"What foes more dang'rous than too strong allies?": Anglo-Welsh relations in eighteenth-century London

Welsh writing is often misunderstood or overlooked in historical and literary-critical studies of eighteenth-century Britishness, which tend to emphasize the turbulent nature of Anglo-Scottish and Anglo-Irish relations in contrast to the peaceful integration of Wales with England. Through an analysis of a selection of sermons and poetry produced by the London-Welsh Society of Ancient Britons, Sarah Prescott asks in this article whether Anglophone Welsh writers uphold or challenge the view of an acquiescent and anglicized Wales. Although the writers discussed here make explicit claims for both integration and distinctiveness at times, their dramatizations of bardic prophecy, their insistence on the Welsh identity of the Ancient Britions and the antiquity of the Welsh language, and their use of Galfridian mythology and anti-Saxon rhetoric may be said to resist Anglo-British assimilation and to pave the way for the more openly nationalist reappropriation of Welsh traditions that was to follow.