fifteen livings, thus having in his hands nine livings cum cura and seven sine cura; and though six had been resigned by him, it was only ‘upon having of the better.’ He had leased out ‘divers parcels’ of the bishopric, ‘to the hindrance of his successors,’ in the form of lordships, manors, and good rectories. The bishop was further charged with extorting money from his clergy on his visitations ‘over and above the procurations appointed by law,’ and with committing or overlooking other infringements of the late canons. The account may be exaggerated, but the charge of pluralism is not reducible to 'excessive exchanging.' The report dwells on the number of recusants in the diocese, but Hughes in a letter to Whitgift, dated 4 Nov. 1577, says that ‘there are no persons within his diocese refusing or neglecting to come to church.’ Hughes was in fact not altogether neglectful of the interests of his diocese. In the case of Albany v. the Bishop of St. Asaph (Common Pleas, 27 Eliz.) one of the bishop's replies to the quare impedit was that he had refused to institute Mr. Bagshaw, ‘a Master of Arts and preacher allowed,’ to the living of Whittington because he did not understand Welsh, the parishioners being ‘homines Wallici, Wallicam loquentes linguam et non aliam.’ Hughes also gave assistance to William Morgan [q. v.] in the translation of the Bible into Welsh by the loan of books and examination of the work.
In 1596 it seems to have been proposed without result to translate him to Exeter. In October 1600 he died, and was buried in the choir of the cathedral, 'without inscription or monument.' By his wife Lucia, daughter of Robert Knowesley of Denbighshire, he left a son, William, and a daughter, Anne, who married Thomas, youngest son of Sir Thomas Mostyn. By his will, dated 16 Oct. and proved 9 Nov. 1600, he left his estate to his daughter and her heirs, in default of heirs the property to go towards founding a school at St. Asaph; but as Anne had heirs the school was not founded. He also left 20l. to build a library for public use, his own library being bequeathed to form a nucleus. This bequest does not seem to have taken effect. Hughes was the author of some ‘Notes made on the authority of Scripture and the Fathers of the Church relative to the descent of Christ into hell,’ preserved in the Record Office, and a letter, in Latin, relating to St. Asaph (Browne Willis, Survey of St. Asaph, ed. Edwards, vol. ii. App. i. pp. 6, 7).
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 844; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. ii. 289; Regist. Univ. Oxon. ed. Boase, vol. i. (Oxford Hist. Soc.); Strype's Annals of the Reformation and Lives of Parker and Whitgift; Rymer's Fœdera, vol. xv.; Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. 1547–80, 1581–90, 1595–7; Thomas's Hist. of St. Asaph, pp. 90–3; Williams's Eminent Welshmen; Llewelyn's Account of the British or Welsh Versions of the Bible, p. 107; Morgan's Welsh Bible, 1588 ed., Preface; Leonard's Reports of Law Cases, Case 39.]
HUGHES, WILLIAM (fl. 1665–1683), horticultural writer, served, according to his own account, on board a vessel engaged on a filibustering expedition in the West Indies. He then visited, among other places, Barbadoes, St. Kitts, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Florida. After his return, about 1652, he took service, apparently as gardener, under the Dowager Viscountess Conway at Ragley. While in this situation he brought out 'The Complete Vineyard, or an excellent way for the Planting of Vines,' &c., London, 1665; this reached a third edition in 1683. His next venture was 'The Flower-Garden enlarged,' London, 1671; third and last edition 1683; and finally a third duodecimo in 1672, 'The American Physitian, or a Treatise of the Roots, Plants, Trees … growing in the English Plantations in America,' &c., in which he recounts his experience of West Indian produce.
[Works; Pritzel's Thes. Lit. Bot. 1st ed. p.127.]
HUGHES, WILLIAM (d. 1798), writer on music, was possibly son of William Hughes who became minor canon of Worcester in 1718, and in 1721 was presented to the vicarage of Old Sodbury, Gloucestershire, which he held until his death in 1768. The younger William Hughes was, on 25 Nov. 1741, admitted a minor canon of Worcester Cathedral, an appointment he held for upwards of forty years. When admitted, he apparently had no degree, but in 1757, when, on resigning the rectory of Bredicote and curacy of St. Clement's, Worcester, he was presented by the chapter to the vicarage of St. Peter's in that city, he is described in the chapter-house minutes as M.A. Hence he may have been the William Hughes who graduated B.A. at Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1749, and proceeded M.A. in 1752. He died at Leominster on 31 July 1798, bequeathing his property to the Worcester Infirmary. His cheerful disposition made him a great favourite in Worcester. According to an epitaph upon him written by a contemporary wit, 'Great was his genius, small his preferment. The Oracle of a coffee-house, he wished not to shine in a more exalted sphere. He laughed through life, and his face made
