was the younger son of John Robinson of Conway (son of the above Henry Robinson) by Elin, daughter of the Rev. W. Brickdale of the Wirral and his wife Marsli, a descendant of the family of Conwy of Bodrhyddan. Entering Queens’ College, Cambridge, in March 1545, he was elected Fellow at the instance of Edward VI's Protestant visitors (c. 1548) before proceeding to his M.A. (1551). In Mary's reign he signed the Roman Catholic articles of faith imposed on the University (1555) and was ordained acolyte, deacon, and priest on three successive days in March 1557, by bishop William Glynne (q.v.), of Bangor, under special faculty from cardinal Pole; the only evidence for Strype's allegation (Parker, i, 464) that he ‘suffered much from the Papists’ during the reign is that he then held no college or university office as in the preceding and succeeding reigns. On Elizabeth's accession archbishop Parker made him his chaplain and licensed him (20 Dec. 1559) to preach throughout his province, whereupon he took his divinity degrees (B.D. 1560, D.D. 1566). A sermon of his at S. Paul's Cross in Dec. 1561 (extract in Strype, Parker, i, 465-6) attracted the notice of Grindal, bishop of London, who suggested his name for the provostship of Eton next day; filling this, he was presented to two rectories in Grindal's diocese and the next year to that of Northop, Flints., and the archdeaconry of Merioneth (26 Aug. and 16 June 1562). The last gave him a seat on convocation, where he voted for the thirty-nine articles and against the proposed Puritan articles (1562); he also supported the episcopal proposals on vestments (1564). He was still resident at Cambridge on the queen's visit in 1564, and she made him one of her Lenten preachers next year. The see of Bangor then falling vacant, Cecil (to whom he had been previously recommended for the headship of a Cambridge college) put his name forward as ‘a person well known in that country, and a Welshman … a grave learned man,’ as against Pembroke's nominee, the lay lawyer, Dr. Elis Prys (q.v.), and, the archbishop concurring, Robinson was consecrated in 1566.
As bishop, he took a strong line against images, pilgrimages, and other ‘superstitions,’ voted in the convocation of 1571 (when he was proxy for the South Wales bishops) for the disciplinary canons, conducted a visitation of his diocese with Dr. Thomas Yale (see under Yale) in 1576, and in 1578 sat on two special commissions: in Feb. (with the bishop of S. Asaph, two judges, and five laymen) to root out ‘superstitious usages’ from Denbighshire and Flintshire, and in March to investigate the Caernarvonshire contacts of the Roman Catholic refugee, Hugh Owen (1538-1618) (see under Owen of Plas-du). Despite all this he had to defend himself in 1582 against charges of ‘popery.’ An active administrator in both ecclesiastical and civil affairs, he was not free from the prevailing vices of pluralism and nepotism. He clung to all his preferments save one English living (resigned, 1574) and the archdeaconry of Merioneth (exchanged for that of Anglesey, 1573); his kinsman and fellow-Cantrabrigian Humphrey Robinson succeeded him in Merioneth, having previously been admitted by him to the rectory of Llanengan (1570) before he was either priest or graduate, and re-admitted both there (1573) and at Llanbedrog (1572) after graduation (1571) and ordination (1572). On the other hand the Anglesey properties of Mynachdy (Llanfair-yng-nghornwy) and Skerries, which the bishop is commonly said to have alienated from the temporalities of the see, were almost certainly a legitimate purchase from the secularised estate of Maenan abbey. He had a high reputation as a preacher (Sir John Wynn of Gwydir thought his extempore sermons best) and as scholar and linguist; at the request of Sir John Wynn's father he translated into Latin the Welsh life of Gruffudd ap Cynan (q.v.) (printed Arch. Camb., III, xii, 30, 112), and wrote an unpublished treatise on Welsh church history. He d. 13 Feb. 1585, and was buried in his cathedral; the memorial brass, plundered in the Civil War, was replaced by another in 1843. He has been called ‘one of the chief pioneers of the Reformation in North Wales,’ and his successor, bishop Humphrey Humphreys (q.v.), sums him up as ‘a learned and diligent man and an excellent governor.’ His literary remains are listed in Cooper, Athen. Cantab., i, 505.
Of the bishop's children by his wife Jane, daughter of Randle Brereton and granddaughter of Sir William Griffith of Penrhyn, the heir,
WILLIAM ROBINSON (1576-1644),
entered Hart Hall, Oxford, in 1592 (11 Feb.), was sheriff of Denbighshire (1630) as owner of Gwersyllt Uchaf (bought by his father) and of Anglesey (1632) by virtue of Monachdy, served as commissioner of array for Denbighshire, Sept. 1642, and m. Jane, daughter of John Pryce of Newtown Hall;
HUMPHREY ROBINSON (1577-1621)
entered Hart Hall, Oxford, with his brother but graduated from University College (B.A. 1596, M.A. 1598), adding a Cambridge M.A. in 1600, when he became rector of Aber and probably of Llanbedr-y-cennin (with the vicarage of Caerhun);
HUGH ROBINSON (1584-1655)
was educated at Winchester (1596-1603) and New College, becoming Fellow of the latter in 1605 and ‘Informator’ (headmaster) of the former, as well as holding several English livings from which Parliament extruded him in 1647 till he took the Covenant and was compensated elsewhere. Either he or a kinsman of the same name also succeeded Humphrey Robinson at Caerhun and Llanbedr in 1613, to which he added the living of Trefriw (with Llan-rhychwyn and Betws-y-coed) in 1617, keeping them all, in spite of complaints of neglect in 1618, till he was ejected under the Propagation Act in 1650 — just after making himself useful to Owen Wynn of Gwydir (q.v.) by reminding the dying archbishop, John Williams (q.v.), of a promised legacy to his niece Grace, Wynn's wife.
