cess of the divorce of Queen Anne as of the contract and solemnization of the same between the king and the most noble Queen Jane; wrote to the king the abridgements of the comperts of the late visitation,' and, after further services, he adds that he 'has ever since been occupied in the execution of traitors, felons, or heretics' (Letters and Papers Henry VIII, XIII. ii. 1225).
Price was encouraged by William Herbert, first earl of Pembroke [q. v.], and devoted himself to study. He took, however, some part in public affairs, and is stated to have been greatly occupied in the union of England and Wales, drafting or suggesting the petition on which the statutes were framed. He was sheriff of Brecknock in 1541, and lived chiefly at Brecon priory. He was knighted on 22 Feb 1546-7, and made one of the council for the Welsh marches in 1551. He died probably about 1573. He and his son Richard were patrons of Hugh Evans, and are said to have introduced him to Shakespeare; Richard gave Evans the living of Merthyr Cynog, Brecon, in 1572. Evans died in 1581, and made Richard Price the overseer of his will. He married Joan, daughter of John Williams of South wark, and had a family of five sons and two daughters. The Prices in the civil war took the royalist side, and Charles I after Naseby dined and slept at Brecon priory on 5 Aug. 1645.
Sir John Price wrote: 1. 'Historiae Britannicae Defensio,' composed about 1553, published by his son Richard in 1573, and dedicated to Lord Burghley; in part a protest against Polydore Vergil. 2. 'Description of Cambria,' translated and enlarged by Humphrey Lhuyd [q. v.], and published as part of the 'Historie of Cambria ' by David Powell [q. v.], 1584; other editions 1697, 1702, 1774, and 1812. 3. 'Fides Historian Britannicae,' a correction of Polydore Vergil (Brit. Mus. Cotton MS. Titus, F. iii. 17). 4. A tract on the restitution of the coinage, written in 1553; dedicated to Queen Mary (MS. New Coll. Oxon. Arch. MS. 317, iii.); in this tract he refers to a larger treatise on the same subject, which is not extant. He is also said to have translated and published the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments in Welsh, for the first time. Many of his letters are preserved in the British Museum and the Record Office.
[Wood's Athenae Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 216-7; Reg. Univ. Oxf. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), i. 134, 169, 178; Jones's Hist, of Brecknockshire, n. i. III, &c.; Williams's Eminent Welshmen, p. 416; York's Royal Tribes of Wales, p. 89; Robinson's Castles and Mansions of Herefordshire, p. 162; Annals of the Counties and County Families of Wales; Warrington's Hist. of Wales; Wright's Suppression Letters (Camd. Soc.), p. 53, &c.; Metcalfe's Knights, p. 94; Reg. Univ. Oxf. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), i. 156, 669; Dixon's Hist. of the Church of Engl. i. 305-6, ii. 144, 213; Letters and Papers Henry VIII; Strype's Annals, III. i. 415, 744, Memorials, I. i. 321, ii. 216, II. i. 500, ii. 162, 329; Gasquet's Henry VIII and the Engl. Monasteries.]
PRICE (PRICÆUS), JOHN (1600–1676?), scholar, born of Welsh parentage in London in 1600, was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he was elected student in 1617; but, being a Roman catholic, neither matriculated nor graduated. He was perhaps identical with the John Price, ‘son and heir of John Price of London, deceased,’ who was admitted a student at Gray's Inn in 1619. He accompanied James Howard, eldest son of Thomas, second earl of Arundel [q. v.], in his travels on the continent, and obtained a doctor's degree, probably in civil law, from some foreign university. During the viceroyalty of Sir Thomas Wentworth (afterwards Earl of Strafford) [q. v.] he visited Ireland, and made the acquaintance of Archbishop Ussher. In 1635 he made his mark as a scholar by an edition of the ‘Apologia’ of Apuleius, published at Paris. In the autumn of that year he was in London, corresponding under the name Du Pris with Jean Bourdelot (see the very rare ‘Deux Lettres Inédites de Jean Price à Bourdelot, publiées et annotées par Philippe Tamizey de Larroque,’ Paris, 1883, 8vo). Resuming his travels, he visited Vienna, where he occupied himself in making excerpts from Greek manuscripts in the Imperial Library, some of which, marked with the date February 1637, and dedicated to Laud, are in Addit. MS. 32096, ff. 336 et seq. In 1640 he resumed residence at Christ Church, Oxford, where during the civil war he wrote pamphlets in the royalist interest. He suffered in consequence a brief imprisonment, and on regaining his liberty went once more abroad. At Paris in 1646 he edited the Gospel of St. Matthew and the Epistle of St. James, and in 1647 the Acts of the Apostles; at Gouda in 1650 the ‘Metamorphoses’ of Apuleius. About 1652 he settled at Florence as keeper of the medals to the Grand Duke Ferdinand II, who afterwards gave him the chair of Greek at the university of Pisa. There he compiled commentaries on St. Luke's Gospel, the Epistles of St. Paul to Timothy and Titus, and of St. James, St. John, and St. Jude, the Apocalypse, and the Psalms, which, with his prior essays in the same kind, were published at London
