er of villages. It included castles and mansions and great
estates; a considerable portion of the general body voters were
associated with the landowners and aristocrats. Lloyd George must have
felt it was a pretty hopeless fight, but a fight, nevertheless, which
he would enjoy.

There is one other event to chronicle during this year when he reached
the age of twenty-five. Upon the mountain slopes beyond Llanystumdwy
was a spacious old farm-house, the home of a sweetly pretty Welsh girl
named Maggie Owen. How or when Lloyd George first met her is not
recorded, but in the course of his diary we come across a significant
entry just before this time. The diary refers to a meeting of a
debating society in which he had taken part, and goes on to relate
"Took Maggie Owen home." It is hard to imagine young Lloyd George
anything but an impetuous lover. His suit progressed, and in this same
fateful year of 1888 he was married. It may be said in passing that
never was a happier union, and that in the hard and adventurous life
that lay before the young politician he found in Mrs. George a true
companion. Marriage seemed to strengthen his ambition, and his vision
began to spread over the general field of politics instead of remaining
exclusively, as hitherto, fixed upon projects of special, if not of
exclusive, interest to Wales. Nevertheless he continued the leading
figure in the fight for reforms in his native country. A good deal of
his enthusiasm, for example, was expended on Church disestablishment in
Wales--that is to say, the separation of the English Church from state
support and state endowment, in view of the fact that the majority of
the people were Nonconformists, and that it was unfair to impose upon
them an unwanted and costly church which they had to help support even
though they were Nonconformist enthusiasts. There is nothing like a
religious controversy to stir feelings strongly, and the conflicts in
the campaign for disestablishment were very bitter. Lloyd George's
chief opponent on the other side was the Bishop of St. Asaph, a prelate
of the Church of England, himself a Welshman and a very able man. He
gave the promoters of disestablishment some hard knocks, and it is
related of him that he was particularly effective in one of the
districts. Accordingly, the Nonconformists there brought down Lloyd
George to speak at a public meeting in order to counteract the bishop's
influence. Lloyd George hims