John Francis Wade

Who was John Francis Wade?

John Francis Wade was an English hymnist who is sometimes credited with writing and composing the hymn "Adeste Fideles" 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 in 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. There, he taught music and worked on church music for private use.