Fonds GB 0210 GEOIES - George M. Ll. Davies Papers

George Maitland Lloyd Davies (1880-1949) (name changed from G. M. Temple Davies), a Calvinistic Methodist minister, was born in Liverpool, the son of John Davies, a tea merchant, and his wife Gwen, the daughter of John Jones (1796-1857) of Tal-y-sarn, Caernarfonshire, the celebrated Methodist preacher. In 1913, George Davies left his job as the manager of the Wrexham branch of the Bank of Liverpool to become secretary of the Welsh Town Planning and Housing Trust. In 1914, he and Richard Roberts of Blaenau Ffestiniog formed Fellowship of Reconciliation (Cymdeithas y Cymod), a Christian society to promote peace. They published a monthly periodical called Y Deyrnas, 1916-1919. Davies married Leslie Eleanor Royde-Smith in 1916, and they had one child, Jane Hedd. Davies was imprisoned several times, 1917-1919, as a conscientious objector. In 1923, he was elected as MP for the University of Wales as a Christian Pacifist. He was not returned in the next election, and in 1926 he was ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church of Wales. He was minister of the churches at Tywyn and Maethlon, Merionethshire, 1926-1930. He spent the following years working among the unemployed in Monmouthshire and Glamorganshire. In 1932, he moved to the Quaker settlement at Maes-yr-Haf in the Rhondda. The Welsh National Pacifist Society was established in 1937, with Davies as president. A pamphlet was published to coincide with the launching, titled Ymorthodwn a rhyfel (We reject war). He retired to Dolwyddelan, Caernarfonshire, in 1946.