father had left the Cornish property much involved, but he paid off the incumbrances, and redeemed the mortgage on the rectory of Paul. With this rectory he had inherited a chancery suit, commenced 14 June 1680, as to the right of the rector to take tithe of fish landed at Newlyn and Mousehole. The case came before the House of Lords 26 Feb. 1729-30, and went against the fishermen. Nevertheless at the entrance to Newlyn there was for many years a notice affixed to a house which said 'One and All, No tithe of fish' (Josiah Brown, Cases in the High Court of Parliament, 1802, ii. 446-50). About 1710 Edward Lhuyd came into Cornwall, where he conferred with Gwavas, Thomas Tonkin, and John Keigwin as to the formation of a Cornu-British vocabulary. At this time these three persons were the chief authorities in the county on the old Cornish language; they kept up a correspondence on the subject, and collected mottoes, proverbs, and idioms. In the dedication to Tonkin's 'Parochial History of Cornwall,' 1733, the only part of the work that was printed, the author says: 'William Gwavas, Esq., perhaps the only gentleman now living who hath a perfect knowledge of the Cornish tongue, has been so kind as to lend me his helping hand to look over and amend my Cornish vocabulary, and to furnish me with several pieces in the said language, which are inserted in my said "Archæologia," with his name prefixed to them.' The existing remains of Gwavas's Cornish writings are now to be seen at the British Museum, Addit. MS. 28554. His commonplace book, dated 1710, was lot No. 650 at the sale of Mr. W. C. Borlase's library, 22 Feb. 1887, and was purchased by Mr. Bernard Quaritch.
Gwavas was buried on 9 Jan. 1741 in Paul Church, where a marble monument was erected to his memory. He left two daughters: Anne, who married the Rev. Thomas Carlyon, and died in 1797, and Elizabeth, who married William Veale, and died in 1791. A likeness in oil of Gwavas is in the possession of George Bown Millett, esq., of Penzance.
[C.S. Gilbert's Cornwall, i. 157; Polwhele's Cornwall, v. 22-3, 25; Journal of Royal Institution of Cornwall, November 1879, pp. 176-81, by W. C. Berlase ; Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, pp. 200-1, 1213.]
GWENT, RICHARD (d. 1543), archdeacon of London, son of a Monmouthshire, farmer, was elected fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford, in 1515. On 17 Dec. 1518 he supplicated for bachelor of civil law, on 28 Feb. 1518-19 he was admitted bachelor of canon law, on 20 March 1522-3 he supplicated for doctor of canon law, and proceeded doctor of civil law on 3 April 1525 (Reg. of Univ. of Oxford, Oxford Hist. Soc., i. 107). For a while he acted as chief moderator of the canon law school at Oxford (Wood, Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 47, 67), and was instituted by the abbess and convent of Godstow to the vicarage of St. Giles in that city, a benefice which he resigned in April 1524 (W. H. Turner, Records of the City of Oxford, p. 52). He removed to London in order to practise as an ecclesiastical advocate, and was employed on behalf of Queen Catherine in 1529 (Letters, &c., of Hen. VIII, ed. Brewer, vol. iv. pt. ii. 1498, pt. iii. 2571, 2624). On 13 April 1528 he was presented to the rectory of Tangmere, Sussex, and on 31 March 1530 to that of St. Leonard, Foster Lane, London, which he resigned in 1534 to become, on 17 April of that year, rector of St. Peter's Cheap, London (Newcourt, Repertorium, i. 394, 522). He was admitted to the prebend of Pipa Parva in the church of Lichfield on 6 Oct. 1531, but quitted it for Longdon in the same church on the following 9 Dec. (Le Neve, Fasti, ed. Hardy, i. 620, 614). He was appointed chaplain to the king, and on 18 Sept. 1532 dean of the arches and master of the prerogative, having previously been vicar-general of the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield (Letters, &c., of Hen. VIII, ed. Gairdner, v. 574). His name occurs as archdeacon of Brecknock in 1534, and on 6 May of that year he was made prebendary of Leighton Ecclesia in the church of Lincoln (Le Neve, i. 311, ii. 174). When Cranmer made his metropolitan visitation in September 1534, Gwent, as the archbishop's commissary, visited Merton College, Oxford, and altered many of the ancient customs of that house (Wood, Antiquities of Oxford, ed. Gutch, vol. ii. pt. i. pp. 63-4). Gwent was collated to the archdeaconry of London on 19 Dec. 1534 (Le Neve, ii. 323). Convocation elected him their prolocutor in 1536, 1540, and 1541 (Strype, Eccl. Mem. 8vo, vol. i. pt. i. pp. 378, 553, 557-8). He was one of those appointed by convocation in July 1540 to determine the validity of the marriage of Henry VIII with Anne of Cleves, and in the following August was a commissioner in London for prosecution upon the 'Six Articles' (ib. vol. i. pt. i. pp. 559, 565).
On 5 April 1542 he was installed archdeacon of Huntingdon, and on 12 April of the ensuing year prebendary of Tottenhall in St. Paul's Cathedral (Le Neve, ii. 52, 440). He also held the rectory of Walton-on-the-Hill, Lancashire (Baines, Lancashire, ed. Whatton and Harland, ii. 286), that of Newchurch, Kent, and that of North Wingfield, Derbyshire, which last preferment he ceded
