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Huw Pryce

Professor Huw Pryce

Honorary Professor

School of History, Archaeology and Religion

Overview

Huw Pryce held the Chair of Welsh History at Bangor University, where he is now Professor Emeritus.

He has published widely both on the history of medieval Wales, including an edition of the charters, letters and other documents issued by native Welsh rulers 1120–1283, and on the historiography of Wales, the subject of his most recent book, Writing Welsh History: From the Early Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century (OUP, 2022).

He is also co-editor of the Welsh History Review, one of the editors of the book series Studies in Celtic History (Boydell) and Rethinking the History of Wales (University of Wales Press), and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.

Research

Contributions to current research projects

Co-Investigator, ‘Inventor of Britain: The Complete Works of Humphrey Llwyd’ (AHRC): https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FP00704X%2F1#/tabOverview

See also The Conversation, 23 August 2018:

https://theconversation.com/humphrey-llwyd-the-renaissance-scholar-who-drew-wales-into-the-atlas-and-wrote-it-into-history-books-101744

Author of a chapter on the representation of Wales in the Gough Map in a forthcoming volume arising from the project, ‘Understanding the Medieval Gough Map through Physics, Chemistry and History’ (Leverhulme Trust): https://blog.history.ac.uk/2019/08/understanding-the-gough-map-the-application-of-physics-chemistry-and-history/

One of the advisers for ‘The Writings of Gerald of Wales’ project, which will publish authoritative new editions of most of Gerald’s works (Leverhulme Trust): https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/the-writings-of-gerald-of-wales#tab-1982701

Editorships and memberships of editorial boards

  • Co-Editor, Welsh History Review.
  • Co-Editor of the book series Rethinking the History of Wales (University of Wales Press).
  • One of the General Editors of the monograph series, Studies in Celtic History (Boydell).
  • Member, Editorial Boards of the journals Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture, and Studia Celtica Posnaniensia.

Publications

Books

  • 1993   Native Law and the Church in Medieval Wales (Oxford: Clarendon Press).  Pp. xvi + 292.
  • 1996 (Co-editor with Nerys Ann Jones)  Yr Arglwydd Rhys [The Lord Rhys] (Cardiff: University of Wales Press).  Pp. xxii + 230.
  • 1996    (General Editor)  K. L. Maund, Handlist of the Acts of Native Welsh Rulers 1132-1283 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press).  Pp. xxxiv + 165.
  • 1998    (Editor) Literacy in Medieval Celtic Societies (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 33; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).  Pp. xiii + 297.
  • 2005    (Editor, with the assistance of Charles Insley)  The Acts of Welsh Rulers, 1120–1283 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press).  Pp. lvi + 902; repr. with corrections (UWP, 2010).
  • 2006    Tywysogion [Princes] (with contributions by R. W. Jones and S. Smith) (Cardiff: Hughes a’i Fab/S4C).  Pp. 167.
  • 2007    (Co-editor with John Watts)  Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies (Oxford: Oxford University Press).  Pp. xii + 283.
  • 2011    J. E. Lloyd and the Creation of Welsh History: Renewing a Nation’s Past (Cardiff: University of Wales Press). Pp. xvii + 277.
  • 2013    (Co-editor with Neil Evans), Writing a Small Nation’s Past: Wales in Comparative Perspective, 1850–1950 (Farnham: Ashgate). Pp. xiii + 391.
  • 2022 Writing Welsh History: From the Early Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Pp. xxiii + 482.

Articles and Chapters

  • [1983] ‘Hanesyddiaeth Cymru’ [The historiography of Wales], in Robert Rhys (ed.), Arolwg 1982 ([Liverpool]: Cyhoeddiadau Modern Cymreig), tt. 62–6.
  • 1984    ‘Ecclesiastical sanctuary in thirteenth-century Welsh law’, Journal of Legal History, 5/3, pp. 1-13; repr. in A. Kiralfy et al. (eds.), Custom, Courts and Counsel (London: Frank Cass, 1985), pp. 1-13.
  • 1985    ‘Enghraifft o croc “crocbren” yn y Canu i Gadfan?’ [An example of croc “gallows” in the Poem to Cadfan?], Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 32, pp. 166–8.
  • 1986    ‘Duw yn lle mach: briduw yng nghyfraith Hywel’ [God instead of a surety: the “honour of God” in the law of Hywel], in T. M. Charles-Edwards, M. E. Owen and D. B. Walters (eds.), Lawyers and Laymen: Studies in the History of Law presented to Professor Dafydd Jenkins on his seventy-fifth birthday (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), pp. 47-71.
  • 1986    ‘Early Irish canons and medieval Welsh law’, Peritia: Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland, 5, pp. 107-27.
  • 1986    ‘The prologues to the Welsh lawbooks’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 33, pp. 151-87.
  • 1987    ‘In search of a medieval society: Deheubarth in the writings of Gerald of Wales’, Welsh History Review, 13/3, pp. 265-81.
  • 1988    ‘Church and society in Wales, 1150-1250: an Irish perspective’, in R. R. Davies (ed.), The British Isles, 1100-1500: Comparisons, Contrasts and Connections (Edinburgh: John Donald), pp. 27-47.
  • 1988    ‘Cymru Gerallt’ [Gerald’s Wales], in G. H. Jenkins (ed.), Cof Cenedl III (Llandysul: Gomer Press), pp. 1-30.
  • 1989    ‘Gerald’s journey through Wales’, Journal of Welsh Ecclesiastical History, 6 (1989), pp. 17-34.
  • 1992    ‘Ecclesiastical wealth in early medieval Wales’, in N. Edwards and A. Lane (eds.), The Early Church in Wales and the West (Oxbow Monograph 16; Oxford: Oxbow Books), pp. 22-32.
  • 1992    ‘Pastoral care in early medieval Wales’, in J. Blair and R. Sharpe (eds.), Pastoral Care before the Parish (Leicester and London: Leicester University Press), pp. 41-62.
  • 1993    ‘The church of Trefeglwys and the end of the “Celtic charter tradition” in twelfth-century Wales’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 25, pp. 15-54.
  • 1994    ‘A new edition of the Historia Divae Monacellae’, The Montgomeryshire Collections, 82, pp. 23-40.
  • 1995  ‘Yr eglwys a’r gyfraith yng Nghymru’r oesoedd canol’ [The church and the law in medieval Wales], in G. H. Jenkins (ed.), Cof Cenedl X (Llandysul: Gomer Press), pp. 1-30.
  • 1996    ‘Yr eglwys yn oes yr Arglwydd Rhys’ [The church in the age of the Lord Rhys], in Nerys Ann Jones and Huw Pryce (eds.), Yr Arglwydd Rhys (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), pp. 145-77.
  • 1996  (with N. A. Jones) ‘Rhagymadrodd’ [Introduction], in Jones and Pryce (eds.), Yr Arglwydd Rhys, pp. 1-17.
  • 1996    (translated and introduced) ‘Y canu Lladin er cof am yr Arglwydd Rhys’ [The Latin poetry in commemoration of the Lord Rhys], in Jones and Pryce (eds.), Yr Arglwydd Rhys, pp. 212-23.
  • 1998    ‘A cross-border career: Giraldus Cambrensis between Wales and England’, in R. Schneider (ed.), Grenzgänger (Saarbrücken: Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Saarländische Landesgeschichte und Volksforschung 33), pp. 45-60.
  • 1998    ‘Introduction’, in Huw Pryce (ed.), Literacy in Medieval Celtic Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1-14.
  • 1998    ‘The origins and the medieval period’, in P. H. Jones and E. Rees (eds.), A Nation and its Books: A History of the Book in Wales (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales), pp. 1-23.
  • 1998    ‘Owain Gwynedd and Louis VII: the Franco-Welsh diplomacy of the first prince of Wales’, Welsh History Review, 19/1, pp. 1-28.
  • 1999    ‘Esgobaeth Bangor yn oes y tywysogion’ [The diocese of Bangor in the age of the princes], in W. P. Griffith (ed.), ‘Ysbryd Dealltwrus ac Enaid Anfarwol’: Ysgrifau ar Hanes Crefydd yng Ngwynedd (Bangor: Canolfan Uwch-Efrydiau Crefydd Bangor), pp. 37–57.
  • 1999    ‘Medieval experiences: Wales 1000-1415’, in G. E. Jones and D. Smith (eds.), The People of Wales (Llandysul: Gomer Press), pp. 11–47.
  • 2000    ‘The context and purpose of the earliest Welsh lawbooks’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 39 (Summer 2000), pp. 39–63.
  • 2000    ‘The household priest (offeiriad teulu)’, in T. M. Charles-Edwards, M. E. Owen, and P. Russell (eds.), The Welsh King and his Court (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), pp. 82–93.
  • 2000    ‘Lawbooks and literacy in medieval Wales’, Speculum, 75, pp. 29–67.
  • 2000    (with J. Goering)  ‘The De modo confitendi of Cadwgan, bishop of Bangor’, Mediaeval Studies, 62 (2000), pp. 1–27.
  • 2001    ‘British or Welsh? National identity in twelfth-century Wales’, English Historical Review, 116, pp. 775–801.
  • 2001    ‘Frontier Wales, c.1063–1282’, in Prys Morgan (ed.), The Tempus History of Wales (Stroud: Tempus), pp. 77–106.
  • 2001    ‘The medieval church’, in J. B. and Ll. B. Smith (eds.), History of Merioneth, II: The Middle Ages (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), pp. 254–96.
  • 2001    ‘Welsh custom and canon law, 1150–1250’, in K. Pennington (ed.), Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law (Monumenta Iuris Canonici Series C; Subsidia, 11; Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana), pp. 781–97.
  • 2002    ‘Negotiating Anglo-Welsh relations: Llywelyn the Great and Henry III’, in B. K. U. Weiler with I. Rowlands (eds.), England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III (1216–1272) (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 13–29.
  • 2003    ‘The christianization of society’, in W. Davies (ed.), Short Oxford History of the British Isles: The Ninth to the Eleventh Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 138–67.
  • 2003    ‘Wales: religion and piety’, in S. Rigby (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Later Medieval Britain (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 411–29.
  • 2003    ‘Welsh rulers and the written word, 1120–1283’, in P. Thorau et al. (eds.), Regionen Europas—Europa der Regionen: Festschrift für Kurt-Ulrich Jäschke zum 65. Geburtstag (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag), pp. 65–78.
  • 2004    ‘Modern nationality and the medieval past: the Wales of John Edward Lloyd’, in R. R. Davies and G. H. Jenkins (eds.), From Medieval to Modern Wales: Historical Essays in Honour of Kenneth O. Morgan and Ralph A. Griffiths (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), pp. 14–29.
  • 2004    ‘Anian, bishop of Bangor (d. 1306/7)’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: OUP), ii. 168; ‘Bleddyn ap Cynfyn (d. 1075)’, ibid., vi. 198–9; ‘Caradog (d. 1124)’, ibid., x. 9–10; ‘Gruffudd ap Cynan (d. 1137)’, ibid., xxiv. 133–5; ‘Gruffudd ap Rhys (d. 1137)’, ibid., xxiv. 139–40; Madog ap Maredudd (d. 1160)’, ibid., xxxvi. 95–7; ‘Owain Gwynedd (d. 1170)’, ibid., xlii. 179–81; ‘Prise, Sir John’, ibid., xlv. 424–5; ‘Rhys ap Gruffudd (1131/2–1197)’, ibid., xlvi. 614–17.
  • 2005    ‘Culture, power and the charters of Welsh rulers’, in M. T. Flanagan and J. Green (eds.), Charters and Charter Scholarship in Britain and Ireland (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 184–202.
  • 2005    ‘From the neolithic to nonconformity: J. E. Lloyd and the history of Caernarfonshire’, Transactions of the Caernarvonshire Historical Society, 66, pp. 14–37.
  • 2005    ‘Uses of the vernacular in the acts of Welsh rulers, 1120–1283’, in 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: http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/document180.html)
  • 2006    ‘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.
  • 2007    ‘The dynasty of Deheubarth and the church of St Davids’, in J. W. Evans and J. M. Wooding (eds.), St David of Wales: Cult, Church and Nation (Studies in Celtic History; Woodbridge: Boydell), pp. 305–16 .
  • 2007    ‘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], in Geraint H. Jenkins (ed.), Cof Cenedl XXII (Llandysul: Gomer Press), pp. 1–31.
  • 2007    ‘Patrons and patronage among the Cistercians in Wales’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 154 (2007 for 2005), pp. 81–95.
  • 2007    ‘Welsh rulers and European change, c.1100–1282’, in Huw Pryce and John Watts (eds.), Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies (Oxford: OUP), pp. 37–51.
  • 2008    ‘R. Allen Brown Memorial Lecture: The Normans in Welsh History’, in C. P. Lewis (ed.), Anglo-Norman Studies XXX (Woodbridge: Boydell), pp. 1–18.
  • 2008    (with Katharine K. Olson) ‘The reluctant medievalist?’, in G. H. Jenkins and  G. E. Jones (eds.), Degrees of Influence: A Memorial Volume for Glanmor Williams (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), pp. 30–57.
  • 2009    ‘Conversions to Christianity’, in P. Stafford (ed.), A Companion to the Early Middle Ages: Britain and Ireland c.500–c.1100 (Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell), pp. 143–59.
  • 2009    ‘Robert Rees Davies 1938–2005’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 161 (2009), pp. 135–55.
  • 2010    ‘Annals and Chronicles: Ireland – Irish Annals’; ‘Annals and Chronicles: Wales – Chronicle of the Welsh Princes’; ‘Hywel Dda, Laws of’, in Robert Bjork (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press), I, p. 73; II, pp. 831–2.
  • 2011    ‘Anglo-Welsh agreements, 1201–77’, in Ralph A. Griffiths and Phillipp Schofield (eds.), Wales and the Welsh in the Middle Ages (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), pp. 1–19.
  • 2011    ‘Gerald of Wales, Gildas and the Descriptio Kambriae’, in Fiona Edmonds and Paul Russell (eds.), Tome: Studies in Medieval Celtic History and Law in Honour of Thomas Charles-Edwards, Studies in Celtic History (Woodbridge: Boydell), pp. 115–24.
  • 2011    ‘Llywelyn the Great and Llywelyn the Last – for themselves or for Wales?’, in H. V. Bowen (ed.), A New History of Wales: Myths and Realities in Welsh History (Llandysul: Gomer Press), pp. 27–34.
  • 2011    ‘Were we Welsh or were we British?’, in ibid., pp. 35–41.
  • 2012    ‘Culture, identity, and the medieval revival in Victorian Wales’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium. Volume XXXI, 2011 (2012), pp. 1–40.
  • 2012    ‘John Edward Lloyd: hanesydd Cymru’ [John Edward Lloyd: historian of Wales], Y Traethodydd, 167/701 (Ebrill 2012), pp. 101–16.
  • 2013    (with Neil Evans), ‘Writing a small nation’s past: states, race and historical culture’, in Neil Evans and Huw Pryce (eds.), Writing a Small Nation’s Past: Wales in Comparative Perspective, 1850–1950 (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 3–30.
  • 2013    ‘J. E. Lloyd’s History of Wales (1911): publication and reception’, in Evans and Pryce (eds.) Writing a Small Nation’s Past, pp. 49–64.
  • 2014    (with Gwilym Owen), ‘Medieval Welsh law and the mid-Victorian foreshore’, Journal of Legal History, 35/2 (2014), pp. 172–99.
  • 2016    ‘Cofio Glyndŵr’ [Remembering Glyndŵr], Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, n.s. 22, pp. 43–60.
  • 2016    ‘Giraldus and the Geraldines’, in Peter Crooks and Seán Duffy (eds.), The Geraldines and Medieval Ireland: The Making of a Myth (Dublin: Four Courts), pp. 53–68.
  • 2016    ‘Harry Longueville Jones, FSA, medieval Paris and the heritage measures of the July Monarchy’, The Antiquaries Journal, 96 (2016), pp. 391–414.
  • 2016    ‘Medieval Welsh history in the Victorian age’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic
  • Studies, 71 (Summer 2016), pp. 1–28.
  • 2018    ‘Gerald of Wales and the Welsh past’, in Georgia Henley and A. Joseph McMullen (eds.), Gerald of Wales: New Perspectives on a Medieval Writer and Critic (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), pp. 19–45.
  • 2018    ‘Historians and the Treaty of Montgomery’, Montgomeryshire Collections, 106, pp. 5–16.
  • 2019    (with Owain Wyn Jones), ‘Historical writing in medieval Wales’, in Jennifer Jahner et al. (eds.), Medieval Historical Writing: Britain and Ireland, 500–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 208–24.
  • 2020    ‘Chronicling and its contexts in medieval Wales’, in 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    ‘The Irish and Welsh Middle Ages in the Victorian period’, in Joanne Parker and Corinne Wagner (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism (Oxford: OUP), pp. 215–34.
  • 2021    ‘Gerald of Wales: medieval ethnographer of the Welsh’, in W. John Morgan and Fiona Bowie (eds.), Social Anthropologies of the Welsh: Past and Present (RAI Country Series, 5; Canon Pyon: Sean Kingston Publishing), pp. 41–55.
  • 2022    ‘Iachawdwriaeth, rhagluniaeth a hanes: Theophilus Evans a Drych y Prif Oesoedd’ [Salvation, providence and history: Theophilus Evans and the Mirror of the Primitive Ages], Y Traethodydd, 176/741 (Ionawr 2022), 16–26.

Biography

  • 1981–2021, Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer and Reader, in History, and (from 2005) Professor of Welsh History, Bangor University
  • 1993, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
  • 2011, Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales
  • 2012, Member of the Commission internationale de diplomatique, Comité international des Sciences historiques
  • 2021, Honorary Professor, School of Archaeology, History and Religion, Cardiff University