Benjamin Francis

FRANCIS, Benjamin. b. Wales, 1734; d. Horsley, Gloucestershire, 14 December 1799. Francis was a Welsh speaker, who wrote hymns in Welsh and English, and edited a Welsh hymnbook (Aleluia: neu Hymnau perthynol I addoliad cyhoeddus, Caerfyrddin, 1774). JJ, p. 386, lists five hymns in Welsh that were in use in 1892. He trained at the Baptist College, Bristol, and served as a minister at Sodbury (Old Sodbury and Chipping Sodbury), Gloucestershire, and then, from 1757 to 1799, at Horsley, near Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. There he had what is described in JJ as ‘a happy and very successful ministry of 42 years’ (p. 385). He published Conflagration; a poem in four parts (Bristol, 1770; many...