Contents

Preface

CHAPTER I : Why translate the Bible into Welsh?

CHAPTER II : Who was William Morgan?

CHAPTER III : The Bible of Bishop Morgan

CHAPTER IV : The significance of the translation

CHAPTER II : Who was William Morgan?

[The Bible] now recently has been translated and turned into Welsh, through the pains and industriousness of the truly excellent and most learned Doctor Morgan to whom the whole of Wales must ever be obliged, not only for his pains and expense in this, although that is in itself sufficient cause for praise and thanks, but also because he has caused the bringing of such a treasure, namely the true and pure word of God, to the common light of all, the which before was hidden from many, and for restoring again the respect and dignity of a language which was decayed and which had more or less collapsed.

(Huw Lewys, Perl mewn Adfyd, 1595)

Figure 12. Bishop William Morgan. Imaginary portrait in pen-and-ink wash by T. Prytherch, 1907.

When exactly William Morgan was born is a matter for debate, but the generally accepted opinion today is that it was in the year 1545. There has never been any doubt as to where the event took place. It was at a house called Tŷ Mawr (some have called the same house Tyddyn Mawr) at Wybrnant in the parish of Penmachno, above the valley of the river Conwy, where that parish touches the parish of Dolwyddelan, in Caernarfonshire. William was probably one of five children, the second son of John ap Morgan and his wife Lowri. John ap Morgan was a copyhold tenant on the estate of the Wynns of Gwydir near Llanrwst, a fairly wealthy tenant and a descendant of the same kind of family as that of the Wynns of Gwydir, the medieval aristocracy of Gwynedd. He was descended from at least two of the medieval patriarchs, ‘The Fifteen Tribes' of Gwynedd, Hedd Molwynog and Nefydd Hardd. William's mother, Lowri, was the daughter of William John ap Madoc ap Ifan Tegin from Diosgydd near Betws-y-coed, in the same neighbourhood, a descendant of another medieval chieftain, Marchudd ap Cynan. Family-trees were carefully remembered and could be an embarrassment as much as a matter of pride. When Sir John Wynn was quarrelling with William Morgan he taunted him that he was descended from mere ‘bondman', on the grounds that his forefather Nefydd Hardd, many centuries before, had been demoted for some obscure misdemeanour, from the rank of noble to that of bondman.

Figure 13. Plas Maenan in the Conwy Valley, a gentry resident of the period of Bishop Morgan. Oil by J. T. Steadman, 1887.

Compared to families such as the Wynns of Gwydir, the family of Wybrnant was poor, and yet rich enough to afford a university education for many years for one of their sons, at a time when such a thing was very rare among Welsh families. They were lesser gentry living at a time when the gap was widening between those lucky enough to combine farms together and create an estate (as did the Wynns) and the less lucky majority descended from younger sons or tenants and who paid an annual rent to the greater estates. A vague tradition claimed that Wybrnant was a neighbourhood where the old Catholic faith survived, and that William Morgan as a boy was educated by an old monk who had been expelled from some nearby monastery. One thing which it is obvious that the boy inherited from his native heath is a command of perfect Welsh, as nurtured by the late medieval Welsh gentry, and a knowledge of bardic traditions while they still flourished. He retained all his life a delight in the bards and was the recipient of several odes in traditional metres.

What kind of place was Tŷ Mawr, Wybrnant? Fortunately the house is still standing today, and is open to the public. It is on the banks of a brook in an open glade surrounded by forested hills at the headwaters of Cwm Wybrnant. The original farmhouse had become ruinous in the eighteenth century, but it was later bought by Lord Mostyn and then by Lord Penrhyn, and the latter restored it in the mid-nineteenth century, erecting at the same time a memorial to William Morgan above the front door. Together with many surrounding lands, Tŷ Mawr came in this century into the hands of the National Trust, which cares for Tŷ Mawr today. From outside, with its slate roof and fairly modern windows it looks a typical early nineteenth-century farmhouse. But its walls are ancient, dating from the early seventeenth century. We have some detailed descriptions of the house as it was when Lord Penrhyn restored it, and from those it seems as if the central crucks date from the late Middle Ages. This was the opinion of the historian and architect Owain Gethin Jones, known as ‘Gethin'. Above the old door was a carved motto ‘Heb Dduw heb ddim. Duw a digon.' Gethin believed that the central crucks of the walling were exactly like those of nearby dwellings which could certainly be dated to the late Middle Ages. The house stands in an idyllic spot of great beauty, though the area must have changed a good deal since the sixteenth century. At that time there were no pine forests darkening the hills, and where there are trees today there must have been tiny cottages for the mountain shepherds.

Figure 14. Tŷ Mawr, Wybrnant, Penmachno, birthplace of William Morgan. Drawing by Kyffin Williams

Figure 15. Plas Gwydir, across the river from Llanrwst. Home of the patrons of William Morgan. Watercolour by James Bourne (1773-1854)

We have already had cause to mention Sir John Wynn of Gwydir. William Morgan was the son of a tenant on the Gwydir estate and without doubt this was one of the most important factors in his career, since it was a matter of great good fortune to be the son of a leading tenant, neighbour and friend of the Wynns at the very time when they were rising to become one of the most ambitious and civilized families in Gwynedd, even in Wales. To judge the splendour of the Wynns, one has only to visit Llanrwst in the Conwy valley and look at their flamboyant tombs at the parish church, or by crossing the elegant bridge to look at Plas Gwydir or the ornate little chapel of Gwydir Uchaf. True that the Plas has been much rebuilt since John Wynn's time, but it is in a style so close to the original that it gives an accurate impression of the magnificence of the Gwynedd gentry of the sixteenth century. The Wynns kept close contact with the court of the King, were ardent Protestants and patronized the New Learning and the arts, but also spoke Welsh and patronized bardic lore at the same time. Until the mid-seventeenth century, Welsh would have been their vernacular language while keeping English as the language for getting on in the world, in official circles. At the end of William Morgan's life the relationship with the Wynns became embittered, but until that point, it was without doubt a great advantage to William Morgan to be a protégé of the Wynns of Gwydir.

Figure 16. The Gwydir family chapel at Llanrwst Church. Wood engraving by Hugh Hughes, 1823.

The family tradition at Gwydir was to invite the ablest children of the leading tenants or friends to be educated at Gwydir by the family's own tutors, and this was usually carried out in the rooms of the old gatehouse at Gwydir, a part of the original house which has stood unchanged up to the present day. The learning dispensed there was the New Learning, but it had always been a medieval tradition to board gentry children out with neighbouring families, with young men serving as pageboys in neighbouring castles, to teach them to be independent of their parents. William Morgan's luck, then, was to be boarded out with such a cultivated family as the Wynns. It was through them that he knew about the qualities of a Cambridge education, for Sir John Wynn had an uncle, Dr. John Wynn (or Gwynn), who had been since 1548 a fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. When Gwynn died in 1574 he left much of his wealth to his old college. The Wynns were the kind of family who wished their sons to go to university, or possibly – the Act of Union making it highly desirable for the gentry to know the details of English law – to the Inns of Court. Dr. Gwynn had been fellow at St. John's since 1548, a while before William Morgan was being taught at Gwydir, and so he must have been aware as a young boy that St. John's College was at the forefront of the mission to make England a Protestant country. Whether William had any help from the Wynns to go to Cambridge is not known, but it was a natural step for him to go there, and it is to St. John's College that he went in 1565.

Figure 17. St. John's College, Cambridge. Photograph, 1881. NLW Photo Album 611

He was at that time about twenty years of age, slightly older than was usual but not rare or exceptional. It is likely that the eldest son of Tŷ Mawr, Wybrnant, stayed at home to farm, thus leaving William, the second son, free to go to university and become a priest. He stayed in Cambridge from 1565 to 1571. One way he had of lifting the financial burden from his parents was to work in the college as a sizar, a kind of valet waiting on the richer students or sons of noblemen at the university. At the start of his college career he is termed a sub-sizar, later becoming a proper sizar, and the same time he was working for his degree as Bachelor of Arts, B.A. He would have a number of minor duties to perform in the rooms of the more fortunate students which would limit the time he had for his own study and amusement. He found time, however, to form friendships with several people who would later play an important part in his life. Among the Welshmen he knew were Richard Vaughan, from Nyffryn in Llŷn, later to be Bishop of Bangor, then of Chester and lastly of London; Edmwnd Prys, the poet and scholar who later became Archdeacon of Merioneth; and Gabriel Goodman of Denbigh, later Dean of Westminster. Among his other Cambridge friends were William Hughes, later Bishop of St. Asaph, and Hugh Billot (or Bellott), later Bishop of Bangor, and then of Chester. An intelligent circle of friends, it combined firm Protestantism with humanism in education, and in the case of Prys and of Morgan, a delight in Welsh bardistry. The fact that so many of them came to hold high office in the Church is a sign that Welshmen could reach the top in the Tudor period, and this had not been the case in the Church in the period before the Reformation. It is hardly surprising that eighteenth-century Welsh patriots looked back at the age of Elizabeth I as a Golden Age when the Church had real respect for Welsh and for Welshmen.

Figure 18. Ely Cathedral, where William Morgan was ordained priest. Photograph, 1881. NLW Photo Album 611

Between 1565 and 1568 William Morgan studied for his initial degree as bachelor, his tutor being John Dakyns, a native of Derbyshire. He would have studied mathematics, logic, rhetoric and philosophy and in the process would have read a good deal of Latin. From 1568 to 1571 he studied for his higher degree, Master of Arts, M.A. But before venturing on this, he was ordained deacon of the Church at – Ely Cathedral in 1568. The cathedral is near Cambridge, a great landmark standing like a ship in the midst of the watery wastes of the Fens of eastern England.

To complete his M.A. degree he would have to study more philosophy, astronomy, Greek, Hebrew and Divinity. He studied Hebrew – the language of the Old Testament – under a most able teacher, Antoine Chevallier, a French Protestant who had fled to Germany during Mary Tudor's reign, and who had been the French tutor to Queen Elizabeth 1. It is possible that he taught some French to William Morgan, since it was remarked by one or two of his contemporaries that he knew the French language. His Hebrew learning, imbibed at this stage, proved to be of immense value to him later on, as the bard Siôn Tudur observed in an ode of thanks for the Welsh translation of the Bible:

You translated and took the Word of God
At great pains from the Hebrew text,
This you did when the age of Christ
Was sixteen hundred years but twelve,
Translating every chapter
Of the Bible for the sake of benighted folk.

Figure 19. The Hebrew Bible used by Bishop Morgan, including notes in his hand on the meaning of Hebrew words.

The copy of the Hebrew Bible belonging to William Morgan has survived to this day, preserved first by Lady Llanover, and now kept as one of the treasures of the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth. In the margins of the pages may be seen detailed notes on the meanings of abstruse Hebrew words.

As we have said, the University of Cambridge was at the forefront of the battle to convert England to Protestantism and the Puritan party – those wishing to push England furthest along the road to Reform – were remarkably strong there. William Morgan kept safely to a middle path between conservatives and Reformers, as indeed did his friend Edmwnd Prys. A Catholic satirist, Stephen Valenger, wrote a satirical poem entitled ‘The Cuckold's Calendar' in which he pilloried various scholars and students at Cambridge, and among those satirized is William Morgan whom he refers to punningly as a mean miser with the name ‘More Gain'. At Cambridge in this period worked John Whitgift who later became Archbishop of Canterbury, and he must have known at this period of William's careful moderation. William went on to graduate M.A. in 1571. It is not known precisely when he left Cambridge, but after he left he kept up his contacts with his old university, returning in 1578 to take his degree as Bachelor in Divinity (B.D.) and then in 1583 his degree as Doctor in Divinity (D.D.).

Figure 20. The church at Llanbadarn Fawr, where William Morgan had his first living. Oil painting by an artist of the ninteenth-century British school, 1895.

Within a year of his graduating, in 1572 his world was changed by his being appointed vicar in the parish of Llanbadarn Fawr in north Cardiganshire, a mile or so inland from the little port of Aberystwyth. He stayed at Llanbadarn three years and this is almost certainly the time when his abilities as a scholar became known to Richard Davies, Bishop of St. Davids, and when Davies must have perceived that here was the young man who could best be entrusted with the task of translating the Old Testament, the job abandoned by himself and William Salesbury. In 1575 he was appointed vicar of Welshpool in Montgomeryshire, through the offices of his old friend William Hughes, now Bishop of St. Asaph. Hughes showed him several favours and gave him several ‘sinecures', church offices which meant that he received the salaries, but did not visit the parishes. Instead, he appointed a deputy who would be paid a small proportion of the salary. It was thus that he obtained the livings of Denbigh, Llanfyllin and Pennant Melangell. The holding of several offices was called ‘pluralism' and was the target of severe criticism in general, but William Morgan was not breaking the law, for clerics were permitted to hold one or two livings in addition to their own.

Figure 21. Welshpool, where William Morgan was vicar. Oil painted by Edward Days (1763-1804), 1803.

In 1578 he was appointed again by Bishop Hughes to the vicarage of Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant in Denbighshire, and it is with this parish that he is associated in popular memory, because he lived there for a long time from 1578 to 1595, and it was there that he translated the Bible. He also held the living of the little mountain parish of Llanarmon Mynydd Mawr a few miles from Llanrhaeadr. His parish was in the folds of the eastward facing slopes of the Berwyn Mountains on the border of Denbighshire and Montgomeryshire, and is named from the river Rhaeadr which plunges down into the village from Wales's highest waterfall before it flows into the river Tanat. To the east is the parish of Llansilin, and the border with Shropshire. Like many border parishes, it was rich and lively in its Welsh culture.

Figure 22. A printed map of Wales by one of Bishop Morgan's contemporaries, Humphrey Lhuyd, c. 1580.

In the same year, 1578, he was appointed a university preacher at the University of Cambridge, and this was a sign of great favour that he was highly regarded and trusted by the University authorities. It is quite possible that at some time or other in his capacity as preacher he had occasion to preach at St. Paul's Cross in London, and this would explain the reference in the ode to him by the bard Rhys Cain:

You gilded reason, a lesson most strict,
At the Cross of St. Paul's, with words eternal.

The ancient church and vicarage at Llanrhaeadr stand today, though much altered, and they form the centre of a beautiful village, with churchyard and rectory gardens running down to the river. A famous eighteenth-century rector, William Worthington, is probably responsible for rebuilding much of the present vicarage, but several parts at the back of the house look ancient, and possibly date from William Morgan's time. By crossing the churchyard and going over the bridge behind the vicarage, one goes into Montgomeryshire by crossing the river, and one climbs through steep woods, getting a picturesque view of church and village. The local tradition is that this was William Morgan's favourite walk and that he used to study in a little arbour at Pen-y-Walk above the river on summer days. So charming is the spot that it is easy to believe the tale is true.

There were other reasons, other than pleasing prospects, why William Morgan should be happy at Llanrhaeadr, for about 1578 he married. His wife was Catherine ferch George, the daughter of a quite ordinary family from Oswestry, which was at this period to all intents and purposes a Welsh-speaking town; she had already been twice married and twice widowed. It was a happy marriage, but through it, William Morgan was brought into conflict with the powerful families of the parish, who were a thorn in his flesh all the while he was there.

Oliver Thomas, second husband of Catherine ferch George, was a brother of the wife of a member of a family called Maredudd or Meredith who owned Lloran Uchaf, a large farm which still exists to this day within the parish of Llansilin, but close to the village of Llanrhaeadr. Great indeed was the disappointment of the family when they saw that Catherine ferch George, the young widow, was to marry the vicar. The most ambitious member of the Lloran Uchaf family was one Ifan or Evan Meredith, a successful lawyer who led the opposition to the new vicar. To make matters worse, a nephew of Evan Meredith had high hopes of marrying the heiress of Maes Mochnant farm, thus gaining control of that estate, only to find that before this operation could be completed, the young vicar Morgan had used his influence to persuade the heiress of Maes Mochnant to marry Robert Wynn of Gwydir, the son of his lifelong patrons. It was now battle royal between the party of Lloran and that of Maes Mochnant, the opposition accusing Evan Meredith of being an adulterer and not being married to the woman he lived with. The case was taken to the Court of High Commission, the ecclesiastical court, which judged against Evan Meredith. According to a tradition recorded by Charles Edwards (who came from a village not far away, although a century later) in his book Hanes y Ffydd Ddiffuant in 1665, the case of Evan Meredith was taken eventually to Ludlow, to the Council of Wales. Since 1577 the President of the Council was none other than Whitgift (at that stage Bishop of Worcester) and there Whitgift is said to have come across William Morgan and got to know about his work as translator:

The prelate discovered his excellence and urged him on with that blessed work.

Meredith continued to live with his wife Margaret Ellis, despite the verdict of the court, but he claimed that William Morgan was at the root of all the troubles, and pressed every parishioner to refuse to pay tithe to the vicar, or to delay payment for so long as to force the vicar to start costly proceedings in the courts. The bards talk of William suffering many troubles with his parishioners. For example, in 1589 a law was passed calling on parish priests to muster the able male parishioners to train them in military bands to defend the kingdom against a Spanish invasion. At this point, Evan Meredith and his friends swooped down on Llanrhaeadr and besieged Morgan in the rectory, forcing the vicar to take legal action against him. Wild accusations and counter-accusations were hurled by both sides. Morgan accused Meredith of a night attack on his curate, Lewis Hughes, while Meredith claimed that all he had done was to come with a band of youths to borrow a harp from the curate, to hold a Noson Lawen in the tavern. In 1591 Meredith took out an action against the vicar, claiming that he had mustered bands for military training and then set them on Meredith and his kinsfolk. The case was eventually taken before the Court of Star Chamber in London. The situation was said to be so bad that William Morgan had taken to carrying a pistol under his cloak for self-defence. Meredith accused the vicar of doling out charity only to his approved friends and that the great majority of poor folk were driven away from the rectory door with a mastiff.

In the Star Chamber case, William Morgan did admit to holding several sinecures and that he issued threats against some poor folk at Llanrhaeadr that he would burn their houses if they persisted in stealing his firewood, and agreed that he had lightly struck or tapped his mother-in-law when she had been urging Morgan's servants to attack the servants of Evan Meredith. Perhaps he was really trying to keep the peace between the two factions. Many of the accusations and counter-accusations were extreme and even absurd, and strike us today as merely comical. Morgan's wife, Catherine ferch George, was accused of being ‘common', a mere ‘wafer woman' going round taverns with a basket on her arm selling wafers to the tipplers. Exaggerated claims were made in cases of this kind, but even if only a fragment of these battles were based on the truth, it was still tragic that the energies of a priest should be exhausted in cases like these, and when one thinks of the time taken up by the cases, it puts into higher relief the great achievement of William Morgan, able to sustain a long and elaborate piece of scholarly work in the face of such circumstances. In the end, the quarrels ceased, thanks to the intervention of Sir John Wynn of Gwydir, who persuaded the two sides to come to an understanding. Meredith was a lawyer and could probably afford the litigation, but Morgan must have wasted a good deal of money in the process.

The great work of translation went ahead despite all the distractions of parish life. In 1587 the vicar was able to travel to London and stay there for a whole year to deal with his printers, an essential visit since the monoglot English printers could not cope with a book in Welsh without daily supervision. After the Bible appeared in 1588, William Morgan found himself famous. He was already well-known throughout the diocese as one of the few clerics able and willing to preach. In a report on the diocese of St. Asaph in February 1587, it was said that only three clerics apart from the Bishop were able to preach – Dr. Morgan, his friend Dr. Powel the historian and rector of Ruabon, and the parson of Llanfechain:

There is never a preacher within the said diocese (the Lord Bishop only excepted) that keepeth ordinary residence and hospitality upon his living, but Dr. Powel and Dr. Morgan and the parson of Llanvechen, an aged man about eighty years old.

Morgan's fame as a translator of the Bible, and indeed his fame as a preacher in the diocese, made him stand head and shoulders above the great majority of his fellow-priests. As the Church authorities were anxious to appoint good Welshmen to the episcopal bench, it was only a matter of time before he was raised to a bishopric. His chance came in 1595 with the translation to the diocese of Exeter of Gervase Babington, Bishop of Llandaff. Characteristically, Sir John Wynn claimed that it was he who had really obtained the office for Morgan by corresponding with a ‘Mr. Boyer' and thereby influencing Whitgift, Cecil and the Queen. Possibly Wynn did lend a hand, but Morgan was already so well known to people like Whitgift since he had lived in London for a whole year in 1587 and '88, that there was only a scant need to draw attention to his considerable virtues. Two Welsh bishoprics had to be filled at this juncture, Bangor and Llandaff. It has been suggested that Morgan's friend, Richard Vaughan, was destined for Llandaff, but since he already had some preferment as Archdeacon of Middlesex, it was arranged for Morgan to go to Llandaff while Vaughan went to Bangor. William then went to Croydon near London, which was one of the palaces of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and on 20 July 1595, at the church at Croydon, he was ordained bishop by Whitgift and others. The parish church of Croydon has been entirely rebuilt, but in it in 1604 Whitgift was buried and there is to be found his memorial.

Figure 23. Llandaff Cathedral, where William Morgan was bishop. Engraving by the brothers Buck, 1741.

Figure 24. St. Asaph Cathedral, where William Morgan was bishop. Engraving by the brothers Buck, 1742.

William and his wife now went down to South Wales to live. Sir John Wynn lent them horses for the long journey from Llanrhaeadr, and in the South they lived from 1595 to 1601. The cathedral buildings at Llandaff were at that period not unlike their appearance at the present day, but the medieval fabric of the church had already begun to decay badly, and one of William's chief aims as bishop was to organize the refurbishment of the fabric, but the bishopric was notoriously poor, the aim came to nothing, and the fabric decayed until in the eighteenth century it was a ruin. Kings and nobles down the centuries had despoiled the bishopric, its poverty being proverbial. An anecdote which may refer to the sixteenth-century bishops of Llandaff says that one bishop maintained that he should be called ‘Bishop of Aff', for all his ‘Lland' had been taken. The fine old medieval palace of the bishops (of which the splendid gatehouse still remains on the hill above the cathedral today) had been pillaged by Owain Glyndwr in the early fifteenth century and left a ruin. William and his wife had to use the secondary palace, a house at Mathern near Chepstow at the easternmost point of the diocese. The old palace of Mathern still exists but it has been a private residence for around a hundred years, and stands in a fine position near the modern Severn Bridge. Morgan therefore lived in Monmouthshire and in many ways that was the most problematic part of his diocese, for there flourished the groups of Catholic recusants protected by the powerful family of the Earls of Worcester at Raglan Castle. As far as can be seen, Morgan did his work in the diocese conscientiously and industriously.

Figure 25. Letter from William Morgan to Sir John Wynn, 26 May 1601.

While at Llandaff he did not neglect his scholarly work – he revised the text of the New Testament for a future republication, and looked after the re-editing of the Book of Common Prayer which he published in 1599. According to his friend and pupil Dr. John Davies (later rector of Mallwyd), William also collected materials for a dictionary, which of course is a natural thing for such a linguist to wish to do, but the manuscript has long disappeared. He also encouraged Welsh scholars in the diocese, men like James Parry of Ewyas (on the Herefordshire borders) who began setting the Psalms to Welsh metres to be sung in churches, a work completed successfully in 1621 by Edmwnd Prys; or men like Edward James (vicar of Cadoxton, Neath) who translated into Welsh the book of official sermons of the Church written by John jewel and others, a collection published in 1606 and called Llyfr yr Homiliau. Homily was the usual word for sermon. James's translation is a masterpiece of stately Welsh and shows strongly the influence of Bishop Morgan.

Figure 26. Pennant Melangell Church, one of the churches where William Morgan was vicar. Watercolour by John Ingleby (1749-1808), 1795

At their palace at Mathern, William Morgan and his wife were very welcoming to the bards or poets, and a number of odes praising them and thanking them have survived – odes by men such as Huw Machno, Lewys Dwnn and Siôn Mawddwy. Lewys Dwnn was perhaps rather mercenary:

Generous and tender, most encouraging,
With gold for me, is he always,
William will always pay
For he cares for praise, like the men of yore.

Brilliant author of a fine work,
You have brightened, adorned our language,
From Greek and from Hebrew
And wise Latin, all gifts,
You turned the Testament from them
Into fine and beautiful Welsh.
Happy feast was it, it could not be done
Had it not been for the man from Gwynedd.

For little Wales fairest nurture
And fair was your birth,
O famous Lord, you brought us
Like blind men out of our darkness.

Distant is the way for us Welshmen
To our church to travel,
Eternal is the winter, Lord,
When the days grow colder,
O, Tydain of Christendom, only a strong man
O, splendid lion, can go
From Glyn Neath that merry place
To Glyn Corrwg, so much is clear.

So he begs you, generous Lord,
My lord he begs in earnest tones,
That he might be permitted to build
A chapel for the land where he dwells.

Figure 27. Mathern Palace, near Chepstow. Pencil drawing by C. L. W., c. 1820.

The proposed chapel was indeed built at Clun y Bont in Cwm-gwrach, and its successor stands there to this day. The descendants of George Williams continued to worship there although they later built yet another chapel of ease by their house at Aberpergwm. One of the family, Maria Jane Williams, ‘Llinos', the famous collector of folk songs, was the churchwarden of the little chapel in the nineteenth century. This particular ode has been quoted here in some detail because it is a good sign of the bishop's liking for bardistry and a good sign of his happy stay at Llandaff, and a sign of what was a moment, all too brief in Welsh cultural life, of happy cooperation between bards, squires and ecclesiastics, all through the medium of Welsh.

In 1600 his old friend William Hughes, Bishop of St. Asaph, died and there was much anxious correspondence about his successor. A mutual friend, Gabriel Goodman, Dean of Westminster, said that William Morgan was the most appropriate choice, and he wrote to Robert Cecil, who had by now risen to the place of his father, William Cecil, as chief adviser to the Queen:

My lord of Llandaff is well known to be the most sufficient man in that country both for his learning, government and honesty of life, and hath also best deserved of our country for his great pains and charges in translating the Bible into our vulgar tongue, with such sufficiency as deserveth great commendation and reward.

Figure 28. Bishop Morgan did not succeed in preventing the dilapidation of Llandaff Cathedral. Engraving by S Hooper, 1787.

So William and his wife travelled back again to the North. One should perhaps insert here that Catherine ferch George did not have any children either from her first or her second marriage. As in Llandaff, the bishop's palace at St. Asaph was in ruins, and so they went to live in the Archdeacon's house, Plas Gwyn, in the village of Dyserth, a little to the east of St. Asaph. Here again they were most welcoming to the bards. Owain Gwynedd wrote Morgan an ode of welcome to St. Asaph: Rhys Cain wrote a comic ode on behalf of William Morgan to John Vaughan, the vicar of Abergele, thanking him for the gift of some geese – the geese of Abergele were so ferocious that they had killed the bishop's own geese and also his greyhound. It is clear that as at Llandaff, here in St. Asaph he gathered around him a wide circle of literary friends who swapped Welsh poems.

He carried out his duties at St. Asaph conscientiously. The only kinsman to whom he gave favour was one Evan Morgan, the son of his brother, who became the vicar of Llanasa in Flintshire. He gave patronage to some scholars, almost the last thing he did being to appoint to the rectory at Mallwyd his friend and pupil Dr. John Davies, the finest scholar of his generation. One example of his dutifulness as bishop was that he paid out of his own pocket for the re-roofing of the cathedral church at St. Asaph. By the standards of his day he was already an old man, and yet he worked at his fresh translation of the New Testament completing it in 1603. The manuscript was then taken to London by Thomas Salesbury, but disappeared when Salesbury was forced to flee from London to escape the plague.

It is sad to relate of this return to the North that he also returned to more local squabbling, not this time with his parishioners but with the gentry of the diocese. In 1602 he quarrelled with a powerful landowner in Abergele, Denbighshire, David Holland of Teirdan, a stubborn, vengeful and litigious man. It was over tithe payments at Abergele, and yet again Sir John Wynn was called in to intervene and settle the dispute for his old friend William Morgan. Such quarrels, of course, were not uncommon at this period, a time when the gentry could see easy pickings to enrich themselves at the expense of the Church.

More ironic, perhaps tragic, was the quarrel between Morgan and Sir John Wynn himself. This happened in February 1603, by which time the bishop's health had begun to give way, and the bone of contention was the tithe of Llanrwst parish. Wynn tried to get the bishop to lease him the tithe at a small rent, but the bishop knew well that considerable profits would accrue to Wynn, and so he refused to yield, saying it would be to the disadvantage of the Church. Wynn and his allies claimed that the bishop really wanted to retain the tithe for himself, and thus add to his own income. Wynn was deeply offended, the more so because he had all his life helped Morgan, had assisted his rise to office, had intervened to help him in every dispute, and had been actually promised the rent of the tithe by Morgan himself in the first place. A good deal of acrimonious correspondence appears to have passed to and fro in 1603 and 1604 and, in his last letter of 24 July 1604, Morgan refuses to yield an inch although he is now a very sick man. He went off to England to look for medicines and doctors to improve his health, and stayed there for six months, but all in vain. He returned to St. Asaph and died there on 10 September 1604. He was buried somewhere inside the cathedral church, probably near the high altar in the chancel, but there is no memorial stone to mark the spot. His widow survived him for a year, went back to her native town of Oswestry and died there.

Morgan left a will, his executors being Dr. John Davies of Mallwyd, his nephew Evan Morgan, John Chambres of Lleweni, the nephew of Gabriel Goodman, and John Price the headmaster of Ruthin school. John Wynn rightly observed that Morgan died a poor man, his goods totalling in value only some £110, a paltry sum compared with the wealth of Elizabethan gentry. A few debts were owed out of that sum. According to the will he had a collection of some 45 pewter vessels, five flower-pots, two peacocks and two swans. We have thus a rare glimpse of some of his personal tastes, for pewter, flowers and pets, but on the whole the will shows how frugally and unpretentiously William Morgan had lived, and how very remote was his style of life from that of the Elizabethan gentry. It would be hard to find a more glaring contrast than that of his nameless stone and the monuments of the Wynns of Gwydir.