Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 22.djvu/112

 Austin in England—was prior (the twenty-eighth) from 1484 to 1507. During that time he made considerable additions to the monastery, erecting the refectory and other monastic buildings, only the foundations of which now remain, and was perhaps the most skilled architect ever in the priory. In the cathedral proofs of his great skill are still to be seen in the screen of St. Catherine's chapel, where his initials are on the scroll work. The screen which separated the choir from the aisles before 1764 was also his work. On an old chest in the vestry is the following Latin verse: ‘En domus hæc floruit Goudibour sub tegmine Thomæ.’ He and Castell, prior of Durham from 1494 to 1519, ‘are thoroughly identified with the use of an elegant and peculiar school of art,’ but it is impossible to say which of them had the priority (meeting of Society of Antiquaries at Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1863; Gent. Mag. 1864, i. 213).

 GONELL, WILLIAM (d. 1546?), scholar and correspondent of Erasmus, a native of Landbeach, Cambridgeshire, proceeded B.A. at Cambridge 1484–5, and M.A. 1488, and probably maintained himself by teaching at the university, for Pits speaks of him as a ‘public professor.’ He became an intimate friend of Erasmus, who probably recommended him to Sir Thomas More, in whose household he succeeded Dr. Clement as tutor. He is said to have been attached at one time to Wolsey's household. In 1517 West, bishop of Ely, collated him to the rectory of Conington, Cambridgeshire. Gonell announces the fact in an extant letter to his friend Henry Gold of St. Neots, inquiring if Gold can hire a preacher of simple faith and honesty, and endeavouring to borrow Cicero's ‘Letters’ for More's use (, Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII, ii. 2, App. 17). Six short letters from Erasmus to Gonell are extant, which indicate a close intimacy between the two. The earliest was written in 1511, the latest in 1518. Erasmus was in the habit of lending his horse to Gonell. Dr. Knight (Life of Erasmus, pp. 176–8) touches upon the chief points of interest in the letters, and summaries of them will be found in Brewer's ‘Letters and Papers of Henry VIII's Reign.’ According to Tanner, Gonell was the author of ‘Ad Erasmum Roterodamensen Epistolarum Liber,’ which Dodd may allude to when he speaks of Erasmus's ‘letters to him extant’ (Church History, i. 205). Dodd calls him ‘an universal and polite writer.’ There are forty-four lines addressed to him in Leland's ‘Encomia’ (1589, p. 28), entitled ‘Ad Gonellum ut urbem relinquat.’ In Cole MS. ix. 50 the will of Gonell names among the executors ‘my brother Master William Gonell, Pryest,’ this is dated ‘Ult. Jan. 37 H. 8.’ The exact date of his death is not known.

 GONVILE, EDMUND (d. 1351), founder of Gonville Hall, Cambridge, and of Rushworth College, Norfolk, is described in the commemoration service of Gonville and Caius College as a son of Sir Nicholas Gonvile, but Dr. Bennet has given very strong grounds for regarding the latter as his elder brother, and for holding that he was a son of William de Gonvile, an alien, ‘natus de potestate reg' Francia commorans in Anglia,’ who obtained the manor of Lerling, Norfolk, in or about 1295. Edmund Gonvile first appears as rector of Thelnetham, Suffolk, in 1320, being about the same time steward of William, earl Warren, and of the Earl of Lancaster, who both held large property in that neighbourhood. He was rector of Rushworth in 1326, rector of Terrington St. John in 1342, and commissioner of the marshlands of Norfolk.

His first foundation was at Rushworth in 1342. This was a collegiate church with an endowment (i.e. the rectory and manor of Rushworth) for a master and four fellows. ‘He provides for five priests to be continually resident in one house, to one of whom, as master, he commits the general oversight of his foundation, and also, specially and personally, the spiritual care of the town. … There is no hint of any educational purpose in the original foundation. It was a purely religious foundation’ (, who gives in extenso the original deed of foundation, in which the statutes are incorporated: this appears to be the earliest complete example of statutes framed for these rural colleges). This college, after having been somewhat altered and largely added to by subsequent benefactions, shared the fate of other religious houses by being suppressed in 1541. It may be remarked that Blomefield mentions (Norf. i. 427) an earlier foundation than this, but assigns no authorities. According to him Gonvile was co-founder, with Earl Warren and the Earl of Lancaster, of the Friars Preachers' House at Thetford.

It is, of course, by his Cambridge 