Richard Williams Morgan was a Welsh clergyman and author. He was born in Llangynfely, Cardiganshire and educated at Saint David's College in Lampeter

Lampeter

Lampeter is a town in Ceredigion, South West Wales, lying at the confluence of the River Teifi and the Afon Dulas.-Demographics:At the 2001 National Census, the population was 2894. Lampeter is therefore the smallest university town in both Wales and the United Kingdom...

. Morgan was a leading figure in the Celtic Revival

Celtic Revival

Celtic Revival covers a variety of movements and trends, mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries, which drew on the traditions of Celtic literature and Celtic art, or in fact more often what art historians call Insular art...

 "Gorsedd of Bards".

In 1874, Morgan was consecrated First Patriarch of a restored Ancient British Church by Jules Ferrette

Jules Ferrette

Jules Ferrette, was a Bishop of Iona and founder of the Catholic Apostolic Church of the West .A Frenchman of Protestant parentage, he was born in Épinal , France on 22 April 1828...

, the founder of the British Orthodox Church

British Orthodox Church

The British Orthodox Church is a small Oriental Orthodox jurisdiction, canonically part of the Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria. Its mission is to the people of the British Isles, and though it is Orthodox in its faith and practice, it remains British in its ethos...

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Morgan took the religious name of 'Mar Pelagius I' and undertook to revive the Celtic Christianity

Celtic Christianity

Celtic Christianity or Insular Christianity refers broadly to certain features of Christianity that were common, or held to be common, across the Celtic-speaking world during the Early Middle Ages...

 prior to the Synod of Whitby

Synod of Whitby

The Synod of Whitby was a seventh century Northumbriansynod where King Oswiu of Northumbria ruled that his kingdom would calculate Easter and observe the monastic tonsure according to the customs of Rome, rather than the customs practised by Iona and its satellite institutions...

 while continuing his duties as an Anglican clergyman. In 1879 consecrated Charles Isaac Stevens (1835-1917), a former presbyter of the Reformed Episcopal Church

Reformed Episcopal Church

The Reformed Episcopal Church is an Anglican church in the United States and Canada and a founding member of the Anglican Church in North America...

 as his successor as Patriarch of the Ancient British Church. The Ancient British Church in the UK persisted into the 1920s, with the Fifth Patriarch Herbert James Monzani Heard consecrated in 1922. A line of succession from Monzani survives in the small Ancient British Church in North America

Ancient British Church in North America

The Ancient British Church in North America is a small body claiming to be Eastern Orthodox in Toronto to serve marginalised people who feel that they are rejected by the Eastern Orthodox Community and the Roman Catholic Church.The church was founded by its first presiding bishop Jonathan Vartan...

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Timeline

• 1848, Maynooth and St. Asaph
• 1849, Verities of the Church
• 1851, Ida de Galis. A Tragedy of Powys Castle
• 1851, Vindication of the Church of England: in reply to Viscount Fielding
• 1853, Raymonde de Monthault, The Lord Marcher
• 1854, Christianity and Modern Infidelity (reprinted New York, 1859)
• 1855, Scheme for the Reconstruction of the Church Episcopate and its patronage to Wales
• 1856, North Wales or Venedotia
• 1857, The British Kymry or Britons of Cambria (translated into Welsh by the Rev. John Williams ('Ab lthel') as Hanes yr Hen Gymry, eu Defodau a’u Sefydliadau, 1858, and reprinted New York, 1860)
• 1858, Amddiffyniad yr iaith Gymraeg
• 1861, St. Paul in Britain or the Origin of the British as opposed to Papal Christianity (2nd ed. 1880)