Griffith Jones

Griffith Jones was born in 1683 in the Teifi valley, one of the most cultivated areas of Wales. He grew up in a godly household, as was very much the norm in Wales in this period. Growing up in Penboyr, Carmarthenshire he attended the local village school where after he became a shepherd. At some point in his youth, Griffith had an intense religious experience, and he became filled with an overwhelming desire to save the souls of his fellow man. He entered Carmarthen Grammar School with the aim of becoming ordained.

The Wales in which Griffith had been born into was just over 100 years into its legal union with England, yet despite these one hundred plus years of formalised English authority there was still a concern over the spiritual state of the Welsh nation. During the aftermath of the Civil War Cromwell and the Parliamentarians had been concerned over the level of support in Wales enjoyed by the monarchy and Royalist forces. In 1650, the Act for the Better Promotion of the Gospel in Wales was passed by Parliament, the act itself didn’t last too long but the impact was to create a hastening in the collapse of the old order in Wales and also the growth in independent forms of worship. The great English preacher George Fox, one of the founders of the Quakers, had undertaken a tour of Wales in 1657 and found a warm welcome in mid Wales and south Pembrokeshire. There was a deep yearning for more knowledge and increased devotion. It was against this background that The Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) was founded in 1699, backed by powerful landowners like Sir John Phillips of Picton Castle, its main goal was the establishment and maintenance of charity schools. Between 1700 and 1740 it established ninety-six schools in Wales with almost half being in Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire. By the early 1700s, Welsh society had moved forward enough to allow parents with a reasonable income to send their children to school and so literacy rates were improving in those classes, however it was those below this level that the SPCK was concerned with. Yet, despite their success in creating schools across Wales, the SPCK had minimal impact on education in Wales as a whole. Its success was hindered by the parents, who would rather their child begged or laboured than attend a free school and crucially that English and not Welsh should be the medium of education in their schools. In practice, Welsh was used in parts, particularly the north, out of necessity and the SPCK did not prove completely hostile to the language, as they did in Scotland with Gaelic. The SPCK made a significant contribution to the tradition of the printing of religious texts in the Welsh language, though they were mostly translations of books written in English.

In 1707, Jones was ordained as a priest, his career being helped along by the vicar of Clydeu, Evan Evans and the aforementioned Sir John Phillips. It was in 1708 that Jones began to keep a SPCK school, became a correspondent of the society in 1713 and Phillips presented him with the living of Llanddowror, Carmarthenshire in 1716. The patronage of Sir John Phillips was crucial in the early career of Griffith Jones, as Jones often had the rather unwelcome habit of visiting neighbouring parishes and stirring up the religious emotions and fervour of their congregations. A habit incredibly unpopular with the incumbent clerics of the parish!

The schools of the SPCK, as already mentioned, had a policy of teaching in English and included instruction in the so-called 3 Rs, Griffith Jones saw the shortcomings in this when the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of Wales were monoglot Welsh speakers and saw little value in learning English. The Welsh were not shorn of sufficient religious texts to make the word of God unknown to them, prayer books and of course the bible had been translated into Welsh into 1588. Their problem was being able to read them! Although a highly talented preacher, Jones did not think this was enough and certainly in the scope of his desire to save as many souls as possible preaching to his congregation at Llanddowror was rather limited. He felt it was essential that the population had a good grasp of catechism and that they should be permitted to read the bible for themselves.

Thus in 1734, admittedly in poor health and at the age of fifty, Griffith Jones conceived of a scheme for establishing temporary schools that would teach in Welsh. He would go on to assemble a small army of teachers, both male and female, whose job it would be to teach these ‘vulgar sorts’ to read the bible and the church catechism. The idea of Jones’ school was not new, every aspect of it had been discussed before but no-one had had the energy and focus to put them into place like Griffith Jones did. However, those qualities weren’t quite enough, and Jones’ schools did not operate for free, the primary expense being wages for the teachers. Luckily, Griffith Jones found a wealthy benefactor in Bridget Bevan.

Bridget Bevan, also born in Carmarthenshire, came from a wealthy family. Her father, John Vaughan was a philanthropist and a member of the SPCK who directly supported their schools in the area. She had also married the lawyer and member of Parliament for Carmarthen, Arthur Bevan in 1730. Her financial wealth and connections with the wealthy members and patrons in places like London and Bath allowed the schools to operate free of financial concerns. The partnership between Bevan and Jones was so strong that when Jones’ wife died in 1755, he moved in with Bevan and she continued his work after his death in 1761. She demonstrated considerable business and organisational skills over the many years she was solely responsible for these schools and her contribution was just as significant as Jones’ himself.

What would become known as ‘circulating schools’ would have a massive impact on the life of Wales. By the second half of the eighteenth century, Wales was one of the few countries to have a literary majority. Griffith Jones sent yearly reports titled ‘Welch Piety’ to his patrons and supporters and from those reports we can estimate that over 200,000 people had attended them by 1771. His reports in Welch Piety served to highlight the progress of his campaign, appeal for further funding and crucially soothe any doubts about the use of Welsh in instruction. We must not forget that many of its patrons were not Welsh, did not speak Welsh and were suspicious of any instruction not in English. Jones’ however argued that it was essential to teach in Welsh not only for practical reasons but also because using the Welsh language in this capacity stopped it from being used in a reactionary way.

The schools were most numerous in the three counties of south west Wales where they were often held year after year for a quarter of a century. Aside from Flintshire, where no schools were ever recorded, the circulating schools were held in every other county of Wales. Of course, these were not schools as we know them today, they had very limited resources and education and it was completely geared to religious understanding. Out of necessity or desire, Jones stated that he did not want his pupils to have ideas above their station. His intent was to create Christians and not gentlemen. The success of Griffith Jones’ circulating schools sadly widened the gap between Welsh and other minority languages not officially recognised. No such system ever existed for Cornish, Manx or Gaelic for example. Furthermore, the history of the schools are bound tightly with the Methodist Revival in Wales. The regions with the largest numbers of schools were also the areas where Methodism was strongest in its revival. Griffith Jones was a friend and spiritual father to some of the great Methodist preachers such as Daniel Rowland and Howel Harris.

The impact of Jones’ circulating schools should not be underestimated and its achievement of creating a mostly literate population in 18th century Wales is something that should be celebrated. Very few other nations could boast such success, even Catherine the Great of Russia sent envoys to inspect the work with the aim of setting up similar schools. The contributions of Griffith Jones, Bridget Bevan and that army of schoolteachers would have a legacy that would last for centuries and would define Wales for hundreds of years. They created a legacy of a spiritual, god-fearing people who through education were better prepared to understand the immense changes in the world that were coming with industrialisation. Perhaps just as important was the legacy it left on the Welsh language, it is probably difficult for us to imagine the significance of being taught and learning to read in Welsh to those people who only knew that one language. It gave validation to the Welsh language as a means of not only instruction but also as a means of understanding religion. Additionally, it created a huge audience for Welsh literature meaning that the case for printing in Welsh grew even stronger. I’d argue it created a sense of legitimacy, it preserved and strengthened the language, it challenged some of the prejudices and stigmas around Welsh.

Griffith Jones:

Bridget Bevan:

Jones' tomb:

Part of William Morgan's Beibl: