He was employed by Richard of Dover, the Archbishop of Canterbury, on various ecclesiastical missions in Wales, and distinguished himself by his efforts to remove supposed abuses of consanguinity and tax laws flourishing in the Welsh church at the time.

While administering this post, Gerald collected tithes of wool and cheese from the populace; the income from the archdeaconry supported him for many years.

[1] Gerald became a royal clerk and chaplain to King Henry II of England in 1184, first acting as mediator between the crown and Prince Rhys ap Gruffydd.

This was the catalyst for his literary career; his work Topographia Hibernica (first circulated in manuscript in 1188, and revised at least four times) is an account of his journey to Ireland; Gerald always referred to it as his Topography, though "history" is the more accurate term.

Both works were revised and added to several times before his death, and display a notable degree of Latin learning, as well as a great deal of prejudice against foreign people.

[citation needed] Having thus demonstrated his usefulness, Gerald was selected to accompany the Archbishop of Canterbury, Baldwin of Forde, on a tour of Wales in 1188, the object being a recruitment campaign for the Third Crusade.

His two works on Wales remain very valuable historical documents, useful for their descriptions (however untrustworthy and inflected by ideology, whimsy, and his unique style) of Welsh and Norman culture.

Here Gerald is frequently critical of the rule of the Angevin kings, a shift from his earlier praise of Henry II in the Topographia.

[citation needed] On the death of Peter de Leia in 1198, the chapter of St Davids again nominated Gerald for the bishopric; but Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, refused confirmation.

Representatives of the canons followed Richard I to France, but before they could interview him he died; his successor, King John, received them kindly and granted them permission to hold an election.

Gerald returned, and his cause was now supported by the Princes of Wales, most notably Llywelyn the Great, and Gruffydd ap Rhys II, while King John, frequently in conflict with the Welsh, warmly espoused the cause of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

After this long struggle, the chapter of St Davids deserted Gerald, and having been obliged to leave Wales, he fled to Rome.

In April 1203 Pope Innocent III annulled both elections, and Geoffrey of Henlaw was appointed to the See of St Davids, despite the strenuous exertions of Gerald.

Professor Davies tells us that Gerald, whom he calls "an admirable story-teller", is the only source for some of the most famous of the Welsh folk tales including the declaration of the old man of Pencader to Henry II which concludes Descriptio Cambriae: This nation, O King, may now, as in former times, be harassed, and in a great measure weakened and destroyed by your and other powers, and it will also prevail by its laudable exertions, but it can never be totally subdued through the wrath of man, unless the wrath of God shall concur.

He had pleasant things to say about the poetic talents of his people, too: In their rhymed songs and set speeches they are so subtle and ingenious that they produce, in their native tongue, ornaments of wonderful and exquisite invention both in the words and the sentences...

They make use of alliteration in preference to all other ornaments of rhetoric, and that particular kind which joins by consonancy the first letters or syllables of words.Gerald could not have predicted the later perfection of cynghanedd, the complex system of sound correspondence that has characterised the strict-metre poetry of the Welsh for so many centuries and that is still practised today, especially in competitions for the eisteddfod chair.

As Gerald puts it, "an attention to order now requires that, in this second part, we should employ our pen in pointing out those particulars in which it seems to transgress the line of virtue and commendation".

The persons of those who are well-formed are indeed remarkably fine, nowhere better; but as those who are favoured with the gifts of nature grow up exceedingly handsome, those from whom she withholds them are frightfully ugly.

No wonder if among an adulterous and incestuous people, in which both births and marriages are illegitimate, a nation out of the pale of the laws, nature herself should be foully corrupted by perverse habits.

It should seem that by the just judgements of God, nature sometimes produces such objects, contrary to her own laws, in order that those who will not regard Him duly by the light of their own consciences, should often have to lament their privations of the exterior and bodily gift of sight.