Thomas Charles - Welsh Bibles Project

Welsh Bibles Project

In 1800, when a frostbitten thumb gave him great pain and much fear for his life, his friend, Rev. Philip Oliver of Chester, died, leaving him director and one of three trustees over his chapel at Boughton; and this added much to his anxiety. The Welsh causes at Manchester and London, too, gave him much uneasiness, and burdened him with great responsibilities at this juncture. In November 1802 he went to London, and on 7 December he sat at a committee meeting of the Religious Tract Society, as a country member, when his friend, Joseph Tarna, member of the Spa Fields and Religious Tract Society committees, introduced the subject of a regular supply of Bibles for Wales. Charles impressed the committee with his arguments in favour. In 1800 he had met a poor young Welsh girl, named Mary Jones, who walked 26 miles to purchase a Bible from him at Bala. When he visited London in 1803, his friends were ready to discuss the name of a new Society, whose sole object should be to supply bibles. Charles returned to Wales on 30 January 1804 and the British and Foreign Bible Society was formally and publicly inaugurated on 7 March. The first Welsh testament issued by that Society appeared on the 6 May 1806, the Bible on the 7 May 1807, both being edited by Charles.

Between 1805 and 1811 he issued his Biblical Dictionary in four volumes, which still remains the standard work of its kind in Welsh. Three editions of his Welsh catechism were published for the use of his schools (1789, 1791 and 1794); an English catechism for the use of schools in Lady Huntingdon's Connection was drawn up by him in 1797; his shorter catechism in Welsh appeared in 1799, and passed through several editions, in Welsh and English, before 1807, when his Instructor (still the Connectional catechism) appeared. From April 1799 to December 1801 six numbers of a Welsh magazine called Trysorfa Ysprydol (Spiritual Treasury) were edited by Thomas Jones of Mold and himself; in March 1809 the first number of the second volume appeared, and the twelfth and last in November 1813.