‘Readers of this handsomely produced volume have been most ably served by the editor. . . The lengthy introduction . . . is a work of careful and percipient scholarship which amply repays close study. . . This edition rewards careful study as the composition of one of the most notable of the succession of Welsh humanists who . . . kept the flame of Welsh national consciousness alight at a time when many forces sought to extinguish it . . . ’
(Welsh History Review)
‘ . . . a work of painstaking scholarship.’ (Gwales.com)
The antiquary and map-maker Humphrey Llwyd was born in Denbigh about 1527 and educated at the University of Oxford. He spent many years in the service of the earl of Arundel and served as MP for East Grinstead and later for Denbigh. Llwyd was credited with facilitating the passage of the Bill for the translation of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer into Welsh. He died in Denbigh in 1568.
Cronica Walliae, Llwyd’s earliest and by far his largest extant work, was completed in 1559 but remained unpublished. In this essay, Llwyd presents what he regarded as the true history of Wales to readers outside its borders. Based on the medieval Welsh chronicle Brut y Tywysogyon, it is the first attempt to provide a history in English of the lives and acts of the kings and princes of Wales from Cadwaladr to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last native Welsh prince. The Elizabethan scholar David Powel later used Cronica Walliae as the basis for Historie of Cambria (1584), which became the foundational work for the history of Wales.
The text of this first ever edition of Cronica Walliae is based on the Llanstephan manuscript at the National Library of Wales, and the aim of the editor has been to reproduce Llwyd’s original as far as it is possible to do so.
Ieuan Morgan Williams was born at Pontarddulais and educated at Gowerton Intermediate School and the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. After war service in the Royal Air Force he taught at Gowerton before his appointment as assistant Secretary to the Council of the University of Wales in 1952. He became Director of Extra-Mural Studies at University College, Swansea, in 1960 and was appointed to the Chair of Adult and Continuing Education in 1980. He also served as Vice-Principal from 1980 to 1983.
Following the death of Ieuan Williams in 2000, this edition of Cronica Walliae was prepared for publication by J. Beverley Smith, Emeritus Professor of Welsh History at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.