Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Charles, Thomas
CHARLES, THOMAS (1755–1814), of Bala, Welsh preacher and writer, was born on 14 Oct. 1705 at Pantdwfn, in the parish of Llanfihangel-Abercowin, near St. Cleans in Carmarthenshire. He was the second son of a large family, of which David, the third son, [see Charles, David], also attained some eminence. His father, Rice Charles, was a small farmer. Thomas was sent to school when about ten or twelve years old to Llanddowror, when Griffith Jones, the precursor of the methodist movement in Wales and the founder of the ‘circulating schools,’ had been vicar until his death in 1761. Falling under the influence of an old disciple of Jones's named Rees Hugh, Charles ‘early entertained serious impressions.’ When fourteen years old he was sent to the grammar school at Carmarthen, and there he joined one of the methodist societies. He ascribed his full ‘awakening’ to a sermon from the famous Rowland of Llangeitho on 20 Jan. 1773. The methodists were still in communion with the established church, so that Charles’s sympathies with them did not affect his destination for the ministry. ‘Providence unexpectedly and wonderfully opened up his way to Oxford,’ where he matriculated at Jesus College on 31 May 1775. There he remained until 1778. He became acquainted with many of the chief evangelical and methodist leaders stayed during a summer vacation with Newton at Olney, where he met the ‘great Romaine,’ and on 14 June 1778 was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Oxford, as curate of Queen’s Camel in Somerset. During the summer he visited Wales, preached his first sermon in the church of his native village, paid a pilgrimage to Llangeitho, and met on a visit to Bala Miss Sarah ones, the lady who subsequently became his wife. In 1779 he took the degree of B.A. He found his curacy at Queen’s Camel very distasteful; the villagers showed ‘great contempt to the gospel and godly living;’ the absentee rector reduced Charles’s salary from 45l. to 40l. and then to 30l.; but a clergyman named Lucas, vicar of Milborne Port, an old Oxford friend, took him to live with him and help him in his parish. On 21 May 1780 Charles was ordained priest. His opinions made it hard for him to had a suitable curacy. He rejected an offer of Lady Huntingdon's chapel at Bath, and in 1783 abandoned his curacy to marry (20 Aug.) and settle at Bala. When at last ‘engaged to serve a church,’ he was, ‘after two Sundays, genteelly excused,’ and was content to take duty at places so distant from his home as Shawbury in Shropshire, and Llanymawddwy, fourteen miles south-west over the mountains; but in April 1784 the rector of the latter place dismissed him. Charles was not in want of actual means, as his wife conducted a large drapery business at Bala. He began new and independent work by collecting and catechising the children of Bala, for which purpose he gladly accepted the use of the Calvinistic methodist chapel there. At the end of 1784 he preached in the chapel. and at onm became one of the most prominent of the methodist clergy. He was soon ceaselesly occupied in long preaching journeys over the whole of North Wales, and acquired celebrity for finely delivered sermons which dwelt mainly ‘on plain practical truths.’ The results of Charles’s reac ing were very striking. He was the grst to s read the methodist movement in North Wyales. Following the example of Jones of Llanddowror, he began in 1785 to institute ‘circulating’ schools in North Wales. Money came from his methodist friends in England; he trained the teachers himself, and cliavoted the whole of the income from the chapel he served at Bala to their support. A school was established first in one village, and then when, in about six to nine months, the children had learned to read their bibles in Welsh, was moved to another. Charles took a very active part in their management. His sympathetic and tender disosition made him peculiarl successful in his dealin with children. In 1789 he was probably the first (but cf. Rees, Welsh Nonconformity, pp. 393-5) to introduce Sunday schools into ilzales, which were attended by adults as well as children. The standard of morality was thus notably raised. The growth of Sunday schools, conducted by gratuitous teachers, made less necessary the circulating schools, which were also more expensive an difficult to maintain. Before long, associations of the different Sunday schools were collected and catechised in some central place, and Charles could point with just pride to assemblies, so great that no building would hold them, thered together in the open fields. In 1791 a great ‘revival’ radiated from Bala throughout North Wales as the result of Charles’s Sunday schools.
Zeal for the religious education of his countrymen led Charles into literary composition. In 1775 his initials appeared on a Welsh tract called, ‘Yr Act am Bwyso Aur,’ published at Carmarthen at the time when be was about leaving school there. In 1789 he printed at Trevecca the first draft of the catechism which was afterwards universally employed among the methodists of Wales. It was called ‘Crynodeb o Egwyddorion Crefydd, neu Gatecism byrr i blant ac eraill, i’w dysgu.’ In later and better known editions it was styled ‘Hyfforddwr yn Egwyddorion y Grefydd Gristionogol.' In 1797, appeared in English ‘An Evangelical Catechism, recommended by the late Countess of Huntingdon for all the children in the schools attending her chapels’ (London), which in 1817 reacied a fourth edition. In 1799 Charles began, in conjunction with his friend, Thomas Jones of Denbigh, to issue at Chester a quarterly religious magazine called ‘Trysorfa Ysprydol ’ (Spiritual Treasury), almost the first of its kind in the Welsh language. It stopped in 1802, but was again published between 1809 and 1813. With the object of printing good Welsh text-books for his circulating an Sunday schools with greater facility and less expense he established in 1803 a press at Bala, which before his death was said to have issued fifty-five editions and 320,000 copies. In 1805 he began to issue from the Bala press his ‘Geiriadur Ysgrythyrol’ (Scriptural Dictionary), which extended to four volumes octavo, and was completed in 1808. Of this his enthusiastic biographer says: ‘It is a magazine of useful, rich, scriptural knowledge;’ ‘truly evangelical yet wholly practical,’ ‘a model of Welsh style,’ and, ‘next to the Bible, the best book in the Welsh language? It has since gone through seven editions. In 1801 he drew up the first definite constitution of the methodists (‘Rheolau a Dybenion y Gymdeithas Neillduol yn mhlith y bobl a elwir y Methodistiaid yn Nghymru’). In 1802 he published an English tract, ‘The Welsh Methodists vindicated in answer to anonymous attacks on the society (reprinted in Hughes's Life, ch. xii.) He was appointed by the Bible Society to prepare for the press their editions of the Welsh Bible, and his alterations in the orthography occasioned a sharp literary war with advocates of the older spelling, which, on an appeal to arbitration, was decided against him. Among Charles’s lesser literary labours may be enumerated a ‘Recommendatory Preface to the works of W. Cradock’ (1800) ; a translation of Jewel’s ‘Apology into Welsh, with a life of the bishop (1808); an arranged and enlarged edition of the hymns of his friend, the Rev. P. Oliver of Chester (1808); ‘Advice to Christian Professors,' written jointly with Oliver(l8l73; the autobiography, letters, and essays issue after his death; and a multitude of occasional articles and tracts on various subjects (Rowlands, Cambrian Bibliographry; British Museum Catalogue).
Charles kept up a closer relation with the leaders of Califinistic methodism in England than any of the other great Welsh ministers, and had in his own day a considerable English reputation. The disciple of Whitefield, he yet showed a charity and tolerance towards the ‘Arminian methodists’ who followed Wesley. Lady Huntingdon befriended him, and adopted his catechism in her schools. He paid constant visits to London, corresponded with and visited Scott, Cecil, and others of ‘the serious clergy,' collected subscriptions for his Welsh projects, dined on board the Duff missionary yacht, spoke, preached, and prayed for the London Missionary Society, established in 1795, and from 1793 onwards regularly served for three months in the year at Lady Huntingdon’s famous chapel in Spa Fields, Clerkenwell (Life and Times of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, ii. 304-9; Pink, History of Clerkenwell, 141-8). Charles was fiercely attacked in the ‘Quarterly Review’ (xxxvi. 7 -8). In 1807 he paid a visit to Ireland, and endeavoured, in conjunction with the Hibernian Society, to establish schools for teaching in Irish, and ‘gospel preaching' in the same language. He also interested himself in Gaelic schools and reaching (1811). Charles helped to fiiund the British and Foreign Bible Society, mainly with a view to printing a bible at a price within the reach of the thousands who flocked to his Sunday schools. The Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge was persuaded to issue a cheap bible in 1799, but ‘peremptorily declined’ to do any more. In December 1802, when Charles was in London, he suggested to a committee of the Tract Society the plan of establishing a society like the Tract Society, with the special object of furnishing Welsh bibles at a low price. This plan, at the suggestion of a fellow-countryman, the Rev. Joseph Hughes, was extended from the purely Welsh basis which Charles had suggested to a more general one. The society was soon established, and in July 1806 the first copies of the Welsh bible printed by the society, prepared for the press by Charles himself, were distributed (J. Owen, History of the Bible Soczlety; Owen, Memoir of the Rev. Thomas Jones of Creaton; two interesting letters of Charles to H. Boase, esq., in Add. MS. 29281, ff. 8-10).
Charles was the organiser of Welsh Calvinistic methodism. For many years his position had been that of all Lady Huntington's followers. Repudiated by the church, and preaching and teaching regardless of ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, they carefully disclaimed the title of dissenter, used the Anglican liturgy in their worship, and allowed none but priests episcopally ordained to administer the Holy Communion, for which and for baptism the connexion still largely had recourse to the parish churches. Only heavy fines under the Conventicle Act drove them to obtain the benefits of the Toleration Act by registering their chapels as places of nonconformist worship. The development of a complex system of organisation gradually and half-unconsciously created what might easily become a separate church. For some years regular meetings and associations had been held, accounts of which, drawn up by Charles, form the most valuable portion of the contents of the ‘Trysorfa.’ In 1801 Charles drew up, at a quarterly association at Bala, an elaborate system of rules and regulations for the conduct of members of the society. But that very constitution repudiated dissent from the doctrinal articles of the established church. The burning question was, however, the ordination of the lay preachers. For many years Welsh methodists discussed whether they should not follow the example of John Wesley in this respect, and the ‘methodist clergy’ opposed the desire of the preachers for further recognition. In 1810 the death of Jones of Llangan deprived the conservatives of a respected leader, and Charles, who had hitherto opposed any change in the position of the lay preachers, assented to their demands at an association at Bala in 1810. At the next meeting (1811) he himself ordained eight of the foremost lay preachers. The immediate result was separation from the established church.
Charles’s health was now declining, owing to his continued exertions. He died on 5 Oct. 1814, and amid a vast concourse was buried in Llanycil churchyard. Without any very great intellectual qualities, and with all the limitations of the evangelical school, he yet possessed in abundant measure moral worth, strength of character, and capacity for leadership.
Mrs. Charles died 20 Oct. 1814. Charles's grandson, Dr. David Charles (d. 1878), joined with his granddaughter’s husband, Dr. Lewis Edwards, to open, in 1887, the Calvinistic Methodist College at Bala, and was from 1842 to 1862 principal of the Methodist College, then established on the site of Lady Huntingdon’s old institution at Trevecca.
[There are several biographies of Charles: 1. Cofiant neu hanes bywyd a marwolaeth T. Charles (Bala, 1816), written by his friend, the Rev. Thomas Jones of Denbigh. 2. Memoir of the Life and Labours of Thomas Charles, by the Rev. Edward Morgan, vicar of Syston (London, 1828). These both largely consist of his Diary and Letters. Mr. Morgan also published, in 1837, Charles's Essays and Letters. 3. Life and Letters of Thomas Charles, by the Rev. William Hughes (Rhyl, 1881), which reprints some portions of Charles's writings, but contains little additional biographical information. Shorter memoirs are in the Eclectic Review for 1828, Hughes's Hanes Methodistiaid Cymru, Rees's History of Welsh Nonconformity, and prefixed to the fourth edition of the Geiriadur Ysgrythyrol (Bala, 1836).]