David Powel

David Powel (1549/52 – 1598) was a Welsh Church of England clergyman and historian who published the first printed history of Wales in 1584.

Life Powel was born in Denbighshire and commenced his studies at the University of Oxford when he was 16, sometime between 1566 and 1568. Whilst his initial college membership is not known, it is known that he moved to Jesus College when it was founded in 1571. He obtained his B.A. degree on 3 March 1573 and is thought to have been the college's first graduate. One of his sons was Gabriel Powell, also a clergyman, and a strident anti-Catholic.

Works Powel made a significant contribution to developing and preserving Welsh culture and to the growth of Protestantism in Wales. He was a supporter of William Morgan's efforts to translate the Bible into Welsh. He kept the Privy Council informed about illegal books circulating amongst Roman Catholics in Wales. It also popularised the legend that Prince Madoc had discovered America in about 1170, a tale used to justify English encroachments on the territory of Spanish America (for example in Hakluyt's Discourse on Western Planting).

Powel also published a volume with editions of Ponticus Virunnius's Historia Britannica, and Gerald of Wales's Itinerarium Cambriae ('Journey through Wales', 1191) and Descriptio Cambriae ('Description of Wales', 1194), but omitted Gerald's negative comments about the Welsh. The volume was dedicated to Sidney. He is also said (by the later lexicographer John Davies) to have worked on an unpublished Welsh dictionary.