daughter of the laird of Balfour, and he was selected as one of the six ministers who drew up the Scottish Confession and First Book of Discipline. In July, 1560, he was translated to Perth; the same year he was a member of the first general assembly which met on the 20th December, and of the fifteenth assembly he was the moderator. For twenty years he laboured in the cause of the Reformation, and died at Perth on the 16th October, 1580, at the age of fifty-four. Five of his sons were ministers, James at Kilspindie, William at Forgandenny, John at Carnock, Archibald at Stobo, and Colin at St. Quivox. Several of their sons also were faithful and zealous ministers.
Row, John, third surviving son of the preceding, was born at Perth in December, 1568, the witnesses of his baptism being John Anderson of Tullilum, and Sir Colin Campbell of Glenorchy, an ancestor of the present family of Breadalbane. At seven years of age he could read the Old Testament freely in the original. In 1588 he accompanied his cousins, the Bethunes of Balfour, to Edinburgh as their tutor, and himself attended the newly-erected college, studying under Charteris, the successor of Rollock (see Rollock), and taking his master's degree in August, 1590. After being a schoolmaster at Aberdeen, he was ordained minister of the parish of Carnock at the close of 1592. In this situation he lived and laboured for more than half a century, and died on the 26th of June, 1646. He wrote a "History of the Kirk of Scotland," from the year 1558 to the year 1637.—His second son, John Row (noticed below), made a fair transcript of the MS. four years after his father's death, or in 1650.—Another son, William Row, settled at Ceres, seems also to have made another copy. The work in MS. long lay in the Advocates' library, but has now been published by the Maitland Club, and also and specially by the Woodrow Society, under the editorial care of David Laing, from the MS. in the Advocates' library, in the writing of John Row, who continues the history to July, 1639, and who himself is now to be noticed.
Row, John, principal of King's college, Aberdeen, was the second son of the minister of Carnock just referred to, and was born there about the year 1598. He studied at St. Andrews, and took his degree in St. Leonard's college, July, 1617. He was for some time tutor to the son of the earl of Kinnoul, lord chancellor of Scotland. In 1632 he was appointed master of the grammar-school at Perth, and the presbytery for a time refused to admit him, because he had not been tried and approved by them. While in this situation, with hereditary love for the Jewish tongue, he compiled a Hebrew grammar, which received the approbation of the faculty of St. Leonard's college, and of Alexander Henderson, and was honoured with eulogistic verses by Samuel Rutherford, James Guthrie, and Principal Adamson. The work was inscribed to his former pupil, now earl of Kinnoul. In 1641 Row was elected minister of St. Nicholas church, Aberdeen, and was formally admitted in December of that year. In 1644 appeared his Hebrew grammar, "Hebrææ Linguæ Institutiones," Glasguæ excudebat Georgius Anderson; and his "Hebrew Vocabulary," 12mo, is bound up with the preceding. These were the first books of the kind ever printed in Scotland, and it is remarkable that they were printed, not in the Scottish capital, but in the city of Glasgow. Two years afterwards the general assembly recommended these elementary compilations for general use, and the town council of Aberdeen ordained Thomas Burnet, their "thesaurer," to give the author for "his paines four hundreth merks." Being a covenanter he made himself sometimes obnoxious to the royalist party, and had to seek refuge ou one occasion in Dunottar castle. During Cromwell's supremacy, five of his colonels as English commissioners went to Aberdeen, and one of their acts was the elevation of Row to the principalship of King's college. At this period, according to the minutes of presbytery, Row is alleged to have inclined to independency, nay, some affirmed, to baptist views. He, however, filled the office of principal with great credit, and compiled in 1651 a "Praxis Preceptorum Hebrææ Grammaticæ," but it does not seem to have been printed. Principal Row does not seem to have been very steady in his politics, as at the Restoration he dedicated a poetical panegyric to Charles II. (Εὐχαρίστια Βασιλική), in which he heartily vilifies Cromwell, calling him amongst other things, "trux vilis vermis" (vile cruel worm), an anagram on the name Oliver Cromwell. But his newborn loyalty seems to have been suspected, and it did not save him, for he immediately resigned the principalship, taught for a season a private school in New Aberdeen, and then retired to Kineller, and spent the remainder of his life in the house of his son-in-law, the minister of the parish. He is supposed to have died about 1672. Row could not have much money after his resignation, but in 1663 he set apart a hundred merks, the interest of which was to be added to the salary of the schoolmaster of his native parish of Carnock. It was in 1650 that he transcribed his father's history, and added a short supplement, which he curiously and quaintly calls a "Handful of goates haire for the furthering of the building of the tabernacle." A few words may suffice as to other members of this clerical and literary family.—William, a son of the minister of Perth, was born about 1563, and was settled at Forgandenny, in succession to a person of his father's name, and probably a relative. He was one of the ministers who would not give thanks for the king's deliverance from the Gowrie conspiracy. After being moderator of the synod of Perth, he was put to the horn, and summoned to appear before the council. He died in October, 1634, and his son William, who attended the Scottish army as chaplain into England, became his successor. He died in 1660.—William, the youngest son of the minister of Carnock, was born about 1612. His college studies being over, he assisted his brother in the grammar-school at Perth in 1634, and during some subsequent years; then was for some time assistant to his father at Carnock; and in 1644 was ordained minister at Ceres. In 1665 he was ejected for nonconformity; was in 1679 allowed to preach privately, but not within two miles of the parish church. He was finally silenced in 1680, but at the Revolution he was restored to his former charge. He survived beyond 1697.—Row, James, another son of the minister of Carnock (he had four sons ministers), was minister of Monivaird and Strowan, and is known still as author of a sermon which forms one of the curiosities of Scottish literature. It was preached in St. Giles in 1638, and is sometimes called the "redshankes" sermon, sometimes the "pockmanty" sermon, and sometimes that of Bon Accord. It is a quaint and droll description of the wounds of the church, the text being Jeremiah xxx. 17, and contains a strong recommendation to sign the covenant. He speaks of "we Highlanders," hence its first name; and he talks of Balaam falling off his ass on the one side, and his "pockmanty" on the other, hence its second; and it got its third name from the concluding sentence, in which he urges the reluctant Aberdonians to "subscrive" the covenant and then with relieved consciences to go home and "drink a cup of Bon Accord." It is said in some current biographies, that Principal Row preached before the parliament at Westminster, October, 1656. This is a mistake. The John Row who preached and published that sermon was an independent minister in London, who during the Cromwellian period had allotted to his congregation part of the Abbey church of St. Peter, Westminster. Born at Crediton, Devonshire, 1625; studied at Oxford; died 12th October, 1677. Author of "Saints' Temptations," "Emmanuel, or the Love of Christ."—J. E.
ROWE, Elizabeth, a literary lady, the daughter of Mr. Walter Singer, dissenting minister of Ilchester in Somersetshire, was born at that town in 1674. She published a volume of poems under the signature of "Philomela," when she was only twenty-two. She was married to Mr. Thomas Rowe, himself a man of literary cultivation and pursuits, in 1709. Her husband died in 1715. Mrs. Rowe's chief productions are, "Friendship in Death, in Twenty Letters from the Dead to the Living," 1728; "Letters Moral and Entertaining;" "The History of Joseph," 1736; and "Devout Exercises of the Heart." Her miscellaneous works were published in 1739, in 2 vols., 8vo. Mrs. Rowe died in 1737.—W. J. P.
ROWE, Nicholas, dramatist, poet, and editor, was born at Little Berkford in Bedfordshire in 1673, of an old family, and the son of a sergeant-at-law. Educated at Westminster under Busby, he became a sound classical scholar, but at sixteen was entered at the Middle temple, to follow his father's profession, the law. His father's death left him his own master, and in independent circumstances. He forsook law for literature and the stage, and his first play, "The Ambitious Stepmother," 1700, was successful. It was followed in 1702 by "Tamerlane," in which Louis XIV. was represented unfavourably as Bajazet, and William III. very favourably as a wise and virtuous Tamerlane. This drama was, therefore, very successful, and so late as 1815, it is said, continued to be performed in London on the anniversary of the day of King William's landing. Of Rowe's other plays we need only mention two, "The Fair Penitent," 1703, founded on Massinger's Fatal Dowry, and "Jane Shore," 1714,
