Welsh historical culture, as seen in Chapter 1, manifested itself in overlapping forms, including bardic poetry, narrative histories, manuscript collections, and material objects. It had a self-confident character, secure in its ancientness and value. Welsh historical culture served a number of crucial purposes. Many of these are similar to other historical cultures – after all, Wales had complex interwoven relationships with England, Ireland, and continental Europe, and it did not exist in a vacuum. One powerful purpose of Welsh historical culture was to create and then maintain continuity with the ancient and medieval Welsh past, providing stability at a time of intensely destabilising change. The field of memory studies has been of vital importance in analysing some of the practices and purposes of conservative cultures, and will be used in this chapter to explore how and why the Welsh gentry sought to create an impression of unchanging permanence, while incorporating new elements from England and Europe into their culture. Second, Welsh historical culture helped the Welsh gentry to demonstrate and display their status and the honour that attached to that status in terms of individuals and kindreds as well as the region or country more broadly. The gentry became keepers of that culture, as antiquaries and collectors of manuscripts and books. Finally, Welsh historical culture was one way to display kinship relationships publicly, both within and outside a region.

Welsh historical culture was also distinctive from that which operated in England. Using again the metaphor of a recipe for ‘Welsh historical culture’, some ‘ingredients’ were distinctively Welsh, whilst others were common to historical cultures in England and continental Europe. The quantities, blend, and method by which all these ingredients were brought together renders the result distinctive. The Welsh language, bardic tradition and methods of recording lineage, the social and legal background to, for example, land ownership and compensation for injury, as well as the ways that the British History was used to assert the special place of the Welsh, are all unique to Wales. Equally there were shared forms and values, such as an interest in genealogy and heraldry, a stress on the importance of an ancient lineage, and an obsession with family and honour.