Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rhys, Ioan Dafydd
RHYS, IOAN DAFYDD, or John David (1534–1609), Welsh grammarian, was born in 1534 at Llan Faethlu, Anglesey. His father, Dafydd Rhys, was, according to the traditional story (which is imperfectly corroborated), a son of Rhys Llwyd Brydydd of Glamorganshire, and came to the north as gardener to Sir William Gruffydd of Penrhyn, who married Jane Stradling of St. Donat's in that county. Dafydd married, it is said, one of the bride's attendants; on the death of both in a few years their son John was brought up at St. Donat's, and educated with the Stradlings. It is certain he was in December 1555 a student of Christ Church, Oxford, but left the university without graduating, and proceeded to Siena (Tuscany), where he took the degree of doctor of medicine. Appointed public moderator of the school of Pistoia, he published at Venice an Italian work on the Latin language, and at Padua a Latin treatise, ‘De Italicæ linguæ pronunciatione.’ After a long residence abroad he returned to England and practised as a physician, settling at Blaen Cwm Llwch, at the foot of the Brecknock Beacons. He had been urged, some years before making his home in Brecknockshire, by Sir Edward Stradling [q. v.] to publish a Welsh grammar, and in 1592 his ‘Cambrobrytannicæ Cymræcæve linguæ institutiones et rudimenta’ appeared in London. The Latin text (a large part of which has reference to Welsh prosody) is preceded by a dedication to Sir Edward, who bore the expense of publication, by Latin complimentary verses by Camden and John Stradling, a Latin address to the reader by Humphrey Prichard of Bangor, and Rhys's own Welsh preface. Wood asserts that Rhys died a papist, but Prichard calls him ‘sinceræ religionis propagandæ avidissimus,’ though the purpose attributed to him of issuing his grammar in order to aid the readers of the Welsh bible of 1588 seems to have been an afterthought of his friends. He introduced into his grammar a new orthography, which was followed by Myddelton (1593 and 1603) and Henry Perry (1595), but never won general acceptance. A manuscript translation by him of Aristotle's ‘Metaphysics’ into Welsh is said to have once existed in the library of Jesus College, Oxford. Rhys died in 1609, leaving a son Walter, who was vicar of Brecon from 1576 to 1621 (Jones, History of Breconshire, ii. 51).
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon.; tract by E. Gamage in notes to Taliesin Williams's Doom of Colyn Dolphyn, 1837; Rowlands's Llyfryddiaeth y Cymry, pp. 57–68; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714.]