Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/342

 is found as serjeant pleading for the Duke of Devonshire. In 1695 Godolphin renewed former efforts to secure him promotion (Hist. MSS. Comm. 13th Rep. vii. 105), but they came to nothing. Rawlinson died on 11 May 1703, and was buried in the church at Hendon, where he had purchased an old mansion of the Whichcotes in Brent Street. In Hendon church there is a monument to his memory with a long Latin inscription.

He was twice married. By his first wife he had two daughters, Elizabeth and Ann, both of whom had descendants. By his second wife, Jane, daughter of Edward Noseworthy of Devon, and Honora, a daughter of Sir John Maynard (1602–1690) [q. v.], he had one son, who died an infant (, Lancashire Pedigrees;, Environs of London, ii. 230). The second wife died in 1712, bequeathing 500l. for the purpose of establishing a school for girls. She was buried in Ealing church, and a monument was erected there.

[Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, ubi supra; Foss's Judges of England, vii. 344; Burke's Landed Gentry, 1687; Foster's Gray's Inn Reg.; Lysons's Environs of London, ii. 230, iii. 79; Luttrell's Relation of State Affairs; Foster's Lancashire Pedigrees. The William Rawlinson who graduated at St. John's College, Cambridge, B.A. in 1667, was a son of Rob Rawlinson of Cartmel, Lancashire, and is not identical with the above William Rawlinson: see Mayor's Entries to St. John's Coll. Cambr. i. 164.] 

RAWSON, GEORGE (1807–1889), hymn-writer, was born at Leeds on 5 June 1807. Educated at Clunie's school, Manchester, he was articled to a firm of Leeds solicitors, and ultimately practised for himself. Retiring from business, he went to Clifton, and died there on 25 March 1889. Rawson wrote many hymns. His earliest efforts appeared anonymously, under the signature of ‘A Leeds Layman.’ A collection was published as ‘Hymns, Verses, and Chants,’ with his name on the title-page (London, 1877); and a small volume, ‘Songs of Spiritual Thought,’ embracing a selection from the earlier collection, was issued by the Religious Tract Society in 1885. There is much diversity of style and treatment in his verse, and his hymns, original in subject and form, are both poetic and devout. His best known hymn is one for the communion, ‘By Christ redeemed,’ but others are included in several church collections.

[Sunday Magazine, September 1888; Miller's Singers and Songs, 1869, p. 551; Leeds Mercury, 30 March 1889; Horder's Hymn Lover pp. 223, 488.] 

RAWSON, JOHN, (1470?–1547), born about 1470, was descended from an ancient family seated at Water Fryston in Yorkshire; his father, Richard Rawson, was from 1478 to 1483, senior warden of the Mercers' Company, and in 1476 served as alderman in London, subsequently becoming sheriff. His mother, Isabella Craford, died in 1497, and was buried with her husband at St. Mary Magdalene's, Old Fish Street. A brother Richard was chaplain to Henry VIII and archdeacon of Essex, and died in 1543.

John was the eldest son, and in 1492 was made free of the Mercers' Company; before September 1497 he joined the knights of St. John, whose headquarters were then at Rhodes. In 1510 he was employed on some mission to Rome connected with the order; on his way he was entertained in great state at Venice by the doge (Cal. Venetian State Papers, vol. ii. No. 64). In 1511 he was appointed prior of Kilmainham, an office which carried with it the headship of the order in Ireland and a seat in the Irish house of peers; at the same time he was sworn of the Irish privy council. He also held the preceptories of Quenington, Gloucestershire, and Swinfield.

In 1517 Rawson was made treasurer of Ireland, but in the following year was summoned to the defence of Rhodes, then besieged by the Turks. In 1519 he obtained a license from the king to go abroad for three years; but apparently he did not leave England, for his license was revoked, and he was compelled to return to Ireland in July 1520 with Surrey (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. iii. No. 2889). He remained in Ireland until March 1522, and then seems to have made his way to Rhodes, as his name appears at the head of the list of English knights reviewed there by Villiers de L'Isle Adam in that year (, Hist. of the Knights of Malta, 1728, vol. i. App. p. 154). Rhodes surrendered on 20 Dec., and Rawson returned to Ireland, being reappointed treasurer in the same year. In 1525 he again received a license to travel abroad for three years, and in June 1527 was with L'Isle Adam at Corneto in Italy; in the same month he was appointed turcopolier or commander of the turcopoles or light infantry of the order, an office which carried with it the headship of the English ‘langue’ and care of the coast defences of Malta and Rhodes. But in the following year Henry VIII, who needed Rawson's services in the administration of Ireland, secured his reappointment as prior of Kilmainham, and again made him treasurer of Ireland. 