The New International Encyclopædia/Rowlands, Samuel

ROWLANDS, rō'landz, Samuel (c.1570-?). An English author, who published about twenty-five famous pamphlets in prose and verse. Some are on religious themes, but most are satires on contemporary manners. The series began with The Betraying of Christ, a poem (1598), and closed with Heaven's Glory. Seeke it. Earth's Vanitie. Flye it. Helle's Horrour. Fere it (in verse and prose, 1628). Of his satirical work, a good specimen is The Letting of Humours Blood in the Head-Vaine (1600), a collection of satires and epigrams, assailing his contemporaries under fictitious names. To the same year belongs the similar A Mery Metinge, or 'tis Mery when Knaves mete. Both these pamphlets were burned by the authorities, and the publishers were fined for handling them. Martin Mark-all, Beadle of Bridewell (1610), is an excellent account of the rogues of the time. Consult the reprint of his Works, with an introduction by Gosse (Hunterian Club, Glasgow, 1872-1886). The introduction was reissued in Gosse's Seventeenth Century Studies (London, 1883).