JONES
,
WILLIAM
(d.
c.
1700
),
Baptist minister
in
south-western Wales
.
Many things about him are uncertain: there are no particulars of his birth and education; there is not enough proof that he was once
minister
of
Cilmaenllwyd
under the ‘
Triers
’; and there is not sufficient support for the tradition that he became a
Baptist
by contact with
Jenkin
Jones
(b.
1623
) (q.v.)
in
Carmarthen gaol
. Sure ground is reached with the account of his romantic journey to
Olchon
in the
south-west of Hereford
, the reputed home of the first colony of strict
Baptists
on the borders of
Wales
, to be there baptized by immersion, and with the coming of two officers of that church to found a new cause in the west, for convenience usually called ‘
Rhydwilym
,’ a cause devoted to immersionist baptism and exclusionist communion (
12 July 1668
).
William
Jones
was named as
chief elder
. Thirty had been baptized before the Olchonites had arrived; before the end of
1669
there were fifty-five members; by the end of
1675
eighty; by
1689
, 113. These numbers testify to intense and persistent propaganda; for these
Baptists
had to survive the fierce impact of the penal laws, the natural opposition of the
Independents
nurtured by
Stephen
Hughes
(q.v.)
, and the still more fierce opposition of the early
Quakers
, especially in the parish of
Llandysilio
and the adjoining districts. The gospel preached and practised by
William
Jones
was not easy and attractive, but austere and uncompromising: baptizing in winter, baptizing old women, travelling far to lay on hands (in obedience to
Hebrews
vi, 2), and all subject to
Vavasor
Powell
's
Confession of Faith
, from which had been carefully excised all references to free communion with people not baptized by immersion.
Jones
and his people were deeply expert in all the apparatus of conscientious resistance: secret meetings, stealthy movements across country, marriages before elders without clerical authority, arranging burying-places for the members, and refusing to disclose their clandestine retreats by taking out licences under the
Indulgence
of
1672
. The church of
Rhydwilym
[the chapel bearing that name is on the
Carmarthenshire
bank of the
eastern Cleddau
] had a wide geographical ambit, from
mid-Cardigan
to
Amroth
by the sea, from
Haverfordwest
to
Llanllawddog
; by
1715
, according to the lists of
Dr.
John
Evans
, it had 900 members in
Pembrokeshire
alone — an obvious exaggeration, but a great tribute to the power and persistence of the propagandist. Naturally enough, the severity of the persecution told heavily upon the success of
Jones
's work;
between 1678 and 1687
, only five were baptized. But as soon as the greater liberty of
Toleration
arrived,
William
Jones
is at it baptizing again, adding twenty to the
church in
1689-90
. In his latter days he had no fewer than eleven
preachers
as assistants. Gradually the subsidiary branches became autonomous churches; out of them, in a later generation, arose some of the most famous
Baptist
churches of
Wales
.
Bibliography:
-
Trafodion Cymdeithas Hanes Bedyddwyr
Cymru
,
1928
, 93-9;
-
A History of Carmarthenshire
, 2 vols.,
1935–9
, ii, 150-2;
- Rhydwilym church book (N.L.W.);
-
Consistory Act books, archdeaconry of Carmarthen,
1661-8
(N.L.W.);
-
Reference is made to two editions, by E. B.
Underhill, 1847, and Nathaniel Haycroft, 1865. Reference is
also made to Addenda B (pp. 511–9 in 1847 ed)
, Add. B, 512.
Author:
Thomas Richards, D.Litt., (1878-1962), Bangor
