Welsh Journals

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF EDWARD LHUYD AND JOHN WYNNE By WILLIAM GIBSON John Wynne has become known to posterity as the Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, who peremptorily sold the manuscripts and remains of Edward Lhuyd to Sir Thomas Seebright. The animosity between Wynne and Lhuyd emerged in 1708 when the first volume of Lhuyd's Archaeologia Britanrrica was published. In the preface to the work, Lhuyd attacked an unnamed 'gentleman' who, according to Thomas Hearne, 'had run down ye work as of no great use, there being, as he (the anonymous gentleman) said but three or four who troubled themselves about this subject'. Hearne went on to say 'tis said ye Gentleman is Dr Wynne ye Margaret Professor, who never was a very good friend of Mr Lhuyd's: but others say 'tis Dr Edwards'.2 Indeed Lhuyd had occasion to complain of John Wynne in 1704; he wrote to John Lloyd of Ruthin, Wynne's old schoolmaster, saying: you perhaps remember who it is we called formerly the frigid friend, he has lately, as indeed he has done several times before (for reasons thank God utterly unknown to me) appear'd my fervent adversary. Apparently Lhuyd had attempted to gain the Cardiganshire scholarship at Jesus for a friend, David Parry. Wynne had blocked this by telling Lhuyd that Principal Edwards disliked Parry. When Lhuyd visited Principal Edwards, however, it appeared that the Principal had no such feelings for Parry, and was quite happy that he should stand for election to the scholarship. Before the election Wynne raised a further objection to Parry, that his work for Lhuyd at the Ashmolean in Oxford would distract him from his studies. Wynne then invited all the Fellows of Jesus to a tavern according to his usual practice before important votes, and overawed them so that no one voted for Parry.3 However, this state of affairs between Wynne and Lhuyd had not always existed. They had in fact been quite close, and they were corresponding in a warm tone until the end of 1707. Lhuyd watched Wynne's career develop at Oxford, 1 J. Nichols, The Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1812), 1, 1166. 2 C. E. Double, The Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne (Oxford, 1886), II, 24. Archaeologia Cambrensis (1859), 253.