Welsh Journals

ties adopted fashionable Anglican customs and costume, so that in the coun- ties of Anglesey and Caernarfonshire for instance, the towns of Beaumaris, Amlwch, Bangor, Conwy and Caernarfon were keen to adopt Anglicisation, while the monoglot peasants of the rural districts maintained Welsh culture.63 Increased Anglicisation also infiltrated the church, although the extent of that infiltration varied across Wales. In 1689, ninety per cent of the Welsh population spoke Welsh, and therefore the provision of Welsh-language serv- ices was imperative.64 In 1710, Edward Tenison, archdeacon of Carmarthen, noted that where Welsh services were not provided in Anglican churches resi- dents chose to attend Welsh-language services in dissenting chapels, as at Laugharne in Dyfed, where the appointment of a Welsh speaking cleric to the parish church reduced the numbers of families attending dissenting service in the parish from sixteen to four.65 However, the trend for Anglicisation per- sisted and in those parishes that relied on the generosity of the most prominent parishioners for survival, their desires prevailed. In 1710 bishop William Fleetwood of St Asaph noted that: In some place I understand there is now and then an English Sermon preached, for the sake of one or two of the best Families in the Parish, although the rest of the Parish understand little or nothing of English, and those few Families understand the British perfectly well, as being their native Tongue. I cannot possibly approve of this Respect and Complaisance to a few, that makes the Minister so useless to the rest, and much the greatest Number of his People.66 Edward Evans, curate of Dyserth in Flintshire, afforded further evidence of the wishes of some leading Welsh families to conform to fashion and par- take of service in English, when he agreed to conduct an English service for the 'most respectable' families of his parish once a month.67 In many parts of Wales Anglicisation of church services was resisted with great fervour. The see of Bangor had maintained its use of the Welsh language to such an extent that when Benjamin Hoadly was appointed to it in 1716, his nineteen immedi- ate predecessors had all been Welsh-speaking. One of them, Humphrey Humphreys from Penrhyndeudraeth in Meirionethshire, had championed the publication of Welsh-language books so tirelessly that Samuel Williams dedi- cated his 1707 translation of John Fox's Time and the End of Time (Amser a