Welsh Journals

BIOGRAPHICA ET BIBLIOGRAPHICA [See Journal, Vol. I, p. 51, for a note as to the purpose and scope of this section. — Editor .] D.N.B. = The Dictionary of National Biography. MORRIS CLYNNOG (d. 1580 ?; D.N.B. xi, 37). In the second volume of the episcopal registers of St. Davids, which covers the years 1554-1565, there is an entry dated 22 March, 1556, recording the collation of Maorice Clinnocke to the prebend of Blaenporth by Bishop Henry Morgan. The previous incumbent, whose death occasioned the vacancy, is not named. The entry is quite obviously a hasty insertion, being only a brief note, and wedged in between the record of the presentations to the rectory of Hubbertson, 2 April, 1556, and to the rectory of Bryngwyn, 30 April, 1556. Since the register adheres to the old style calendar, 22 March, 1556, would now be given as 22 March, 1557, but it seems very probable that the clerk, in his haste, copied the year of the entry above unthinkingly, when he should really have entered the date as 22 March, 1555 (i.e., 1556, by modern computation). Morris Clynnog was presumably deprived of this and other livings in 1559, when he fled to the Continent rather than betray his convictions. In Thomas Young's register, also in the same volume, Walter Jones is recorded as having been presented to the living on 10 June, 1560. No reason is given for the vacancy. SWANSEA. GLANMOR WILLIAMS. JOHN GIBSON, R.A. (1790-1866; D.N.B., xxi, 278). The National Library is fortunate in possessing three hitherto little-known volumes which have close connections with this famous sculptor. Although he was born near Conway John Gibson moved with his family to Liverpool at an early age, and possibly his only actual connection in later life with his native country was through his friends Mr. and Mrs. Henry Sandbach who made their home at Hafodunos, Abergele. Mrs. Sandbach, herself the author of three volumes of poems, was the grand-daughter of Gibson's first patron, William Roscoe (1753-1831 D.N.B., xlix, 222) of Liverpool, author of Life of Lorenzo de Medici (1765) and other works. It was Mrs. Sandbach who urged Gibson to write his autobiography,1 and it was during a visit paid by Gibson to Hafodunos, in 1851, that the work was begun-with Mrs. Sandbach copying down from his dictat- ion. Before they finished the work Gibson returned to Rome (in October, 1851), where his brother Benjamin had recently died, and Mrs. Sandbach, after a painful illness, died in the following June. N.L.W. MSS. 4914-152 are two albums containing material relating to John Gibson collected by Joseph Mayer, F.S.A. (1803-86; D.N.B. xxxvii, 149), of Liverpool, founder of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire'. They include about a hundred original pencil sketches, pen-and-ink sketches, and crayon sketches, and many engraved prints in various states of much of his work. Among them are preliminary sketches of many of his best-known sculptures, and drawings of figures and details incorporated in later works. These sketches in conjunction with the engravings enable one to trace the development of several of his classical' groups from the early incomplete pencil sketches to the final engraving of the completed sculpture. MS. 4914 also contains a coloured copy of a miniature of Gibson painted by Thomas Griffiths and finished the morning that Mr. Gibson left Liverpool for Rome' (i.e., 1817), an etching of a self-portrait by Gibson, and a water-colour sketch of Conway, showing Gibson's birthplace, by Harry Clarke Pidgeon (1807-80; D.N.B., xlv, 257). Among the many interesting letters in these two volumes are about fifty autograph letters of Gibson him- self, written mainly from Rome, and including about two dozen to J. B. Crouchley (Liverpool), several to 1 Life of John Gibson, R.A. (1870), edited by Lady Eastlake. 2 See Hand-list of Manuscripts in the National Library of Wales, Part VII, p. 53.