John Rowe (minister)

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

Life

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] 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 in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
  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. ^ http://greatejection.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html
  8. ^ http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Theophilus_Gale
  9. ^ Walter Wilson, History & Antiquities of the Dissenting Churches - Vol. 2 (reprinted 2001), p. 514.
  10. ^ http://www.oldlondonmaps.com/viewspages/0290.html
  11. ^ http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/Biographies/issac_watts.htm
  12. ^ Alan P. F. Sell, Testimony and Tradition: Studies in Reformed and Dissenting Thought (2005), p. 91.