File T10 - Public life

Correspondence and other papers broadly relating to various aspects of Taliesin's public life and work in Merthyr Tydfil and elsewhere. The file contains: some fifty-four draft and copy letters, or parts of letters, written by Taliesin Williams, including many letters to newspapers, 1831-1845, some twenty-seven letters and envelopes addressed to Taliesin and others, 1808-1843, and miscellaneous calling cards and addresses (T10/1); miscellaneous papers relating to his work as a schoolmaster in Neath and Merthyr Tydfil (T10/2); papers relating mostly to various aspects of public life in Merthyr Tydfil, including papers apparently relating to his service as special constable, various petitions to the Crown, the Marquess of Bute and others, and a few items relating to the Merthyr Tydfil Sympathetic Society, 1831-1839 (T10/3); and various papers relating to his activities with groups such as Cymreigyddion y Fenni and Cymreigyddion yr Alarch, being mainly lists of competition subjects, entries and adjudications by him (T10/4).
Of particular note is the beginning (2 pp.) of a draft, in Taliesin's hand, of a petition sent by the people of Merthyr Tydfil to Lord Melbourne, the Home Secretary, in July 1831 pleading for clemency for Lewis Lewis (Lewsyn yr Heliwr) and Richard Lewis (Dic Penderyn) (the final petition is apparently lost, see Gwyn A. Williams, The Merthyr Rising (Cardiff, 1988), p. 184) (in T10/3).