Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

A WELSH CHURCH RATE FRACAS, ABERYSTWYTH, 1832-33: THE MAKING OF A POLITICAL DISSENTER THE potential strength of Welsh Dissent began to emerge as an aggressive force in the political upheaval of the years 1830-32, as did Dissent in Scotland and England.1 In view of the higher proportion of Dissenters in Wales,2 it might have been expected that they would continue to play at least as large a part in politics as did English and Scottish Dissenters, but this was not the case. Dissenters were very active and made considerable gains in English and Scottish politics from the 1830s to the 1850s.3 In Wales, on the other hand, the Dissenting giant languished until the 1860s: his presence was obvious, he was aggrieved and dissatisfied, but he failed to find the necessary political voice. This was partly because the character of Welsh representation changed but little after 1832. Despite growing industrialization, representation was still over- whelmingly rural, and Anglican landlord domination was little affected. There was not so much scope for the urban radicalism which characterized contemporary English nonconformity, and the few industrialists who were returned to parliament were usually of an Anglican and Whig (or Tory) cast of mind. Only the further enfranchisement of 1867 and the ballot in 1872 enabled Welsh representation to reflect the political and religious complexion of the country.4 Besides these constitutional hindrances, Welsh Dissent lacked cohesion in its political attitudes. Congregationalists (i.e. Independents) and Baptists were often radicals, as in England. 1 Gwyn A. Williams, 'The Making of Radical Merthyr, 1800-36', ante, I, no. 2 (1961), 161-87, and 'The Merthyr of Dic Penderyn', in Glanmor Williams (ed.), Merthyr Politics (1966), pp. 13 ff. I By 1851 over 75 percent of Welsh church-goers were nonconformist. Kenneth O. Morgan, Wales in British Politics, 1868-1922 (new edn., 1970), p. 12; cf. Report on Religious Census of 1851, P.P. 1852-53 (1969), pp. lxxxix, cxcv ff. See also Wilton D. Wills, 'The Established Church in the Diocese of Llandaff, 1850-70', ante, IV, no. 3 (1969), 235, 269-70. In England about 40 per cent of church-goers attended Protestant nonconformist chapels on Census Sunday, 1851 (Report, loc. cit., p. clvi); and on the same day in Scotland probably about 60 per cent of Protestant church-goers did not attend the Church of Scotland (J. H. Dawson, Abridged Statistical History of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1857), p. 1106). SB. J. Mason, 'The Rise of Combative Dissent (in England), 1832-59' (University of Southampton M.A. thesis, 1958); W. H. Macintosh, 'The agitation for disestablishment of the Church of England in the nineteenth century (excluding Wales), with special reference to the Minutes and papers of the Liberation Society' (University of Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1955); G. I. T. Machin, 'The Maynooth Grant, the Dissenters and Disestablishment, 1845-7', Eng. Hist. Rev., LXXXII (1967), 61-85; and idem, 'The Disruption and British Politics, 1834-43', Scottish Historical Review, LI (1972), 20-51. 4 Kenneth O. Morgan, op. cit., pp. 14 ff.