GRIFFITH, ROGER (died 1708), Presbyterian minister and tutor, afterwards archdeacon
Name: Roger Griffith
Date of death: 1708
Gender : Male
Occupation: Presbyterian minister and tutor, afterwards archdeacon
Area of activity: Education; Religion
Author: Robert Thomas Jenkins
He seems to have been born at Abergavenny. In 1690-2 he was being supported by the ‘Common Fund’ (Presbyterian and Congregational) at Bishop’s Hall, Bethnal Green, where Charles Owen was a fellow-student. Griffith then (1693) went to Utrecht university, again at the charges of the fund. In or about 1695 he became minister at Abergavenny; and in 1697, on the death of Samuel Jones (1628 — 1697) of Brynllywarch, the Presbyterian board (but not the Congregational board) placed its students under Griffith’s care; his academy, of some five or six students (including Samuel Jones ‘of Tewkesbury’ and Thomas Perrott,, was highly spoken of. In 1698 he began to exhibit leanings towards the Establishment, and in 1702 resigned and conformed. He was given the Crown rectory of New Radnor, perhaps as early as 1704 — according to Jonathan Williams, Hist. of Radnorshire, his years there were 1706-8. Yardley records that on 9 October 1704 he was instituted archdeacon of Brecon, having been presented by the Crown during a vacancy in the see, at the instance of Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, who was at the time M.P. for Radnor. Edmund Calamy (who was with Griffith at Utrecht) naturally laments his defection, and says that he died in debt and dishonour; and Yardley ends his very chilly notice of him with ‘he died in October 1708, and was buried in S. Mary’s church in Abergavenny, without any inscription to his memory.’ According to New Radnor parish register, he died ‘soon after 10 October.’ The ‘B.D.’ with which Yardley credits him was perhaps the honorary B.D. granted by Cambridge to a ’ Roger Griffith ’ in 1705 (Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses).
