Richard Gwyn facts for kids
Quick facts for kids SaintRichard Gwyn |
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Detail of a painting of Richard Gwyn in Wrexham Cathedral
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| Martyr | |
| Born | ca. 1537 Montgomeryshire, Wales |
| Died | 15 October 1584 (aged 47) Wrexham, Wales |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church |
| Beatified | 15 December 1929 by Pope Pius XI |
| Canonized | 25 October 1970 by Pope Paul VI |
| Major shrine | Wrexham Cathedral |
| Feast | 4 May, 25 October |
| Patronage | Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, Roman Catholic Diocese of Wrexham, teachers, large families, parents of large families |
Richard Gwyn (ca. 1537 – 15 October 1584), also known by his anglicised name, Richard White, was a Welsh teacher at illegal and underground schools and a Bard who wrote both Christian and satirical poetry in the Welsh language. A Roman Catholic during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England, Gwyn was executed for high treason at Wrexham in 1584. He was canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Since its creation in 1987, St. Richard Gwyn has been the Patron Saint of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wrexham. Along with fellow lay martyr St. Margaret Clitherow, Gwyn is the co-patron of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales.
Contents
Early life
While little is known of Richard Gwyn's early life, it is known that he was born about 1537 in Llanidloes, Montgomeryshire, Wales and, reportedly, "descended of honest parentage, bearing the surname of Gwin (sic)."
Only at the age of 20, "he did frame his mind to like of good letters", and accordingly matriculated at Oxford University, "where he made no great abode", and did not complete a degree. He then went to Cambridge University, "where he lived on the charity of the College", and its then Master, the Roman Catholic Dr. George Bullock. During his time at University, Gwyn's fellow students began calling him by the alias of "Richard White", "as being the English equivalent of his name". In the early part of the reign of Elizabeth I, Bullock was forced to resign the mastership in July 1559 and Gwyn was forced to leave the college.
After leaving the university, Gwyn found that, "need and poverty compelled him to became a teacher before he could perfectly lay the foundation to be a learner," and returned to his native district in Wales. Gwyn served successively as schoolmaster in the Wrexham area villages of Gresford, Yswyd, and Overton-on-Dee while continuing his studies of the liberal arts, theology, and history.
Gwyn married Catherine, a young woman from Overton-on-Dee. They had six children, three of whom survived him.
Despite repeated threats of both fines and imprisonment, Gwyn made every effort to avoid attending Anglican Sunday Services and taking the Oath of Supremacy. As a Recusant in a small village, Gwyn's adherence to the old faith was common knowledge. Gwyn also made no effort to hide his opinions and openly exhorted his neighbors who had conformed to return to the Catholic Church.
At the time, Bishops of the Established Church were under considerable pressure from Queen Elizabeth I to arrest Recusants, especially schoolmasters, who exercised great influence and Welsh Bards, who, like Richard Gwyn, were acting as secret messengers on behalf of Roman Catholic priests and Recusants within the Welsh nobility and commons. In this way, the Bards of Wales were highly important within the Welsh Catholic underground and were how news was spread about secret Masses and religious pilgrimages.
For these reasons, Dr. William Downham, a former Roman Catholic priest of the Augustinian Brothers of Penitence who had conformed to Anglicanism and been appointed by the Queen as Bishop of Chester, and his officers, "began to molest", Gwyn, "for refusing to receive at their communion table". The Bishop and local statesman Roger Puleston put considerable pressure upon Gwyn, who reluctantly agreed, "greatly against his stomach", to receive Communion at Anglican services the following Sunday. The next Sunday, however, as Gwyn left St. Mary the Virgin Church in Overton-on-Dee following the Anglican service there, he was assaulted and pecked all the way back to his home by a flock of crows and kites. Soon after, Gwyn became so gravely ill that his life was despaired of. Gwyn promised God that if his life were spared, he would return to the Catholic Faith and never again violate his conscience by attending services at a Protestant church. Soon after, the seminary priests began arriving in North Wales from Catholic Europe. Gwyn made his Confession and returned to the religion of his childhood.
Incensed by Gwyn's return to Catholicism, Bishop Downham and the Protestants of Overton made Gwyn's life so unbearable that the schoolmaster and his family fled the Diocese of Chester on foot. After crossing the River Dee and finding a new home in Erbistock, Gwyn set up the Welsh equivalent to an Irish hedge school inside a deserted barn, where he secretly taught the children of local Catholic families. In time, however, Gwyn was forced to flee from Erbistock as well to avoid arrest.
On a Wednesday night early in 1579, Richard Gwyn was arrested by the Vicar of Wrexham, Dr.. Hugh Soulley a former Roman Catholic priest who had conformed to Anglicanism and married, during a visit to the city's Cattle Market. Gwyn was confined to Wrexham Jail, where he was offered his liberty if he would conform to the Established Church. When he refused, Gwyn was told that he would appear before the magistrates the following day. That very night, Gwyn escaped and remained a fugitive for a year and a half.
Imprisonment
After eighteen months on the run, Gwyn was on the way one afternoon in July 1580 into Wrexham in order to deliver a secret message that a priest was urgently needed. During his journey, Gwyn was recognized on the public highway by David Edwards, a wealthy Puritan cloth merchant. Even though English law at the time did not permit what is now called a citizen's arrest, Edwards ordered Gwyn to stop. When the latter refused, Edwards drew his dagger and attacked Gwyn, who defended himself with his staff and struck the Puritan such a severe blow on the head that Edwards was thrown to the ground. Gwyn then took to his heels. Edwards followed in pursuit and cried, "Stop thief! Stop thief!" The Puritan's servants were cutting hay nearby and, hearing their master's cries, they surrounded Gwyn and seized him.
David Edwards brought Gwyn into his own house, and kept him there in heavy bolts and chains while the magistrates were summoned. After the magistrates took charge of him, Gwyn was taken to Wrexham prison and lodged in an underground dungeon known as "The Black Chamber" (Middle Welsh: Siambrddu).
After laying on the cold ground in the Black Chamber for two days, Gwyn was brought before the Justice of the Peace, Robert Puleston, who ordered that Gwyn be sent to Ruthin Castle and, "very straitly guarded as being vehemently suspected of high treason." For this reason, Gwyn spent his first three months in Ruthin Castle wearing, "strong handbolts on his arms, and a huge pair of bolts on both heels, which were so placed that he could not lie on his side, but, whenever he would sleep, must needs lie on his back or his belly."
At the Michaelmas Assizes in 1580, Gwyn was offered his freedom if he would agree to attend Anglican services and to give up the names of the Catholic parents in Erbistock whose children he had taught. Gwyn refused and was returned to Ruthin Castle. By this time, however, Gwyn's jailer, "understanding that he had merely a prisoner for religion to deal with, remitted some part of his former rigour towards him."
Around Christmas 1580, all the prisoners at Ruthin Castle were transferred to Wrexham Jail, where the new jailer greeted Gwyn, "with a great pair of shackles, which was compelled to wear both night and day all the year following." When brought before the next Assizes, Gwyn again refused to conform.
Trial
On Friday October 9, 1584, Richard Gwyn, along with two other people, was arraigned at Wrexham before a panel of judges headed by the Chief Justice of Chester, Sir George Bromley, as well as Simon Thelwall, Piers Owen, Dr. Ellis Price, Roger Puleston, Jevan Lloyd of the Yale, and Owen Brereton.
As the indictment was read aloud by the clerk of court, all three prisoners learned that they stood accused of high treason under the Act of Supremacy (I Eliz. c. 1) and the Statute of Persuasion (23 Eliz. c. 1). Like all other British subjects tried for the same offence prior to the Treason Act 1695, they were forbidden the services of a defence counsel and forced to act as their own attorneys.
At 8:00 AM on Saturday October 10, 1584, the jury returned with a verdict. Richard Gwyn was found guilty of high treason and condemned to death upon the following Thursday October 15, 1584.
Bard
When he began working as a village schoolmaster, Richard Gwyn was reportedly fascinated by the Welsh folklore and poetry of the Wrexham area.
At the time, Queen Elizabeth I of England had commanded that the bards of Wales were to be examined by the officials of the Crown and licensed to be allowed to compose Welsh poetry or compete in Eisteddfodau. Poets who were refused a license, according to Hywel Teifi Edwards, were coercively, "put to some honest work." Richard Gwyn, however, chose to compose poetry anyway. According to an anonymous writer from the Elizabethan era, "As for his knowledge of the Welsh tongue, he was inferior to none in his country, whereto he hath left to posterity some precedent in writing, eternal monuments of his wit, zeal, virtue, and learning."
During the early 20th-century, five works of Welsh poetry in strict meter by St. Richard Gwyn, were identified by John Hobson Matthews of the Catholic Record Society in one of the Llanover Manuscripts. The manuscript containing the poems is dated 1670 and is in the handwriting of the famous Welsh poet Gwilym Puw, a Recusant member of the Welsh aristocracy who fought as a Royalist officer during the English Civil War. John Hobson Matthews found a sixth poem at the Cardiff Free Library (Welsh MS. 23, Ph. 2954 {vol. I, p. 255.}).
All six of Gwyn's poems were literally translated into English from the Middle Welsh literary language by John Hobson Matthews and David Lloyd Thomas and bilingually published, side by side, by the Catholic Record Society in 1908.
In 1931, Welsh Bard T.H. Parry-Williams, who at the 1912 National Eisteddfod of Wales at Wrexham had achieved for the first time the almost unheard of feat of winning both the Bardic Chair and the Crown at the same Eisteddfod and who had since become Professor of Welsh at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, published his own scholarly edition of the complete poems of Richard Gwyn, along with original source material about his life in Middle Welsh, Elizabethan English, and Renaissance Latin.
Investigation, canonization, and feast day
In 1588, a detailed account of Richard Gwyn's martyrdom written by Fr. John Bridgewater in Renaissance Latin was published at Trier, as part of the book Concertatio Ecclesiae Anglicanae.
Following Catholic Emancipation in 1829, an Elizabethan era samizdat manuscript was found at the Mission House of the Catholic Chapel, Holywell". The manuscript, which is titled, "A True Report of the Life and Martyrdom of Mr. Richard White, Schoolmaster, Who suffered on the 15th day of October, an. Dom. 1584", provides a detailed account of Richard Gwyn's life and martyrdom. The contents of the manuscript, which is held in the archives of St. Beuno's College in Tremeirchion, Denbighshire, Wales, were first published in The Rambler in 1860 by Fr. John Henry Newman of the Birmingham Oratory. When checked against other period sources, this Elizabethan English account has been found far more reliable than Fr. Bridgewater's account in Latin, including for the dates of St. Richard Gwyn's trial and even for that of his execution.
Cardinal William Godfrey of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster, submitted 24 potentially miraculous cures to the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Out of the candidate cases for recognition as answered prayers, the alleged cure of a young mother from a malignant tumor was selected as the clearest case. In light of the fact that Saints Thomas More and John Fisher, who belonged to the same group of Martyrs, had been canonized in 1935 with a dispensation from miracles, Pope Paul VI, after discussions with the Sacred Congregation, decided that it was permissible under the Code of Canon Law to proceed with multiple Canonizations on the basis of one miracle.
In response, Pope Paul VI granted permission for the whole group of 40 names to be recognized as saints on the basis of this one miracle cure. The canonization ceremony for St. Richard Gwyn took place as part of that for the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales at Rome on October 25, 1970.
Like the other 39 martyrs Canonized with him, St. Richard Gwyn was originally commemorated by the Catholic Church in England with a feast day on 25 October, which is also the feast of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, but he is now venerated together with all the 284 canonized and beatified martyrs of the English Reformation on 4 May.
The Catholic Church in Wales celebrates the feast day of the Six Welsh Martyrs: priests Philip Evans and John Lloyd, John Jones, David Lewis, John Roberts, the layman Richard Gwyn, and their companions, every year on October 25.
Relics of St. Richard Gwyn are available to be venerated at the Gothic revival Church of Our Lady of Sorrows, which began being construction in 1857 and is now the Cathedral Church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wrexham. Every year, St. Richard Gwyn is honored by the Catholics of Wrexham by a religious procession to the site of his execution in the former Beast Market of the city. Along with St. Margaret Clitherow, Gwyn is also the co-patron of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, which since 2015 has sponsored an annual pilgrimage to Wrexham and Tridentine Missa Cantata on the closest Sunday to the anniversary of Gwyn's martyrdom.
Other relics of St. Richard Gwyn may be venerated at the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady and Saint Richard Gwyn in his native town of Llanidloes. The church building began construction during the 1950s next to the Franciscan friary on Penygreen Road. The first Mass was celebrated there on the 18 October 1959.
Commemoration
In 1954, Blessed Richard Gwyn Roman Catholic High School was founded in Flint, Flintshire. Its name was altered slightly following Gwyn's Canonization in 1970. St Richard Gwyn Catholic High School in the Vale of Glamorgan, which was originally named St Cadoc's, was renamed in honor of St Richard Gwyn in 1987.
Quote
- From Carol IV:
- Nid wrth fwyta cig yn ffêst
- A llenwi'r gêst Wenere
- A throi meddwl gida'r gwynt,
- Yr aethon gynt yn Saintie.
- "Not by eating flesh speadily
- And filling the paunch on Fridays
- And turning one's opinion with the wind
- Were folk made Saints of old."
See also
In Spanish: Ricardo Gwyn para niños
- Dissident
- Jean de La Ceppède
- Metaphysical poets
- Parrhesia
- Robert Southwell
- Samizdat
- Speaking truth to power
