# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Nowell, Laurence

Modern scholarship identifies two distinct Laurence Nowells, confused in older works.
​NOWELL or NOWEL, LAURENCE (d. 1576), dean of Lichfield, a younger son of John Nowell, esq., of Read Hall, Whalley, Lancashire, by his second wife, Elizabeth, born Kay, and brother of Alexander Nowell [q. v.], dean of St. Paul's, entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1536, and, desiring to study logic at Cambridge, migrated to that university, where he graduated B.A. in 1542. Returning to Oxford, he was in that year incorporated B.A., and proceeded M.A. in 1544. He is said at one period to have been a member of Christ Church (Tanner); but this is extremely doubtful. In 1546 he was appointed master of the grammar school at Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire. Before long, however, articles were exhibited against him in chancery by the corporation of the town as patrons of the school for neglect of duty. Proceedings were stayed in February 1550 by an order from the privy council to the warden and fellowship of Sutton that he should not be removed from his place ‘unless they have found in him some notable offence, in which behalf they were to make the lords privy thereto’ (Acts of the Privy Council, new ser. v. 226). On the accession of Queen Mary he took shelter with Sir John Perrot at Carew Castle, and after a time joined his brother Alexander in Germany. Having returned to England on ​the queen's death, he was made archdeacon of Derby in 1558, and received the deanery of Lichfield in March 1560, which he held along with his archdeaconry (Le Neve, Fasti, i. 565, 577). In the convocation of 1563 he voted with his brother Alexander for the proposals for abrogating some church ceremonies and rendering others optional, and for the six articles to the like effect, on which the lower house divided (Strype, Annals, i. i. 500–6). In that year he was tutor to Richard de Vere, earl of Oxford (1550–1604), and was installed prebendary of Chichester. He also held the rectory of Haughton and Drayton Basset, Staffordshire, and in 1566 received a prebend in the church of York. He was accused in 1570 by Peter Morwent [q. v.], a prebendary of Lichfield, of having uttered scandal about the queen and the Earl of Leicester, and answered the charge in writing (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1547–80, p. 393). In 1575 he bought a house and estate at Sheldon, and some land at Coleshill, both in Warwickshire. He died in or about October 1576, and it is thought was buried at Weston in Derbyshire. By his wife Mary, whose former husband was named Glover, he left two or more sons—Laurence, matriculated at Brasenose College, at the age of eighteen, in 1590 (Clark, Register of the University of Oxford, ii. ii. 180), and Thomas—and three daughters. He was a diligent antiquary, and learned in Anglo-Saxon, being among the first to revive the study of the language in England (Camden, Britannia, col. 6), and having as his pupil William Lambarde [q. v.], the editor of the laws of the Anglo-Saxons, with whom he used to study when staying at one period in the chambers of his brother, Robert Nowell (d. 1569), attorney-general of the court of wards, in Gray's Inn. Nowell left the following manuscripts: (1) ‘Vocabularium Saxonicum,’ an Anglo-Saxon dictionary, which passed successively to Lambarde, Somner, and Selden, and is now in the Bodleian Library, as is also a transcript of it made by Francis Junius (1589–1677) [q. v.]; (2) A collection containing perambulations of forests and other matters (Thoresby, Hist. of Leeds, p. 531); (3) ‘Collectanea’ in MS. Cotton. Vitell. D. vii.; (4) ‘Excerpta quædam Saxonica A.D. 189–997;’ (5) ‘Excerpta, A.D. 1043–1079;’ and (6) ‘Variæ mappæ chorographicæ, Hiberniæ, Scotiæ, Angliæ, Walliæ,’ &c.—Nos. 4–6 are in MS. Cotton. Domit. xviii.; (7) ‘Gesta episcoporum Lindisfarnensium et Dunelmensium … ex Symeone Dunelmensi collecta,’ &c., in MS. Cotton. Vespas. A. v.; (8) a letter in Latin to Cecil, dated June 1563, stating that he was prepared to make maps of England, in MS. Lansd. vi.; (9) answer to the charges of Peter Morwin (see above); (10) a letter to Archbishop Parker, dated June 1567, on behalf of two nonconformists, in Corpus Christi College Library. A portrait of Nowell, with the inscription ‘Nowell, 1601,’ but without painter's name, was bequeathed to Dulwich College by Edward Alleyn, and is now in the Dulwich Gallery.
[Churton's Life of A. Nowell, pp. 12, 99, 198, 233–9; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 357, 358; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), i. 245; Biog. Brit. v. 3259; Le Neve's Fasti (Hardy), i. 563, 577, iii. 169; Dugdale's Warwickshire, p. 670; Thoresby's Leeds, p. 531; Cal. State Papers, (Lemon), 1547–83, p. 393; Acts of Privy Council (new ser.), v. 226; Strype's Annals, i. i. 500 sq. (8vo edit.); Strype's Memorials, ii. i. 403.]
W. H.