Despite a frustrated ecclesiastical career - his ongoing failure to secure the See of St David's embittered him - Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales, Gerald de Barry, c.1146-1220/23) composed many remarkable literary works, initially while employed as a royal clerk for Henry II and, subsequently, in semi-retirement in Lincoln. Eight volumes of his works were compiled as part of the Rolls Series of British medieval material. Volume 7, edited by clergyman and historian James F. Dimock (1810-76) and published in 1877, contains Giraldus' lives of Saint Remigius, the first Bishop of Lincoln, and his later successor Saint Hugh, a contemporary of Giraldus himself. The Latin text, in Giraldus' vigorous and anecdotal style, gives a vivid picture of the ecclesiastical world of medieval Britain and its historical background, while the English editorial preface illuminates nineteenth-century interest in the period.
