THOMAS, LEWIS (died March 1704), one of the chief leaders of the Particular Baptists

after the migration of John Miles to America; a native of Margam. He was baptized at Ilston in November 1650, and figured prominently in the complicated circuit arrangements made by Miles in 1657. Later he made his home at the Mŵr by Newton Nottage, and in 1669 he is reported as preaching illegally in the company of Richard Cradock the Independent at Cradock ' house. Under the Declaration of 1672 he received a licence to preach at the house of William Dykes in Swansea. He suffered severely from the ' Clarendon Code ' and the writs of sheriffs. When Toleration came it was seen that his area of activity stretched from Carmarthen to Bridgend, supervising the 'church of Swansea,' though there are plenty of references to his preaching as far east as Hengoed and Blaenau Gwent. His name appears on the records of the London Assemblies of 1689 and 1692, and much to the forefront in the Welsh Association from 1700 onwards. He was at the Llanwenarth meeting in 1703; at the Swansea Association of 1704, a short but eloquent note was made of his death. A few years before that a special tribute was paid him - he was the first to preach at the new Rhydwilym meeting-house in 1701, the first chapel to be built by the Baptists in western Wales.

Author

• Thomas Richards, (1878 - 1962)

Sources

• Joshua Thomas, Hanes y Bedyddwyr ymhlith y Cymry: o amser yr Apostolion, hyd y flwyddyn hon: yn ddwy ran (Caerfyrddin 1778) (1885 ed.), 92-3, 100-4
• Lambeth MS 639 (187b)
• Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, Charles II, 251, 260
• Entry Book 38A
• Trafodion Cymdeithas Hanes Bedyddwyr Cymru, 1928, 87, 101; 1938, 94-5

Additional Links

• Wikidata: Q20733803

Published date: 1959

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