Gabriel Goodman
Ruthin boy, Dean of Westminster
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Ecclesiastical career
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A sympathizer with the religious settlement of Edward VI, he compromised under Mary, then fully accepted the Elizabethan church settlement, disliking equally Catholics and Puritans. He was rector of South Luffenham, Rutland, 1558; and rector of Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire, 1559-82;
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In 1559 Goodman was made a prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral and in 1560 of Westminster Collegiate Church. The old Westminster Abbey had been dissolved and the monks dispersed or pensioned. Queen Elizabeth I reinstituted the establishment as a collegiate church with Dr Bill as Dean and Gabriel Goodman as twelfth prebendary.
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In 1561 Goodman was promoted to the position of Dean and in January 1562 he was concerned in "a memorable convocation of the clergy of the Province of Canterbury wherein the matters of Church were to be debated and settled for the future regular service of God and establishment of orthodox Doctrine". The convocation's deliberation culminated in the Thirty-Nine Articles to which Goodman was a signatory.
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He served frequently as member of the court of high commission. In 1575 he assisted in the condemnation of Peters and Turnwort, Dutch anabaptists who were burnt at Smithfield that year.
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Goodman was well versed in several languages and was responsible for the translation of 1 Corinthians in the Bishops' Bible of 1568, and when William Morgan was supervising the printing of the Welsh Bible he stayed with Goodman at the Deanery.​ Goodman's influence with the Cecils made him an important link between Wales and the Court.
Dean Goodman was considered for several bishoprics but, for reasons which are not clear, Goodman's attempts to secure a diocese were unsuccessful. Notwithstanding the support of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, Goodman failed to gain the see of Norwich in 1575, Rochester in 1581, Chichester in 1585 and Chester in 1596. His failure was probably due to his opposition to Leicester, his prominence on the court of high commission, and his reputation as 'a grave, solid man, yet … peradventure too severe' . However he made a great contribution to Westminster School and to the fledgling City of Westminster and was described as "a right good man indeed, of singular integrity and an especial patron of literature".
He was one of the commissioners appointed to reform abuses in the hospital of the Savoy, 1589, a member of the royal commission for the settlement of Jesus College, Oxford, 1589, and was concerned in the foundation of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, 1598. He was one of the executors of Burghley's will.
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In 1574 Goodman returned to his home-town of Ruthin where he made strenuous efforts on its behalf. In addition to signing a petition to the Countess of Warwick to arrange a new charter for the borough, Goodman had built a new School-house to the north of St Peter's Church. Whilst there is evidence to suggest that Ruthin School had continued to function after the dissolution of the collegiate church in or about 1535, it is not clear where the school was held. It therefore appears that Goodman had the new building constructed to provide a permanent home for his old school.
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On 23 February 1591 In 1590 Goodman founded Christ's Hospital, Ruthin (president [the Bishop of Bangor], warden, and twelve poor inmates) and endowed it with the tithes of Ruthin and Llanrhydd which he purchased from the lay impropriators into whose hands they had fallen after the dissolution of the collegiate church of S. Peter, in perpetuity. In 1595 he added a grammar-school to the foundation.
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n May 1599 he returned home "to perfect that work begun of the school".
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In 1583 and 1598 Goodman gave two bells inscribed “Campanis Patrem Laudate Sonantibus Cultum. Gabriel Goodman Decanus 1598” (bells sounding worship praise the father) to Westminster Abbey which are still in use to this day.
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In 1600 he brought to the notice of Sir Robert Cecil a petition from the inhabitants of Ruthin complaining of their burden of taxation; and he was active a few months before his death in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain a new charter for the borough.
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Gabriel Goodman (6 November 1528 – 17 June 1601), a Welsh speaker, became the Dean of Westminster on 23 September 1561 and the re-founder of Ruthin School, in Ruthin, Denbighshire. In 1568 he translated the “First Epistle to the Corinthians" for the “Bishops' Bible” and assisted Dr. William Morgan with his translation of the Bible into Welsh. He is mentioned on the monument to William Morgan which stands in the grounds of St Asaph cathedral.
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Early years
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Gabriel Goodman, the second son of Edward ap Thomas Edward, who adopted the surname Goodman, a wealthy mercer in Ruthin, and Cecily Thelwell, was born at Nantclwyd y Dre, Ruthin on 6th November 1528. Little is known of his early years, but he matriculated from Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1546. He graduated as BA in 1549 or 1550, and MA from Christ's College in 1553 where he had become a fellow the previous year. He returned to Jesus College as a fellow in 1554. He proceeded under special dispensation to a D.D. from St John's College in 1564. He became chaplain to Sir William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, and tutor to William's eldest son Thomas Cecil, Earl of Exeter.
Gabriel Goodman died on 17 June 1601 (unmarried, as the Queen preferred the clergy to be celibate) and was buried in Westminster Abbey. A memorial monument was also installed in the Abbey , in the Ambulatory Chapel of St Benedict (left) with a Latin inscription translating as:
To God the best and greatest. Gabriel Goodman, Doctor of Theology, fifth Dean of this church, which he headed with great praise for 40 years; and at Ruthin in Denbighshire, where he was born, he founded a hospital and instituted a school. Dear to God and good people for his holiness of life, he departed piously for the heavenly country on 17 June 1601, aged 73.​​​
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In his will Goodman left his library of religious books in the “…. special care of the President and Warden” … who will see that there will be no lack of preaching in St Peter's Church of Ruthin, or any other in that Deanery where they may do good”.
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Goodman's motto was Dei Gratia Sum Quod Sum. “By the Grace of God I am What I am”. It appears on the front gable of a row of houses called Providence Place in Woking, Surrey.
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