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 1511). Laurence Nowell [q. v.], dean of Lichfield, was a younger brother. Having received his early education at Middleton, Lancashire, he entered Brasenose College, Oxford, at the age of thirteen, and is said to have been the chamber-fellow of John Foxe [q. v.] the martyrologist. He was not admitted B.A. until 1526, was that year elected fellow of his college, proceeded M.A. in 1540 (, Register, p. 183), and in 1541 or 1542 gave public lectures in the university on Rodolph's logic (, Annals, i. 307). Having taken orders he was in 1543 appointed master of Westminster School, where he introduced the reading of Terence, and on one day of every week read St. Luke's Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles in Greek with the elder scholars. He was appointed a prebendary of Westminster in 1551 (, Fasti, iii. 351), received a license to preach, and ‘preached in some of the notablest places and audiences in the realm’ (, u. s.). When Dr. John Redman [q. v.], master of Trinity College, Cambridge, was dying, Nowell attended him, and after his death published a little book containing Redman's last utterances on matters of religious controversy. Although the book was subscribed by other divines as witnesses, Thomas Dorman [q. v.], a catholic divine, charged Nowell with false witness, which Nowell strongly denied (ib. Memorials, i. 527 sq.). In the first parliament of Queen Mary, which met on 5 Oct. 1553, Nowell was returned as one of the members for Looe, Cornwall; but a committee appointed to inquire into the validity of the return reported on the 13th that he, ‘being prebendary at Westminster, and thereby having voice in the convocation house, cannot be a member of this house,’ and the election was accordingly annulled (Commons' Journals, i. 27; Returns of Members, i. 381;, History of the Reformation, iii. 511;, Constitutional History, i. 275). Nowell was a ‘dear lover and constant practiser of angling’ (Compleat Angler, pt. i. c. i.) and it is said that Bishop Bonner, seeing him catch fish in the Thames, designed to catch him, but Francis Bowyer, merchant and afterwards sheriff of London, conveyed him abroad (, Worthies, i. 547). After residing for a time at Strasburg he went to Frankfort, where, being desirous of peace, he took a leading part in the attempt to compose the religious disputes of the exiles in 1557. He subscribed the ‘new discipline,’ which was presbyterian in character, and joined in defending it against the objections of Robert Horne (1519?–1580) [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Winchester, and others. But he was not bigoted, and on the death of Mary was one of the joint writers of the letter that the exiles remaining at Frankfort sent to the Genevan divines declaring that they were ready in non-essentials to submit to authority (Troubles at Frankfort, pp. 62, 116, 163; , Annals, i. 263).

Nowell returned to England, and in July was appointed on a commission to visit the dioceses of Oxford, Lincoln, Peterborough, and Lichfield. Cecil had included his name in a list of eminent divines who were to receive preferment, and in December he was made archdeacon of Middlesex (, Fasti, ii. 330), and preached at the consecration of four bishops, among them being Edmund Grindal [q. v.] of London, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, who had appointed him his chaplain (Life of Grindal, p. 49). In February 1560 he was collated to the rectory of Saltwood with Hythe, Kent, which he resigned the same year; was given a canonry at Canterbury (, i. 537), and was appointed by the archbishop to visit that church (Life of Parker, i. 144); he received a canonry at Westminster in June, which he resigned the next year (, Repertorium, i. 49), and in November was recommended by Queen Elizabeth ‘for his godly zeal, and special good learning, and other singular gifts and virtues’ for election as dean of St. Paul's, was elected, and was collated to a prebend in that church (ib. pp. 47, 215; Life of Grindal, p. 56). He was constantly appointed to preach at St. Paul's Cross the ‘Spital sermons,’ and before the queen, and had no small share in the restoration of the reformed religion. One of his sermons in 1561 raised some stir, for Dorman misrepresented a sentence in it as a threat of violence against papists (Annals, i. 352). After the fire at St. Paul's in June he preached before the lord mayor and aldermen a sermon that led the city to take immediate steps to repair the damage. He was by this time married; for Archbishop Parker wrote that if the queen would have a ‘married minister’ for provost of Eton, there were none comparable to Nowell (Life of Parker, i. 208). But the queen chose a celibate divine, William Day (1529–1596) [q. v.] On 1 Jan. 1562 the dean placed a new and richly bound prayer-book, with pictures of the saints and martyrs, on the queen's cushion in St. Paul's, intending it for a new year's gift. Elizabeth made the verger fetch her old book, and showed evident signs of anger. When the service was over she went at once into the vestry, told the dean that he had infringed her proclamation against ‘images, pictures,