The University of Wales Press is pleased to publish Cardiganshire County History. Volume 2. Medieval and Early Modern Cardiganshire, on behalf of the Ceredigion Historical Society in association with the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. This is the second and final volume in a prestigious and lavishly illustrated series. A team of fifteen distinguished authors have embraced the challenge of providing a comprehensive and illuminating account of the wide range of socio-economic, political, religious and cultural forces that shaped the ethos and character of the county during the turbulent centuries of a period that witnessed conquest and castle-building, the impact of the Glyndwr rebellion, the coming of the Reformation and the turmoil of civil war. Although Cardiganshire was one of the smallest and most impoverished counties in Wales, it had and continues to have an acute sense of its own identity and history - `Yn rhagoriaeth ar bob tir / Gorau yw Sir G'redigion', wrote one effusive poet. Any shire that can boast locations from Aberystwyth to Cardigan castles, Strata Florida and Gogerddan, let alone such luminaries as Dafydd ap Gwilym, Thomas Jones (later mythologised as Twm Sion Cati), Sir John Vaughan and Katherine Philips (the `Matchless Orinda'), has a claim to posterity.
