William Peryn
William Peryn (died 1558) was an English Catholic priest and Dominican friar. During Mary I’s reign he became prior of the Priory of St Bartholomew’s in Smithfield, London, the first religious house Mary founded.
Peryn studied at Blackfriars in Oxford, where records show him in 1529 and 1531, the year he was ordained. He moved to London as a preacher against heresy and served as chaplain to Sir John Port. After Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy in 1534, he went into exile, returning in 1543 to seek a Bachelor of Theology at Oxford. He became a chanter at St Paul’s and early in 1547 spoke in favour of images in religious services. When Edward VI took the throne that year, Peryn again went into exile, spending years in Louvain before returning to England in 1553 upon Mary I’s accession.
That same year he was appointed prior of the Dominican house at St Bartholomew’s in Smithfield, the first religious house Mary founded. On 8 February 1556, he is recorded preaching at Paul’s Cross.
Peryn wrote three books: Thre Godly Sermons of the Sacrament of the Aulter (1546); Spirituall exercyses and goostly meditacions, and a neare waye to come to perfection and lyfe contemplatyve (1557); and De frequenter celebranda missa (no copy survives). The three sermons were preached at St Anthony’s Hospital in London and dedicated to Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London. Peryn borrowed heavily from John Fisher’s De veritate corporis et sanguinis Christi in eucharistia, and in a preface explained he published the sermons “in homely and plain sentence, for the unlearned.” Spirituall exercyses was dedicated to two exiled English nuns—Katherine Palmer and Dorothy Clement—and was based on Nicolaus van Esch’s Exercitia theologiae mysticae. It enjoyed a long readership among English recusants and was treasured by Margaret Clitheroe; a Caen edition appeared in 1598.
William Peryn died in 1558 and was buried in St Bartholomew’s on 22 August.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 01:09 (CET).