Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/120

Edwards his troubles were greatly increased, and the benefice was soon taken out of his hands. In 1666 soldiers broke into his house at night, went into his cellar, got drunk on his beer, called him a traitor, and with great violence took him prisoner and carried him to the county gaol. His release cost him time and money, and on his return home he seems to have found one of his children dead from fright. 'Within a few months afterwards,' says he, 'my wife and some of my surviving children, being discouraged in their obedience by the many injuries they saw inflicted on me, became undutiful....' His children were persuaded that it was better for them to be without him, and his wife was so far alienated from him that she importuned him to part from her and live asunder, though for sixteen years they had lived together as lovingly as any couple in the country. They separated by mutual consent, and he returned to Oxford in 1666. Henceforward he devoted himself mainly to Welsh literature, and the next few years were employed on the book by which he is best known, 'Hanes y Ffydd Ddiffuant,' which is a kind of history of christianity, interspersed with much interesting information respecting the tenets of the ancient Welsh bards. He maintains their orthodoxy, and shows that the primitive British church was independent of that of Rome. The book was published at Oxford in 1671, with a Latin recommendation from the pen of Dr. Michael Roberts, the principal of Jesus College at the date of Edwards's expulsion. In 1675 he was in London busy with the printing of some Welsh books.. In this year he published his curious little work, of which several editions have appeared, 'Hebraicorum Cambro-Britannicorum Specimen.' It is intended to show the Hebrew origin of the Welsh language. The second edition of 'Hanes y Ffydd' appeared in Oxford in 1676, the third in 1677, the fourth at Shrewsbury in 1722, fifth and sixth at Dolgelley in 1811 and 1812, seventh at Carmarthen in 1856. His 'Plain Pathway' appeared in 1682, 'Book of the Resolution' in 1684, and in 1686 'Fatherly Instructions* and 'Gildas Minimus.' About this time he probably eked out a precarious living as a bookseller, for in 'Fatherly Instructions' he says that 'British books are to be had with the publisher hereof.' His last known work is his autobiography (1691), bearing the title 'An Afflicted Man's Testimony concerning his Troubles.' It is probable that he died soon after this.

Notwithstanding the great amount of additional information discovered and recently made public in the paper read by Mr. Ivor James of Cardiff, at a meeting of the Cymmrodorion Society, 26 March 1886, still, as Mr. James adds, 'a mystery remains — how came this man, the object of so much malevolence,to be the mouthpiece of a body of gentlemen, who comprised among their number Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Baxter, Stephen Hughes, and Jones of Llangynwyd. Had he friends? They stood aloof from him; his relatives, his wife, his children, kindred and acquaintances, all leagued, according to his story, against his character, estate, and life.'

[Ivor James's Paper; Williams's Eminent Welshmen; Foulkes's Geirlyfr Bywgraffiadol.]  EDWARDS, EDWARD (1738–1806), painter, the elder son of a chairmaker and carver, who had come from Shrewsbury, and settled in London,was born in London 7 March 1738. He was a weakly child, with distorted limbs, and remained of very small size all his life. At an early age he went to a French protestant school, but at fifteen was removed in order to work at his father's business. He worked up to eighteen with a Mr. Hallet, an upholsterer at the corner of St. Martin's Lane and Long Acre, drawing patterns for furniture. His father then sent him to a drawing school, and in 1759 he was admitted as a student into the Duke of Richmond's gallery. He lost his father in 1760, when the support of his mother and sister devolved upon him. Edwards took lodgings in Compton Street, Soho, and opened an evening school for drawing. In 1761 he was admitted a student in the academy in St. Martin's Lane, where he studied from the life. In 1763 he was employed by John Boydell [q. v.] to make drawings for engravers, and in the following year succeeded in gaining a premium from the Society of Arts for the best historical picture in chiaroscuro, which he exhibited at the Free Society of Artists in the same year, the subject being 'The Death of Tatius.' He subsequently exhibited with the Incorporated Society of Artists, of which body he became a member, quitting it, however, for the Royal Academy, where he exhibited for the first time in 1771, sending 'The Angel appearing to Hagar and Ishmael,' and a portrait. He continued to exhibit there up to the year of his death, contributing pictures of various descriptions, and numerous portraits. Among them may be noted 'Bacchus and Ariadne' (1773), 'Oliver protected by Orlando, from "As you like it" (1775), 'View of Brancepeth Castle, near Durham (1784), 'A View of the River at Barn Elms' (1785), 'The Angel appearing to Gideon' (1792), 'The Release of the Prisoners from Dorchester Gaol' (1796), * Portrait of Rev. H. 