1415 Owen Edwards

Constituency : Merionethshire  1899-1900

Owen  took  over  at  Merionethshire  after  the  death  of  Thomas  Ellis.

Owen  came  from  a  Welsh-speaking  area  near  Bala. He  was  educated  there,  University College  of  Wales, Aberystwyth  and  Oxford  where  he  won  all  the  major  prizes  for  history. He associated  with  other  Welsh  students  and  became  a  fervent  cultural  nationalist. He  became  a history   tutor  at  Oxford. In  1891  he  started  editing  the  magazine  Cymru  and  started  a  children's  version  a  year  later.

Parliamentary  life  was  not  as  Owen  expected  and  he  declined  to  stand  again  in  1900.  He  never  spoke  in  the  Commons.

In  1901  Owen  started  an  English  version  of  Cymru  called,  not  surprisingly,  Wales.

Owen  wrote  a  number  of  books  on  Welsh  history. He  published  his  autobiography  Clych  Agdof   in  1906.

In  1907  Owen  left  Oxford  to  become  Chief  Inspector  of  Schools  in  Wales. He  tried  to  ensure  the  teaching  of  the  Welsh  language  in  schools  and  locked  horns  with  the  Central  Welsh  Board  over  intermediate  schools  which  he  saw  as  an  unpalatable  anglicising  influence.

Owen  was  knighted  in  1916.

He  died  in  1920  aged  61.