ABSTRACT
The early years of the nineteenth century were crucial in establishing the perception of Nonconformity as intrinsically Welsh and Wales as inherently Nonconformist. The secession of the Calvinistic Methodists from the Anglican Church in 1811 helped ensure the numerical triumph of the Nonconformists over the Church by the mid-nineteenth century, so that Nonconformists felt justified in claiming Wales as their own. As Densil Morgan has suggested, evangelical Nonconformity ‘had succeeded to a remarkable degree in recreating Wales in its own form and image’.1 The need to confirm the identity of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism at a key turning point in its history was an essential part of this process.
