page_title: William Price (physician)
section_title: Welsh nationalism and Chartism: 1821–1839
hierarchical_section_title: William Price (physician) / Biography / Welsh nationalism and Chartism: 1821–1839
caption_attribution_description: English: Engraving from 1886 book True Stories of the Reign of Queen Victoria by Cornelius Brown.
context_page_description: William Price was a Welsh doctor known for his support of Welsh nationalism, Chartism and his involvement with the Neo-Druidic religious movement. He has been recognized as one of the most significant figures of 19th-century Wales, and one of the most unusual in Victorian Britain.
  Born to a lower-class household in Glamorganshire, Wales, Price trained as a doctor in London before returning to Wales, becoming interested in the Chartists' ideas regarding equal democratic rights for all men. Following their failed 1839 uprising, he escaped government prosecution by fleeing to France, where he became convinced that an ancient prophecy predicted that he would remove Wales from English rule.
  Returning to Wales, Price tried reviving what he believed to be the religion of the ancient druids, the Celtic Iron Age ritual specialists of western Europe. In doing so, he became one of the most prominent proponents of the Neo-Druidic movement, something that had been developing since the Welsh nationalist Iolo Morganwg's activities in the late 18th century.
context_section_description: Becoming a trained doctor, Price returned to Wales, setting up in his medical practice at Craig yr Helfa in Glyntaff, remaining there for seven years. He rented Porth y Glo Farm in Upper Boat, filling the farm with goats and cattle, but was forcibly evicted. He subsequently moved to the newly industrialised Taff Valley near to Pontypridd. It was here in 1823 that the workforce elected him to the position of chief surgeon at the Brown Lenox Chainworks in Pontypridd; he stayed in this job till 1871. In June 1823 he was also appointed medical advisor to the wealthy Crawshay family who owned the ironworks at Merthyr and Treforest. Spending time in Treforest, "a revolutionary town", he came under the increasing influence of left-wing political ideas. Being a proud Welsh nationalist, Price found likeminded friends in another wealthy family, the Guests, and gave a speech on Welsh history and literature at their Royal Eisteddfod in 1834, which Lady Charlotte Guest felt to be "one of the most beautiful and eloquent speeches that was ever heard". On the basis of it, he was invited to take up the job of judging the eisteddfod's bardic competition, with the prize being awarded to Taliesin, son of famous druid and Welsh nationalist Iolo Morganwg.
  Price became increasingly interested in Welsh cultural activities, which included those that had been influenced by the Neo-Druidic movement. He joined the Society of the Rocking Stone, a Neo-Druidic group that met at the Y Maen Chwyf stone circle in Pontypridd, and by 1837 had become one of its leading members. To encourage the revival of Welsh culture, he gave lessons every Sunday in the Welsh language, which he feared was dying out with the spread of English. In 1838 he also called for the Society to raise funds to build a Druidical Museum in the town, the receipts from which would be used to run a free school for the poor. He was supported in this venture by Francis Crawshay, a member of the Crawshay family, but did not gain enough sponsors to allow the project to go ahead. In anger, he issued a statement in a local newspaper, telling the people that they were ignoring "your immortal progenitors, to whom you owe your very existence as a civilised people."
  Meanwhile, Price's social conscience had led him to become a significant figure in the local Chartist movement, which was then spreading about the country, supporting the idea that all men should have the right to vote, irrespective of their wealth or social standing. Many of the Chartists in the industrial areas of southern Wales took up arms in order to ready themselves for revolution against the government, and Price aided them in gaining such weaponry. According to government reports, by 1839 he had acquired seven pieces of field artillery. That same year, the Newport Rising took place, when many of the Chartists and their working class supporters rose up against the authorities, only to be quashed by soldiers, who killed a number of the revolutionaries. Price had recognised that this would happen, and he and his supporters had not joined in with the rebellion on that day. Nonetheless, he also realised that the government would begin a crackdown of those involved in the Chartist movement in retaliation for the uprising, and so he fled to France, disguised as a woman.
caption: An illustration of a Chartist riot.
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