Richard Williams Morgan (1815–1889), also known by his bardic name Môr Meirion, was a Welsh Anglican priest, Welsh nationalist, campaigner for the use of the Welsh language and author.
Morgan's outspoken criticism of English bishops in Wales who could not speak Welsh led him into conflict with the authorities of the Church of England. He supported the Celtic revival movement, and in 1858 helped organise an eisteddfod at Llangollen. In books on the history of the Welsh and the origins of Christianity in Wales, he traced the ancestry of the Welsh people back to Japheth, son of Noah, and in his St. Paul in Britain, claimed that the apostle Paul had converted the people of Britain to Christianity; and thus, the British Church was as old as the Church of Rome, and never owed allegiance to the Pope.
In the 1870s, Morgan became involved in the establishment of a new church, the "British Church", later to be known as the "Ancient British Church" and perhaps envisaged as the restoration of the original church allegedly set up in Britain by Paul of Tarsus and other Christian missionaries. Morgan was consecrated as hierarch or bishop of Caerleon-upon-Usk and possibly as Patriarch of this new church.
Life
Early life Richard Williams Morgan was born in 1815 in Llanfor, near Bala, then in Merionethshire, now Gwynedd, the son of the Rev. Richard Morgan and his wife Anna Margaretta Williams.Anson 43.Pearson 34. He was a nephew of John Williams, later Archdeacon of Cardigan.Freeman 87. Morgan was educated at Saint David's College in Lampeter."Morgan, Richard Williams".
Clergyman
Morgan was ordained deacon in 1841 and priest in 1842,Thomann 4. and was appointed as curate at Mochdre and perpetual curate at nearby Tregynon, both of them small villages in Montgomeryshire (now Powys) in north Wales.Brown 134. He remained curate in Mochdre only until 1852, but retained his position in Tregynon until 1862.
In 1852 Morgan came into conflict with the bishop, Thomas Vowler Short, Bishop of St Asaph, within whose diocese Tregynon lay. Morgan had dismissed his maidservant, Elizabeth Williams, when she became pregnant; she gave birth to an illegitimate child, and, before dying of typhus, she claimed that Morgan was the father.Brown 152–3. Not surprisingly, Short took this up as a disciplinary matter, and although he finally accepted that Morgan was not the father of Elizabeth's child, the enmity between the two men was to grow worse. In 1854 Morgan was accused of mismanaging his parish finances, and Bishop Short sequestrated Morgan's living; although Morgan remained in position as perpetual curate of Tregynon, all the income passed to his junior, the curate Augustus Field.Brown 157.
Welsh nationalist By the mid-1850s, Morgan had become an outspoken Welsh nationalist, campaigning for the use of the Welsh language in schools and in churches, and, as Thomann says, "became notorious for his attacks on the shortcomings of the Established Church in Wales".Thomann 5. In particular, he criticised English bishops in Wales who could not speak Welsh, including his own bishop, Thomas Short. In 1855 Morgan published a book on The Church and its Episcopal Corruptions in Wales, and wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Bird Sumner, asking that these bishops be removed from their posts (and then published the correspondence); in 1857 he followed this with a similar letter to the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston.Pearson 127–8, note 44. His notorious attitude towards the bishops, and the public and aggressive way he expressed his feelings, led to scandal in November 1857, when he was staying with friends in Rhosymedre, Ruabon, in north-east Wales. After giving a public speech on the failings of the Church in Wales, he attended a communion service at the local parish church, where, in front of the whole congregation, the officiating curate refused to administer the cup to Morgan, on the grounds that he was not "in charity with all his neighbours" as required by the Church of England's catechism.Brown 160.Thomann 30–42. In spite of several letters to the bishop in whose diocese Rhosymedre church lay written in support of Morgan by the incumbent and the churchwardens, the bishop (it was, unfortunately, Morgan's enemy Bishop Short of St Asaph) refused to intervene on his behalf. Morgan did not formally resign from his perpetual curacy in Tregynon until 1862, but after 1858 he never held another ecclesiastical position in Wales, and lived mostly in England.Thomann 4–6.
In April 1858 the Welsh-language (and strongly Welsh nationalist) satirical magazine Y Punch Cymraeg published a cartoon supporting Morgan's campaign against the English bishops.Lord 148–50. Drawn by Ellis Owen Ellis, it depicted Morgan himself, brandishing a whip and driving a skeletal horse and rider out of Wales and into the jaws of Hell. Three clerical figures were bound to the back of the horse; they were identified in the accompanying Welsh text as Bishop Short, Bishop Bethell of Bangor and Bishop Ollivant of Llandaff. The Welsh text described them thus: "they have been carefully saddled as pillions of Death, who knows where to take them".Lord 150.
At this time, Morgan was also involved in the Celtic Revival movement, along with other Welsh clergymen like his cousin John Williams, the bard Ab Ithel. Morgan himself adopted the bardic name Môr Meirion ("Sea of Merioneth", with reference to his own name and his birthplace). In 1858, he joined Ab Ithel and other like-minded clergy to organise an eisteddfod at Llangollen, Denbighshire – although some of his colleagues felt that his involvement, while he continued his campaigns against the English bishops, might jeopardise the plans for the meeting.Kenward 130–53.Hutton 265–6.Clark 46–7. The focus of the gathering was a gorsedd, a ceremonial meeting of bards, following rituals claimed to be based on ancient Celtic practice, but actually invented by Edward Williams, commonly known as Iolo Morganwg, in the late 18th century. One Welsh newspaper editor, Isaac Foulkes, commented at the time "every oddbod in Wales took himself off there, and no doubt felt quite at home in the company".Quoted in Lord 150. A more recent historian noted "members of the public [...] were to witness the most derisory scenes on an eisteddfod platform. Ab Ithel and his friends appeared in strange 'druidical' costumes, while Myfyr Morgannwyg wore an egg on a string round his neck".Miles 55–6. Môr Meirion himself declaimed the opening "Gorsedd Prayer" and later in an oration (as a contemporary commented) "launched his energetic but somewhat too unqualified Cymricism".Kenward 133; 144.
After 1858 Morgan served as a curate for short periods in a number of English parishes,Pearson 35. but in the 1860s he lived most of the time in London, concentrating on pseudohistorical writing.Thomann 6.Clark 47. He had already in 1857 published The British Kymry, an extensive account of the history of Wales and the Welsh people, whose origin he traced back to Japheth, one of the sons of Noah and according to tradition the ancestor of the peoples of Europe. In 1861 came St. Paul in Britain, in which he proposed that Paul of Tarsus had evangelised and made converts in Britain,Evans 32. and, as Thomann says, "[argued] that the British Church was as old and venerable as the Roman and equally of apostolic origin". Morgan returned to the subject of the Japhetic origin of the Welsh in 1863, in his Vindication of the Mosaic Ethnology of Europe, in which he reaffirmed the accuracy of the Biblical story of the Flood, and the historical descent of the races of mankind from the sons of Noah.
Ancient British Church In 1866 Jules Ferrette, also known as "Mar Julius", arrived in England with papers showing that he had been consecrated as Bishop of Iona by the Oriental Orthodox Bishop of Homs in Syria, Mar Bedros, with powers to ordain other bishops in Britain.Thomann 7.Anson 35–40. At some point Ferrette met Morgan, and, suggests Anson, "found a kindred spirit in this erratic, unstable, hot-headed Welsh clergyman".Anson 44. In about 1874, when Morgan was serving as curate in Marholm, near Peterborough, Ferrette allegedly consecrated him as "Pelagius I", Bishop or Hierarch of Caerleon-upon-Usk and (the details are disputed) Patriarch of a new "British Church" – later to be known as the "Ancient British Church".Thomann 7–8Anson 45.
Brandreth reports a later claim that Morgan was "obsessed with the vision of a British Church that should restore the doctrine and discipline of the days before St Augustine".Brandreth 78. In 1878 Morgan, as "Pelagius", published an Altar Service of the British Church,Thomann 8; 48–71 in the preface of which he repeated his conviction that "The British Church was founded by the Apostles and Apostolic Missions A.D. 49 – four centuries before the Foreign Roman Papal Church was founded in Kent by Pope Gregory and St. Augustine".Thomann 49. There seem to be no records of the early activities of Morgan's British Church, if any. Pearson comments on similar church foundations: "These churches were made up predominantly of bishops, with a few priests and deacons and hardly any laity".Pearson 136, note 82. However, in 1879 Morgan consecrated Charles Isaac Stevens, a former Reformed Episcopal Church presbyter, as his "perpetual coadjutor with the right of succession".Thomann 9Brandreth 50. Several later churches, in England and abroad, were to claim apostolic succession through Stevens, Morgan and Ferrette.Thomann 9–10Brandreth 50–52.Anson 216–51.
Death In spite of his involvement with the Ancient British Church, Morgan served as curate twice more in English parishes, in Stapleton, Shropshire in 1882–83, and in Offord D'Arcy, Huntingdonshire in 1886–88; in 1888 he retired and moved to Broadstairs in Kent, but died on 22 August 1889 in Pevensey, Sussex.Thomann 10–11.Anson 47.
Writings Richard Williams Morgan was a prolific author; Thomann listed over 25 publications by him, written between 1845 and 1878.Thomann 17–23. Since Morgan published not only under his own name but as "R.W.M.", "Môr Meirion", and "Pelagius", and wrote short articles for obscure magazines and newspapers, Thomann may not have identified all of his publications. He wrote not only about church matters and Welsh history, but fiction, poetry, a verse play, and a guide-book to North Wales. He even used his poetic skills to satirise Bishop Short in verse.Thomann 46–7. However, even contemporary critics in Wales questioned the reliability of his historical writings. An article published in the Cambrian Journal in 1863 described him as "a man of genius, ability and learning, the energetic champion of all Cymric interests, and the uncompromising scourge of all ecclesiastical abusers. If only he would chasten his imagination, and moderate his patriotic impulses, in dealing with Welsh history, he would be also entitled to unqualified praise as one of the most eloquent and vigorous writers of the day".Quoted in Clark 47.
More recent writers have been even more critical. According to Peter Anson, Morgan was "a tireless but uncritical research worker, ready to believe anything that took his fancy and indifferent to the lack of documentary evidence".Anson 43, cited in Pearson 44. Yet Morgan did draw on documentary sources. However, these included, for example, the History of the Kings of Britain, the pseudohistory of the origins and early history of Britain by the 12th-century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth, and supposed ancient Welsh texts from the collections of the Welsh antiquarian Iolo Morganwg (Edward Williams, 1747–1826) that were later proved to be forgeries. Morgan accepted all these as factual records of early British and Welsh history and culture – and then interpreted them and elaborated on them in the light of his strongly pro-Welsh feelings and his enthusiasm for all things Welsh.Some examples of his methods are discussed in Clark 48–52.