Gabriel Goodman 1528-1601 Gareth Evans
Ruthin boy, Dean of Westminster
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Gabriel Goodman, Ruthin’s principal benefactor, was born in Ruthin on November 6th 1528, the second son of Edward Goodman, merchant, and his wife, Cecily Thelwall of Plas-y-Ward, Llanynys.
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Responding to new fashions, his father, Edward Goodman had changed his name from the Welsh Edward ap Thomas ap Edward. The family came from Llandyrnog to Ruthin,
They were very wealthy and traded in animals, wool and leather. Edward had acquired the successful Ruthin business and property of Thomas Exmewe when he transferred all his interests to London.
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Gabriel had 5 sisters and 2 brothers and his eldest brother Gawen succeeded his father to the Ruthin estate in 1560.
They lived in Exmewe Hall, one of the largest houses on Market Place (now St. Peter’s Square) in Ruthin. The house had no running water for Gabriel Goodman in his will left money to provide a conduit from Galchog for water, one quill to his late father’s house and one quill to Christ’s Hospital, the almshouses he had established.
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Gabriel was educated in Ruthin and at Cambridge. He was probably instructed at home or in a private school in the town, perhaps by one of the clergy of the College, which in 1550 had a Warden and five priests. The College was not dissolved until after Gabriel had left Ruthin and such a large number of priests in the town would have provided scope for some to turn to teaching, especially as the lordship was now in the hands of a distant owner with little interest in matters in Ruthin.
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He entered St John’s College, Cambridge probably in 1542 when he was 14. He remained at Cambridge for over ten years. He became well versed in several languages. Goodman matriculated to the University of Cambridge from Jesus College in 1546.[2] He graduated BA in 1549 or 1550, and M.A. from Christ's College in 1553 where he had become a fellow the prior 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.
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From University around 1555 he entered the service of William Cecil as chaplain and tutor to William's eldest son Thomas Cecil, later Earl of Exeter. He became an intimate of Sir William Cecil’s family and developed a lifelong relationship and friendship with Cecil. Sir William Cecil became in turn Elizabeth I’s Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer and her chief adviser.
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Goodman was a sympathizer with the religious settlement of Edward VI, he compromised under Mary and fully accepted the Elizabethan church settlement , disliking equally Catholics and Puritans. Goodman gained preferment through William Cecil. He was rector of South Luffenham, Rutland, 1558; rector of the first portion of the church of Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire, 1559, and of the second portion in 1569; prebendary of St. Pauls, 1559 and prebendary of Westminster, 1560. He became Dean of Westminster in 1561 and continued to hold much other preferment. He remained Dean until his death in June 1601. Becoming Dean was a high honour, which he must have owed to William Cecil. He would be rubbing shoulders with Queen Elizabeth, her ministers and the leaders of the church.
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His influence with the Cecils made him an important link between Wales and the Court. He would use this influence to promote the translation of the Bible into Welsh and to create Ruthin School and Christ’s Hospital.
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The early Tudor years were not an easy time for religious leaders and many lost their lives as religious quarrels and differences tore the church apart. His Church, the Anglican Church was new and Goodman sided with the Queen and backed a middle way for the church trying to keep much that was good such as music and ceremony and combining them with a Bible that could be understood by the common people. He was one of those who created the rules for this new Church, which still influence the form of worship in Anglican churches today. He was also responsible for the translation of 1 Corinthians in the Bishops’ Bible of 1568.
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He assisted his friend, William Morgan, with his translation of the Bible into Welsh, published in 1588. When William Morgan was supervising the printing of the Welsh Bible in London, he stayed with Goodman at the Deanery. Goodman’s language skills helped with the proof corrections. This support given to Bishop William Morgan by Gabriel Goodman helped to give the people of Wales a Bible they could understand. Because of the Bible’s literary quality, it helped the Welsh language to survive.
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Goodman showed himself much interested in educational and charitable schemes. In 1570 he provided for the erection at Chiswick of a home for sick Westminster scholars. Two scholarships were founded in his name at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1578–9, the endowment being the gift of Mildred, Lord Burghley's wife. By his will, dated 2 March 1600–1, Goodman left many rare books and manuscripts, chiefly bibles, together with legacies to poor scholars, to Christ's College, Sidney Sussex College, St. John's College, Jesus College, all at Cambridge, and to Jesus College, Oxford.
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He also left important legacies to Ruthin, his home town – founding Ruthin School, creating almshouses for the elderly (Christ’s Hospital) and putting St Peter’s Church and parish on a firm foundation.
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By founding Ruthin School Gabriel Goodman gave the boys of his home town high quality education. Ruthin School was founded around 1574 by Goodman.1 Whether it functioned or not is unknown, but it was re-endowed by Goodman in 1595. It catered not only for potential clergymen, but also for the needs of laymen who aspired to a higher education by making them proficient in Greek and Latin. Boys from Ruthin and Llanelidan paid only 4d on admission and had free education afterwards. Fees were graduated for others and some of the poorest paid simply the cost of a cheese a quarter. Over the centuries many famous Welshmen attended the school.
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By founding the almshouses (Christ’s Hospital), Goodman provided homes for the elderly poor - in his day the State did not provide education or welfare. This was a time when nationally there was a great drive to provide support for poor people, who through no fault of their own could not provide for themselves.
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Christ’s Hospital was founded in 1590 by Goodman for ten men and two women, all unmarried and aged 50 or above. Women were to wash for the community and to look to the sick and poor of the hospital. The inmates were to be occupied with profitable work and a dairy was provided to supply milk for them. The alms-people received regular fuel and money allowances and grants of clothes and the grinding poverty of a few of the town’s poor was relieved.
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St. Perer’s Church was very important to Goodman. When Gabriel Goodman began his interventions in Ruthin, the parish church was surrounded by a large close. This close contained the cloisters, which are still here, the church, very much still here, and all the storage and outbuildings of the former college, which had become the centre of a small farm.
Apart from the church, which at the dissolution became the parish church and to which there would have been a right of way, everything else had been seized by the crown and was in the hands of a gentry family who ran the farm. So the church was in the middle of ordinary farm activity. Gabriel Goodman bought the entire property and founded a school and an almshouse and placed the parish priest of Ruthin as the warden in charge. This vastly improved the position of the church.
Goodman bought the tithes of Ruthin and Llanrhudd and a portion of the tithes of Llanelidan as an endowment for his new institutions.
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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. The grant by James I of new powers to the Aldermen of Ruthin in 1607 may well be a belated consequence of Goodman’s efforts.
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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 in England.
Gabriel Goodman died on 17 June 1601 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. A memorial monument was also installed in the Ambulatory Chapel of St Benedict 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 piIously for the heavenly country on 17 June 1601, aged 73.
In the words of a contemporary, his epitaph was ‘Goodman was his name and goodness was his nature’.
Sources: R Newcome, A Memoir of Gabriel Goodman (Ruthin, 1825); N M W Powell, Dyffryn Clwyd in the time of Elizabeth , Dictionary of National Biography; Dictionary of Welsh Biography; R. A. Roberts (editor), Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, Volume 10: 1600 Historical Manuscript Commission, 1904; D.G. Evans, The Foundations of Ruthin, 2017.
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