Merioneth

Adopting the style of the Old Testament jeremiad, John Jones I* asked a correspondent rhetorically ‘where is there more sin to encounter with, where more ignorance, where more hatred to the people of God, where the word saint more scorned, than in Merionethshire?’. ‘Inedited Letters’ ed. Mayer, 185. The correct answer was of course nowhere, in his eyes, but most of his contemporaries would have been struck more by the county’s remoteness than by its spiritual desolation.