estate. He was trained for the independent ministry at the nonconformist college at Brynllŵarch, near Bridgend, Glamorganshire. This college, the earliest institution of the kind in Wales, and the parent of the existing presbyterian college at Carmarthen, was founded by Samuel Jones after he was ejected from the living of Llangynwyd in 1662, and on Jones's death in 1697 was transferred to Abergavenny, whither Pugh accompanied it. He was received as church member at Cilgwyn in 1704, and in October 1709 was ordained co-pastor with David Edwards and Jenkin Jones. His social position as a landed proprietor in the county was improved by his marriage with an heiress of the neighbourhood, while his power as a preacher and his piety gave him widespread influence. He and his colleagues were in charge of six or eight churches, with a united membership of about one thousand. Between 1709 and 1760 he baptised 680 children.
Pugh avoided controversy, but he regarded with abhorrence the Arminian doctrines introduced by Jenkin Jones [q. v.] and the Arian doctrines propagated by David Lloyd (1725–1779). He sympathised, however, with the calvinistic methodist movement under Daniel Rowlands [q. v.] (1713–1790), and induced Rowlands to modify the ferocity of his early manner of preaching. Of the churches with which Pugh was more or less connected, three continue to be congregationalist, three have gone over to the methodists, and three are unitarian.
Pugh died on 12 July 1760, aged 81, and was buried in the parish churchyard of Llanddewi Brevi, where the effigy of one Philip Pugh, probably an ancestor, once figured in the chancel (Meyrick, Cardiganshire, p. 270). His unpublished diary and the Cilgwyn church-book contain much information about the Welsh nonconformity of the period, and have been utilised by Dr. Thomas Rees and other Welsh historians.
[Enwogion Ceredigion, Do. Sir Aberteifi; Rees's History of Protestant Nonconformity in Wales, pp. 309, 310, 340; Williams's Welsh Calvinistic Methodism, xvii. 29, 31, 32; Jeremy's Hist. of the Presbyterian Fund.]
PUGH, ROBERT (1609–1679), Roman catholic controversialist, born in 1609 at Penrhyn in the parish of Eglwys-Ross, Carnarvonshire, was probably a son of Philip Pugh and his wife, Gaynor or Gwynn. Foley says that the family was of better lineage than fortune. He was educated at the Jesuits' College at St. Omer, under the name of Robert Phillips (Foley), and this alias renders him very liable to be confused with Robert Philips [q. v.] the oratorian, who was confessor to Queen Henrietta Maria. After his return to England he is said to have served in Charles I's army with the rank of captain, and to have been ejected by the jesuits in 1645 for not having obtained permission beforehand. He afterwards studied civil and canon law (probably at Paris), and became doctor in both faculties. He was well known to Walter Montagu [q. v.] the abbot. With Montagu's aid, in a pamphlet entitled ‘De retinenda cleri Anglicani in sedem Apostolicam observantia,’ Paris, 1659, he attacked the philosophical views of Thomas White (alias Blackloe) [q. v.], and claimed, in opposition to White, that the regular clergy should be exempt from the jurisdiction of the catholic chapter in England. White replied in ‘Monumentum Excantatus,’ &c. (Rome, 1660), to which Pugh retorted in ‘Amuletum Excantationis’ (1670). Subsequently Pugh returned to the conflict in ‘Blacklo's Cabal discovered’ (2nd edit. 1680, 4to). It contains letters, supplied by Montagu, of White, and of White's friends Sir Kenelm Digby, Henry Holden, and others, the originals of which Pugh had deposited in the English Jesuits' College at Ghent. His reputation as a theologian grew rapidly, and in 1655 he was created by the Pope ‘protonotarius publicus apostolicus.’ His Latin style was very good. After the Restoration Pugh lived at times in London, and at times at Redcastle in Wales, in the family of the Marquis of Powis.
In 1664 appeared, doubtless from his pen, though the author merely calls himself ‘a royal veteran,’ ‘Elenchus Elenchi; sive Animadversiones in Georgei Batei, Cromwelli parricidæ aliquando protomedici, Elenchum motuum nuperorum in Angliâ,’ Paris, 8vo [see Bate, George]. With Roger Palmer, Earl of Castlemaine, Pugh was also closely connected and, with him, seems to have written ‘The English Papist's Apologie’ (1666). The author was diligently inquired after by the House of Commons, but not found. It was answered by William Lloyd, afterwards bishop of Lichfield, and was defended in ‘A Reply to the Answer of the “Catholic Apologie,”’ 1668 (cf. Butler, Hist. Mem. of English Catholics, iv. 457 n.) Pugh's ‘Bathonensium et Aquisgranensium Comparatio, rebus adjunctis illustratis,’ 1676, 8vo, was written ‘by way of epistle to his patron, Palmer.’
During the ‘popish plot’ panic of 1678 Pugh was committed to Newgate, ‘having been betrayed by a treacherous miscreant when paying a visit of charity to the catholic gentry confined in a London prison.’ He died ‘a glorious martyr in chains’ on the night
