Clenock, Maurice (Clynnog)
CLENOCK, MAURICE (CLYNNOG)
First rector of the English College, Rome; b. Caernarvonshire, Wales, c. 1525; drowned at sea, 1580 or 1581. He earned the D.D. and B.C.L. degrees at Oxford, where he lectured in civil law. Later he was almoner and secretary to Cardinal Reginald Pole, and chancellor of the prerogative court at Canterbury. He was nominated to the See of Bangor in 1558, but the death of Mary Tudor prevented his consecration. He retired in exile to Louvain, where he studied theology and advocated the restoration of English Catholicism by foreign military intervention. At Milan in 1558 he published a book of Christian doctrine in Welsh titled Athravaeth Gristnogavl. In 1565 and from 1576 to 1577 he was warden of the hospice for exiled English dons in Rome and was closely concerned with the negotiations that transformed it into a seminary. He became its first rector but was dismissed in 1579 through the appeals of the English students to the pope, who alleged his partiality for Welshmen. The seminary was then entrusted to the Society of Jesus.
Bibliography: Dictionary of Welsh Biography (London 1959) 78–80. j. gillow, A Literary and Biographical History or Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics from 1534 to the Present Time (London-New York 1885–1902; repr. New York 1961) 1:501–505.
[j. m. cleary]