Richard Williams Morgan

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. It was consecrated as hierarch or bishop of Caerleon-upon-Usk and possibly as Patriarch of the new church.