Acting Secretary Jennifer Powell 01291 421086 jen.powell@btinternet.com
Secretary John Nettleship 01291 420745 john@rose-cottage.freeserve.co.uk
Caerwent Show 1st September
We shall have a stall at the show again. A special feature this year will be a display of 1st Word War memorabilia from the personal collection of Gareth Jones.
A visit to Gilgal Chapel
2.30pm Sunday 29th July
Gilgal Chapel occupies a picturesque spot on the upper slopes of Mynydd Allt Tir Fach (Munny Turvey to most of us). It closed for worship in 1961. After experiencing degrees of dereliction it has now undergone a very pleasing restoration. This has been achieved by a group of families with a personal interest in the site and they will be pleased to show us over it. Afterwards it may be possible to take a short walk up to the top of Munny Turvey. Meet in the car park of the Ban Mai Restaurant (formerly Wentwood Inn) at 2.30pm.
William Wroth M.A. - “The Apostle of Wales”
In the year following the erection of the pulpit in Caerwent parish church King Charles I reissued of the “Declaration of Sports” which made legal dancing and the playing of particular games on a Sunday. Puritans within the established church held that the Sabbath should not be profaned in this way. Many, including William Wroth, rector of Llanvaches and Walter Craddock, curate at St. Mary’s Cardiff, refused to read the orders contained within the Declaration of Sports to their congregations. Their Bishop reported them to the authorities for their “disobedience to your majesty’s instructions” and for their “dangerous and schismatic preaching to the people”.
William Wroth was born in Monmouthshire in the 1570’s and had been educated at Oxford. The only record of his time at Oxford indicates that he was initially a pupil of Mr. Case, a well known scholar “strongly inclined to the doctrines of the Church of Rome”. By 1617 Wroth had been appointed Rector of Llanvaches.
The pulpit at Caerwent clearly demonstrates a puritan presence in the Caerwent area prior to the 1633 “Declaration of Sports”. The inscription in the porch at Llanvair Discoed is a clear indication that the playing of sports on Sundays was not advocated by the local church authorities there. In 1634 the Bishop of Llandaff found that William Wroth at Llanvaches “willfully persisted in his schismatic course”, which almost certainly included refusing to conform to the requirement to read the “Declaration of Sports” to his congregation. The Bishop reported Wroth to the High Commission Court. In 1635 the Bishop complained that the proceedings against Wroth were too slow and that, meanwhile, Wroth was able to continue to preach and gather followers.
Wroth’s preaching was so popular that people travelled from Somerset, Gloucester, Hereford, Radnor and Glamorgan to Llanvaches to hear him preach. It commonly became necessary for Wroth to preach in the churchyard because the parish church was not large enough to accommodate all who attended. Wroth travelled and preached elsewhere. It is possible that Wroth preached from the Caerwent pulpit – a sympathetic, neighbouring parish where puritan ideas are so clearly presented alongside imagery of allegiance to the established church – Llandaff – on the pulpit.
In 1638 the Bishop reported that Wroth had “submitted” but by November 1639 Wroth had either resigned or been ejected from his living, and established the first independent non-conformist congregation in Wales at Llanvaches. Worship was ordered according to the “New England way” and this might have initially continued to be conducted at the parish church, possibly until the outbreak of war.
Wroth died shortly before the outbreak of the first English Civil War in 1642 and was buried, according to his wishes, at Llanvaches parish church. He had never set out to split from the established church, having sought to reform it from within. He, and his successor Walter Craddock, insisted that their new congregation remained broad based, open to all who would hear the gospel. Craddock stated that
“… there should be no ordinances to punish men for holding opinions”.
Mark Lewis