Welsh Journals

WILLIAM BEAW: A CAVALIER BISHOP THERE are three main contemporary sources known to the writer for the life of this colourful but rather controversial personality, who was by turn scholar, major in the Royalist cavalry, soldier of fortune in the Baltic, and finally a bishop in Wales. One is his entry in the Heralds' Visitation of Monmouthshire of 1683. This is printed by Sir Joseph Bradney in vol. IV, part 1 of his monumental history of that county (published in 1929), together with the result of his own researches into Beaw's descendants. The second is a letter written on 21 August 1699 by Beaw himself from his living at Adderbury in Oxford to Tenison, archbishop of Canterbury, describing his long career and his attempts to obtain preferment. The letter is expressed in exceedingly vivid language, and will be quoted here in extenso. But Beaw was eighty-four at the time the letter was written and he has, perhaps intelligibly, omitted many dates and names which would have aided further research. It is preserved in Lambeth Palace under the reference MS. 930, folio 49. The third source needs some explanation. It consists of a manuscript note dated Gileston, 14 June 1849, headed 'Copy of manuscript of Revd William Willis: some accounts relating to Dr. William Beaw, late Bishop of Llandaff'. There follows a short note on his life, the original of which was clearly written some time after Beaw's death, and is referred to below as Willis MS. 1. The next 'account' in this series of papers is a copy of the history of Beaw's life which can be dated, from internal evidence, to 1702. It is written in the third person, but the style is almost unmistakably that of Beaw's own letters. This will be referred to below as Willis MS. 2. It is followed by a copy (Willis MS. 3) of a third 'account' dated 23 April 1702, similarly in the third person, but again almost certainly composed by Beaw himself. A footnote to this account states that 'the original manuscripts of which this is a copy are in the possession of the Rev. Samuel Willis, Rector of Elworthy'. The last few pages of the 1849 manuscript contain a few random notes on Beaw's life, and an extract from Browne Willis's survey of Llandaff cathedral in 1717. The manuscript of 1849, which is now in the writer's possession, was found by him in 1935 in an outhouse at Hartrow Manor in Somerset, where it had lain since 1913 when his cousin, the late E. H. Sweet-Escott, bought the contents of Willet House nearby on the death of his kinswoman, Miss Margaret Blommart. The