Howell Harris
Howell Harris (1714–1773) was one of the main
leaders of the
Welsh Methodist
revival in the 18th century, along with
Daniel Rowland and
William Williams
Pantycelyn.
Harris was
born at Talgarth
in Brecknockshire
in 1714. He underwent a religious conversion
in 1735 while listening to a sermon by the Rev. Pryce Davies in the
parish church on the necessity of partaking of
Holy Communion. While listening to that
sermon Harris came to the conviction that he had received mercy
through the blood of Christ. He immediately began to tell others
about this and to hold meetings in his own home encouraging others
to seek the same assurance that he had of Christ's
forgiveness.
Having failed to be accepted for ordination in the
Church of England because of his "
Methodist" views, he became a travelling preacher
and was tireless in his determination to spread the word throughout
Wales. His preaching often led him into personal danger, and he
endured considerable persecution and hardship before gaining a
following.
In 1750,
having fallen out with Daniel
Rowland, and having been the subject of a public scandal, he
retreated to his home at Trefeca
, near
Brecon
. In 1752, inspired by the example of the
Moravians, he founded a religious
community there, known as
Teulu Trefeca (=The Trefeca
family) with himself as "father".
However, Harris had not given up preaching, and resumed his former
activities in 1763, after reconciliation with Daniel Rowland. When
he died, ten years later, and was buried close to his birthplace at
Talgarth, twenty thousand people are said to have attended his
funeral.
He was effectively the founder of the
Presbyterian church of Wales,
also known as the
Calvinistic Methodist
church.
The papers of Howell Harris
Howell Harris presented today’s historians with a gift — his
keeping of a detailed diary, in addition to a careful filing of
letters he sent and received during his ministry. His papers are
not only a first eye witness of the
Welsh Methodist revival, but also
give historians an insight into the thoughts of one of the most
influential Welshmen ever.
After his death, the papers were left to gather dust for over a
century until
O.M. Edwards, in the 1880s, noted their importance
and suggested they ought to be taken care of. By this time, the
once-home of Harris at Trefeca had been turned into a college. The
deputy head of the College, Edwin Williams, took on the task of
putting the papers in order. They were kept safe at Trefeca until
1910 when the
Presbyterian
church of Wales (which ‘owned’ the papers) decided to set up a
committee whose responsibility it would be to take care of the
papers and to study them.
Not until 1913 did the scale of the work needing to be done on the
papers become apparent. As many of the papers were in Latin, it was
estimated that it would take a good part of a decade and a vast sum
of money to ready the papers for publication. In 1913, it was
decided that a better use of resources would be to set up a
Historical Society of the
Presbyterian church of Wales
that would be responsible for publishing a regular journal to
include, amongst other articles, some of Howell Harris’s
papers.
It is
believed that around 1932, the papers were moved from Trefeca to
the denomination's theological College in Aberystwyth
. Those papers, along with others from Coleg y Bala (an old college of the
denomination in Bala, North Wales), were taken in 1934 to be stored
safely at the National Library of Wales
. The papers are in the vaults to this day.
Recently
Dr. Geraint Tudur (son of R Tudur
Jones), Chair of ‘Church History’ at University of
Wales, Bangor
, published a biography of Harris: Howell Harris
: From conversion to separation, 1735-1750, Cardiff:
University of Wales Press, 2000.
References
- Davies, Gwyn (2002), A light in the land : Christianity in
Wales, 200-2000, Bridgend: Bryntirion Press. ISBN
1-85049-181-X
- Tudur, Geraint (2001), "Papurau Howell Harris" in Cof
Cenedl XVI, Gwasg Gomer.
External links
Wikis
Map
Search