Welsh Journals

DEAN CHARLES VAUGHAN, A. J. WILLIAMS AND THE DISESTABLISHMENT DEBATE OF NOVEMBER 1885 J. Graham Jones Let these gentlemen be clearly given to understand that disestablish- ment is a great and cardinal doctrine in the true Liberal faith, and that no candidate can claim to represent the Liberalism of the constituencies who does not firmly believe that every religious sect or denomination should stand on its own legs and that the vast sums at present appropriated by Episcopalianism should be devoted to national purposes more worthy than to obtain religious instruction to the Queen (who is proverbially rich) and to her family, to the landed aristocracy and the plutocratic classes who can well afford to pay for their religious instruction out of their own pockets. Thus did Thomas Edward Ellis translate a pungent passage published in Baner ac Amserau Cymru in September 1885 which virulently attacked those Liberal MPs who had failed to declare their views on the Disestablishment question. In fact, the issue had played a part in Welsh political life at least since the battle to achieve the Irish Church Act of 1869 passed by Gladstone's first ministry. The machinery of protest in Wales was provided primarily by the activities of the Liberation Society which had energetically set up cells in many Welsh towns during the 1840s and 1850s, those very places where political awareness was most acute. A national organisation followed in 1862 launched at Swansea at a convention held to commemorate the bi-centenary of the expulsion of the 'martyrs' by the Clarendon Code in 1662. The re-organisation and self- examination which ensued within the Welsh Church served to renew and fortify the efforts of Welsh nonconformists who were still reeling from the impetus of the great revival of 1859, the influence of the Oxford Movement, and the long term effects of the intense controversy which had resulted from the 'Blue Books' episode of the late 1840s. In the epoch making 'breaking of the ice' general election of 1868 the debate over the disestablishment of the Irish Church had clearly divided 'The Welsh Press' by 'Cuneglas' [Thomas Edward Ellis] published in the Cardiff Times, 26 September 1885.