CAMBREN'SIS, the literary name of Gerald de Barri. He was fourti..
son of William de Barri, a Norman noble who had settled in Pembrokeshire, and allied himself by marriage to the family Rhys ap Theodore, prince of South Wales. Giraldus was bore about 1146, and educated by his uncle David, who was bishop of St. David's. lie entered the university of Paris•in his 20th year, and after three years of much lite iary distinction he returned to England, entered into holy orders in 1172, and was soon .afterwards appointed archdeacon of St. David's. He was from the first a zealous church man; strenuous in the enforcement of discipline, and especially of clerical celibacy; and was the chief agent in the establishment of the payment of tithes within the principality.
•On the death of his uncle, the chapter of St. David's elected him bishop; but as the -election was made without the royal license, Giraldus renounced it. The king, Henry II., directed a new election; and on the chapter's persisting in their choice of Giraldus, the king refused to confirm the selection, and another bishop, Peter de Leia, was appointed. Giraldus withdrew for a time to his old residence in the university of Paris, and on his return he was required, by the archbishop of Canterbury, to take the admin-, istration of the diocese of St. David's, which had utterly failed in the hands of De Leta. He held it for four years, when being appointed a royal chaplain, and afterwards pre ceptor to prince John, lie accompanied that prince in 1185 in his expedition to Ireland, where lie remained after John's return, in order to complete the well known descriptive •account of that country, which, although very valuable as a whole, has in many of its details called forth much angry criticism from Irish scholars and antiquaries. On his return, in 1187, he read this work publicly in the university at Oxford, giving a full day to each of the three divisions of which it consists. A tour of Wales which he made '(1188) in the company of Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, led to a similar descrip tive work, the Itinerarium, Cambrice. In the following year he accompanied the king to
France, where he remained till the king's death. His later years, after his return, were full of disappointment. On the see of St. David's again becoming vacant, lie was again unanimously elected by the chapters ; but the archbishop of Canterbury having interposed, Giraldus, notwithstanding an appeal to Rome, in prosecuting which lie made three different journeys in the course of five years of the contest, failed to obtain a confirma tion of the nomination. He soon afterwards resigned his archcleaconry, and devoted the remaining seventeen years of his life to study. Once again the see of St. David's became vacant, but although it was offered to Giraldus on certain conditions, lie declined to accept it, and died at St. in the 74th year of his age. The reason etify Giraldus's %appointment to the bishopric was so much opposed is not clearly known, but the king, it is said, had resolved that r' native of Wales should obtain the dignity. Giraldus's writings, although disfigured by credulity, and in the personal narratives with which they abound, by exce.ssive vanity, are of great value as materials for the history, and for ,the social condition of the age and the countries which. he describes. But they must be read with much caution, and with a careful critical consideration of the sources of the: information which they embody. Several of his works are still preserved in in the British museum, the Bodleian, the Lambeth, and Corpus Christi college libraries_ His printed works are the Itinerarium Cambria; Mpographia Hibernia; Expugnatip Hibernia; Descriptio Cambria; and several smaller pieces, which are printed in the second volume of Wharton's Anglia Sacra. Barry's work on Ireland called out several rejoinders, the most valuable of which is that of John Lynch (under the pseudonym of Gratianus Lucius), entitled Camhrensis Eversus; a less valuable work is that of Stephen White, recently published, from the original manuscripts; sir James Ware has freely criticised Barry in the Antiquities of Ireland.