Career
Little is known of his birth but it is thought to have been in the Caernarfon area around 1507. He was a friar at Blackfriars, Oxford and was admitted as Bachelor of Divinity on 5 July 1532. In 1535 was appointed by John Hilsey, then Bishop of Rochester, to be his Vicar-General, and was appointed rector of Street Magnus-the-Martyr in 1537.
A succession of posts in the church followed, mainly in the Diocese of Rochester but he also maintained his Welsh connection with the see of Saint Asaph.
Only towards the end of his career, in 1554, was he appointed to be Bishop of Rochester. He died on 20 November 1558, probably at the bishop’s palace in Southwark, and was interred in the church of Street Magnus-the-Martyr, of which was still rector at the time of his death, on 30 November 1558 with much solemnity.
The three leading mourners were Sir William Petre, Sir William Garrard and Simon Lowe, who were also to be the executors of his will. Both Gerrard and Lowe were parishioners of his at Street Magnus-the-Martyr.
He had been left, with William Glyn, Bishop of Bangor, property from the will of Geoffrey Glyn, in order to found a school in Bangor in North Wales.
As William Glyn had also died and he was the only surviving trustee of Glyn"s will, he transmitted this trust by his will to his executors – William Petre, William Garrard and Simon Lowe – who went on to found Friars School, Bangor as was intended.