Richard Williams Morgan

Several of his publications, however, did have some lasting influence. In 1857 Morgan published The British Kymry, or Britons of Cambria, a comprehensive history of the Welsh people from the time of the Biblical Flood to the 19th century.[23] This was, he claimed in his preface, "the version of these transactions, of British history in general" that the Welsh themselves had preserved.[24] He also wrote that "These 'Outlines' are a compendium of a larger work, 'The History of the British Kymry from the earliest to the present period,' which will be in due course committed to the press." The promised fuller version was never to appear.

The chronological span of the book is demonstrated in a fold-out chart explaining the lineal descent of the crown of Britain from the first legendary ruler of Britain, Brutus of Troy, to Queen Victoria.[25] As this suggests, the early part of Morgan's book is a reworking of Geoffrey of Monmouth's account of Brutus and his legendary successors in his History of the Kings of Britain, written in the early 12th century, and long dismissed as largely fictional by modern historians.[26] Morgan accepted it as a factual account, and elaborated on it, drawing on Welsh medieval texts and legends, as well as on the forgeries of Iolo Morganwg. Although Morgan is an extreme example in his reliance on such untrustworthy sources and the extent of his elaborations on them, these sources were also drawn on by some of his Welsh contemporaries, such as his cousin John Williams (Ab Ithel), who published The Barddas of Iolo Morganwg in 1862.[27][28]

Morgan devotes several pages to an account of "the Druidic religion of Britain". He claims that Joseph of Arimathea, who according to medieval legends had first brought Christianity to Britain, had been invited by "some eminent Druids", and that later the apostle St Paul had visited Britain and made many converts – subjects he was later to enlarge on in his book St. Paul in Britain. He claimed the ancient British church had been established by "Christo-Druidic bards";[9] that their church and religion was untainted, unlike the Roman Catholic Church, and that their politics were pure, unlike those of the Saxons.[11]

A historian recently dismissed The British Kymry as a "benighted and fanciful treatise".[11] However, in 1933 a reprint of the book appeared, under a new title History of Britain: From the Flood to A.D. 700. This comprised little more than the first half of Morgan's book, complete with his original introduction dated 1857, but with no indication of the text's context or its first publication.[23]

In 1861 Morgan returned to the subject of the Christianisation of Britain in St. Paul in Britain: or, the origin of British as opposed to papal Christianity.[29] The case that the Apostle St Paul had visited Britain and converted the Britons to Christianity had been argued earlier by Thomas Burgess (1756–1837), Bishop of St Davids from 1803 to 1825, in a series of pamphlets and sermons with titles like Christ, and not Saint Peter, the Rock of the Christian Church; and Saint Paul, the Founder of the Church in Britain and The Protestant Catechism, in which it is clearly proved, that the Ancient British Church existed several centuries before Popery had any footing in Great Britain.[9][30] The subject was also a matter of great interest to Morgan's cousin John Williams, who in 1844 published The Ecclesiastical Antiquities of the Cymry; or the Ancient British Church; its History, Doctrine, and Rites.[31]

Morgan developed Burgess's arguments and summarised (p. 129) his own conclusions: "Christianity was first introduced into Britain by Joseph of Arimathæa, A.D. 36–39; followed by Simon Zelotes, the apostle; then by Aristobulus, the first bishop of the Britons; then by St. Paul". Of these, the most important was St Paul, who had not only consecrated Aristobulus as the first bishop and sent him to Britain, but then himself visited Britain and converted the British royal family.

Thus, the ancient Church in Britain was, within a few years, as old as the first church established in Jerusalem.[32] Its teachings came directly "from the lips of the first disciples themselves of Christ" (as Morgan said in his preface).[9] It was independent of the Church of Rome, and did not recognise the authority of the Pope, only introduced to Britain by the mission of Augustine of Canterbury in the sixth century.[33][10]

Morgan also emphasised his belief in the role of the British Druids in the conversion of the country to Christianity. He claimed that their ancient faith was close to Christianity, and, as Ronald Hutton says, "In his view, Druids had led the British in an uncompromising opposition to Roman paganism, joyously received the Christian faith, and had been persecuted by the Romans alongside Christians as a result."[34] In the 20th century Morgan's views on the relationship between the Druids and early Christianity in Britain seem to have influenced Gerald Gardner, one of the founders of modern Witchcraft or Wicca. He owned a copy of St. Paul in Britain, and according to Pearson "much of Gardner’s history of Christianity in Britain [in his book The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959)] comes straight from the pages of Morgan's St. Paul in Britain."[35] Pearson notes that Gardner had concluded that witches were well-disposed to early Celtic Christianity, represented by the Druids who had become Christians, but disliked the invading Saxons and their type of Christianity, which derived from Rome.[36]

Morgan's book went through nine reprintings between 1861 and 1984.[23][9] Joanna Pearson notes that in the 20th century the book was adopted by the British Israelite Society, and several editions of it were issued by their own publishing house, the Covenant Publishing Company, between 1925 and 1948.[29]

In the 1850s Morgan spent much of his time in London,[33] and it was presumably at this time he first took an interest in London Stone, the mysterious monolith that stood in Cannon Street in the centre of the City of London and was already known by the end of the 11th century as "lundene stane".[37] There had long been speculation about its origin and function,[38] and Morgan incorporated it into his extraordinary vision of the origins and history of the Welsh people. His starting point was Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th-century History of the Kings of Britain, which attributed the original settlement of Britain to a party of Trojan refugees led by Brutus of Troy, who gave his name to the land of Britain and the British people. According to Geoffrey, Brutus had founded his capital city, which he called "Troia Nova" ("New Troy"), later "Trinovantum", on the site of London.[39][40] In 1857 in his The British Kymry Morgan added novel details to this bare account. He claimed that London Stone was once in Troy itself. It was the stone plinth on which had stood the Palladium, the statue of the goddess Pallas Athene upon which, according to Greek legend, the safety of the city of Troy depended.[41] Brutus had brought it to Britain, and when he founded New Troy, he had set the Stone up there, in a temple dedicated to the goddess Diana.[26] "On it", according to Morgan, "the British Kings were sworn to observe the Usages of Britain." Morgan added that there was an ancient belief that as long as London Stone survived, London "would continue to increase in wealth and power"; if London Stone were lost or destroyed, the city "would decrease and finally disappear". John Clark concluded, however: "there is no trace of [these traditions] in any independent source".[42]

In 1862 Morgan returned to the subject in a brief contribution to the scholarly journal Notes and Queries, published under his bardic name "Môr Meirion". In it he claimed that London Stone was made of porphyry, and that this was the same material as the Altar Stone at Stonehenge. He repeated his assertions about its origin and historic significance.[43] Moreover, he added that there was an ancient Welsh saying that referred to it: "Tra maen Prydain, Tra lled Llyndain" ("As long as the Stone of Prydain [exists], so long will London expand/spread"). He provided a supposed English equivalent: "So long as the Stone of Brutus is safe, so long will London flourish." Clark was unable to identify the source of these "traditional sayings", and surmised they were Morgan's own invention.[26]

Morgan's ideas about London Stone were largely ignored at the time. Then in 1888 the popular fortnightly magazine Chambers's Journal published a short article about London Stone.[44] This included ideas clearly derived from Morgan's Notes and Queries article (without crediting it), and cited "an old saying to the effect, that 'so long as the stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish'". Taken up by later more influential writers like the folklorist Lewis Spence the idea that London Stone was "the Stone of Brutus" and that dire results would result from destroying or even moving it became widely known. The "traditional saying" about "the Stone of Brutus" and the role of London Stone as London's own Palladium is mentioned in almost every later description of London Stone.[45]

• Anson, Peter F. (2006) [1964]. "Jules Ferrette, Mar Julius, Bishop of Iona, and alleged Patriarchal Legate of the Syrian Jacobite Church for Western Europe". Bishops at Large. Independent Catholic Heritage. Apocryphile press. ISBN 0-9771461-8-9.
• Brandreth, Henry R. T. (2007). Episcopi vagantes and the Anglican Church. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. ISBN 978-0-89370-558-9.
• Brown, Roger L. (2002). "Richard Williams Morgan: Patriarch, Priest and Romantic". Parochial Lives: A Study in the 19th Century Welsh Church. Llanrwst: Gwasg Carreg Gwalch. pp. 131–66.
• Clark, John (2010). "London Stone: Stone of Brutus or Fetish Stone--Making the Myth". Folklore. 121 (1): 38–60. Retrieved 22 November 2021.
• Evans, R. J. W. (2016). "National Historiography, 1850-1950: The European Context". In Evans, Neil (ed.). Writing a Small Nation's Past: Wales in Comparative Perspective, 1850–1950. Routledge. ISBN 9781134786619.
• Freeman, Peter (2000). "The Revd Richard Williams Morgan of Tregynon and his Writings". Montgomeryshire Collections. 88: 87–93.
• Gardner, Gerald (1959). The Meaning of Witchcraft. London: Aquarian Press.
• Geoffrey of Monmouth (1966). Thorpe, Lewis (ed.). The History of the Kings of Britain. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
• Hutton, Ronald (2011). Blood & Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain. New Haven; London: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300170856.
• Kenward, James (1871). Ab Ithel: An Account of the Life and Writings of the Rev. John Williams. Tenby; London: R. Mason; W. Kent.
• "Morgan, Richard Williams", The Dictionary of Welsh Biography to 1940 (1959), p. 393.
• Pearson, Joanne (2007). Wicca and the Christian Heritage: Ritual, Sex and Magic. Routledge. ISBN 9781134524273.
• Pruter, Karl (2006). The Old Catholic Church. Autocephalous Orthodox churches. 3 (3 ed.). Wildside Press. ISBN 9780912134413.
• Thomann, G. H. (2001). A Short Biography of the Reverend Richard Williams Morgan (c:1815–1889), the Welsh Poet and Re-founder of the Ancient British Church: An enquiry into the origins of neo-Celtic Christianity, together with a reprint of several works by Richard Williams Morgan and Jules Ferrette, etc. Solna, Sweden: St Ephrem's Institute.
• Williams, Daniel (1874). Memoirs and Sketches of One Hundred-and-Eleven Eminent Men, Natives of the County of Cardigan, Chiefly Authors... Cardigan. p. 20.