Hugh Roberts, 1836–1907

Born in Trawsfynydd, Merionethshire, the young Hugh Roberts was apprenticed as a tailor/weaver in the nearby town of Bala. There he set his mind on improving his education with the aim of becoming a preacher, and enrolled at the college in Bala with the little money he had been able to save.

Unfortunately, his savings proved to be insufficient for him to complete the course and, around 1860, he moved to live in the Betws Gwerful Goch area (between Bala and Corwen) and took up teaching posts at Gwyddelwern, Dinmael and Betws.

During his time as a schoolmaster he met Mary Jones (b. 1844?), a farmer’s daughter from Pendref, Llangwm. They married in 1866 and soon began a family and moved to live in Glan Aber, a draper and grocer’s shop in Betws. Hugh Roberts ran the village school and his wife ran the shop. In the 1871 Census he is described as ‘School Master/Draper & Grocer’. He soon came to realise how difficult it would be to raise a family on the pittance paid to schoolmasters. He left the school and ran a business, linked to the shop, as a ‘butter merchant’, as he is described in later documents.

This work entailed visiting small shops throughout the area in a horse and trap. Local farmers and cottagers sold butter surplus to their own requirements to the local shop. Hugh Robert would then buy the butter from the shop, carry it to Corwen in his horse and trap and arrange for it to be taken by train to be sold in destinations in England, principally Liverpool.

According to one of the stories about Hugh Roberts, the butter supplied by one of the cottagers was consistently underweight. Hugh Roberts complained to the shopkeeper who passed on the complaint to the cottager. The poor man couldn’t make head or tail of it. “Well,” he said to the shopkeeper, “we haven’t got proper scales at home, and what my wife Hannah does is to put butter on one side of our makeshift balance and a pound of sugar from your shop on the other side, and that seems to work alright!”

Travelling along country lanes late at night was a risky business at this time. While returning home in the early hours after meeting the train in Corwen, Hugh Roberts developed the habit of talking with himself using different voices so as to give the impression that he was not alone in the trap.

His wife, Mary Roberts, died in 1893, at the early age of 49. Their children helped to run the shop and, within a year or so, Hugh Roberts married Jane Ellis:




Hugh Roberts’s children on the occasion of his second marriage, outside Glan Aber. Back row (from the left): Robert Owen (b.1868), Mary Ellen (Malen) (1870–1950), Hugh Edward (or Edwin) (b.1871); front row: John Llewelyn (b.1877), Henry Richard (b.1882 – the first Henry Richard died in 1880 at the age of 9 months), Thomas Henry (1885–1929), David William (Dei Wil) (1875–1967).

According to an article in a local newspaper pasted inside Hugh Roberts’s family bible, Mrs Jane Ellis was the widow of the late John Ellis, Bryncras, formerly living in the chapel house at Capel y Gro (the chapel attended by Hugh Roberts and his family). In 1897, or thereabouts, Hugh Roberts suffered a stroke that left him unable to talk or to communicate other than through sign language for his remaining years – a particularly frustrating disability for one who was well-known for his ability to speak in public.

Hugh and Jane Roberts lived at the Bryncras farm before returning to Glan Aber.

Hugh Roberts died in 1907 at the age of 71. He was a highly respected member of the community, well known as a successful and fair-minded business man and as a dedicated deacon at Capel y Gro. He had been a deacon there with the Calvinist Methodist cause for 37 years and continued to attend services regularly despite the effects of his stroke. He was also remembered as a schoolmaster in the area, although there is a hint in a newspaper report on his funeral that he may not have been a great disciplinarian:

We have been told that the Teacher’s tenderness sometimes verged on weakness. Be that as it may, his name is held dear by many of his countrymen, and not least by his former pupils.1

One of his former pupils, Anthropos (Robert David Rowland, 1853?–1944), became a renowned author and minister:

Some time ago Anthropos came to visit his boyhood roots. We witnessed the teacher and his former pupil meeting face to face and, although time’s shadow stood between them, we saw deep respect sparkling in the eyes of the pupil while the teacher’s joyous laughter overcame him.2

Tributes to Hugh Roberts appeared in Welsh-language newspapers in north Wales and attention was drawn in the press to the particular circumstances of his funeral. The relevant background is as follows.

In 1880 the government had passed a new burial bill – ‘The Burial Laws Amendment Act, 1880’. This amendment had been motivated by an ‘incident’ at the funeral of Henry Rees (1798–1869), the most prominent Welsh Calvinist Methodist minister of his period, who was buried in the parish churchyard on the island of Tysilio, Menai Bridge. The funeral service was held at Tabernacle chapel in Bangor and it is reported that a funeral procession of some four thousand people made the four-mile journey to Tysilio either on foot or in one of seventy-seven horse-driven carriages that accompanied the walkers. Without any prior warning, the rector of Menai Bridge refused permission for any Nonconformist minister to speak publicly at the graveside, and insisted on following the rites of the Church of England to the letter. A public outcry ensued and many Anglicans criticised the rector for his insensitivity and for needlessly providing Nonconformists with an excuse to make an issue of the event. Henry Rees’s son-in-law – Richard Davies, Treborth – was a Liberal Member of Parliament for Anglesey, and there was soon a drive to amend the existing law:

[I]n 1870 [George Osborne Morgan, Liberal member of Parliament for east Denbighshire and a colleague of Richard Davies] introduced the burials bill, permitting any Christian service in a parish churchyard, a direct result of what had happened at the funeral of Henry Rees in the previous year. Osborne Morgan introduced this bill in ten successive sessions until, in 1880, it was passed.3

The effect of this new legislation, which only applied to England and Wales, was to allow the family of the departed to make a formal application to the local rector to be able to hold a burial service in the parish churchyard without having to follow the rites of the Church of England. In particular it allowed families to arrange for Nonconformist ministers to follow their own religious practices at the graveside.

The Act was eventually passed in the teeth of determined opposition by the Church of England and the Tory Party. In 1881 a pamphlet was published by the Reverend Alfred T. Lee, secretary of The Church Defence Institution that set out, principally for the benefit of clergy, the nature of their duties and obligations under the Act: The New Burials Act: what it does and what it does not do. The pamphlet sought to encourage clergy to comply with the new regulations, but not to go an inch further than what was required of them under the Act. The pamphlet’s final paragraph conveys a sense of the tensions of the period:

In conclusion, however ungrateful to the feelings of many Churchmen the provisions of this Act may be, however great a grievance it may appear to be in the eyes of many, it is earnestly to be hoped that now, notwithstanding many earnest protests, it has become law, Churchmen of all classes, whether Clergy or Laity, will submit, with patient dignity, to this unwelcome enactment, and not gratify their enemies by an unseemly and unavailing opposition unworthy alike of their duty as Christians and their position as law-abiding Englishmen [sic].4

In order to be able to take advantage of the new provisions, a family needed to submit a notice of burial on an official form for the rector’s approval. There have been a number of examples over the years where families had to struggle to exercise these new rights. The most notorious example was that in the village of Llanfrothen in 1888, which brought fame to the then young solicitor, Lloyd George (1863–1945), when he won the right to bury Robert Roberts alongside his daughter in the Llanfrothen parish churchyard with a Nonconformist service, despite the local rector’s initial refusal to uphold the family’s request. The case gave Lloyd George the perfect stage to establish himself in the public consciousness as a fighter on behalf of ordinary people against the privileged classes, Nonconformists against Anglicans, Liberals against Tories. It effectively launched his political career.

In the case of Hugh Roberts, the parish churchyard was the only practical choice for his burial and the family duly presented a completed form to the local rector, the Reverend Robert Jones. He agreed to a burial in the churchyard but refused the family’s request to hold a service at the graveside according to Nonconformist rites. The regional newspaper reported on the funeral as follows:

The funeral was held last Friday afternoon in the parish churchyard. It had been hoped that this committed Nonconformist could have been buried under the regulations of the new Act, and a request to that effect had been submitted, but because his place of residence, although only a stone’s throw from the churchyard, was technically in a different parish, the request had been refused on the basis that it was not covered by the provisions of the 1880 Act.5

It appears, therefore, that the rector had refused permission because Glan Aber, Hugh Roberts’s house, was in the next parish, just a few yards the other side of a small stream at the edge of the village. This stream marks the parish boundary. Glan Aber is in fact in the adjacent parish of Gwyddelwern and its parish church is a number of miles away over the hills. In that period, it would have been impractical to travel to Gwyddelwern from Betws for the funeral as well as being inappropriate, given that other members of Hugh Roberts’s family – his first wife and one of their children – had been buried in the Betws churchyard some years earlier.

According to Alfred T. Lee, the rector had exercised his powers correctly:

Non-parishioners have no rights of burial given them under this Act in the parochial graveyard. If such rights were granted the graveyard might soon be filled by strangers to the great detriment of the parishioners. But non-parishioners may be buried in the parochial graveyard with the consent of the Incumbent, usually with special fees. This Act, however, confers no right on the Incumbent to permit the funeral of a non-parishioner with any other rites than those of the Church of England.6

The newspaper report of Hugh Roberts’s funeral includes details of the proceedings:

A service led by the Minister [of Capel y Gro] was held at the house. With the ready permission of Congregationalist brethren a public service was held at Salem chapel [a building adjacent to Glan Aber], at which contributions were made by Mssrs Roberts Wynne, and John Hughes, from Capel y Gro, David Williams, Glan’rafon; David Ellis, Brithdir; and the Reverend H Arthur Jones, Clement Evans, Gwyddelwern; and William Williams, Glyndyfrdwy. In the church and at the graveside services were led by the Rector, the Reverend Robert Jones.7

Nonconformist ministers had officiated at the house and in the adjacent Salem chapel but, once the coffin had reached the churchyard, the rector (who was unlikely to have attended at either the house or the chapel) had insisted on taking over the reins and to have followed the rites of the Church of England. Although the rector had followed the letter of the law, his lack of sensitivity had inflamed local feeling: Glan Aber was barely fifty yards from the churchyard and, yet, the rector had been unable to show any flexibility. The press took the opportunity to draw attention to the injustice and to use it to reinforce the call to disestablish the Church in Wales from the Church of England:

Our cry yet again is for full disestablishment once and for all so as to rid ourselves of what are misleadingly referred to as rights.8




Hugh Roberts’s gravestone in the parish churchyard, Betws Gwerful Goch, showing also his first wife Mary Roberts and their son Henry Richard who had died at the age of nine months.

Dei Wil (one of Hugh Roberts’s sons) recalled that his father had gone to the assistance of the Betws rector on a number of occasions and carried him home in his trap late at night after the rector had had rather too much to drink at a tavern between Betws and Corwen. The rector in question was presumably a forerunner of the Reverend Robert Jones!

Postscript: a) Shortly after Hugh Roberts’s death, Capel y Gro established its own cemetery adjacent to the chapel, where a number of members of the family are buried b) The Church in Wales was disestablished from the Church of England in 1914.

Gareth Roberts
May, 2012
garethamenna@btinternet.com


1 Baner ac Amserau Cymru, February 13, 1907, p. 1. (trans.)
2 Ibid. (trans.)
3 E. Morgan Humphreys, ‘George Osborne Morgan’, Welsh Biography Onmline, National Library of Wales, http://wbo.llgc.org.uk/en/s-MORG-OSB-1826.html
4 Alfred T. Lee, The New Burials Act: what it does and what it does not do, p. 12.
5 Baner ac Amserau Cymru, February 13, 1907, p. 1. (trans.)
6 Alfred T. Lee, The New Burials Act, p. 10.
7 Baner ac Amserau Cymru, February 13, 1907, p. 1. (trans.)
8 Ibid. (trans.)
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Hugh Roberts – a tale          May 2012