Richard Williams Morgan

Richard Williams Morgan (bardic name: Môr Meirion) (c.1815-1889) was a Welsh 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.

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