We will now follow the history of the Welsh Church into the reign of James I. At that time, there lived and laboured in Wales a very remarkable man, the Rev. Rees Pritchard, Vicar of Llandovery, in Carmarthenshire, the author of a work which has had a larger circulation in the Principality than any book except the Bible. It is entitled 'Canwyll y Cymry,' or, 'The Welshman's Candle,' a series of moral and religious poems, most simple in their language, and even slovenly in their metrical composition, but full of poetry and feeling, and thoroughly saturated with evangelical truth. He flourished between the years 1616 and 1644. John Penry, in his most vehement remonstrances, does not employ stronger language to portray the utter ignorance, irreligion, and immorality in which the people were sunk, than does this excellent clergyman. But what we have specially to do with now is the testimony he bears as to the condition of the Church, a testimony all the more unimpeachable, as he continued through life a member and a minister of that Church. In one of his poems, after describing all classes as wholly given up to every species of depravity, he adds that the clergy were asleep, leaving the people to wallow in their sins, and to live as they liked, unwarned and unrebuked.[158] In another poem, he puts the clergy at the head of various classes, whom he enumerates, who were 'contending with each other, which of them should most daringly affront the Most High.' There is evidence still more conclusive, if possible, in the reports presented to the King by Archbishop Laud, between the years 1633 and 1638, which are still extant among the Lambeth MSS. This bigoted prelate had, it seems, in those years, been specially instigating the Bishops of St. David's and Llandaff to persecute without mercy those in their dioceses who were guilty of 'inconformity;' that is, who refused to read 'The Book of Sports,' and other similar obligations which were laid on the consciences of the clergy. After commemorating the success with which the Bishop of St. David's had silenced one Roberts, a lecturer, for inconformity, and reduced three or four others to submission, he adds: 'He complains much, and surely with cause enough, that there are few ministers in those poor and remote places that are able to preach and instruct the people.' And the Bishop of St. Asaph tells Laud that 'they were not anywhere troubled with inconformity; but that he heartily wished that they might as well be acquainted with superstition and profaneness.'