From this atmosphere of superstition Morgan escaped early, being sent to school with Walter Cradock at Wrexham, then the most enlightened centre in the whole country. From his able teacher he learned all the new ideas of freedom both in religion and in politics; and it is not surprising that, when the Civil War broke out, he should have joined the Parliamentary army, and served as chaplain for several years. While in London he united himself with that wonderful sect called the Fifth Monarchy Men. These men believed that the world was destined to be governed by five great monarchies in succession. Four--Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome--had already been, and were humbled in the dust. The fifth was to be a heavenly kingdom. Christ would himself appear on earth, would free His saints from bondage, and would establish a universal and immutable empire. They believed His advent to be now at hand, and waited for it anxiously day by day. {194} Their duty, as they conceived of it, was to prepare the way for His coming; and it necessarily followed that an acknowledgment of any earthly monarch must be profane and blasphemous. Fanatical they were, unreasonable they may also have been; but there were no more unflinching upholders of the liberty of the subject, and no better friends of religious toleration. The most influential man in the sect was Harrison, and with his appointment, in 1649, as Governor of South Wales, Morgan Llwyd settled down as pastor at Wrexham. In February 1650 an Act was passed "for the propagation of the Gospel in Wales." Power was given to commissioners to hold an enquiry into the lives of all the Welsh clergy, and to deprive all such as were found to be immoral, incapable, or hostile to the new Government. A large number actually were ejected, and their place taken by a new and specially certified body of preachers. These commissioners were extremely unpopular in Wales, for the country was strongly anti-Puritan; and much of the unpopularity was visited on the new preachers, who were frequently waylaid and beaten. Not much progress appears to have been made; for as {195} late as 1656 we find Berry, who was Major-General, first for North Wales, and afterwards for South, writing to Thurloe--"One great evil I find here, which I know not how to remedy, and that is the want of able preachers. Certainly, if some course be not taken these people will some of them become heathens."