John Gwynneth
1511–1557), was a clergyman of Welsh nationality originating from Gwynedd, and was a composer of religious and liturgical vocal music for which he was awarded a doctorate in the University of Oxford.
[2] Although he was a polemicist for the Catholic faith, he maintained his ministry through the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Queen Mary, and was brother-in-law and executor of Stephen Vaughan (a supporter of the English Reformation).
[6] When still an acolyte he was collated, apparently by the Cluniac priory of St Andrew, Northampton,[7] to the benefice of Stuchbury or Stotesbury (near Sulgrave), Northamptonshire in December 1528, which he held until his death.
[10] By December 1531 he had achieved a remarkable output, at which time he made a formal approach to the University of Oxford: "John Gwynneth a secular priest, who had spent twelve years in the praxis and theory of music, and had composed all the responses of the whole year in division-song,[11] and had published many masses in the said song, supplicated that these his labours might enable him to be admitted to the praxis of music.
[13][14] He was one of the composers whose work was included in the collection printed in 1530, called the "Book of XX Songes",[15] of which only the volume of bass lines (Bassus) survives.
[17] John Gwynneth's sister Margaret was firstly the wife of Edward Awpart (Alporte[18]), citizen and Girdler of London in the parish of St Mary le Bow, who originated from Penkridge in Staffordshire.
The King presented Gwynneth to the collegiate church of Stoke sub Hamdon Priory, Somerset, in September 1534, at the Crown's disposal on the death of John Glyn.
[31] He published his first writings against the doctrines of John Frith, as The confutacyon of the fyrst parte of Frythes boke: with a dysputacyon before whether it be possyble for any heretike to know that hym selfe is one or not.
[35] In October 1537 Gwynneth was presented by the King to the provostship or rectory sine cura of Clynnog Fawr (in the Llŷn south of Caernarfon), with the chapels and church of Llangeinwen and Llangaffo (Anglesey), upon the death of Dr. William Glyn of Glynllifon.
[36] John Capon, Bishop of Bangor (1534–39), would not admit him, instituting instead Gregory Williamson, a child nephew of Thomas Cromwell's, to the living.
In October 1540 Archbishop Cranmer granted a dispensation to Gwynneth to occupy the perpetual vicarage of Enstone, Oxfordshire pending its transfer from the Diocese of Lincoln to that of Oxford in 1542.
In October, during the vacancy in the see of Bangor, Gwynneth (described as "Magister", and "sacellanus" or royal chaplain) had himself instituted to Clynnog Fawr by the Commissary of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Vaughan appealed to Lord Paget on Gwynneth's behalf, explaining that he had spent 8 years in continual suit and expense in the law over it, at his personal cost of 500 marks.
During Edward's reign the old Faringdon chantry was done away with, the church fraternity was dissolved, the rood was taken down, the altars were replaced with tables and the paraphernalia of the Catholic ritual were removed from St Peter's.
[49] In October 1548 Gwynneth's niece Joan Awparte, Vaughan's stepdaughter, married Edward Myldemay,[50] elder brother of Sir Walter.
[55] In that connection he had the task of delivering to Sir John Williams some £305 owing to the King from Vaughan's accounts as Under-Treasurer of the Tower Mint.
[62] At this stage Jane Vaughan was unmarried, but her sister Anne was already married to Henry Locke, son of Sir William Lok.
[64] In April 1554 outside his church door in London, at the Cheapside Cross, the popular mood was expressed by the spectacle of a cat hanged on a scaffold, robed like a priest with its head shaved, its bound paws holding up a morsel representing the Sacrament.
The title page of the latter bore the text: "There is a waie, which semeth to a man streight, and yet the endes therof leaden to perdicion" (Proverbs, 16:25).
The lease of nine years having expired, he brought action for a debt of £67.14s.6d against Dafydd Gryffyth owing for Clynnog Fawr,[68] and against various persons for tithes in Caernarfon and Anglesey.
In March 1556 the commissioners made a discretionary allowance of £8.6s.8d towards the repairs, on condition that Crawley spend the remainder on church ornaments by Midsummer, for which Gwynneth gave an undertaking to the Bishop of Ely.
On 10 June he was able to report to the commissioners (William Berners, Thomas Mildmay and John Wiseman) that Crawley (at his own expense) had spent £5 on a cope and vestment of blue velvet and more than 20 nobles on a chalice.
