Richard Gwyn
Welsh Catholic martyr and bard
Richard Gwyn (ca. 1537 – 15 October 1584), also known by his anglicized 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 martyred by being hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason at Wrexham in 1584. He was canonized 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.
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 St John's College, Cambridge, "where he lived on the charity of the College", and its then Master, the Roman Catholic Dr.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Richard Gwyn” as welsh Catholic martyr and bard. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3397314. VIAF identifies the subject as 12033052. The Library of Congress control number is no2005015271. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1537, 1584, 1970 and 1987.
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This entry incorporates text from “Richard Gwyn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.