Gelli Meyrick

Sir Gelli Meyrick (also Gelly or Gilly) (1556? – 13 March 1601) was a Welsh supporter of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and conspirator in Essex's rebellion. He was executed for his part in it.

Life

He was the eldest son of Rowland Meyrick, bishop of Bangor (Gwynedd), by Katherine, daughter of Owain Barret of Gelliswic. After his father's death in 1565 he spent his youth with his mother on the family estate of Hascard in Pembrokeshire. At an early age he became a soldier and served in the Netherlands, receiving in 1583 the grant of a crest.

He soon became acquainted with Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who owned property in Wales. He attended the Earl at

St Clement Eastcheap

.

The death of

Sir Anthony Ashley

, and he retaliated by accusing Ashley of far more serious peculations. The quarrel ended in Ashley's committal to prison.

In 1597 he took part with Essex in the Islands Voyage, and was in command of the Swiftsure. In the Earl's disputes with Walter Raleigh in the course of the expedition, Meyrick strongly supported his master, and is credited with embittering the relations between the two leaders. In the spring of 1599 Meyrick went to Ireland with Essex, who was then lord-deputy, and he returned with messages from his master in August, a few weeks before Essex himself arrived in London to meet the charges preferred against his Irish administration.

In July 1600 Essex was induced to dismiss Meyrick from his office of steward by friends who represented him as a dangerous counsellor, but he was soon reinstated at

John Popham) who had arrived earlier in the day to inquire into Essex's movements and had been locked up in the house.^[4]

Meyrick defended the house when attacked by the royal troops in the afternoon, and only surrendered at Essex's bidding.

He was held in the

Sir Christopher Blount, Sir John Davis, and Sir Henry Cuffe, he declined to admit his guilt, but was convicted and sentenced to death. He declared himself willing to die, and explained that he merely acted under his master's orders. He was hanged at Tyburn

on 13 March, together with Cuffe. In a short speech at the gallows he expressed the hope that others might receive a pardon.

Family

Gelli is a member of the

John Vaughan, 1st Earl of Carberry. Both children were subsequently restored in blood, and seem to have been granted out of their father's confiscated estates lands at Lucton and Eyton

in Herefordshire. Lady Meyrick died in 1625.

Notes

^ "WILLIAMS, Sir ROGER (1540? - 1595), soldier and author". Dictionary of Welsh Biography.
^ Thomas Birch, Memorials of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 2 (London, 1754), p. 50.
^ Takashi Kozuka, J. R. Mulryne (editors), Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson: new directions in biography (2006), p. 33.
^ Penry Williams, The Later Tudors: England, 1547–1603 (1998), p. 374.

References

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Meyrick, Sir Gelly". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

External links

Page at Royal College of Physicians

[1] "WILLIAMS, Sir ROGER (1540? - 1595), soldier and author". Dictionary of Welsh Biography.

[2] Thomas Birch, Memorials of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 2 (London, 1754), p. 50.

[3] Takashi Kozuka, J. R. Mulryne (editors), Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson: new directions in biography (2006), p. 33.

[4] Penry Williams, The Later Tudors: England, 1547–1603 (1998), p. 374.

[4]