William Peryn

William Peryn (died 1558) was an English Roman Catholic priest and Dominican friar who in the reign of Mary I became prior of the short-lived Priory of St Bartholomew's, Smithfield, London.

Life Peryn was educated at Blackfriars in Oxford and there are records of him being there in 1529 and 1531, the year in which he was ordained. He went to London and was a preacher strongly against heresy, and a chaplain to Sir John Port. Soon after Henry VIII’s Royal Act of Supremacy, 1534, he went into exile, but in 1543 returned to England, when he applied for the degree of Bachelor of Theology at Oxford. He became a chantrist at St Paul's and early in 1547 preached in favour of images in religious services. It was also based on Nicolaus van Esch's Exercitia theologiae mysticae. This work by Peryn was to have a long readership among English recusants and was much treasured by Margaret Clitheroe. It would be republished by a Catholic press of Caen in 1598.

Peryn died in 1558 and was buried in St Bartholomew's on 22 August, at the high altar.