of Hendon and subdean of York, 1504, vicar of Thornton, Yorkshire, on 6 Sept. 1505, canon of Windsor, 1506, archdeacon of Cleveland, 1507, king's almoner in 1509, rector of St. Martin's, Ludgate, 1514, archdeacon of Huntingdon on 18 Nov. 1514, and prebendary of Westminster on 28 May 1518. He was with Henry in France in 1513, and served as almoner at the meeting between Charles V and Henry at Gravelines in 1520. He was deprived of the wardenship of Merton by the archbishop of Canterbury for reasons not honourable to him in 1521 (for the particulars see Brodrick, Mem. of Merton, pp. 162–3), and, as a sort of recompense, in 1523 he became bishop of St. Davids. He duly acknowledged the royal supremacy on 22 July 1534. But his orthodoxy was no more above suspicion than his conduct as a bishop, if we may trust the somewhat unreliable testimony of William Barlow (d. 1568) [q. v.], his successor at St. Davids. In 1535 Barlow, who was then acting as Rawlins's suffragan, complained that ‘There is none who sincerely preaches God's word, and scarce any who heartily favour it. No diocese is so corrupted by the enormous vices, the fraudulent exactions, the misordered living, and heathen idolatry shamefully supported under the clergy's jurisdiction.’ Barlow also objected to the bishop's ungodly spiritual officers and to his extravagance. Rawlins died on 18 Feb. 1536, and was buried at St. Davids. A very curious inventory of his goods, and notably of his library, has been preserved. A letter from him is Cotton MS. Vit. B. ix. f. 117.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 671, ii. 743; Brodrick's Memorials of Merton (Oxford Hist. Soc.); Letters and Papers of Henry VIII; Lansdowne MS. 979, f. 116; Le Neve's Fasti Eccl. Angl.; Jones and Freeman's Hist. and Antiq. of St. Davids, p. 309.]
RAWLINS, THOMAS (1620?–1670), medallist and playwright, born about 1620 (see commendatory verses prefixed to The Rebellion), appears to have received instruction as a goldsmith and gem engraver, and to have worked under Nicholas Briot [q. v.] at the mint. He first comes into notice in 1640, when he published ‘The Rebellion,’ a tragedy which is stated on the title-page to have been acted nine days together and divers times since by his majesty's company of revels. It is ‘far from a bad play,’ though the verse is rather halting and bombastic (Genest, English Stage, x. 113–14). The scene is laid in Seville, and a prominent part is taken in the play by the tailors of that city. ‘The Rebellion’ (London, 1640, 4to, reprinted in ‘The Ancient British Drama,’ vol. iii., and in Dodsley's ‘Old English Plays,’ vol. xiv.) was dedicated by Rawlins to his ‘honoured kinsman Robert Ducie, esq., of Aston, Staffordshire.’
Rawlins's first dated medal is of 1641. Shortly afterwards, upon the outbreak of the civil war, he repaired to the king's headquarters at Oxford. His signature appears on coins of the Oxford mint, 1644–1646, and in 1644 he produced the crown piece known as the ‘Oxford crown,’ from the view of Oxford introduced beneath the ordinary equestrian type of the obverse of the coin. In 1643 he prepared the badge given to the ‘Forlorn Hope,’ and received a warrant (1 June 1643) for making the special medal conferred on Sir Robert Welch. He struck at Oxford a medal commemorating the taking of Bristol by Prince Rupert's forces (1643), and until 1648 was actively employed in making medals and badges for the king's adherents. Rawlins also designed a pattern sovereign of Charles I, and the so-called ‘Juxon medal,’ probably the pattern for a five-broad piece. He was formally appointed chief engraver of the mint in the twenty-third year of Charles I (March 1647–March 1648).
About 1648 Rawlins appears to have fled to France. He returned to England in 1652, and from that time till the Restoration earned a precarious livelihood, partly by making dies for tradesmen's tokens. He engraved the town-tokens of Bristol, Gloucester, and Oxford, and produced dies for London tradesmen in Broad Street, Hounsditch, St. Paul's Churchyard, and the Wardrobe (Boyne, Trader's Tokens, ed. Williamson). On 27 Feb. 1657 he was in prison for debt at the ‘Hole in St. Martin's,’ and wrote for assistance to John Evelyn, whom he had met in Paris. Evelyn endorsed the letter as being from ‘Mr. Tho. Rawlins … an excellent artist, but debash'd fellow.’ Some pattern farthings of Cromwell are supposed to have been the work of Rawlins (Montagu, Copper Coins, 2nd edit. p. 35).
At the Restoration Rawlins was reinstated as chief engraver at the mint, Thomas Simon [q. v.] being then styled ‘Chief Engraver of Arms and Seals.’ He had a residence in the mint, and in June 1660 (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1660–1, p. 78) was ordered to engrave the king's effigies for the coins. Five patterns for copper farthings of Charles II were perhaps designed by Rawlins in the same year. From 30 July to 24 Sept. 1660 he was engaged in engraving a privy seal for Ireland and five judicial seals for the Welsh counties. For these six seals he was paid 274l. 2s. 6d. (ib. 1660–1 pp. 185, 299, 1663–4, pp. 109, 257). Rawlins died in 1670. He was
