Cylchgronau Cymru

the anti-tithers lionized all thirty-one as the 'Llangwm Tithe Martyrs'.35 On the same day as the Langwm disturbance, a crowd at Rhyl (Flintshire) not only prevented all tithe sales, but forced an auctioneer to swear never to conduct tithe sales again.36 Elsewhere, a series of disturbances broke out in the Meifod Valley of Montgomeryshire, news of which fanned the flames already blazing in northern Wales.37 It was at Bodfari (also called Bodfair) in Denbighshire on 11 June, that Major Leadbetter first called on the military to attend at tithe distraints. A troop of seventy-two soldiers accompanied fifty county constables. The soldiers took no part in the mild scuffling, but Leadbetter was slightly injured.38 One week later, at the mountain village of Mochdre, not far from Colwyn Bay in western Denbighshire, there occurred one of the most sanguinary disturbances of the tithe war." Stephens had earlier seized animals to the value of £ 40 on five area farms. On the afternoon of 16 June, a special train made an unscheduled stop at a rail-siding close to Mochdre, bringing to the village one of the largest protective forces ever used for distraint protection: seventy-six soldiers, seventy-six police, together with Leadbetter and Browne, Stephens, the court bailiffs, and a Denbigh magistrate. As soon as the company disembarked from the train, the anti-tithers advertised their arrival by horns, flags and cannon. As the force trudged along the narrow farm lanes to the first farm, Bolton, the Flintshire deputy chief constable, noticed the swelling crowds: nine-tenths of them had sticks which were five feet long, many of them having hold of them like cattle drovers'. At the bottom of a precipitous lane leading to the Mynydd farm, Leadbetter halted the party, counting off twenty-six constables to accompany Stephens and the bailiffs up the steep land to the farmhouse. The day was a very hot one, and the Denbigh police, for some unexplained reason, were still wearing their winter uniforms. Stephens's negotiations with Roberts, the owner of Mynydd, became protracted due to a dispute concerning the amount of additional costs. 35 3 Hansard, CCCXVI, 510; The Tithe War, pp. 3-5. Since the trial of the thirty-one 'martyrs' was pending during the Bridge Commission, the latter took no evidence concerning the Llangwm disturbance. 36 Annual Register (1887), Part II, p. 23. 3 Tithe Report, pp. 5-6; Q. 4774, 4937, 4945, 4984. Dunbabin based his account (pp. 214ff.) primarily on the estate papers and Letter Books of Christ Church. 31 Tithe Report, Q. 1076ff., 287 Iff. 39 My account is based on the testimony of participants scattered through the pages of the Tithe Report.