ties  for  individuals  to  travel  between  England  and  Wales,  be  they  secular  lords,
bishops,  monks  or  merchants.5
At  the  same  time  the  creation  of  Norman  lordships  in  Wales  accentuated  the  political
fragmentation  of  the  country,  injecting  new  ethnic  and  cultural  divisions  into  what
has  been  aptly  described  as  a  country  ‘of  plural  frontiers’.6  Of  no  region  was  this
truer  than  Dyfed  in  south-west  Wales,  the  birth-place  of  the  churchman,  scholar  and
author  who  is  the  subject  of  this  paper:  Giraldus  Cambrensis  or  Gerald  de  Barri.7
Giraldus’s  maternal  grandmother,  Nest,  was  the  daughter  of  the  Welsh  king  of
Dyfed,  Rhys  ap  Tewdwr,  killed  by  the  Normans  in  1093;  Dyfed  swiftly  fell  to  the
Normans  and  was  divided  into  a  number  of  small  lordships.  Among  the  early  Norman
  conquerors  in  the  region  was  Giraldus’s  maternal  grandfather,  Gerald  of  Windsor,
  castellan  of  Pembroke,  who  married  Nest  ‘with  the  object  of  giving  himself  and
his  troops  a  firmer  foothold  in  the  country.’8  Giraldus’s  father,  William  de  Barri,  was
a  minor  Norman  lord  whose  castle  lay  at  Manorbier.  By  ancestry,  then,  Giraldus  was
three-quarters  Norman  and  one  quarter  Welsh,  the  product  of  intermarriage  which
was  a  fairly  common  characteristic  in  the  Welsh  March.9  This  mixed  ancestry  was  to
play  an  important  part  in  his  career,  for  he  was  related,  not  only  to  leading  Norman
families  in  south-west  Wales,  but  also  to  the  native  ruling  house  represented  by  the
successors  of  his  great-grandfather,  Rhys  ap  Tewdwr.  When  Giraldus  was  bom,  c.
1146,  this  house  was  beginning  to  revive  its  power,  notably  at  the  expense  of  the
Clare  lords  of  Ceredigion  and  the  Cliffords  of  Llandovery.  Just  over  twenty  years
later,  in  1169,  many  of  Giraldus’s  relatives,  including  two  of  his  elder  brothers,
seized  the  opportunity  to  seek  new  fortunes  in  Ireland  by  participating  in  the  Anglo-Norman
  intervention  prompted  by  the  request  for  military  help  from  the  exiled  king
of  Leinster,  Diarmait  Mac  Murchada.10  Giraldus  thus  came  from  a  region  of  shifting
borders  and  also,  more  importantly,  from  a  family  well  used  to  negotiating  the
frontiers  between  natives  and  incomers  in  south-west  Wales.

5  See  e.g.  Ralph  A.  Griffiths,  Medieval  Severnside:  The  Welsh  Connection,  in:  R.  R.  Davies
et  al.  (eds.),  Welsh  Society  and  Nationhood,  Cardiff  1984,  pp.  70-89;  Huw  Pryce,  In
Search  of  a  Medieval  Society:  Deheubarth  in  the  Writings  of  Gerald  of  Wales,  in:  Welsh
History  Review  13  (1986-7)  pp.  274-5.
6  Davies,  Conquest  (as  n.  1)  pp.  3-15;  R.  R.  Davies,  Frontier  Arrangements  in  Fragmented
Societies:  Ireland  and  Wales,  in:  Robert  Bartlett  and  Angus  MacKay  (eds.),  Medieval
Frontier  Societies,  Oxford  1989,  pp.  77-100  (quotation  at  p.  80).
'  On  Dyfed,  see  Rowlands  (as  n.  1)  and  Pryce,  Deheubarth  (as  n.  5).  Of  the  extensive
secondary  literature  on  Gerald,  see  especially  Michael  Richter,  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  2nd
edn,  Aberystwyth  1976;  Robert  Bartlett,  Gerald  of  Wales  1146-1223,  Oxford  1982.
8  Giraldus,  Opera  6  p.  91.
9  A.  J.  Roderick,  Marriage  and  Politics  in  Wales,  1066-1282,  in:  Welsh  History  Review  4
(1968-9)  pp.  4-8,  11-12.
10  Marie  Therese  Flanagan,  Irish  Society,  Anglo-Norman  Settlers,  Angevin  Kingship:  Interactions
  in  Ireland  in  the  Late  Twelfth  Century,  Oxford  1989,  pp.  140-53.

46