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.

This book is a comprehensive single-volume history of literature in the two major languages of Wales from post-Roman to post-devolution Britain.

The conquest of Wales by the medieval English throne produced a fiercely contested territory, both militarily and culturally. Wales was left fissured by frontiers of language, jurisdiction and loyalty - a reluctant meeting place of literary traditions and political cultures. But the profound consequences of this first colonial adventure on the development of medieval English culture have been disregarded. In setting English figurations of Wales against the contrasted representations of the Welsh language tradition, this volume seeks to reverse this neglect, insisting on the crucial importance of the English experience in Wales for any understanding of the literary cultures of medieval England and medieval Britain.

This is the first book-length treatment of the ‘turncoat’ John Poyer, the man who initiated the Second Civil War through his rebellion in south Wales in 1648. The volume charts Poyer’s rise from a humble glover in Pembroke to become parliament’s most significant supporter in Wales during the First Civil War (1642–6), and argues that he was a more complex and significant individual than most commentators have realised. Poyer’s involvement in the poisonous factional politics of the post-war period (1646–8) is examined, and newly discovered material demonstrates how his career offers fresh insights into the relationship between national and local politics in the 1640s, the use of print and publicity by provincial interest groups, and the importance of local factionalism in understanding the course of the civil war in south Wales. The volume also offers a substantial analysis of Poyer’s posthumous reputation after his execution by firing squad in April 1649.

Physick and the family offers new insights into the early modern sickness experience, through a study of the medical history of Wales. Newly available in paperback, this first ever monograph of early modern Welsh medicine utilises a large body of newly discovered source material. Using numerous approaches and methodologies, it makes a significant contribution to debates in medical history, including economies of knowledge, domestic medicine and care, material culture and the rural medical marketplace. Drawing on sources from probates to parish records, diaries to domestic remedy collections, Withey offers new directions for recovering the often obscure medical worldview of the ‘ordinary’ person. This innovative study will appeal to anyone interested in the social history of the early modern period. Its multi-disciplinary approach will appeal to a broad spectrum of academics and scholars, and will enhance a range of courses and modules both in medical history and in social history more widely.

In general approach and content, this book resembles Alex Haley's best-selling novel, Roots, except that this work contains no fiction. It chronicles thirty generations and a thousand years of Sanders (and Saunders) family evolution beginning before England's earliest days and ending across the Atlantic in colonial Virginia and eventually frontier and later Kentucky. Family figures are portrayed in their own distinctive historical contexts and an extensive genealogy focused on old world lineage is appended. Nearly a thousand chapter notes on sources and names are furnished to assist readers interested in discovering their own ancestry.

This collection, first published in 1969, presents essays written by twenty of the most eminent scholars from the British Isles and Europe on aspects of folk life studies. The essays are written in honour of Dr Iorwerth C. Peate, Curator of the Welsh Folk Museum and doyen of folk life studies in Britain, to mark his retirement as the first President of the Society for Folk Life Studies. In the present book all the various aspects of folk life, from linguistics to sociology, from architecture to agrarian history, are covered, reflecting the wide interests of Dr Peate and his valuable contribution to the development of the study of traditional life in Britain.

This book chronicles thirty generations and a thousand years of Sanders (and Saunders) family evolution beginning before Englands earliest days and ending across the Atlantic in colonial Virginia and later Kentucky. Family figures are described in their own distinctive historical contexts, and an extensive genealogy focused on Old World lineage is appended. Nearly a thousand chapter notes on sources and commentaries are furnished to assist readers interested in discovering their own ancestry. This new book revises and expands our earlier edition by extending family history another five generations and two hundred years into the deep past, correcting earlier literature on this subject. For the first time, the family coat of arms is decoded to learn its message. The portrayal of family activity and circumstances before and during the American colonial period are improved, and an appendix of previously unpublished Sanders vital records for the seventeenth century is included.