Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mawe, Leonard
MAWE or MAW, LEONARD (d. 1629), bishop of Bath and Wells, son of Simon Mawe, gentleman, of Rendlesham, Suffolk, by his wife Margery, daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Wyld of Yorkshire, by his wife Alice, daughter and heiress of John Jago of Suffolk (Wood), was born at Rendlesham, and educated at Cambridge, where he was admitted fellow of Peterhouse in 1595, and having proceeded M.A. was incorporated at Oxford in 1599. He was proctor of the university of Cambridge, 1609, was chosen master of Peterhouse, 1617, and vice-chancellor, 1621. He held a prebend at Wells, and was chaplain to Charles, prince of Wales. When Charles was in Spain in 1623, King James sent Mawe and Matthew Wren [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Ely, along with other officers and attendants, to join him, charging the chaplains to fit up a room chapel-wise, hold prayers twice a day, and generally so to manage as to commend the English service to the Spaniards (Gardiner). Mawe and the rest set sail on 3 April. During his journey through Spain he had a fall from his mule, 'lighting on his head and shoulders' (Wynn). The prince was obliged to send orders that the greater part of the company was to return to England without coming on to Madrid, and Mawe returned through France. As a reward for his services he was appointed master of Trinity College by patent in 1625. Before he left Peterhouse he gave 300l. for covering the roof of the chapel then being built there with lead. As master of Trinity College he did much towards freeing that foundation from a heavy debt (Fuller). He used all his influence to secure the election of the Duke of Buckingham as chancellor of the university in 1626, urging the members of his college to vote unanimously for the duke (Original Letters). In 1628 he received the see of Bath and Wells, being elected 24 June, and consecrated at Croydon 7 Sept. He died on 2 Sept. 1629 at Chiswick, and was buried in the church there. He was 'a good scholar, a grave preacher, a mild man, and one of gentle deportment' (Fuller). There is a portrait of him in the palace at Wells.
[Wood's Fasti Oxon. vol. i. col. 282, ed. Bliss; Registrum Univ. Oxon. ii. i. 355 (Oxf. Hist. Soc.); Fuller's Worthies, ii. 333; Le Neve's Fasti, i. 146, iii. 621, 669, 699, ed. Hardy; State Papers, ed. Hardwicke. i. 406; Cal. State Papers, Chas. I, Dom. 1627, p. 448; Sir Richard Wynn's Account of the Journey of Prince Charles ap. App. to Historia Ric. II. ed. Hearne; notices of the Spanish journey, though without mention of Mawe's name, also in Verney Papers (Camden Soc.); Ellis's Original Letters, vol. iii. pt. i. p. 229; Gardiner's Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage, ii. 330, 337 (History of England, v. 35, 43); Willis and Clark's Architectural History of Cambridge, i. 42; Godwin, De Præsuiibus Angliæ, p. 392.]