John Francis Wade

John Francis Wade (1711–1786) was an English hymnist who is sometimes credited with writing and composing the hymn "Adeste Fideles" (which was translated to "O Come All Ye Faithful" in 1841 by Frederick Oakeley), even though the actual authorship of the hymn remains uncertain. The earliest copies of the hymn all bear his signature. 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.