Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Price, Hugh
PRICE, HUGH (1495?–1574), founder of Jesus College, Oxford, was the son of Rees ap Rees, a butcher, who ‘acquired such a fortune as to enable him to give his children a liberal education, and to leave to his eldest son a considerable landed estate.’ Hugh was born at Brecon about 1495, and educated at Oxford, where he graduated B.C.L. on 4 July 1512, B. Canon L. on 23 Feb. 1523–4, and D. Canon L. on 2 July 1526. On 26 April 1532 he was one of those who tried James Bainham [q. v.] for heresy in the Tower of London, and he may be the Hugh Price alias Whiteford who was presented by the king to the living of Whitford, Flintshire, on 22 Jan. 1535–6. On the re-foundation of the see of Rochester in 1541 he was appointed to the first prebend, which he held till his death in August 1574. From 1571 to 1574 he was treasurer of St. David's. He was buried in the priory church at Brecon in August 1574.
On Price's petition, and by letters patent dated 27 June 1571, Elizabeth established Jesus College, Oxford, and conferred on it all the lands, buildings, and personalty of White Hall. Price himself gave 60l. as a yearly endowment. It was the first distinctly protestant college founded at Oxford. The buildings were commenced about 1572, but only two stories on the east and south sides of the outer quadrangle were completed until 1618. A portrait of Price attributed to Holbein belongs to the college. It was engraved by George Vertue in 1739, and appears in Jones's ‘History of Brecknockshire.’ The arms adopted by the college are not those of Price (cf. English Hist. Rev. 1895 passim).
[Letters and Papers Henry VIII, v. App. No. 29, (3), x. No. 226; Le Neve's Fasti, i. 318, ii. 582; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Wood's Fasti, i. 70; Jones's Hist. of Brecknockshire i. 123–5; Granger's Biogr. Hist. i. 214; Elizabethan Oxford (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), pp. 15, 241; The Colleges of Oxford, ed. Clark, pp. 365–6; Williams's Eminent Welshmen; Imp. Dict. of Biogr.; Bromley's Cat. of Engraved Portraits.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.226
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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