[13] For these reasons, 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".

[10] The Bishop and local statesman Roger Puleston[8] put considerable pressure upon Gwyn, who reluctantly agreed, "greatly against his stomach", to receive Communion at Anglican services the following Sunday.

[10] 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.

[16] 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.

[15] On a Wednesday night early in 1579, Richard Gwyn was arrested by the Vicar of Wrexham, Hugh Soulley a former Roman Catholic priest who had conformed to Anglicanism and married,[15] during a visit to the city's Cattle Market.

"[18] 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.

Instead of being charged or tried with an offence, the judge had ordered that the three recusants were to hear a sermon by an Anglican clergyman, whose name does not survive, but who is described as a Zwinglian and as the illegitimate son of a Roman Catholic priest.

[26] When the Michaelmas Assizes were held at Holt in 1582, Gwyn, Hughes, and Morris were indicted and tried for high treason based on the allegedly perjured testimony of Lewis Gronow of Meriadoc and Robert Clarke, the new Vicar of Wrexham.

In particular, Atkyns demanded to know Gwyn's opinion of the 1570 papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, in which Pope Pius V had declared Queen Elizabeth I excommunicated and deposed for both heresy and religious persecution of the Catholic Church in England and Wales as well as in Ireland.

According to a contemporary account, Gwyn "bestowed all the time of his torments in continual prayer, by craving of God for his tormentors mercy and forgiveness, and for himself safe deliverance from their malice by the merits of Jesus Christ His Passion; and this he did with a loud voice.

Immediately after dinner, Gwyn was visited by the Councillors of Wales and the Marches; Sir George Bromley, Henry Townsend, Fabian Phillips, William Leighton of Plaish Hall, and Simon Thelwall.

[35] When the prisoners were asked by the court how they wished to be tried, Gwyn responded, "We will be tried by you, who are the justices of the bench; for you are wise and learned, and better able to discern the equity of our cause than the simple people of our own country, altogether unacquainted in such matters.

"[34] Edward Erles also "deposed that he had heard", Gwyn, "rehearse certain rhymes of his own making against married priests and ministers; secondly, that he called the Bible a babble; thirdly that he termed Justice Bromley ustus y fram; and fourth that he defended the Pope's authority.

"[36] An Elizabethan English account of the trial, "corroborates this and says that the money was given them by Jevan Lloyd of Yale, the year he was Sheriff"[38] and their perjured testimony on promise of bribery had been arranged by the Vicar of Wrexham.

Thelwall then, "roved over the insurrection in the north", the excommunication of the Queen by Pope Pius V in the papal bull Regnans in excelsis, "Story and Felton", Nicholas Sanders and the Second Desmond Rebellion, "Campion and his fellows, Arden and Sommerfield, Francis Throckmorton; aggravating the prisoners to be of one religion with the person's before named and recited".

"[40] Catherine Gwyn and Mrs. John Hughes then arrived, each carrying a newborn baby,[40] both of whom had recently been conceived by the defendants due to the Jailer, Mr. Coytmore, who had granted both recusants an unauthorized parole in order to visit their wives.

[43] On Tuesday 13 October 1584 Richard Gwyn was visited in Wrexham Jail by "a gentleman", who, "in the Sheriff's name offered to discharge him of all his troubles, if he would acknowledge the Queen Supreme Head of the Church within her own dominions; but the man, being constant, refused to purchase his own liberty so dear.

"[45] On the morning of Thursday 15 October 1584 Catherine Gwyn saw the Puritan cloth merchant David Edwards passing by Wrexham Jail and cried out, "God be a righteous judge between thee and me!

[9] 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.

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.

"[8] During the early 20th-century, five works of Welsh poetry in strict meter by St. Richard Gwyn, were identified by Celticist John Hobson Matthews of the Catholic Record Society in one of the Llanover Manuscripts.

Gwyn urged his listeners to beware of Protestant ministers and to seek the Catholic Faith, lest, "when night shades fall", they will have to give an account upon the highest hill of why they did not.

[68] In "Carol II", which begins, Duw a ro yr awen i brudydd o Bryden ("May God send the Muse to a poet of Britain"), Gwyn argued in favour of both having devotion to the Blessed Virgin and of regularly reciting all fifteen decades of the Rosary.

[69] In "Carol III", which begins, Gwrandewch ddatcan, meddwl maith ("Hear a song, a great thought,"), Gwyn both summarized and versified Jesuit priest Robert Persons's 1580 samizdat work, A brief discovrs contayning certayne reasons why Catholiques refuse to goe to Church.

"[70] In "Carol IV", which begins Adda ag Efa ar Neidir fraeth ("Adam and Eve and the smooth-tongued serpent"), Gwyn denounced the theology of the Protestant Reformation and the greed, gluttony, and hedonism of those whom he said preached it.

[71] In "Carol V", which begins Angau su yn y Sessiwn Mawr ("The Grim Reaper is in the Great Session"), Gwyn began by briefly describing the famous aftermath to the 5 July 1577 trial of printer and bookseller Roland Jenks before the Oxford Assizes for illegally selling Catholic books.

[73] Despite this fact, the sixth Richard Gwyn poem, which was found by John Hobson Matthews at the Cardiff Free Library, is titled Cowydd Marwnadd yn llawn cabledd ir prins o Orens ("Funeral Ode, full of reproach of the Prince of Orange").

It was composed at Wrexham Jail after Balthasar Gérard's 10 July 1584 assassination at Delft of William the Silent, the Calvinist Prince of Orange-Nassau and the English-backed leader of the Dutch Revolt against the rule of King Philip II of Spain.

To Gwyn, "the hyperbolic praises", lavished on the slain Prince by the Elizabethan State, and, "the hypocrisy of persecuting the Catholics" of the British Isles, "because of a political assassination in Holland might, with reason, have exasperated him.

[76] In 1588, a detailed account of Richard Gwyn's martyrdom written by John Bridgewater in Renaissance Latin was published at Trier, as part of the book Concertatio Ecclesiae Anglicanae.