Welsh Journals

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News from the Glamorgan Archive Service As the Annual Report of the Glamorgan Archivist now gives detailed coverage of accessions to the Glamorgan Record Office and developments within the service, a recent Morgannwg editorial decision invited a contribution in a new form, that of highlighting particular documents or collections. This short article therefore draws attention to an important collection from the Society of Friends in Wales, held by the Record Office. Readers of Morgannwg will recall the article by Fay Williams in volume V, which traced the history of Quakers in Glamorgan during the period 1654-1900. That work was based, in part, upon this source material. Archives of the Society of Friends in Wales The bulk of the collection was placed in the care of the Glamorgan Record Office in the 1950s. By then much of the material had come together in the Cardiff Meeting House, but other items were gathered from Neath and Swansea. Additional deposits have been received, subsequently. The collection relates to the whole of Wales (except for the extreme north); the early volumes date from the seventeenth century, the earliest recording information from the 1660s, listing the Sufferings imposed upon Friends during times of persecution. The lists reveal imprisonment without trial and examples of harassment, as well as distraints upon possessions. Friends' refusal to pay tithes to the church, 'towards the upkeep of the steeplehouse', or taxes for the furtherance of war, and their refusal to take oaths (including that of Supremacy), occasioned the seizure of domestic utensils, animals, stock and crops. The most widely represented series of documents in the collection are the minute books, arising from different levels of meeting within the hierarchical organisation of the Society. Yearly and half-yearly meetings in Wales brought together delegates from the whole country or from its northern and southern halves. Quarterly meetings were held at regional level, and monthly meetings united members from the more local preparative meetings. The Society had no formal priesthood, but Friends of particular standing were designated Ministers and Elders. The minutes record members' activities and their responsibilities for the upkeep of the Society's property, the meeting houses and burial grounds, their boundary walls and ditches; the minutes refer to steps taken to set