Welsh Journals

OBITUARY. i. THE RIGHT REV. JOHN OWEN, BISHOP OF ST. DAVIDS (1854-1926), Vice-President of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion. By T. HUWS DAVIES, Secretary to the Welsh Church Commission. THE roll of Menevian Bishops contains a not inconsider- able number of names of the highest distinction in the history of our island. Among them, for instance, are Bernard of Newmarch, Peter de Leia, Thomas Beck, Henry Chichele, William Lyndwood, William Barlow, Robert Ferrar, William Laud, Roger Mainwaring, Thomas Burgess, Connop Thirlwall, all names which no compiler of even the sketchiest of biographical dictionaries can ever overlook or disregard. The num- ber of Welshmen in the list during the last thousand years is, however, astonishingly small. It is generally said that the policy of appointing alien bishops to Welsh Sees arose out of the apprehensions of the Hano- verian statesmen at the Jacobite sympathies of the Welsh people, but the consideration of the St. Davids' roll demands at least an extension of the classroom theory. Ever since the days of William the Conquerer's pilgrim- age to St. Davids to pray (or as some say to subdue), royal patrons and their statesmen seem to have had a strange reluctance to confer episcopal dignity upon the native priest. Of course, one can enumerate a fair