Welsh Journals

By THE REv. W. ISLWYN MORGAN, BRYN-MAWR ONE of the minor personalities with whom John Welsey formed a warm and lasting friendship was Walter Churchey of Brecon. Unlike Robert Jones of Fonmon and George Bowen, Llwyn-y-gwair, Churchey can scarcely be counted a wealthy supporter of Methodism, and yet he was far more influential in early Methodism than either Jones or Bowen. Moreover, he does not appear to have been a prominent member of the legal fraternity of his native town,1 and he certainly did not attain to the civic honours and academic distinctions which fell to the lot of his illustrious fellow-Methodist and schoolmate, Thomas Coke. Neither does his name appear amongst those of his contemporaries who were trustees of the Breconshire Turnpike Trust and the Brecknock and Abergavenny Canal.! This is all the more surprising when one considers that the Brecon of his day was the hub of the agricultural and industrial interests of Breconshire and North Glamorgan, and could offer an attorney many opportunities for advancing his ambitions. One might be tempted to liken the Brecon of the eighteenth century to Trollope's fictional Barsetshire of the nineteenth, albeit with a sharp difference; one would look in vain for a Duke of Omnium, or even a Lady Lufton, but one would meet with the nouveaux riches, whose interests in the ironworks of Glamorgan enabled them to live in comfort. And one would not have far to seek for the prototypes of Archdeacon Grantly, Mr. Roberts, the Vicar of Framley, and the poverty-ridden Parson Crawley of Hogglestock, not to mention the farmers and their servants, the shop- keepers (one recalls that the Rev. John Hughes's father was a hatter), and the occasional Methodist itinerant Preacher (Calvinistic and Arminian), Reprinted from Bathafarn, (The Journal of the Historical Society of the Methodist Church in Wales), Vol. 26, 1971-2, with the kind permission of the Editor, The Rev. Griffith T. Roberts, M.A., B.D. 1 There were several lawyers in Brecon during these years Hugh Bold, Thomas Mayberry, Penoyre Watkins (with whom Theophilus Jones served his articles), Theophilus Jones, and Samuel Church see Theophilus Jones, The History of the County of Brecknockshire (Glanusk Edition, 1930), and Edwin Poole, The Illustrated History and Biography of Brecknockshire (1886) also the list of Subscribers in Churchey's Poems and Imitations of the British Poets (1789), for Messrs. Powell, William Wilkins, and Thomas Williams, all of whom were Brecon lawyers. 2 Mayberry Papers, Folio 71, at Brecon Museum.