Huw Pryce

Bangor University, History, Philosophy, and Social Sciences, Emeritus

Bangor University, History, Welsh History and Archaeology, Faculty Member

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Alex Woolf

University of St Andrews

Jacques Chiffoleau

EHESS-Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales

Florin Curta

University of Florida

Ozgur Tufekci

CESRAN | Centre for Strategic Research & Analysis

Johnni Langer

UFPB - Universidade Federal da Paraíba

Andreas Rhoby

Austrian Academy of Sciences

Lucas Villegas-Aristizabal MA PhD FRHistS

Queen's University at Kingston

Fabien Montcher

Saint Louis University

Sverrir Jakobsson

University of Iceland

Klaniczay Gabor

Central European University

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Books by Huw Pryce

Writing Welsh History: From the Early Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century

Oxford University Press, 2022

Writing Welsh History is the first book to explore how the history of Wales and the Welsh has bee... more Writing Welsh History is the first book to explore how the history of Wales and the Welsh has been written over the past fifteen hundred years. By analysing and contextualizing a wide range of historical writing, from Gildas in the sixth century to recent global approaches, it opens new perspectives both on the history of Wales and on understandings of Wales and the Welsh - and thus on the use of the past to articulate national and other identities. The study's broad chronological scope serves to highlight important continuities in interpretations of Welsh history. One enduring preoccupation is Wales's place in Britain. Down to the twentieth century it was widely held that the Welsh were an ancient people descended from the original inhabitants of Britain whose history in its fullest sense ended with Edward I's conquest of Wales in 1282-4, their history thereafter being regarded as an attenuated appendix. However, Huw Pryce shows that such master narratives, based on medieval sources and focused primarily on the period down to 1282, were part of a much larger and more varied historiographical landscape. Over the past century the thematic and chronological range of Welsh history writing has expanded significantly, notably in the unprecedented attention given to the modern period, reflecting broader trends in an increasingly internationalized historical profession as well as the influence of social, economic, and political developments in Wales and elsewhere.

Writing a Small Nation's Past: Wales in Comparative Perspective, 1850-1950, ed. Neil Evans and Huw Pryce.

"This is the first volume to examine how the history of Wales was written in a period that saw th... more "This is the first volume to examine how the history of Wales was written in a period that saw the emergence of professional historiography, largely focused on the nation, across Europe and in the United States. It thus sets Wales in the context of recent work on national history writing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and, more particularly, offers a Welsh perspective on the ways in which history was written in small, mainly stateless, nations. The comparative dimension is fundamental to the volume's aim, highlighting what was distinctive about Welsh historical writing and showing how the Welsh experience mirrors and illuminates broader historiographical developments.
"

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

This is the first book on John Edward Lloyd (1861-1947), widely regarded as the founder of the mo... more This is the first book on John Edward Lloyd (1861-1947), widely regarded as the founder of the modern academic study of Welsh history. Published to mark the centenary of Lloyd's most important achievement, "A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest" (1911), this intellectual biography reassesses Lloyd's significance by setting his work in the context of his life and of the ideas and scholarship of his time. It thus provides a case study of how the past of a small, stateless nation was reconfigured to provide a new narrative of national origins.

The Acts of Welsh Rulers 1120-1283

The Acts of Welsh Rulers 1120-1283 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), 2005

A critical edition of the charters, letters and other acts issued in the names of Welsh princes a... more

Native Law and the Church in Medieval Wales

"This is the first full scholarly study of the relationship between native secular law and the ch... more "This is the first full scholarly study of the relationship between native secular law and the church in medieval Wales. The interaction was close, despite Archbishop Pecham's condemnation of native law as the work of the devil. Huw Pryce assesses the influence of the church on Welsh law, examining the participation of churchmen in the composition of lawbooks and the administration of legal processes and analysing ecclesiastical criticism of native customs, notably those concerning marriage. He considers the extent to which Welsh law defended the authority and possessions of the church, focusing in particular on the status of clerics and on rights of sanctuary and lordship.
The book throws revealing new light on both the law and the church in Wales in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As a study of the impact of ecclesiastical reform on a society perceived by some contemporaries as barbarian and immoral this scholarly and lucid account makes an important contribution to medieval history."

Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies, ed. Huw Pryce and John Watts.

Collecting sixteen thought-provoking new essays by leading medievalists, this volume celebrates t... more Collecting sixteen thought-provoking new essays by leading medievalists, this volume celebrates the work of the late Rees Davies. Reflecting Davies' interest in identities, political culture and the workings of power in medieval Britain, the essays range across ten centuries, looking at a variety of key topics. Issues explored range from the historical representations of peoples and the changing patterns of power and authority, to the notions of 'core' and 'periphery' and the relationship between local conditions and international movements. The political impact of words and ideas, and the parallels between developments in Wales and those elsewhere in Britain, Ireland and Europe are also discussed. Appreciations of Rees Davies, a bibliography of his works, and Davies' own farewell speech to the History Faculty at the University of Oxford complete this outstanding tribute to a much-missed scholar.

Literacy in Medieval Celtic Societies

This 1998 collection of studies examines the use of the written word in Celtic-speaking regions o... more This 1998 collection of studies examines the use of the written word in Celtic-speaking regions of Europe between c. 400 and c. 1500. Building on previous work as well as presenting the fruits of much new research, the book seeks to highlight the interest and importance of Celtic uses of literacy for the study of both medieval literacy generally and of the history and cultures of the Celtic countries in the Middle Ages. Among the topics discussed are the uses and significance of charter-writing, the interplay of oral and literate modes in the composition and transmission of medieval Irish and Welsh genealogies, prose narratives and poetry, the survival of Celtic culture in Brittany and of Gaelic literacy in eastern Scotland in the twelfth century, and pragmatic uses of literacy in later medieval Wales.

Yr Arglwydd Rhys

Papers by Huw Pryce

The Irish and Welsh Middle Ages in the Victorian Period

The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism

This chapter compares how the Irish and Welsh of the Victorian period engaged with their respecti... more This chapter compares how the Irish and Welsh of the Victorian period engaged with their respective medieval cultures and histories. Although medieval Ireland and Wales both produced extensive and varied literatures in Celtic vernaculars and experienced English conquest that had major long-term consequences, they also differed in important respects. The same is true of the post-medieval histories of both countries. These differences in turn help to explain why uses of their medieval legacies by the nineteenth-century Irish and Welsh reveal significant contrasts. After outlining the contexts in which engagement with medieval culture and history took place, the discussion focuses on the significance attached to the Middle Ages in understandings of the Irish and Welsh pasts; idealizations of the medieval Church and secular rulers; medieval influences on art and architecture; and the editing and translating of medieval Irish and Welsh literary texts, together with medieval influences on...

The Irish and Welsh Middle Ages in the Victorian period

Joanne Parker and Corinne Wagner (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism (Oxford: OUP), pp. 215–34, 2020

Chronicling and its contexts in medieval Wales

Ben Guy, Owain Wyn Jones, Georgia Henley, and Rebecca Thomas (eds), The Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March: New Contexts, Studies and Texts (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 1–32, 2020

A survey of Welsh chronicle writing from the early Middle Ages to the fifteenth century, in both ... more A survey of Welsh chronicle writing from the early Middle Ages to the fifteenth century, in both Latin and Welsh, including discussion of the compilations known generically as Brut y Tywysogyon (The Chronicle of the Princes), designed as continuations of Geoffrey of Monmouth's De Gestis Britonum (Historia Regum Britanniae) and the work of the poet, scribe and genealogist Gutun Owain (d. c.1500).

Historical writing in medieval Wales

Jennifer Jahner, Emily Steiner and Elizabeth M. Tyler (eds), Medieval Historical Writing: Britain and Ireland, 500–1500 (Cambridge: CUP), pp. 208–24, 2019

This chapter focuses on narrataive texts largely comprising chronicles and histories composed bet... more

Gerald of Wales and the Welsh past

Georgia Henley and A. Joseph McMullen (eds), New Perspectives on Gerald of Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), pp. 19–4, 2018

The chapter examines how Gerald of Wales treated the Welsh past with reference, first, to his Iti... more

Giraldus and the Geraldines

Peter Crooks and Seán Duffy (eds), The Geraldines and Medieval Ireland: The Making of a Myth (Dublin: Four Courts), pp. 53–68, 2016

This book chapter explores (1) how Gerald of Wales depicted his own family, and especially what h... more

Cofio Glyndŵr [Remembering Glyndŵr]

Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, n.s. 22 (2016), pp. 43–60, 2016

Harry Longueville Jones, Fsa, Medieval Paris and the Heritage Measures of the July Monarchy

The Antiquaries Journal, 2016

This paper explores the hitherto overlooked influence of France on the archaeological interests a... more This paper explores the hitherto overlooked influence of France on the archaeological interests and approach of Harry Longueville Jones (1806–70), whose best-known contributions to archaeology centred on Wales. Focusing mainly on the period down to his co-founding of Archaeologia Cambrensis (1846) and the Cambrian Archaeological Association (1847), it analyses Jones’s engagement with both archaeological monuments and heritage measures in France. The discussion assesses the significance of his recording of medieval churches in and around Paris while resident in the city 1835–42, including an unpublished report that he submitted to the Minister of Public Instruction in 1840. Attention is also given to his role as one of the corresponding members for England of the French government’s Comité historique des arts et monuments. Lastly, Jones is placed in the context of other British responses to the institutions established by the July Monarchy to study and safeguard historic monuments in...

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Medieval Welsh Law and the Mid-Victorian Foreshore

Journal of Legal History, vol. 35, no. 2, Aug 2014

In 1862 a text of medieval Welsh law, attributed to the tenth-century king Hywel Dda (Hywel the G... more In 1862 a text of medieval Welsh law, attributed to the tenth-century king Hywel Dda (Hywel the Good), was cited as part of the defence in a case, Attorney General v Jones, concerning disputed foreshore rights in Anglesey, north Wales. This article aims to explain why and how Welsh law, effectively abolished by the Acts of Union of 1536–43, was deployed as evidence in the case and how far this marked a readiness to accommodate the distinctive legal heritage of Wales within the framework of the nineteenth-century common law. As well as analysing the legal arguments presented, the article seeks to assess the broader significance of the case by setting it in the contexts of the Crown's increasingly vigorous claims to foreshores, the circumstances and attitudes of the real defendant, William Bulkeley Hughes, and antiquarian study of the medieval Welsh law-texts, including their use in previous mid-Victorian foreshore disputes.
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Culture, Identity, and the Medieval Revival in Victorian Wales

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Grym y gair ysgrifenedig: tywysogion Cymru a’u dogfennau, 1120–1283 [The power of the written word: the Welsh princes and their documents, 1120–1283]

Geraint H. Jenkins (ed.), Cof Cenedl XXII (Gomer Press, Llandysul), pp. 1–31, 2007

Cenedligrwydd a chymdeithas: dehongli oes y tywysogion [Nationality and society: interpreting the age of the Princes]

Transactions of the Caernarvonshire Historical Society, 67, pp. 12–29, 2006

Writing Welsh History: From the Early Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century

Oxford University Press, 2022

Writing a Small Nation's Past: Wales in Comparative Perspective, 1850-1950, ed. Neil Evans and Huw Pryce.

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

The Acts of Welsh Rulers 1120-1283

The Acts of Welsh Rulers 1120-1283 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), 2005

A critical edition of the charters, letters and other acts issued in the names of Welsh princes a... more

Native Law and the Church in Medieval Wales

Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies, ed. Huw Pryce and John Watts.

Literacy in Medieval Celtic Societies

Yr Arglwydd Rhys

The Irish and Welsh Middle Ages in the Victorian Period

The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism

The Irish and Welsh Middle Ages in the Victorian period

Joanne Parker and Corinne Wagner (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism (Oxford: OUP), pp. 215–34, 2020

Chronicling and its contexts in medieval Wales

Ben Guy, Owain Wyn Jones, Georgia Henley, and Rebecca Thomas (eds), The Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March: New Contexts, Studies and Texts (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 1–32, 2020

Historical writing in medieval Wales

Jennifer Jahner, Emily Steiner and Elizabeth M. Tyler (eds), Medieval Historical Writing: Britain and Ireland, 500–1500 (Cambridge: CUP), pp. 208–24, 2019

This chapter focuses on narrataive texts largely comprising chronicles and histories composed bet... more

Gerald of Wales and the Welsh past

Georgia Henley and A. Joseph McMullen (eds), New Perspectives on Gerald of Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), pp. 19–4, 2018

The chapter examines how Gerald of Wales treated the Welsh past with reference, first, to his Iti... more

Giraldus and the Geraldines

Peter Crooks and Seán Duffy (eds), The Geraldines and Medieval Ireland: The Making of a Myth (Dublin: Four Courts), pp. 53–68, 2016

This book chapter explores (1) how Gerald of Wales depicted his own family, and especially what h... more

Cofio Glyndŵr [Remembering Glyndŵr]

Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, n.s. 22 (2016), pp. 43–60, 2016

Harry Longueville Jones, Fsa, Medieval Paris and the Heritage Measures of the July Monarchy

The Antiquaries Journal, 2016

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Medieval Welsh Law and the Mid-Victorian Foreshore

Journal of Legal History, vol. 35, no. 2, Aug 2014

Culture, Identity, and the Medieval Revival in Victorian Wales

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Grym y gair ysgrifenedig: tywysogion Cymru a’u dogfennau, 1120–1283 [The power of the written word: the Welsh princes and their documents, 1120–1283]

Geraint H. Jenkins (ed.), Cof Cenedl XXII (Gomer Press, Llandysul), pp. 1–31, 2007

Cenedligrwydd a chymdeithas: dehongli oes y tywysogion [Nationality and society: interpreting the age of the Princes]

Transactions of the Caernarvonshire Historical Society, 67, pp. 12–29, 2006

Conversions to Christianity

A Companion to the Early Middle Ages, 2009

Welsh rulers and the written word, 1120–1283

P. Thorau et al. (eds.), Regionen Europas—Europa der Regionen: Festschrift für Kurt-Ulrich Jäschke zum 65. Geburtstag (Böhlau Verlag, Cologne), pp. 65–78, 2003

The Normans in Welsh History

in C. P. Lewis (ed.), Anglo-Norman Studies XXX (Boydell, Woodbridge, 2008), 1–18, 2008

Although Allen Brown did not write extensively about Wales, he was certain that the Normans had m... more Although Allen Brown did not write extensively about Wales, he was certain that the Normans had made a big difference to its history by inaugurating a conquest that was completed, some two centuries later, by Edward I. 1 Members of the Battle Conference, on its visit to Gregynog, about eight miles west of the motte of Hen Domen near Montgomery, 2 will hardly need persuasion that Norman conquest and settlement were significant in Wales. After all, in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries the Normans and their allies established control over a substantial swathe of the country, extending in an arc along its eastern borders and southern coast, and created marcher lordships that enjoyed extensive autonomy until the reign of Henry VIII. Yet precisely how much difference the Normans made is a matter for continuing debate. Now, I should explain at the outset that my aim is not to try and assess the nature and impact of Norman conquest and settlement in Wales. Rather, what follows will focus on how historians have viewed the place of the Normans in Welsh history, and especially how and how far these conquerors have been integrated into narratives of national history. In other words, this paper is essentially historiographical in its approach. True, Allen Brown was somewhat impatient of the efforts of previous scholars, who, he believed, had muddied the waters by their partisan stance in relation to the Norman conquest of England. Yet, as he clearly saw, his own work responded to those earlier interpretations and in turn contributed to continuing debates about the extent and significance of the Normans in English history. 3 Historiographical reflection is valuable, indeed inescapable, in any serious effort to offer new interpretations of a given subject. That, then, is one justification for my topic: by looking at the work of previous historians, we may gain a clearer understanding of the premises and frameworks underpinning more recent studies of the Norman impact on Wales. But there is more to the enterprise than that. While looking back to previous historians' work provides a background and context for the present state of the subject, it does not follow that we should adopt a Whiggish view that tends to deprecate earlier scholars for their lack of rigour or understanding in order to celebrate the allegedly higher standards of our own day. Instead, an investigation of earlier interpretations of the Normans' place in the history of 1 R. Allen Brown, The Normans, Woodbridge 1984, 5, 73, 153; idem, The Normans and the Norman Conquest, 2nd edn, Woodbridge 1985, 11, 226. I am grateful to all those at the Battle Conference who provided feedback on the lecture at Gregynog, to Neil Evans and J. Beverley Smith for their comments on a draft of the published version, and to Nancy Edwards for her encouragement and support. 2 Cf. Brown, Normans; Chibnall, Normans. Cf. also works which, while narrower in geographical scope, set Norman expansion in a wider context than that of the individual countries of

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The reluctant medievalist?

G. H. Jenkins and G. E. Jones (eds.), Degrees of Influence: A Memorial Volume for Glanmor Williams (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2008), pp. 30–57, 2008

Welsh Rulers and European Change, c.1100–1282

Power and Identity in the Middle Ages, 2007

The dynasty of Deheubarth and the church of St Davids, in J. Wyn Evans and Jonathan M. Wooding (eds), St David of Wales: Cult, Church and Nation (Woodbridge, 2007)

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Culture, Power and the Charters of Welsh Rulers

Charters and Charter Scholarship in Britain and Ireland, 2005

Uses of the vernacular in the acts of Welsh rulers, 1120–1283

O. Guyotjeannin (ed.), La langue des actes: actes du XIe congrès international de diplomatique (Troyes, jeudi 11-samedi 13 septembre 2003) (on-line; École nationale des chartes, Paris) , 2005

Princes, Prelates and Poets in Medieval Ireland: Essays in Honour of Katharine Simms. Edited by SeánDuffy. Four Courts Press. 2013. xxiv + 599pp. £50.00

History, 2015

Britain and Ireland 900-1300: Insular Responses to Medieval European Change

Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 2000

... into the mainstream of Scottish political life in the course of the thirteenth century was gr... more

Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies . Edited by Huw Pryce and John Watts. Pp. xii, 283. ISBN: 9780199285464

Scottish Historical Review, 2009