Ann Griffiths

Ann Griffiths: Montgomeryshire

In 1916, one hundred and ten years after the death of Ann Griffiths, Evan Richards of 'Barry Island, Glam' published 'A Short Memoir Of Ann Griffiths, With A Translation Of Her Letters And Hymns'. In his first paragraph, Evan Richards records, with regret, that 'She is, in fact, unknown to the English world'. A hundred years later, two hundred since her death, Ann seems to be no better known to 'the English world'.

The weary, drab and reticent town of Bala lies like an uncomfortable grey pillow at the head of a big lake in Wales; somewhat similar to the stone on which Jacob rested his head to sleep at Bethel. Long ago the town's origins were mislaid in the swirling Welsh mists. But we know that in 1310 by Royal Charter, Roger Mortimer was granted the right to establish the present town, to subdue the Welsh. By Tudor times Bala had seeped away to be no more than a poor insignificant market town. Its 'fame', such as it was, arrived at the close of the 18th century, wrapped in woollen cloth. A thriving local industry developed, employing all the women of Bala. The town was honoured to supply for a rheumatic George III the 'stuff' from which the King's stockings were made: rheumatism being all the King and Ann shared in common.

In 1800, a lithe sixteen year old girl walked from her home in Llanfihangel-y-Pennant over the desolate hills to Bala; going barefoot, to save her shoes during her ten-hour pilgrimage southwards. Mary Jones was to buy a Bible. Mary had heard that Welsh Bibles were for sale, from the Rev. Thomas Charles, the Calvinistic Methodist apostle of North Wales. For six long years Mary struggled to save money for her purchase. Arriving at the preacher's house, Mary heard there were no Bibles available. Mary wept. On the morrow, a compassionate Thomas Charles somehow found a Bible for Mary. By the alchemy of grace, Mary's tears watered the idea that gave birth, five years later, to the British and Foreign Bible Society.

In the same year Mary made her journey, Ann Thomas walked to Bala from the opposite direction, along a similar meandering path, to hear Thomas Charles preach. Ann set out from another Llanfihangel, Llanfihangel-yng-Ngwynfa, thirty miles to the east of Bala. In those days many sang their way across the windy hills of Wales, drawn by preaching of irresistible spiritual power. The grey chapels, warm hovels, market squares and rolling hills and valleys were aflame with the preaching of William Williams, Howell Harris, John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield and Daniel Rowlands. Those were the days and that was the Wales in which Ann Griffiths lived and died.

Ann's personal life might be considered something 'incidental'. Kathryn Jones refers to 'ambiguity and elusiveness'. Even Ann's name was secondary, no more than a supplement. For all but the last ten months of her twenty-nine years Ann Griffiths was 'Nansi' Thomas.

Ann's biography is incidental: we have only a few scraps to piece together. Her occupations were incidental: Ann, in similar style to her spiritual sister, Mary of Bethany, acknowledged that she often would 'fail completely to stand in the way of my duty with regard to temporal things'. That we know anything of Ann at is due to her 'hymns'. But these too, in a certain sense, were incidental. None of her verses were conventional compositions. Ann thought it would be better were they all to be forgotten. She considered them unworthy of preservation: 'I don't wish anyone to have them after me; they're for my own comfort'. The hymns come to us as absconding traces, stray rays of glory, somehow escaping through the lattice of her open heart; fleeting shadows of the soft whispers of her soul's intimacy with her Saviour. Ann herself regarded her earthly life to be incidental to heaven.

When new-born lambs frolic on the grass green hills, and hazel hedges sing with nesting blackbirds, Ann entered the world, April 1776, the exact date unknown, (again 'incidental'). Where she was born she lived and died, on Dolwar-fach, the family farm in the parish of Llanfihangel-yng-Ngwynfa; a long-stone's throw from the market town of Llanfyllin in Montgomeryshire, mid-Wales; on the country's extreme eastern edge.

Two sisters left home before their mother died in 1794, leaving the 17 year old Ann as mistress of the household for the rest of her life. She was now responsible for keeping house and supervising the work of the maids; with them she would milk cows, churn butter, make cheese, feed hens, collect eggs, be mid-wife to lambing ewes, mother orphaned lambs, make hay, sow, weed and dig vegetables; walk to and from market and be occupied with all the tasks the seasons demand of a farmer. She would also prepare and spin wool, harvested from the backs of Montgomeryshire sheep. At the time of her death Dolwar-fach housed one loom, five spinning wheels and supported a flock of eighty sheep.

Ten years after the loss of her mother, Ann's father died, in the February of 1804. Later that same year, on the 10th October, Ann married Thomas Griffiths, in Llanfihangel Parish Church. Thomas, resident in an adjoining parish, belonged to a wealthy farming family; he was Ann's age. Dolwar-fach became their home. Nine months later, on 13th July, Ann gave birth to a baby daughter, Elizabeth. The child survived only two weeks; Elizabeth was buried in Llanfihangel churchyard, on 31st July 1805. Already frail and failing, mortally weakened by the birth of her daughter, Ann died only days after Elizabeth. She was buried on 12th August close to her daughter. Ann was 29 years old.

Here for a few years

the spirit sang on a bone bough

at eternity's window, the flesh trembling

at the splendour of a forgiveness

too impossible to believe in, yet believing.

R. S. Thomas

The Sunday following, in the Methodist chapel at nearby Pontrobert, John Hughes preached a funeral sermon in Ann's memory. His text, from the first chapter of Philippians: For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.

We have no authentic portrait of Ann; those we have are imaginary. We know Ann only through words, her own words and those of her closest friends. Above average height, Ann featured a distinguished arched nose and presented a natural dignity of stature; her character was gentle and considerate; long dark hair and a high knowing forehead crowned a face of pale complexion, rosy cheeks and lively eyes. Frequently troubled by ill-health, Ann suffered three recurring bouts of rheumatic fever. Tuberculosis and the effects of rheumatic fever no doubt contributed to her early death, her heart too weak for the strains of childbirth. But Ann was by no means a chronic invalid; her routine of hard work, and sometimes harder play, provide the proof.

Mentally resilient, vivacious, spontaneous, sharp-witted, mischievous, affectionate, cheerful, determined, thorough, obsessive and passionate; Ann was a leader by nature, gifted with an unusually penetrating mind and retentive memory. She benefitted from having received little formal education, just sufficient to equip her to read and write, but not so much to blunt her natural talents. Temperamentally Ann had need of entertainment, of physical and mental stimulation. Before her conversion, she revelled in village fairs, large, noisy crowds. Indulging an insatiable passion for dancing, Ann earned an early reputation as someone 'wild', 'fickle' and 'rather arrogant'. An old woman, who had known Ann personally, recalled 'Ann Thomas was notorious for her attendance at the sessions of nightly games and was very addicted to dancing'. (Ryan, 31)

Ann's father was a devout member of the Anglican Church. He regularly attended services in Llanfihangel. His old sheep dog followed him to Church every Sunday morning, lying still and silent under the pew until the service was over. This Church-going habit was so consistent that the old dog would go to Church by himself on the few occasions the family was unable to attend.

John Evan Thomas, Ann's father, held family devotions every morning and evening at Dolwar-fach, reading from the Welsh translation of the Book of Common Prayer. He belonged to a group of local poets and wrote a particular form of Welsh hymn; these he sang while the family spun and weaved wool. Ann herself was able to compose these characteristic Welsh religious songs by the time she was ten. With a magpie's keenness, from an early age Ann garnered the distinctive rhythms and grand language of the Welsh Bible and Prayer Book; their phrases and idioms filling her expanding memory.

Welsh was the primary language in Ann's locality. But this was border country, and economic forces drew folk eastward, to travel the precarious roads to Shropshire and the flourishing English lowlands. Though there is no record of any such journey, it is probable that Ann visited Chester and Shrewsbury with her sister, who travelled to buy stock for the little shop she kept in Llanfyllin. In a letter to John Hughes, Ann included a 'parable' of commerce:

I have heard a parable of a shopkeeper who went to Chester to buy two hundred pounds' worth of goods; he received an invoice; it hung in the shop, naming and detailing the goods; and a man came in and asked for a crown's worth of one of them; he replied, 'I haven't got a pennyworth of it.' Though many may make a grand show in the profession of religion, yet in the face of temptation you ask, 'Where is their faith?' A shout arose: 'Little children, cry for the wagon to come home; it is heavily laden, with ministers of the Word.'

Close by Dolwar-fach lived farm-worker, John Owen. Every year John found harvesting work in Shropshire. One year he returned with a wife, to be known as 'Ann the English'. Mrs Owen opened a local school and taught Nansi Thomas to speak and read English.

'Ann the English' gave birth to a son, Samuel, 'Sam the English'; he it is who is credited with introducing Methodism to the Dolwar-fach household. The Methodist movement had entered mid-Wales in the 1730s, with Daniel Rowland of Llangietho, Howel Harris of Trevecka, and William Williams Pantycelyn as the leading men of the movement. In Ann's time the movement spread to North Wales, mainly through the zeal of Thomas Charles, who had moved from Carmarthen to Bala in the mid-1780s.

The Welsh temperament was ideally suited to the fervour of the movement. Members met in local groups, called 'societies' (seiadau), to examine and assess their spiritual condition and religious experiences, and to be instructed from the Word of God for their spiritual progress. Almost Ann's whole family joined 'the Methodists'. The local 'society' (seiat) normally meet at Pontrobert, a mile or so from Ann's home; on occasions the seiat would meet in Ann's home, Dolwar-fach.

Following her involvement in the seiat, in her 20th year, Ann's life was transformed. The record of her conversion is unclear. But we know in 1796 Ann, as was her habit, went to the Easter fair at Llanfyllin, on Easter Monday. Passing an open-air preacher, outside the pub in the town-centre, Ann caught the words of the preacher; and the Word caught Ann.

Down the path she set off

for the earlier dancing

of the body: but under the myrtle

the Bridegroom was waiting

for her on her way home

R. S. Thomas

That same summer, at the invitation of a maid who worked on her farm, Ann heard the Rev. Benjamin Jones of Pwllheli preach in Llanfyllin. Months of spiritual distress followed. Finding no help from the parish Church to ease her inner conflict, Ann was forced to look elsewhere. At this time Ann was no friend of Methodism and would often ridicule its overt enthusiasm. But as she attended to the words of the Methodist preacher at Pontrobert, she 'experienced strong convictions of her sinfulness and her lost condition. The spiritual weight of God's law gripped her mind so powerfully she would sometimes roll on the ground in terror and tribulation of mind on her way home from hearing sermons at Pontrobert'. Eventually, through the faithful ministry of the Pontrobert Methodist preacher, Ann found the peace she had longed searched to know.

The report of Ann's 'terror and tribulation of mind' comes from the man who was to be one of her two closest friends, John Hughes. Ann's other closest friend was Ruth Evans, whom John would eventually marry. These friendships, within the ethos of the seiat, were the greatest formative influences in Ann's experience. John Hughes was a poor young weaver from Llanfihangel parish, one year Ann's senior. He became a seiat member a year before Ann. John was a useful school teacher and became a highly regarded leader of the Montgomeryshire Calvinistic Methodists, continuing to be an active preacher for more than fifty years; writing and publishing an exposition of The Song of Solomon. Ann shared John's love of that book, drawing heavily on its vocabulary and metaphors for her letters and verses. John lodged at Ann's home for some months after her conversion, becoming her close friend and spiritual companion. He was overwhelmingly impressed with Ann's depth of godliness. In his sixty-fifth year John Hughes recorded that Ann 'shone with greater intensity and eminence in spiritual religion than anyone I saw during my lifetime'. This is a most remarkable and significant statement in view of the vast number of men and women of the most eminent spirituality and piety John had meet through his long years of ministry. It is perhaps difficult to accept John's estimate as wholly objective, just as it is difficult to avoid the thought that John's opinion reflects the depth of his affection for Ann. An affection and attachment that deepened and developed through the many hours they spent together and the spiritually intimate conversations they shared. With one sole exception, Ann's extant letters were written as replies to letters she had received from John; the strength of Ann's feelings a surging under-current to her words.

It has been suggested, in relation to this remarkable friendship, that it was 'no more than' a close spiritual companionship. That's a revealing description. If their friendship was as reported then it would be more accurate to describe John and Ann's friendship as no less than a close spiritual companionship. Such friendships, rare as they are precious, are, in the Lord, the most helpful, sweet and supportive of all forms of companionship; incorporating every feature of godly, spiritual fellowship.

The evident depth of their companionship suggests that this friendship was not confined merely to one aspect of experience. Such an assessment would belittle the nature of true friendship. Resorting to the term 'merely' in this connection devalues the dignity of Christian friendship. Such friendship is all-embracing; it cannot be confined to a single domain or sphere. This remains the case however carefully such friendships observe the protocols of Christian 'decency' and the cultural mores of the societies in which they develop and flourish. Indeed, that very sensitivity is intrinsic to the glory of such friendships. Ann's letters to John show how she found their friendship a shelter from a rough sea, a refuge and a harbour. Separation from her friend was painful. Ann's heart would fully concur with Emily Dickinson's complaint: 'I am sorry you came because you went away'! Both felt the pain of the loss felt in separation from friends to be distressing and disturbing; both found in 'thinking of those I love my reason is all gone from me'; and, both found a letter to be the ideal expression of friendship, a 'meeting' free from the pain of parting. Ann's letters reveal her keen sense of the true and profound depth and nature of this friendship, conscious also of the challenges such friendships present.

Ann was unable to hide the intense longing she felt at the coming of her friend, 'the one person with whom she can speak altogether freely […]'. (Allchin, 14)

John Hughes is our sole first-hand authority on the history and life of Ann Griffiths. Forty years after her death he wrote a short memoir of Ann, published in 1846. This memoir is probably the most important documentary source we have for Ann's life and character. (It is greatly to be regretted that John's Memoir still awaits translation into English).

Remarkable as Ann's friendship was with John Hughes, her friendship with Ruth Evans, whom John married a few months before Ann's death, seems no less remarkable. Ruth's parents were pioneers of the Methodist cause in the border country of Montgomeryshire, Ruth joining the movement in about 1791. Ten years later, in May 1801, Ruth was employed by Ann, as a maid at Dolwar-fach; where she remained until her marriage to John Hughes in 1805. Ann and her husband attended John and Ruth's wedding, as witnesses. Ruth was to leave Dolwar-fach when Ann would have been pregnant for around six months. Ann and Ruth had enjoyed an exceptionally intimate friendship as spiritual confidantes; Ruth an 'Elizabeth' to Ann's 'Mary'. Significantly, in 1802, the year after Ruth arrived at Dolwar-fach, Ann began to compose her verses. Ann seems to have had a winsomely mischievous, playful side to her character. And so we learn, from John Hughes's short memoir, that Ruth felt it her duty to be a sobering influence on Ann – perhaps we may be allowed some regret at this suppression of Ann's natural vivacity. Reliable anecdotes report Ann and Ruth shared the same bed at Dolwar, an altogether unremarkable and wholly innocent arrangement for the times. With such close and deep friendships these were the most richly rewarding years of Ann's brief life.

Ann's intense emotional sensitivity and the easy and frequent use of erotic vocabulary in her letters and verses, together with the singular nature of her friendships with Ruth and John have generated speculation, a speculation intensified by the enigmatic character of Ann's marriage to Thomas Griffiths. All of which invites some attempt to probe the nature of her friendships and the circumstances of her marriage to Thomas Griffiths.

It is a wise insight to understand, 'We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are'. Unwarranted surmises say more about the dispositions of those who entertain them than of their subjects. It would however be naïve to suppose that any age, and certainly not Ann's, is free from sexual proclivities and fascination. Indeed, as already remarked, there is evidence of sexual impropriety on the part of one, if not of both, of Ann's sisters. It appears, from the 1851 Census, that Ann's eldest sister, Jane, gave birth to a son, named John, sometime before March 1793, six years before she married. Whether this is indeed evidence of 'sexual impropriety' depends on one's definition of 'marriage'. Ann's second sister, Elizabeth, married a Thomas Morris. It is probable that he is cited in the Llangadfan Parish Register, as the father of an illegitimate son. A case was brought against Morris and the child's mother in the consistory court in July 1795, on a charge of adultery. It is also possible that Elizabeth's husband fathered a second illegitimate child, Ann, who was buried on 28 September 1787.

It may be surmised, from Ann's letters to John, that they shared thoughts of marriage, vague as their thoughts on that subject may have been. It is no great surprise that the intense nature of Ann's friendship with John has occasioned suggestions that Ann's marriage to Thomas Griffiths was a rather formal arrangement. As deep as Ann's and John's friendship was, it would likely be the case that marriage to John would have been no less 'formal' for Ann than her marriage to Thomas is supposed to have been. The thought is that Ann's spirituality precluded all possibility of Ann being an affectionate, fulfilling wife. R. S. Thomas expressed the idea: History insists on a marriage/but the husband was as cuckolded as Joseph. A poetic 'insight'; while lacking any substance in the realities of Ann's life or the nature of true spirituality.

The idea that Ann's marriage to Thomas was merely 'formal' may seem to be strengthened by the comparative suddenness with which Thomas enters Ann's life. The absence of any written communication between Ann and Thomas leaves no material with which to map the development of an emotional relationship. The realities of Ann's marriage point in a different direction, and what we know of her temperament would seem to suggest that their marriage was more affectionate than some suppose. We need not doubt they shared a deep fondness; that a child was born less than ten months after their wedding indicates the normality of the relationship. It is also the case that neither Ann nor Thomas was in good health when they married.

At the time of her marriage Ann's circumstances, emotionally and domestically, were precarious. The death of her father, in February 1804, eight months before her marriage, affected Ann so deeply that her constitution never wholly recovered. Ann was left, with her unmarried brother John, to run the farm. Thomas came from a similar social class to Ann and was a man of recognised godliness, prominent in the local Methodist movement.

That economic considerations may have been significant in Ann's choice of husband (not infrequently the case in the culture of the times) need not in itself imply any weakness in Ann's emotional and affectionate attachment to Thomas Griffiths; indeed, given Ann's oceanic capacity for affection, it is inconceivable that she would contract a marriage purely, or even principally, for reasons of economic convenience.

Like Ann, Thomas suffered with a weak constitution, surviving his wife by only three years, he died in 1808. Following Ann's death it is recorded that Thomas would complain of his loss and destitution, saying his memory of Ann's great gentleness created a longing which almost overpowered him. On one occasion, it is reported, Thomas fainted on hearing the congregation singing one of Ann's hymns. Evidently Thomas was a man of acute sensitivity, capable of deep emotional response.

Ann lived in an age of revolution. Born in 1776, the year of American Independence, Ann died in 1805, the year of the battle of Trafalgar and the beginning of the Industrial revolution. Attending weekly prayer meetings, on Wednesday mornings, she and her companions prayed for deliverance from the threat to Britain from revolutionary France. Ann's inner turmoil might be seen as an internalisation of the external social uncertainties of her times, a tendency to transfer one set of realties, over which we have no power or control, into those where we can, at least to some degree, normalise, subdue and manage them, so as to hold some hope of an assured outcome, however great the conflict. Ann came to see sin as that conflict and Christ as our only hope.

During these years Ann gloried in the absolute certainty of the great themes she had learned from her girlhood: that Jesus Christ, the second person of the blessed Holy Trinity, was the One who was God and man in one Person; that he had taken the punishment for her sin upon himself, through dying in her stead, ensuring for her forgiveness and eternal reconciliation with God. She now drank as deeply of the joy of salvation as she had from the cup of conviction – her songs of praise could be heard from kitchen to hilltop, throughout the valleys of her Welsh Galilee.

Month by month Ann travelled the hilly miles, on foot or horseback, over the Berwyn mountains to Bala, to hear Thomas Charles preach and to receive Communion. The journeys required an overnight break, and the unfettered exuberance of her guests drew the landlady of the hostelry where the party stayed into complaining that with their singing and jubilation the Methodist travellers were worse than drunkards!

On one occasion, while in Bala, Ann involved Thomas Charles in a long conversation. Charles was no stranger to experiences of intense spiritual excitement and depth. During the time of this awakening he would deal with many who were under strong spiritual experiences, such as he himself had known. The Minister was however profoundly moved by the depth of understanding and the intensity of the experiences of this young woman with whom he was talking. With characteristic wisdom and insight Charles suggested that one of three things might happen to Ann: that she would die young or that she would suffer greatly or that she would backslide. It was the prospect of this last likelihood, of backsliding, not suffering or death, which moved Ann to tears when Thomas Charles spoke of it as a distinct possibility. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that Ann experienced any significant degree of spiritual decline. She did, indeed, die young and, as Charles foretold, experienced great suffering. Ann's spiritual condition during her final weeks was of exceptional piety and godliness. Her insistence on saying 'grace' before taking her medication is a measure of Ann's singular piety.

Her earliest biographers recorded that Ann was very quiet and uncomplaining during her final illness, receiving the news of the death of her baby daughter quietly and humbly – knowing that her little one was only in 'the other room'. Through hours of sleeplessness she would meditate on spiritual and heavenly themes. At such times, in the silence of the night, she would sometimes think she could hear melodious singing surrounding the house and gave every appearance of longing to join the heavenly host in their eternal song of praise.

Ann is reported to have said that it was her hope to be in a clear state of mind on her deathbed. But, when that time arrived, she found that that was unimportant; what truly mattered was to rest quietly in the strength of the eternal covenant; relying solely on the merits of Christ.