Nova,’ a compendium of the subjects of medical education. His books contain nothing of value, and many of them are mere advertisements. There is an engraved portrait of him.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. ii. 340; Thornton's Vaccinæ Vindicia, London, 1806; Gent. Mag. 1804 ii. 1224, 1806 i. 294, 377–9; Georgian Era; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886; Index Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office, United States Army; Works.]
ROWNING, JOHN (1701?–1771), mathematician, born about 1701, was son of John Rowning of Ashby-with-Fenby, Lincolnshire. He was educated at the grammar school in Glanford Brigg. Entering Magdalene College, Cambridge, he graduated B.A. in 1724 and M.A. in 1728. He obtained a fellowship at his college and was subsequently appointed rector of the college living of Anderby in Lincolnshire. He was a constant attendant of the meetings of the Spalding Society. A brother was a great mechanic and watchmaker, and he is said himself to have had ‘a good genius for mechanical contrivances.’ ‘Though a very ingenious and pleasant man, he was of an unpromising and forbidding appearance—tall, stooping at the shoulders, and of a sallow, down-looking countenance.’ He died at his lodgings in Carey Street, near Lincoln's Inn Fields, in November 1771. An epitaph, by Joseph Mills of Cowbit, is quoted in Nichols's ‘Literary Anecdotes’ (vi. 109). Rowning was married and had one daughter.
Rowning's chief work was ‘A Compendious System of Natural Philosophy,’ in four parts, which went through seven editions between 1735 and 1772. He also wrote a ‘Preliminary Discourse to an intended Treatise on the Fluxionary Method,’ 1756, which is largely argumentative (see a notice in Monthly Review, 1756, i. 286); and published two papers in the ‘Philosophical Transactions:’ (1) ‘A Description of a Barometer, wherein the Scale of Variation may be increased at Pleasure,’ 1733; (2) ‘Directions for making a Machine for finding the Roots of Equations universally,’ 1770.
[Nichols's Lit. Anecd.; Hutton's Math. Dict.; New and General Biogr. Dict.; Chalmers's Biogr. Dict.; Allibone.]
ROWNTREE, JOSEPH (1801–1859), quaker, youngest son of John Rowntree of Scarborough, by his wife, Elizabeth Lotherington, daughter of a quaker shipowner and captain, was born at Scarborough on 10 June 1801. He left school at thirteen, but continued to study, with the aid of his brother and sisters. At twenty-one he started in business as a grocer in York, and was admitted a member of the Merchants' Company. Education especially in the Society of Friends was his lifelong interest, and he was prominent in establishing, in 1828 and 1830, the York Quarterly Meeting Boys' and Girls' Schools, now occupying extensive premises at Bootham and The Mount, York. In 1832 he assisted in the establishment of the Friends' school at Rawdon, near Leeds, for children of a different class, and was one of the original trustees of the Flounders' Institute, Ackworth, for training teachers.
Rowntree was the friend of James Montgomery [q. v.], of Joseph John Gurney [q. v.], of Hannah Kilham [q. v.], and of Samuel Tuke [q. v.] With the latter he helped to establish the Friends' Educational Society in 1837, and served on the committee of the Friends' Retreat for the insane at York [see under Tuke, William]. He inaugurated several schemes of municipal reform in York, of which city he was alderman from 1853 and mayor in 1858. Although he was elected, he declined to serve from conscientious scruples. An able pamphlet by him helped to reform the marriage regulations of the Society of Friends (1860 and 1872), by which marriage with a person not in membership ceased to be visited with disownment. Other pamphlets were issued by Rowntree on ‘Colonial Slavery’ and on ‘Education.’
Rowntree died at York on 4 Nov. 1859. By his wife, Sarah Stephenson of Manchester (m. 1832), he had three sons.
[Family Memoir, printed for private circulation, and kindly lent by the editor, John Stephenson Rowntree; Annual Monitor, 1859, p. 211; York Herald, 12 Nov. 1859; Smith's Cat. ii. 514; Reports of the Friends' Educational Society; The Friend, xvii. 214; Biogr. Cat. of Portraits at the Friends' Institute.]
ROWSE, RICHARD (fl. 1250), Franciscan teacher. [See Richard of Cornwall.]
ROWSON, SUSANNA (1762–1824), novelist and actress, born at Portsmouth in 1762, was only daughter of Lieutenant William Haswell, of the British navy (d. 1805), and his wife, Susanna (Musgrave), who died at the birth of her daughter. Having settled in New England, Haswell returned in 1766 to conduct his daughter to his home on the promontory of Nantasket beach, Massachusetts. Haswell soon married a second wife, Rachel, daughter of Ebenezer Woodward, by whom he had three sons.
Susanna showed a fondness for books, and
