Rawdon Brown (1803 – 25 August 1883 in Venice) was a historical scholar.
He spent his life at Venice in the study of Italian history, especially in its relation to English history. He came to Venice in 1833 to find the gravestone of Thomas Mowbray, the banished Duke of Norfolk mentioned in Shakespeare's play Richard II.[1] In 1838 he bought the Palazzo Dario, but sold it four years later due to lack of funds. However, he remained in Venice for most of his life, and John Ruskin met him there and enjoyed a warm friendship with him. His great work, to which he gave some twenty years, was done for the British government on Venetian state papers in the Frari, particularly on the reports of Venetian ambassadors to England, projecting the publication of A Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English Affairs existing in the Archives of Venice and Northern Italy. This was unfinished when Brown died at Venice in 1883, but some further work was done on it by his executor George Cavendish-Bentinck, before in 1889 the completion of the work was taken over by Horatio Brown (no relation).[2][3]
Rawdon Brown and the Gravestone of "Banished Norfolk"
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.