10

Cultural Revival and Romantic History: The World of Thomas Price (Carnhuanawc), 1820–48

In October 1840 the Revd Thomas Price (1787–1848), better known by his bardic name ‘Carnhuanawc’ (literally, ‘the sunny cairn or mound’),¹ drew the attention of a rapt audience of Welsh cultural patriots to ‘the extraordinary destiny of our race and language, and the prominent situation we occupy among the nations of Europe’. Whereas the Greek and Latin languages had experienced decline and fall, ‘the antient British language’ looked set to flourish ‘for ages yet to come’, since, having already enjoyed two Augustan ages in the sixth and twelfth centuries, ‘there is a spirit awakening which shows that something extraordinary is about to take place’, heralded by the recent publication of various Welsh texts.² This exceptionalist narrative of national revival framed against the backdrop of an ancient past articulated an essentially Romantic understanding of the nation for which there were many European counterparts in the first half of the nineteenth century.³ In Wales, that understanding was shaped and promoted above all by a network of ‘reactionary patriots’ comprising mainly Anglican clergy and gentry,⁴ who established new kinds of institutions exemplified by the body under whose auspices Price delivered his address, namely an eisteddfod held by the Cymreigyddion Society of Abergavenny, a small market town in Monmouthshire, and one of numerous societies established in this period with the aim of fostering Welsh culture.

Two years later Price completed the most ambitious history of Wales attempted hitherto.⁵ Written in Welsh and published between 1836 and 1842 by a printer in the small town of Crickhowell (Breconshire), this comprised nearly 800 pages that took its readers from the origins of the Welsh to the Edwardian conquest and thence briefly to the reign of Queen Victoria. While this traditional chronological emphasis no doubt reflected Price’s own convictions, it presumably also reflected the assumptions of both author and publisher about what would make the History a commercially viable enterprise capable of attracting a wide readership. Rather than relying on subscribers, the work was issued from July 1836 onwards in fourteen slim paper-covered instalments, costing 1s. each, that were sold mainly by itinerant booksellers in Wales and advertised as being available from booksellers across the principality and in London and other cities in England.⁶ The publication of the work was facilitated, then, by developments in the Welsh book trade intended to serve the needs of the growing numbers of readers of Welsh.⁷ Those developments took place against a backdrop of continuing economic and demographic growth sustained by industry and trade, as the population of Wales reached a million for the first time by 1841, and more than doubled between 1821 and 1851 in the two south-eastern counties of Glamorgan and Monmouth where industrial expansion far outpaced that elsewhere in the principality.⁸ The period also witnessed rural and urban protest driven by economic and political grievances which in turn left their mark on history writing, notably the 1831 Merthyr rising, the Chartist march on Newport in 1839, and the Rebecca movement’s attacks on toll gates.⁹ However, the composition of Price’s History also responded to Welsh readers’ interest in history, attested by the continuing popularity of Theophilus Evans’s Drych y Prif Oesoedd (‘Mirror of the Primitive Ages’), reissued nine times between 1794 and 1840,¹⁰ as well as shorter historical works in Welsh published earlier in the nineteenth century. The scale and nature of the response show, though, that Price sought to provide his readers with an authoritative account, informed by his own research, that would supersede previous Welsh-language histories of Wales. His book also stood comparison with the far more numerous English-language histories of Wales that had appeared since the late sixteenth century; indeed, both its length and its approach made it the most significant new account of Welsh history to appear between the works of Warrington (1786) and Gweirydd ap Rhys (1872–4).

The following discussion explores what the multiple worlds inhabited by Thomas Price reveal about the variety of Welsh history writing, in both Welsh and English, between c.1820 and his death in 1848. I assess, first, the contexts in which this writing was produced; second, the work of authors other than Price in the 1820s and 1830s; and, third, the significance of Price’s treatment of the history of Wales.

Contexts

Thomas Price’s work highlights the importance of two factors that helped to encourage writing about the Welsh past: developments in print culture and the establishment of new institutions dedicated to the preservation and study of the Welsh language and its literature. As we shall see, Price was not the first to publish a book on Welsh history in this period thanks to the initiative and support of printers in Wales. No less significant was the appearance of his earliest essays in the periodical Seren Gomer (‘The Star of Gomer’), a magazine established in Swansea in 1818 by the Baptist minister Joseph Harris (‘Gomer’; 1773–1825). An undenominational publication intended to foster the Welsh language that ‘became a forum for virtually all the leading Welsh writers and scholars of the day’, Seren Gomer—published monthly from 1820 and selling 1,500–2,000 copies of each issue—offered its readers a varied diet, including current affairs, religion, poetry, and history.¹¹ Among the historical topics featured were hardy perennials such as the ‘Treason of the Long Knives’, St David, Prince Madog and the Welsh ‘Indians’, and Owain Glyndŵr, as well as a pedigree tracing George III’s descent from ‘Cadwaladr, last king of the Britons’ via the medieval Welsh kings and princes.¹² Price also helped to found The Cambrian Quarterly Magazine and Celtic Repertory (1829–33), which, like the earlier Cambro-Briton (1819–22), gave prominent attention to antiquarian and historical topics.¹³

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries London had provided the main centre for Welsh cultural endeavour, mainly thanks to the efforts of the Gwyneddigion Society, whose support for The Cambro-Briton was gratefully acknowledged by its founding editor, the lawyer-turned-journalist John Humffreys Parry (1786–1825).¹⁴ However, Parry represents the end of this London-Welsh phase as the focus of such activity moved to Wales with the foundation of Cambrian societies for the four ‘provinces’—corresponding to major medieval territorial divisions—of Dyfed (1818), Gwynedd (1819), Powys (1819), and Gwent (1821). That the revived Cymmrodorion Society in London (1820), also named the Metropolitan Cambrian Institution, was envisaged as providing central co-ordination serves to underline the geographical shift that had occurred. There rapidly followed the establishment of similar societies, numbering over 100 by the 1820s, for individual Welsh towns, both old boroughs and new industrial communities, the most prominent being the Cymreigyddion Society of Abergavenny (1833–54).¹⁵ The societies and their associated eisteddfodau provided the first modern institutional framework in Wales dedicated to the cultivation of Welsh culture, including writing about the Welsh past, and their activities were publicized in Seren Gomer and other periodicals as well as in the newspaper press, media which, as elsewhere in Britain, became increasingly important outlets for the publication of history in the nineteenth century.¹⁶ While the impetus for the formation of the provincial societies came from a group of scholarly, antiquarian-minded, and politically conservative Anglican clergy, who sought episcopal, aristocratic, and gentry patronage for their initiatives, the societies’ eisteddfodau were open to competitors of varying social standing and religious persuasions and also provided new opportunities for women to pursue their interests in Welsh culture and history.

An influential pattern for the other provincial societies was set by the Cambrian Society for Dyfed established in October 1818 with the blessing of Thomas Burgess, the High Church bishop of St Davids (1803–25) ‘for the Preservation of the remains of Ancient British Literature, Poetical, Historical, Antiquarian, Sacred, and Moral; and for the Encouragement of the National Music’.¹⁷ Among its aims was the publication of ‘collections for a new history of Wales’ by Iolo Morganwg, who the following year staged a performance of his bardic vision of the Welsh past in Carmarthen by holding a Gorsedd at the society’s first eisteddfod, to the discomfiture of Burgess, the event’s patron, and despite the society’s recent resolution that it had ‘nothing in common with the Ancient Bardic principles, or institutions’ beyond ‘promoting the preservation of the remains of the Ancient Bards’ and awarding prizes for Welsh poetry and ‘the study of the Welsh Language’.¹⁸ Iolo’s Unitarianism and political radicalism ran counter to the Cambrian societies’ strongly Anglican and loyalist character as institutions that supported the state’s resolute commitment to upholding the established order in the era after the Napoleonic Wars. Thus the Dyfed society was ‘a Church of England Society’ since it had been ‘instituted for the investigation of our National Antiquities, of which, one of the earliest and most important branches is, the origin of the National, i.e. the Episcopal Church founded by our British and Saxon Princes, and by the common Law of the land’—a conviction in line with Burgess’s recent reiteration, predicated on the High Church belief in the British churches’ apostolic continuity and prompted by the movement for Catholic Emancipation, of the theory that the Church of England established at the Reformation had in fact restored an ancient, native, and fundamentally Protestant British Christianity.¹⁹ When applied to the Anglican Church, at least, the adjective ‘national’ here encompassed England as well as Wales, and is consistent with the society’s contributionist argument that ‘the Ancient Literature of Britain’ was ‘of general interest to all the inhabitants of Britain’.²⁰ Indeed, one resolution explicitly stated that linguistic and religious conservation served a politically conservative end:

That the primitive Language, Religion, and Church of Britain, are at this day subsisting in greater purity than the primitive Language, Religion, or Church of any other country in Europe; and that it is our duty to maintain these national privileges with all the zeal and fidelity to which they are entitled; especially at a period, when it requires all the aid and vigilance of Government, and Local Magistracy, to counteract the extensive combination of Anarchy and Irreligion.²¹

Likewise meetings of the Abergavenny Cymreigyddion Society were ‘to avoid all subjects that were discourteous, disloyal to the government, or would lead to religious, political, or quarrelsome arguments’.²² At least in part, then, the establishment of the Cambrian societies reflected anxieties about popular protests and movements for parliamentary reform; indeed, as we shall see, Thomas Price implied that the cultural activities they fostered supplied an antidote to political subversion.²³

Welsh History Writing, c.1820–c.1840

Printed accounts of the history of Wales produced in the 1820s and 1830s varied both in their content and in the manner of their publication. Histories of England continued to provide limited coverage. For example, Sir James Mackintosh supplied a summary of events in Wales since the late ninth century by way of introduction to his account of the Edwardian conquest, which he maintained had extinguished Welsh nationality; he also observed that the history of the Welsh ‘has not yet been extricated from fable’ and that the ‘Chronicle of Caradoc of Llanarvon [sic]’ translated in David Powel’s Historie of Cambria had, unlike ‘the Saxon Chronicle and Irish Annals’, lacked ‘industrious and critical editors’.²⁴ Editorial work was undertaken, however, by the British government’s Record Commission, which resulted in the publication of sources relating to Welsh history, including the revised edition of Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum (1817–30), the Record of Caernarvon (1838), and Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales (1841), an edition of the medieval Welsh lawbooks by Aneurin Owen, son of William Owen Pughe.²⁵

Historical works in Welsh were generally published as commercial ventures, without subscriptions. Two notable examples appeared in 1822 from the press of John Jones of Trefriw and Llanrwst, who had brought out Robert Jones’s account of Methodism two years earlier.²⁶ One was a reissue of Theophilus Evans’s Drych y Prif Oesoedd (‘Mirror of the Primitive Ages’), the other a book completed in 1804 by the quarry-manager and antiquary William Williams (1738–1817) of Llandygái that was explicitly described as a continuation of Evans, a notion reflected in its title: Prydnawngwaith y Cymry (‘The Noonday of the Welsh’).²⁷ Priced 2s. 6d., Williams’s work drew on previous accounts of the medieval Welsh kings and princes by Wynne and Warrington as well as quite possibly a text of Brut y Tywysogyon (‘The Chronicle of the Princes’) in order to provide ‘the common people of Wales’ with a concise history of their nation in Welsh, thereby fulfilling a need identified by the Baptist historian Joshua Thomas over four decades earlier.²⁸ The work’s coverage followed the conventional parameters established by earlier English-language histories of Wales, being mainly devoted to the period down to the Edwardian conquest with only a brief narrative of subsequent events including the union with England, which, like Theophilus Evans, Williams welcomed while simultaneously indulging in anti-English rhetoric.²⁹ Another author who catered for the popular interest in the history of Wales was William Owen (Sefnyn; 1785–1864), a sawyer who had served as a marine in the Napoleonic Wars and was, unusually among Welsh writers of this period, a Roman Catholic, whose numerous and highly uncritical historical works, mostly in Welsh, included a prize-winning essay on the massacre of the Welsh bards submitted to the Caernarfon eisteddfod in 1824 and a pamphlet on Owain Glyndŵr.³⁰

The first English translation of Theophilus Evans’s ‘Mirror’ was published in Pennsylvania in 1834 with a preface commending the work’s appeal to descendants of the Welsh who had fled oppression in Britain for the liberty of the United States.³¹ By contrast, new English-language writing about the history of Wales continued to be produced largely by and for the lay and clerical gentry and professional classes. One strand was the topographical tradition represented by Thomas Pennant. For example, the artist Hugh Hughes acknowledged that his Beauties of Cambria (1823), a volume comprising sixty engravings, each with a page of facing text, derived much of its historical commentary from Pennant and Thomas Rees, author of a volume on south Wales in John Britton’s series, The Beauties of England and Wales.³² The appeal of the topographical is evident in other kinds of historical writing too. When Richard Llwyd, member of a gentry family in Llannerchfrochwel, Guilsfield (Montgomeryshire), prepared what would be the last new edition of Wynne’s History, posthumously published in 1832, he supplemented it with extensive ‘Topographical Notices’ on each county that occupied over half the volume and significantly extended the book’s geographical and chronological range.³³

Llwyd exemplifies a wider desire to build on previous accounts of Welsh history through detailed treatment of particular aspects. He had abandoned plans to write a biography of Owain Glyndŵr after he was beaten to it by the Anglican clergyman Thomas Thomas (1776–1847), rector of Aberporth (Cardiganshire) in 1822.³⁴ Thomas published his Memoirs of Owen Glendower with the support of over 500 subscribers, among them leading lights of the Cambrian societies, including Thomas Price.³⁵ Small wonder, then, that the book exemplified the societies’ combination of cultural patriotism and political conservatism, in which a heroic Glyndŵr is conventionally lauded as part of a glorious past subsequently superseded by an even more glorious future of Welsh assimilation with England. Thomas devoted the greater part of the work to a chronological account of the prince based closely on Pennant, but framed it in the longer arc of Welsh history from the Norman and Edwardian conquests of Wales to the eighteenth century. This enabled him to stress the prince’s role as a fighter for liberty who was the equal of ‘any British king or prince in military fame’ and deserved to be remembered as much as Cromwell or Bonaparte, as well as to defend the value of early Welsh history and literature, including Geoffrey of Monmouth, while nevertheless celebrating Wales’s eventual assimilation with England, after which ‘the ancient Britons…have been as memorable for their allegiance, as they had before been tenacious of their rights’.³⁶ This, Thomas held, had been demonstrated in recent decades by Welsh responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars: ‘when politics had rendered all Europe mad with insubordination and levelling principles, Wales still remained firm at her post, and shed its best blood in crushing democracy and subduing tyranny’.³⁷ Similarly he concluded the book with an account of the defeat of the French invasion of Pembrokeshire in 1797 that prompted a resounding declaration of loyalism:

May Britain appreciate her own prosperity, and learn wisdom from the fall of other nations! Let civil and religious liberty be her boast; universal justice her pride! And may the Principality of Wales, a district of much turbulence and discord heretofore, now incorporated with England under one august monarch, rapturously say,

Jam cuncti Gens una Sumus

–––––––– Et simus in ævum!

[Now we are all one people

–––––––– And may we be for ever!]³⁸

Thomas’s book was in turn a major source for an account of Glyndŵr in The Cambrian Plutarch (1824), a collection of biographical essays by John Humffreys Parry on twenty-two ‘most eminent Welshmen’ from King Arthur to the recently deceased clergyman, biblical scholar, and antiquary Peter Roberts (1760–1819).³⁹ Parry exemplified the continuing contribution of London-Welsh literati to writing about the Welsh past. A member of the Gwyneddigion Society, founding editor of the Welsh literary and historical periodical The Cambro-Briton (1819–22), and one of those who revived the Cymmrodorion Society in 1820, serving as first editor of its Transactions, Parry was appointed editor in 1823 of the Welsh section of an edition of early British historians planned by the government, an appointment abruptly terminated after he was killed in a drunken brawl in Pentonville three years later.⁴⁰ Like many previous Welsh historians who chose to write about the Welsh past in English, Parry presented his work as an attempt to remedy ignorance about the oldest of the peoples of Britain.⁴¹ As with earlier collections of biographies, The Cambrian Plutarch offered a thematically and chronologically more diverse picture than that of standard narratives focused on kings and princes down to the Edwardian conquest: poets, churchmen, and scholars far outnumbered the book’s five medieval rulers, and half of the individuals had lived in the centuries after 1282. Unsurprisingly, all the biographies depicted their subjects in a favourable light: Parry took great trouble, for example, to defend Glyndŵr from charges of treason against the crown.⁴²

Parry’s celebration of the achievements of the Welsh stood in stark contrast to the iconoclastic take on their history published by his older London-Welsh contemporary John Jones (1772–1837).⁴³ Like The Cambrian Plutarch, Jones’s History of Wales (1824) was brought out, without subscriptions, by a London publisher.⁴⁴ Its full title expresses the breadth of the author’s ambition: The History of Wales, Descriptive of the Government, Wars, Manners, Religion, Laws, Druids, Bards, Pedigrees, and Language of the Ancient Britons and Modern Welsh, and of the Remaining Antiquities of the Principality. In his preface Jones declares his determination to supersede the deficient efforts of previous writers on the subject as well as ‘to reject idle tradition, and to sacrifice even his national pride to the cause of truth’.⁴⁵ His critical dismissal of consoling visions of past grandeur, while anticipating trends that gathered momentum from the mid-nineteenth century, was at odds with the predominantly Romantic sensibility of Welsh history writing of his own time. In part, his ironic and at times sarcastic tone reflected his combative character: Jones had torpedoed his career as a successful barrister by making offensive comments on his fellow lawyers and been expelled from the Gwyneddigion Society after publishing a highly unflattering portrait of Owen Jones (Owain Myfyr), patron of the Myvyrian Archaiology.⁴⁶ Nevertheless, as much as he may have delighted, say, in subverting Iolo Morganwg’s grandiose claims for the superiority of south Wales as the home of a continuous bardic tradition deriving from the Druids by attributing its superiority in poetry to the beneficent influence of the Normans (to whom the Welsh, in his view, were indebted for much else besides),⁴⁷ such interpretations cannot be explained merely as attempts to puncture some of the cherished tenets of Welsh cultural patriots. They also reflected an adherence to Enlightenment rationality and notions of human progress, an intellectual outlook quite possibly informed by his studies in Germany and Austria towards the end of the eighteenth century, when he was awarded a doctorate in law from the university of Jena.⁴⁸ This comes across clearly in Jones’s downbeat assessment of the Druids:

we may lay it down as certain, that mankind, in the various stages from rudeness to civility, will be found to have the same religious sentiments, the same occupations, and the same customs and manners. The frame of our mental and corporeal faculties will admit of no deviation from this identity…To behold an order of men, possessed of every science and accomplishment, as the Druids are said to have been, while their compatriots were sunk in the grossest ignorance, is such a phainomenon [sic] as never was seen.⁴⁹

Similar assumptions inform Jones’s criticisms, here following Gerald of Wales, of the propensity of medieval Welsh rulers for ‘civil dissentions, devastations, and murders’, defects thrown into relief by the peaceful reign of Hywel Dda (Hywel the Good), ‘the only good prince that Wales ever produced’.⁵⁰ Nevertheless, the law code attributed to Hywel was cited as further evidence of Welsh backwardness, being ‘a very poor production’ whose opening section on the royal court ‘might suit the establishment of a farmer in the present day’.⁵¹

Jones was exceptional among the writers of Welsh history in this period in having studied in continental universities. Most works on the Welsh past were homegrown, many being the products of eisteddfod competitions held by regional and local Cambrian societies. These competitions included prizes for essays on a variety of historical topics, mainly staples of ancient British history such as ‘The credibility of the Massacre of the British Nobles at Stonehenge’ and ‘The History of the real Arthur, King of Britain; and on the fabulous Characters of that name’ as well as local history of all periods, including accounts of medieval castles and churches.⁵² The submitted compositions exemplified the widely divergent approaches of the time, ranging from the wildly imaginative efforts of William Owen (Sefnyn) to the critical scholarship of the Revd Rice Rees (1804–39), a fellow of Jesus College, Oxford and professor of Welsh at St David’s College, Lampeter. In his Essay on the Welsh Saints Rees sought to write an ecclesiastical history of Wales between c.400 and c.700 ce that was free of ‘fable’ and ‘bardic mythology’, declaring that ‘the business of the antiquary, whose object is the history of his country, is to search after the oldest authorities that can be procured, and afterwards to consider them by themselves, divested of the misconceptions and exaggerations of later ages’.⁵³ This rigorous reappraisal of the testimony of a wide range of Latin and Welsh sources, with a particular focus on dedications, placed the subject on a new footing that in turn served to confirm the Protestant theory of Welsh ecclesiastical history, according to which the Reformation restored to the Welsh their ancestors’ independence from Rome.⁵⁴

Most eisteddfod competitors were men. A notable exception was the antiquary Angharad Llwyd (1780–1866), daughter of the Revd John Lloyd who had assisted Thomas Pennant.⁵⁵ Although facing disadvantages as a single woman lacking any formal education and financially dependent on her brother, Llwyd was educated at home and inherited her father’s books and manuscripts along with his scholarly bent; she also benefited from her father’s extensive contacts with the gentry of north Wales to gain access to their libraries. Her family and social background thus allowed her to participate in the antiquarian activities and networks associated with the Cambrian societies and eisteddfodau in a way that was highly unusual among gentry women in her day, the closest parallels being Lady Charlotte Guest (1812–95), translator of the medieval Welsh prose tales (the Mabinogion), and Augusta Hall (1802–96), Lady Llanover, author of a prize-winning essay on the Welsh language and costume at the Cardiff eisteddfod in 1834 and patron of the Abergavenny Cymreigyddion.⁵⁶ However, neither of these women could boast Angharad Llwyd’s antiquarian accomplishments.

Llwyd’s best-known work was a prize-winning history of Anglesey submitted to the Beaumaris eisteddfod of 1832.⁵⁷ After a geographical introduction and a section on the Druids, this falls into three main parts, each representing different genres of Welsh history writing current at that time: first, a history of the kings and princes of Gwynedd, with especial reference to Anglesey, from the end of the Roman occupation to the conquest of Edward I; second, a detailed topographical account, occupying almost half the entire work, that relates the history of the places covered down to the nineteenth century; third, twenty-two ‘Biographical Sketches of Eminent Men Born in the Island of Mona’ from the sixteenth century to 1802, including the antiquaries Henry Rowlands and Lewis Morris, the poet Goronwy Owen, and William Jones, a distinguished mathematician and ‘the father of the celebrated oriental and general scholar, Sir William Jones’.⁵⁸ The work concludes with a short tribute to the author’s father, the Revd John Lloyd, lists of the island’s poets, sheriffs, and Members of Parliament, and newspaper accounts of the Beaumaris eisteddfod. In its subject matter and approach the essay conforms to the conventions of previous Welsh history writing by clerical and gentry antiquaries. It not only deploys a wide variety of sources, including the late medieval Black Book of Basingwerk and transcriptions of medieval and later documents in the manuscripts of both Edward Lhuyd and her father, but addresses well-established themes such as the Druids, the medieval princes, and the history of gentry families and their houses.⁵⁹ Llwyd was also conventionally prejudiced in her criticisms of ‘Atheistical Demogogues’, ‘monkery’, and Roman Catholicism (William Owen (Sefnyn) was dismissed as a ‘Papist Bard’).⁶⁰ Yet if in most respects her approach resembled that of her male counterparts, her gender may help to explain her unusual emphasis on the active role of some women. After quoting from a forged version of the medieval Welsh chronicles by Iolo Morganwg reporting that the women of Anglesey fiercely attacked the English who had killed Rhodri Mawr in 878, Llwyd praised the ‘heroic spirit…inherent in the women of Cambria, who in our time, without the aid of husbands or brothers, overcame and made prisoners, some hundreds of Frenchmen’ who invaded Pembrokeshire in 1797.⁶¹ In a more peaceful vein, Eleanor de Montfort, wife of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, is portrayed not merely as a pawn in her husband’s fractious relations with Edward I but as a peacemaker whose ‘mild influence…had been…the means of preventing hostilities’.⁶² Llwyd also stressed the important role played by Sir William Jones’s mother in her son’s education.⁶³

Angharad Llwyd stands in instructive contrast to the only other female author of works on Welsh history in this period, namely Eliza Constantia Campbell (née Pryce, 1796–1864), from a gentry family in Montgomeryshire, who published two books for children in 1833, the year after the death of her first husband, a commander in the Royal Navy.⁶⁴ One, intended ‘for the School-room’ and dedicated to William Owen Pughe (praised as ‘the most distinguished Welsh and Celtic scholar of the day’), consisted of a series of questions and answers, while the other, longer volume presented the material as stories told to the author’s young son, adopting the format of ‘nursery histories’ of England published at this time.⁶⁵ The subject-matter is conventional: beginning with the origins of the Britons, the Romans, Druids, and bards, both books move on to the era of the medieval Welsh kings and princes and the Edwardian conquest, before concluding with the rising of Owain Glyndŵr and the union with England under Henry VIII. The interpretation offered likewise follows familiar lines, as Campbell presents the history of Wales as meriting attention for its distinctive, indeed to some degree fundamental, contribution to a wider ‘British History’ while stressing that its eventual subjection to the English crown had been for the best.⁶⁶ Since then, ‘the Welsh have never been found behind their English neighbours in valour, faith, and loyalty, when the cause of old England required their services’.⁶⁷ What was new about her work was its form, including, in the longer book, its narration of Welsh history largely as a conversation between ‘Mrs. Campbell’ and her young son ‘Lewie’, with occasional interventions by his father. In seeking to instruct and entertain, Campbell presented her readers with a series of vignettes, based on established authorities like David Powel and infused with a Romantic sensibility exemplified by Iolo Morganwg’s bardism, Welsh American ‘Indians’ descended from Prince Madog and his companions, and descriptions of nature.⁶⁸ The same is true of her insistence, probably deriving from Thomas Price, that Wales was the original home of European Romance and inclusion of the recently invented legend of Llywelyn the Great’s killing his faithful greyhound Gelert in the mistaken belief it ‘had devoured’ his baby son.⁶⁹ Campbell approached the writing of Welsh history as a dutiful wife and mother who made little attempt to subvert established male-dominated narratives by attributing agency to women as Angharad Llwyd had occasionally done, the only exception being Æthelflæd ‘Lady of the Mercians’, a ‘very enterprising woman’ who built towns ‘and sent an army to invade Wales’.⁷⁰

Thomas Price (Carnhuanawc) and the History of Wales

The Revd Thomas Price was one of the most prominent figures in the Cambrian societies and their eisteddfodau. Strongly committed to fostering the Welsh language and the cultural revival of his day, Price demonstrated an interest in Welsh antiquities from an early age.⁷¹ The son of an Anglican clergyman and former stone mason, Price completed his education at the grammar school attached to Christ’s College, Brecon (1805–12) before being ordained a priest of the Church of England. He was remembered as a dedicated pastor of the parishes he served in Radnorshire and Breconshire, and his ecclesiastical livings also provided sufficient means and leisure for him to travel extensively in Britain, Ireland, and continental Europe as well as to pursue his interests in language, literature, and antiquities.⁷² While at Brecon his antiquarian interests were fostered by frequent visits to Theophilus Jones (1758–1812), then completing his history of Brecknockshire. Jones was evidently impressed by his visitor, as he asked Price to supply over half of the illustrations and plans for Volume II of the history, published in 1809, and two years later recommended him to the Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of London as ‘a young but intelligent and zealous antiquary’.⁷³ Price shared important assumptions and interests not only with Jones but also with the latter’s grandfather, Theophilus Evans, another Anglican priest whose identification with the Church of England had a distinctively Welsh complexion. However, Price inhabited a different cultural world from that of Evans thanks to the formation of the Cambrian societies and to the influence of Iolo Morganwg’s bardism, to which Price was highly receptive, notwithstanding its radical elements, in common with other antiquarian- and literary-minded Welsh contemporaries.⁷⁴ As well as being a frequent eisteddfod competitor and adjudicator, Price was a founding member and president of the Brecon Cambrian Society established in 1823 and played a central role in the Abergavenny Cymreigyddion Society, which he helped to found in 1833, having already excited the interest of the society’s best-known patron, Augusta Hall, later Lady Llanover, in the Welsh language and Welsh culture.⁷⁵ His commitment to cultural revivalism was also exemplified by his promotion of Welsh harp music and role in the establishment and running of the Cambrian Quarterly Magazine (1829–33) and the Welsh Manuscript Society, founded in 1836 for the purpose of publishing editions of mainly medieval texts.⁷⁶

Price developed a deep interest in the literature and history of Wales and other Celtic countries, especially Brittany, with which he had first become acquainted through meeting Breton prisoners-of-war in Brecon during the Napoleonic Wars.⁷⁷ From the 1820s he contributed articles on the Celtic languages, Brittany, and other topics to Welsh- and English-language periodicals, some originating as eisteddfod prize essays.⁷⁸ He also published an essay on racial characteristics attacking John Pinkerton’s arguments in favour of polygenesis, which he deemed ‘blasphemous’ as they denied the biblical view that all humankind derived from Adam.⁷⁹ Instead, Price attributed physical and intellectual variations to environmental factors, explaining dark eye colour by the proximity of coalfields!⁸⁰ This work illustrated the strongly Christian dimension to Price’s work, also evidenced by his successful campaign to have the British and Foreign Bible Society sponsor the translation of the Bible into Breton. Characteristically, Price based his arguments on historical assumptions, namely that the Welsh and Bretons were closely related through their common descent from the Britons of the post-Roman period, and also followed a suggestion by John Hughes that the translation would repay a debt incurred by the post-Roman British Church when St Garmon (Germanus) and other saints came from ‘Armorica and Celtic Gaul’ to preach against the heresy of Pelagianism.⁸¹

Shortly before the appearance of the first part of his Hanes Cymru (‘History of Wales’) in 1836 Price declared that he had embarked on the task after failing to persuade anyone else to shoulder it, though his memorialist Jane Williams later stated that the work was commissioned by its publisher—and keen eisteddfod competitor—Thomas Williams of Crickhowell. He also stressed that his aim was to make the history of Wales available in the Welsh language, adding that the only histories of that kind were the medieval chronicles Brut y Tywysogyon and Brut y Brenhinedd, recently printed in the scarce and prohibitively expensive Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales.⁸² Price made his popularizing intentions clear in an address to his ‘compatriots’ in the first number, where he declared that he had tried ‘to express my thoughts in an easily understandable language’.⁸³ Price deliberately sought, then, to make his work accessible to the common people able to read Welsh, an aim in line with his criticisms, expressed most forcefully in letters published in 1844, of the failure of what he considered to be a corrupt Anglican Church in Wales to minister adequately to a rapidly increasing and mostly Welsh-speaking population attracted to Dissent, especially in the industrial areas.⁸⁴ Indeed, his resolutely patriotic History, with its providential interpretation of the survival of the Welsh and occasional quotations in black-letter type from the Book of Common Prayer, may itself be seen as an extension of Price’s pastoral commitment to the Welsh-speaking majority.⁸⁵ He certainly appears to have satisfied his target audience, as the response to his work in the Welsh press was generally favourable, one commentator describing it as ‘the best written and most faithful record of the actions of our ancestors’, and Price was pleased to report that nearly all of the 2,000 copies printed ‘were bought by the labouring classes’ (reflecting a wider pattern among purchasers of books in Welsh in this period).⁸⁶

Like most other writers of Welsh history at this time, Price appealed to his readers by striking a traditional chord, as the conception and coverage of his Hanes Cymru followed well-worn precedents. Over 90 per cent dealt with the origins of the Welsh and their history down to the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in 1282, and only 2.5 per cent with the period from Henry VII’s accession in 1485 to the author’s own day.⁸⁷ Indeed, Price effectively revived the two-stage framework of medieval Welsh historical writing, in which Welsh translations of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history of the Britons were followed, from the late seventh century to 1282, by the chronicles known as Brut y Tywysogyon (‘The Chronicle of the Princes’)—an approach consistent with his regarding the latter as one of the main precursors of his own work. The former period appears to be synonymous with the ‘Cynoesoedd’ (‘Primitive Ages’ or ‘Antiquity’), given as the work’s starting point in its full title, which occupied half of the coverage down to 1282, the latter with ‘Tywysogion Cymru’ (‘The Princes of Wales’), the last major heading in the table of contents, and furnished with a separate introduction in which the author outlined the approach he had taken to his sources.⁸⁸ The first half of the work is subdivided into five sections charting the arrival of different peoples and the Christian religion: ‘The Coming of the Welsh to the Island of Britain’; ‘The Coming of the Romans’; ‘The Coming of the Gospel’; ‘The Coming of the English’; and ‘The Church’. By contrast most of the second half structures its narrative as a sequence of Welsh royal and princely reigns from the late seventh century to the Edwardian conquest, punctuated by short thematic sections on political geography, the marcher lords, religion, literature, and society.⁸⁹ The last sixty pages bring the work to a close with a summary account of events from the conquest to Price’s own day.⁹⁰

That Price wrote a longer history of Wales than his predecessors without substantially extending its chronological focus beyond 1282 was due mainly to the breadth of the sources he deployed, and also partly to his readiness to include some coverage of Scotland, Ireland, and Brittany as well as the British kingdoms of north Britain and Cornwall and their struggles with the Anglo-Saxons.⁹¹ In this, he was a beneficiary of studies and editions published earlier in his lifetime. The former included books by William Owen Pughe, Peter Roberts, Theophilus Jones, and Rice Rees.⁹² Price was particularly indebted to a work on the early history of the Britons and Welsh, Horae Britannicae (1818–19), by the Wesleyan minister John Hughes, which he praised for being ‘purified of superstition and inconsistency, with outstanding detail and criticism’, and also urged the translation into Welsh of Augustin Thierry’s ‘excellent’ History of the Conquest of England by the Normans (1825), a staple of Romantic historiography indebted to Walter Scott notable for its sympathetic treatment of the Welsh and other victims of Germanic and Norman invasions.⁹³ Most importantly, though, Price took advantage of the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales (1801–7) in order to draw on a wider range both of Welsh-language chronicles and of Welsh poetry and other literary texts than his predecessors, and thus to be the first to assimilate in a substantial general history of Wales the literary turn in the study of the Welsh past that had begun in the mid-eighteenth century.⁹⁴ Indeed, Price himself had devoted extensive attention to the Welsh language and its literature before embarking on his History. This is vividly demonstrated by an address to an eisteddfod at Brecon in 1822 in which, holding up the Book of Aneirin, a thirteenth-century manuscript containing the earliest extant text of Aneirin’s ostensibly sixth-century poem Y Gododdin, he expounded both on the poem (whose authenticity had been defended two decades earlier by Sharon Turner) and on the importance of bardism to Welsh culture through the ages, the latter argument evidently influenced by Iolo Morganwg.⁹⁵ In his Hanes Cymru Price not only reiterated these points but amplified them through frequent references to medieval Welsh poets, some of whose works he quoted extensively, especially in his accounts of twelfth- and thirteenth-century princes.⁹⁶ Price also followed Hughes’s Horae Britannicae in relying heavily on another medieval literary genre, namely the ‘Triads of the Island of Britain’.⁹⁷ While some of the triads he cited were authentic medieval texts, the waters had been muddied by Iolo Morganwg’s inclusion in the Myvyrian Archaiology of a ‘Third Series’ of triads, which he in fact had concocted (albeit partly by elaborating genuine medieval triads) and passed off as the earliest and most authentic versions (see Chapter 9). Although Price was not alone among nineteenth-century Welsh scholars in swallowing this deception, his readiness to rely on the triads was criticized both at the time of publication and subsequently, and differed sharply from the cautious approach to their use advocated by his German contemporary Albert Schulz (San-Marte).⁹⁸

It is true that Price felt it necessary to assess the historical value of the triads, arguing that they were consistent with the testimony of other sources and differed markedly from medieval texts considered to be forgeries.⁹⁹ However, he unwittingly put his finger on their true character by adding that it was ‘as if they had been composed under the full radiance of historical knowledge of recent times’: Price’s ostensibly critical approach to sources provided only partial protection from the allure of the fabulous and fanciful.¹⁰⁰ Likewise, his History exposes a tension between, on the one hand, the aim of distinguishing ‘authority’ and ‘(true) history’ from ‘imagination’ or ‘legends’ and, on the other, adherence to long-established understandings of ancient and medieval Welsh history and the sources on which these were based.¹⁰¹ He was certainly prepared to challenge the veracity of particular accounts and sources: for instance, he rejected the story of Edward I’s massacre of the bards, followed Iolo Morganwg and other Welsh literati in condemning the poems attributed to Ossian as a fabrication, and criticized some of the interpretations of Edward ‘Celtic’ Davies.¹⁰² But Price was reluctant to dismiss the traditional sources of ancient and medieval Welsh history out of hand. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of his work, especially for the period down to the late seventh century, was its citing and assessment of different accounts of the same event, thereby demonstrating the author’s critical credentials while allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. One important consequence of this approach was to give a voice to Geoffrey of Monmouth—who Price, like earlier scholars, argued to have been merely a translator—on the grounds that, while implausible in many respects, his History might nevertheless contain a grain of truth and draw upon early medieval British sources no longer extant.¹⁰³ (His younger contemporary Rice Rees was less tolerant.)¹⁰⁴ It is telling that, even when he expressed scepticism about Geoffrey’s account of the angel’s ordering Cadwaladr to leave Brittany and end his days in Rome, on the (correct) grounds that the story evidently confused Cadwaladr with the West Saxon Cædwalla, whose death in Rome in 688 was reported by Bede, Price added that this was ‘not because of the legend about the angel; because if we were to reject every story from the early ages which contains superstitious legends, we would have nothing in existence in the shape of history’.¹⁰⁵ Price returned to these issues in a rare passage of methodological reflection, in which he differentiated between authoritative sources and those of questionable reliability. This reserved his sharpest criticism, not for medieval sources like Geoffrey’s History, but for recent English-language histories of Wales, all of which he considered inferior to David Powel’s 1584 Historie of Cambria. Whereas Powel had supplied ‘the events, in a comprehensive and clear manner, together with his authorities from old writings’, some of his successors—Warrington was probably in Price’s sights here—had prioritized literary effect over sound historical content, imputing motives and emotions to individuals without any basis in the evidence and making it impossible ‘to distinguish between the whim…of the writer of today and the reports of the ancient author’. Price’s aim was different, namely ‘not to assert anything, except with authority. And when I offer my conjectural opinion, to give it in such a way that it cannot be mistaken for authoritative assertions.’¹⁰⁶ Price thus implied that it was precisely his commitment to critical rigour that allowed him to include questionable sources and interpretations. In large part, this probably reflected his reluctance to abandon the glorious visions of the Welsh past inspired by Geoffrey of Monmouth and, more recently, by Iolo Morganwg. (By contrast, Price derided medieval Irish origin legends as ‘completely worthless’.)¹⁰⁷ In addition, whether deliberately or not, Price’s approach to his sources also spoke to the History’s intended readership by adding colour to the narrative and including, albeit with qualifications in some cases, episodes and individuals—including Gomer and Joseph of Arimathea—familiar from popular understandings of the past.¹⁰⁸

Price sought, then, to write a history that was both authoritative and attractive. One major selling point was its patriotic standpoint. Like many other writers of Welsh history before and during his lifetime, Price presented his readers with a gallery of heroes as well as the occasional villain. Thus the work defended the historical existence of King Arthur and celebrated him together with other brave heroic leaders from Caratacus to Owain Glyndŵr, while castigating Vortigern and other traitors.¹⁰⁹ However, Price also highlighted the unique achievements and virtues of the Welsh people as a whole. In part this was a conventional matter of stressing the antiquity of the Welsh as the original inhabitants of Britain (Edward Lhuyd’s theory of a previous Irish settlement was given short shrift),¹¹⁰ their survival as a nation against formidable odds (attributed to an independent spirit whose roots lay in tribal self-government),¹¹¹ and their success in preserving the language of their ancestors largely unchanged—a feat, Price pointedly noted, which had eluded the English.¹¹² The Welsh had also been much more successful than the English in being neither conquered by the Danes nor swiftly defeated by the Normans, and in keeping alive the memory of their early warriors; indeed, the Britons had done much more than the English to record the conquests of Hengist and Horsa.¹¹³ Nor was Welsh exceptionalism limited to the orbit of Britain, as Price also claimed for medieval Wales a wider European significance. This went beyond emphasizing connections with Brittany and extended to the assertion that Wales was the source of European chivalry, a theory that possibly built on brief suggestions by William Owen Pughe or Walter Scott.¹¹⁴ Price is first known to have advanced this idea in his address at Brecon in 1822, and he developed it over the following years. Similar assertions also began to be made by other writers, including the literary scholar Albert Schulz (San-Marte), author of a prize-winning essay on the influence of Welsh traditions on German, French, and Scandinavian literature at the Abergavenny eisteddfod of 1840.¹¹⁵ According to Price, European romance originated with the Welsh bards’ tales of Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, which had been taken via Bretons to France and beyond as part of the ‘awakening’ of Europe from about the beginning of twelfth century, thereby resulting ‘in the system of chivalry of the middle ages, that sprung out of the feelings which the Bards of Wales and Brittany had excited’.¹¹⁶

Yet, notwithstanding his Romantic sensibility and eagerness to praise the achievements and virtues of the Welsh, Price was careful to insist that their history was ultimately governed by a divine providence ready to punish as well as reward.¹¹⁷ Thus he opened the introduction to the second main part of the History by noting that, after ‘the Welsh nation’ had lost its extensive territories and been confined to Wales,

Providence thought fit to stop the destruction; and for more than a thousand years, though many unfortunate events happened to our nation, nevertheless their name was not destroyed, nor was their number reduced. And since this was the sentence for our crimes…I see a great reason to be grateful for mildness towards us, even in the midst of chastisement…¹¹⁸

Likewise Price saw ‘the hand of providence’ in the introduction of Christianity to Roman Britain.¹¹⁹ In addition, he invoked the secular concept of fate in relation to the downfall of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in 1282, which he not only compared with the defeat of Caradog (Caratacus) by the Romans 1,200 years earlier but attributed to Llywelyn’s marriage to Eleanor de Montfort and the resulting coupling of the prince’s fate with that of the Waldenses—heretics portrayed in suitably proto-Protestant guise—seeking revenge after their persecution by Eleanor’s grandfather Simon de Montfort.¹²⁰ The latter assertion in turn exemplified Price’s view that ‘the largest portion of the history of the nations of the earth [consists of] a catalogue of crimes and punishments; of injury and wrong on the one hand, and revenge on the other…The nation of the Welsh has frequently had experience of these things.’¹²¹ But not only the Welsh: the passage follows a justification for Welsh participation in the conquest of Ireland in the late twelfth century as paying the Irish back for their attacks on Britain in previous ages, while Price later observed that the Bretons in William the Conqueror’s army had recovered the land lost by their ancestors and helped ‘to place the yoke of slavery on the necks of the English, as payment for violence and exile’.¹²²

Price’s History, then, was imbued with a strongly Christian perspective, albeit one that, in the tradition of Gildas, owed more to the Old Testament than the New. More specifically, like many other historians of Wales since the sixteenth century and some fellow Anglican clergy of his own day such as Thomas Burgess, Price wrote as a defender of the Church of England fiercely hostile to Roman Catholicism (no mention is made of Catholic Emancipation in 1829), although he admitted that the ‘Church of Rome’ had accomplished some things ‘worthy of praise’ such as preserving the Scriptures uncorrupted.¹²³ Moreover, as a sharp critic of ‘the Anglo-Welsh Bishops, who fatten on the dioceses of the aboriginal Britons’ to the detriment of the Welsh-speaking poor, ‘ultimately driving them to the dissenting chapels’, whose ministers were more supportive of his History than most of his fellow Anglican clergy, it is hardly surprising that Price tried to be even-handed in his treatment of seventeenth-century Dissenters and the ejection of Puritan clergy after the Restoration.¹²⁴ However, his ecclesiastical allegiance also had political implications, as Price shared the outlook of other Welsh cultural patriots among the Anglican clergy in regarding the preservation of Welsh culture as a fundamentally conservative enterprise allied to the maintenance of existing social hierarchies and the political status quo. At ease with the gentry and aristocracy on whose patronage he and likeminded patriots depended for resources and legitimacy in promoting the cultural activities of the Cambrian societies, Price sought not only to inform his readers about the Welsh past but to instruct them in its lessons for their place in early Victorian Britain.

In part this was a matter of reiterating the well-worn view that the history of Wales as an independent polity had ended with the Edwardian conquest; thereafter its political history was indissolubly tied to that of England.¹²⁵ One corollary of this was that the Welsh could take pride in being an ancient people who continued to make a distinctive contribution to a greater Britain. More generally, Price sought to explain how Great Britain had achieved ‘its present position of national pre-eminence’ in an essay first published in 1844 that dressed up fanciful and eccentric speculation in scientific guise, in which he proposed that empires and civilizations, from ancient Mesopotamia to the British Empire, ‘have always progressed in a north-western direction’ at an average rate of ‘50 seconds and a fraction in a year’ under the stimulus of an ‘influence…analogous to that of Electricity’ for which he coined the ‘Celtic term Kyffrawd, i.e. impulse or excitement’.¹²⁶ This allowed Price to present imperial expansion as natural and inevitable, being ‘a fierce and irrepressible spirit of emigration and discovery’ which ‘carried the Greeks to India, the Romans to Britain, and now urges the Britons to the extremities of the earth’.¹²⁷ Towards the end of his History Price also responded to new political challenges emerging closer to home in the industrial areas of south-east Wales. Most strikingly, he saw ‘the hand of Providence’ in the crushing of the Chartist uprising at Newport in 1839 ‘through the courage and skill of Sir Thomas Phillips, mayor of the town…with great slaughter’. He was quick to add, though, that ‘these disturbances of the Chartists did not belong to the Welsh as a nation, but rather the ferment was carried to Wales by the English’. On hearing of ‘the blood of the Welsh flowing along the streets of Newport, I could not refrain from groaning for my fellow-blood’, and wishing that the enthusiasm displayed there had been directed ‘towards maintaining the true privileges and rights of their nation’.¹²⁸ This consoling but inaccurate interpretation of Chartism as a foreign contagion was shared by other commentators, both Anglican and Nonconformist, and was of a piece with Price’s idealization of the Welsh working class as more peaceable, cultured, and polite than its English counterpart.¹²⁹ In 1826 Price attributed these virtues to the Welsh cultural revival of his day, observing that ‘while many less fortunate districts, even in the British Islands, are all but threatening rebellion…the happy natives of the Principality are composing odes for Eisteddfodau, and offering medals for the cultivation of the harp’.¹³⁰ Small wonder that he sought to exonerate the Welsh for an insurrection that shattered this idyllic image of social harmony, an image sharply at odds with the radicalism of the Chartist leader John Frost of Newport, who presented the power held by landed families like the Morgans of Tredegar as the latest chapter in a story of aristocratic oppression going back to the Norman conquest.¹³¹

Price’s response to the Newport rising offers an unusually explicit insight into his conception of Welsh nationality as something transmitted biologically whose key hallmarks were linguistic, cultural, and religious, and whose unique virtues were set in sharp relief, moreover, by unflattering comparisons with an English other.¹³² This is consistent with a broader argument that the fostering of culture and civilization compensated for political defeat and subordination. In part, this meant emphasizing that the Welsh of the early Victorian period were more civilized than their ancient and early medieval ancestors.¹³³ But above all it meant conceiving of their nationality primarily in terms of their language and literature. Thus, Price maintained not only that, as the birthplace of romance, Wales had significantly influenced European culture but that it had also surpassed all other countries in poetry and the nurturing of its language as part of a European awakening in the eleventh century.¹³⁴ Although the Welsh could be proud of their ancestors’ brave defence of their liberty, ‘this was only defence, and keeping their own. Yet when [the Welsh] look at the effects of their literature, they see a cause for taking pride, not only for keeping their own, but also for conquests of the most marvellous and honourable kind.’¹³⁵ Such views dovetailed neatly with Price’s emphasis on the revival of Welsh literature in his own day. It is telling, too, that in asserting that Welsh settlers in the United States ‘maintain their patriotism in a most worthy and commendable fashion’, Price singled out their continued use of their ‘old language’ and support for periodicals in Welsh.¹³⁶ He concluded his History, though, in homiletic vein, by reiterating his view that Welsh nationhood was inextricably linked to Christianity, expressing the hope that

while the Welsh Language continues to be an instrument for spreading scriptural knowledge, and a medium for truth; while it continues to be the language of the Christian ministry; in a word, while the Gospel is preached in the Welsh Language, that Almighty God will not allow that language to be extinguished, nor the nation that uses it to be erased from the land.¹³⁷

As a self-taught amateur Price was a world away from the emerging historical profession in continental Europe, centred above all in Germany and exemplified by Leopold von Ranke. Moreover, while many other writers of history were not professionals employed in universities, Price wrote in a different institutional and intellectual context from his counterparts in England, France, or central and eastern Europe. Learned societies in the latter resembled the Cambrian societies in their patriotic purpose but were more academic, and Price lacked a debt to Enlightenment historiography comparable to those of the Czech historian František Palacký, the Hungarian Mihály Horváth, or his older English contemporary, the Eton- and Oxford-educated lawyer, Whig politician, and historian Henry Hallam (1777–1859).¹³⁸ Receiving no formal education beyond grammar school and serving as a rural clergyman with a modest income, Price’s engagement with the past formed part of wider voluntary efforts to sustain the native vernacular and associated literary culture of a minority nation within the imperial orbit of a greater Britain. However, it would be mistaken to conclude that Price was completely isolated from wider trends in European historiography and culture. In particular, he was influenced by the Romantic history writing of his day reflected, for example, in his enthusiasm for the work of Augustin Thierry. His Hanes Cymru bears several of the hallmarks of Romantic national history, above all the importance it attached to medieval literature, an emphasis indebted not only to homegrown influences, especially Iolo Morganwg, but also to broader currents of European Romanticism and medievalism. Consistent with this is the work’s composition in Welsh, the first language of the overwhelming majority of people in Wales. Nevertheless, while his use of Welsh mirrors the democratization of the medium of historical writing identified by Monika Baár as a key hallmark of national history writing in nineteenth-century eastern and central Europe, Price did not resemble the latter, as well as Romantic history writing in England, France, and elsewhere, in their determination ‘to democratize their subject’ by focusing on the common people and their ancient inalienable liberties.¹³⁹ On the face of it, Price did exactly the opposite, offering a view of history that emphasized the traditional themes of distant ethnic origins, saints, and heroic medieval princes, augmented by a celebration of medieval literary achievements and culminating, through Henry Tudor’s victory at Bosworth, in the recovery of sovereignty over Britain. Yet this was also a view attuned to long-established popular understandings of Welsh history, which meant that Price to a significant degree offered his readers what they expected, reinforcing their view of themselves as the heirs of an ancient and glorious people that had preserved their distinctive identity as loyal and equal subjects of the crown.

Nevertheless, while Price’s History enjoyed respect and influence in the decades following its publication, it was never reprinted. To a significant extent the work was the product of a moment in Welsh cultural and intellectual life that was already passing during Price’s last years.¹⁴⁰ Two developments marked important shifts whose impact is assessed in Chapter 11, one challenging Price’s understanding of Wales’s place in the British state, the other the bardic and other fanciful aspects of his Romantic interpretation of the past. The first was the publication in 1847 of a report of a commission of inquiry into the state of education in Wales which included damning verdicts on the Welsh language, Nonconformity, morality, and other alleged defects of Welsh society that created a furore which reverberated for the rest of the century, verdicts that showed scant regard for the loyalism and Welsh cultural patriotism espoused by Price, who himself came under fire from the commissioners for alleged deficiencies both at his parish school and in his History that he vigorously rebutted in a letter to The Times.¹⁴¹

Price was not the only Anglican priest to reject the commissioners’ portrayal of the Welsh as prejudiced and inaccurate. Another was Harry Longueville Jones (1806–70), an antiquary of partly Welsh origin, who with the Revd John Williams (Ab Ithel; 1811–62), founded the journal Archaeologia Cambrensis (1846) and the ensuing Cambrian Archaeological Association (1847) in order to place the study of Welsh antiquities on a more systematic footing than before.¹⁴² These initiatives built on the antiquarian interests and activities of individuals such as Price, who shortly before his death in July 1848 agreed to be the new association’s local secretary for Breconshire.¹⁴³ Nevertheless, and this brings us to the second development, the association and journal opened a new phase in the engagement of the Anglican clergy with the Welsh past that promoted the recording of archaeological monuments and artefacts and medieval architecture alongside work on written sources. While there were Welsh precedents for this approach, especially in the fieldwork of Edward Lhuyd, immediate inspiration came from English and, above all, French example, thanks to Jones’s exposure to antiquarian endeavours and government measures to record and preserve historic monuments while resident in Paris between 1835 and 1842.¹⁴⁴ Whereas Thomas Price stressed the indebtedness of French and other continental romance literature to Wales, and supported efforts to persuade the Catholic Bretons to become Protestants like their Brittonic cousins in Wales, Jones believed that Wales had much to learn from the study of antiquities in France. In his commitment to critical scholarship informed by continental example Jones adopted a more rigorous stance than both Price and, more particularly, John Williams, an ardent proponent of Iolo Morganwg’s bardism who parted company with Jones in 1853.¹⁴⁵ The conflicting approaches they represented would become an increasingly prominent aspect of writing about the Welsh past from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries.

Writing Welsh History: From the Early Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century. Huw Pryce, Oxford University Press. © Huw Pryce 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198746034.003.0011

¹ The name of a farm near Crickhowell where he had resided: J. Rhys, ‘Buchdraeth’, 164; cf. Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 50–2, 61–2, 83.

² Monmouthshire Merlin, 10 October 1840.

³ Cf. Thiesse, La création des identités nationales, esp. 11–14, 106–11, 133–58; Leerssen, National Thought, 119–26.

⁴ Prys Morgan, ‘Early Victorian Wales’, 105.

⁵ Price, HC.

⁶ Thomas Price, Hanes Cymru, Rhif 1; Thomas Price, Hanes Cymru, Rhif 2; Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 293.

⁷ See Chapter 9, and Philip Henry Jones, ‘Printing and Publishing’.

⁸ John Williams, Digest of Welsh Historical Statistics, 1: 7, 17, 20; Gareth Elwyn Jones, Modern Wales, 151–2, 161–73.

⁹ Gareth Elwyn Jones, Modern Wales, 225–37.

¹⁰ DPO (1740), [xxxvi].

¹¹ [Thomas Price] Carnhuanawc, ‘Yr Iaith Geltaeg’; [Thomas Price] Carnhuanawc, ‘Hiliogaeth Gomer’; [Thomas Price] Carnhuanawc, ‘Cymry Llydaw’; Glanmor Williams, ‘Gomer’; Miskell, ‘Intelligent Town’, 52–3. Quotation: Huw Walters, ‘The Periodical Press’, 199.

¹² Seren Gomer, 2 (1819), 290–4; 3 (1820), 171–2; 5 (1822), 139–43; 6 (1823), 336–40, 369–70; 19 (1836), 129–33; 20 (1837), 65–8, 353–6.

¹³ Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 97; Huw Walters, ‘The Periodical Press’, 203.

¹⁴ John H. Parry, ‘Introductory Address’, 1, n.^*.

¹⁵ R. T. Jenkins and Helen M. Ramage, A History, 138–73; Mair Elvet Thomas, Afiaith yng Ngwent; Sian Rhiannon Williams, Oes y Byd i’r Iaith Gymraeg, 34–8; Löffler, ‘A Century of Change’, 237–40; Brynley F. Roberts, ‘Welsh Scholarship at Merthyr Tydfil’, 54. For an early account of the societies and their eisteddfodau see Cathrall, The History of North Wales, 1: 289–305.

¹⁶ Glanmor Williams, ‘Gomer’, 127–8. Cf. Howsam, ‘Mediated Histories’, 802–15.

¹⁷ NLW MS 11116E, fol. 2r; similar aims are given for the Powys and Gwent societies at fols. 17r, 27r. See also R. T. Jenkins and Helen M. Ramage, A History, 142–3; D. T. W. Price, Yr Esgob Burgess, 45–9; Nockles, The Oxford Movement, 25–6, 149, 170. The Cambrian societies may also be viewed as part of wider efforts, in which High Churchmen were closely involved, to renew and establish Church societies in this period: Andrews, ‘High Church Anglicanism’, 144–5.

¹⁸ NLW MS 11116E, fols. 2v, 14v; Geraint H. Jenkins, ‘The Unitarian Firebrand’. See also Löffler, The Literary and Historical Legacy, 46–7, 81.

¹⁹ Burgess, Tracts; Nockles, The Oxford Movement, 166–7; Kidd, British Identities, 121; Yates, ‘Anglican Attitudes to Roman Catholicism’.

²⁰ NLW MS 11116E, fol. 14v.

²¹ NLW MS 11116E, fol. 14v.

²² Mair Elvet Thomas, Afiaith yng Ngwent, 4.

²³ Cf. Nockles, The Oxford Movement, 44–53, 57–63; David J. V. Jones, Before Rebecca.

²⁴ Mackintosh, The History of England, 1: 243–51, quotations at 243, 245, n.* (first edition 1830).

²⁵ Pryce, ‘Medieval Welsh History in the Victorian Age’, 13–14.

²⁶ Gerald Morgan, Y Dyn a Wnaeth Argraff, 12–13.

²⁷ William Williams, Prydnawngwaith y Cymry, ed. Jones. Further editions of Evans’s work were published in Merthyr Tydfil in 1828, 1833, and 1840: DPO (1740), [xxxvi].

²⁸ William Williams, Prydnawngwaith y Cymry, ed. Jones, 2–3, 13 (quotation); Gerald Morgan, Y Dyn a Wnaeth Argraff, 18. Cf. Joshua Thomas, Hanes y Bedyddwyr, xxviii.

²⁹ Dafydd Glyn Jones, Un o Wŷr y Medra, 294–319.

³⁰ Emyr Gwynne Jones, ‘Owen, William’; J. E. Lloyd, Owen Glendower, 157–8; William Owen, ‘Hanes Cyflafan neu Ddinystr y Beirdd’; William Owen, Hanes Owain Glandwr. The English summary of William Owen, Drych Crefyddol, [v], makes its Roman Catholic standpoint clear: ‘a brief History of the Reformation, and an Account of many Britons who suffered Death for their Religion in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth, King James I. and Charles I. and II’.

³¹ Theophilus Evans, A View of the Primitive Ages, trans. Roberts. Evans’s account of Prince Madog’s alleged discovery of America may help to explain Roberts’s subsequent inquiries about Welsh ‘Indians’: cf. Hunter, Llwybrau Cenhedloedd, 111.

³² H. Hughes, The Beauties of Cambria; Thomas Rees, The Beauties of England and Wales.

³³ Richard Llwyd, The History of Wales. See also Cathrall, The History of North Wales.

³⁴ Richard Llwyd, The History of Wales, ‘Advertisement’.

³⁵ Thomas Thomas, Memoirs of Owen Glendower. See further Dafydd Glyn Jones, Agoriad yr Oes, 206–9.

³⁶ Thomas Thomas, Memoirs of Owen Glendower, ii, vi, 174–5, 214–15, quotations at xxii, 214.

³⁷ Thomas Thomas, Memoirs of Owen Glendower, 215; see also xxii, 236–8; ‘democracy’ referred to the French Revolution.

³⁸ Thomas Thomas, Memoirs of Owen Glendower, 240.

³⁹ John H. Parry, The Cambrian Plutarch, 230, n.^*.

⁴⁰ J. E. Lloyd, revd. Jones, ‘Parry, John Humffreys’; Glenda Carr, William Owen Pughe, 203–4, 210–11.

⁴¹ John H. Parry, The Cambrian Plutarch, iii–v.

⁴² John H. Parry, The Cambrian Plutarch, 229–30, 272.

⁴³ Looker, ‘Jones, John’.

⁴⁴ John Jones, The History of Wales.

⁴⁵ John Jones, The History of Wales, vii.

⁴⁶ Looker, ‘Jones, John’; Geraint Phillips, Dyn Heb ei Gyffelyb, 240–2.

⁴⁷ John Jones, The History of Wales, 220–33; Pryce, ‘The Normans in Welsh History’, 9–10.

⁴⁸ Looker, ‘Jones, John’; cf. Bÿggé, Travels in the French Republic, trans. John Jones, ‘LL.D.’.

⁴⁹ John Jones, The History of Wales, 215.

⁵⁰ John Jones, The History of Wales, 52, 80.

⁵¹ John Jones, The History of Wales, 151.

⁵² NLW MS 11116E, fols. 17v, 28r, 48r; Mair Elvet Thomas, Afiaith yng Ngwent, 73–84; Prys Morgan, ‘From Long Knives to Blue Books’, 203.

⁵³ Rice Rees, An Essay on the Welsh Saints, quotations at viii, x; Jane Williams, Literary Remains, 2: 194–5.

⁵⁴ Rice Rees, An Essay on the Welsh Saints, 313–14. For Rees’s significance see John Reuben Davies, ‘The Saints of South Wales’, 362–3.

⁵⁵ Mary Ellis, ‘Angharad Llwyd’.

⁵⁶ Augusta Hall, Gwent and Dyfed Royal Eisteddfod; Prys Morgan, ‘Lady Llanover’; Guest and John, Lady Charlotte Guest, 97–117.

⁵⁷ Angharad Llwyd, A History of the Island of Mona. References here are to the 1833 edition.

⁵⁸ Angharad Llwyd, A History of the Island of Mona, 381.

⁵⁹ E.g., Angharad Llwyd, A History of the Island of Mona, 2, 52–3, n. *, 148–63, 329–37.

⁶⁰ Angharad Llwyd, A History of the Island of Mona, 3, 51; Mary Ellis, ‘Angharad Llwyd’ (1973–4), 59; see also (1975–6), 66, 76–7.

⁶¹ Angharad Llwyd, A History of the Island of Mona, 61–2. Cf. MA, 2: 481 (‘Brut Aberpergwm’).

⁶² Angharad Llwyd, A History of the Island of Mona, 106.

⁶³ Angharad Llwyd, A History of the Island of Mona, 384–5.

⁶⁴ Robert Thomas Jenkins, ‘Campbell (Morrieson), Eliza Constantia’; Aaron, Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing, 63–5.

⁶⁵ [Eliza Constantia Campbell], The History of Wales; [Eliza Constantia Campbell], Stories from the History of Wales. Cf. Howsam, Past into Print, 10–13.

⁶⁶ [Eliza Constantia Campbell], The History of Wales, 79; [Eliza Constantia Campbell], Stories from the History of Wales, 50, 158.

⁶⁷ [Eliza Constantia Campbell], The History of Wales, 80.

⁶⁸ [Eliza Constantia Campbell], The History of Wales, 14–15, 52–7 (information partly derived from William Owen Pughe); [Eliza Constantia Campbell], Stories from the History of Wales, 75–7, 84–94.

⁶⁹ [Eliza Constantia Campbell], The History of Wales, 26, 60–1; [Eliza Constantia Campbell], Stories from the History of Wales, 28, 96–101. The point on romance may have derived from Price’s essay on Brittany, which Campbell knew: Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 1: 28; [Eliza Constantia Campbell], The History of Wales, 25.

⁷⁰ [Eliza Constantia Campbell], The History of Wales, 31–2.

⁷¹ Price, HC; J. Rhys, ‘Buchdraeth’; Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 3, 83. See also S. J. Williams, ‘Carnhuanawc’; Mair Elvet Thomas, Afiaith yng Ngwent, 109–17; Herbert Hughes, ‘Thomas Price’.

⁷² Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 45, 61–4, 89–97, 162–3, 200–3. His annual income was £300: J. Rhys, ‘Buchdraeth’, 167.

⁷³ Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 18–19, 40–1; Theophilus Jones, A History of the County of Brecknock, 2: plates II–VI, VIII–X, XII, XV, XVII; Thomas Price, ‘An Account of Some Roman Remains’.

⁷⁴ On Price and Iolo see Constantine, The Truth against the World, 152–3; Löffler, The Literary and Historical Legacy, 81–2, 85, 115, 133–4.

⁷⁵ Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 82, 229–31. See also Prys Morgan, ‘Lady Llanover’; Gurden-Williams, ‘Lady Llanover’, 74–5, 83–8, 127.

⁷⁶ Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 97, 233; The Liber Landavensis, ed. and trans. Rees, [iii]. Music: Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 82, 299–300, 393–411.

⁷⁷ Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 149.

⁷⁸ Above, n. 11; Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 83–5.

⁷⁹ T. Price, An Essay on the Physiognomy, quotation at p. viii. For Pinkerton and his critics, including Price, see Kidd, The Forging of Races, 110–13. Price also rejected Pinkerton’s arguments for the Germanic or Gothic origins of the Picts: Price, HC, 120–1, 125.

⁸⁰ T. Price, An Essay on the Physiognomy, 36–40, 101. Environmental factors are also cited to explain physical characteristics in Price, HC, 126–7.

⁸¹ Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 147–79, quotation at 152; John Hughes, Horæ Britannicæ, 1: 76; Constantine, The Truth against the World, 152–4.

⁸² Seren Gomer, 19 (1836), 221; Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 195; Thomas Price, Hanes Cymru, Rhif 1; Thomas Price, Hanes Cymru, Rhif 2; Mair Elvet Thomas, Afiaith yng Ngwent, 82. See further Ifano Jones, A History of Printing, 170–1; Pryce, ‘Medieval Welsh History in the Victorian Age’, 5–7.

⁸³ Thomas Price, Hanes Cymru, Rhif 1, back cover. Cf. J. Rhys, ‘Buchdraeth’, 166.

⁸⁴ Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 318–29.

⁸⁵ Price, HC, 133, 152.

⁸⁶ Quotations: letter from ‘Anhunog’, The Cambrian, 27 November 1841; Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 339. See also David Joshua in Seren Gomer, 19 (1836), 367; The Cambrian, 12 November 1836. Working people as the purchasers of Welsh-language books: Philip Henry Jones, ‘Printing and Publishing’, 319. By contrast, only 300 copies were printed of Wynn, The History of the Gwydir Family, ed. Llwyd: Mary Ellis, ‘Angharad Llwyd’ (1973–4), 83.

⁸⁷ Price, HC, 775–95.

⁸⁸ Price, HC, vi, 323, 368–70.

⁸⁹ Thematic sections: Price, HC, 449–72, 489–93, 534–41, 587–9, 600–8, 637–48.

⁹⁰ Price, HC, 735–95.

⁹¹ Price, HC, 100, 118–34, 144–7, 200–3, 275–92, 323–41, 475–8.

⁹² Price, HC, 187, 188, 408.

⁹³ Price, HC, 54 (quotation), 474, n.*; cf. Barczewski, Myth and National Identity, 129–30; Kelley, Fortunes of History, 143–4, 154–7. Thierry was praised in 1830 for portraying the Welsh as ‘a great, a good, and an intellectual people’ by Anon., Review of Thierry, Conquête, 105. See also [Eliza Constantia Campbell], Stories from the History of Wales, 9–10.

⁹⁴ His use of literature is noticed in William Williams, Prydnawngwaith y Cymry, ed. Jones, 5.

⁹⁵ Report of the Proceedings at the Eisteddfod, 5–6, 21–40. The manuscript was a gift from Theophilus Jones: Huws, Llyfr Aneirin, 43–4. Cf. Turner, A Vindication, whose comments on Y Gododdin are cited approvingly by John Hughes, Horæ Britannicæ, 1: 200–2.

⁹⁶ Price, HC, 42–50 (bardism), 354–9 (Aneirin), 567–8, 583–6, 663–4, 729–31 (Llywelyn ap Gruffudd).

⁹⁷ Cf. John Hughes, Horæ Britannicæ, 1: 12–15. However, by relying on triads in his account of Roman Britain Price went further than Hughes, who confined his attention to Roman authors and modern studies: John Hughes, Horæ Britannicæ, 1: 85–113; Price, HC, 56–79.

⁹⁸ Price, HC, 8–11, 54, 76–9; The Cambrian, 12 January 1839; HBC, 1: 7; Die Arthur-Sage, ed. San-Marte, 45–8.

⁹⁹ Price, HC, 76–9.

¹⁰⁰ Price, HC, 10–11.

¹⁰¹ E.g. Price, HC, 1, 12, 131, 153, 238.

¹⁰² Price, HC, 46, 116–18, 240–2, 251. By contrast, Ossian received sympathetic, though not uncritical, treatment in John Hughes, Horæ Britannicæ, 1: 30, 41–2, 72, 195, 342–55.

¹⁰³ E.g. Price, HC, 68–9, 113, 142–7, 236–8, 249, 259, 305.

¹⁰⁴ Rice Rees, Essay on the Welsh Saints, vi–vii, 83, 289–90.

¹⁰⁵ Price, HC, 317; see also 54, 312–15.

¹⁰⁶ Price, HC, 369.

¹⁰⁷ Price, HC, 128–31, quotation at 131.

¹⁰⁸ Price, HC, 12, 160–2.

¹⁰⁹ E.g. Price, HC, 79, 258–75, 542, 544–5, 569, 770, 772 (heroes); 244, 562 (villains).

¹¹⁰ Price, HC, 1, 133–4, 152, 221, 226.

¹¹¹ Price, HC, 294–5.

¹¹² Price, HC, 90, 226.

¹¹³ Price, HC, 227, 294–5, 401, 474, 481.

¹¹⁴ Pryce, ‘Medieval Welsh History in the Victorian Age’, 9–10.

¹¹⁵ Report of the Proceedings at the Eisteddfod, 28–35. Cf. [Eliza Constantia Campbell], Stories from the History of Wales, 28; Rice Rees, Essay on the Welsh Saints, ix–x; Die Arthur-Sage, ed. San-Marte, 28–33; Mair Elvet Thomas, Afiaith yng Ngwent, 87–8. Another German Welsh and Celtic scholar and prize-winning essayist at the Abergavenny eisteddfod (in 1842) was Friedrich Carl Meyer: Löffler, ‘Prince Albert’s “Celtic” Librarian’.

¹¹⁶ See e.g. The Cambrian, 5 December 1835 (speech at Abergavenny Cymreigyddion Eisteddfod); Thomas Price, ‘An Essay on the Influence’, esp. 235–6, 271–2, 297–9; Price, HC, 257–8.

¹¹⁷ E.g. Price, HC, 42, 98–9, 111, 150, 333, 395–6.

¹¹⁸ Price, HC, 368. Divine punishment of the sinful Britons is also emphasized at 98–100, 111–12.

¹¹⁹ Price, HC, 159–62, quotation at 162.

¹²⁰ Price, HC, 677, 702–3.

¹²¹ Price, HC, 133.

¹²² Price, HC, 133, 478 (quotation).

¹²³ Price admitted his ‘bias’ and ‘perhaps prejudice’ in favour of the Church in Price, HC, 789. Views on Roman Catholicism: Price, HC, 171, 203–13, 788.

¹²⁴ Price, HC, 786–90; cf. Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 161–2, 195–9, 318–29, quotations at 320, 327; J. Rhys, ‘Buchdraeth’, 166, n.*. The printer of Hanes Cymru was also a Wesleyan preacher: Ifano Jones, A History of Printing, 171.

¹²⁵ Price, HC, 761; and cf. 677, 738, 783–5. See also Jane Williams, Literary Remains, 2: 144–5.

¹²⁶ T. Price, The Geographical Progress, quotations at 5, 7–8, 20, 22–3.

¹²⁷ T. Price, The Geographical Progress, 25.

¹²⁸ Price, HC, 793. For the events see David J. V. Jones, The Last Rising; Chris Williams, ‘ “The Great Hero of the Newport Rising” ’.

¹²⁹ E. T. Davies, Religion in the Industrial Revolution, 78–82; Sian Rhiannon Williams, Oes y Byd i’r Iaith Gymraeg, 49–50; Jane Williams, Literary Remains, 2: 133–4; Price, HC, 700, n.*.

¹³⁰ Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 132.

¹³¹ David J. V. Jones, The Last Rising, 57.

¹³² A biological understanding of race is similarly found in the assertion that, as a result of intermarriage with the Welsh, descendants of the Norman conquerors in Glamorgan had become Welsh by blood: Price, HC, 488–9.

¹³³ Price, HC, 13, 42, 388. The early Germanic peoples were depicted in an even less flattering light at 224, 225.

¹³⁴ Price, HC, 535–40.

¹³⁵ Price, HC, 258.

¹³⁶ Price, HC, 794.

¹³⁷ Price, HC, 795.

¹³⁸ Cf. Baár, Historians and Nationalism, chs. 3–4, esp. 78–84, 101–2, 113–24; Kelley, Fortunes of History, 99–102.

¹³⁹ Cf. Baár, Historians and Nationalism, 46–52.

¹⁴⁰ Prys Morgan, ‘Early Victorian Wales’, 97–102.

¹⁴¹ Jane Williams, The Literary Remains, 2: 337–9, quotation at 339. Responses to the commissioners’ reports are discussed in Chapter 11.

¹⁴² Ben Bowen Thomas, ‘The Cambrians’; Pryce, ‘Harry Longueville Jones’; Pryce, ‘Jones, Harry Longueville’; H. L. Jones, ‘Education in Wales’.

¹⁴³ Arch. Camb., 3/10 (1848), 169.

¹⁴⁴ Pryce, ‘Harry Longueville Jones’.

¹⁴⁵ Löffler, The Literary and Historical Legacy, 91–2; Nancy Edwards and John Gould, ‘From Antiquarians to Archaeologists’, 145–9.