14 Facts About Thomas Charles

Thomas Charles was a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist clergyman of considerable importance in the history of modern Wales.

Thomas Charles was educated for the Anglican ministry at Llanddowror and Carmarthen, and at Jesus College, Oxford.

Thomas Charles was ordained deacon in 1778 on the title of the curacies of Shepton Beauchamp and Sparkford, Somerset; and took priests orders in 1780.

Thomas Charles had been influenced by the great revival movement in Wales, and at the age of seventeen had been converted by a sermon of Daniel Rowland.

Thomas Charles's preaching, his catechizing of the children after evensong, and his connection with the Bala Methodists, his wife's stepfather being a Methodist preacher, gave great offence.

Thomas Charles's friends advised him to return to England, but it was too late.

Thomas Charles had learned of Robert Raikes's Sunday Schools before he left the Establishment, but he preferred his own system.

Thomas Charles gave six days tuition for every one given by them, and many people not only objected to working as teachers on Sunday, but thought that the children forgot in the six days what they learnt on the one.

John Thornton and Thomas Charles Scott helped him to secure supplies from the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge from 1787 to 1789, when the stock became all but exhausted.

Thomas Charles returned to Wales on 30 January 1804 and the British and Foreign Bible Society was formally and publicly inaugurated on 7 March.

Thomas Charles's last work was a corrected edition of the Welsh Bible issued in small pica by the Bible Society.

Thomas Charles died, "worn down by his activities" according to biographer Edwin Welch, in October 1814, nine days before his 59th birthday, and was buried at nearby Llanycil.

Thomas Charles's influence is still felt, and he is rightly claimed as one of the makers of modern Wales.

Thomas Charles's great-grandson was Thomas Charles Edwards, the first principal of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.