Welsh Journals

parts of Arvonia ,135 What Thomas Pennant had warned against had come to pass. The common people had been introduced to political thinking in their own language. The loyalist activities of 1792-3 and the translation of English- language political material into Welsh had unforeseen and radical consequences. Firstly, by developing a counter-radical literature de- signed for the common people in their own language, the loyalists in- directly advanced a process of participation in political thought which made the Welsh of one language more likely to become receptive to political ideas of any kind. Secondly, the Welsh language, because it was the language of the common people, came to be viewed ipso facto as a vehicle for radicalism and sedition.136 Any work in Welsh could be regarded with suspicion. 'Dafydd Ionawr', the author of a mighty 13,000-line epic on the Trinity in strict metre, Cywydd y Drindod, felt it necessary 'owing to the turbulence of the times' to preface his work with an English disclaimer: his work had 'nothing to do with French Revolutions and British Polities'. 137 Thirdly, the connection between political unrest, the common people of Wales who spoke only Welsh and their religious leaders was an outcome of the political circumstances of the early 1790s. As late as 1799, English commentators continued to insist that Welsh Calvinistic Methodist preachers were 'instruments of Jacobinism' and secret disseminators of the works of Tom Paine in translation.138 Welsh Nonconformist leaders were to spend the next thirty years proclaiming, both in English and Welsh, that this was not the case. The loyalist legacy of 1792-3 was equally long-lasting in its effect on the political culture of Anglicans in Wales. A new generation of bilingual Anglican clergy, yr hen bersoniaid llengar,139 headed by Walter Davies ('Gwallter Mechain') the Oxonian of lowly Montgomeryshire origins, 135 Walter Davies to Owen Jones, 25 February 1793: BL, Add MS 15,030. 136 G. H. Jenkins, R. Suggett, E. M. White, 'Yr Iaith Gymraeg yn y Gymru Fodern Cynnar', in G. H. Jenkins (gol.), Y Gymraeg yn ei Disgleirdeb: Yr Iaith Gymraeg cyn y Chwyldro Diwydiannol (Caerdydd, 1997), pp.67-8. .137 D. Ionawr, Cywydd y Drindod (Wrexham, 1793), preface. 138 D. E. Jenkins, The Life of the Rev. Thomas Charles of Bala, vol.2 (1908), 362; The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, vol.7 (September 1800 to January 1801), 406. 139 Bedwyr Lewis Jones, 'Yr Hen Bersoniaid Llengar' (1963).