DAVIES, RANDOLPH (RONDL) (died 1695), cleric and controversialist
Date of death: 1695
Spouse: Mary Davies (née Williams)
Gender: Male
Occupation: cleric and controversialist
Area of activity: Religion
Author: John Williams James
We have no information about his birth, parentage, education, and ordination. He was appointed vicar of Meifod, Montgomeryshire, 13 April 1647, by the (Puritan) Commissioners of the Great Seal; he was, therefore, an Anglican cleric who had conformed with the Commonwealth regime. Despite the statements that he was displaced by a Stephen Lewis at Meifod in 1648, there can be no doubt that he remained vicar of Meifod until the Restoration (1660), when he once more conformed, being reappointed to the living by king Charles II under the Great Seal of the Realm, 25 August 1660, and receiving institution by the bishop of Sr Asaph, 13 August 1661; he also received the sinecure rectory of Cwm, Flintshire. He married, 10 June 1648, Mary, daughter of John Williams, the loyalist vicar of Llanfyllin and Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, and sinecure rector of Northop, and by her had a large family, all christened between 1649 and 1666. With two other authors he published in 1660 a work attacking the Quakers, and in 1675 he wrote as sole author A Tryall of Spirits or Profiad yr Ysprydion (published at Oxford) against Papists, Presbyterians, Independents, and Quakers. Notwithstanding his published opinions he is said to have interceded with bishop William Lloyd (1627 - 1717) of St Asaph on behalf of a body of Independents living in his own parish: his great desire seems to have been to live at peace with all men, especially with his own ecclesiastical superiors and his neighbours. He was buried 24 February 1695.
Author
- Chancellor John Williams James
- W. Rowlands, Cambrian Bibliography (Llanidloes 1869)
- H. B. Thomas, A History of the Diocese of St. Asaph (1874)
- J. C. Morrice, Wales in the Seventeenth Century its literature and men of letters and action (Bangor 1918)
- T. Richards, (a) A History of the Puritan Movement in Wales (1920), (b) Religious Developments in Wales, 1654–1662 (1923), (c) Wales under the Penal Code, 1662-1687 (1925)
Sources
- Wikidata: Q20734176
Additional Links
Published date: 1959
Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/
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