Vavasor Powell

Vavasor Powell (1617-1670) Puritan preacher, author, and soldier, was born at Knucklas (Welsh Cnwclas, ‘Green Hill’) Radnorshire, modern Powys. His father was Richard Powell, his mother was Penelope, daughter of William Vavasor of Newtown, Morrice has her originally coming from Yorkshire, before settling in Wales. He was an ardent evangelist and preached in many places around Wales. He once denounced Cromwell by saying “Lord, wilt thou have Oliver Cromwell or Jesus Christ to reign over us?”

Not much is known about his early life, except that he worked for a while as a hostler, groom/stable boy, at Bishops Castle, before he went to study under his uncle Erasmus Powell, vicar of Clun, Shropshire. He was then sent to Jesus College, Oxford apparently leaving without attaining a degree, whereupon he moved back to Clun, and worked as a teacher. After reading Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reede and listening to the sermons of Walter Cradoc, he became a Puritan, and joined the Free Baptist movement. He was arrested in 1640 and 1642, in Prestatyn for disturbing the peace by preaching ‘Inconformity’, but was found not guilty.

Later in 1642, he moved to London, and in 1644, he was appointed as a puritan vicar in Dartford, Kent, where many continued to listen to his ardent preaching. It was during this time that the Great Plague swept through the country, leaving Powell to conduct 62 burials in his first year as vicar in Dartford. He resigned this position on 7 January 1646, at which point he moved back to Wales, where he was authorised as a preacher by the Westminster Assembly and was named as a preacher in North Wales by the Committee for Plundered Ministers.

In the autumn of 1648, he fought with the forces of Thomas Mytton and to...

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...e widely across Wales. Vavasor Powell considered himself primarily to be a preacher, who would eventually preach in nearly every parish in Wales.

Works Cited

1. Morrice, Rev. J.C., Wales in the Seventh Century: Its Literature and Men of Letters and Action. Bangor: Jarvis & Foster, 1918.

2. Lloyd, J.E., Jenkins, R.T., Davies, W. L., Davies, M.B., (eds.), The Dictionary of Welsh Biography down to 1940. Oxford: B.H. Blackwell Ltd, 1959.

3. Stephens, M., (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

4. Douglas, J.D., 2nd edn., The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church. Exeter: Paternoster Publishing. 1978

5. Coffey, J., Lim, P.C.H., (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

6. McBeth, L. H., The Baptist Heritage. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1987.