Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/347

  of the … Hand of God … at Witney … with … three Sermons,’ &c., Oxford, 1653, 4to.  ‘Heavenly-mindedness and Earthly-mindedness,’ &c., 1672, 16mo, 2 parts.  ‘The Saints' Temptation … also the Saints' Great Fence,’ &c., 1675, 8vo. Posthumous was  ‘Emmanuel, or the Love of Christ,’ &c., 1680, 8vo, thirty sermons, edited by [q. v.] He edited works by William Strong (1656 and 1657, 12mo) and by E. Pearse (1674 and 1683, 8vo). Calamy gives a list of his unpublished manuscripts.

 ROWE, JOHN (1764–1832), unitarian minister, sixth child of William Rowe of Spencecomb, near Crediton, Devonshire, was born on 17 April 1764. He was educated at Exeter under [q. v.]; at Hoxton Academy, and, after its dissolution, at the new college, ultimately fixed at Hackney, but then conducted (September 1786–June 1787) at Dr. Williams's Library, Red Cross Street, Cripplegate. He preached occasionally for his tutors, [q. v.], at Westminster, and (1723–1791) [q. v.] at Hackney. On 14 Oct. 1787 he became colleague with Joseph Fownes (1714–1789) at High Street Chapel, Shrewsbury, and on Fownes's death (7 Nov. 1789) was elected sole pastor. His congregation built (1790) a new ‘parsonage-house’ for him; and at Michaelmas 1793 gave him an assistant, [q. v.], who left the ministry in June 1795. In January 1798 Coleridge preached some Sundays as candidate for the place of assistant, but withdrew in consequence of an offer of an income from Thomas Wedgewood (see letter of Coleridge, 19 Jan. 1798, in Christian Reformer, 1834, p. 838). Rowe left Shrewsbury in May 1798 to become colleague with [q. v.] at Lewin's Mead Chapel, Bristol. He was an impressive extempore preacher, and became a power in Bristol, both in charitable and in political movements. He was a founder of the Western Unitarian Society, which was established in 1792, on principles which many of his congregation thought too narrow. He held a doctrine of conditional immortality. In January 1831 he was seized with paralysis. He resigned his charge in 1832, and went to Italy. He died at Siena on 2 July 1832, and was buried in the protestant cemetery at Leghorn. In 1788 he married his cousin Mary (d. 1825), daughter of Richard Hall Clarke of Bridwell, Devonshire. His only son, John, died in Mexico on 17 Dec. 1827, aged twenty-nine. He published, besides sermons (1799–1816), ‘A Letter to Dr. Ryland, in refutation of a note contained in his Sermon, entitled “The First Lye refuted,”’ 1801, 8vo.

 ROWE, NICHOLAS (1674–1718), poet laureate and dramatist, born in the house of his mother's father at Little Barford, Bedfordshire, in 1674, was baptised there on 30 June (Genealogica Bedfordiensis, ed. 1890, F. A. Blaydes, p. 16; Gent. Mag. 1819, ii. 230). He was son of John Rowe (1647–1692), who married Elizabeth, daughter of Jasper Edward, at Little Barford on 25 Sept. 1673. His father's family was long settled at Lamerton, Devonshire, and one of his ancestors is said to have been distinguished as a crusader. His father was a London barrister of the Middle Temple and a serjeant-at-law, who published in 1689 Benloe's and Dalison's ‘Reports in the Reign of James II,’ and, dying on 30 April 1692, was buried in the Temple Church. Rowe's mother was buried at Little Barford on 25 April 1679. After attending a private school at Highgate, Nicholas was in 1688 elected a king's scholar at Westminster, where Busby held sway; but, destined for his father's profession, he was soon removed from school, and was entered as a student at the Middle Temple. He was called to the bar, and Lord-chief-justice Sir George Treby noticed him favourably. Law proved uncongenial. From youth he had read much literature, especially dramatic literature, both classical and modern, and he was soon fired with the ambition to try his hand as a dramatist. His father's death in 1692, which put him in possession of an income of 300l. a year, enabled him to follow his own inclinations.

Forsaking the bar, although still residing in the Temple, Rowe early in 1700 saw his blank-verse tragedy, ‘The Ambitious Stepmother,’ produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields. The scene was laid in Persepolis. The characters, which were supposed to be Persian, were not drawn with much distinctness, but the piece was well acted by Betterton, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Mrs. Barry, and others, and answered the company's expectations (, Roscius Anglicanus, 1708, p. 45). Congreve described the play as ‘a very good one,’ and