File Peniarth MS 134 [RESTRICTED ACCESS]. - Llyfr Mawr Gruffudd Hiraethog,

An informal collection of pedigrees in both narrative and tabular form in the variable hand of Gruffudd Hiraethog. Compiled between 1550 (pp. 216, 303) and 1558 (pp. 151, 379, 447, 453) with later additions. Apart from pp. 405-19, the pedigrees are almost all north Welsh. On p. 2, in the hand of Robert Vaughan, ‘Y llyvr mawr y mae Gr Hiraethog yn galw hwnn’ [of which Peniarth MS 133 also formed a part, see P.C. Bartrum, ‘Notes on the Welsh genealogical manuscripts’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1976, 106]. For Gruffudd’s named sources, see P.C. Bartrum, ‘Genealogical sources quoted by Gruffudd Hiraethog’, National Library of Wales Journal, 26 (1989-90), 1-9.
On pp. 99-106 and 305-8 are short Welsh armorials in blazon in Welsh, the former, of south Wales bias, drawn in part from ‘llyfr Lewys y Glyn’ [Lewys Glyn Cothi] (pp. 100, 107). On pp. 3-38 is an index in the hand of Wiliam Llŷn, whose foliation 1-248, with irregularities, is on pp. 41-463. Traces of several disrupted earlier foliations survive. Collaborating hands are Simwnt Fychan (pp. 45-6, 49-53, 79, 91, 393-5, and on p. 382 an autograph englyn, and on p. 426 his signature and a calligraphic alphabet), Huws’ X179 (pp. 157-66, 169-70, 171, 327) and Richard Longford (p. 345). There appear to be five collaborating hands, some of them resembling that of Gruffudd Hiraethog: A (fols 107-15); B (p. 167); C (pp. 381-2, once a folded sheet, containing annals and englynion); D (pp. 383-91 and 429-30, the latter leaf is displaced, containing text which came, as Robert Vaughan notes on p. 383, ‘allan or llyfr gwyn o Hergest’ [printed in National Library of Wales Journal, 17 (1971-2), 238-48]); E (pp. 457-62). E, under the heading ‘Swyddinbych Kwmwd Issaled’, transcribes the pedigree of ‘Mayster Robert ap Res ap Meredyth’ [died 1534, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.n. Ellis Price], citing ‘iache … o waith Tudyr [A]led a Robertt Iachwr [Robert ab Ieuan ap Hywel]’; the damaged colophon on p. 462 (probably copied with the text) names the scribe ‘[ ... ]s ap Robert ysgolhaic’ and mentions his wish that the book be preserved at ‘blas Mayster Doctor [ ... ]’.