Welsh Journals

hot for a Journey to Kentucky',116 and as pauperism increased in the cloth- making communities, Ezekiel Hughes, a young clock-maker from Llanbryn- mair, assembled a group of farmers and craftsmen to accompany him on an exhausting thirteen-week journey from Bristol to Philadelphia.117 In spite of the anti-American propaganda peddled by Christmas Evans and others, economic depression, social injustice and radical Dissenting ideology remained powerful incentives among potential emigrants.118 By the autumn, however, the dogged old curmudgeon cut a sorry figure. His lease on Dolhywel had expired, his rent had trebled, his riding horse had collapsed and died, and his long-suffering daughter Elizabeth was determined to leave home to be married.119 The absentee rector, Matthew Worthington, was convinced that Jones genuinely desired a political and social revolution, and did all within his power to stir up feelings against him. Agitated magistrates had assembled at Llanfair Caereinion to discuss his case and urged him to draw in his horns. His sole champion in the parish was John Jones, a well-regarded, liberal gentleman who, largely by force of personality, intervened on his behalf and arranged that all correspondence to William Jones be sent directly to his home at Stonehouse, Llangadfan.120 There was to be no escape from 'Pharaoh's servants' for the Welsh disciple of Voltaire, and as he had often wearily confessed: 'mwyaf poen, poen methu' ('the greatest pain is failure').121 He died, aged sixty-nine, in late November 1795. Having spent virtually the whole of his life in spartan discomfort in the 'bogs and crags of poor Wales" 122 suffered harsh indignities at the hands of landowners, stewards and agents, and been demonized by his rector and fellow parishioners, it was entirely characteristic of this stubborn, querulous and unpredictable Voltairean heretic that he should have insisted on being buried in unconsecrated ground, normally reserved for murderers, suicides, the unbaptized and ne'er-do-wells, far from '"N.L.W. MS. 1806E, f. 773. '"I- C. Peate, 'Ezekiel Hughes's Autobiography', Mont. Colls., 70 (1982), 131-33; W.T.R. Pryce and T. Alun Davies, Samuel Roberts, Clock Maker (Cardiff, 1985), p. 39. 118H. M. Davies, '"Very Different Springs of Uneasiness": Emigration from Wales to the United States of America during the 1790s', ante, 15 (1991), 368-98. N.L.W. MS. 13221E, f. 301. The tenancy of Dolhywel passed to Jones's daughter and son-in-law, Elizabeth and Evan Jones, and remained in the family until at least 1862. E.H.C. Davies, op. cit., p. 81. N.L.W. MS. 323E, ff. 43-47. ,2,N.L.W. MS. 170C, f. 34. '"N.L.W. MS. 1806E, f. 786.