Biography of Ranulf Glanville 1112-1190

The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales: Introduction. When he came to deal with the affairs of state on a larger stage, his methods were still that of the modern journalist. He was always an impressionist, a writer of personal sketches. His character sketches of the Plantagenet princes - of King Henry with his large round head and fat round belly, his fierce eyes, his tigerish temper, his learning, his licentiousness, his duplicity, and of Eleanor of Aquitaine, his vixenish and 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 (age 75), the first English jurist, and he has "Boswellised" some of his conversations with him. He was intimate with Archbishop Baldwin (age 62), 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. 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 Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales: Book 1 Chapter 1. The archbishop proceeded to Radnor [Map], on Ash Wednesday (Caput Jejunii), accompanied by Ranulph de Glanville (age 75), privy counsellor and justiciary of the whole kingdom, and there met Rhys (age 55),¹¹ son of Gruffydd, prince of South Wales, and many other noble personages of those parts; where a sermon being preached by the archbishop, upon the subject of the Crusades, and explained to the Welsh by an interpreter, the author of this Itinerary, impelled by the urgent importunity and promises of the king, and the persuasions of the archbishop and the justiciary, arose the first, and falling down at the feet of the holy man, devoutly took the sign of the cross. His example was instantly followed by Peter, bishop of St. David's,¹² a monk of the abbey of Cluny, and then by Eineon, son of Eineon Clyd,¹³ prince of Elvenia, and many other persons. Eineon rising up, said to Rhys, whose daughter he had married, "My father and lord! with your permission I hasten to revenge the injury offered to the great father of all." Rhys himself was so fully determined upon the holy peregrination, as soon as the archbishop should enter his territories on his return, that for nearly fifteen days he was employed with great solicitude in making the necessary preparations for so distant a journey; till his wife, and, according to the common vicious licence of the country, his relation in the fourth degree, Guendolena, (Gwenllian), daughter of Madoc, prince of Powys, by female artifices diverted him wholly from his noble purpose; since, as Solomon says, "A man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps." As Rhys before his departure was conversing with his friends concerning the things he had heard, a distinguished young man of his family, by name Gruffydd, and who afterwards took the cross, is said thus to have answered: "What man of spirit can refuse to undertake this journey, since, amongst all imaginable inconveniences, nothing worse can happen to any one than to return."

Note 11. Rhys ap Gruffydd was grandson to Rhys ap Tewdwr, prince of South Wales, who, in 1090 [Note. 1093?], was slain in an engagement with the Normans. He was a prince of great talent, but great versatility of character, and made a conspicuous figure in Welsh history. He died in 1196, and was buried in the cathedral of St. David's [Map]; where his [Rhys ap Gruffydd's] effigy, as well as that of his son Rhys Gryg (age 22), still remain in a good state of preservation.

Note 12. Peter de Leia, prior of the Benedictine monastery of Wenlock [Map], in Shropshire, was the successful rival of Giraldus for the bishopric of Saint David's, vacant by the death of David Fitzgerald, the uncle of our author; but he did not obtain his promotion without considerable opposition from the canons, who submitted to the absolute sequestration of their property before they consented to his election, being desirous that the nephew should have succeeded his uncle. He was consecrated in 1176, and died in 1199.

Note 13. In the Latin of Giraldus, the name of Eineon is represented by Aeneas, and Eineon Clyd by Aeneas Claudius.