POWELL, JOHN

Three men of this name are connected with religious movements in North Monmouthshire in the first half of the 18th century; as there is a tendency to confound them it seems better to discuss them together:

(1) JOHN POWELL (1708 - 1795), Methodist cleric,

a Brecknock man, priested at Hereford 20 December 1735 on a title given by the rector of Llanwenarth. He was curate of Aberystruth (Edmund Jones, Hist. of Aberystruth, 103, 131) from March 1736 till 3 October 1742. In the meantime (19 February 1739/40), he had become rector of Llanmartin and Wilcrick near Newport; he died there 25 March 1795. He was one of the earliest Methodist clerics, and was one of the three Welsh clergymen present at the Watford Association of January 1743. In 1778, we find him offering a curacy to Thomas Charles (D. E. Jenkins, Thomas Charles, I, 71; see also a note by him in Cylchgrawn Cymdeithas Hanes y Methodistiaid Calfinaidd, Trevecka Supplement 8, 273).

(2) JOHN POWELL (1720 - 1766), Independent minister;

Born at Lanelli (Brecknock). A shoemaker in Glyn Ebwy Fawr, he was converted by Edmund Jones (Hist. of Aberystruth, 106), and began to preach. After a while (1748) he went to Carmarthen Academy, was pastor for a few years from 1753 of Capel Isaac (Hanes Eglwysi Annibynnol Cymru, iii, 531), and afterwards in Somerset; but in July 1761 succeeded Thomas Morgan (1720 - 1799) as pastor of Henllan Amgoed, where he died 24 July 1766. (Hanes Eglwysi Annibynnol Cymru, iii, 361-2).

(3) JOHN POWELL (died 1743), Methodist and Baptist exhorter;

Born at Abergwesyn, but converted in north Monmouthshire by Howell Harris. He joined the Baptists (at Olchon), but continued to itinerate as a Methodist. He is heard of near Meidrym at the turn of 1739/40, and in March 1740 was causing much perturbation to Harris and to several of the religious leaders of west Wales by preaching against infant baptism - see Trevecka Letters 230 and 231. He died in 1743 (Joshua Thomas, Hanes y Bed., 159, 569; Y Cofiadur, 1935, 11-13 and notes).

Author

• Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, (1881 - 1969)

Published date: 1959

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