aspects  Giraldus’s  career  depended  to  a  considerable  degree  on  both  his  Welsh  and
his  English  connections.
Thus  it  was  as  the  legate  of  the  archbishop  of  Canterbury  that  Giraldus  began  his
career  in  the  diocese  of  St  David’s,  collecting  tithes,  and  it  was  the  archbishop  who
ordered  Bishop  David  of  St  David’s  to  appoint  Giraldus  as  archdeacon  of  Brecon
after  the  deposition  of  his  married  predecessor,  Jordan—although  the  bishop  was
doubtless  happy  to  advance  his  nephew’s  career  in  this  way.33  Indeed,  Giraldus’s
family  connections  made  the  diocese  of  St  David’s  the  obvious  place  to  demonstrate
his  credentials  as  an  ecclesiastical  reformer  trying  to  put  into  practice  the  ideals  he
had  absorbed  so  enthusiastically  in  the  Paris  of  Peter  the  Chanter.34  Politically,  it  was
those  family  connections  which  made  Giraldus  so  potentially  valuable  to  the  Angevin
  court:  it  can  be  no  accident  that  he  was  employed  at  precisely  the  time,  in  1184,
when  Henry  II  was  trying  to  repair  the  détente  with  the  Lord  Rhys  established  in
1171-2,  a  détente  which  had  been  threatened  by  a  recent  rebellion  by  Rhys’s  nephew,
Morgan  ap  Caradog,  lord  of  upland  Glamorgan,  with  the  active  support  of  Rhys
himself.35 36  Yet  those  connections  also  made  Giraldus  vulnerable,  as  he  discovered
when,  after  Henry’s  death  in  July  1189,  he  failed  in  his  missions  to  restore  the  peace
in  Wales  in  the  face  of  much  more  serious  attacks  on  royal  and  Marcher  lands  and
castles  by  Rhys  and  his  sons.  A  Cistercian  abbot,  William  Wibert,  who  accompanied
Giraldus  on  three  of  these  missions,  allegedly  accused  his  companion  of  betraying
the  royal  cause  by  siding  with  his  Welsh  kinsmen.3,1  Later,  however,  Giraldus  was
blamed  by  the  Welsh  for  having  the  Lord  Rhys  and  his  sons  excommunicated  by  the
bishop  of  St  David’s;  and  had  one  of  his  prebends  plundered  as  a  result.37
One  question  which  arises  from  an  examination  of  Giraldus’s  career  is  how  he  saw
himself  in  relation  to  England  and  Wales:  did  he  identify  with  one  country  more  than
the  other?  This  question  can  be  approached  from  two  directions.  First,  we  can  examine
  Giraldus’s  statements  regarding  his  identity.  These  have  attracted  considerable
scholarly  attention.  Very  briefly,  the  tendency  of  much  work  over  the  last  three
decades  has  been  to  minimize  the  significance  of  Giraldus’s  Welsh  ancestry  and
associations,  in  an  understandable  reaction  against  interpretations  of  him  as  an  early
Welsh  nationalist,  interpretations  based  excessively  on  the  autobiographical  writings

33  Giraldus,  Opera  1  pp.  24,  27.  For  Jordan,  see  most  recently  Julia  Barrow  (ed.),  St  Davids
Episcopal  Acta  1085-1280  (South  Wales  Record  Society),  Cardiff  1998.1  am  very  grateful
to  Dr  Barrow  for  providing  me  with  a  copy  of  this  work  in  advance  of  publication.
34  Bartlett,  Gerald  (as  n.  6)  pp.  27-33.
35  Cf.  Lloyd  (as  n.  3)  2  p.  561;  J.  Beverley  Smith,  The  Kingdom  of  Morgannwg  and  the
Norman  Conquest  of  Glamorgan,  in:  T.  B.  Pugh  (ed.),  Glamorgan  County  History,  Vol.  3,
The  Middle  Ages,  Cardiff  1971,  pp.  37-9;  John  Gillingham,  Henry  II,  Richard  I  and  the
Lord  Rhys,  in:  Peritia  10  (1996)  pp.  229-31.
36  Giraldus,  Opera  1  pp.  203-13.  Cf.  Gillingham,  Henry  II  (as  n.  35)  pp.  234-5  and  n.  57.
Giraldus  also  claimed  later  that  he  had  been  accused  by  Prince  John  of  emptying  Wales  of
its  defenders  on  account  of  his  success  in  recruiting  troops  for  the  Third  Crusade  in  1  188,
thereby  handing  it  over  to  his  Welsh  kinsmen:  Giraldus,  Opera  1  p.  76.
37  Ibid.  pp.  321,332.

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