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 established in 1795, and from 1793 onwards regularly served for three months in the year at Lady Huntingdon’s famous chapel in Spa Fields, Clerkenwell (Life and Times of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, ii. 304-9;, History of Clerkenwell, 141-8). Charles was fiercely attacked in the ‘Quarterly Review’ (xxxvi. 7 -8). In 1807 he paid a visit to Ireland, and endeavoured, in conjunction with the Hibernian Society, to establish schools for teaching in Irish, and ‘gospel preaching' in the same language. He also interested himself in Gaelic schools and reaching (1811). Charles helped to fiiund the British and Foreign Bible Society, mainly with a view to printing a bible at a price within the reach of the thousands who flocked to his Sunday schools. The Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge was persuaded to issue a cheap bible in 1799, but ‘peremptorily declined’ to do any more. In December 1802, when Charles was in London, he suggested to a committee of the Tract Society the plan of establishing a society like the Tract Society, with the special object of furnishing Welsh bibles at a low price. This plan, at the suggestion of a fellow-countryman, the Rev. Joseph Hughes, was extended from the purely Welsh basis which Charles had suggested to a more general one. The society was soon established, and in July 1806 the first copies of the Welsh bible printed by the society, prepared for the press by Charles himself, were distributed (, History of the Bible Soczlety;, Memoir of the Rev. Thomas Jones of Creaton; two interesting letters of Charles to H. Boase, esq., in Add. MS. 29281, ff. 8-10).

Charles was the organiser of Welsh Calvinistic methodism. For many years his position had been that of all Lady Huntington's followers. Repudiated by the church, and preaching and teaching regardless of ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, they carefully disclaimed the title of dissenter, used the Anglican liturgy in their worship, and allowed none but priests episcopally ordained to administer the Holy Communion, for which and for baptism the connexion still largely had recourse to the parish churches. Only heavy fines under the Conventicle Act drove them to obtain the benefits of the Toleration Act by registering their chapels as places of nonconformist worship. The development of a complex system of organisation gradually and half-unconsciously created what might easily become a separate church. For some years regular meetings and associations had been held, accounts of which, drawn up by Charles, form the most valuable portion of the contents of the ‘Trysorfa.’ In 1801 Charles drew up, at a quarterly association at Bala, an elaborate system of rules and regulations for the conduct of members of the society. But that very constitution repudiated dissent from the doctrinal articles of the established church. The burning question was, however, the ordination of the lay preachers. For many years Welsh methodists discussed whether they should not follow the example of John Wesley in this respect, and the ‘methodist clergy’ opposed the desire of the preachers for further recognition. In 1810 the death of Jones of Llangan deprived the conservatives of a respected leader, and Charles, who had hitherto opposed any change in the position of the lay preachers, assented to their demands at an association at Bala in 1810. At the next meeting (1811) he himself ordained eight of the foremost lay preachers. The immediate result was separation from the established church.

Charles’s health was now declining, owing to his continued exertions. He died on 5 Oct. 1814, and amid a vast concourse was buried in Llanycil churchyard. Without any very great intellectual qualities, and with all the limitations of the evangelical school, he yet possessed in abundant measure moral worth, strength of character, and capacity for leadership.

Mrs. Charles died 20 Oct. 1814. Charles's grandson, Dr. (d. 1878), joined with his granddaughter’s husband, Dr. Lewis Edwards, to open, in 1887, the Calvinistic Methodist College at Bala, and was from 1842 to 1862 principal of the Methodist College, then established on the site of Lady Huntingdon’s old institution at Trevecca.

 CHARLESWORTH, EDWARD PARKER (1783–1853), physician, was son of John Charlesworth, rector of Ossington, Nottinghamshire, whose father was a medical man and was brother of another John 