John Francis Wade

WADE, John Francis. b. 1711/12; d. 1786. Probably educated at the Dominican College at Bornhem in Flanders between 1731 and 1734, and presumably a member of the Rosary Confraternity from 1731. He was probably the son of John Wade, a cloth merchant and active Roman Catholic convert mentioned in Archbishop Blackburn’s 1735 Visitation to York. Wade is renowned today as the composer and author of the well-known Christmas carol, ‘Adeste, fideles’*, although his importance lies more broadly in his place as ‘the father of the English plainchant revival’. His extant works, which date from 1737 to 1774, divide into three types: plainchant manuscripts; printed liturgical books with hand-notated...