Wales' First Journalist

Wales' First Journalist

Wales' First Journalist

Born in 1146 during the reign of the last Norman King, Stephen, at Manorbier near Tenby, a beauty spot well-known to short breaks in Wales tourists, Gerald the Welshman, or Giraldus Cambrensis as he was known in those Latin language days, lived on in the reigns of the first four Plantagenet Kings, dying aged 77 in 1223.

He was the grandson of a Norman Knight Guillaume de Barry and the famous Welsh Princess Nest, daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, so was of mixed blood. But he felt himself a Welshman, although his critics said he was too Norman to be Welsh and too Welsh to be Norman.

It may be of interest to short breaks in Wales historians that he had a church education in Gloucester and studied in Paris before being employed in around 1172 by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Richard of Dover, on various ecclesiastical missions in Wales.

Short breaks in Wales visitors to St Davids Cathedral will find it interesting that, upon the death of his uncle, David FitzGerald, Bishop of St Davids, in 1176, the chapter felt Giraldus was the man most likely to withstand the aggressions of the Archbishops of Canterbury - Thomas a Beckett had been murdered only six years before. But Henry 11 rejected his submission, preferring Peter de Leia, one of his Norman retainers, as he felt the appointment of 'a man of great honesty and vigour might give strength to the Welsh and increase their pride.'

He became clerk and chaplain to Henry 11 in 1184, but his ambition to become Bishop, or even Archbishop, of St Davids was never realised.

He had petitioned in vain to have an Archbishopric of Wales, even lobbying the support of Pope Innocent 111, to whom he once complained: "Because I am a Welshman am I to be debarred from all preferments in Wales?"

In his writings, which many academic short breaks in Wales in Wales tourists may have read, Gerald gave details of how the ordinary Welsh people lived. He chronicled their trades, their skills, their warrior accomplishments and even their every day habits. He commented on the whiteness of their teeth, which it will interest short breaks in Wales patrons to know, they cleaned regularly with splayed twigs like rudimentary tooth brushes, cut from the hedges.

Visit Bluestone to know more about Pembrokeshire holidays.

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