ABSTRACT
The religious radicalism was confined in its geographical scope, largely limited to the old centres of Stuart times. It is unlikely that the civilised rationalism of the Old Dissent could ever have swept Wales to have become a national religion. The invincible Dissent of the nineteenth century therefore had a dual origin, owing something to the older Puritanism, but more to evangelical and educational traditions that originated within the established Church. Carmarthen academy was by no means the only factor in spreading religious heterodoxy among the congregations, as Dissent was by nature fissiparous. By far the most important was the Carmarthen academy, the closest parallel to a local university in eighteenth century Wales. The Welsh revival had its origins within the established Church, among those clergy and pious laymen who wished to evangelise what they saw as the impious and ill-educated population of Wales.
