Daniel Woolf argued that a historical culture consists of ‘habits of thought, languages, and media of communication, and patterns of narrative and non-narrative modes of discourse’. Historical cultures are ‘part of the mental and verbal specie of the society that uses them, passing among contemporaries through speech, writing, and other means of communication’. There were commonalities in Wales and England, but just as the language and patterns of behaviour differed between the two, so did the resulting historical culture. Historical representation, myth, and narrative permeated Welsh culture. The gentry class or uchelwyr placed themselves, their ancestors, and their descendants within a narrative spanning centuries. They linked the present to the past, and the past to the future frequently within a framework that prized deep continuities and lineal identities. As a result, for example, a gentleman’s Civil War allegiance in 1642 could be connected smoothly with his ancestors’ loyalty to (or descent from) the medieval Welsh princes, and their office-holding from 1282 onwards. Such a sense of continuity was largely imagined and partly a response to significant social, political, religious, and economic changes. It functioned as a way of providing stability, demonstrating status, and indicating regional relationships. It was partly a defensive culture, brought into play against English attacks on Welsh ‘backwardness’, a dishonourable representation that the Welsh occasionally attempted to rebut. On the other hand, it was also assertive, proudly demonstrative of the ancientness and splendour of the Welsh past and, by implication, present. It was not fixed and inflexible. Welsh historical culture was capable of weaving in new developments into the web of pre-Roman and medieval cultural memories, particularly when the values demonstrated by those developments accorded closely with those that continued to be important from the past. Welsh historical culture was of fundamental importance in determining the ideologies and actions of the seventeenth-century North-East Welsh gentry under examination herein.

Welsh historical culture was simultaneously unique and derivative. Within it were many features also visible within English, and indeed European, historical culture. After all, ‘having a past and knowing it’ has been considered desirable and necessary across time and within a wide range of societies. Many of the overarching trends were similar to those in England and continental Europe, and many of its products would be familiar to those over the border.