Cylchgronau Cymru

LONGUEVILLE JONES AND WELSH EDUCATION: THE NEGLECTED CASE OF A VICTORIAN H.M.I.* IN 1848 the Rev. Harry Longueville Jones was appointed Her Majesty's Inspector of Church schools in Wales. He was the first schools' inspector to be appointed for Wales as a whole, though he was constrained to work within the religious framework of the provision of education in the first half of the nineteenth century. He was to make an impact on the principality in three ways-first, by refuting many of the educational findings of the commissioners of 1847; secondly, by advocating the adoption of bilingual teaching methods in schools throughout Wales; and, thirdly, by using his annual reports to emphasise the distinctive educational needs of the country. In the event, because of the influences that dominated the education system in the 1850s and 1860s, he failed to accomplish much of lasting significance in his professional life. Appointed in 1848 by Kay-Shuttleworth, secretary to the Committee of the Privy Council on Education, Jones was to see his patron forced by ill health to resign in just over a year, to be succeeded by R. R. W. Lingen, one of the 1846 commissioners, who had no understanding or appreciation of an unique Welsh identity. As a result of his failure to make a more positive impact on policy under Lingen's regime, Jones has been well- nigh forgotten in Welsh educational history, and the nonconformist interpretation which has dominated that history has further tended to erase his memory. The aim of this study is to reassess his work as an educationist who had developed a distinctive concept of Wales's needs as early as the middle years of the nineteenth century. Jones's appointment resulted from a meeting of a deputation of three churchmen-Bishops Thirlwall and Short, and Sir Thomas Phillips-with Earl Grey, the Lord President of the Council in 1848. As a constituted deputation of the National Society's Welsh Education Committee, their object was to press Grey to adopt a number of measures 'to improve and extend instruction in Wales'. Their meeting took place in the atmosphere of crisis Mlinutes of the) Clommitte of] Ciouncil] (1847-48), pp. xlvii-xlix. I should like to record my gratitude to the British Academy for the generous financial assistance in support of the research on which this article is partly based. I should also like to thank Professor J. R. Webster, Mr. T. M. Bassett, Dr. B. L. Davies and Dr. W. P. Griffith for their readiness to discuss this article with me and for their valuable suggestions.