the ‘rebaptised people,’ led in Wales by John Myles [q. v.] On 1 Jan. 1656 Thurloe writes of him as ‘lately rebaptised, and several other of his party.’ The presumption is that he was baptised by Henry Jessey [q. v.]; he certainly adopted Jessey's view of baptism, not making it, with Myles, a term of communion. At baptism he used imposition of hands; he practised the ceremony of anointing, for the restoration of the sick. Toulmin errs in supposing him to have become a seventh-day baptist. The change in his views made no diminution of his popularity; his open-air preachings were largely attended; the alarm of the authorities was excited by the concurrence of persons disaffected to Cromwell's government, but the suspicion that Powell aimed to be a leader of insurgents was groundless. His republicanism was of the theocratic type, and in this sense he was a fifth-monarchy man; but he took no part in the struggles of practical politics.
Wood reports that in 1657 Powell was at Oxford, preaching on Wednesday, 15 July, in All Saints' Church, and denouncing Henry Hickman [q. v.] for admitting that the church of Rome might be a true church. This agrees with his biographer's remark that he reckoned popery the ‘common public enemy of mankind;’ but it hardly consists with Wood's statement, on the authority of M. Ll. (i.e. Martin Lluelyn [q. v.]), that Powell ‘was wont to say that there were but two sorts of people that had religion, viz. the gathered churches and the Rom. catholicks.’
Powell is said to have been the first nonconformist who got into trouble at the Restoration. There was nothing against him but his preaching; and his preaching, in addition to its irregularity, gave offence by its theocratic tone, which was interpreted as tending to sedition. As early as 28 April 1660 he was arrested at Goitre by a company of soldiers. It is said that he was warned of his arrest by a dream, and refused to take measures for his escape. He was taken to Welshpool, Montgomeryshire, and thence to Shrewsbury; after nine weeks' imprisonment he was liberated by an order of the king in council. Twenty-four days later he was again arrested on the warrant of Sir Matthew Price, high sheriff of Montgomeryshire, for refusing to abstain from preaching. When brought up at the assizes he objected to the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, on the ground that these oaths were meant for papists. Hence he was sent back to prison, and shortly afterwards summoned before the privy council. He was not actually brought before the council, but committed to the Fleet, where he lay for nearly two years in rigid confinement, under offensive conditions which impaired his health. On 30 Sept. 1662 he was removed, with Colonel Nathaniel Rich, to Southsea Castle, near Portsmouth. Here he was confined for five years. After the fall of Clarendon (30 Aug. 1667) he sued for a writ of habeas corpus, and obtained his release by an order in council (November 1667). Nine months later he started from Bristol on a preaching tour in Wales, and was arrested at Merthyr Tydvil, Glamorganshire, and conveyed to Cardiff. On 17 Oct. 1668 he was examined at Cowbridge, Glamorganshire, on a charge of irregular preaching, and committed (30 Oct.) to prison. He refused to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and objected also to the ceremony of swearing on the Bible. Under a writ of habeas corpus he was sent to London on 16 Oct., and appeared at the common pleas on 22–23 Oct. Though the legality of the proceedings against him was not sustained, he was committed to ‘Karoone House, then the Fleet prison, Lambeth,’ where he ended his days. His confinement does not seem to have been strict; he was allowed to preach in the prison, ‘many being admitted to hear him,’ and he appears to have been let out occasionally on parole. He died on 27 Oct. 1670, and he was buried in Bunhill Fields, where a monument (not now extant) was erected to his memory, bearing an epitaph written by Edward Bagshaw the younger [q. v.] His constitution was strong, ‘a body of steel,’ according to his biographer. No portrait of him is known; an ‘elogy’ by J. M. (John Myles?) speaks of his ‘stature mean,’ and says he ‘died childless.’ He was twice married. His first wife was the widow of Paul Quarrel of Presteign, Radnorshire. According to Griffith, she had been a ‘walking pedlar’ of ‘hot-waters.’ His second wife, Katherine (baptised 20 Oct. 1638), youngest child of Colonel Gilbert Gerard of Crewood, Cheshire, governor of Chester Castle; she survived him, and married John Evans, by whom she became the mother of John Evans, D.D. [q. v.]; she was living in 1705. Thomas Hardcastle [q. v.] married her sister Anne.
Though not a man of learning, Powell, according to his biographer, was ‘well read in history and geography, a good natural philosopher, and skilled in physic.’ Some of these acquirements belong to the last ten years of his life, when he ‘turned his prison into an academy.’ He wrote little, but his style is forcible and earnest, and very temperate in manner. His forte was preaching. ‘I would not,’ he says, ‘neglect, for the printing of a thousand books, the preaching of one sermon.’ His services were sometimes
