BARRY, or BARR, GIRALD DE, commonly called Giraldus Cambrensis, an historian and ecclesiastic of the twelfth and thirteenth century, was born at the castle of Mainarpir, near Pembroke, in 1146. By his mother he was descended from the princes of South Wales; and his father, William de Barri, was one of the chief men of that principality. Being a younger brother, and intended for the church, he was sent to St David's, and educated in the family of his uncle, the bishop of that see. When about twenty years of age he was sent to the university of Paris, where he continued for three years, and, according to his own account, became an excellent rhetorician. On his return he entered into holy orders, and obtained several benefices both in England and Wales. But observing with much concern that his countrymen the Welsh were very backward in paying tithes of wool and cheese, he applied to Richard, archbishop of Canterbury, and was appointed his legate in Wales for rectifying this and other disorders. Barri excommunicated all, without distinction, who refused to compound matters with the church, and, in particular, delivered over bodily to the Evil One those who withheld the tithes. Not satisfied with enriching, he also attempted to reform, the clergy. He deputed the archdeacon of Brecon to the archbishop, for the unpardonable crime of matrimony; and on his refusing to put away his wife, he was deprived of his archdeaconry, which was bestowed upon the zealous legate. On the death of his uncle, the bishop of St David's, in 1176, he was elected his successor by the chapter; but this choice having been made without the permission of Henry II., Girald prudently declined to insist upon it, and went again to Paris to prosecute his studies. He speaks with exultation of the prodigious fame which he acquired by his eloquent declamations in the schools, and of the crowded audiences who attended them. Having spent about four years at Paris, he returned to St David's, where he found everything in confusion; and on the expulsion of the bishop by the people, which took place soon after, he was appointed administrator by the archbishop of Canterbury, and governed the diocese in that capacity till 1184, when the bishop was restored. About the same time he was called to court by Henry II., appointed one of his chaplains, and sent into Ireland with Prince John, by whom he was offered the united bishoprics of Fernes and Leighlin, but declined them, and employed his time in collecting materials for his Topography of Ireland, and his history of the conquest of that island, which was completed in three books in 1187. In 1188 he attended Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, in his progress through Wales, preaching a crusade for the recovery of the Holy Land; an employment in which he tells us, with his usual modesty, that he was far more successful than the primate,—adding significantly, that the people were most affected with the Latin sermons (which they did not understand), melting into tears, and coming in crowds to take the cross. On the accession of Richard I. in 1189, he was sent by that prince into Wales to preserve the peace of the country, and was even joined in commission with William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, as one of the regents of the kingdom. He failed, however, to improve this favourable opportunity; and having fixed his heart on the see of St David's, the bishop of which was very old and infirm, he refused the bishopric of Bangor in 1190, and that of Landaff the year following. But in 1192 the state of public affairs became so unfavourable to Barri's interest at court that he determined to retire. He proceeded to Lincoln, where William de Monte read lectures in theology with great applause; and here he spent about six years in the study of divinity, and in composing several works. At
last the see of St David's, which had long been the object of his ambition, became vacant, and he was unanimously elected by the chapter, but met with so powerful an adversary in Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury, that it involved him in a litigation which lasted five years, cost him three journeys to Rome, and ended in his defeat in the year 1203. Retiring from the world, he spent the last seventeen years of his life in a studious privacy, composing many books, of which a catalogue is given in the Biographia Britannica. His MSS. are preserved in the British Museum, the library at Lambeth, and the Bodleian Library. Of his published works, the best known is his Itinerarium Cambriae, of which a translation, illustrated with annotations, and accompanied with a life of the author, was published by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, in two splendid quarto volumes, in 1806.