St. Richard Gwyn

Who was St. Richard Gwyn?

St. Richard Gwyn was a Welsh schoolmaster and poet, a husband and father, who spent four years in Welsh jails for the Catholic faith and was executed at Wrexham in October 1584. English records call him Richard White, since gwyn means "white" in Welsh. He is honored as the first martyr of Wales under Queen Elizabeth I, and Pope Paul VI canonized him on October 25, 1970, with the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, among them St. Edmund Campion and St. Margaret Clitherow.

What stands out in the contemporary account of his death is his good humor. He joked with the court, with the jury and even with the hangman, and his fellow prisoners said they never knew him more cheerful than after he was condemned.

The life of St. Richard Gwyn

A Welsh scholar and teacher

He was born at Llanidloes in Montgomeryshire around 1537. After a short time at Oxford he studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, until about 1562, then came home and kept school in the Wrexham district, at Overton in Flintshire and other villages. The Catholic Encyclopedia says he gained a reputation as a Welsh scholar. He married Catherine, and they had six children, three of whom outlived him.

For a time he conformed to the new Church of England. When the first priests trained at Douai came into Wales, he was reconciled to the Catholic Church, and his absence from Protestant services was soon noticed.

Prisoner for the faith

The Dictionary of Welsh Biography says he was arrested at Wrexham in 1579 and escaped, then was taken again in July 1580. At Ruthin he lay three months in double chains, Challoner writes, and at the assizes he was offered a pardon if he would go to church just once. He refused.

At the Wrexham assizes of May 1581 the judge, Sir George Bromley, had him carried into church by force. He protested all the way, and in church he made so much noise that no one could hear the minister. The judge had him set in the stocks in the market place. When he was later charged for disturbing the service, Challoner records that the clerk reading the indictment suddenly could not see the letters. "Take care lest the Papists make a miracle of this," the judge sneered.

In 1583 he and his fellow prisoners John Hughes and Robert Morris were sent to the Council of the Marches and tortured at Bewdley and Bridgnorth to make them name who had reconciled them. They were then returned to Wrexham.

Trial and death

He was tried on October 9, 1584, on the evidence of witnesses the contemporary account calls perjured, and condemned for treason. Even then his wit did not leave him. When a jury of nobodies replaced the gentlemen who refused to serve, he called it, in Latin and Welsh wordplay, "a tales, quales non est in Wales." His wife Catherine told the court, "If you lack blood, you may take my life as well as my husband's."

On the morning of his death he forbade her to curse the man who had hounded him, telling her that "if they did not forgive now freely all their labours would be lost." He blessed the children in the jail and reached through the window to take the hands of those outside. To a former pupil in tears he said, "Weep not for me, for I do but pay the rent before the rent-day." He gave his wife eleven shillings and his rosary, "all the wealth he left her."

He was drawn to the gallows saying the rosary on the end of the string that held up his irons. Rain fell all the way. At the gallows he said, "God is merciful unto us; behold the elements shed tears for our sins." He forgave the hangman, and he told the vicar he acknowledged Elizabeth as lawful Queen of England. Challoner records that he twice spoke the name of Jesus during his butchery. His head and one quarter were set on Denbigh Castle.

Miracles and signs

No miracle is required for a martyr's canonization, and none was approved for him. The old accounts record two signs as reported by witnesses: the clerk's sudden blindness at the 1581 assizes, and the rain that began when he was laid on the hurdle and stopped at the moment of his death.

His poems

The Catholic Encyclopedia notes five carols and a funeral ode he wrote in Welsh. The Dictionary of Welsh Biography describes the carols as poems defending the Catholic faith and attacking Protestantism.

Symbols of St. Richard Gwyn in art

Modern images show him as a layman in Elizabethan dress, not as a priest:

• A ruff and doublet: the clothes of a schoolmaster and gentleman of his day.
• A rosary: he prayed it on the way to his death and left his beads to his wife.
• Chains or shackles: for his four years in prison.
• A martyr's palm: the sign of all martyrs.

No portrait of him from his own lifetime is known.

Feast day and places

We keep his feast on October 17, and he is honored with the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. He was executed in the Beast Market of Wrexham, where the Catholic cathedral of Our Lady of Sorrows now stands in the town where he suffered. See our feast days page for other saints of October.

Prayer to St. Richard Gwyn

No traditional prayer to him has come down to us. Let us pray with his own words, "In the name of Jesus," which he spoke as he left the prison, and ask him to obtain for us his gift of forgiving freely. St. Richard Gwyn, pray for teachers, for the people of Wales, and for all who suffer for their faith.