Welsh Journals

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Despite this history of cultural activity, Brecon's early printing industry was, initially at least, not so promising. Quite apart from the Trefeca press, which belongs to an earlier era, Brecon's first commercial printer, according to Ifano Jones, was Evan Evans and his son, who set up shop in 1772. They were, Jones tells us, 'indifferent printers' who printed some books by William Williams, Pantycelyn. In 1808, Henry Hughes entered the trade, which on his death in 1827 was taken up by his wife Priscilla, who produced the 1,635-page, three volume edition of Sir William Ousley's Travels in various countries in the East, issued between 1819 and 1823. These volumes Jones judged to be the 'best the county has produced', at least up to the time of writing in 1921. Priscilla Hughes also printed broadsides and popular ballads, such as on the murder of John Price by Rees Lewis, both shepherds, on 23 April 1826. Lewis was executed at Brecon on 4 August of the same year. So Brecon had a relatively well-established and varied printing trade by the time its first newspaper was printed. The title of the Silurian referred to an ancient tribe of south east Wales, and was also chosen by the new science of geology, led by Adam Sedgwick and his student Charles Darwin, to refer to an even more ancient rock strata (it is interesting to note how many geological periods have Welsh names the Cambrian and pre-Cambrian strata are among the oldest exposed rocks in the world).6 In the early nineteenth century, however, the term 'Silurian' referred mainly to the dialect of south eastern Wales. The title thus conjures up a region, whose people share a distinctive past and a peculiar inflection of speech. It did not seek to represent the whole of Wales. Brecon's Rev. John Hughes, writing to lolo Morganwg in April 1817, described himself as 'a true Silurian and cannot bear the conceitedness of many of the North Walians'.7 He and lolo were also involved, at about the same time, in a Silurian Society.8 All this worried the Conservative interest in the region, led by the Marquess of Bute, who, during the Reform crisis of 1832, had both morally and financially supported William Mallalieu's Conservative newspaper, the Merthyr Guardian. Bute's intelligence gatherer in Merthyr, in other words, his spy, was the town's stipendiary magistrate John B. Bruce. In one of his regular dispatches to the Marquess on 1 June 1836, Bute had this to say. 'I have seen a Prospectus for a new Paper to be called the Breconshire Iris to be printed at Brecon patronized, as it is believed, by Mr Parry Wilkins, the banker to be printed at Brecon Radical.' I have seen no evidence that this Iris was ever produced. But he then went on to say that 'It is also believed that another Paper is on the stocks, to which Mr Guest (that isjosiai^ John Guest, Merthyr's Liberal Free-Trader MP since 1832) has given 100 Guineas to be called the Silurian The prospectus of this is Private, and exclusively sent anti-Churchmen and Radicals when I can ascertain anything positive I will inforr your Lordship'.9 Some three months later, Bruce once again reported to Bute, as follow 'My dear Lord, The first number of the "Silurian/Merthyr and Brecon" paper havir