# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Claymond, John

1904 Errata appended.
​CLAYMOND, JOHN, D.D. (1457?–1537), divine and scholar, was the son of John Claymond and Alice his wife, 'sufficient inhabitants' of Frampton in Lincolnshire, where John was born. He was educated at Magdalen College grammar school, Oxford, and became a demy of the college, and in 1488 perpetual fellow, and in 1504 president. He proceeded B.D. in 1508 and D.D. in 1510. He held many ecclesiastical benefices. In 1505 he was made master of St. Cross Hospital, near Winchester, by Bishop Fox, and held the post till 1524; in 1506 the abbot and convent of Glastonbury appointed him to the rectory of West Monkton in Somersetshire; he received in 1509 from Adrian de Castello the prebend of Whitchurch in the cathedral church of Wells, to which belonged the church of Beningar in Somersetshire; from 1498 to 1518 he held the vicarage of the collegiate church Norton, Durham, resigning it on condition of receiving a yearly pension of twenty marks; one of the six scholars for whom he subsequently provided scholarships at Brasenose College was to come from Overton or Havant or Mottesfont, Hampshire, 'of which three places he was successively rector.' At the request of Bishop Fox Claymond gave up the presidentship of Magdalen and accepted that of Corpus Christi, which Fox founded in 1516; but since this involved a pecuniary loss the bishop bestowed upon him the 'rich rectory' of Cleeve in Gloucestershire, which he held till his death. Claymond was a considerable benefactor of the Oxford colleges in which he was interested; to Magdalen he left 'divers lands and tenements' in Oxfordshire and Southampton, conditionally upon annual service being performed in the chapel for the souls of himself, his father and mother, and his stepfather John; he also left certain moneys for distribution among the poorest fellows and demies; at Brasenose he founded six scholarships, the scholars being chosen from places where he had held preferments, these scholars were afterwards called Claymondines or Clemmondines; to Corpus Christi he left lands and money and his books. He does not seem to have printed anything, but left in manuscript to Corpus Christi College Library: 'Notæ et Observationes in Plinii Naturalem Historiam,' 4 vols.; 'Comment. in Auli Gellii Noctes Atticas;' 'Comment. in Plautum;' 'Epistolae ad Simon. Grinæum, Erasmum et alios Viros Doctissimos;' and a 'Treatise of Repentance,' which came into the possession of Anthony à Wood. John Shepgreve, professor of Hebrew, wrote a Latin life of Claymond, with the title 'Vita et Epicedion Johannis Claymundi, Prsesidis Coll. Corp. Chr.' Erasmus mentions Cuthbert Tonstall, Thomas More, and Richard Pace as his special friends. He died on 19 Nov. 1537, and was buried in Corpus Christi College Chapel. The dates were never filled in on his tombstone, so that the year of his birth is a guess of Wood's.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. i. 104; Wood's Antiquities, passim; Allen's Lincolnshire, i. 348; Hutchinson's Durham, iii. Ill ; Leland's Encomia, &c., London, 1589, p. 43; J. Caius de libris propriis, London, 1576, p. 13; Erasmi Opera Omnia, 1703, iii. 463.]
R. B.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.69 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| | | 17 | Claymond, John: for 1504 read 1506-7 |
| | | 22 f.e. | for 1516 read 1516-7 |