Welsh Journals

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THE LIBRARY OF EDWARD RICHARD, YSTRADMEURIG1 The traditional picture of the Established Church in eighteenth century Wales tends to emphasize its weaknesses and ignore the attempts at reform. The root cause of the many difficulties which faced the church for much of the period was poverty. Administrative weak- nesses-namely absentee bishops and the ineffectiveness of arch- deacons to discipline clergy and laity compelled individual parochial clergy to take the initiative in promoting religious life in their localities. However the clergy themselves also suffered from the poverty of the Church, with the multiplicity of poor livings leading to pluralism and non-residence in many areas. Moreover, personal impoverishment could also retard a clergyman's education by preventing him from receiving an adequate education and even from buying religious lit- erature which could seriously affect the performance of his pastoral duties. This was all the more serious when the lack of organised facili- ties for clerical education is taken into account. The teaching of divinity at the universities left much to be desired, with the emphasis being placed on the arts and sciences to the detriment of divinity itself. In the diocese of St. David's few candidates for ordination could afford to enter the English universities. Many, indeed, were compelled to gain instruction in their clerical and pastoral duties through their own individual effort and enterprise. For much of the period libraries were the clergy's only means of education and enlightenment, but gradually two institutions providing a more formal system of clerical instruction emerged, the first being the grammar school at Ystradmeurig which was set up in the 1740s, the second the college at Lampeter which opened in 1827. In 1800 with one exception there were at that date no facilities anywhere in England or Wales for training men for the ministry besides those rather meagre ones supplied at the two universities. The exception was but a very little one and it was very remote, but the Seminary of Ystrad Meurig in Cardiganshire did at least give a year's simple instruction to the non-graduate ordinands of the Diocese of St. David's.2 Edward Richard was born in March 1714 in the remote Cardigan- shire village ofYstradmeurig, the youngest child of Thomas and Gwen- llian Richard.8 His father was a tailor who had several men in his employment,4 while his mother kept an inn. They had sufficient in- come to give their eldest child Abraham (b. 17 10) a thorough edu- cation. After some time at the grammar schools of Hereford and