Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

From Edward Lhuyd to lolo Morganwg: The Death and Rebirth of Glamorgan Antiquarianism in the Eighteenth Century J. P. Jenkins The antiquaries of Tudor and Stuart times have been duly praised, and local historians fully acknowledge that the foundations of their craft lie in the great tradition which included Leland, Stowe, Lambarde and Dugdale. Glamorgan produced the celebrated Rice Merrick in Elizabethan times, and the latest volume of the Glamorgan County History includes full studies of his historically minded contemporaries like Sir Edward Mansel, Sir Edward Stradling and Anthony Powel of Llwydarth, as well as of their successors in the next century such as the Wilkinses. The Civil War provided renewed stimulus to historical study, for scholars were appalled by the wanton destruction of "heaps of parchment books and rolls" burnt by Roundheads, while Royalists excluded from public life now had the time and inclination to study antiquities. Thomas Wilkins the antiquary began his studies in 1657, in the Interregnum, and the famous scholar John Aubrey "began to enter into pocket memorandum books philosophical and antiquarian remarks AD 1654, at Llantrithyd", while staying with his Glamorgan kinsman and namesake. The renewed tradition flourished after the Restoration. Sir Edward Stradling patronised the work of Percy Enderbie on Welsh history, and the sermons of George Stradling are models of historical erudition both ancient and medieval. The Aubreys remained in close touch with one another, so that local antiquarian circles were brought into contact with national figures like Edward Lhuyd. It is the work of Lhuyd in the 1690s that permits us to see how enthusiastically the Glamorgan gentry had adopted historical study as a pastime amounting to an obsession[l].