ArtistInfo

John Francis Wade

1711-1786 GB
Classical

John Francis Wade (1711 – 16 August 1786) was an English hymnist who is sometimes credited with writing and composing the hymn "Adeste Fideles" (which was later translated to "O Come All Ye Faithful"), even though the actual authorship of the hymn remains uncertain. The earliest copies of the hymn all bear his signature.Born either in England or in Douai, Flanders, France, Wade fled to France after the Jacobite rising of 1745 was crushed. As a Catholic layman, he lived with exiled English Catholics in France, where he taught music and worked on church music for private use.