John Rowe (minister)

John Rowe (1626–1677) was an English clergyman, minister to an important Congregationalist church in London.

Biography

He was born in Crediton, Devon.[1] He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge[2] and Oxford, where he attended New Inn Hall.[3]

His 1653 book Tragi-comoedia took an incident in his parish of Witney as a judgement on those attending dramatic productions. The floor of an upper room of The White Hart Inn collapsed during a performance by travelling players of Mucedorus.[4]

In 1654 he was appointed lecturer to Westminster Abbey.[5] In October 1656 he preached to Parliament, then giving thanks for a naval victory in the Caribbean.[6] In 1659 at the State Funeral of John Bradshaw, the President of the Court that had condemned Charles I, he gave the eulogy. However, he was displaced from his position by the Restoration of 1660, and in 1662 refused to conform, losing his status and being ejected as Anglican minister.[7]

After some moves, he established a church in Holborn, London, where he was assisted by Theophilus Gale.[8]

Thomas Rowe (1657–1705) was his son. He took over the church after Gale’s death, and moved it to Girdlers’ Hall, which opened in 1681 in Basinghall Street.[9][10] It had Isaac Watts in its congregation.[11] Henry Grove, friend of Watts, was Rowe’s nephew.[12]

References
  1. Walter Wilson, The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses (1810), p. 156.
  2. "Rowe, John (RW644J)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  3. University of Oxford College Histories: From Their Foundations to the Twentieth Century (1998), pp. 144-5.
  4. Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (1999), p. 7.
  5. Daniel Neal, Joshua Toulmin, The History of the Puritans, Or Protestant Nonconformists: From the Reformation in 1517, to the Revolution in 1688 (1837), p. 209
  6. Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (1993), p. 101.
  7. Gary Brady (19 September 2005). "The Great Ejection 1662: October 2007". Greatejection.blogspot.com. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
  8. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Gale, Theophilus" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 397.
  9. Walter Wilson, History & Antiquities of the Dissenting Churches - Vol. 2 (reprinted 2001), p. 514.
  10. "Girdlers' Hall, Basinghall Street". Archived from the original on 11 October 2008. Retrieved 10 October 2008.
  11. "Issac Watts". Hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
  12. Alan P. F. Sell, Testimony and Tradition: Studies in Reformed and Dissenting Thought (2005), p. 91.


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