 1676 death had played havoc with these leaders. In the former year at the Fleet prison Vavasor Powell had passed away, one of the most powerful personalities in the story of British Puritanism; in 1671 William Thomas of Llantrisant in Monmouth, one of the Baptist apostles of free communion;' in 1674 John Williams of Llangian, his gentle nature subdued by the stress of the times; in 1675 Richard Price of Gunley, once most active of Parliamentary captains, later the "elder and pillar" of the gathered church of Montgomeryshire; about the same time died Thomas Jones, formerly Baptist pastor of Llantrisant in Glamorgan, after the Restoration propagator of Baptist principles in Eglwysilan and the five "hamlets" of Gelligaer.' John Miles had departed in 1663 to found a new "Swansey in the New World. New leaders had at once stepped into the vacant places. Let us name but a few. Vavasor's wide mantle was shared between John Evans of Wrexham and Henry Williams of Ysgafell; William Rowlands of Llangybi became the guiding spirit of the turbulent sectaries of Carnarvonshire; Thomas Quarrell of Shirenewton was chosen as new pastor of the Gwentian Baptists between St. Arvans and Newport; while the respectable total of Nonconformists in the deaneries of Ardudwy and Estimaner proclaim the rise in Merioneth of a Puritan evangelist of rare piety and self-sacrifice, Hugh Owen of Bronyclydwr, close blood-relation of the Dr. John Owen who divided with Baxter the Puritan principate of letters. Thus the third column of the Salt MS. represents not only sectaries of the most obstinate type, but also the minimum number of Nonconformists in the difficult period of transition between the passing of the old leaders and the assured accession of the new-and that at a time when the aged Sheldon was meditating a final crusade for their complete extinction. It is rather curious that the six years' limit noted above witnessed a change of personnel among both Anglican clergy and Puritan

1 Joshua Thomas: Hanes y Bedyddwyr (Pontypridd ed.), p. 243. 2 Broadmead Recs., p. 517. Ibid., pp. 514-515.

3

4 Ibid.,
p. 513.

ministers Bishop Morgan of Bangor, writing to the Archbishop in 1673, pauses to remark that the old guard of clergymen, "the gravest and best of the function ", those who had survived the rigours of the interregnum, were by a great mortality swept away; the letter of Maurice in 1675 pens the obituary notices of the older men who had suffered the vicissitudes of the Restoration and the Clarendonian code. Along that same third column. can be clearly seen a new generation of Dissenters which was to carry the Puritan torch from the school of Walter Cradock to the days of the Toleration Act and the "Lists" of Dr. John Evans.

This letter of Maurice's, written as it was in the year just preceding the census, deserves more extended notice. His picture of contemporary Dissent in Wales, with its "scattered" and "desolate" societies harassed by the world and the "new crew of Quakers", makes dispiriting reading, and at first sight the figures of the census tend to corroborate his outlook. A closer examination reveals shafts of sunshine playing between the clouds. Maurice describes his own gathered church of Brecknock, with headquarters at Llanigon, as a conglomerate of Independents and free Baptists, conveying the impression that this "only church in the county" was sitting by the waters of Babylon the Anglican census-makers have to admit there were as many as 682 Nonconformists in the county. Bishop William Lucy three years before had referred to this over-modest minister (that is, Henry Maurice himself) as a wandering preacher "who leades a body of 200 or 300 after him in the face of this Country ". 3 On the other hand, various bits of information given by him in his letter are strikingly confirmed by the local clergy. In north Pembroke he mentions a "small company "who met at the house of Capt. Jenkin Jones; the Indulgence documents prove the house to have been at Cilgerran ; and the census records 7 Nonconformists there.' He refers to "a party of professing people", some Independents and some Baptists, at Llangennech-the Church authorities in 1676 found 6 in that same locality. At 1 Tanner MS. 43, f. 68 (letter dated 13 Jan., 1672-1673).

2 Broadmead Recs., p. 512.

3 Tanner MS. 146, f. 138v.

For these facts see Broadmead Recs., p. 517; St. Pap. Dom., Chas.

II, Entry Bk. 38A, p. 85; Salt MS., f. 391.

5 Cp. Broadmead Recs., p. 513, with Salt MS., f. 389.

the tail end of the Denbighshire report we are told that some members of the Wrexham church met near the castle of Chirk,' which is borne out by "Chirke 35" on f. 416 of the Salt MS. Maurice's general verdict on the Puritanism of Flintshire is almost as discouraging as that on Anglesey-"no professing people in all the late times". But he does admit that some liveliness developed among the dry bones with the Indulgence of 1672-1675, which admission finds support in the 28 Nonconformists counted in 1676 by the clergy of the county. 20 of these, however, are entered opposite "Eastyn" (Llanestyn or Queenhope), a direct reminder that William Jones, the exiled minister of Denbigh town, had settled down in the district. Maurice only knew in 1675 that Jones lived somewhere in the county of Flint; more certain news on the matter were supplied to Calamy and Palmer-from whom we know that he died at Hope in 1679.* Curiously enough, there is in the letter not the slightest reference to Philip Henry and the Presbyterians of English Flint, just as if Maurice and the ecclesiastical archivists of the Province of York had made an unholy compact to consign them all to oblivion. The omission is more to be wondered at because for several years before coming down to Brecknock Maurice was settled in a part of the country (Stretton and Shrewsbury) not so very far distant from Henry's sphere of influence.

It must be remembered that Maurice meant to give a rough outline only of the state of Nonconformity in the thirteen counties. As an exhaustive conspectus of contemporary Puritanism it is very inadequate. There is not a syllable about Thomas Gouge nor of his movement then well under way, nor of the literature produced by Gouge's coadjutors; he has nothing but contempt for the Quakers, whose sufferings were never so intense as in 1675-1676. In addition to the serious hiatus regarding English Flint, there are other omissions. He sees well to pay attention to the sectaries of Cilgerran (only 7 in number in 1676) and none at all to those of Cenarth (as many as 31, according to the census). The Glamorgan

1 Broadmead Recs., pp. 513-514.

3 Salt MS., f. 412.

2 Ibid., p. 514.

Account (1713), ii, 713; Noncon. Mem. (1803), iii, 477. 6 Salt MS., f. 391 (both references).

summary gives not the faintest suggestion of the 51 Nonconformists who lived at St. Bride's Major on the undulating land to the left of the Ogmore river,' who no doubt kept up a close communication from the projecting angle of Southerndown with their friends at Newton Nottage, and often warned them of the approach of the authorities. From Maurice's Montgomery account one would never guess that the Puritan preachers had long since moved down from Cydewain and the highlands of Arwystli to the commote of Cyfeiliog: the census has 33 Nonconformists at Machynlleth, 20 at Llanbrynmair.2 He is strangely reticent, too, about the activities of John Weaver of New Radnor, referring to his congregation as "lately gathered", and not able to give any account whatsoever of the elders and deacons who worked under him.3 In the same letter in which Bishop Lucy dubs Maurice himself a pernicious propagator of dissenting doctrine, he relates to Sheldon the presumption at BettwsDisserth of "one Weaver who keepes Schoole and preaches without license, being long since Excommunicated". It would probably surprise Maurice to see the numbers of Nonconformists sent to the Bishop by the Archdeacon of Brecon in 1676:—

proving that the proportion of Nonconformists to Conformists was higher in this district than in any other in the whole principality. No less than 46 dissenters were scattered over the parish of Llanfor in Penllyn, according to the census of 1676. No group of Puritans is more difficult to account for than these, seeing that their official pastor for many years had been the Anglican opportunist ex-pluralist William Langford, about the last man in the whole country to found a school of Puritans who were going strong 16 years after the Restoration. Perhaps the majority of the 46 were Quakers (six years later the first band of Welsh Quakers to emigrate to America came

1 Salt MS., f. 423.

5 Salt MS., f. 396.

2 Ibid., f. 415. 3 Broadmead Recs., p. 518. 4 Tanner MS. 146, f. 138. 6 Ibid., f. 414. For Langford's connection with Llanfor, see Rawlinson MSS. C. 261; D. 843, 84 (Commonwealth and Protectorate); Lamb. MS. 639, ff. 302-303 (post-Restoration).

from the Bala district'); perhaps that was the reason why Maurice did not profess to have heard a word of them. It is equally likely he had no idea of the huge size of this parish. Finally, his very colourless allusion to the Dissenters of Swansea and his almost complete disregard of the parish of Clodock-two cases where the prosaic colums of the census held underneath them many of the elements of romance-are deficiencies important enough to deserve treatment in a sub-section all their own. This preternatural silence of Maurice and the very natural reserve of the Anglican clergy have between them obscured the real tone and temper of Welsh Puritanism at this juncture. And the effort to prove underestimation might indeed result only in adding to the Nonconformist lists a number of souls, stubborn enough in all conscience, but lacking in initiative and resource, men doomed to bring a great movement to its death through failing to put the persecutors to the test at any and every opportunity. Fortunately, other records exist which furnish plenty of evidence of the wealth of intrepid courage which animated this obstinate minority, evidence a good deal of which can be narrowed down to the year 1676. We have already noticed how the Mostyn MS. 238 has absolved the Carnarvonshire Puritans from apathy; in Montgomery in 1676 a secret meeting was held at the house of John Kynaston of Bryngwyn, only to be "surprised" by one of the most persecuting J.P.'s in all Wales'; the Presbyterians of English Flint, though unnoticed by Maurice in 1675, were able a short while afterwards to force a concession in law from the seared conscience of Sir George Jeffreys himself acting as Chief Justice of Chester; down south in the diocese of Llandaff a "stubborn schismaticke" (name not given) began in 1676 to give Bishop William Lloyd all the trouble and expense he and his brethren could contrive, and when cast into prison made such play with the law as to force the Bishop to beg the assistance of the Lord Chancellor to prevent his being "enlarged". And room must be found to mention the

1 J. H. Davies: Y Crynwyr yng Nghymru, pp. 11, 12, 20.

2

Cymru, Feb. 1911, p. 145.

3

Philip Henry: Diaries, p. 274.

Tanner MS. 39, f. 47 (to Archbishop Sancroft, 26 June, 1678)—

"thiese two years last past ".