The Last Invasion of Britain Was an Opéra Boufee Farce

The whole saga of The Last Invasion of Britain is told on the panoramic Fishguard Tapestry from beginning to end and is on display in its own museum in the Welsh village.  Captioned in Welsh and English it begins here with the spotting of the French fleet.

On February 24, 1797 the remnants of a star crossed French invasion surrendered to local Welsh and English forces raised mostly from the local yeomanry.

It began as a diversion to a diversion, an ill planned and worse executed scheme to draw British troops from Continental Europe where they were engaged in the struggle with revolutionary France known as the War of the First Coalition.  But for Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen, the tawdry affair was the beginning of a collapse of a great dream of Irish Independence secured with the assistance of French arms.

At the instigation of Tone, an Anglo-Irish idealist then serving as an officer in the French Army while trying to lead from exile the growing United Irishmen movement he had founded in his homeland, the French Directory authorized a complex and ambitious plan put forward by General Louis Lazare Hoche.  Tone had promised the French that 30, 000 United Irishmen would lead a mass popular uprising with the support of a fairly modest French invasion.  As a diversion to the main effort in Ireland, Hoche planned two more limited raids on the British home island.  The most significant would land in Wales and then march to Bristol to sack and burn the city.

 

Wolfe Tone was a Protestant Anglo-Irish patriot and founder of the United Irishmen.  As a French officer during the post-revolutionary wars, he convinced the French Directory to lend troops to an invasion of Ireland meant to trigger a general uprising against the English. 

Tone issued bloodthirsty manifestos smuggled into Ireland calling for the uprising and urging no quarter to British troops.  The stage was set for the great adventure.

On December 15, 1796, 43 ships carrying about 14,450 men and an arsenal war material for distribution in Ireland sailed from Brest.  Tone accompanied Hoche under the nom du guerre Adjutant General Smith, a thin disguise meant to protect him should he be captured by the British. 

The planned three prong operation had already fallen apart.  The main force for the actual invasion of Ireland arrived off Bantry Bay on the west coast but was prevented by high winter seas from attempting a landing.  The naval and troop carrier commanders were, in Tone’s acid opinion, largely incompetent.  After a heavy gale nearly destroyed the fleet, it had to limp back to France.

La Légion des Francs, under General Quantain, was instructed to attack Newcastle upon Tyne and destroy local shipping. It had set out from Dunkirk in November of 1796 but turned back in Dutch waters after bad weather had swamped several of the invasion barges.  The troops, mostly impressed convicts and even British prisoners of war, mutinied back in port and refused to re-embark for a second attempt. 

Astoundingly, the third force, a flotilla of French warships, now with no main effort to support, left Brest flying Russian colors on February 16, 1797 headed for Britain.

Young French General Louis Lazare Hoche was Tone's friend and ally and devised the plan for the Irish invastion that included two diversionary raids on the British home island.   Nothing worked as planned.

The second diversionary force was La Légion Noire (The Black Legion), a fierce sounding name for a rag-tag brigade sized force of 1,400 men and 46 officers.  Like the ill-fated Légion des Francs, it was also made up mostly of half-trained conscripts described, charitably, as irregulars.  But the was a core of the force were 600 Grenadiers of the line. The unit took its name from its uniforms, which were captured English redcoats that had been poorly died to a range of colors from muddy brown to a sooty black. Their trousers were a ludicrous and unmilitary  The poor condition of their outfits was an indication that the French command saw them as doomed pawns.  The unit was under the command of an Irish American, chef de brigade (colonel) William Tate who could not speak French and had to communicate with his men through translators.  Several of his subordinate officers were Irish, as well.

At least the warships under the command of Commodore Castagnier were first rate.  They included the frigates La Vengeance and La Resistance on her maiden voyage, the corvette La Constance, and Le Vautour a smaller lugger.  The plan was to provide cover for and land troops near Bristol, then to dash north to rendezvous with Hoche’s shattered fleet to provide them cover and protection on the limp home.  Of course, that meant that the small invasion force would be abandoned on the home island of the enemy.  What could possibly go wrong?

Apparently, a lot.  The same high seas and winds that had scattered Hoche’s fleet prevented a landing as originally planned.  Castagnier was forced to turn around and try to land at secondary choice, Cardigan Bay on the west coast of Wales.  Making its way through the Bristol Channel, the flotilla was spotted from land and despite now flying English colors was identified as hostile.  Surprise was gone.

La Vegengeance and La Resistance land their Troops in Cardigan Bay in Wales, unable to land nearer their target of Bristol.  Troops under Irish-American Col. Robert Tate had already taken the crest of the shore cliffs.  What looks at first glance like and American flag on the hill and on the ships is a French ensign.

At 2 in the morning of on February 22, 1797, the French landed 17 boatloads of troops, 47 barrels of gunpowder, 50 tons of cartridges and grenades, and 2,000 stands of arms. One boat was lost in the surf and sank, with the critical loss of artillery and ammunition.Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Knox of the 400-man local Fishguard and Newport Volunteer Infantry had already been alerted of the invasion force and was mobilizing his troops.  In addition, other units in the region were rushing to the invasion site including Lord Cawdor’s Castlemartin Troop of the Pembroke Yeomanry Cavalry the along with the Pembroke Volunteers and the Cardiganshire Militia.  Lieutenant-Colonel Colby of the Pembrokeshire Militia assembled 250 men.  A Royal Navy pressgang, tough thugs usually employed in emptying sea side pubs of drunken sailors and swooping up un-alert farm lads from the fields, 150 strong also landed with several pieces of artillery.  All began converging on the threat.  Lord Cawdor assumed overall command.

At dawn after a three-mile forced march from the landing site, Tate’s men looked down from the surrounding hills at the small port of Fishguard.  They observed it bustling with activity, no doubt stirred by the fast flying word of the invasion.  A good many women were assembled in the market dressed in a traditional local costume which included high black hats and scarlet shawls.  From the distance they apparently were mistaken for Redcoats in black shakos sending some of the ill trained irregulars into a near panic.

None-the-less the French began to push inland, capturing several farm houses.  Some of the irregulars broke loose and began pillaging the farmsteads and rural hamlets for loot, dashing the unrealistic hopes that the Celtic Welsh might see the invasion as liberators and rise up against English rule.

Tate was left with only a handful of his irregulars, mostly Irish exiles, and his regular Grenadiers.  He set up a headquarters and occupied strong defensive positions on the high rocky outcrops of Garnwnda and Carngelli.  

On February 23 the two hundred or so local militia at Fishguard under colonel Knox, re-enforced by an influx of angry civilian volunteers armed with scythes, pitch forks, pikes, and other odd implements, began a retreat from the port after realizing that they were facing a much larger force.  But they encountered Lord Cawdor’s hastily assembled force and turned around to join his march to meet the enemy.

As they advanced, Tate’s forces began to fall apart.  Conscripts discovered a warehouse of Portuguese wine and began drinking heavily.  Many, especially impressed English prisoners of war, simply deserted.  Most of the rest were soon drunk or sick in farm houses scattered about.

 

Enshrined on the Fishgaurd Tapestry farm wife Jemima Nicholas single handedly captured a dozen drunk French conscripts in their shabby uniforms and became a legend along with her traditional Welsh dress and high black hat.

One local farm wife, Jemima Nicholas, armed only with a pitchfork rounded up 12 of the drunken conscripts and locked them in St. Mary’s Church in the town.

That evening Cawdor and 600 men advanced from Fishguard on the French strong points but turned back fearing ambush.  But Tate’s men saw the size of the well-armed forces against them, including artillery.  Knowing that the fleet had already abandoned them, his officers began to council surrender.

The Pembroke Yeomanry and and other British troops form on the sands to accept the formal French surrender on February 24.

 The morning of the 24 two French officers entered Cawdor’s camp under a white flag to attempt to negotiate an honorable surrender with safety guaranteed Irish officers.  Cawdor refused the terms and set a 10 am deadline for unconditional surrender or he would attack.  Part of that was bluff.  Cawdor still believed he was outnumbered and planned to await further reinforcements before an all-out assault.
The deadline passed, but Tate realized his position was hopeless and announced his unconditional surrender at 2 pm.  Tate and his men were taken prisoner, although rounding up all the deserters and stragglers took time.  Eventually Tate and most of the others were paroled and returned to France.  Some of the conscripts simply agreed to switch uniforms, some for the second time.

But the disaster was not over for the French.  On March 9 La Resistance, which had been crippled by the adverse weather in the Irish Sea and La Constance were captured after a short but bloody engagement with HMS St Fiorenzo and HMS Nymphe.  Both were re-fitted and commissioned in the Royal Navy.  Commodore Castagnier on board La Vengeance managed to escape to France.

This tinted British print compared the damage to the French fleets to the destruction of the Spanish Armada more than 200 years before.  Perfect war time propaganda

As for Wolfe Tone, well he pressed for another invasion.  His ardent supporter Hoche died of tuberculosis and he found ascending French authorities, including Napoléon Bonaparte less enamored of his Irish schemes.  But when open rebellion broke out in Ireland and with Napoléon off on his Egyptian adventure, he persuaded the government to back a second expedition.

This time a force under General Humbert succeeded in landing near Killala, County Mayo and marching through the countryside gathering United Irishmen with “their pikes upon their shoulders” before it was smashed.  A second force broke up again in the raging seas, and the third, accompanied by Tone himself was intercepted by the Royal Navy.  Tone was taken prisoner.  He died of wounds of a botched suicide attempt after several days, but in time to cheat the hangman.

The pitiful and fruitless so-called Battle of Fishguard is now remembered as the last invasion of Great Britain. 

The Guidon of the Pembroke Yeomanry commemorates their famous victory.
 
In 1853 the Pembroke Yeomanry was awarded the battle honor “Fishguard” to be attached as a ribbon to their colors. It is the only regiment in the British Army, regular or territorial, which bears a battle honor for an engagement on the British mainland and the first battle honor awarded to a volunteer unit.
 




 

 

World’s First Rail Passengers Rolled on the Good Swansea and Mumbles Railway

An early photo of open car horse drawn service on the Swansea and Mumbles Railway.  Probably a vary pleasant hour or so on a lovely spring day, but undoubtedly miserable in Wales's snowy winters.

Over the years this blog has covered many firsts relating to railway history.  That’s because I am fascinated with transportation history in general and rail history in particular.  Maybe it comes from growing up in a railroad town like Cheyenne, Wyoming, playing with electric trains, or listening all of my life to all of those songs about lonesome whistles, getting’ on down the line, and hobos.  But somehow I missed the very first rail passenger service in the world, which was inaugurated way back on March 25, 1807 on the Swansea and Mumbles Railway in Wales.  I know, it sounds like a line made up by J.K. Rowling for some fantastic adventure.

It started out, as most railroads did, as freight service.  Specifically it was charted in 1804 by Parliament as the Committee of the Company of Proprietors of the Oystermouth Railway or Tramroad Company for the purpose of hauling limestone from quarries by the Swansea Canal a little more than 7 miles to a fishing village called Oystermouth, a harbor at the mouth of the River Tawe.  Mumbles was the end station in Oysterouth, and the line was thus called the Swansea and Mumbles Railway, or just called the Mumbles Train by the suitably rustic locals. 

Construction on the roadbed and the laying of rude iron-strap rails was completed in 1806.  Freight operations commenced with no dedication or ceremony.  None-the-less, it quickly boosted the economy of both of its terminals.  With the addition of a mile-long spur from Blackpill up the Clyne Valley to Ynys Gate it also facilitated the development of coal pits at Blackpill.  Limestone, coal, and other freight was all carried in single open carts and horse drawn over the rugged course.  Speed was not a priority.

There being no road between the termini other than a rude foot path, the Proprietors soon decided that since the damn railway was just sitting there anyway, they might as well add passenger service. One of the original proprietors, Benjamin French, offered to pay the company the 20£ for the right to haul paying customers for a year.  Suitably uncomfortable open coaches thus began making regular trips on this date in 1807 without need of much further investment.  The Mount at Swansea became the world first railway station.  Actually anyone could do what Mr. French did.  By the arcane terms of the original charter the railroad was just that—the roadbed—and operated like a turnpike or canal.  Anyone could use the rails for a fee or toll as long as they provided their own compatible equipment.  It is unclear who or how many exercised that option.

Eventually seven stations including the termini were built which became the center of small hamlets and served the narrow valley running through the Welsh hills.

In the 1820’s a turnpike was built parallel to the rail line that cut into passenger traffic so that the only operator of cars at that time, Simon Llewelyn, suspended operations in 1827.

The re-introduction of passenger service in 1866 brought these more comfortable cars.

Over the next couple of decades the roadbed was re-laid and standard gauge flanged rails were used.  George Byng Morris, the son of one of the original proprietors and a local developer of coal pits, took control of the line, made more improvements, and re-introduced horse-drawn passenger service in 1866, when most British rail had already converted to steam.

The first steam service on the line began in 1877 when Henry Hughes’s patent tramway locomotives owned by the Swansea Improvements & Tramways Company began to use part of the line.  But because of the archaic charter and various disputes, the owner of the rail line, then a John Dickinson had to continue to use horse cars for some services.  There was a complicated web of companies owning all or parts of the line over time and/or operating on it.

It wasn’t until 1896 that the last horse car left service.  About that time a new company, the Mumbles Railway & Pier Company extended the line in Oystermouth to a new pier they built in the harbor and established and new terminal station, Mumbles Head.  Trains operated over both lines and occasionally during business disputes passengers were forced to change trains at the old Mumbles station.

A tank steam locomotive drawing double-deck cars arrives in Oystermouth Station in the early 20th Century.

By the turn of the 20th Century the tram engines had gone the way of the horse cars and a motley assemblage of small conventional tank locomotives were in use.  One early experiment with battery powered electric engines had already failed.

In 1904 to celebrate the centennial of the railway charter, the line finally got the ceremonial attention it never got in the beginning.  King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra visited Swansea for the ceremonial cutting of the first sod of the new King’s Dock in July.  They rode in a gutted and re-fitted battery electric car suitably fancied up and drawn by a steam engine.  The line received a second Royal visit in 1920 when King George V officiated at the opening of the new Queen’s Dock.

In 1928 the line was electrified and converted to an overhead wire tram style for the passenger service making it one of the few services in the world to have employed horse drawn, steam, and electric service.  Several double-decker cars built by the Brush Electrical Company of Loughborough, in Leicestershire—the largest ever built for service in Britain—were used.  Each could seat 106 passengers and were frequently operated in pairs with a seating capacity of 212 per train. That is a hint of the surprisingly heavy usage of the short run line.

These handsome and striking red double-deck overhead tram cars serviced the line for decades.  This one is approaching the Mumbles Pier in the last days of the line.

Freight service, which diminished with the closing of several coal pits and the short branch lines built to serve them, was handled for a while with gasoline powered engines which proved under-powered and finally with diesel locomotives.

The railroad got national attention in Britain once again when it celebrated its 150th Anniversary in 1954.  A replica of an early horse drawn passenger coach was constructed and ceremonially run on the line with newsreel and BBC coverage.

But it was almost a swan song.  In 1958 the railroad’s greatest competitor, The South Wales Transport Company, which was the principal operator of bus services in the Swansea area, bought out the two operating companies and the underlying but dormant road bed company.  Since the railroad had never been integrated into the nationalized rail system and still operated under the arcane 1804 charter, the bus company petitioned Parliament for permission to abandon the line.  The Conservative government of Prime Minister Harold McMillan was glad to oblige.

Under the South Wales Transport Act 1959 despite the voracious protests and objection of local residents the Swansea and Mumbles Railway was closed down in two stages.  The last ceremonial run was driven by Frank Duncan, who had worked on the railway since 1907, on January 5, 1960.  Work began immediately to tear down some stations to make way for bus terminals, tear up the track for scrap, and dismantle most of the rolling stock.  

What was then the oldest railway in the world with continuous service was no more.

The last intact car sat for years awaiting restoration but deteriorating on a Leeds siding. Seen in 1966, it was destroyed by fire soon after.
 

One car was saved for preservation by members of Leeds University in Yorkshire and was stored awaiting work at the Middleton Railway in Lees but it was heavily vandalized and eventually destroyed by fire. The front end of car no. 7 was also saved for preservation at Swansea Museum and was initially restored in the early 1970s by members of the Railway Club of Wales.  It is now on display in the Tram Shed by the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea’s Maritime Quarter.

But there was dim hope of a restoration of service.  In 2009 the City and County of Swansea began a long process of looking at the feasibility of tram service for the Swansea bay area again perhaps using the old roadbed.  The Environment, Regeneration and Culture Overview Board created by the Council to conduct the survey began a process of setting up a private charitable corporation.  But with many obstacles to overcome no cars are yet running.

 

William Price—The Welsh Druid Doctor Who Burned Jesus Christ

                                      Dr. William Price in full Druid regalia.

On January 18, 1884 an old man with white beard nearly to his knees and dressed in green clothing, a red sash, and a fox fur draped across his head, ascended a mountain overlooking the Welsh town of Llantrisant.  Muttering invocations in a form of “ancient Welsh” of his own invention, he lit a pyre and laid the body of his five-month-old son, Iesu Grist, Welsh for Jesus Christ, on it.  Townspeople investigating the fire fell upon the old man in a rage and pulled the unconsumed body of the infant from the flames.

Dr. William Price had to be rescued from the mob by the local constabulary who promptly charged him with the illegal disposal of a corpse under the assumption that cremation, long banned by Church tradition which held a belief in bodily resurrection on Judgment Day, was illegal.  He escaped a charge of infanticide when an autopsy showed that the boy died of natural causes. 

Dr. Price attempting to cremate his son Iesu Grist.  His arrest and highly publicized court case would pave the way for full recognition, legalization, and regulation of cremation in Great Britain.

Price was brought to trial at Cardiff before the riveted attention of the British press.  He argued that there were no statutes that either sanctioned or forbad cremation.  It turned out he was right.  The judge was forced to free him.  Price returned to Llantrisant and before a crowd of hundreds of supporters, completed the cremation.  He erected a 60 foot high pole surmounted by a crescent moon on the site and declared his intention to be burned there in his own time.

There was already a small movement to permit cremation in Britain based on various religious beliefs and for reasons of sanitation.  The new Cremation Society of Great Britain saw the ruling as precedent.  They promoted cremations at Working in 1885 and encouraged the founding of the first British crematorium at Manchester in 1892.  But it was not until the Parliamentary Cremation Act of 1902 that the practice gained the full sanction and regulation of law.

For his part, Dr. Price enjoyed the national celebrity the case bestowed upon him and took advantage of it by selling medallions and religious tracts promoting his Neo-Druid sect and the Welsh nationalism he had long embraced.

But the case was just one episode in the long life of a man described as “both one of the most colourful characters in Welsh history, and one of the most remarkable in Victorian Britain.”

Price was born in a cottage at Tyn-y-coedcae Farm (The House in the Wooded Field) in Risca, Monmouthshire, Wales on March 4, 1800.  His father was an Anglican priest and his mother had been an illiterate servant girl—a scandalous marriage across class lines.  The first surviving son and fourth child, he was raised in a Welch speaking home and knew no English until he began his formal schooling.  His father was a Welch nationalist and by local accounts quite mad, often speaking to trees, spitting on stones, and apt to fits of violence.

Young William attended school in nearby Machen from the ages of 10 in 13.  He proved to be a brilliant student and not only mastered English but completed his course work in only three years and successfully passed his examinations.  In defiance of his father, who wanted his son to be a solicitor, the boy apprenticed himself to successful surgeon, Evan Edwards, at Caerphilly in south Wales. 

                    William Price in 1822 as a medical student.

Completing his apprenticeship in 1820, Price entered the London Hospital in Whitechapel for a year of instruction under Sir William Blizard and then at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital studying with surgeon John Abernethy.  He found private employment caring for wealthy patients to finance his studies.  By 1823 he had earned his place in the Royal College of Surgeons.

Despite being tempted to go to India, Price decided to return to Wales and set himself up as a general practitioner.  For seven years he practiced at Craig yr Helfa in Glyntaff and rented a nearby farm on which he raised goats.  But some sort of trouble arose, and he was evicted from the farm.

While maintaining his Glyntaff practice, Price moved to the industrialized Taff Valley near to Pontypridd.  Serving the working people there, he was elected in 1823 as chief surgeon at the Brown Lenox Chainworks, a job he kept—with as we will see some interruptions—until 1871.  He also became a private physician to the wealthy Crawshaw family who owned the ironworks at Merthyr and Treforest.

The Crawshaws were ardent Welsh nationalists and helped Price renew his interest in Welsh culture and identity.  He began to be noticed in nationalist circles when he delivered an impassioned address at the Royal Eisteddfod, a Welsh festival of literature, music, and performance, in 1834 and became judge of the annual bardic competition at the Eisteddfod.  He awarded a prize to Taliesin, the son of the famous Welsh nationalist and Druid, Iolo Morganwg, perhaps sparking his interest in the religion of the ancient Celts.

He joined the Society of the Rocking Stone, a Neo-Druidic group that met at the Y Maen Chwyf stone circle in Pontypridd, and by 1837 had become one of its leading members.  He also began the first of repeated efforts to establish a Druidic museum of in the town.

At the same time his close association with the workers and the time he spent in Treforest, a hot bed of working class radicalism, drew him into the Chartist Movement.  Although the movement’s goals of electoral reform and one man, one vote seem mild in retrospect, to the national Tory establishment it was considered revolutionary and anarchical.  Welsh workers were among the most militant in the nationwide movement and many were convinced that it would take armed revolution to achieve their ends.

Price joined the movement and rapidly rose in local leadership.  Price sided with the revolutionaries and began helping them amass arms for the day of insurrection.  By 1839 he had secured seven pieces of field artillery and assorted small arms.  Despite his militancy, Price feared that a planned march on Newport was premature and sure to be crushed by the Army.  He and his followers stayed away from what became known as the Newport Rising and the bloody battle with the Army that left more than 20 workers dead and 50 wounded.  In the aftermath scores of Chartist leaders were arrested and 24 were put on trial for their lives.

Although an active Welsh Chartist leader, Dr. Price feared the march on Newport was premature and doomed.  He and his group sat out the attack but in its wake he still had to flee the country.

Rightly figuring that he was in danger, Price fled the country disguised in women’s clothing.  He wound up in the traditional European home of political exiles, Paris.   It was there while visiting the Louvre that he had a religious epiphany and a vision which has been compared to that of Joseph Smith and the Gold Tablets of Mormonism.  He became fixated with an ancient Greek stone with an inscription which he believed depicted an ancient Celtic bard addressing the Moon.  That no one else shared this insight did not bother him in the least.  In fact, he intuited a whole story from the stone that it represented prophecy given by an ancient Welsh prince named Alun, that a man would come in the future to reveal the true secrets of the Welsh language and to liberate the Welsh people.  Price was sure that he was that liberator.

When it was safe, Price returned to Pontypridd and set himself up as a chief Druid.  Charismatic, he drew a following.  He began to grow his hair and beard and took to wearing special costumes both in daily life and at the rituals he led at Rocking Stone.  He carried a long staff surmounted by a crescent moon.  Many of his followers carried elaborately carved sticks and staffs as well.

After declaring that marriage was an illegitimate exploitation of women that reduced them to chattel, Price took as a partner Ann Morgan who presented him with a daughter in 1842.  At a Rocking Stone ritual, he named the girl Gwenhiolan Iarlles Morganwg (Gwenhiolan, Countess of Glamorgan).

As time went by his vision became more grandiose.  He allied himself with the Order of True Ivorites, a so-called Friendly Society, which conducted all of its business in Welsh, and which fostered working class solidarity and mutual aid.  In place where trade unions were suppressed the secret society gave them cover under which to operate.  In 1855 Price then led a parade of the Ivorites, through the streets of Merthyr Tydfil, accompanied by a half-naked man calling himself Myrddin (Merlin) and a goat.

Price resurrected his dream of a Druid museum and school and secured the patronage of a local landowner.  But he had a falling out with the patron and the scheme once again fell through, this time leaving Price heavily in debt.  Once again he fled to Paris in 1861.

While in the City of Life, he began to send letters to the Welsh and English press with new claims.  He proclaimed himself Lord of the Southern Welsh.  He also made claims that “All the Greek Books are the Works of the Primitive Bards, in our own Language!!!!!!!… Homer was born in the hamlet of Y Van near Caerphili. He built Caerphili Castle… the oldest Books of the Chinese confess the fact!!”  Then, as now, writing with extraneous exclamation marks was considered a sign of mental instability.

Yet Price pressed on.  Upon returning to Wales in 1866 he settled in Llantrisan opening a new medical practice which thrived despite his eccentricities. By this time Ann Morgan had died and his daughter Gwenhiolan had grown up and was living an independent life.  

He began work on a master opus, in what he claimed was the pure and original form of Welch, from which the Greeks learned.  It was an invented dialect that no one but he and his most devoted followers could read.  In The Will of My Father, Price described the universe being created out of a snake’s egg by a supreme Father God.  Perhaps this recalled one of his own father’s many eccentricities—collecting and carrying small snakes by the pocketful on his wild roaming.

The book, which no one could read, was published in 1871 and sank into almost immediate obscurity.

Dr. Price with his young wife Gwenllian Llewelyn and their two surviving children, Penelopen and the second Iesu Grist.

In 1881 the now elderly Price with his famous long beard took a new partner, a 21 year old farmer’s daughter named Gwenllian Llewelyn.  Despite his previous declarations against marriage, he wed her in a Druidic ceremony on March 4, 1881.   In 1883 Gwenllian gave Price the ill-fated son who died after only five weeks of life.  Together they would have two more children, including a second Jesus Christ and a daughter Penelopen.

Price died on January 23, 1893 after drinking a final glass of Champaign.  On January 31 10,000 people gathered to watch him be laid on a pyre of two tons of coal beside the spot where his son was burned.  By all accounts it was a spectacular sight.

Gwenllian abandoned Druidism, married the road inspector for the local Council, was baptized Christian, and changed her son’s name to Nicholas.

                          The statue of Dr. William Price in Llantrisant.

Today Price is a kind of folk hero in Wales.   A statue of him was erected his long-time home of Llantrisant in 1982, depicting the doctor in his characteristic fox-skin headdress, arms outstretched in an odd Christ-like pose.