In 1731 Griffith Jones, rector of Llanddowror in rural Carmarthenshire, established a scheme of circulating schools. Using the Welsh language, these temporary schools were intended to provide pupils with the rudiments of reading over a period of about three months before the instructor moved on to another parish. By the time of the scheme's collapse, some fifty years later, it had spread throughout Wales. This was not the only circulating system of education in the principality. A smaller-scale scheme of circulating schools in north Wales was organized by Thomas Charles from about 1785, which continued even after 1798, when Charles became the main agent for the Sunday School Society in North Wales and began founding the Sunday schools for which he is more famous. During the early nineteenth century, the scheme established by Griffith Jones re-emerged under the aegis of the Bevan Charity, but it now operated in a very different political and educational environment.

This article will analyse three aspects of the circulating school movement. Its main aim will be to consider why the schools founded by Griffith Jones were so much more successful than those of Thomas Charles and the Bevan Charity. It will explore how these schools were funded, and in particular the way in which their activities were publicized to raise charitable donations. It will argue further that the relationship between these school foundations and the Anglican clergy, at both parochial and diocesan levels, was also a consideration. Finally, it will reflect on the religious, political and educational climate in which these schools operated, as well as how both the environment and the schools changed over the period being examined.

Serious studies of the circulating schools are few and, in some cases, rather dated. Mary Jones's classic study of charity schools has a detailed section describing the circulating schools of Griffith Jones.Footnote ¹ Geraint Jenkins's account of Jones's life and work paints a picture of a sickly but industrious figure, a powerful preacher and inspiration to the early Methodist leaders, although their excesses irritated him.Footnote ² Jenkins's entry for Jones in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives more detail on his relations with his Methodist friends and notes his equal dislike of Dissenters and Roman Catholics.Footnote ³ Gordon Wallace-Hadrill's series of four articles for Pembrokeshire Life follows the schools through to the nineteenth century but his findings have not been taken up by later scholars.Footnote ⁴ Roger L. Brown's study provides a detailed analysis of the testimonials provided by clergy and printed by Jones in his annual publication, Welch Piety.Footnote ⁵ Brown argues that Jones's connection with the early Methodist leaders in Wales has drawn attention away from his strongly Anglican credentials and the role of the parish clergy in the schools. Gareth Jones and Gordon Roderick accept the traditional belief that the success of the circulating schools created a literate nation but consider that the explanation of their success in terms of the failings of the established church over against the ‘dynamic, inspirational, native Welsh-language’ Methodist approach ‘has long been shown to be more the product of Methodist hagiography than strict historical accuracy’.Footnote ⁶ William Jacob's account sets the schools in the context of eighteenth-century parish life and the church's wider role in education.Footnote ⁷

Most recent studies have considered the schools mainly from the point of view of their contribution to the preservation of Welsh language and culture. Eryn White speaks of Jones's love of the Welsh language, albeit noting that its preservation was not part of his intention. She points out that by the 1740s he was under pressure to provide English-language schools in English-speaking areas, and that this had begun by 1747.Footnote ⁸ W. T. R. Pryce applies innovation and diffusion theory to the records of schools in Welch Piety and suggests the routes by which they might have spread.Footnote ⁹ He argues that the schools made an important contribution to the maintenance of Welsh identity. Wyn James maintains that the schools had a crucial role in making Christianity central to the lives of many Welsh people. He notes that Jones might have been surprised by, and possibly less happy about, some of the indirect results of his work, such as the flourishing of Methodism and evangelical Nonconformity and the growth of radicalism.Footnote ¹⁰

This present article takes the story of the Welsh circulating schools forward into the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It does not aim to advance the discussion of their contribution to the preservation of Welsh language and culture, but instead sets them in a wider context and considers how the schools were funded and managed and what factors, internal and external, contributed to the relative lack of success of all later attempts to set up such schools, compared with the extraordinary success of Jones's original project.

Griffith Jones was of relatively humble origin. He was educated at Carmarthen Grammar School and his lack of a university education may have contributed to some delay in his ordination. He was ordained priest in 1708 and presented to the rectory of Llanddowror in Carmarthenshire in 1716. He was an enthusiastic corresponding member of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) from about 1713,Footnote ¹¹ and worked closely in the provision of schooling with his friend and patron Sir John Philipps, probably the most prolific provider of charity day schools in Wales during the earliest decades of the century.Footnote ¹² In the summer of 1718 the two undertook a tour of the north of England and southern Scotland, visiting outposts of the SPCK. It may have been on this tour that Jones first came across the idea of temporary, mobile schools, in the shape of the ambulatory schools provided by the Scottish SPCK to teach the poor in remote parts of the Highlands. These schools were taught in English, which meant they had to stay longer in one place than Jones's circulating schools, so that the scholars could be taught English, but the model of funding and provision was very similar to that adopted by Jones in Wales: they were centrally funded and controlled but locally provided.

In many ways Wales and the Scottish Highlands shared similar problems of poverty and inaccessibility. Charity schools were costly to provide and Wales, like the Highlands, was poor. During this period, the Welsh economy was almost entirely based on agriculture and much of the land was too poor to sustain much more than the raising of sheep and cattle. There were few towns, and none of them large, so there were very few of the middling sort, and the poor were often very poor indeed. Wales had its noble and gentry families, many of whom set up charity schools in the early decades of the century, but, where this was not the case, individual clergy often struggled to raise funding and subscriptions to secure a building and a teacher. Parish incomes for Wales in this period show that it was not realistic to hope that parochial clergy could make large donations themselves.Footnote ¹³

To address the problems of providing education in this context, Jones's idea was to avoid as many as possible of the common expenses of charity schools. His plan was to train teachers and then send them into a place, announcing in all the local churches that schooling would be provided for a short period of time, to teach children and older people to read. By 1738 about fifty teachers had been trained by Jones himself.Footnote ¹⁴ Attendance at the schools was free and costs were kept to a minimum. The schools used the language of the area (usually Welsh), so as not to waste time and effort teaching another language before scholars could begin learning to read. They taught only the essentials of religious literacy: reading the Bible and learning the Catechism, together with graces before and after meals and elements of Morning and Evening Prayer. There was no teaching of writing, needlework, reckoning or navigation as usually happened in charity schools. There was no long-term commitment to apprenticeships. There was no need to provide a building; schools were set up in any barn or outbuilding that could be spared for a few weeks and there was teaching during the day and in the evenings. After about three months, or sometimes longer, the teacher moved on elsewhere. With this pared-down approach, Jones reported in 1748 that ‘about six poor people, or children, are taught for every twenty shillings’.Footnote ¹⁵

It is not clear exactly when the schools started (probably in the early 1730s) but we know that by 1737, the year of Sir John Philipps's death, they had grown beyond the power of Jones to supply and control without much wider support.Footnote ¹⁶ In that year, he published the first of his annual reports on the progress of the schools, under the title Welch Piety. These were a crucial element in Jones's publicity system. They kept the schools repeatedly in the public eye in a form which reached potential donors across England and Wales and permitted Jones to respond to any criticisms, especially in the early years. Each edition contained details of the numbers of schools and scholars in the previous year, together with news of their good effects, gratitude to those who supported them and, in most years, testimonials from clergy who had had schools in their parishes; these spoke of the care and diligence of the masters, the extraordinary results (academic and spiritual) in those who attended the schools and the benefit to the neighbourhood of having had a school that year. The reports also show how the schools were organized and funded. Each year Welch Piety included a list of collectors willing to receive and pass on donations to the schools. The list varied from year to year, although there was a core of names which remained constant. They included clerics in several of the Welsh counties and (in different parts of England) members of the nobility and gentry, professional men and assorted clergymen. Jones himself was always on the list until his death, when he was replaced by Madam Bevan of Laugharne. Bridget Bevan was a committed educationalist, the heiress of John Vaughan of Derllys and widow of Arthur Bevan, an eminent lawyer and MP for Laugharne from 1727 to 1741. She had probably known Jones from her youth, when he had been the incumbent of Laugharne. She was certainly one of Jones's most long-standing patrons and advisers, and they carried on a voluminous correspondence, some of which has been published.Footnote ¹⁷ Although Madam Bevan is the only woman listed as a collector, donations would have come from women as well as men, as was common with philanthropic causes during the eighteenth century.Footnote ¹⁸ These collectors were part of a network of corresponding supporters set up by Jones. He asked supporters to promote and set up schools, to oversee schools in their locality, to pray for the project and to donate money if they could. However, he recognized that financial support was more difficult for the Welsh, acknowledging that without large donations from the English the schools could not survive.Footnote ¹⁹

Jones maintained control over the funding himself, paid the teachers and made decisions about where to site the schools each quarter. The subjects dealt with in Welch Piety and the changing tone of the publication make clear that initially Jones had to defend his schools against accusations of Methodism and general suspicion from some fellow clergy. Gradually, however, they came to be seen as highly desirable and many parish clergy did all they could to encourage Jones to send them a school. By 1749 he could report his gratitude to ‘our most Worthy and Right Reverend Diocesans, who are pleased to speak Kind Things, and approve of the Welch Schools, and recommend them’.Footnote ²⁰ The support of the Welsh bishops was important for several related reasons: it helped to silence detractors and confirm that the schools were teaching sound religion, it gave strong local publicity to the schools and it encouraged clergy to support them. This was very important because the schools could never have extended so widely if Jones had not been able to draw on networks of Anglican clergy to find teachers and to set up and manage the schools. By 1749 the day-to-day management of the schools was effectively devolved or, as Jones put it, ‘under the appointments and direction of the parochial clergy’.Footnote ²¹ The local clergy identified teachers, catechized the pupils, inspected the schools and reported each year on the master and the progress of the scholars. It also became common for the schools to be taught in the parish church itself: the proportion of schools taught in parish churches grew from none in 1739–40 to 52 per cent in 1751–2.Footnote ²²

In discussing the success of the schools, it is worth considering why Welch Piety was published. It was never a simple factual report but was essentially propaganda, aimed at encouraging donations from readers. Seen in those terms, Jones shines through as an expert publicist for the schools. Welch Piety emphasized the aspects most likely to encourage potential donors. It described the plight of the benighted poor of Wales and their desperate need for the gospel with all its benefits of salvation and right behaviour. Whilst good results in terms of behaviour were described, it left no doubt that it was the results in terms of salvation which were Jones's primary concern and which he expected to be that of his readers.

His urgent desire to spread the knowledge which would save people's souls (both those of the pupils and those of the donors) is manifest through all the issues of Welch Piety and his published letters about the schools. There are repeated references to Jones's intense gratitude – and that of the children and their parents – for the generosity of the English donors. The regularity and intensity with which the children pray for those who have given them the opportunity to learn about salvation is also stressed.Footnote ²³ Testimonials from clergy bear witness both to the efficacy of the schools and to their freedom from any taint of Dissent.Footnote ²⁴

Jones's natural talent for fundraising propaganda was also helped by the fact that he was very well connected. Through his marriage to Philipps's sister Margaret in 1719, he was related to several of the leading families of south Wales and also to Sir Robert Walpole. Perhaps more importantly, through his membership of the SPCK he had access to many of the leading philanthropists of the day. His ill-health took him to Bath from time to time with Mrs Bevan, where he could meet his correspondents and encourage their support. This network of supporters was kept informed through his diligent letter-writing. Welch Piety is described as ‘a letter to a friend’, and he published other open letters explaining how the schools worked and showing their benefits and costs. It is hard to arrive at exact numbers of those educated in these schools: Jones himself admits that he cannot check the precise accuracy of the published figures and points out that some schools included scholars from previous years.Footnote ²⁵ However, it is widely accepted that at least 200,000 children and adults were taught in the schools in the forty-five or so years of their existence and that they penetrated to virtually every corner of Wales. In 1764, a commissioner from Catherine the Great came to England to investigate education, and he took the trouble to visit Wales and report back on the circulating schools.Footnote ²⁶

The schools ended quite suddenly in 1779, by which time they had passed into the supervision of Jones's close friend, patron and collaborator, Madam Bevan of Laugharne. Laugharne was five miles from Llanddowror, and after his wife died in 1755, Jones went to live in her house to be cared for in his old age; he died there in 1761. Jones left Bevan the collected funds of the schools along with his private fortune of some £7,000, and under her management, the schools continued to prosper for a further eighteen years. On her death in 1779, Bevan left some £10,000 to trustees to maintain them for the future; however, her family had other ideas and contested the will. With neither central direction nor money, the entire system immediately collapsed, while the dispute spent twenty-eight years languishing in the Court of Chancery.

Although Jones's organization crumbled, the concept was by then so well known that it was taken up by others. For example, Dr Edward Williams, who taught the Dissenting academy at Oswestry, founded Sunday schools in north Wales from about 1789, and in about 1793 he converted them into circulating schools, using some older pupils as teachers.Footnote ²⁷ There was also a group of parishes on the Llŷn peninsula which shared a circulating school funded by local giving, topped up from the Robert Owen charity. However, the most successful of these later circulating schools, albeit on a much smaller scale than Jones's schools, were those set up by Thomas Charles of Bala. Charles was an evangelical Anglican clergyman, born in Carmarthenshire in 1755 and ordained to a curacy in Somerset in 1778. He returned to Wales in 1783 to marry Sally Jones, whose mother was a shopkeeper in Bala. His attempts to find a local curacy failed after complaints from parishioners and local clerics and he joined Sally's stepfather in preaching among the Methodists. Like Jones, he believed that the poor needed to be able to read to understand the Scriptures and be catechized, so he too set up a scheme of circulating schools. Beginning, probably in 1785, with one teacher whom he trained and supervised himself, by 1794, when the schools were probably at their largest, there were twenty teachers and Charles was using ‘proper persons’ as visitors to supervise the schools and catechize the pupils. The schools stayed in one place for six to nine months, teaching both rich and poor, and teachers were paid £10 a year. As well as holding the day schools, masters and mistresses were expected to teach ‘on Sundays and as many nights in the week as convenient to instruct Young Persons grown up and in service’.Footnote ²⁸ Charles visited the place chosen for the school in advance to discuss his plans with ‘the principal inhabitants’ and call a meeting of all the inhabitants to address them about the importance of teaching their children to read the word of God and to tell them he was sending a teacher. He then spoke informally to the parents and children ‘and thus in general, we are kind friends ever after the first interview’. When the circulating school moved on, Charles visited again to catechize the children publicly and encourage the parents to support the Sunday school which would continue, taught by one of the successful pupils.Footnote ²⁹ No record has survived of the numbers taught in each school, so comparisons are difficult, but Charles's network was clearly much smaller than Jones's. It never extended beyond north Wales and flourished for only about ten years, but nevertheless the impact of the schools must have been significant within that area.

Although Charles did not benefit from connections in the highest ranks of society as Jones had done, he did have access to wealthy evangelical networks, similar to those on which Jones had drawn. However, Charles produced nothing akin to Welch Piety and made little use of publications giving information about the value and expense of the schools. He raised money initially from voluntary subscriptions from Methodist societies in north Wales and from individual donations but, as the schools flourished, he turned to wealthier subscribers in London, where he stayed for several weeks most years to preach at the Countess of Huntingdon's chapel in Spa Fields. Subscribers included William Wilberforce and other members of the evangelical Clapham Sect. Charles also encouraged donations by writing occasional letters about the schools to publications such as the Evangelical Magazine and the Gospel Magazine, which tapped sources across denominations.Footnote ³⁰ Possibly the most important difference between Charles's fundraising and that of Jones was that Charles did not establish a network of collectors and supporters to promote the schools across the country; neither did he follow Jones's example by devolving to others responsibility for setting up and managing the network of schools.

In 1796 Charles applied to the Sunday School Society in London for support, and in 1798 the society appointed a committee to raise subscriptions so that its work could be extended to Wales. From then on much of Charles's time was taken up by the Sunday schools for which he is famous but, although they declined gradually, the circulating schools continued, acting in support of the Sunday schools by revisiting them from time to time ‘to revive them, and reanimate the teachers and people to carry them on; or else, in time, they gradually decline, in country places, where the children are scattered far from one another’.Footnote ³¹ However, Charles was not allowed to devote the funding he received for Sunday schools to the circulating schools and they continued to decline. In 1814, the year of his death, there were only three masters but nevertheless the schools struggled on, providing some day schooling in parts of Merionethshire until at least 1821, at which time they were being run by Revd Simon Lloyd, rector of Bala.Footnote ³² The fact that Charles's schools passed to the care of the local Anglican cleric rather than to the Calvinistic Methodists may seem curious and perhaps provides evidence for Charles's continuing sense of Anglican identity, long after he had thrown in his lot with the Methodists.Footnote ³³

Probably the most important factor in the relative lack of success of Charles's circulating schools was simply that he was working a generation after Jones, in very different circumstances. Writing in 1816, Lloyd accounted for the difficulties with funding in terms of ‘the pressure of the times’.Footnote ³⁴ The closing decades of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth were a period of political and religious turbulence. The American colonies had been lost; the French Revolution had brought with it the spectre of a bloody revolution in Britain too; Thomas Paine had published The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason and there had been pamphlet wars, lasting longer in Wales than in other parts of Britain, advocating the downfall of the establishment in church and state.Footnote ³⁵ In England and Wales, Methodism was in the process of splitting from the Church of England; a revitalized Dissent was beginning to be seen as a threat and the establishment was on the defensive. Education was becoming a focus for new interdenominational rivalries.Footnote ³⁶ By 1817, Bishop Majendie of Bangor was of the opinion that the flourishing of Dissenting schools in the diocese would inevitably lead to ‘the fall of the Constitution of this Country, both in Church and State, and probably at no distant period’.Footnote ³⁷ Education itself had also moved on. A mixture of evangelical zeal and socio-political anxiety had prompted the spread of Sunday schools, an alternative solution to the problem of teaching large numbers of poor people with a minimal financial outlay. From 1811 the National Society would be offering support to parishes with the intention of achieving a school in every parish.Footnote ³⁸ Charles's struggles to perpetuate Jones's legacy in north Wales were largely overtaken by these changes.

It was in this new and different context that circulating schools reappeared after the case of Madam Bevan's will was settled in 1807. They were initiated by the newly established Bevan Charity, which existed to provide circulating schools, taught in Welsh, for children of the poor across Wales. In most ways, the charity replicated the aims and model of the original circulating schools, guarding against both Dissent and distrust by placing the schools very firmly under the control of the Church of England authorities in Wales. The rules insisted that teachers must be members of the Church of England and approved by the bishop or his representative. The placing of schools had to be approved by the bishop and visitors were to be appointed by him to visit each school in their area every six months and to report to him as well as to the trustees. These rules seem to have envisaged a much larger organization than ever actually developed. There could be several reasons for this: tighter regulation may have combined with poor communications to limit the expansion of the schools; in somewhat wealthier areas of north Wales there was a greater choice of schooling for the poor, and rival provision from established and Dissenting churches became a focus for conflict. In these circumstances, clergy may have been looking for a more stable and reliable education than an occasional visit from a circulating school could provide. There is evidence that some parents would have been happier if the schools had taught English.Footnote ³⁹ It was only in St Davids, the poorest diocese and the one in which the charity was based, that the schools of the Bevan Charity had any great impact, and even here they were significantly more important in the three counties of the south-west, Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire, than in other parts of the diocese.

The surviving trustees’ minute book for 1812–36 makes it clear that there was a thriving organization in the south-west corner of the diocese and also reveals that there were some schools in north Wales under the aegis of the charity.Footnote ⁴⁰ Understandably, perhaps, the control of these northern schools by the trustees seem to have been rather limited. In 1812 the trustees wrote to the visitor for north Wales, pointing out that the use of clergy as teachers and teaching in English were both forbidden by the charity's rules and noting a little tetchily that ‘not strictly complying with Trustees’ Orders gives much trouble and creates confusion’. In 1814 a bill for £36 was sent ‘to pay the Masters Salaries in North Wales’. Schools in the north are rarely referred to in detail but in 1820 ten were listed; a copy letter to the visitor for north Wales is included in the minutes for 1832.

Although the terms of the charity suggest that it sought to set up schools which were very similar to those in Jones's organization, in practice they differed from their predecessors in three significant ways. First, they circulated less and taught for longer. Rather than moving on after one or two quarters, the Bevan schools stayed until the trustees decided to move the teachers on: two or three years in one place was not uncommon. They were also taught all year round apart from 20 August to 20 September and 24 December to 14 January.

Secondly, the charity soon decided to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the newly fashionable monitorial system to teach large numbers of children using one master. This system worked by using able children to teach their peers and was the brainchild of Dr Andrew Bell, a Scottish cleric and missionary, who had been inspired by watching children teaching each other in the streets of Madras. His system was promoted by the National Society, to which Bell acted as an advisor. In 1819, the Court of Chancery gave permission for the use of ‘Dr Bell's system’ in the Bevan Charity's schools and ‘for that purpose to set up a central school’ in Newport, Pembrokeshire. One of the masters, John Morgan, was sent to the National Society's school in Baldwin's Gardens, London, for a few weeks to learn the system and from then on new masters had, in their turn, to attend his central school in Newport for a few weeks to learn it from him. John Morgan continued to teach the central school until the middle of the century; he is commemorated with a window in St Mary's Church, Newport, and a plaque on the building thought to have housed the school.

Thirdly, possibly in response to pressure from parents ambitious for their children, the schools began to cover a somewhat wider range of subjects and include some teaching of English. In 1827, it was agreed that ‘[w]hen any shall have made a competent progress in the Welsh language, such scholars shall be placed in an English Class to be taught reading writing and Arithmetic.’

Overall, it is clear that the schools had to adapt themselves to a different culture and to different expectations from those for which their predecessors were designed. As the century moved on, they were overtaken by educational developments, first the National Society and later the succession of Education Acts. The National Society's schools were better funded and their teachers better paid. By 1850 the trustees, believing that the objectives of the charity could be better met by adapting to the times, petitioned to be permitted to give grants to the new National Schools; the resulting hearing found that the circulating schools were so unsatisfactory that they should be abolished, the teachers pensioned off and the funds used to support National Schools.Footnote ⁴¹ Gradually the charity, adapting to cultural change, changed completely from its original form, but it survived the disestablishment of the Welsh church and continues to provide funding for bilingual religious education in Wales. Today the Bench of Bishops of the Church in Wales meet annually as governors of the charity and amongst its most recent projects have been a collection of Welsh songs and a website for religious educational resources.Footnote ⁴²

This article has described three operational phases of the circulating school movement in Wales and has considered why the first, in the mid-eighteenth century, was the most successful in terms of finance and of geographical spread of the schools, and the length of time for which they continued to thrive. It has concluded that Griffith Jones's schools were much better funded than those of Thomas Charles; that a climate of suspicion, which affected many evangelical causes in the last decades of the century, seriously hindered Charles's fundraising efforts; and that the schools of the Bevan Charity, although well funded, were operating in a period when developments in education and changes in society had made their approach seriously outdated.

The reasons for Jones's superior funding and the greater spread and longevity of his schools were partly his approach to publicity and partly his structured network of supporters. Jones's series of publications, both Welch Piety and a series of pamphlets in letter form on subjects relating to the schools, provided far better publicity than Charles's occasional letters to evangelical magazines. The limited spread of Charles's schools was inevitable as long as he kept them under his own control, using ‘proper persons’ only as visitors for the schools. It was Jones's willingness to delegate the practicalities to parochial clergy, whilst maintaining control of the funding and monitoring the schools through reports from those clergy, which allowed his schools to spread far beyond his ability to supervise them himself. Most importantly, Charles never set up a system of corresponding members across England and Wales, as Jones had done, to promote and support the schools. This support system included the clergy who managed the schools but was much wider. Nourished by Jones's continuing supply of information about the schools, it was largely responsible for keeping the schools in the public eye and reminding the public of the need for funding.

The climate of fear and suspicion which developed in the final decades of the eighteenth century and continued into the nineteenth made many wealthier funders withdraw their support from causes which might encourage Methodism and Dissent, and Charles struggled to defend his schools against such accusations. At the same time, the rise of the Sunday school movement meant that what support remained in England for the education of the poor tended to be devoted to these schools and, although Charles used this funding to support his Sunday schools, it meant that his circulating schools continued to decline.

The political and religious climate also affected the schools of the Bevan Charity, although they did not rely on the financial support of individuals. Developments in education meant that clergy and funders could look to the National Society to support a more stable and effective form of education. Despite the Bevan Charity's decision to work with the National Society, it became clear that circulating schools no longer provided the best answer to the question of how to educate the poor. Jones's great project, which he had managed so successfully for so long in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, had been left behind by political, religious and educational change in the generations which followed.