PREFACE.
GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS, SO called from the country of which he was a native, was born about the year 1146, and belonged to one of the most distinguished families in South Wales. A Norman, or Anglo-Norman, chieftain had established himself in that district, and left to his family a name taken from the little island of Barri, on the coast of Glamorganshire. William de Barri, the head of this family in the reign of king Stephen, was lord of the princely castle of Manorbeer, in Pembrokeshire, and became allied by marriage with one of the most remarkable families in Wales. Rhys ap Tudor, prince of South Wales in the reign of William Rufus, had a daughter named Nesta, celebrated for her beauty, and for other accomplishments, who became the concubine of king Henry I., and was subsequently married to Gerald de Windsor, castellan of Pembroke. From this marriage sprung the illustrious family of Fitzgerald. William de Barri, just mentioned, married Angharad, the daughter of Gerald de Windsor and the princess Nesta, whereby the Barris became related both to the powerful Norman family of the Fitzgeralds, and to the princes of South Wales and the numerous families of Welsh chieftains who claimed kindred with them. Giraldus, the author of the historical treatises, of which we now publish a translation, was the youngest of the sons of William de Barri and Angharad; and was no doubt named after his maternal grandfather, the castellan of Pembroke. In one of the books translated in the present volume, Giraldus relates how his cousins effected that extraordinary series of exploits, the conquest of Ireland; and it was the unity of family of the conquerors, and their great connections in Wales, which made them objects of jealousy, for their success, to king Henry. The same feeling of jealousy was extended to Giraldus himself; and, according to his own statement, stood in the way of his advancement to the bishopric of St. David's; and this circumstance will explain many sentiments expressed by him in various parts of these writings.
Giraldus was born in the castle of Manorbeer, and, as he says, displayed in his childhood a love for literature, and for the ecclesiastical profession, which led his father to call him "his little bishop." His education was entrusted to the care of his mother's brother, David Fitzgerald, bishop of St. David's, with whom he remained until he had reached his twentieth year; and then he repaired to Paris, and gained great distinction in that University. He returned to England in 1172, and obtained ecclesiastical preferment; but his activity in correcting the abuses in the church gained him many enemies. In 1176, the see of St. David's became vacant, and the chapter chose Giraldus as their bishop; but the king refused his consent to his election, and Giraldus and the canons were compelled to yield. Peter de Leia, prior of Wenlock, was chosen in his place. He returned to Paris, and continued his career in that celebrated University, where he rose to great honours; but he came home again in 1180, repaired to his archdeaconry of Brecknock, and was appointed administrator of St. David's during a temporary absence of the bishop. During the few years preceding, the first conquest of Ireland had taken place. King Henry, visiting the borders of Wales in 1184, became acquainted with Giraldus, and, admiring his learning, took him to court. He employed him on several occasions in diplomatic negotiations with the Welsh, made him one of his chaplains, appointed him preceptor to his son, prince John, and, in 1185, sent him with the young prince to Ireland, in the quality of secretary.
Giraldus was evidently a zealous, if a rather credulous, observer and collector of facts. It was during this visit to Ireland that he occupied himself diligently in collecting materials for a description of that country, and remained there for that purpose some time after the departure of prince John. The result was his "Topography of Ireland," which he began to compose soon after his return to Wales, a little after the Easter of 1186, and completed in 1187. Its completion gave occasion for a remarkable display of the writer's vanity and love of ostentation. He recited his book, which was divided into three parts, which he called by the then fashionable term of distinctions, before a public audience of the university of Oxford on three successive days; and, to give more effect to this proceeding, he gave on each day a sumptuous feast. The poor people of the town were entertained on the first day; the doctors and students of greatest distinction on the second; and on the third the other scholars and the burghers and soldiers. Giraldus was evidently very proud of the sensation he had made on these occasions; for in one of his books (that De Gestis Suis, lib. ii. c. 16), he declares that it was worthy of the classic ages of the poets of antiquity, and that nothing like it had ever been seen in England. Its effect appears to have been to increase his celebrity.
In the latter part of this year news arrived of the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin, and all Western Europe was thrown into a state of great excitement. Preparations were made on every side for a new crusade; and Henry II., though too prudent a monarch to be led away by the enthusiasm to which it gave rise, could not avoid seeming to encourage it. He accordingly proclaimed the crusade; and Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, was sent to preach it in Wales. Giraldus was appointed to accompany the archbishop, in which there was no doubt a stroke of policy; for our author was then known throughout Wale's as the champion of the rights and independence of the Welsh church against the pretensions of the metropolitan see of Canterbury; and it was thought that, by joining him in the mission, the fears and suspicions of all who might be inclined to look with distrust upon the visit of the English metropolitan would be silenced. It is probable, indeed, that the presence of Giraldus, the Welshman who had morally been raised to the see of St. David's, did give favor in the eyes of the Welsh to archbishop Baldwin's preaching; although the vanity of the archdeacon led him to believe that his own Marvelous eloquence was the chief element in their success. This expedition is the subject of one of the most interesting of his books, the "Itinerary of Wales," which was compiled with the avowed intention of immortalizing the acts of the archbishop, and especially of his companion, the archdeacon.
In the year 1189, Giraldus accompanied Henry II. on his last expedition into France, and he appears to have been present at that king's death. The new king, Richard I., showed the confidence he placed in our writer, by sending him immediately to Wales, to persuade his countrymen to abstain from revolt, and he appears to have fulfilled his mission with success. We find a further proof of the king's consideration, in the circumstance, that, when Richard departed for the Holy Land, he appointed Giraldus, who had obtained a dispensation from the crusade, to be coadjutor with the bishop of Ely, in the administration of the kingdom. Our author was now so confident in his expectation of obtaining, through the king's favor, the high ecclesiastical preferment to which he aspired, that he refused the lesser bishoprics of Bangor, in 1190, and Landaff, in 1191, but his hopes seem to have met with continued disappointment, until, at length, he quitted the court, and, being prevented from going to France by the breaking out of war between the two countries, he retired to Lincoln, where he gave himself to his old literary occupations. And he remained in this retirement several years. In 1198, Peter de Leia died, and the bishopric of St. David's thus again became vacant. Giraldus was elected by the chapter, and opposed by the archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter, who refused to accept the nomination on the same grounds which had been previously alleged by king Henry II., that it would be dangerous to the English supremacy to appoint a Welshman to the metropolitan see of Wales. Meanwhile king Richard died, and king John, whose favor Giraldus enjoyed, gave him reason to expect that his election would now be confirmed; but the king yielded to the arguments of the archbishop, and, after a rather obstinate struggle on the part of the canons of St. David's to sustain their choice, the election of Giraldus was set aside, and the bishopric of St. David's was finally conferred on Geoffrey de Henelawe, in 1203. In the course of this dispute, in which an appeal was made to the pope, Giraldus gave so much offence to king John, that that monarch proclaimed him an enemy to the crown, accusing him of a design to raise a rebellion among the Welsh, and seized upon his lands. He, however, made his peace with the king, after the election of Geoffrey de Henelawe; but, having resigned his archdeaconry in favor of one of his nephews, and retaining only his two church preferments of canon of Hereford, and rector of Chesterton, in Oxfordshire, he retired finally from public life. The see of St. David's was again vacant in 1215, and was offered to Giraldus, but he was now unwilling to accept it. We know nothing of his history during the rest of his life, but he appears to have died in the year 1223.
Such was Giraldus de Barri, or Cambrensis, the writer of the four works translated in the present volume, and of many others, most of which have been preserved. In these writings he appears to us in the character of what we may truly describe as an elegant scholar, deeply learned in the learning of his day, and widely read in classical and medieval literature. He was evidently a diligent collector of facts, but he was at the same time a man of extraordinary credulity, as all...
