Richard Williams Morgan

Richard Williams Morgan (bardic name: Môr Meirion) (c.1815-1889) was a Welsh Oriental Orthodox priest and author.

Morgan was born in Llangynfely, Cardiganshire, and educated at Saint David's College in Lampeter. He was a leading figure in the Celtic Revival "Gorsedd of Bards".

Morgan was ordained priest in October 1842, when he was appointed perpetual curate in Tregynon, Montgomeryshire (now Powys). An outspoken campaigner for the use of the Welsh language in schools and in churches, he perhaps went too far in verbal attacks on English-born bishops in the Welsh church who could speak no Welsh. It was apparently his obduracy over this issue that in 1857 led to Morgan being refused communion in his own parish church in Tregynon. Although Morgan did not formally resign his curacy until 1862, he never again held an ecclesiastical post in Wales.

Like many Welsh Anglican clergy of his generation, Morgan was also active in the Celtic revival movement. As "Môr Meirion" he organised, along with his better-known cousin John Williams (Ab Ithel), an eisteddfod at Llangollen in 1858. But his presence among the organisers, at the height of the controversy over his attitude to the English bishops in Wales, had imperilled the plans.

In the late 1850s and the 1860s Morgan spent most of his time in London. In 1857 he published The British Kymry, or Britons of Cambria, a comprehensive but unorthodox history of the Welsh people from The Flood to the 19th century; and in 1861 St. Paul in Britain: or, the origin of British as opposed to papal Christianity. Morgan argued that St Paul himself had evangelised Britain and converted the British Druids; he claimed that therefore the ancient Church of Britain was coeval with that established by St Peter in Rome, and represented an apostolic succession independent of the Roman Church (the Catholic Church) that Augustine of Canterbury introduced to England in the sixth century.

In 1874, Morgan was consecrated First Patriarch of a reputed restored Ancient British Church by Jules Ferrette, the founder of the British Orthodox Church. Morgan took the religious name of "Mar Pelagius I" and undertook to revive the Celtic Christianity that existed prior to the Synod of Whitby while continuing his duties as an Anglican priest.

On 6 March 1879, Morgan received a further consecration as a bishop, this being from Frederick George Lee, Thomas Wimberley Mossman and John Thomas Seccombe of the Order of Corporate Reunion.

Also on 6 March 1879, Morgan consecrated Charles Isaac Stevens, a former Reformed Episcopal Church presbyter, as his successor as patriarch. Morgan was assisted in this consecration by Lee and Seccombe for the Order of Corporate Reunion.

The Ancient British Church in the UK persisted into the mid-twentieth century, with the Fifth Patriarch, Herbert James Monzani Heard (1866-1947), consecrated in 1922. Succession from Morgan's Ancient British Church is also found in the Free Protestant Episcopal Church (now the Anglican Free Communion).

In spite of his commitment to the Ancient British Church, Morgan served as a Church of England curate three more times, before he died in Pevensey, Sussex, in 1889.