¹ The best guides to what survives are Jack, R.I., Medieval Wales (London 1972) pp 127-60Google Scholar, and Davies, J.C., ‘The Records of the Church in Wales’, National Library of Wales Journal, 4 (Aberystwyth 1945-6) pp 1–34 Google Scholar; the remainder of the latter volume is devoted to articles on other aspects of Welsh ecclesiastical history and records.

² The earliest Welsh text is Rhigyfarch’s Life of St David, ed James, J.W. (Cardiff 1967)Google Scholar composed in the last quarter of the eleventh century. For a general assessment of the value of saints’ lives see Evans’s, D.S. introduction to the new edition of Doble, G.H., Lives of the Welsh Saints (Cardiff 1971) pp 1–55 Google Scholar.

³ The standard edition is The Text of the Book of Lian Dâv, ed Evans, J.G. and Rhys, J. (Oxford 1893)Google Scholar replacing the hopelessly inaccurate Liber Landavensis, ed Rees, W.J. (Llandovery 1840)Google Scholar. There has always been a desire in Wales, at present represented by J. W. James and P. C. Bartrum, to believe in the basic genuineness of the text, but most other scholars see its alleged sixth- and seventh-century charters as fabrications of the twelfth century. In a recent London PhD thesis, Wendy Davies argues that a detailed study of the text suggests that the early ‘charters’ assembled there may well be summaries of genuine documents now lost; part of her argument is now more widely available in Davies, W.E., ‘St Mary’s Worcester and the Liber Landavensis’ , Journal of the Society of Archivists, 4 (London 1972) pp 459-85Google Scholar.

⁴ See, for instance, the list of primary sources cited by Williams, Glanmor, The Welsh Church from Conquest to Reformation (Cardiff 1962) pp 567-73Google Scholar.

⁵ The St Davids’ registers run from 1397-1410, 1482-1518, 1636-8, and from 1660. The pre-reformation registers have been misleadingly published as The Episcopal Registers of St Davids, 1397-1518, Cymmrodorion Record Series, 6 (London 1917-20). The Bangor registers run from 1408-17, 1508-25, 1542-1636, and from 1682. The earliest register was published by Ivor Pryce in Archaeologia Cambrensis, 7 series, 2 (London 1922) pp 80-107. No registers survive for the diocese of Llandaff before 1819.

⁶ Yardley’s Menevia Sacra, which includes precise references to the now lost episcopal registers of Benedict Nicholls and Thomas Rodburn (1417-42), was edited by Francis Green for the Cambrian Archaeological Association in 1927. The two volumes of Payne’s Collectanea Menevensia, in the National Library of Wales, have yet to find an editor, but their contents were listed by Owens, B.G. in National Library of Wales Journal, 4 (1945-6) p 211 Google Scholar.

⁷ Note, for instance, the importance attached to the surviving accounts for Tenby for the years 1657-73, extracts from which are printed in Laws, E. and Edwards, E.H., Church Book of St Mary the Virgin (Tenby 1907) pp 239-52Google Scholar.

⁸ See Jeffreys-Jones, T.I., ‘Carmarthenshire Parish Records’, Carmarthen Antiquary, 2 (Carmarthen 1945-57) pp 100-7Google Scholar, 141-65. Some parishes were omitted from this survey.

⁹ For instance, at Tenby, where a parish magazine was begun by the tractarian rector, George Huntington, in 1869, only the first four volumes survive, and these were chance discoveries by the curator of the local museum. These magazines contain valuable information on the impact of the Oxford movement in south-west Wales.

¹⁰ The basic guide here is A Bibliography of the History of Wales (Cardiff 1962); addenda are published from time to time in the Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies (publ Cardiff).

¹¹ Episcop al Acts and Cognate Documents relating to the Welsh Dioceses, 1066-1272, ed Davies, J.C., Historical Society of the Church in Wales (Cardiff 1946-9)Google Scholar.

¹² A poor edition with translation, by J. W. Willis-Bund, was published in the Cymmrodorion Record Series, 5 (London, 1902).

¹³ Namely a series of thirty articles by H. L. James, ‘Yr Hen Lwybrau’, contributed to Yr Haul during 1932-4, and Evans, D.E., ‘Mudiad Rhydychen yng Ngogledd Sir Aberteifi’ and subsequent articles contributed to the Journal of the Historical Society of the Church in Wales between 1954 and 1960 (publ Cardiff)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ For the details of his career see The Dictionary of Welsh Biography (London 1959) pp 1052-3. ‘Ab Ithel’ was a clergyman, holding a succession of Welsh livings, a prolific translator of medieval latin hymns into Welsh, and a disciple of the Oxford movement. He collaborated with Henry Longueville Jones to oppose the proposed union of the sees of Bangor and St Asaph, to edit Arehaeologia Cambrensis, and to found the Cambrian Archaeological Association. Despite the fact that his abilities as an editor and his knowledge of palaeography were negligible, he was chosen to edit the Annales Cambriae and Brut y Tywysogion for the Rolls Series and four other texts for the Welsh Manuscripts Society, and his name was seriously canvassed for the proposed chair of Celtic at Oxford. He was the organiser of the notorious Llangollen eisteddfod of 1858, at which most of the prizes went to his friends and relations, and an important essay by Thomas Stephens, denying that Madoc ap Owen Gwynedd had discovered America in the twelfth century, was denied the prize it should have won because it challenged ‘ab Ithel’s’ own, more romantic, interpretation of Welsh history.

¹⁵ The Gorsedd is now an essential part of the Welsh national eisteddfod, its president being the archdruid of Wales. Several of Iolo’s ‘inventions’ were published during his lifetime in the Myvyrian Archaiology and many more after his death by his son, Taliesin ab Iolo, apparently quite innocently, in the collection of Iolo Manuscripts published by the Welsh Manuscripts Society in 1848 (? Llandovery). These forgeries were accepted as genuine by many Welsh historians until the inter-war period.

¹⁶ Rice Rees (1804-39) was professor of Welsh at St David’s college, Lampeter, and fellow of Jesus college, Oxford. He was a far better scholar than ‘ab Ithel’, and had it not been for his early death he would probably have been able to prevent ‘ab Ithel’ from acquiring the dominent position in Welsh historical scholarship during the mid-nineteenth century. Rice Rees’s uncle, W. J. Rees of Cascob (1772-1855), was a poor editor of the Liber Landavensis in 1840 and The Lives of the Cambro-British Saints in 1853, having been prevailed upon to complete some of his nephew’s projected work.

¹⁷ See Anson, P.F., Bishops at Large (London 1964) pp 43-7Google Scholar. Morgan believed that the British were descended from the lost ten tribes of Israel and that saint Paul’s missionary journeys included one to Britain. He was both an anglican clergyman and an autocephalous bishop in his own Ancient British Church.

¹⁸ This was another invention by Iolo Morganwg who deliberately substituted the words llinus Brân vah Llŷp for llinus Joseph o Arimathia in his edition of the Welsh triads; see Bromwich, Rachel, Trioedd Ynys Prydein (Cardiff 1961) p 203 Google Scholar.

¹⁹ For a detailed criticism of James’s and Bowen’s views, see Brooke, C.N.L., ‘St Peter of Gloucester and St Cadoc of Llandcarfan’, Celt and Saxon, ed Chadwick, N.K. (Cambridge 1964) pp 315-22Google Scholar; Chadwick, W.O., ‘The Evidence of Dedications in the Early History of the Welsh Church’, Studies in Early British History, ed Chadwick, N.K. (Cambridge 1959) pp 173-88Google Scholar; and Jackson, K.H., ‘Sources for the Life of St Kentigern’, Studies in the Early British Church, ed Chadwick, N.K. (Cambridge 1958) pp 313-18Google Scholar.

²⁰ By Williams, Sir Ifor, ‘Hen Chwedlau’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (London 1946-7) p 53 Google Scholar and Richards, Melville, ‘Places and Persons of the Early Welsh Church’, Welsh History Review, 5 (Cardiff 1970-1) p 335 Google Scholar.]