Author: Morgan, Caesar
Biography:
MORGAN, Caesar (1749/50-1812: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born in 1749/50 at Ty Gwyn, near Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, the son of Nicholas Morgan. His mother’s name is not known. (It should be possible to establish further details of the family since his will gives siblings, cousins and nieces.) He went to the Grammar School, Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, and then proceeded to Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1768 (BA 1773, MA 1776, DD 1793), where his fellow-Welshman Hugh Thomas was Master and Dean of Ely. Through Thomas, Morgan began a long association with Ely Cathedral as Prebendary and held various other church appointments in the area. He married Mary Gibbs on 22 April 1776 at St. Nicholas, Ipswich. His Poems (1783) included three poems on Welsh history and myth: "The Hermit of Snowdon," "The Shrine of King Arthur," and "The Cave of Merlin." Mary, his wife, also took up these themes in her epistolary travelogue, A Tour to Milford Haven, in the Year 1791 (1795), 144-189. He was more widely admired for his prize-winning essay on a theme which would much agitate the Anti-Jacobins after 1789: A Demonstration that True Philosophy has No Tendency to Undermine Divine Revelation and that a Well-grounded Philosopher may be a True Christian (Haarlem 1786, Cambridge 1787). He died at Stretham, near Ely, where he was Rector, on 10 Jan. 1812, aged 62. His wife Mary had predeceased him and was the subject of a GM eulogy, which he possibly wrote. (ancestry.co.uk 23 Jan. 2021; James Bentham, The History and Antiquities of the Conventual and Cathedral Church of Ely [1812] 2: Addenda ,18; Bury and Norwich Post 20 Jul. 1808, 15 Jan. 1812; GM Aug. 1808, 751, Feb. 1812, 193) AA