 With the encouragement and friendship of Lord Aberdare, Sir Josiah John Guest, and Lady Charlotte Guest, Stephens was a prominent promoter of welfare, education and sanitary schemes in Merthyr Tydfil and organised relief for families of victims of coal mine explosions.He was appointed High Constable of Merthyr in 1858.Literary critic Meic Stephens states that Stephens "is generally considered to have been the first Welsh literary critic to adopt a scientific method and to have done more, as an adjudicator, to raise the standards of the National Eisteddfod and to win for it the confidence of scholars, than any other Welshman of his time."