They wouldn't have named themselves based on their position on Baptism at the time, but I believe they fit the core requirements, or at least in some regions they did.
My main basis for this is Bede's account of Augustine of Canterbury's interactions with the Briton Christians that already existed on the island. Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England Volume II Chapter 2.
Bede leads with the timing of Easter as seemingly the first concern but acknowledges other issues existed without identifying all of them.
Augustine's first meeting with some of them was at a place Bede calls Augustine's Oak which seems to be located just south east of the Severn or Bristol Channel. This may have specifically been the Pengworm colony who were not actually located in the modern dentition of Wales but probably somewhere in or by Somerset. Some Welsh Genealogies associate them with Glastonbury but that city as we know it didn't properly exist yet.
By the end of that first meeting...
The Britons then confessed that they perceived that it was the true way of righteousness which Augustine taught; but that they could not depart from their ancient customs without the consent and sanction of their people. They therefore desired that a second time a synod might be appointed, at which more of their number should be present.
This pretty clearly establishes what we would today call Congregational Polity, the Ecclesiastical Polity favored by Baptists most Anabaptists and the Pedo-Baptist Puritans who became the Congregationalist denomination.
Later came what is called the Synod of Chester, (it probably wasn't actually held at the northern Chester it's traditionally identified with). What Bede says Augustine said to them here is what I have become more convinced only makes sense if these Britons were Credo-Baptists every time I read it.
He said to them, "Many things ye do which are contrary to our custom, or rather the custom of the universal Church, and yet, if you will comply with me in these three matters, to wit, to keep Easter at the due time; to fulfil the ministry of Baptism, by which we are born again to God, according to the custom of the holy Roman Apostolic Church; and to join with us in preaching the Word of God to the English nation, we will gladly suffer all the other things you do, though contrary to our customs." They answered that they would do none of those things, nor receive him as their archbishop
Bede is trying to be fairly sympathetic to the Britons here, so given how scandalous refusing to Baptize Infants would be to his readers it makes sense for him to tip toe around explicitly revealing that. But here is the thing, there were lots of divergences in custom but Augustine had decided only these three things were important enough to risk schism over. No other disagreement about Baptism could have been that important, it was the importance placed on Infant Baptism by Cyprian of Carthage the prior Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria that made Baptism an issue of such cosmic importance.
Now you might think the date of observing Easter is a pretty superficial thing to make such a big deal out of. But the Council of Nicaea had ruled that all of the Church should be practicing Easter at the same time so to a representative of the established organized Church it's absolutely something Augustine had to prioritize no matter how much he personally cared. And it was the only of these three issues addressed by a Canon of an Ecumenical Council so that's why it has the highest priority. But Infant Baptism had become so important to the Roman Church that it was practically on the same level.
Also according to other sources Constantine of Strathclyde was Baptized in 589 the year he turned 19. Some try to interpret that as him being "converted" that year but the Archeological evidence shows that Paganism no longer existed in Britain for awhile before he was born in 570.
In time the Welsh, Cornish and other Britons eventually mostly submitted to Catholic practice, 768 is the date given for when they finally adopted the Roman method for when to observe Easter.
Among those who already before I wrote this liked to speculate on the Britons/Welsh being Baptists are many Primitive Baptists. And part of why lies I think in the part of this dispute about refusing to help Evangelize the Anglo-Saxons. Again Bede was surprisingly sympathetic to the Britons, I sympathize with the Briton perspective on that part of this more here then I do reading later presumably more pro-Welsh accounts, Geoffrey of Monmouth just makes them sound kinda Racist.
I don't believe in the Doctrine of Baptist Perpetuity, I don't think it matters if any modern Baptists can claim an unbroken line of Believers Baptisms going back to The Disciples. But I do think the reasons Infant Baptism is wrong are obvious enough in The Bible that there have always been some people who figured it out. And I don't think it's impossible there was some underground survival of pre Augustine Brythonic practice in the more mountainous remote parts of Wales or the Welsh Marshes or other parts of England, and I may make a future post on which 17th Century Baptist Churches could and could not work to imagine as having such a connection.
But I do want to warn people that others talking about the possibility of the Britons being Baptists repeat a lot of the bad history out there about the origins and history of Christianity in Ancient Brittan. So I want to clarify... I don't think Jesus visited Britain as a child nor do I think Joseph of Arimathea ever came to Britain nor did Simon Zelotes or Aristobolus or Paul or Peter. I also don't believe the King Lucius legend or that Helena the mother Constantine was a Briton.
And returning to the main story I devoted this post to, no these events are not directly connected to the Bangor-on-dee massacre, that happened years after Augustine died and the King of Northumbia who did it was a Pagan, that kingdom was Christianized later.
I am open to the theory that the Claudia and Pudens mentioned in 2 Timothy are the same as the couple from Marital who are linked to Britannia but even that is highly speculative. However we do know that Christianity was established in parts of Britannia by the early 3rd Century because Tertullian said the The Gospel had subdued parts of the Island even Rome hadn't. Britain had at least 3 Bishops contemporary with the Council of Nicaea but none of them seem to have attended it just like the Bishop of Lyon didn't, there were no Briton Bishops at any of the Ecumenical Councils.
One thing not included in other books or websites on the subject of the Britons possibly having been Baptists is any reference to Arthur. If this theory is true it means probably the historical King Arthur was a Baptist. Baptists like to see themselves as a font of modern Democracy, they can exist under a Monarchy and even be loyal to The King but it makes sense they wouldn't want to lead with the Arthur question.
But I'm one of those investigators of the Matter of Brittan who likes to note that the three oldest surviving references to Arthur (Annales Cambriae, the Historia Brittonum and Y Goddodin which isn't as old as it's sometimes claimed to be) don't call him King, one uses the title Dux Bellorium, often translated War Chief. You know who else could be called a Dux Bellorium of Britannia? Oliver Cromwell, who was a member of a Congregational Polity denomination yet gets looked at as a King in all but name. But he does have apologists who maintain that no he was truly a believer in making Brittan more Democratic. So what if Arthur was a 6th Century Baptist Cromwell?
Update June 2024: Quatrodeciminism.
Reading what exactly Bede says about how these Britons observed Easter is a bit confusing and hard to interpret, I think something might be lost in Translation or corrupted by scribal error. But essentially it seems to me like the most logical explanation is that they were doing actual Quatrodeciminism and weren't just called that because of how the Roman Church sometimes called all divergent Easter practices Quatrodeciminism. Or maybe it began as Quatroodeciminism but evolved after they lost the ability to keep track of the when The Jews were observing Passover each year, since Roman and Sub-Roman Britain did not seem to ever have a Jewish population.
Basically I think "Fourteenth to Twentieth Moon" may have originally meant "Fourteenth to Twentieth of the Moon". Ezekiel 45:21 describes Passover in a way that sounds like a Seven Day Feast that starts with the 14th.
This thus lends credibility to the often dismissed claim that Wilfrid of Northumbria was disputing with Quartodecimans at the time of the 664 Synod of Whitby.
The first interesting clue that gives us regarding the History of Brythonic Christianity is that it implies it's origins may lie in Asian Christianity. I personally would see a neat poetry in the Briton Church being a daughter of Ephesus, (If the Claudia and Pudens of 2 Timothy are the same as the Claudia and Pudens of Marital then that provides one possible connection), alongside the well documented fact that Lyon was a daughter of Smyrna.
Or the Briton Church could have shared this Smyrna-Lyon lineage, if Christian indeed first came to Britannia during the time of Eleutherius being Bishop of Rome, that's includes a time when the Christians of Lyon and Vienne faced some local persecution around 177, some of them could have decided to migrate further north and eventually across the channel.
Modern Saturday Sabbath keeping Christians love to assume the Ancient Quatrodecimins must have also kept a Saturday Sabbath, which would then make this interesting to Seventh Day Baptists. But that is ultimately speculation.
However it could also be that the Sunday during "Fourteenth to Twentieth of the Moon" was when they observed Easter. So it's still unclear.
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