The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales | Page 9

revengeful wife, the murderess of "Fair Rosamond" (who must
have been known to Gerald, being the daughter of Walter of
Clifford-on-the-Wye), and of the fierce brood that they reared - are of
extraordinary interest. His impressions of the men and events of his
time, his fund of anecdotes and bon mots, his references to trivial
matters, which more dignified writers would never deign to mention,
his sprightly and sometimes malicious gossip, invest his period with a
reality which the greatest of fiction-writers has failed to rival. Gerald
lived in the days of chivalry, days which have been crowned with a
halo of deathless romance by the author of "Ivanhoe" and the
"Talisman." He knew and was intimate with all the great actors of the
time. He had lived in the Paris of St. Louis and Philip Augustus, and
was never tired of exalting the House of Capet over the tyrannical and

bloodthirsty House of Anjou. He had no love of England, for her
Plantagenet kings or her Saxon serfs. During the French invasion in the
time of King John his sympathies were openly with the Dauphin as
against the "brood of vipers," who were equally alien to English soil.
For the Saxon, indeed, he felt the twofold hatred of Welshman and
Norman. One of his opponents is denounced to the Pope as an "untriwe
Sax," and the Saxons are described as the slaves of the Normans, the
mere hewers of wood and drawers of water for their conquerors. He
met Innocent III., the greatest of Popes, in familiar converse, he jested
and gossiped with him in slippered ease, he made him laugh at his
endless stories of the glory of Wales, the iniquities of the Angevins,
and the bad Latin of Archbishop Walter. He knew Richard
Coeur-de-Lion, the flower of chivalry, and saw him as he was and "not
through a glass darkly." He knew John, the cleverest and basest of his
house. He knew and loved Stephen Langton, the precursor of a long
line of statesmen who have made English liberty broad - based upon
the people's will. He was a friend of St. Hugh of Lincoln, the sweetest
and purest spirit in the Anglican Church of the Middle Ages, the one
man who could disarm the wrath of the fierce king with a smile; and he
was the friend and patron of Robert Grosstete, afterwards the great
Bishop of Lincoln. He lived much in company with Ranulph de
Glanville, the first English jurist, and he has "Boswellised" some of his
conversations with him. He was intimate with Archbishop Baldwin, the
saintly prelate who laid down his life in the Third Crusade on the
burning plains of Palestine, heart-broken at the unbridled wickedness of
the soldiers of the Cross. He was the near kinsman and confidant of the
Cambro-Normans, who, landing in Leinster in 1165, effected what may
be described as the first conquest of Ireland. There was scarcely a man
of note in his day whom he had not seen and conversed with, or of
whom he does not relate some piquant story. He had travelled much,
and had observed closely. Probably the most valuable of all his works,
from the strictly historical point of view, are the "Itinerary" and
"Description of Wales," which are reprinted in the present volume. {10}
Here he is impartial in his evidence, and judicial in his decisions. If he
errs at all, it is not through racial prejudice. "I am sprung," he once told
the Pope in a letter, "from the princes of Wales and from the barons of
the Marches, and when I see injustice in either race, I hate it."

The text is that of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, who published an English
translation, chiefly from the texts of Camden and Wharton, in 1806.
The valuable historical notes have been curtailed, as being too elaborate
for such a volume as this, and a few notes have been added by the
present editor. These will be found within brackets. Hoare's translation,
and also translations (edited by Mr. Foster) of the Irish books have
been published in Bohn's Antiquarian Library.
The first of the seven volumes of the Latin text of Gerald, published in
the Rolls Series, appeared in 1861. The first four volumes were edited
by Professor Brewer; the next two by Mr. Dimmock; and the seventh
by Professor Freeman.
W. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS. January 1908.
The following is a list of the more important of the works of Gerald:-
Topographia Hibernica, Expugnatio Hibernica, Itinerarium Kambriae,
Descriptio Kambriae, Gemma Ecclesiastica, Libellus Invectionum, De
Rebus a se Gestis, Dialogus de jure et statu Menevensis Ecclesiae, De
Instructione Principum, De Legendis Sanctorum, Symbolum
Electorum.

FIRST PREFACE - TO STEPHEN LANGTON, ARCHBISHOP OF
CANTERBURY

As the times are affected by the changes of circumstances, so