ABSTRACT
In the eighteenth century Wales was a land of poverty-stricken peasants. Their labours supported a class of absentee landlords as well as an alien, largely absentee and pluralist clergy. In comparison with Scotland with its parish schools Wales was undoubtedly backward: at the same time it was probably in advance of England. Dating from the annexation of Wales by the English Crown in the thirteenth century, a steady deterioration of the Celtic cultural tradition had set in. O. Cromwell had attempted to tackle the problem of popular education in Wales in the revolutionary Act of 1649. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge was also active in Wales. Wales was regarded by the average English clergyman appointed to a living there as a purgatory which must be endured whilst awaiting a fat English benefice or bishopric.
