J. E. Lloyd and the Creation of Welsh History

Huw Pryce

Description

This is the first book about the historian John Edward Lloyd (1861 - 1947), whose A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest (1911) marks a turning point in the writing of Welsh history.
art One: A Historian's Life 1 Welsh Liverpool, 1861-77 2 Expanding Horizons: Aberystwyth and Oxford, 1877-85 3 Towards A History of Wales, 1885-1911 4 Historian of Wales, 1911-47 Part Two: The Making of a Nation 5 A Nation Revived: Lloyd and Modern Wales 6 Assumptions and Methods 7 Origins: From Prehistoric to Post-Roman Wales 8 Tribal Wales: Society and the Church 9 Princely Wales: Rulers as Nation Builders Conclusion: Creating Welsh History?

Sujets

• Histoire
• Great Britain
• History
• Wales
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780708323908
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

J. E. Lloyd and the Creation of Welsh History

Renewing a Nation’s Past

Huw Pryce

University of Wales Press

J. E. LLOYD AND THE CREATION OF WELSH HISTORY

J. E. Lloyd and the Creation of Welsh History Renewing a Nation’s Past

Huw Pryce

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS CARDIFF 2011

© Huw Pryce, 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff, CF10 4UP.

www.uwp.co.uk

British Library CIP Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9780708323885 (hardback)  9780708323892 (paperback) eISBN 9780708323908

The right of Huw Pryce to be identied as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copy right, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Typeset in Wales by Eira Fenn Gaunt, Cardiff Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire

Er cof am fy nhad Gwyndaf Pryce 1926–2008

P REFACE

I rst encountered John Edward Lloyd’sA History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian ConquestCentralin Cardiff Library during a vacation in the late 1970s when I read parts of the work after James Campbell, my tutor for several medieval papers at Oxford, had recommended it after I asked what I might read about medieval Welsh history. A few years later I acquired a copy of the third edition, bearing the inscription of the Irish scholar Séamus Pender, and over the last three decades or so this has been an indispensable companion in my own research on medieval Wales, especially during the years I was editing the documents of native Welsh rulers, when constant recourse to its precisely referenced polit ical narrative nally put paid to the spine of volume II. While the present study is intended as an intellectual biography which tries to set Lloyd in the context of his own time, rather than to assess his strengths and weaknesses in the light of subsequent scholarship, the fact that he remains essential reading for historians of medieval Wales obviously helps to explain why I have written it. In addition, by the beginning of this century I had long been living under Lloyd’s shadow at Bangor, where colleagues related stories they had heard about him and where he became a familiar face thanks to the portrait by Gertrude Coventry held by our department. However, while I had vaguely thought for some time that it would be interesting to look at Lloyd from a historiographical perspective, it was an invitation from Geraint H. Jenkins and the late Rees Davies to contribute an essay to a Festschrift for Kenneth O. Morgan and Ralph A. Grifths that provided the catalyst which rst turned this notion into something tangible, and I am grateful to the editors of that volume for having inadvertently set me on the fascinating path towards the completion of this book. Writing that essay made me aware of the wealth of material available in

Preface

Lloyd’s papers deposited at Bangor, and led in turn to a successful application to the (now regrettably defunct) University of Wales Board of Celtic Studies to fund a research project on Lloyd; I wish to thank the board for its support as well as to its researcher Matthew Pearson for laying the foundations of this book by annotating and securing copies of relevant archival and printed material in Bangor, Aberystwyth, Manchester, Oxford and Reading in 2003–4. In preparing and writing the book I have incurred numerous other debts which it is a pleasure to acknowledge, without of course wishing to implicate those named in its remaining defects. Mary Dodd, J. Gwynn Williams and the late Enid P. Roberts and Jean Ware generously shared their recollections of the elderly Lloyd, while Avril Jones of Hirnant near Penybontfawr provided valuable guidance on his family roots in Montgomeryshire. Warm thanks are due to the archivists and librarians who have replied to queries and otherwise facilitated my research, including David Fitzpatrick, Aberystwyth University Archives (who kindly transcribed some of the college’s council minutes); Alma Jenner, Manseld College Library, Oxford; Andrew Mussell, Lincoln College Archives, Oxford; Alan Tadiello, Balliol College Library, Oxford; and Paul Webster, Liverpool Record Ofce. I am particularly grateful to Einion Thomas, Archivist and Welsh Librarian at Bangor University, for his support during my work on this project and, together with his colleagues Ann Hughes and Elen Wyn Simpson, for making the Bangor archives such a conducive environment for consulting Lloyd’s papers and related materials. At Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales John Kenyon and Beth Thomas gave me access to a copy of the 1937 lm introduced by Lloyd, and Nicholas Thornton discussed and showed me Evan Walters’s portrait of Lloyd, painted in a some what disconcerting ‘double vision’ style at the end of 1936. For bibliographical guidance and other help with sources I am grateful to Bill Jones, Euros Wyn Jones, Densil Morgan and Paul O’Leary. I have also beneted from discussion with Thomas CharlesEdwards, whose interest in the progress of this book is but the latest expres sion of longstanding friendship and support, and who gave me the opportunity to present a paper that eventually grew into chapter 2, as well as a version of chapter 7, to the Celtic Seminar at Jesus College, Oxford. Some of the latter chapter originated in my Sir Thomas

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