George Griffith (bishop)

George Griffith (30 September 1601 – 28 November 1666), was Bishop of St. Asaph.

Griffith was born at Penrhyn in Carnarvonshire on 30 September 1601, and was educated at Westminster School, whence he proceeded to Oxford and became a Westminster student of Christ Church, Oxford in 1619. He proceeded B.A. in 1623, and M.A. in 1626, and became distinguished as a tutor at his college and a popular preacher. He became domestic chaplain to Bishop John Owen of St. Asaph, who made him a canon of St. Asaph and rector of Newtown, Montgomeryshire, in 1631. In 1632 he gave up Newtown for the rectories of Llandrinio and Llanfechain, also on the presentation of his patron. In 1633 he surrendered Llanfechain for the richer rectory of Llanymynech. In 1635 he proceeded D.D. In 1640, as a proctor in convocation, he urged the necessity of a new edition of the Welsh Bible, none having been published since that of Bishop Parry in 1620.

Griffith was not ejected from Llanymynech by the parliamentary commissioners. John Walker must be wrong. He described himself as an ‘episcopal presbyterian,’ and waged a fierce war against independents and other sectaries, defended the parochial system, and boasted that ‘he had withstood popery both by writing and preaching as much as any minister in Wales.’ In 1652 he accepted the challenge which the famous itinerant, Vavasor Powell, threw down to any minister in Wales, to dispute whether his calling or Powell's, and his ways or his opponent's ‘ways of separation’ were most conformable to scripture. After some preliminary skirmishing, in which Griffith held up to ridicule the bad Latin of his adversary, the disputation was held on 23 July 1652, and, if Wood's partial testimony can be accepted, Powell ‘fell from want of academic learning and of the true way of arguing.’ Both parties claimed the victory and rushed into print.

Powell wrote his account in the ‘Perfect Diurnall,’ while three pamphlets were Griffith's contributions to the controversy. They were: 1. ‘A Bold Challenge of an Itinerant Preacher (Vavasor Powell) modestly answered by a Local Minister to whom the same was sent and delivered; and severall Letters thereupon’ [in Latin], London, 1652, 4to. 2. ‘A Relation of a Disputation between Dr. Griffith and Mr. V. Powell, and since some false observations made thereon,’ London, 1653, 4to. 3. ‘A Welsh Narrative corrected and taught to speak true English and some Latine, or, Animadversions on an imperfect relation in the "Perfect Diurnall," Numb. 138, 2 Aug. 1652, containing a narration of the Disputation between Dr. Griffith and Mr. Vavasor Powell, near New Chappell in Mountgomeryshire, 23 July 1652,’ London, 1653. The ‘British Museum Catalogue’ also assumes that Griffith was the George Griffith who wrote prefaces to devotional works of William Strong, preacher at the Charterhouse, but it is more likely that this was George Griffith of the Charterhouse, ejected for nonconformity in 1662.

...
Wikipedia