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Howell Harris (; 23 January 1714 – 21 July 1773) was a Calvinistic Methodist evangelist. He was one of the main leaders of the Welsh Methodist revival in the 18th century, along with Daniel Rowland and William Williams Pantycelyn.
Harris underwent religious conversion in March 1735 after hearing a parish-church sermon by the Rev. Pryce Davies on the Sunday before Easter, on the necessity of partaking of Holy Communion. This led to several weeks of self-examination, which reached a climax at Communion on Whit Sunday, May 1735. After what is described as answering the devil's accusations, he received Communion and became convinced he had received mercy through the blood of Christ, which gave him a sense of great joy.Richard Bennett; Howell Harris and the Dawn of Revival; , pp. 20–26. He immediately began to tell others of this and hold meetings in his home to encourage others to seek the same assurance of Christ's forgiveness.
He failed to be accepted for ordination in the Church of England because of views held to be "Methodist". Instead he became a travelling preacher, tirelessly determined to spread the word through Wales. His preaching often led him into personal danger, persecution and hardship before he gained a following. From 1738 he was supported by Marmaduke Gwynne, a local squire and early convert. Maramaduke Gynne , llgc.org.uk, retrieved September 2013
In 1750 Harris retreated to his home at Trefeca, having fallen out with a fellow evangelist, Daniel Rowland, and become the subject of public scandal for his close friendship with "Madam" Sidney Griffith. In 1752 he was inspired by the example of the Moravian Church to found a religious community there known as Teulu Trefeca (The Trefeca family) with himself as "Father".
Harris had not given up preaching and resumed his former activities in 1763, after a reconciliation with Rowland. He died ten years later and was buried close to his birthplace at Talgarth, where 20,000 people are said to have attended his funeral. There is a memorial to him at Rhydyclafdy, near Pwllheli, where he preached.
He was effectively the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Wales, also known as the Calvinistic Methodist Church.
By 1913 the scale of the work needing to be done on the papers became apparent. Many of the papers were in Latin, and it was estimated that it would take much of a decade and a vast sum of money to ready them for publication. In 1913, it was decided it would be a better use of resources to set up a Historical Society of the Presbyterian Church of Wales, which would publish a regular journal that would include some of Harris's papers.
Probably around 1932, the papers were moved from Trefeca to the denomination's theological college in Aberystwyth. These papers, along with others from Coleg y Bala (an old college of the denomination in Bala, North Wales), were taken in 1934 to be stored safely at the National Library of Wales. There the papers remain in the vaults to this day. Revd Dr Geraint Tudur (son of R. Tudur Jones), formerly Lecturer in Church History at University of Wales, Bangor, and subsequently General Secretary of the Union of Welsh Independents, published a biography: Howell Harris: From Conversion to Separation, 1735–1750 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000).
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