parish, and an old fellow-student of Row, his son William was appointed his assistant and successor. It is said that he refused, even under these circumstances, to recognise the ecclesiastical supremacy of his old friend, placing their former regent, John Malcolm, now minister of Perth, at the head of his table, instead of the bishop. Row died in October 1634.
[Fasti Eccl. Scot.; Melville's Autobiogr.; Row's and Calderwood's Hist.]
ROWAN, ARCHIBALD HAMILTON (1751–1834), United Irishman, only son and heir of Gawin Hamilton of Killyleagh Castle, co. Down, a lineal descendant of Hans Hamilton, vicar of Dunlop in Ayrshire, father of James Hamilton, viscount Claneboye (1559–1643) [q. v.], was born in Rathbone Place, London, in the house of his maternal grandfather, William Rowan, on 12 May 1751. His education was superintended by his grandfather, who placed him at a private school kept by a Mr. Fountain in Marylebone. When he was sixteen his grandfather, a man of considerable wealth, died, leaving him his entire property, on condition, first, that he adopted the name of Rowan in addition to his own; secondly, that he was educated at either Oxford or Cambridge; and, thirdly, that he refrained from visiting Ireland till he attained the age of twenty-five, under penalty of forfeiting the income of the estate during such time as he remained there. Accordingly, he entered Queens' College, Cambridge, where, having fallen into a fast set, he speedily became more remarkable for his dogs and hunters and feats of strength than for his love of learning, ‘and so,’ according to a contemporary, ‘after coolly attempting to throw a tutor into the Cam, after shaking all Cambridge from its propriety by a night's frolic (in which he climbed the signposts and changed the principal signs), he was rusticated, till, the good humour of the university returning, he was readmitted, and enabled to satisfy his grandfather's will.’
After spending a few months in America as private secretary to Lord Charles Montague, governor of South Carolina, and paying some secret visits to Ireland, Rowan, through the influence of the Duke of Manchester, obtained a commission as captain of the grenadiers in the Huntingdon militia. In consequence of his extravagant manner of living, he was about this time compelled to sell out of the funds a considerable quantity of stock inherited from his grandfather; but far from learning prudence by his misfortunes, he hired a house on Hounslow Heath, in addition to his lodgings in London, where he indulged his fancy for horses and hunting to the top of his bent. In 1777 he was induced by Lord Charles Montague to accept a lieutenant-colonelcy in the Portuguese army. On arriving at Lisbon, however, he found that the Marquis of Pombal, through whose influence the English officers had been appointed, had lost power. Accordingly, after visiting Tangier, he returned to England, and joined his regiment at Southsea, but on the camp breaking up he resigned his commission and went to reside at his mother's house in London.
Here he made the acquaintance of his future wife, Sarah Anne Dawson, the daughter of Walter Dawson of Lisanisk, near Carrickmacross, co. Monaghan. They were married in the following year (1781) in Paris, where they resided till 1784, when, in compliance with his mother's wish, he removed to Ireland, and took a cottage near Naas in co. Kildare, till the requirements of his rapidly increasing family obliged him to purchase the estate of Rathcoffey in the same county. He at once began to display great interest in the political affairs of his country, and, enlisting as a private in his father's company of Killyleagh volunteers, he was chosen a delegate for co. Down to the volunteer convention that met at Dublin on 25 Oct. 1784. In May 1786 he succeeded his father in the command of the Killyleagh volunteers; but it was his conduct in the case of Mary Neal, two years later, that brought his name first prominently before the public. Mary Neal was a young girl who had been decoyed into a house of ill-fame and outraged by a person in high station. The case was complicated by a cross charge of robbery, while the woman by whose connivance the outrage was committed, after being sentenced to death, was pardoned by the viceroy at the instigation, it was supposed, of the girl's seducer. Rowan thereupon published ‘A brief Investigation of the Sufferings of John, Anne, and Mary Neal,’ and offered a strong but ineffectual opposition to what he and many others considered an abuse of the prerogative of mercy. Failing in his object, he took the unfortunate girl into his own house, and finally apprenticed her to a dressmaker; but ‘her subsequent character and conduct were not such as could requite the care of her benefactor or justify the interest she had excited in the public mind’ (Autobiogr. p. 103 n.; cf. Barrington, Personal Sketches, i. 327). In 1790 there was established at Belfast a Northern Whig Club, of which Rowan was admitted an original member. In October of
