William Peryn
William Peryn (died 1558) was an English Catholic theologian and prior of the short-lived Marian Priory of St Bartholomew's, Smithfield, London. Life. Peryn was educated at Blackfriars in Oxford and there are records of him being there in 1529 and 1531, the year in which he was ordained. He went to London and was a preacher strongly against heresy, and a chaplain to Sir John Port. He went into exile with the declaration of royal supremacy in 1534 but returned to England in 1543, when he applied for a degree of BTh at Oxford. He became  a chantrist at St Paul's and in early 1547 preached in favour of images in religious services. With the accession of the Protestant Edward VI in 1547 he went into exile again, spending several years in Louvain before returning to England in 1553 upon the accession of the Catholic Mary I. That year he was appointed prior of the Dominican house at St Bartholomew's in Smithfield, London. This was the first religious house founded by Mary. On 8 February 1556 Peryn is recorded by the diarist Henry Machyn as preaching at Paul's Cross. Peryn was the author  of three books: "Thre Godly Sermons of the Sacrament of the Aulter" (1546); (1557); and (of which no copy survives). The three sermons published were originally preached at St. Anthony's Hospital in London, and are dedicated to Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London. He borrowed heavily from Bishop of Rochester John Fisher's and in the preface Peryn explains why he has published the sermons: Peryn's was dedicated to two exiled English nuns: Katherine Palmer, abbess of the nuns at Syon in Isleworth, and Dorothy Clement, a Poor Clare at Louvain and the daughter of Sir Thomas More's  adopted daughter Margaret Clement. It was also based on Nicolaus van Esch's "Exercitia theologiae mysticae". This work by Peryn was to have a long readership among English recusants and was much treasured by Margaret Clitheroe. It would be republished by a Catholic press of Caen in 1598. Peryn died in 1558 and was buried in St Bartholomew's on 22 August, at the high altar.