GUDWAL, Saint (fl. 650), bishop and confessor, is said to have been of noble parentage and a native of Wales. At an early age he entered the priesthood, and became a bishop. Afterwards he led a party of 188 monks across the sea to Cornuvia (Cornwall), where they were hospitably received by Mevor, a prince of the country, and Gudwal founded a monastery not far off (according to the Bollandists, in Devonshire). After his death his monks carried his body to Monstreuil in Picardy, and it eventually, in 955 or 959, found a resting-place in the monastery of Blandinberg at Ghent, where his festival was kept on 6 June. Relics of Gudwal were also preserved at Yevre-le-Chastel and Pluviers in the Gatinois. Such is briefly the legend as given by the Bollandists, but Surius and Malebrancq make Mevor a native of Picardy, reading Corminia (Cormon) for Cornuvia, and say that it was there that Gudwal established his monastery. The parish of Gulval, near Penzance, is dedicated to him, and there is a celebrated holy well there, but the old oratory has been destroyed. Gudwal's life and miracles were written by a monk of Blandinberg in the twelfth century (the writer refers to Abbot Gislebert, who died in 1138), but there seems to have been an older life which has perished. The full life is printed in the 'Acta Sanctorum,' and abbreviations of it are given by Capgrave and Surius.
Gudwal must be distinguished from St. Gudwal or Gurval, an Irish monk and disciple of St. Brendan (484-577) [q. v.], who became second bishop of St. Malo in the seventh century. This saint's festival was also kept on 6 June, though the day is sometimes given as 6 Jan.
[Acta Sanctorum, 6 June, i. 715 sqq.; Surius Vitæ Sanctorum, vi. 108; Capgrave's Nova Legenda Anglie, p. 167; Malbrancq, De Morinis, lib. ii. c. xv.; Hardy's Cat. Brit. Hist. i. 371-3 (for a description of the various manuscripts of the Vita S. Gudwali); Haddan and Stubbs, i. 28, 31, 36, 161, ii. 82, 85; Dict. Christ. Biog. ii. 807, 823.]
GUERIN, THOMAS. [See Geeran.]
GUERSYE, BALTHASAR, M.D. (d. 1557), physician, an Italian, rose to high favour at the court of Henry VIII. On 7 Nov. 1519 'Thomas Roos of London, surgeon, was bound over in 100l. not to molest Baltazar de Guerciis, or pursue an information late put into the king's Exchequer, till he prove that surgery is an handicraft' (Letters and Papers of Reign of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer, iii. pt. ii. 1562, where Roos's very curious 'proof' is given). As surgeon to Queen Catherine of Arragon, Guersye was naturalised on 16 March 1521-2 (ib. iii. pt. ii. 902). About 1530 he took the degree of M.B. at Cambridge. On 9 Nov. 1532 his services were rewarded by a grant of lands (ib., ed. Gairdner, v. 668). On 20 Aug. 1534 he obtained license to depart into Italy with three servants, five horses or geldings, and twenty crowns of the sun, baggage, &c. (ib. vii. 443). He was also surgeon to Henry VIII (ib. xi. 567), and in 1543 was engaged in collecting accusations against Archbishop Cranmer. He was by special grace admitted M.D. at Cambridge in 1546. He was excepted out of the act of general pardon 7 Edward VI, being therein described as 'Balthaser Guarsy, surgenn.' On 22 Dec. 1556 he was admitted a fellow of the College of Physicians. Guersye, who had long resided in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, was buried there on 10 Jan. 1556-7. His will, in which he describes himself as 'being aged and weake of body and diseased,' was dated on 7 Jan. 1556-1557, and proved with a codicil at London on the following 18 Jan. (registered in P.C.C. 2, Wrastley). He left issue two sons, Benedick, admitted B.C.L. on 17 Feb. 1537-8 at Oxford (Reg. of Univ. of Oxford, Oxford Hist. Soc. i. 190), and Richard, and two daughters, Frances, widow of Thomas Polsted, and Mary Polley. He left a sum of money to be distributed among the poor of Tadmarton, Oxfordshire, and St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. His wife died before him.
[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 173; Munk's Coll. of Phys. 1878, i. 57.]
GUEST, GHEAST, or GESTE, EDMUND, D.D. (1518–1577), bishop of Salisbury, was born in 1517-18 at Northallerton, Yorkshire. His father, Thomas, belonged to a Worcestershire family, the Gestes of Row Heath in the parish of King's Norton. Edmund was educated at the York grammar school and afterwards at Eton, whence in 1536 he was elected a scholar of King's College, Cambridge. Here he took the degrees in arts (B.A. 1541, and M.A. 1544), and became fellow and ultimately vice-provost of his college. While vice-provost he took his B.D. (1551) and received a license to preach in March of the same year. In 1548 he took the side of the reformers in 'A Treatise against the Privy Mass in the behalf and furtherance of the most Holy Communion,' London, 1548, dedicated to Cheke, then provost of King's College (reprinted in H. G. Dugdale's 'Life of Bishop Geste,' Append, i.) In the following summer (June 1549) disputations on transubstantiation were held before the commissioners at Cambridge, in which Guest spoke on the protestant side; and early in 1552
