Then his faith gave way; he separated from the Roman Communion, and for a while was adrift in his convictions. He left the colliery in which hitherto he had worked, and wandered from place to place in bitterness of spirit, taking up occasional work here and there, unsettled in every way, spiritually as well as temporally.
After a while he settled as a quarryman at Penrhyn, and here for the first time came in contact with Anglican clergy, and found that the Church of England, while not pretending to be the whole Church, considered herself to be part and parcel of the One Body, with the sacred deposit of faith, orders, and sacraments. This gave him what he wanted, and Albert Davies now found his feet on what he thought was solid ground, and the old argumentative spirit reawoke in him, and the dinner-hour was once more the time for theological dialectics.
So years passed, and old age and ill-health crept on. The quarry work that he could do was ill-paid and precarious. He lived in chronic hunger, and often was too poor to afford himself a fire in winter; for every penny he could spare was spent in the purchase of books. He would read none but such as dealt with theology.
At length he became so ill that he had to be taken into the workhouse. He struggled against the necessity as long as he could, and then submitted, saying, “It is God’s will, and I must accept what He desires.”
In the workhouse he received better food, and comforts such as he had not been accustomed to as a poor and failing quarryman. Any little gratuity offered him he accepted to spend on his beloved books, and in time his library was by no means inconsiderable. After his death, by his express wish, they have been divided between Bangor and Beaumaris libraries.
In the workhouse he died peacefully, and content with his solitary lot. He was a man of rugged exterior, with a head and face singularly like those attributed to Socrates.
Such is the story of one man of the people; it is characteristic of the Welshman, with strong theologic bent, that leads one in this direction, another in that; the mind is active, inquiring, especially in the direction of abstruse studies.
In Penrhyn Castle is preserved the so-called Hirlas Horn. It was discovered among the rubbish, during some alterations and rebuilding of the castle, and had probably fallen from the top of one of the towers from which it had been blown. It bears the arms of Sir Piers Griffiths, Sheriff of Carnarvonshire in 1566, and was used for both drinking and blowing. The name given to it is from the Hirlas horn celebrated by Owen Cyfeiliog, prince of Powys in the twelfth century, in a poem famous wherever the Welsh language is spoken. It was composed immediately after a great victory gained over the English in Maelor.
“Up rose the ruddy dawn of day;
The armies met in dread array,