Welsh Journals

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ARGLWYDD ARCHESGOB CYMRU Alfred Edwin Morris Election and aftermath John S Peart-Binns In 1957 the Church in Wales had to elect an arch- bishop to succeed John Morgan who died on 26 June that year. He had held office since 1949. Of all the eight archiepiscopal elections since disestablishment, the 1957 election was in many ways the most critical and certainly the most controversial. The archbishop had to be chosen from one of the existing five diocesan bishops Alfred Edwin Morris of Monmouth, aged sixty-three; David Daniel Bartlett of St Asaph, aged fifty-seven; William Glyn Hughes Simon of Llandaff, aged fifty-four; John Richards Richards of St David's, aged fifty-six; and Gwilym Owen Williams of Bangor, aged forty-four. Swansea and Brecon was vacant, following the translation of Simon to Llandaff. In addition to significant dissimilarities of out- look amongst the bishops, there were frictions caused by differences of temperament. Personal antipathies, festering antagonisms, and conflicting convictions were not much buried in some of them. The Church was facing a new era. The great upheaval of disestablishment and disendowment belonged to the receding past. The new administrative machinery of the Church had been tried, tested and not found wanting. Some essential reforms had been carried out. Now was the time to begin the journey inwards towards strength- ening churchmanship and the corporate life of the