Diocese of St Asaph

Diocese of St Asaph Church in Wales
Province:	Wales
Arms of the Bishop of St Asaph
St Asaph's Cathedral
Bishop:	Gregory Cameron
Cathedral:	St Asaph Cathedral
Organisation
Archdeaconries:	St Asaph, Montgomery, Wrexham
Details
Website:	Diocese of St Asaph

The Diocese of Saint Asaph is a diocese of the Church in Wales under the Bishop of St Asaph. It named after Saint Asaph, its second bishop and the town of St Asaph in which the cathedral stands. It is an ancient diocese, which once covered the ancient Kingdom of Powys.

Geography

The Diocese of St Asaph covers the counties of Denbighshire and Flintshire and part of Montgomeryshire. The population of its area is in excess of half a million people.

The more populous areas are to be found along the coast and in the large conurbation of Wrexham, the principal town. The industrial areas around Wrexham and Deeside have undergone great change in the past decade or so, providing the Diocese with new challenges to which it has adapted. Where once the coal, steel and textile industries provided most of the employment, the economy is now much more diversified and one of the fastest growing in the UK. A major employer is Airbus UK (currently part of BAE Systems), while Wrexham Industrial Estate is one of the largest in Europe. North-east Wales also acts as a dormitory area for Chester Business Park, which is dominated by MBNA. This economy is ministered to by an Industrial Chaplain, a post which alternates between a priest of the Church in Wales and a minister of the Presbyterian Church of Wales.

Most of the diocese is rural, interspersed with small market towns and village communities. The southern area of the diocese in Montgomeryshire is undergoing regional development, especially with the advent of a good number of small industries. Because of the beauty of the landscape, at holiday times there is a large influx of visitors from distant parts of the realm and tourism is now one of the growth industries of Montgomeryshire.

For many centuries the Diocese of St Asaph extended also into Shropshire. However, at the time of disestablishment, coming into effect on 31 March 1920, the Shropshire parishes of Criftins, Hengoed, Kinnerley, Knockin, Llanyblodwel, Llanymynech, Melverley, Morton, Oswestry, St Martins, Selattyn, Trefonen, Weston Rhyn and Whittington were transferred from the Diocese of St Asaph to the Diocese of Lichfield, thus remaining within the established church and avoiding the confiscation of endowments meted out to the Church in Wales.

History

This diocese was founded by St Kentigern about the middle of the sixth century, when he was exiled from his see in the north. He founded a monastery called Llanelwy at the confluence of the rivers Clwyd and Elwy where, after his return to the Clyde in 573, he was succeeded by Asaph or Asa, who was consecrated Bishop of Llanelwy.

The diocese originally coincided with the Welsh principality of Powys, but lost much territory first by the Mercian encroachment marked by Watt's Dyke and again by the construction of Offa's Dyke, soon after 798. Nothing is known of the history of the diocese during the disturbed period that followed. Domesday Book gives scanty particulars of a few churches but is silent as to the cathedral, which lay beyond its purview.

Early in the twelfth century, Norman influence asserted itself and in 1143 Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, consecrated one Gilbert as Bishop of St Asaph, but the position of his successors was very difficult and one of them, Godfrey, was driven away by poverty and the hostility of the local people. A return made in the middle of the thirteenth century (British Museum, Cotton MSS. Vitellius, c. x.) shows the existence of eight rural deaneries, seventy-nine churches, and nineteen chapels. By 1291 the deaneries had been doubled in number and there were Cistercian houses at Basingwerk, Aberconway, Strata Marcella and Valle Crucis, and a Cistercian nunnery, Llanllugan Abbey.

The cathedral, which had been burnt in the wars, was rebuilt and completed in 1295. It was a plain massive structure of simple plan, and was again destroyed during the Wars of the Roses. When it was restored by Bishop Redman the palace was not rebuilt and thus the bishops continued to be non-resident. At the end of the fifteenth century there was a great revival of church building, as is evidenced by the churches of that date still existing in the diocese.

The Reformation under King Henry VIII and Thomas Cranmer brought changes; the end of pilgrim traffic and the stripping of idols from the churches, but a growth in secular prosperity and devotion. King Henry also united Wales to England, though this had little influence on a diocese which had happily ignored the old border for centuries.

The see continued to be part of the Church of England until the Church was disestablished in Wales in 1920, since when it has been part of the Church in Wales.

Bishops of St Asaph

Pre-Reformation

Tenure	Incumbent	Notes
c.583 to ???	Kentigern (Saint Mungo)	Bishop of Glasgow
??? to ???	Saint Asaph
About 600	Tysilio
About 800	Renchidus
About 928	Cebur
About 1070	Melanus
1143 to 1152	Gilbert
1152 to 1154	Geoffrey of Monmouth
1154 to 1155	Richard	Died in office
1155 to 1175	Godfrey
1175 to 1183	Adam Parvipontanus	Canon of Paris
1183 to 1186	John I
1186 to 1225	Reiner
1225 to 1235	Abraham
1235 to 1240	Hugh
1240 to c.1247	Hywel ab Ednyfed
c.1247 to 1249	vacant
1249 to 1267	Einion I
1267 to 1268	John II
1268 to 1293	Einion II
1293 to 1314	Llywelyn de Bromfield	Canon of St Asaph
1314 to 1352	Dafydd ap Bleddyn
1352 to 1357	John Trevor (I)
1357 to 1376	Llywelyn ap Madog	Dean of St Asaph
1376 to 1382	William Spridlington	Dean of St Asaph
1382 to 1390	Lawrence Child
1390 to 1395	Alexander Bache
1395 to 1410	John Trevor (II)	Prebendary of Hereford; deprived
1411 to 1433	Robert Lancaster
1433 to 1444	John Low	Translated to Rochester
1444 to 1450	Reginald Pecock	Translated to Chichester
1451 to 1471	Thomas Bird (alias Thomas Knight)
1472 to 1495	Richard Redman	Translated to Exeter
1495 to 1499	Michael Deacon
1499 to 1503	Dafydd ab Iorwerth
1503 to 1513	Dafydd ab Owain	Abbot of Aberconwy
1513 to 1518	Edmund Birkhead
1518 to 1535	Henry Standish

From the Act of Supremacy, 1534

Tenure	Incumbent	Notes
1535 to 1536	William Barlow	Translated to St David's, then Bath & Wells, then Chichester
1536 to 1554	Robert Warton (alias Robert Parfew)	Abbot of Bermondsey; translated to Hereford
1554 to 1559	Thomas Goldwell	Went into voluntary exile

From the Elizabethan Reformation, 1559

Tenure	Incumbent	Notes
1559 to 1561	Richard Davies	Translated St David's
1561 to 1573	Thomas Davies
1573 to 1601	William Hughes
1601 to 1603	William Morgan	Translated from Llandaff Produced the Welsh translation of the Bible
1603 to 1622	Richard Parry	Dean of Bangor
1622 to 1629	John Hanmer	Prebendary of Worcester
1629 to 1651	John Owen	Archdeacon of St Asaph; died in office
1651 to 1660	vacant	For 9 years
1660 to 1667	George Griffith	Archdeacon of St Asaph
1667 to 1669	Henry Glemham	Dean of Bristol
1669 to 1680	Isaac Barrow	Translated from Sodor & Man
1680 to 1692	William Lloyd	Dean of Bangor; translated to Lichfield & Coventry, then Worcester
1692 to 1703	Edward Jones	Translated from Cloyne, Ireland
1703 to 1704	George Hooper	Dean of Canterbury; translated to Bath & Wells
1704 to 1708	William Beveridge	Archdeacon of Colchester
1708 to 1714	William Fleetwood	Canon of Windsor; translated to Ely
1714 to 1727	John Wynne	Principal of Jesus College, Oxford; translated to Bath & Wells
1727 to 1731	Francis Hare	Dean of Worcester and dean of St Paul's, London; translated to Chichester
1731 to 1736	Thomas Tanner	Canon of Christ Church, Oxford
1736 to 1743	Isaac Maddox	Dean of Wells; translated to Worcester
1743 to 1743	John Thomas	Dean of Peterborough; elected but translated to Lincoln before consecration
1743 to 1748	Samuel Lisle	Archdeacon of Canterbury; translated to Norwich
1748 to 1761	The Hon Robert Hay Drummond	Prebendary of Westminster; translated to Salisbury
1761 to 1769	Richard Newcome	Translated from Llandaff
1769 to 1789	Jonathan Shipley	Translated from Llandaff
1789 to 1790	Samuel Hallifax	Translated from Gloucester
1790 to 1802	Lewis Bagot	Translated from Norwich
29 July 1802 to 4 October 1806	Samuel Horsley	Translated from Rochester
15 October 1806 to 15 May 1815	William Cleaver	Translated from Bangor
23 May 1815 to 21 January 1830	John Luxmoore	Translated from Hereford
23 February 1830 to 13 September 1846	William Carey	Translated from Exeter
10 October 1846 to January 1870	Thomas Short	Translated from Sodor & Man; resigned
25 May 1870 to 1889	Joshua Hughes	Vicar of Llandovery
1889 to 1934	Alfred Edwards	first Archbishop of Wales 1920–1934; retired

After Dissestablishment, 1920

Tenure	Incumbent	Notes
1934 to 1950	William Havard
1950 to 1971	David Bartlett
1971 to 1982	Harold Charles
1982 to June 1999	Alwyn Rice Jones	Archbishop of Wales 1991–1999
1999 to 2008	John Davies
2009 onwards	Gregory Cameron	Consecrated 4 April 2009

Sources

• Haydn's Book of Dignities (1894) Joseph Haydn/Horace Ockerby, reprinted 1969
• Whitaker's Almanack 1883 to 2004 Joseph Whitaker & Sons Ltd/A&C Black, London