Morgan ap Rhydderch and wife Jane of Carmarthen, Wales

CHAPTER THREE

MORGAN ap RHYDDERCH and wife JANE

Morgan ap Rhydderch was an early adherents of the Baptist movement in South Wales. He may have been attracted and converted to the Baptist faith by an ex soldier and itinerate preacher named Jenkin Jones, who preached in Carmarthen and its surrounding communities.

The Baptist church at Carmarthen prospered during the years of the Puritan Commonwealth but completely disappeared during the Restoration. After the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658, England had tired of Puritan rule, and accepted the return of King Charles’ eldest son Prince Charles. The British monarchy was reinstated in 1660 when King Charles II ascended to the British throne which began a period known in British history as the “Restoration”. It also began a 28 year period of persecution of religious dissenters and nonconformists as the Anglicanism became the state church once more.

With the supremacy of Anglican Church restored, a Royalist Parliament passed a series of laws to curtail the activities of dissidents and nonconformists. Parliament’s aim was to restore England to its state before the time of the Commonwealth. With these laws the open promotion of the Baptist and Quaker faiths virtually came to a halt.

After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Jenkin Jones was one of those imprisoned at the Carmarthen Castle jail for nonconformity. He was soon released, however, reports that he was gathering followers and making speeches led to his further imprisonment. After that there is no further record of him and he probably died in prison.

In the early summer of 1660, Rev. Willlam Houghton, the former royalist Anglican minister of Ilston was restored and Baptist leader John Miles lost his salary and the use of the Parish Church. For a couple of months, Miles held meeting in an old disused Catholic chapel or a small, crude building erected next to it, as a Baptist meeting house but as more extreme measures were passed by Parliament both Baptists and Quakers were forced into hiding.

Parliament passed the Corporation Act of 1661 which was designed for the express purpose of restricting public offices in England to only members of the Church of England. The Act provided that no person could be legally elected to any office unless he was a member of the Anglican Church.

After that things went south for the Baptists as well as other non conformist churches, when they were forced to go underground to worship by the terms of the Act of Uniformity 1662. In that Ordnance Parliament declared illegal all acts of worship that did not conform to the established Church of England. It required the use of all the rites and ceremonies of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer in all church services which the nonconforming refused to do.

As that the Baptist congregations used only the Bible for worship services, their pastors were arrested and their property confiscated. Those attending nonconformist services also suffered fines and imprisonment for ignoring the law. Baptists caught practicing their faith had their property seized and were imprisoned. For the most part the Baptists began to secretly meet in homes or out in the countryside to avoid detection.

By 1662 Morgan ap Rhydderch had accepted the Baptist views and had become an itinerant preacher. He must have gained a following as that the king's officers ordered Morgan to stop preaching “and he suffered persecution because he continued to preach”. Morgan “persevered” by refusing to discontinue his sermons and he “endured his part of the persecution then so bitter”. Whether this meant he was imprisoned or not is unclear but circumstances suggests that he had been.

Jenkins Jones, while in prison at the former Carmarthen Castle, was in contact with a fellow religious prisoner named William Jones. William Jones, an ejected Presbyterian minister, was convinced by Jenkins Jones that the Baptists were from the true apostolic faith preserved from ancient times in the Olchon Valley. William Jones came to accept that “believers' baptism” was the only baptism of the New Testament. On his released from prison in 1667 after four years, William Jones went to Olchon, which was nearly one hundred miles away, to be baptized by Thomas Watkins. The Baptists also believed in the laying on of hands as taught in the Bible and surely he had this ordinance performed also at Ochlon.

Shortly afterwards, William Jones then formed a church at Ruchacre near Narberth where Morgan ap Rhydderch as appointed its first Deacon. This suggests that William Jones and Morgan had to have had a former acquaintance for Morgan to be given such an important position in that church. They may have met in Carmarthen or in prison where they both emerge in records again about at the same time.

During the four years Morgan ap Rhydderch was probably in prison or at least in hiding, Parliament passed more acts to reduced the civil rights of nonconformists which led to many to flee to America. In 1663 the Ilston congregation broke up after the nearly impoverished Miles fled with several of his Baptist colleagues to New England. He first emigrated to Rehoboth in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. However Miles’ Baptist sentiments were unwelcomed in the Puritan Colony and was he was expelled in 1667. He and his followers then moved on to Rhode Island Colony, founded by Roger Williams who was a Baptist. Miles founded a new town, which he named Swansea. He spent his last years teaching and preaching in his new town and died in Rhode Island, on 3 February 1684.

Parliaments’ Conventicle Act of 1664 was one of the most severe blows as that it forbade nonconformists religious assemblies of more than five people, other than an immediate family. These prohibitions forced many Baptist ministers to vacate their parishes and members of the Welsh Baptist congregations were forced underground. Just as the ministers left the towns and villages so too did their congregations, who followed their pastors to hear sermons held in secret on the Welsh hillside.

Those Baptists which remained in Carmarthen and Swansea were effected the following year by the Five Mile Act of 1665, which prohibited nonconformists from living in incorporated and chartered towns. It was one of the English penal laws that sought to enforce conformity to the established Church of England and to expel any who did not conform. It also forbade clergymen from living within five miles of a parish from which they had been expelled, unless swore to the terms of the Act of Uniformity of 1662. Thousands of ministers all over Great Britain were deprived under this act including the pastors of the Welsh Baptist Churches. These were the conditions under which a Baptists such as Morgan ap Rhydderch labored as a preacher.

With the loss of John Miles to America in 1663, his associate Rev. William Pritchard [ap Richard], became the leader of the Baptists in South Wales. Pritchard founded in 1652 the Baptist Church at Llanwenarth, Monmouthshire which he pastor for 60 years. Some of Morgan ap Rhydderch’s children were members of the Baptist fellowship at Llanwenarth when Pritchard died there about 1708.

Morgan ap Rhydderch had been silenced by the Act of Uniformity which came into force in the summer of 1662 and he probably spent four years in Carmarthen Castle as a prisoner, for holding religious services without a bishop's license. There he found other dissenters suffering the same fate including Jenkin Jones and William Jones.

Once out of prison Morgan ap Rhydderch he most likely returned to his home in Llenwenog to recover from his ordeal. In the fall of 1667 he was baptized in the River Teifi about a mile south of the village on 15 October 1667. He may have even been baptized by William Jones as that he and Jones are found together the following year in the community of Ruchacre between the counties of Pembroke and Carmarthen.

Ruchacre was a community, a mile or so north of the market town of Narberth in Pembrokeshire. In the immediately vicinity lived Morgan’s brother Phillip and his family who were Quakers. At the village of Ruchacre, William Jones newly returned from Ochlon established a congregation. William Jones converted enough people to the Baptist faith that Thomas Watkins from Ochlon and William Pritchard from Llanwenarth came to lay hands on the newly baptized converts and to establish a church there. Thirty people had been baptized before 12 July 1668 when the Baptists at Ruchacre were formed into a church by Prichard and Watkins. The next day William Jones and Griffith Howell were chosen Elders and Morgan ap Rhydderch and Llewellyn John [Jones] were set apart as Deacons. On 27 November 1669 was ordained deacon and shortly afterwards he commenced preaching, not as an ordained preacher, but as an assistant preacher. Before the end of 1669 there were fifty-five members of the congregation.

This church congregation, formed in 1668, is the oldest Baptist church in West Wales although about 1700 the congregation moved to about 10 miles north to Rhydwilim and is generally known as the Rhydwilim Baptist Church. Shortly after its formation the church met primarily at two areas because of the distance for traveling. One was in Llandyslio Parish where Narberth was located and the other was at Glandwr in the Parish of Llandysul, 7 miles south of Llanwenog on the Teifi River.

Those Baptists who founded the Welsh Tract Baptist Church in New Castle County, Delaware came primarily from this Rhydwlim church and the Glandwr church which was later named Rehobeth. The charter member of the Welsh Tract Church, Pastor Thomas Griffiths, came from the church at Glandwr.

As a Deacon Morgan ap Rhydderch while not an ordained minister was an assistant preacher who was so famous that Morgan Edwards, in his history of Baptist Churches in Delaware recalled him as a Baptist minister in Wales. Certainly he attended the Glandwr branch of the Rhydwlim church.

Morgan ap Rhydderch married circa 1670 a woman named Jane whose last name is unrecorded. In any case she would have been a member of the Baptist branch church at Glandwr and most likely the daughter of a close associate of Morgan. She was at least 25 years younger than Morgan and while she was the wife of a Baptist Deacon and later a Baptist Minister, and the mother of two Baptist ministers, her name, birth date and death date is unknown. Tracing many of the early women’s heritage is a challenge and such is the case with Jane. 

Morgan ap Rhydderch evidently returned to his home in Llanwenog Parish about 45 miles north of Narberth for the birth of their children, Thomas, Abel, Enoch, and Esther. They were born between 1671 and 1678.

Morgan and Jane had four known children from their marriage. They were only married about ten years and much of that time Morgan would be off preaching or in hiding. The “gospel” as preached and practiced by Morgan ap Rhydderch was not easy and nor attractive to many. The Baptists were austere and uncompromising and they traveled far to lay on hands and attend meetings.

The Baptists were expert in conscientious resistance against the laws prohibiting their existence. They held secret meetings, moved stealthily across the countryside, performed marriages before elders without clerical authority, arranged burying-places for their members, and refused to disclose their clandestine retreats by taking out licenses under the Declaration of Indulgence Act of 1672 . 

King Charles II's Royal Declaration of Indulgence of 1672 suspended the execution of the Penal Laws passed in the previous decade that punished recusants from the Church of England. It allowed a certain number of non-conformist chapels to be staffed and constructed, with the pastors subject to royal approval. However the Royalist Parliament in 1673, compelled the king to withdraw this declaration and implemented, in its place, the first of the Test Acts (1673), which required anyone entering public service to take Anglican communion. 

As that the Baptist did not keep vital records it is not known the exact date or place for when Morgan ap Rhydderch died. Most sources agree on 1680 as the year he died which made him about 55 years old at the time of his death. He is probably buried near Llanwenog. Jane was a widow at the age of 30 years old with four children under the age of 9 for which she was responsible.

Some time after the death of Morgan ap Rhydderch. Jane married the widower Rev. John Griffith, born 20 April 1647 in Wales. John and Jane had two known children. They were Sarah Griffith and Benjamin Griffith born 1688. John Griffith, the step father of Morgan ap Rhydderch reared his and Jane’s children to adulthood except for son Thomas Morgan who is untraced and may have died young. The family seemed to have been living at Llanarth in Cardiganshire and attended the Glandwer branch of the Rhydwilim Church.

Nine years after Morgan ap Rhydderch died, and William and Mary became Monarchs of Great Britain did the Baptists and other nonconformists win “grudging religious toleration”. When the Conventicle Act and Five Mile Act were repealed in 1689 the Baptist Association for churches in England and Wales was reestablished. In 1700 a separate Association was created for the Welsh churches although the total number of Baptists at the end of the 17th century was only in the region of 500 people. The nine churches in the Association were located primary in the southern portion of Wales.

Abel Morgan was 16 years old when the harsh persecution of Baptists ended. He was from the Glandwr branch in 1692 when at the age of 19 he began to preach. Enoch Morgan was an ordained minister and he immigrated from Glandwr in 1701 to Pennsylvania. Esther Morgan was married to David Jones by 1698. By 1710 John Griffith was a church elder at Lantivy, Carmarthenshire, Wale. A small group was formed and left Wales for the Welsh Tract Church in Delaware. 

Morgan ap Rhydderch’s friend William Jones, 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. William Jones died in 1700. His relationship to David Jones who married Esther Morgan is unknown.

Children of Morgan ap Rhydderch and his wife Jane

1. Thomas Morgan was born circa 1671 at Alltgoch in Cardiganshire Wales and was a miller at Melin Trewen, Brongwyn parish, Cardiganshire. He and his wife (name not known) had one child, Jenkin Thomas (b. 1690) and they did not immigrate to America.

2. Abel Morgan was born at Alltgoch in Cardiganshire in 1673 and was 7 when his father died and circa 11 when his widow mother remarried. He was raised in the household of Rev. John Griffith most likely at Llannarch.

At an early age his family brought him into the Llanwenarch Church outside of Abergavenny in Monmouthshire. There in about 1692 “he was exercising his gifts as a preacher at nineteen years of age.” He was a member of Rev. William Pritchard’s church at Llanwenarth until at the age of 24 the branch church of Blaenau Gwent Church gave him a regular call to the ministry in 1697. He served them in the ministry but it wasn’t until 1700 he was ordained a minister. At this time he was probably married to Priscilla Powell.

In September 1711 he decided to emigrate to America, to join his younger brother Enoch in Pennsylvania. Severe weather during the voyage delayed his arrival until February, having in the meantime lost his wife Priscilla Powell and his son. He married as his second wife Martha Burrows and lastly Judith Joading , a widow, and daughter of Thomas Griffiths , first minister of the Welsh Tract Baptist Church .

Abel Morgan settled among the Pennypack Baptists in Pennsylvania where held the pastorate until his death 16 Deccember 1722 about 49 years old. He is buried at Mount Moriah , in Philadelphia . A son and daughter were born of his first marriage, and three sons and one daughter of the third. He is best remembered for his posthumously published “Cyd-gordiad Egwyddorawl o'r Scrythurau” in Philadelphia , 1730. It was the first Biblical concordance in Welsh and the second Welsh book printed in the America.

3. Enoch Morgan was born in 1675 at Alltgoch, Llanwengog, Cardiganshire, South Wales. As a young man of 26 Enoch Morgan in 1701 sailed from Milford Haven, Wales on the ship James & Mary, arriving in Philadelphia on 8 September 1701. He was one of the 16 Baptists led by Rev. Thomas Griffith of the Rhydwilim Baptist Church. They stayed with the Pennypack Baptists in Pennsylvania for two years.

His uncle Rees ap Rhydderch joined him in 1702 and the Baptists purchased a 30,000 acre tract of land in New Castle County Delaware and formed the Welsh Tract Baptist Church.

Enoch married Jane last name unknown and the couple had 3 children, Esther Morgan Douglas, Rev. Abel Morgan Jr. & Enoch Morgan Jr..

Enoch Morgan was the third Pastor of the Welsh Tract Baptist church and wrote the Introduction and the Dedication for his brother Abel Morgan’s “Welsh Concordance”.

“He died on the 20th of March, 1740, at the age of sixty-four and was buried at the Welsh Tract Meeting House on the 25th. He had preached in churches in Pennsylvania, Delaware and South Carolina.”

“ The Rev'd's tombstone inscription reads: In memory of Rev. Enoch Morgan, late minister of the gospel at the Welsh Tract M. Morgan Rhyddarch, ministre D omeneinne since in South Wales and B. of Mr. Abel Morgan Jun. pastor of Philadephia OBYT Mch. 25 1740. His last text was John 17. He kept the faith and run his race.

4) Esther Morgan was born circa 1677 at Alltgoch, Llanwengog, Cardiganshire, South Wales and married David Jones son of John ap John circa 1697. She immigrated with her husband. See Chapter one